The standpoint epistemology, and many other new epistemological insights, have grown from critiques of positivism, and as proposed alternatives to the positivist view, which is seen as an orthodox epistemology in science. Therefore, it is appropriate for any Bayesian examination of these insights to begin by describing each of the principles of positivism in Bayesian terms, i.e. by modelling each mathematically, as a constraint on the probabilities involved in positivist knowledge. Building Bayesian mathematical models of philosophical principles, previously expressed in natural language, is a tradition established by Garrett [24].
Positivism can [39] be defined by a set of four characteristics, the possession of which by a theory is, for a positivist, a measure of the validity of that theory as part of knowledge. An analysis of these characteristics follows.