Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Notion of falsifiability (from RE: Presentations to the Fifth International....)
I thought that Popper trashed psychoanalysis and Marxism as non-scientific because non-falsifiable as ad hoc auxiliary hypotheses could always be brought in to account for any discrepancies between the theory and empirical evidence. But perhaps this is different from holism and the web of belief? With regard to scientists' relation to philosophical issues, I think that one would first have to break scientists down into categories as to the type of science they are working on. My guess is that the majority of scientific labor is donkey work that has little to do with theoretical advances in their scientific fields, and hence philosophy beyond accepted methodology is irrelevant. A friend of mine, after a lapse of many many years, is now working on completing his Masters in philosophy of science. He finds the issues in the field tedious and trivial and sees little advance in the past two decades. I strongly suspect that it is pretty trivial, and has little relation to real science for reasons more profound than the actual interests or behavior of scientists. It is impossible to escape a fundamental paradox of philosophy, a paradox which itself should become an object of reflection. (It may also affect Juan Inigo's recent reflection on Marxist theory, but I will have to elaborate on this separately.) Philosophy, when it addresses epistemology and ontology, seems to me to be serve a paradoxical and more normative than descriptive function. It seems to generalize categorically about the empirical world while remaining effectively useless in adjudicating any specific questions about it. Philosophy of science, like philosophy generally, seems to be about the structure of logical dependencies among its own concepts, a basically self-enclosed enterprise irrelevant to most of science proper. Why? Because science, like all other issues regarding knowledge, is content-driven, while philosophy is a purely formalistic enterprise. I also think that this is why the demarcation problem is insoluble in formal terms. What demarcates science from pseudoscience and occultism is more than a set of formal criteria relating to testability, etc., but to the actual accumulated knowledge of the material world which has taught us the useful principles about what the world is like to be conceptualized intelligibly, what reasoning and concept formation are about, etc. If one were to subtract all history and content from deliberation over the demarcation crtierion, it itself would not only be unanswerable, but meaningless. One can attempt to formulate completely contentless, abstract formal principles about anything--the need to do this is obvious, to find what is generalizable in experience and make principles out of it--but yet, no evaluation of knowledge claims can ever be made except in content-saturated situations and an assumed backdrop of background knowledge. This not only applies to science, but more generally to critical thinking. One can enumerate general principles, but their applicability is totally dependent on the background knowledge and specific analytical considerations brought to bear in each specific case. Open-mindedness is otherwise an empty, ideological stance actually deployed to obstruct achievable critical thinking just where it is most needed, which is just what Popperianism does. I've learned from my exposure to Popperians that they live in a world of make-believe--a mental universe appropriate to the professional middle class that denies the essential social reality in which it is grounded. (Here is where my and Juan's interests intersect.) Which is not to say that that there is no value in attempting to enumerate general, formal, abstract principles, which are basically normative or orientational in character, but left to themselves they are impotent, because subscribing to them in no way helps one to judge any particular situation. Hence a humorous characterization of Popper's own work as The Open Society by One of Its Enemies. And if you've ever surveyed the critical thinking contingent, you may notice how bad these people's thinking is in a preponderance of instances. Then there's the pomo obsession with reflexivity, which I regard as the philosophical equivalent of narcissistic liberal guilt: * http://www.autodidactproject.org/guidreflex.htmlReflexivity Situatedness I suspect Anglo-American philosophy of science has exhausted itself and is mostly a dead-end. Granted, it's not as bankrupt as French philosophy, but I think it's played out. At 01:51 PM 9/30/2007, andie nachgeborenen wrote: I am not sure about what is wrong with staying close to the intuitive judgments of science. It is only partly accurate to say that falsifiability has not received any interest among philosophers of science. First, things are more complicated. The question to which Popper posed the falsifiability thesis as an answer is itself
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Notion of falsifiability (from RE: Presentations to the Fifth International....)
I am not sure about what is wrong with staying close to the intuitive judgments of science. It is only partly accurate to say that falsifiability has not received any interest among philosophers of science. First, things are more complicated. The question to which Popper posed the falsifiability thesis as an answer is itself passe. This is What Criterion Demarcates Science From Non-Science (or Nonsense). The positivists posed a Verification Criterion (Scientific statements can be verified by empirical observation, roughly). Popper proposed a F-Criterion, Scientific statements can be falsified by empirical observation. But the issue of demarcation is not a big concern and has not been for decades. Partly this is because of the influence of Quine, Goodman, and the neopragmatists,w which have tended to blur the line between science and other kinds of activity. That doesn't mean that the F-Criterion or something like it isn't a good rough test of whether a hypothesis is worth entertaining from a scientific p.o.v.. What's the use of a hypothesis that is immune to test? Btw, so regarded Popper was anticipated by JS Mill in his Logic, where Mill's Methods a re falsifiability tests. Secondly, Popper himself soon realized the point later made with great force by Quine and the neoprags, that simple F-test of Die Logik der Forschung was flawed because it did not take into account the holism of scientific statements, the fact that, as Quine later and Duhem earlier had put it, you could hold true any statement in the face of apparent refutation bu making suitable adjustments elsewhere in the web of belief (Quine's term). Not all adjustment are equally easier, which is why the F test has some bite. Third, neoPopperians of various stripes, including mostly Lakatos as well as a whole whole of English neo-Pops developed Popper's ideas to a more sophisticated level and got them incorporated into the philosophy of science mainstream or at least discussion. Lakatos was a big influence on Feyerabend, not that PKF was mainstream. The neo-Pops were big in Britain at least last when I checked and when I was in grad school there in the early 80s, though more at London and a bit at Oxford than at Cambridge. On the other hand in the 1980s while in phil grad school at Michigan I had to argue my Quine, Kuhn Rorty trained (same as me) phil of sci teacher into including Popper in his phil of sci class that I was TA-ing. Less Ayer, I said, more Popper. He did it, though. --- CeJ [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One observation and then one part of the discussion that created a point of interest for me. 1. Papers and presentation texts don't make for very good discussion topics, but I don't think they are posted for that purpose. I for one appreciate them more than 'clippings' from the NYT, like we see on all those other lists, like A-List, Marxmal, RadGreen, etc. At least there is the potential of having one's attention drawn to something in the mainstream media. 2. RD's response to the presentation at this point caught my interest: This appears to be the germ of a critique of Popper. While the notion of falsifiablity appears to be commonly accepted among the scientific community, I don't see much evidence of a detailed interest in Popper's ideas or for that matter any concern whatever about certainty, which is the philosopher's anxiety. I would have to agree, but I would bet most scientists publishing research in the 'scientific community' believe that they 'prove what is true' (while most put their names on papers they had nothing to do with, not in the writing or in the research--haven't most likely even read the papers their names go on as second authors). Popper never really moved that far away from intuitive judgements about what scientists might actually do and believe. Perhaps philosophy of the 20th century would have been better if Wittgenstein had brained him with the poker. As for the philosophy of science, post-Kuhn, post-Feyerabend, and post-Lakatos, the notion of falsifiability itself doesn't get much discussion anymore. It is too cutting edge for the belief sets of practicing scientists, and quaint for philosophers and sociologist of science. CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis Tonight's top picks. What will you watch tonight? Preview the hottest shows on Yahoo! TV. http://tv.yahoo.com/ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Notion of falsifiability (from RE: Presentations to the Fifth International....)
I have discussed falsifiability on various lists. See: http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2002/2002-January/82.html http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2004w52/msg00209.htm On Sun, 30 Sep 2007 10:51:26 -0700 (PDT) andie nachgeborenen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I am not sure about what is wrong with staying close to the intuitive judgments of science. It is only partly accurate to say that falsifiability has not received any interest among philosophers of science. First, things are more complicated. The question to which Popper posed the falsifiability thesis as an answer is itself passe. This is What Criterion Demarcates Science From Non-Science (or Nonsense). The positivists posed a Verification Criterion (Scientific statements can be verified by empirical observation, roughly). Popper proposed a F-Criterion, Scientific statements can be falsified by empirical observation. But the issue of demarcation is not a big concern and has not been for decades. Partly this is because of the influence of Quine, Goodman, and the neopragmatists,w which have tended to blur the line between science and other kinds of activity. That doesn't mean that the F-Criterion or something like it isn't a good rough test of whether a hypothesis is worth entertaining from a scientific p.o.v.. What's the use of a hypothesis that is immune to test? Btw, so regarded Popper was anticipated by JS Mill in his Logic, where Mill's Methods a re falsifiability tests. Secondly, Popper himself soon realized the point later made with great force by Quine and the neoprags, that simple F-test of Die Logik der Forschung was flawed because it did not take into account the holism of scientific statements, the fact that, as Quine later and Duhem earlier had put it, you could hold true any statement in the face of apparent refutation bu making suitable adjustments elsewhere in the web of belief (Quine's term). Not all adjustment are equally easier, which is why the F test has some bite. Third, neoPopperians of various stripes, including mostly Lakatos as well as a whole whole of English neo-Pops developed Popper's ideas to a more sophisticated level and got them incorporated into the philosophy of science mainstream or at least discussion. Lakatos was a big influence on Feyerabend, not that PKF was mainstream. The neo-Pops were big in Britain at least last when I checked and when I was in grad school there in the early 80s, though more at London and a bit at Oxford than at Cambridge. On the other hand in the 1980s while in phil grad school at Michigan I had to argue my Quine, Kuhn Rorty trained (same as me) phil of sci teacher into including Popper in his phil of sci class that I was TA-ing. Less Ayer, I said, more Popper. He did it, though. --- CeJ [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Notion of falsifiability (from RE: Presentations to the....)
AN wrote this I am not sure about what is wrong with staying close to the intuitive judgments of science. in response to this: CJPopper never really moved that far away from intuitive judgements about what scientists might actually do and believe. --- Intuitive judgments of science? How objective or empirical or experimental or controlled could these be? What I meant though was that Popper, a non-scientist, didn't really understand what most scientists believe or what most scientists actually do (not the same thing). This from a guy who thought he could tell you how to tell a pseudo-science from science. What is that saying about, 'Those who can't, TEACH'. Judging from the scientists across campus they don't even have a notion of falsifiability. Now that science is mostly applied science and invented technology, it is even further away from the concerns of this sort of philosophy of science. Perhaps Schon and Argyris ought to be added to philosophy of 'science' (in the sense that just about every topic taught and researched at North American universities claims to be empirical and scientific) and Popper dropped altogether. It wouldn't hurt to add Lyotard while I am at it. If I had to come up with a term to describe the approach to epistemology in 'science' as I see it, I would say naive positivist, or even romantic positivist. CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Notion of falsifiability (from RE: Presentations to the Fifth International....)
Correction: At least there is the potential of having one's attention drawn to something in the mainstream media. I meant NOT in the mainstream media. And a footnote on my footnote: I think of what is the 'logic' of scientific inquiry in the 'soft' areas I have worked in (applied linguistics, educational linguistics, language teaching). How many papers in this or that journal's 'research template' format basically conclude (which is put in the abstract) with something like: this study did (or did not) support this or that hypothesis. Or , this study only partly supported this or that hypothesis. More research is necessary (an almost universal statement). If any of these 'researchers' ever had to apply linguistics or teach a language or take a philosophy of science 101 class, they might commit suicide! CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
