On Fri, 31 May 1996 ccw94@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Greg provides a classic example of the implicit positivism in Foucualt.
>
>
> >
> >
> >Events do indeed have 'origins' for Foucualt, but such origins are caused by
> >such a diverse confluence of social factors that Foucualt finds the term
> >causality quite problematic. Causality brings to mind the readily
> > identifiable source of a complex historical event (such as the development
> of the prison), where the causal elements are believed to exhaust, or at least
> >mostly explain, the origin of an event.
>
> This is pure David Hume. But is it an acurate account of causation?
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>
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> Colin Wight
>
Well, hmmm, implicit positivism maybe, but only if you first work through
the games that get played with the term positivity in AK. To attempt to
make an identity between foucualt and Compt would be both fascile and
reductive, and the same could be said for the attempt to make an identity
between foucault and Hume. It might be possible to pull off the latter,
but in order to do this it would be necessary to think Hume in the manner
that Deleuze reads him, and not, say, in the manner which Coppelstone
reads him. If you're up for defending this notion that foucault is a
positivist like any other, then please show me where in the text that
foucault relies on the transcendental spiritualism of which Compt is so
fond, or the simplistic naturalism that so easily rolls from Mach's pen.
Flannon