Relief for the exhausted post-positivist: New epistemological choices transcend positivism relativism and even post-positivism

摘要

In this article, I take up Editor D’Eon’s collegial and generous invitation to respond to articles published in this journal—in this case, his own editorial on the difficulties of being a post-positivist.1* Post-positivism as an epistemology is committed to the pursuit of truth while at the same time acknowledging the difficulty of ever getting there. In line with Dr. D’Eon’s argument, I agree that this is the most rational response to the extremes of postmodern relativism and positivism’s overly optimistic assertion that certain and universal truths can be definitively established.