Bab 5
Epistemologi
Epistemologi
Sumber Pengetahuan
• Bidang Epistemologi
– Epistemologi adalah teori tentang pengetahuan
– Bagaimana orang mengetahui
– Apakah pengetahuan kita itu benar
• Dua Jenis Pengetahuan
– Pengetahuan a priori
• A priori adalah sebelum
• Pengetahuan a priori adalah pengetahuan sebelum
pengalaman
• Umumnya mencakup logika, matematika
– Pengetahuan a posteriori
• A posteriori adalah setelah
• Pengetahuan a posteriori adalah pengetahuan setelah
pengalaman (diperoleh dari pengalaman)
• Umumnya mencakup pengetahuan alam
A PRIORI KNOWLEDGE
A priori knowledge, in Western philosophy since the
time of Kant, knowledge that is independent of all
particular experiences, as opposed to a posteriori
knowledge, which derives from experience alone. The
Latin phrases a priori (“from what is before”) and a
posteriori (“from what is after”) were used in philosophy
originally to distinguish between arguments from causes
and arguments from effects.
The first recorded occurrence of the phrases is in the
writings of the 14th-century logician Albert of Saxony.
Here, an argument a priori is said to be “from causes to the
effect” and an argument a posteriori to be “from effects to
causes.” Similar definitions were given by many later
philosophers down to and including Leibniz, and the
expressions still occur sometimes with these meanings in
nonphilosophical contexts. It should be remembered that
medieval logicians used the word “cause” in a syllogistic
sense corresponding to Aristotle’s attia and did not
necessarily mean by prius something earlier in time. This
point is brought out by the use of the phrase demonstratio
propter quid (“demonstration on account of what”) as an
equivalent for demonstratio a priori and demonstratio
quia (“demonstration that, or because”) as an equivalent
for demonstratio a posteriori. Hence the reference is
obviously to Aristotle’s distinction between knowledge of
the ground or explanation of something and knowledge of
the mere fact.
Latent in this distinction for Kant is the antithesis
between necessary, deductive truth and probable, inductive
truth. The former applies to a priori judgments, which are
arrived at independently of experience and hold
universally; the latter applies to a posteriori judgments,
which are contingent on experience and therefore must
acknowledge possible exceptions. In his Critique of Pure
Reason Kant used this distinctions, in part, to explain the
special case of mathematical knowledge, which he
regarded as the fundamental example of a priori
knowledge.
Although the use of a priori to distinguish knowledge
such as that which we have in mathematics is
comparatively recent, the interest of philosophers in that
kind of knowledge is almost as old as philosophy itself.
No one finds it puzzling that one can acquire information
by looking, feeling, or listening, but philosophers who
have taken seriously the possibility of learning by mere
thinking have often considered that this requires some
special explanation. Plato maintained in his Meno and in
his Phaedo that the learning of geometrical truths was
only the recollection of knowledge possessed in a previous
existence when we could contemplate the eternal ideas, or
forms, directly. Augustine and his medieval followers,
sympathizing with Plato’s intentions but unable to accept
the details of his theory, declared that the ideas were in the
mind of God, who from time to time gave intellectual
illumination to men. Descartes, going further in the same
direction, held that all the ideas required for a priori
knowledge were innate in each human mind. For Kant the
puzzle were to explain the possibility of a priori judgments
that were also synthetic (i.e., not merely explicative of
concepts), and the solution that he proposed was the
doctrine that space, time, and the categories (e.g.,
causality), about which we were able to make such
judgments, were forms imposed by the mind on the stuff
of experience.
In each of these theories the possibility of a priori
knowledge is explained by a suggestion that we have a
privilege opportunity for studying the subject matter of
such knowledge. The same conception occurs also in the
very un-Platonic theory of a priori knowledge first
enunciated by Thomas Hobbes in his De Corpore and
adopted in the 20th century by the logical empiricists.
According to this theory, statements of necessity can be
made a priori because they are merely by-products of own
rules for the use of language.
Epistemologi
Rasionalisme dan Empirisisme
• Dua Paham Epistemologi
– Kedua paham itu adalah
• Rasionalisme
• Empirisisme
• Paham Rasionalisme
– Pengetahuan adalah a priori
– Pengetahuan bersumber dari penalaran
– Terutama pada logika dan matematika melalui
deduksi
• Paham Empirisisme
– Pengetahuan adalah a posteriori
– Pengetahuan bersumber pada pengalaman
– Terutama pada pengetahuan alam, melalui
eksperimentasi, observasi, dan induksi
EPISTEMOLOGY
The first question of the theory of knowledge is the
question whether there can be any such thing as valid
knowledge; the issue posed by skepticism. Supposing that
skeptical doubts can be met, the next question is whether
such knowledge as men can justly claim extends to things
as they are in themselves or is confined to phenomena as
they must appear to us within the limits of the human
senses and human understanding. Those who conceive that
what we know is things as they actually are, independent
of our minds, are called realists in epistemology; those
who believe that we can have no knowledge of absolute
realities but only of their sensible manifestations, are
called phenomenalists.
The earliest skeptics were the ancient Sophists and
Cynics; the most notable of modern skeptics is David
Hume. The outstanding representatives of the
phenomenalist theory are Immanuel Kant and Herbert
Spencer.
Both realists and phenomenalists, it should be noted
agree that there is an absolute reality, and disagree only as
to whether we can know this absolute nature which it has;
whereas idealists believe that there is no reality out of
relation to minds. Idealistic theories of knowledge are,
however, too various and complex for us to attempt to
summarize them here.
Theories of knowledge in general—idealistic ones
included—are also divisible into those which assign the
major role in valid knowledge to intellect or reason, and so
are rationalistic, and theories which take sense perception
to be the sole or the principal ground of knowledge, and so
are empiricistic. In modern philosophy, the Continental
philosophers, Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, are accounted the
outstanding rationalists; and the outstanding empiricists
are the
British philosophers, John Locke, George
Berkeley, and David Hume. Immanuel Kant is notable for
having recognized that both sense and intellectual
understanding are indispensable for any valid knowledge.
In the 20th century—and perhaps particularly in Great
Britain and America—philosophic thinking shows some
tendency to converge upon epistemological conceptions
which may be suggested as follows:
(1) There are two types of knowledge; that which is a
priori (knowable without reference to particular occasions
of experience and sense observation) and that which is a
posteriori and empirical (requiring to be based on and
corroborated by sense observation).
(2) All knowledge of the natural-scientific sort is a
posteriori, dependent upon sense observation for the
assurance of it. It is only in logic itself and in pure
mathematics that we have scientific knowledge which is a
priori.
(3) Consonantly, it is only in the realm of the logical
and mathematical that theoretical certainty is possible.
Both our common knowledge of the external world and
the generalizations of natural science, though they may
achieve an approximation to certainty which is sufficient
for all practical purposes, and even for theory which is
bent upon practical application, cannot become strictly and
theoretically certain.
Agreement on these theses—especially as here briefly
formulated—would be by no means universal; and
whether the tendencies so suggested will continue to
predominate cannot, of course, be forecast.
Epistemology is a difficult and complex subject. Here
particularly, historical selections probably afford the best
introduction. Since Kant is a notable contributor to
epistemology but peculiarly difficult to read, a brief
outline of his conceptions is mentioned by George
Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge and by
Alexander Dunlop Lindsay’s Immanuel Kant.
Epistemologi
Rasionalisme
• Rasionalisme
– Rasionalisme mengutamakan penalaran dan
kecerdasan di dalam pemerolehan pengetahuan
– Ada sejumlah aliran seperti
• Rasionalisme epistemologik
• Rasionalisme etik
• Rasionalisme religius
– Ada dua macam fungsi penalaran yakni diskursif
dan intuitif
• Fungsi Diskursif (langkah demi langkah)
– Mengetahui terputus-putus secara bertahap dari
premis sampai ke kesimpulan
• Fungsi Intuitif (Langsung)
– Secara naluriah langsung mengetahui
RATIONALISM
Rationalism, in philosophy, a method of inquiry that
regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge
and, in contrast to empiricism, tends to discountenance
sensory experience. It holds that, because reality itself has
an inherently rational structure, there are truths—
especially in logic and mathematics but also in ethics and
metaphysics—that the intellect can grasp directly. In
ethics, rationalism relies on a “natural light,” and in
theology it replaces supernatural revelation with reason.
The inspiration of rationalism has always been
mathematics, and rationalists have stressed the superiority
of the deductive over all other methods in point of
certainty. According to the extreme rationalist doctrine, all
the truths of the physical science and even history could in
principle be discovered by pure thinking and set forth as
the consequences of self-evident premises. This view is
opposed to the various systems which regard the mind as a
tabular rasa (blank tablet) in which the outside world, as it
were, imprints itself through the senses.
The opposition between rationalism and empiricism is,
however, rarely so simple and direct, inasmuch as many
thinkers have admitted both sensation and reflection.
Locke, for example, is the rationalist in the weakest sense,
holding that the materials of human knowledge (ideas) are
supplied by sense experience or introspection, but that
knowledge consists in seeing necessary connections bet-
ween them, which is the function of reason (Essay
Concerning Human Understanding).
Most philosophers who are called rationalists have
maintained that that the materials of knowledge are
derived not from experience but deductively from
fundamental elementary concepts. This attitude may be
studied in Rene Descartes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and
Christian von Wolff. It is based on Descartes’s fundamental principle that knowledge must be clear, and seeks to
give to the philosophy the certainty and demonstrative
character of mathematics, from the a priori principle of
which all its claims are derived. The attack made by David
Hume on the causal relation led directly to the new
rationalism of Kant, who argued that it was wrong to
regard thought as mere analysis. In Kant’s views, a priori
concepts do exist, but if they are to lead to the
amplification of knowledge, they must be brought into
relation with empirical data.
Ethical rationalism is the application of epistemological
rationalism to the field of morals. The primary moral ideas
(good, duty) are held to be innate, and the first principles
of morals (e.g., the Golden Rule) are deemed self-evident.
It is further claimed that the possession of reason provides
an adequate motive for moral conduct. In ethical
rationalism, reason is generally contrasted with feeling or
moral sense.
Religious rationalism asserts the claims of reason
against those of revelation or authority. The fundamental
principles of religion are held to be innate or self-evident
and revelation unnecessary. Religious rationalism thus
stresses the importance of natural as opposed to revealed
religion.
Empirisisme
Rasionalisme
• Penalaran (Reasoning)
– Ada banyak arti berbeda tentang penalaran.
Beberapa di antaranya:
– Proses mental beranjak dari sesuatu yang diketahui,
langkah demi langkah, ke mengetahui sesuatu
lainnya yang sebelumnya tidak diketahui
– Berpikir dari umum ke khusus serta dari khusus ke
umum
– Berpikir tentang hal yang berbeda untuk
menemukan hubungan, keurutan, kemiripan,
perbedaan
– Melakukan eksperimen di dalam pikiran
• Penalaran Immanuel Kant
– Menghasilkan karya Critique of Pure Reason dan
Critique of Practical Reason
REASONING OR INFERENCE
Reasoning is the mental process in which we advance
from some known fact or principle to the truth of some
other fact which is different from the starting-point. The
basis for the transition is always found in the knowledge
from which we set out. This is taken or assumed to be real,
and in it is found the ground and justification for the
advance to something else. The differential of reasoning
thus appear to be mediation; when we reason we infer that
something is true because something else is true.
Knowledge derived from reasoning may, therefore, be
termed mediate, as oppose of immediate knowledge
obtained from sense perception and memory. The question
at once arise how any metal content can justify an advance
to something different from itself? How are we warranted
in passing from the known to the unknown? This is not
merely the question that Mill raised as to whether all
syllogistic reasoning—all advance from premises to
conclusion—was not a petitio principii; but it concerns all
reasoning, inductive and deductive alike. The dilemma is
that if the result is not contained in the starting-point the
advance does not seem to be justified; if it is already
present, the reasoning shows nothing new. The view of
Leibniz was that all reasoning is analysis, a drawing out
and fuller explication of the original datum of the mind.
Kant pointed out that thinking involves also synthesis,
new constructions and additions to the material from
which it starts, and he takes as the fundamental problem of
his ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ the question how such
synthetic judgments are possible. His answer is essentially
identical with that which Aristotle gave, namely, that the
mind or reason itself enters into the process as a premise—
or, in other words, that it is through the creative activity of
the mind that the new truth is reached. Whether or not one
can connect one fact with another in a logical way depends
upon one’s intellectual ability to discover points of
essential resemblance or identity between facts. The good
reasoner is he who can look beneath the surface and detect
identities that are not at once obvious, as Newton, for
example, did when he reasoned from the fall of the apple
to the movement of the heavenly bodies. Reasoning then,
may be defined as the process of discovering essential
resemblances or points of identity between things.
It follows from what has been said that reasoning is not
a process of mind that can go on apart from experience.
The thinkers of the modern period down almost to the end
of 18th century continues to believe that reason was a kind
of special organ or faculty that could yield truth of the
highest order of certainty quite apart from ordinary
experience. Kant, however, uses the term “Understanding”
(Verstand) for the thinking faculties as employed in
interpreting experience, and reserves the name “Reason”
(Vernunft) for the vain and illusory attempt of thought to
operate in independence of any given material of experien-
ce. Apart from this terminology, however, which has not
been generally followed, the result of Kant’s teaching was
to exhibit the close and essential connection that exists
between thinking and sense-perception; on the one hand,
thought is empty apart from the material of senseperception, and, on the other, what we call ordinary
perceptive experience is constantly interwoven with more
or less explicit processes of reasoning. Reasoning does
not go on in a vacuum, nor is it a separate and distinct
function of mind that in some mysterious way spins truth
out of itself. But reason is on one side a universal function
of receptivity; it receives its material from every channel
of experience, and is itself just the unifying, co-ordinating
and systematizing life of experience. Deduction and
induction are often spoken of as if they were distinct
species of reasoning. Reasoning, however, is always one
and the same process. It consists, as we have seen, in
connecting parts of experience by the discovery of some
identical element in them. This identity, as present in
various particulars, we may speak of as universal, or
general, principle, and, therefore say that when we reason
we unite particulars through a general law or principle.
Now, the difference between deduction and induction is
the difference in the starting-point and in the direction in
which we proceed. If we are already in possession of the
general law, and set out to apply it to particular cases, we
are using deduction. If, however, our starting-point is the
particular instances, then we reason inductively to
discover the universal law of connection. In both cases the
structure of the completed inference is the same, and
consists in the connection of particulars, in virtue of our
insight into the universal law or principle expressed in
them.
In this reference to a universal principle, we have also
that which distinguishes reasoning from the transition
from idea to idea of the associative process. In the large
part of the conscious life that usually is described as
thinking, one idea by its very presence seems to call up
another, without the apprehension of any universal or
essential law of connection. But this is mere drifting on
the part of the mind. In reasoning, the mind is fully awake;
it sets a definite purpose before it, and proceeds by active
attention and analysis to discover essential and necessary
points of connection. It thus uses association for its own
purposes; so that if we define reasoning as a process of
association, we must add that it is association guided and
controlled at every step by the purposes of thought itself.
How conscious and explicit must this direction be before
we can call the process reasoning? Can animals properly
be said to reason? These questions do not admit of any offhand answer. The conscious direction of the mind, the
clearness with which it apprehends the universal in the
particular, is a matter of degree. We may say that some
direction on the part of the mind there must be, as well as
some apprehension of the terms as universal, if reasoning
to occur, without attempting to determine just when these
conditions are fulfilled in any in individual mind on in any
species. What we call conscious reasoning is doubtless
continues with associative and instinctive mental
processed that seem entirely mechanical and irrational,
and the connection between the two extremes may be
mediated by actual observable processes. This continuity,
however, gives no justification for refusing to regard the
differences as important, or for explaining either extreme
of the process in terms of the other.
Empirisisme
Rasionalisme
• Ciri Umum Rasionalisme
– Mengutamakan penalaran di dalam pemerolehan
pengetahuan
– Banyak menggunakan logika deduktif
– Penalaran berlangsung secara diskursif dan intuitif
– Dunia adalah keseluruhan yang teratur yang
rasional
• Penganut Rasionalisme
– Mencakup di antaranya ahli filsafat terkenal
seperti:
– Rene Descartes
– Spinoza
– Leibniz
– Hegel
Epistemologi
Empirisisme
• Empirisme
– Empirisisme mengutamakan pengalaman di dalam
pemerolehan pengetahuan
– Tidak ada kecerdasan yang sebelumnya tidak
berasal dari indera
– Ada sejumlah aliaran
• Empirisisme absolut
• Empirisisme substantif
• Empirisisme parsial
– Menganggap bahwa penalaran matematika pada
rasionalisme hanyalah hubungan tanpa substansi
• Ada Dua Komponen Teori
– Teori arti (konsep)
– Teori pengetahuan
Epistemologi
Empirisisme
• Teori Arti (Theory of Meaning)
– Penjelasan tentang sesuatu melalui kata-kata
– Kata-kata dapat dipahami hanya jika terkait dengan
sesuatu yang dapat dialami
– Misalnya penjelasan tentang arti mobil, buku, Susi,
baik hati, minat
– Sering tidak mudah untuk dilaksanakan dengan
baik
• Teori Pengetahuan
– Pengetahuan tentang sesuatu melalui kata-kata
– Misalnya, Budi baik hari, Susi pandai, besi
memuai, harga saham meningkat
– Perlu dibenarkan melalui pengalaman (diuji
kebenarannya)
– Pengujian melalui pengalaman memerlukan
rancangan yang tepat dan sering kali memerlukan
alat ukur yang sesuai
EMPIRICISM
Empiricism (from Greek empeiria: “experience”), in
philosophy, an attitude expressed in a pair of doctrines: (1)
that all concepts are derived from the experience to which
they are applied; and (2) that all knowledge of matters of
fact is based on, or derived from, experience. Accordingly,
all claims to knowledge of the world can be justified only
by experience.
Empiricism argues that knowledge derived from a
priori reasoning (involving definitions formed or
principles assumed) either does not exist or is confined to
“analytical” truths, which have no content, deriving their
validity merely from the meanings of the words used to
express them. Hence a metaphysics that seeks to combine
the a priori validity of logic with a scientific content is
impossible. Likewise there can be no “rational” method;
the nature of the world cannot be discovered through pure
reason or reflection.
In practice three different types of Empiricism are
recognized, depending on the degree to which adherents
admit a priori concepts or propositions. Absolute Empiricist admit neither a priori concepts nor a priori
propositions, although they may recognize such analytical
a priori truths as tautological definitions. Substantive
Empiricists distinguish between formal and categorial a
priori concepts. The existence of formal a priori concepts
is admitted, provided such formal concepts are confined to
the ways ideas interact; categorial a priori concepts such
as causation are denied. Substantive Empiricists argue that
every a priori proposition is virtually a tautology, although
it may take deduction to reveal this. Partial Empiricists
claim that certain non-formal ideas may be a priori.
Examples include the concepts of natural cause and effect,
morality, etc. After granting this, however, the Partial
Empiricist verifies everyday propositions about matters of
fact by empirical means.
Historically, the first Western Empiricists were the
ancient Greek Sophists, who concentrated their
philosophical inquiries on such relatively concrete entities
as man and society, rather than the speculative fields
explored by their predecessors. Later ancient philosophers
with Empiricist tendencies were the Stoics and the
Epicureans, although both were principally concerned
with ethical questions.
The majority of Christian philosophers in the Middle
Ages were Empiricists. A notable thinker of the 14th
century, for example, was William of Ockham, who
argued that all knowledge of the physical world is attained
by sensory means. In the 16th century another English
Empiricist, Francis Bacon, believed in building up
observed data about nature so as to arrive at an accurate
picture of the world. To this extent he laid the foundations
of the scientific method. John Locke in the 17th century
was probably the leading Empiricist of the late- to postRenaissance era. Later philosophers who subscribed to
some degree of Empiricism included the Irish-born Bishop
George Berkeley in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Scot
David Hume in the 18th century, and the Britons John
Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell in the 19th and 20th
centuries respectively. Mill (who denied that he was an
Empiricist) and Russell on occasion even claimed that
mathematical truths or logical concepts are essentially
Empirical.
The antithetical position to that of Empiricism in
philosophical arguments over theories of knowledge has
usually been the Rationalist one. Discussion centres on the
extent to which concepts are innate or acquired.
Another group of Empiricists, but one that operated
outside the Anglo-Saxon tradition, consisted of the Logical
Positivists of the Vienna Circle. Logical Positivists hold
that metaphysical statements are meaningless because they
are inherently unverifiable.
The following ideas may be attributed to Empiricist
influence, although not all of them need be held by any
particular Empiricist thinker: (1) Experience is intelligible
in isolation, or atomistically, without reference to the
nature of its object or to the circumstances of its subject.
Hence an experience can be described without saying
anything about the mind that has it, the thoughts that
describe it, or the world that contains it. (2)
The person who undergoes experience is in some sense the
recipient of data that are imprinted upon his intelligence
irrespective of his activity; the person brings nothing to
experience, but gains everything from it. (3) All method is
scientific method. To discover the nature of the world it is
necessary to develop a method of experiment whereby all
claims to knowledge are tested by experience, since
nothing but experience can validate them. (4)
Reductionism: All facts about the world can be reduced to
what are facts inasmuch as experiences confirm claims to
knowledge as facts; hence no claims to knowledge of a
transcendental world can have any foundation.
Empiricism’s influence may be seen in the broad thesis
of Nominalism, according to which reality is held to reside
in the particular rather than in the universal. Nominalists
argue that the whole has no reality that is not derived from
that of its parts.
In the metaphysical sphere Empiricism generates a
characteristic view of causation, seemingly an almost
inevitable consequence of the Empiricist theory of
knowledge. According to Empiricist metaphysics the
world consists of a set of contingently connected objects
and situations, united by regularities rather than
necessities, and unrelated to any transcendental cause or
destiny. Science, according to this view, investigates
connections, and its aim is to make predictions on the
basis of observed regularities. Furthermore, judgments of
value have no place in science, say the Empiricists as such
judgments are subjective preferences of the investigator.
Epistemologi
Empirisisme
• Ciri umum Empirisisme
–
–
–
–
Pengalaman dapat dipahami secara terisolasi
Manusia yang mengalami menjadi penerima data
Semua metoda harus berupa metoda ilmiah
Pengetahuan dapat terdiri atas bagian-bagian yang
lebih sederhana (reductionism)
– Dunia merupakan seperangkat obyek dan situasi
yang berkaitan
– Banyak menggunakan logika induktif
• Penganut Empirisisme
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Mencakup para ahli filsafat seperti:
John Locke
George Berkeley
David Hume
John Stuart Mill
Penganut Positivisme Logika
Penganut pragmatisme
REDUCTIONISM
Of a given kind are collections or combinations of entities
of a simpler or more basic kind or that expressions
denoting such entities are definable in terms of
expressions denoting the more basic entities. Thus the
ideas that physical bodies are collections of atoms or that
thoughts are combinations of sense impressions are form
of reductionism.
Two very general forms of reductionism have been held
by philosophers in the 20th century: (1) Logical Positivists
have maintained that expressions referring to existing
things or to states of affairs are definable in terms of
directly observable objects, or sense-data, and, hence, that
any statement of fact is equivalent to some set of
empirically verifiable statements. In particular, it has been
held that the theoretical entities of science are definable in
terms of observable physical things, so that scientific laws
are equivalent to combinations of observation reports. (2)
Proponents of the unity of science have held that the
theoretical entities of particular sciences, such as biology
or psychology, are definable in terms of those of some
more basic science, such as physics; or that the laws of
these sciences can be explained by those of the more basic
science.
The Logical Positivist version of reductionism also
implies the unity of science insofar as the definability of
the theoretical entities of the various sciences in terms of
the observable would constitute the common basis of all
scientific laws. Although this version of reductionism is no
longer widely accepted, primarily because of the difficulty
of giving a satisfactory characterization of the distinction
between theoretical and observational statements in
science, the question of the reducibility of one science to
another remains controversial.
Empirisisme
Positivisme
• Perkembangan Empirisisme
– Dari empirisisme muncul aliran positivisme
– Positivisme kemudian berkembang menjadi
positivisme logika
– Positivisme logika berkembang menjadi
empirisisme logika
• Positivisme
– Berkembang pada abad ke-19, terutama oleh
Auguste Comte
– Aliran ini dikenal juga sebagai filsafat ilmu
– Positivisme hanya membahas bagian filsafat yang
dapat diuji secara positif (empiris)
– Ada kalanya metodologi penelitian kita dikenal
sebagai metodologi penelitian positif karena
berdasarkan aliran positivisme ini
POSITIVISM
Positivism in a term frequently used to characterize a
number of theoretical positions in philosophy as well as in
the social sciences. A remarkable heterogeneity of
meaning has always accompanied this term, and this
peculiarity is in central ways associated with the 19th
century French philosopher Auguste Comte, who coined
the term and elaborated his conception of it in his writings.
His two major works dealing with positivism are the
course of Positive Philosophy (1830-1842) and the System
of Positive Polity, or Treatise on Sociology Instituting the
Religion of Humanity (1851-1854). Although many of
Comte’s ideas were not original with him, his work
nevertheless represents the first major systematic
formulation of modern positivism. His system was so
stimulate in turn certain central developments in logic, the
philosophy of science, psychology, and sociology.
Positive Philosophy as a Philosophy of Science. One
of Comte’s principal aims was to transform all philosophy
into a philosophy of science, which he called positive
philosophy. The central purposes of his positive
philosophy as a distinct discipline were to coordinate the
general findings of the basic scientific disciplines of
mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and
sociology. By serving these ends, philosophy could guide
and accelerate the direction and progress of the special
sciences.
Positive philosophy as the philosophy of science, is the
final stage in the development of philosophy. Throughout
history man attempted to comprehend the order that
prevails in the world of phenomena. In the earliest stage of
thought, the theological stage, men attribute the
occurrence and order of phenomena to the working of
supernatural agents. In the nest stage, the metaphysical
stage, order is explained by references to abstract forces.
But it is only in the last stage, the positive stage, that the
human mind gives up the search for first and final causes
and instead attempts to discover the invariable relations of
succession and likeness between phenomena. In this way
the actual laws that govern phenomena are discovered.
The Role of Reason and Mathematics in Scientific
Method and Positive Philosophy. For a clear
understanding of Comte’s positivism and of the
philosophy of science that has developed since his day, it
is essential to note Comte’s opposition to a strictly
empiricist theory of knowledge. Although valid
knowledge must be based on the observation of
phenomena, observation and induction in Comte’s view
will never by themselves lead to the discovery of the laws
of phenomena. All observation of phenomena must in fact
be guided by conjectures or theories about their order. In
the past, theological and metaphysical theories were
expressions, although imperfect ones, of this use of faculty
of reasoning. In the positive stage, reasons comes into its
own in the formulation of scientific hypothesis to guide
scientific inquiry. What was later to be elaborated as the
hypothetico-deductive method of understanding already
existed in its essentials in Comte’s rudimentary conception
of scientific method.
Comte considered mathematics the cornerstone of both
positive philosophy and the positive method. In contrast to
geometry and mechanics, which he regarded as natural
sciences, mathematical analysis, because of its purely
logical and rational nature, represents the ideal of
scientific method.
Positivism and Social Phenomena. Comte sought to
apply scientific method to the study of social phenomena,
thereby bringing the last remaining class of phenomena
into the realm of the observational sciences. He believed
that by means of the positive science of social physics, or
sociology, man could discover the laws that determined
social order and progress.
Comte postulated that mankind, like all other
phenomena in nature, was governed by invariable laws of
coexistence and succession. Hence such metaphysical
notions as freedom and will in human affairs were
invalidated, since they were not scientifically observable
entities.
Comte argued that to the extent that men possess
knowledge of the invariable laws determining order and
change in society as well as in nature, they will
consciously behave in accord with them. When man
mistakenly assumes that human affairs can be arranged or
altered at will, he in fact obstructs the working out of
historical laws, produces social disharmony and strife,
delays progress, and prevents himself and others from
becoming reconciled to the prevailing order of things.
This is not to suggest that he believed mankind must
submit passively to what is. Knowledge of these laws will
enable man to predict phenomena and act successfully on
both nature and society. Throughout Comet’s career, his
overriding purpose was to reorganize Western society and
institute a permanent social order free from chaos and
revolution. His vast philosophical system was designed
primarily to serve this end and is inseparable from it.
Epistemologi
Positivisme
• Pandangan Positivisme
– Semua pengetahuan berkenaan dengan fakta materi
didasarkan kepada data “positif” dari pengalaman
– Di luar dunia fakta terdapat logika murni dan
matematika murni
– Menolak pengetahuan yang tidak dapat diverifikasi
melalui metoda ilmiah empirik
– Penjelasan dikemukan dalam bentuk hipotesis atau
hukum empirik lainnya berkenaan dengan
hubungan tetap di antara gejala yang teramati
– Hubungan kosal (sebab akibat) diverifikasi melalui
hubungan di antara gejala yang teramati
– Kesahihan hipotesis ditentukan melalui pengujian
empirik (observasi dan eksperimentasi)
• Perkembangan
– Dari positivisme berkembang positivisme logika
Epistemologi
Positivisme Logika
• Kelompok Wina
– Kelompok ahli fisafat dan ilmuwan di Wina yang
berpaham positivisme
– Kepada positivisme ditambahkan logika
– Tertarik kepada ulasan Wittgenstein tentang bahasa
(filsafat bahasa atau filsafat analitik)
• Aliran Positivisme Logika
– Masalah filsafat adalah masalah bahasa sehingga
bahasa harus jelas
– Bahasa yang jelas adalah bahasa yang merupakan
potret dari kenyataan
– Semua pernyataan harus dapat dijustifikasi
sehingga perlu menyertakan cara untuk
mengujinya secara empirik
– Metafisika dan hal yang tidak dapat diuji secara
empiris tidak memiliki arti (meaningless) sehingga
tidak dibicarakan
VIENNA CIRCLE, German, Wiener Kreis
A group of philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians formed in the 1920s that met regularly in Vienna to
investigate scientific language and scientific methodology.
The philosophical movement associated with the Circle
has been called variously logical positivism, logical
empiricism, scientific empiricism, neopositivism, and the
unity of science movement. The work of its members,
although not unanimous in the treatment of many issues,
was distinguished, first, by its attention to the form of
scientific theories, in the belief that the logical structure of
any particular scientific theory could be specified quite
apart form its content. Second, they formulated a
verifiability principle or criterion of meaning, a claim that
the meaningfulness of a proposition is grounded in
experience and observation. For this reason, the statements
of ethics, metaphysics, religion, and aesthetics were held
to be assertorically meaningless. Third, and as a result of
the two other points, a doctrine of unified science was
espoused. Thus, no fundamental differences were seen to
exist between the physical and biological sciences or
between the natural and social sciences.
The founder and leader of the group was Moritz
Schlick, who was an epistemologist and philosopher of
science. Among its members wer Gustav Bergmann,
Rudolf Carnap, Hebert Feigl, Philipp Frank, Kurt Gödel,
Otto Neurath, and Friedrich Weismann; and among the
members of a cognate group. The Gesselschaft für
empirische Philosophie (“Society for Empirical
Philosophy”), which met in Berlin, were Carl Hampel, and
Hans Reichenbach. A formal declaration of the group’s
intentions was issued in 1929 with the publication of the
manifesto Wissenschaftliche Welauffasung: Der Wiener
Kreis (“Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna
Circle”), and in that year the first in a series of congresses
organized by the group took place in Prague. In 1938, with
the onset of World War II, political pressure was brought
to bear against the group and it disbanded, many of its
members fleeing to the United States and a few to Great
Britain.
Epistemologi
Positivisme Logika
• Bahasa Dalam Filsafat
– Positivisme logika memiliki tiga unsur penting:
logika, bahasa, dan verifikasi
– Masalah filsafat adalah masalah bahasa karena
filsafat diungkapkan melalui bahasa
– Perhatian terhadap bahasa ini melahirkan filsafat
bahasa yang dikenal sebagai filsafat analitik
• Filsafat Analitik
– Mula-mula filsafat analitik muncul dari
Wittgenstein yang diserap oleh positivisme logika
– Kemudian berkembang berbagai pikiran tentang
filsafat analitik atau filsafat linguistik
– Pokok utama yang dipermasalahkan adalah arti
dari kata-kata yang perlu jelas
ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY
Analytic philosophy, also called linguistic philosophy, a
movement, dominant in Anglo-US philosophy in the mid20th century, distinguished by its method, which has
focussed upon language and the analysis of the concepts
expressed in it. Representatives of the Analytic school
have tended to hold that the purpose of philosophy is
therapeutic--to clarify obscurities and confusions, in the
expectation that many of the traditional problems of
philosophy will thus dissolve.
Analytic and Linguistic philosophers have advanced a
variety of divergent view. The Austrian Ludwig
Wittgenstein (1889-1951), for example, in a career
perhaps unique in the history of philosophy, wrote two
major works central to the development of Analytic
philosophy--Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations--the second of which refuted the
first.
Analytic philosophy, flourishing between 1945 and
1960, was the successor of the Logical Positivism of the
1930s, which in its turn derived to some extent form the
Realism and Pluralism of the British thinkers Bertrand
Russell and G.E. Moore, worked in the decade before
1914. Russell was an inspirer of Positivism (the insistence
on a knowledge based on facts verifiable by the method of
empirical sciences); Moore, with his determination to avo-
id unintelligibility in philosophical discourse and his
resistance to beliefs at odds with common sense, was the
chief anticipator of the Analytic and Linguistic philosophy
of 1945 to 1960.
The leading exponents of the movement were
Wittgenstein and the British thinkers Gilbert Ryle (190076) and L.J. Austin (1911-60). Its explicit formulation
began with Wittgenstein’s return, after a period of
withdrawal, to philosophy and Cambridge in 1929. While
the brightest young philosophers were becoming
committed to the Positivism of the Vienna Circle, in the
British form given to it in 1936 in the Language, Truth
and Logic of A.J. Ayer, Wittgenstein’s new ideas were
confined, with a few exceptions, to a close circle of
personal disciples in Cambridge.
The conquest of philosophically more populous Oxford
was signaled in 1946 by a celebrated symposium paper of
Austin’s on the topic of other minds. Ryle’s The Concept
of Mind (1949) was the first important book in the new
mode. Wittgenstein’s earlier, and in many ways different,
view were not generally available until his Philosophical
Investigations was published posthumously in 1953, to be
followed by a long sequence of other writings. In the U.S.
his influence was rap[idly diffused after 1945 by former
pupils teaching at Cornell.
The school’s decline clearly began in 1960--the year of
Austin’s death and of the publication of Word and Object
by the U.S. thinker W.V. Quine, a constructive and highly
original development of the Positivism of of the 1930s.
That was also the epoch of the emergence of the U.S.
linguist Noam Chomsky’s radical renovation of linguistic
science, which must have indirectly helped to undermine
the classically based amateurism of the British Analytic
philosophers.
The starting point of Analytic philosophy is not simply
the belief that language is the proper or immediate object
of philosophical inquiry. That is the conviction of many
philosophers of the past, particularly when they have been
academic or professionalized. It is also accepted by those
who, taking thought and knowledge to be the prime
business of philosophy, realize that all but the most
primitive thoughts require linguistic articulation. The
distinguishing mark of Analytic philosophy is the thesis
that traditional philosophical problems can be solved, or
dissolved, by close attention to the manner in which the
words employed in stating and discussing them are
actually used.
The Analytic philosophers agreed in reciting as
arbitrary and absurd the verification principle of their
Positivist predecessors, which implied that only utterances
Affirming matters of empirical or conceptual fact are
meaningful. Both its branding as senseless of utterances
not in the indicative mood and judgments of value, and the
past so as to bring them under the principle by main force,
were to Analytic philosophers outrages on common sense.
In its place, they argued that language is a social and
functional phenomenon, art of the natural life of the
human species. It is not an abstract calculus whose essence
has been revealed once and for all by modern
mathematical logic. It is used in many different ways and
for many different purposes. There is no single basis of, or
paradigm for, significant speech to which everything must
be forcibly reduced if it is not to be ruled out as senseless.
Echoing Moore’s attachment to the convictions of
common sense, the Analytic philosophers took conflict
with such convictions to be a sign of conceptual
confusion, a misunderstanding of the rules that actually
govern the use of words in normal everyday life, and
which can be followed perfectly well in practice, but
which one is led to ignore in reflective moods by mistaken
but seductive analogies (according to Wittgenstein) or
mere oversimplification, a “one-sided diet of examples”
(in the words of Austin). From this it follows that the right
way to deal with philosophical problems is to bring to
light the mistakes about the meaning of words that give
rise to them.
True philosophy, therefore, is a kind of therapy for
conceptually confused intellect.
Wittgenstein applied his new conception of language to
a large extent to the problem of explaining discourse about
metal processes--understanding, suffering, pain, and
intentionality. Ryle’s Concept of Mind offered a simplified,
perhaps simplistic, version of Wittgenstein’s ideas on this
subject, which arrived in the end at something close to the
behaviourism of most Positivists, but by way of a mass of
interesting detail. Austin wrote brilliantly but
inconclusively about perception, truth, promising, and
responsibility. By his inconclusiveness he succeeded in
avoiding the philosophical theory that philosophy should
propound no theories.
Where Wittgenstein philosophized about language only
so far as needed for the therapeutic purpose in hand, the
Analytic philosophers of Oxford were well disposed to
the study of language for its own sake. Ryle’s view of
philosophy as conceptual geography suggested the
possibility of a comprehensive atlas. Austin, in his last
book, How to Do Things with Words (1962), sketched the
outlines of a systematic theory of the uses of language.
Although Ryle and Austin have passed into history as
influences, Wittgenstein remains a living force in
contemporary philosophy.
Epistemologi
Penalaran
• Arti Penalaran
– Penalaran adalah reasoning dengan berbagai arti,
mencakup
• Proses mental untuk beranjak dari fakta atau gejala
yang diketahui ke pengetahuan akan fakta atau
gejala yang sebelumnya tidak diketahui
• Proses untuk menemukan kemiripan atau perbedaan
di antara dua hal yang berbeda
• Proses berpikir dari hukum umum melalui deduksi
ke kasus atau dari kasus melalui induksi ke hukum
umum
• Proses berpikir yang mengaitkan satu hal dengan hal
lain
• Proses melaksanakan eksperimen di dalam pikiran
• Keterbatasan Penalaran
– Penalaran mengenal keterbatasan
Epistemologi
Penalaran
• Alat dan Pembenaran Penalaran
– Bernalar melalui berpikir atau intuisi; terutama
melalui berpikir
– Bernalar menggunakan bahasa dan matematika
(dan statistika), termasuk berkomunikasi tentang
hasil nalar
– Pembenaran penalaran melalui koherensi,
korespondensi, atau pragmatisme
• Pembenaran Melalui Koherensi
– Pembenaran melalui kecocokan dengan sesuatu
yang sudah diketahui (hukum atau teori atau
sejenisnya)
– Biasanya berbentuk: berdasarkan hukum, teori,
rumus, tertentu, maka ...
– Pembenaran melalui proses deduktif
Epistemologi
Penalaran
• Pembenaran Melalui Korespondensi
– Pembenaran melalui kecocokan dengan kenyataan
atau fakta (empirik)
– Memerlukan data untuk pencocokan
– Pembenaran melalui proses induktif
• Pembenaran Melalui Pragmatisme
– Pembenaran berdasarkan kegunaan di dalam
kehidupan praktis
– Melalui ide yang berguna, praktis, terkerjakan
– Mementingkan kegiatan, pengalaman, hasil, atau
verifikasi
– Berkembang di Amerika Serikat pada bagian awal
abad ke-20
PRAGMATISM
Pragmatism, school of philosophy, dominant in the
United States during the first quarter of the 20th century,
based on the principle that the usefulness, workability, and
practicality of ideas, policies, and proposals are the criteria
of their merit. It stresses the priority of action over
doctrine, of experience over fixed principles; and it holds
that ideas borrow their meanings from their consequences,
and their truths from their verification. Thus, ideas are
essentially instruments and plans of action.
The pragmatist position was first systematized by the
American philosophers Charles Sanders Peirce (18391914) and William James (1842-1910), who agreed on the
practical nature of meaning but differed as to the
implications of such doctrine. For Peirce, pragmatism was
primarily an investigation of the proper methods of
procedure in the natural sciences, a reductive doctrine
equating the meaning of theoretical terms with their
impact upon experience. Peirce’s is a highly theoretical
view of the proper meaning of ideas, derived from
Immanuel Kant and the British empiricists. By contrast,
James moved in a much more practical and moralistic
direction. The virtues of belief, including truth, became in
his view matters of their efficiency in enabling a person to
cope with the problems of living. The vital good of a be-
lief in one’s whole life became its justification. James
could thus write: “On pragmatic principles, if the
hypothesis of God work satisfactorily, in the widest sense
of the word it is ‘true.’” The antirational implications of
this statement shocked many critics, including G.E. Moore
and Bertrand Russell, who saw it as an invitation to wishfulfillment and self-deception. That religious beliefs
exhibit certain consoling and uplifting effects and work
well in the lives of particular believers in an unarguable
fact; but it is another matter entirely to assert that such
attributes substantiate the beliefs themselves. Even
James’s fellow pragmatists, including Peirce, drew back
from this identification of utility with truth.
Controversies over truth continued to dog the
movement. Peirce’s own account of truth was “that which
is fated ultimately to be agreed by all who investigate”; in
this view, truth represents a kind of limit of scientifically
formed opinion. But Peirce’s definition failed to account
for those “facts” that are inaccessible to actual
investigation. The real intention of the definition is to
stress the role of practically motivated inquiry in shaping
concepts and judgments and the particular truths accepted
on their basis.
The more practical aspects of pragmatism were follow-
ed up in the works of the American philosopher and
theorist of education John Dewey (1859-1952). Dewey
developed what he saw as a new attitude toward
experience. In Dewey’s view, the phenomenon of
experience, which empiricists tended too often to regard as
a passive, mechanistic reflection of the world, was in
actuality an active, social process. Knowing, he asserted,
is primarily a matter of knowing how. Inquiry tells us how
to transform situations for the better; thus, knowledge is
assertion warranted by inquiry. This insight was probably
more influential on the practice of education than on
philosophy, particularly after the logical positivists made
their mark on the philosophy of science. However, specific
emphasis on practice and technique regained prominence
in American philosophy during the second half of the 20th
century. It dominated the later work of Ludwig
Wittgenstein (1889-1951), who saw possession of any
kind of language as mastery of a body of techniques; W.V.
Quine argued that the considerations that model changes
of theory are largely pragmatic and not, for instance,
dictated by previously fixed concepts and meanings that
interact with raw experience. The picture of truth that
emerges from Quine’s works, and the works of those
influenced by him, is that the truth of any individual
assertion is itself secondary. It is a derivative virtue of
sentences that are members of theories which themselves
work, as efficient means to practical ends. Whereas the
positivists hoped to reduce the content of scientific theory,
this kind of instrumental view concedes to theories their
own irreducible role but still sees their fundamental virtue
as that of working in practice.