Ouch. If your sole rejection of positivism is that it is self-contradicting then logically you can only conclude that non-empirical principles could exist, not that they must. If you are going to say 'must' then you need some element of proof.
Unless we're going to go down some Godelian path where something can be true without the proposition asserting it being true, then no. If the proposition that there are no non-empirical principles, being itself a non-empirical principle, is logically incoherent (which it is) and thus false, then there MUST be a nonzero number of non-empirical principles.
This IS a proof--a proof by contradiction. Of course since I'm not sure that you acknowledge the laws of logic, as non-empirical principles, exist (either contingently or universally, I don't care which), this might mean not mean anything to you; OTOH, I can't imagine having a meaningful conversation about anything, let alone philosophy, with someone who rejects the laws of logic.
If I can understand where you think your ideas come from, and if I can relate it to where I understand ideas to come from, then I will feel in a position to both 'understand' why you believe the things you do and to make up my own mind in a more informed manner as to whether or not I agree with you.
I think that ethics come from, ultimately, the structure of language and reason. Now, I don't think that language and reason are divorced from our cultural and biological histories, but that they do sort of push us into certain non-empirical principles which are sort of contingently categorical.
For example, my language furnishes me with concepts such as "2" and "4" such that I'm forced into thinking of the latter as being the former multiplies by itself. Insofar as I understand the concepts, there is no need to turn to the world and without understanding the concepts no amount of turning to the world is going to do me any good. My language also furnishes me with the language with which to critique a theory of mathematics and maybe, if I were better at math, to go about constructing a new one. (I have read feminist critiques of mathematics, but like everyone else, I have no idea what a feminist math would look like or how it would be different than normal math.)
I think ethical premises work in more or less the same way, the result of linguistic structures which structure thought. Because of this, ethical principles are always-already built into our language games.
no subject
Unless we're going to go down some Godelian path where something can be true without the proposition asserting it being true, then no. If the proposition that there are no non-empirical principles, being itself a non-empirical principle, is logically incoherent (which it is) and thus false, then there MUST be a nonzero number of non-empirical principles.
This IS a proof--a proof by contradiction. Of course since I'm not sure that you acknowledge the laws of logic, as non-empirical principles, exist (either contingently or universally, I don't care which), this might mean not mean anything to you; OTOH, I can't imagine having a meaningful conversation about anything, let alone philosophy, with someone who rejects the laws of logic.
If I can understand where you think your ideas come from, and if I can relate it to where I understand ideas to come from, then I will feel in a position to both 'understand' why you believe the things you do and to make up my own mind in a more informed manner as to whether or not I agree with you.
I think that ethics come from, ultimately, the structure of language and reason. Now, I don't think that language and reason are divorced from our cultural and biological histories, but that they do sort of push us into certain non-empirical principles which are sort of contingently categorical.
For example, my language furnishes me with concepts such as "2" and "4" such that I'm forced into thinking of the latter as being the former multiplies by itself. Insofar as I understand the concepts, there is no need to turn to the world and without understanding the concepts no amount of turning to the world is going to do me any good. My language also furnishes me with the language with which to critique a theory of mathematics and maybe, if I were better at math, to go about constructing a new one. (I have read feminist critiques of mathematics, but like everyone else, I have no idea what a feminist math would look like or how it would be different than normal math.)
I think ethical premises work in more or less the same way, the result of linguistic structures which structure thought. Because of this, ethical principles are always-already built into our language games.