Abstract
Bunge is critical of three traditional philosophical trends: Positivism, Marxism and Hermeneutics. In relation to the first, he disapproves of its empiricisms, its nominalism and its phenomenalism, as well as its rejection of traditional ontological and axiological questions. In Marxism, Bunge mainly criticizes the ambitions of Dialectics and the thesis that ideas are socially determined. In relation to Hermeneutics, Bunge is convinced that it is radically failured for confusing the knowledge of social events with the interpretation of texts. In this article I show that although Bunge’s criticisms of Positivism are fair, his judgement of the two other doctrines is not totally so.
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Notes
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On the other hand, pure science is for him linked to values in regard to its ethos.
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Bunge gives as an example of this dedication to problems that are of little use to scientists the attempt by authors such as Reichenbach, Carnap and Bar-Hillel to elucidate, in terms of probability, the philosophical concepts inherent to science, such as truth, simplicity, confirmation, etc. (Bunge 1980, Chap. 1).
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For Bunge, the supposed principle does not apply either to things (“it is easy to show the existence of simple material objects, such as the electron, the neutrino and the photon”) or for properties (“it is not true that all things are simultaneously small and large, valuable and without value, etc.”), as for processes (“it is not true that all things heat at the same time as they cool, that all goods that become cheap also become expensive, etc.”) (Bunge 1985, pp. 163–164, AC translation).
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Bunge believes that a similar contradiction is found in Marxist expressions such as that of the brain being the “material base” of the mental events, which would suggest that the mental events are not material, contrary to universal materialism (Bunge 1985, p. 166).
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Moreover, this general theoretical trend admits a range of modalities, from the defense that it is possible to understand actions as if they were texts (Paul Ricoeur) to the conclusion that “there is nothing outside of text” (Jacques Derrida), passing through the theses that “man is a self-interpretive animal” (Charles Taylor) and that culture is “an assemblage of texts” (Clifford Geertz) (see Bunge 1996, pp. 290–291).
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For the formulation of these hypotheses, Bunge admits that Verstehen can help, but not in the form of “putting oneself in the place of the Other” (Dilthey), but in the form of looking for the (typical) motives of the Other’s actions (as proposed by Max Weber). In any case, Verstehen does not excuse us from having to prove our hypotheses (Bunge 1996, pp. 154–155).
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These alleged confusions lead Bunge to frequently affirm that Hermeneutics, as well as Phenomenology and Existentialism, are irrational theoretical positions. He considers “Post-modernism” analogously (see Bunge 1995, Chaps. 9 and 10).
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It should be noted that the use of the expression “ideal superstructure” by Bunge to identify a supposed contradiction, is not found as a rule in Marxist writers. They commonly use the expression “superstructure” to designate political elements (state and law) and ideological ones (morality, religion, education, art, philosophy, science, etc.), to which are not attributed an “ideal” existence, according to the famous principle that “consciousness can never be something other than the consciousness [of concrete men]” (Marx and Engels 1977, p. 37).
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The proposals of both Husserlian Phenomenology and Heidegger’s Existential Analytics are certainly much more complex. Here I limit myself to the aspect that is of interest in relation to Bunge’s criticism.
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I offer a detailed view of the limitations of Bunge’s criticisms of the sociology of knowledge in Cupani (2000).
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And in general, for everyone that defends “positivism”, as I showed in Cupani (1986). Moreover, his bias in favor of science prevents Bunge from appreciating the analysis of vulgar language as is practiced since Wittgenstein, because Bunge is always suspicious of the (in his understanding) mistaken assimilation of the vulgar and scientific use of terms.
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See Heelan (1983) for the specific case of the natural sciences.
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Cupani, A. (2019). Bunge is Correct About Positivism, but less so about Marxism and Hermeneutics. In: Matthews, M.R. (eds) Mario Bunge: A Centenary Festschrift. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16673-1_16
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