Thanks, Peter, for this clarification and correction, which is much more exact
than my post about Popper.
I assume that we are in agreement that, although "Popper was a fallibilist as
well as a falsificationist", what he called "falsification" is quite different
from what Peirce called "fallibilism".
Gary F.
} I was sure until they asked me ... now I don't know. [Jane Siberry (after St.
Augustine)] {
www.gnusystems.ca/gnoxic.htm }{ home
-----Original Message-----
From: Skagestad, Peter [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: August-05-11 12:13 PM
Gary,
This is not exactly Popper's view, although this is how Popper has often been
interpreted, e.g. by Ayer, in Language, Truth, and Logic. Popper's
falsificationism is based on a purely logical asymmetry between falsification
and verification in that a single counterexample will refute a universal
statement, whereas no number of confirming instances will prove it. Thus no
number of observed black ravens will prove the statement "All ravens are
black," whereas a single white raven will refute it. But it does not follow,
nor did Popper ever say, that a falsification is ever conclusive, as I can of
course be mistaken both in my belief that am looking at a raven and in my
perception that it is white.
Basic statements, Popper makes clear in The Logic of Scientific Discovery (pp.
105-111), are themselves testable; they are "basic" only in the sense that we
have decided not to test them, at least for the time being. Thus Popper was a
fallibilist as well as a falsificationist. His discussion of basic statements
concludes:
The empirical bases of objective science has thus nothing 'absolute' about it.
Science does not rest on solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories
rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The
piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or
‘given’ base; and if we stop driving the piles deeper, it is not because we
have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are satisfied that the piles
are firm enough to carry the structure, at least for the time being. (L.Sc.D.,
pp. 11)
This is almost eerily reminiscent of Peirce:
Even if it [science] does find confirmations, they are only partial. It is
still not standing upon the bedrock of fact. It is walking upon a bog, and can
only say, this ground seems to hold for the present. Here I will stay till it
begins to give way. (EP, vol. 2, p. 55)
Popper apparently arrived at his views with no knowledge of Peirce, although
later in life he came to acknowledge numerous points of agreement with Peirce.
But of course thee remain differences, their divergent conceptions of
metaphysics being, as you note, one of them.
Best,
Peter
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