Peter, Gary(s), Ben, List: On Aug 6, 2011, at 1:32 PM, Skagestad, Peter wrote:
> Ben, list, > > My (no doubt fallible) belief is that falsificationism about science and > fallibilism about perceptual judgements are logically independent of each > other. To see the independence of the former of the latter, suppose > perceptual judgements were infallible: I infallibly know that I am looking at > a raven and I infallibly know what color it is. I still cannot infer the > universal statement 'All ravens are black' from any number of observations of > black ravens; the most I can say is that I have, so far, failed to falsify > it, although it may falsified by my observation of the next raven. So we > could still have falsificationism without fallibilism about perceptual > judgements. > > What about the other way around? Suppose there were a "logic of > confirmation," whereby scientific hypotheses are rendered increasingly > probable as we observe more confirming instances. Whether this would work or > not seems to me independent of whether our observations are fallible or > infallible. But fallibilism about perceptual judgements does of course imply > the fallibility of science - it rules out any conclusive proof of scientific > hypotheses. > > I hope this makes sense. > > Peter > > Your perspective is quite interesting. May I ask you to expand on your reasoning? I have long been interested in the philosophical distinction between symbols used internally and symbols used externally. Many mathematicians, followers of Hilbert, such as the Peircean B. Rotman, believe that mathematics is purely an internal "sporting" use of signs. Others believe that mathematics is intuitive, followers of Brouwer, often using the concept of time as the source of order of signs. What would you suppose about a "logic of confirmation"? Would such a logic necessarily take as a presupposition predicate logic? Could a Peircean "diagrammatic logic", necessarily signified on a "sheet of assertion" serve as a general inductive tool for a "logic of confirmation"? Cheers Jerry --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to [email protected] with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to [email protected]
