meekerdb wrote:
On 11/16/2014 10:51 AM, LizR wrote:
On 17 November 2014 00:31, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Heisenberg was influenced by the positivism of the time (The
Vienna circles, the young Wittgenstein, etc.). That was very bad
philosophy, and we can say that is is virtually abandoned.
Positivism is easily shown self-defeating or just an
instrumentalism which abandon fundamental research.
Isn't that the Popperian view - falsification and so on - that David
Deutsch is so keen on in FOR? Or am I getting my wires crossed? If it
is, I didn't know it had been abandoned.
I think Deutsch takes the view that explanation is the important
function of science, whereas positivist eschew explanation and aim for
prediction. Being falsifiable in principle is still considered an
essential attribute of any scientific theory, but "in principle" can be
pretty broadly intepreted.
It is a while since I read Deutsch, but I think one could categorize his
position as that of a (super)realist. Positivism does not really eschew
explanation: the characteristic of positivism is that observation is
paramount and theoretical terms are accepted only in so far as they can
be reduced to observational statements. This philosophy has gone out of
fashion as people have realized that not all theoretical terms can be so
reduced. The realist position is that the theoretical terms of
well-established scientific theories actually correspond to 'elements of
reality', or parts of 'the furniture of the world'. Deutsch takes this
to extremes with his claim that quantum computing 'proves' the existence
of the many worlds of MWI.
Falsification is seen as an important element of science, but not
necessarily the final touchstone. Naive Popperian falsificationism is
clearly wrong, but there are no universally accepted generalizations of
falsifiability that measure up to all that one might want. In sum, the
Popperian quest for a clear demarcation between science and non-science
has assumed a less prominent role in recent philosophy of science.
Bruce
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