Positivism by Comte

A General View of Positivism
by August Comte

The law of the three stages

The structure of the Course explains why the law of the three stages (which is often the only thing known about Comte) is stated twice. Properly speaking, the law belongs to dynamic sociology or theory of social progress, and this is why it serves as an introduction to the long history lessons in the fifth and sixth volumes. But it equally serves as an introduction to the work as a whole, to the extent that its author considers this law the best way to explain what positive philosophy is.
The law states that, in its development, humanity passes through three successive stages: the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive. The first is the necessary starting point for the human mind; the last, its normal state; the second is but a transitory stage that makes possible the passage from the first to the last. In the theological stage, the human mind, in its search for the primary and final causes of phenomena, explains the apparent anomalies in the universe as interventions of supernatural agents. The second stage is only a simple modification of the first: the questions remain the same, but in the answers supernatural agents are replaced by abstract entities. In the positive state, the mind stops looking for causes of phenomena, and limits itself strictly to laws governing them; likewise, absolute notions are replaced by relative ones. Moreover, if one considers material development, the theological stage may also be called military, and the positive stage industrial; the metaphysical stage corresponds to a supremacy of the lawyers and jurists.[2].
This relativism of the third stage is the most characteristic property of positivism. It is often mistakenly identified with scepticism, but our earlier remark about dogmatism prevents us from doing so.
For Comte, science is a “connaissance approchée”: it comes closer and closer to truth, without reaching it. There is no place for absolute truth, but neither are there higher standards for the fixation of belief. Comte is here quite close to Peirce in his famous 1877 paper.
The law of the three stages belongs to those grand philosophies of history elaborated in the 19th century, which now seem quite alien to us (for a different opinion, see Schmaus (1982)). The idea of progress of Humanity appears to us as the expression of an optimism that the events of the 20th century have done much to reduce (Bourdeau 2006). More generally, the notion of a law of history is problematic (even though it did not seem so to Mill (1842, bk. VI, chap. X)). Already Durkheim felt forced to exclude social dynamics from sociology, in order to give it a truly scientific status.
These difficulties, however, are far from fatal to this aspect of Comte's thought. Putting aside the fact that the idea of moral progress is slowly regaining some support, it is possible to interpret the three stages as forms of the mind that co-exist whose relative importance varies in time. This interpretation seems to be offered by Comte himself, who gives several examples of it in his history lessons. The germs of positivity were present from the beginning of the theological stage; with Descartes, the whole of natural philosophy reaches the positive stage, while moral philosophy remains in the metaphysical stage (1830 (58), v. 2, 714–715).

The classification of the sciences and philosophy of science
The second pillar of positive philosophy, the law of the classification of the sciences, has withstood the test of time much better than the law of the three stages. Of the various classifications that have been proposed, it is Comte's that is still the most popular today. This classification, too, structures the Course, which examines each of the six fundamental sciences—mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, sociology—in turn. It provides a way to do justice to the diversity of the sciences without thereby losing sight of their unity. This classification also makes Comte the founder of the philosophy of science in the modern sense. From Plato to Kant, reflection on science had always occupied a central place in philosophy, but the sciences had to be sufficiently developed for their diversity to manifest itself. It was thanks to his education at the École Polytechnique that Comte, from 1818, began to develop the concept of a philosophy of science. At about the same time Bolzano wrote his Wissenschaftslehre (1834) and Mill his System of Logic (1843), Comte's Course presented in sequence a philosophy of mathematics, of astronomy, of physics, of chemistry, of biology, and of sociology. Comte's classification is meant not to restore a chimerical unity, but to avoid the fragmentation of knowledge. Thanks to it, the sciences are related to one another in an encyclopedic scale that goes from the general to the particular, and from the simple to the complex: moving from mathematics to sociology, generality decreases and complexity increases.
The law of classification of the sciences also has a historical aspect: it gives us the order in which the sciences develop. For example, astronomy requires mathematics, and chemistry requires physics. Each science thus rests upon the one that precedes it. As Comte puts it, the higher depends on the lower, but is not its result. The recognition of an irreducible diversity already contains a disavowal of reductionism (in Comte's wording: ‘materialism’), which the classification allows one to make explicit. The positivist clearly sees that the tendency towards reductionism is fed by the development of scientific knowledge itself, where each science participates in the evolution of the next; but history also teaches us that each science, in order to secure its own subject matter, has to fight invasions by the preceding one. ‘Thus it appears that Materialism is a danger inherent in the mode in which the scientific studies necessary as a preparation for Positivism were pursued. Each science tended to absorb the one next to it, on the grounds of having reached the positive stage earlier and more thoroughly.’ (1851, v. 1, 50; E., v. 1, 39)
While philosophers of science have always recognized the place of Comte in the history of their discipline, the philosophy of science presented in the Course, and a fortiori the one in the System, have hardly been studied (Laudan 1981). Comte's philosophy of science is based on a systematic difference between method and doctrine. These are, to use Comtean terminology, opposed to one another, as the logical point of view and the scientific point of view. Method is presented as superior to doctrine: scientific doctrines change (that is what “progress” means), but the value of science lies in its methods. At the level of doctrine, mathematics has a status of its own, well indicated in the second lesson, where it is presented last, and as if to make up for something forgotten. As much as it is itself a body of knowledge, it is an instrument of discovery in the other sciences, an ‘organon’ in the Aristotelian sense. Among the remaining sciences, leaving sociology aside for the moment, two occupy a pre-eminent place:
Astronomy and biology are, by their nature, the two principal branches of natural philosophy. They, the complement of each other, include the general system of our fundamental conceptions in their rational harmony. The solar system and Man are the extremes within which our ideas will forever be included. The system first, and then Man, according to the course of our speculative reason: and the reverse in the active process: the laws of the system determining those of Man, and remaining unaffected by them. (1830 (40), v. 1, 717–718; E., v. 1, 384)
The positive method comes in different forms, according to the science where it is applied: in astronomy it is observation, in physics experimentation, in biology comparison. The same point of view is also behind the general theory of hypotheses in the 28th lesson, a centerpiece of the positive philosophy of science.
Finally, classification is the key to a theory of technology. The reason is that there exists a systematic connection between complexity and modifiability: the more complex a phenomenon is, the more modifiable it is. The order of nature is a modifiable order. Human action takes place within the limits fixed by nature and consists in replacing the natural order by an artificial one. Comte's education as an engineer had made him quite aware of the links between science and its applications, which he summarized in an oft-quoted slogan: ‘From science comes prevision, from prevision comes action’.

Social pressures lead people to make decisions they would otherwise never have made....

Social pressures lead people to make decisions they would otherwise never have made
By
Ahsan Z. Farooqui

Man is social by nature. He lives in society of other people; this society plays a very pivotal role in his actions, activities and overall personality. Society plays such a vital role in one’s life that social pressures force one to do things and make decisions he would otherwise never make. Social pressures lie in two main categories active or direct social pressures and passive or indirect pressures.

Direct pressures include persuasion from people, or influence through peers and other people. Take habit forming acts such as taking drugs, gambling, drinking and chiefly smoking. When inquired from people who are indulged in these acts most of them revealed that different social pressures forced them to do so. In his book “Relapse and Addictive Behavior” by author Michael Gossop he has mentioned that a survey including 64 smokers was carried out. The survey revealed that 37 percent of the smokers got into this addiction against their will and because of social pressure. These social pressure included persuasion from people who smoke, from peers and because people at their home smoked. When talking about society friends come first in the hierarchy of one’s social circle. Sometimes pressure from them indulges one into acts which are done against one’s will. This kind of direct social pressure is called peer pressure. For instance a person has a group of friends who plan to steal something. As a part of the group even he does not wishes to steal he will be coerced into the act of theft. This is because of peer persuasion or the fear of being left out from the whole group. Peer pressure also plays a vital role at schools where students are forced to do things just because other friends have forced them to do so. Class bunking, cheating, stealing are all included in this juvenile delinquency driven by peer pressure. But peer pressure does not have all bad facets. At times it has helped weaker students to perform well because they were encouraged and guided by their friends to work well.

Passive or indirect social pressures also sometimes forces people to do things in opposition to their will. Indirect pressures unlike direct ones are somewhat not that much visible but still they effect people’s decision making and their acts. In recent years researches have shown that the act of suicide is driven by indirect social pressures. In the society where there is an accelerating inflation, unemployed cannot withstand its pressure and hence are unwillingly forced into committing such a deed. Students who fail in the board exam give up their lives because they cannot withstand the embarrassment of not getting into a good institution. In these cases certainly people did not force them to commit suicide but the indirect pressure from society, their family to get employment and to perform well in studies heaped that much that unwillingly they have to give up their lives.
Some people also argue that social pressures to direct personal decision making are acceptable because these social pressures tend to work for the interest of individuals. This forms the basis of collectivism. Collectivism as described by Stephen Grabill and Gregory M. A. Gronbacher is a group or society which works for political, economic and social interests of individuals so that they have to give up their personal decisions to interest and decisions taken by society for them. These kinds of pressures are mainly seen during the formation of a representative body called government, where the society as a whole chooses the leader and each individual then has to accept the leader irrespective of their personal choice. The government formed by that leader than work for the interest of the people living in the society and forces them to obey laws and regulations set by the government bodies. But sometimes the society starts to pressurize and force people to obey the laws that much that it turns into Statism. Statism as defined by Rick Gabor a form of social pressure or collectivism where individuals are forcefully dictated by the government to obeys laws against their will.
However there is a group of people who argue against these actions driven by social pressures. They are of the view that if a society is urging a man to do something wrong he should aloof from society. This negation of society and its pressures give rise to the theology of individualism. The idea of individualism gives all powers of decision making to individuals and thus it states that individuals themselves have the sole responsibility of taking decisions. They have formed their ideology on the basis of the maxim “I am because I can think”. They are of the view that man is not amoral by nature. He can certainly discriminate right from wrong. He can certainly withstand any social pressure through his power of thinking and intellect. If great inventors such as Thomas Edison, Graham Bell and many others had not defied social pressures by going against the existing knowledge and discovering electricity and inventing means of communication then world would have been still dwelling in the realms of darkness. Thus these people advocate that through determination and by discriminating right from wrong one could withstand any social pressure and people who commit bad deeds cannot blame society rather they are hiding their crime at the back of this notion of social pressures.
However, this individualism withdraws its followers from social life into the world of their own which is more of a utopia than realism. The realistic approach is that man is social by nature. He has to live in the society and there are pressures from society. These pressures can be direct or indirect, their effect can be good or bad but they do force the individuals to change their own viewpoint and decisions and forcefully act upon what society urges them to do as C.M Ward said

"There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint." — Ward, C. M.
(The author is a student at Lahore University of Management Sciences of batch 2012)

Works Cited
Gossop, Michael. Relapse and Addictive Behavior. Routledge, 1989.

Training effects Performance... but to what extent?

Abstract

The existence of a relationship between training and employee performance has generally never been called into question in the Context of Pakistan. Everyone works in expectation of some rewards and employees′ work-motivation and productivity are derived logically when this expectation is met. but there are other such factors that leads to the good employee performance and high satisfaction towards their jobs..Building on empirical and psychological theory this study attempts to examine the impact of prevailing training packages and its effect on the performance of employees in different public and private sector organizations.

The study found that training and its effect on performance is statistically significant. However the strength of the relationship varied between the public and private sector organizations. In the private sector the relationship was stronger, with employees perceiving the training practices as satisfactory performing better than that discontent with it. Whereas in the public sector the relationship was much stronger with a majority of employees performance; regardless of how they perceived the training system distributed normally.

In the privates sector because of its competitive nature and stress on the development of the intellectual capital there is a greater stress on dependent on it whereas in the public sector now training is given a mild role in the development of their employees, so performance is greatly influenced by the training policies. The employees at the public sector think that their performance will be improved if they are being provided with the sufficient training programs.

How Budget 2008 has affected Labor Class?

Budget 2008-2009[1]

Finance Minister Naveed Qamar unveiled the federal budget for year 2008-09 with a total outlay of 2300 billion rupees in the parliament, which is 29.7 percent higher than the budget o the outgoing financial year.

According to the budget document, the expenditure of 2.01 trillion has been estimated. The government targeted to generate net tax revenues of 1.25 trillion rupees through Federal Board of Revenue, showing an increase of 23.1 percent over this fiscal year.

“Budget is good – but only for the Rich[2]”

How budget has affected the labors?

Minimum wage rate
The minimum wage has been increased from Rs. 4600 to Rs. 6000

Increase in basic pay
The budget announced envisages an increase of 20 percent in the basic pay and pension of all the federal government and defense services employees.

Minimum pension
The minimum pension of government and defense services employees have been increased to Rs. 2000 from Rs. 300
A pay and pension commission will also be set up to review the pay and pension of government employees and make recommendations for possible improvements.


Increase in conveyance allowance
There is also an increase in the conveyance allowance of government employees serving in basic pay scale from 1 to 19

Increase in medical allowance
There is also an increase of Rs 75 in the medical allowance of the employees in the basic pay scale from 1 to 16. It has risen from Rs425 to Rs500 per month

The minister has proposed regulations of services of all contractual employees in BPS -1 to15 in various government departments

National internship programme
The government has decided to continue with the national internship program that was launched by the previous government and has allocated the budget of Rs 1.6 billion for this programme

Conclusion
The main increase is in the minimum wage rate that is increased to Rs. 6000 and allowances are added separately. In short, EOBI and Social security of the worker has increased. However, we can say that the inflation is at its peak and this increase in the wage rate and the other allowance may not be sufficient enough to meet the daily needs of the workers.
[1] The News,Thursday,June11, 2008
[2] Daily Dawn, Thursday,June12, 2008