The other thread was almost filled up, so I'm starting Part II on a new thread here. (To catch up, have a look at Part I here: http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1409387).

In Part I, I proposed famous Austrian philosopher Karl Popper as a case study in how smart people can wind up holding insane beliefs. I noted that it was his attempt to solve a famous philosophical problem, David Hume's "Problem of Induction" (which I described in Part I), which led him into trouble. I want to describe that process here in hopes we don't make the same kinds of thinking mistakes. After all, our thinking is no longer guided by senile religious charlatans in diapers, and we must learn to make our own way in the world.

********************

Popper first encountered David Hume's "Problem of Induction" while studying philosophy at the University of Vienna in the 1920's. He described his response in his book, "Conjectures and Refutations", pages 55-56:

"Hume, I felt, was perfectly right in pointing out that induction cannot be logically justified...(A)n attempt to justify the practice of induction by an appeal to experience must lead to an infinite regress...I found Hume's refutation of inductive inference clear and conclusive."

Popper reiterated his findings in his book "Objective Knowledge", describing Hume's elucidation of this problem as “an almost flawless gem” which “proves that no positive solution” to it is possible (see his "Objective Knowledge", pages 88 and 90).

For Popper, the issue was settled. Induction was incorrigibly irrational. It therefore had to be entirely rejected. By extension, so did every other philosophy of science, since they all allowed for induction. The world needed a new philosophy of science - the one, true philosophy. And Popper would be the one to discover it, and reveal it, to the world.

So, for Popper, what was that one, true philosophy?

Well, given his pre-commitments, it of course had to be one which entirely rejected induction. And because Popper, following Hume, accepted that there are only two main forms of reasoning - induction and deduction - the one, true philosophy of science had to be exclusively deductive.

What is deduction?

Deduction is the form of reasoning which lets us know whether certain conclusions follow from certain premises.

Just one example:

Premise 1: All A's are B's (All pygmies are humans);
Premise 2: All B's are C's (All humans are mammals);
Conclusion: All A's are C's (All pygmies are mammals).

The problem (for Popper) is that deduction *only* tells us about logical relationships between premises and conclusions. It tells us nothing about the real world itself. So how did Popper deal with this problem?

Quite easily, as it turns out: he simply followed the logic. And the logic went like this:

Premise 1: Deduction is the only valid form of reasoning;
Premise 2: Deduction can yield no knowledge about the world;
Conclusion: Therefore, knowledge about the world does not exist.

Allow me to repeat that: Karl Popper, one of the most celebrated philosophers of science ever, concluded that *knowledge about the world does not exist*. Popper flew in airplanes, rode in cars, watched television, and took medication, yet maintained until his death that nothing could be known. (And you thought Mormons had closed minds...)

No doubt, at this very moment, dozens of RFM readers are gearing up to push "reply" in order to announce that I'm "taking Popper out of context" and that I've "misunderstood his philosophy of science", after which they'll quote Popper talking very plainly about "knowledge", "scientific discovery", etc.

Please, friends, give me a few paragraphs to preemptively address those objections, because they are the result of a big misunderstanding.

That misunderstanding arises because of Popper's rampant habit of equivocation. (Equivocation is a fallacy. It is the use of the same word to mean different things). That habit often obscures what Popper really means. (Below, I'll post references to match up with the Q-number, so you can check everything).

Consider Popper's use of the word "knowledge". For Popper, the idea that the word *knowledge* refers to, or implies – well, *knowledge* – is mistaken. Rather, scientific “knowledge” is not a “species of knowledge” at all (Q1). It is actually a species of "guessing" (Q2, Q3, Q4, Q5, Q6) which is often “not true”; for we can never find any positive reasons to believe that any scientific theory is true (Q7, Q8), or even more probable than another (!) (Q9). Thus, not only is actual knowledge about the world impossible (Q10, Q11, Q12, [Q3, Q4]), but *any belief about the world at all is, by definition, irrational* (Q13).

Popper even openly admits that his denial that any belief about the world can be rational “is as unambiguously negative as that of any irrationalist” [RA, 19]). Well, yes. (And I would add that it takes a very special sort of person to acknowledge that his philosophical conclusion is the same as that of any irrationalist, while still denying that he himself is an irrationalist.)

In other words, confusion abounds - even amongst many philosophy professors - about Popper's philosophy because people miss the outrageous extent of his equivocation. Through it, Popper synonymizes “knowledge” with “theory”, “theory” with “hypothesis”, “hypothesis” with “conjecture”, and “conjecture” with “guess”. That is, he synonymizes "knowledge" with "the absence of knowledge". The linguistic chicanery in Popper is literally as bad as anything we used to read in the old FARMS pieces.

In any case, here are just a few quotes in which Popper denies the possibility of knowledge about the world, and in which you can start to get a feel for his rampant equivocation:

(Q1) “...I suggested that the whole trouble was due to the mistaken assumption that scientific knowledge was a species of knowledge - knowledge in the ordinary sense in which if I know that it is raining, it must be true that it is raining, so that knowledge implies truth. But, I said, what we call 'scientific knowledge' was hypothetical, and often not true, let alone certainly or probably true (in the sense of the calculus of probability). Again, the audience took this for a joke, or a paradox, and they laughed and clapped. I wonder whether there was anybody there who suspected that not only did I seriously hold these views, but that, in due course, they would be widely regarded as commonplace”. ("Unended Quest", p. 125-126).

(Q2) “(The scientist) can never know for certain whether his findings are true. One may formulate this 'third view' of scientific theories briefly by saying that they are genuine conjectures - highly informative guesses about the world which although not verifiable (i.e., capable of being shown to be true) can be submitted to severe critical tests” ("Conjectures and Refutations", p. 154).

(Q3) “...Theories themselves are guesswork. We do not know; we only guess. If you ask me, 'How do you know?', my reply would be, 'I don't; I only propose a guess”. (CR, pp. 204-205).

(Q4) “Thus the proper answer to Russell's question is: 'I do not know; and as to guesses, never mind how or why I guess what I guess. I am not trying to prove that my guesses are correct...the moment we replace the idea of knowledge by that of guesswork, the apparently 'essential subjectivity' of the theory of knowledge disappears...Thus Russell's fundamental problem needs to be reformulated in terms of guesses..”. ("Realism and the Aim of Science", p. 86-87).

(Q5) “...We must regard all laws or theories as hypothetical or conjectural; that is, as guesses”. ("Objective Knowledge", p. 9).

(Q6) “...All our theories must remain guesses, conjectures, hypotheses”. ("Objective Knowledge", p. 13)

(Q7) “We can never give positive reasons which justify the belief that a theory is true”. (CR, p. 310).

(Q8) “From a rational point of view, we should not ‘rely’ on any theory, for no theory has been shown to be true, or can be shown to be true”. ("Objective Knowledge", p. 21)

(Q9) “Science has nothing to do with the quest for certainty or “Science has nothing to do with the quest for certainty or probability or reliability. We are not interested in establishing scientific theories as secure, or certain, or probable...”. (CR, p. 310).

(Q10) “Nothing can be proved (outside of mathematics and logic)”. (CR, p. 67).

(Q11) “Since all knowledge is theory-impregnated it is all built on sand”. ("Objective Knowledge", p. 105).

(Q12) “We never know what we are talking about”. (Popper’s summary of his philosophy of science, "Unended Quest", p. 26).

(Q13) “Belief, of course, is never rational: it is rational to suspend belief” ("Unended Quest", page 97);

More to come. Comments most welcome.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2014 05:07AM by Tal Bachman.

Philosophy is stoopid.

Maybe part 3 in your series on "How Smart People Wind Up With Insane Beliefs" should be autobiographical.

----

The problem of induction still stands. You've done nothing to show that it isn't a problem. Scientific knowledge is always open to being revised due unexpected data (Taleb's "black swan events" for example).

Just because a theory is tentative doesn't mean that it isn't useful or highly predictive. To use an example of Popper's, Newtonian physics has great utility, and it is highly predictive, but it is not the ultimate truth (though it is closer to the truth than previous physical theories). This one example clearly illustrates that knowledge can exist in grades, and it also shows the effect of unexpected data on a rigorous scientific theory.



Edited 8 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2014 10:30PM by archytas.

Logic is a little tweeting bird chirping in a meadow. Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell BAD.

ST:TOS for the win!

I've got an engineer's mentality - it doesn't have to be 'true' just close enough so that it gets the job done.

Ha ha! Compute that, Norman!

This is a fun discussion to a wannabe philosophy geek like me so thanks for starting it.

A few comments: You say Popper wanted to "solve" Hume's problem of induction. I disagree. I think Popper understood it not as a riddle to be solved but as an accurate assessment of the limits of knowledge. I think the OPs mischaracterization through selective narrowing of Popper's work, right at the outset of the post, is responsible for all the judgments that follow.

Hume himself did most of the work on this topic, and the supposed difficulties you are describing has already been exhaustively covered by him. Popper added precious little to it, except to apply it to scientific "knowledge".

In what is known now as "Hume's fork" (a perfect gem of clear and, in my humble opinion, flawless reasoning), Hume writes:

"All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic ... [which are] discoverable by the mere operation of thought ... Matters of fact, which are the second object of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner; nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing."
- An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

And in an even more terse and elegant summation:

"If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."
- An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

IMO Hume is right, and by "right" I mean not just logically sound. He is right in the way a Bach or Leonardo work is "right." It would take a long exposure to the ideas being discussed to really understand why I think that is the case.

So, even though we might not like it, there are very obvious limits to inductive reasoning.

Science is for Hume "experimental reasoning regarding matters f fact and existence." Popper merely attempted to draw the connections of these statements to science.

Insane? I don't think so. Certainly not dangerous. Hume was a true gentleman, a friend of every enlightened and noble sentiment, and Popper readily admitted that he lived his life like any other man, and that these intellectual musings in the realm of pure rationality were just that.

I am definitely not a Popperian rationalist. But really, bringing up the problem does not make him the problem. You say Popper was at times "equivocal?" Maybe, but I think we would be hard pressed to convict him of a lack of hygiene in his language.

That reminds me a little, I hate to say, of Ken Ham accusing astrophysicists of lacking "common sense" or of Thomas Kincade saying that the work of El Greco was "such a downer."

For an even more radical view of the limits of human reason, see "Sextus Empiricus" and "Pyrrhonism".

As Hume said, (paraphrasing) "The errors in religion are dangerous, those in philosophy are merely ridiculous."

Well said, generationofvipers. I was going to write something of the sort but you already said it, and more clearly than I would have done.


Although my guess is Tal was using hyperbole rather cheekily, "insane" is a bit strong. For example this paragraph:

"Allow me to repeat that: Karl Popper, one of the most celebrated philosophers of science ever, concluded that *knowledge about the world does not exist*. Popper flew in airplanes, rode in cars, watched television, and took medication, yet maintained until his death that nothing could be known. (And you thought Mormons had closed minds...)"

There is a huge difference between professional doubt and everyday doubt. Bishop Berkeley took logic to a very strange place, but no one accused the good man of *living* as if his logic were everyday fact. And Hume's "gem" (and I absolutely agree with you and Popper about it being an actual, perfect gem) didn't bother the everyday life of what was probably one of the sanest humans to have ever lived. And I think the same follows for Karl Popper, although I'm not too familiar with his biography.

Insane would be *living* as if one's philosophy is the whole of reality; but as ridiculous of philosophers are (as are well all), I can't think of one who did or does.

Human, a pyrrhonist who gets on airplanes...

I'm curious Tal, do you question the applicability and/or efficacy of the general idea of falsification vis-a-vis scientific enquiry?


And this is for anyone *doing* science or knows a bit about how science is actually *done*: am I wrong to believe this is how scientists generally go about doing science:

http://www.ted.com/talks/stuart_firestein_the_pursuit_of_ignorance?language=en

Popper was on the tail end of the movement of science away from being considered (and called) "natural philosophy" to "science."
One of the reasons for that movement was people like Popper, who sat "thinking," and not actually doing anything with what they thought up -- while science went on learning about how the universe works, and producing useful, working things that took advantage of what had been learned. Popper nearly drove himself nuts because his "pure thinking" led him down paths that observable reality showed were more than a bit silly. Meanwhile, science went on doing what I mentioned in the other thread -- doing the experiments and seeing what happened.

"Pure Philosophy" has since taken a back seat to the practical sciences, and continues to diminish in importance and participation. For good reasons -- it very often doesn't produce anything useful. In the end it doesn't matter if "logic" declares that we can't actually know anything -- we do know stuff well enough to do useful things.

Popper's attitude reminds me a great deal of many present-day nihilists...they claim nothing has any real meaning, yet it seems to mean a great deal to them that other people hear them say that nothing has meaning. Intellectual flailing at best, worthless hypocrisy at worst :)

In actuality, many scientists didn't like Popper because he disrupted the comfortable mythology of logical positivists and their principle of verfication. In fact he devastated some of the writings of this school. Whether or not he was useful is a matter of opinion, but he certainly took "science" off its high horse of claiming it could ascertain "knowledge".

By the way, he was right about the limits of induction.

KOLOB: "Popper was on the tail end of the movement of science away from being considered (and called) "natural philosophy" to "science." One of the reasons for that movement was people like Popper, who sat "thinking," and not actually doing anything with what they thought up -- while science went on learning about how the universe works, and producing useful, working things that took advantage of what had been learned.

COMMENT: Do you think theoretical physicists, like Stephen Hawking, who do not produce useful working things, and are not "actually doing anything with what they thought up," are not contributing to science? There is a great deal of philosophy in the theoretical sciences, and I assure you that modern philosophers of science are experts in the scientific subjects they write about, and contribute greatly in critiquing the logic of scientific assumptions, particularly in the biological and social sciences.

KOLOB: "Popper nearly drove himself nuts because his "pure thinking" led him down paths that observable reality showed were more than a bit silly. Meanwhile, science went on doing what I mentioned in the other thread -- doing the experiments and seeing what happened."

COMMENT: Factually inaccurate.

KOLOB: "'Pure Philosophy' has since taken a back seat to the practical sciences, and continues to diminish in importance and participation. For good reasons -- it very often doesn't produce anything useful. In the end it doesn't matter if "logic" declares that we can't actually know anything -- we do know stuff well enough to do useful things."

COMMENT: Philosophy does not compete with the "practical sciences." Neither do the theoretical sciences compete with their practical counterparts. (except perhaps in research funding) They are different in orientation. That does not mean that philosophers or theoretical scientists do not contribute, or that their activities are not useful.

KOLOB: "Popper's attitude reminds me a great deal of many present-day nihilists...they claim nothing has any real meaning, yet it seems to mean a great deal to them that other people hear them say that nothing has meaning. Intellectual flailing at best, worthless hypocrisy at worst :)

COMMENT: Poppers views have nothing to do with nihilism, not even indirectly. Although it is true that some philosophers cannot reconcile their philosophical opinions with their practical worldview, this is not a matter of either "intellectual flailing" or hypocrisy. It reflects the difficulty of the issues they address.

Sorry, but this whole post is badly misconceived. Popper is one of the most highly respected figures in both philosophy of science and science generally. He most certainly is NOT a candidate for your proposition of "how smart people wind up with insane beliefs." The problem here is partly in Popper's unconventional, and sometimes rhetorical, use of terms like "knowledge," and "guessing," but mostly your own limited understanding of the background issues and scope of the problems he is addressing. Here are comments on the "Q" quotes:

(Q1) “...I suggested that the whole trouble was due to the mistaken assumption that scientific knowledge was a species of knowledge - knowledge in the ordinary sense in which if I know that it is raining, it must be true that it is raining, so that knowledge implies truth. But, I said, what we call 'scientific knowledge' was hypothetical, and often not true, let alone certainly or probably true (in the sense of the calculus of probability). Again, the audience took this for a joke, or a paradox, and they laughed and clapped. I wonder whether there was anybody there who suspected that not only did I seriously hold these views, but that, in due course, they would be widely regarded as commonplace”. ("Unended Quest", p. 125-126).

COMMENT: As is plain from this quotation, for Popper "knowledge" is limited to sense perception, or what could have been distinguished as "certain knowledge," or "direct knowledge." We know the truth of the proposition, "it is raining," because we directly perceive that fact without the requirement of inference. On the other hand, science proceeds by abstraction from such perceptions, which for Popper removes it from 'knowledge' proper. That is all he is saying.

(Q2) “(The scientist) can never know for certain whether his findings are true. One may formulate this 'third view' of scientific theories briefly by saying that they are genuine conjectures - highly informative guesses about the world which although not verifiable (i.e., capable of being shown to be true) can be submitted to severe critical tests” ("Conjectures and Refutations", p. 154).

COMMENT: It is a fact that science lacks certainty. Again, it is this lack of certainty that precludes it from being "knowledge," as Popper uses this term. Note, however, his use of "genuine conjectures." This phrase implies that conjectures are not merely random 'guesses' but are "highly informative" guesses. Thus, for Popper, such guesses are objective and rational not withstanding that their truth cannot be determined with certainty. Moreover, they can be falisified, which again adds objectivity to science, such that theories can be objectively tested and rejected.

(Q3) “...Theories themselves are guesswork. We do not know; we only guess. If you ask me, 'How do you know?', my reply would be, 'I don't; I only propose a guess”. (CR, pp. 204-205).

COMMENT: Again, remember, for Popper "guesses" encompass "genuine conjectures," and are "highly informed." He is not talking about random, unreasoned guessing.

(Q4) “Thus the proper answer to Russell's question is: 'I do not know; and as to guesses, never mind how or why I guess what I guess. I am not trying to prove that my guesses are correct...the moment we replace the idea of knowledge by that of guesswork, the apparently 'essential subjectivity' of the theory of knowledge disappears...Thus Russell's fundamental problem needs to be reformulated in terms of guesses..”. ("Realism and the Aim of Science", p. 86-87)."

COMMENT: Well, from what you have included here, the language is unfortunate. Scientists may not be trying to "prove" their guesses are correct, but they most certainly, in Popper's view, are trying to disprove them, through falsification. But note that he states that changing the scientific view from knowledge to guesses, "the apparently 'essential subjectivity' of the theory of knowledge disappears..." This means that if we acknowledge that certainty is not obtainable in science, and that we are merely testing "guesses," we retain objectivity, which comes through falsification. Thus, scientific knowledge is only subjective if we insist on certainty. If we insist only upon falsifiability, then in some sense objectivity is preserved.

(Q5) “...We must regard all laws or theories as hypothetical or conjectural; that is, as guesses”. ("Objective Knowledge", p. 9).

COMMENT: See above.

(Q6) “...All our theories must remain guesses, conjectures, hypotheses”. ("Objective Knowledge", p. 13)

COMMENT: See above.

(Q7) “We can never give positive reasons which justify the belief that a theory is true”. (CR, p. 310).

COMMENT: Right, but that does not mean that science is not objective, because we can falsify theories. Moreover, Popper would admit that a theory that remains unfalsified, although still uncertain, provides some justification to tentatively believe its truth, as opposed to a theory that has not stood the test of time.

(Q8) “From a rational point of view, we should not ‘rely’ on any theory, for no theory has been shown to be true, or can be shown to be true”. ("Objective Knowledge", p. 21)

COMMENT: Here Popper use of the word "rely" merely highlights a caution against the temptation to assume a theory is certain. For Popper, "shown to be true," means proven with certainty.

(Q9) “Science has nothing to do with the quest for certainty or “Science has nothing to do with the quest for certainty or probability or reliability. We are not interested in establishing scientific theories as secure, or certain, or probable...”. (CR, p. 310).

COMMENT: Science is not about the quest for certainty, i.e. knowledge proper. Moreover, in the scientific context, given the scope of reality, and the scope of theories, it is not proper to consider theories from consideration of probability; which is also a true statement. Mathematical propability is applicable within a theory (for example the kinetic theory of gases), or system, but has no application in judging the validity of any given theory. That is because there is no outside range from which to assess the relationship between the evidence for a theory and its potential falsification.

(Q10) “Nothing can be proved (outside of mathematics and logic)”. (CR, p. 67).

COMMENT: True statement. (Except in the legal context, or loosely by intuitive logic.)

(Q11) “Since all knowledge is theory-impregnated it is all built on sand”. ("Objective Knowledge", p. 105).

COMMENT: All this means is that all of science all remains falsifiable, which is true. The rhetorical language "built on sand" is unfortunate, but only means that at any time even our most entrenced scientific theories could yet be falsified.

(Q12) “We never know what we are talking about”. (Popper’s summary of his philosophy of science, "Unended Quest", p. 26).

COMMENT: This statement is out of context. I need at least the whole paragraph. However, it appears to be early Popper, when he associated himself with the logical positivists. However, Popper always believed that language had genuine meaning.

(Q13) “Belief, of course, is never rational: it is rational to suspend belief” ("Unended Quest", page 97);

COMMENT: Again, I need to see the context, but also again, it appears to be positivist in orientation, which was later rejected by Popper (and everyone else).

Karl Popper was a great philosopher and thinker. Over the course of his career, he altered his views, as have most philosophers. It is false, and frankly a demonstration of ignorance, to suggest that Popper had "insane" beliefs. Philosophers by the nature of their trade examine the deep problems of knowledge and reality, which often only lie at the unexamined surface of other disciplines. When their views appear to be "insane" it is usually a manifestation of the difficulties associated with assessing reality and human life,
and not their own lack of fundamental logical thinking, or "insane beliefs."

When you do this hatchet job on someone like Popper, you encourage people to view philosophers as inherently out of touch, irrational, and entaining weird views, distinguishable from the "logic" of real scientists. Nothing could be further from the truth. Philosophers have made, and continue to make significant contributions to our understanding of science and reality, or the limits of such understanding.

Near as I can tell, the OP's implicit overall message is that smart people end up with "insane" beliefs by thinking about complex issues, so we should all stop thinking about complex issues. That strikes me as a strange message.

Archytas - As I mentioned earlier, this thread is not about the "Problem of Induction" per se. Your attempts to make it so sound like a deliberate attempt at thread hijacking. I mentioned it only because it is Popper's response to it which determines a course which later leads him to absurd beliefs.

Generation - You are of course free to "think" whatever you want. I would only suggest that in a discussion about Popper, what he himself reveals about his views should count for far more than what you, or any person, happens to want to "think" about them.

Along these lines, you can quibble over the verb "to solve" all you want, but Popper himself uses it. Consider, just for starters, the opening lines of Popper's book "Objective Knowledge" (pardon the caps, but since a few RFM readers have a hard time believing their eyes, I wanted to help them out):

"...I think I have SOLVED a major philosophical problem: the problem of induction. (I must have reached the SOLUTION in 1927 or thereabouts). This SOLUTION has been extremely fruitful, and it has enabled me to SOLVE a good number of other philosophical problems".

Again, this thread is about what Popper thought, not what you'd like to think about what Popper thought. And Popper - if you can manage to believe your eyes, that is - thought that he had "solved" the problem of induction.

Human - "Insane" is a strong word, but in subsequent posts, I want to justify its use.

One big difficulty in discussions about Karl Popper, however, is one that Popper himself complained about several times (see Q1, above): many people can simply not believe that he believes what he claims to believe.

I am already starting to see the same thing on this thread. People read his words, and can't believe them. They instantly assume that "context" will reveal that Popper's views are not as extreme and objectionable as they actually are, when in fact, he repeats them ad nauseam throughout his entire body of work. (I didn't quote more "context" in my quotes above, only to keep the post within the limits of readability.)

In future posts, I'll flesh out a few more examples which justify my use of the word "insane". The challenge in accepting that description will only be, taking Popper at his word.

Henry Bemis - Your comments disregard Popper's own clear presentation of his views in numerous book and articles. I do not fault anyone for unfamiliarity with that presentation, but I do take issue with projection. And projection is what you are doing when you write things like, "Popper would admit that a theory that remains unfalsified, although still uncertain, provides some justification to tentatively believe its truth, as opposed to a theory that has not stood the test of time."

No - that's what *you* would say. And for good reason - that's quite sensible. But Popper does not admit any such thing. Do you know why not? Because Popper sees that as a form of "verificationism", which derives from induction, which he is committed to rejecting.

Thus for Popper, as he says so often, no amount of success in attempting to falsify a theory can be rationally taken to mean that that theory is likely more true than any other as-yet unfalsified theory. Popper is clear about that, whereas you will look in vain for support for your claim. All you really have is an inability to believe that Popper could possibly believe what he claims to believe, over and over.

By the way, it is not true that Popper changed his philosophy of science. From "Logik de Forschung" (his first major work on philosophy of science) on, he repeated the same views for fifty years.

I'll address in more detail your comments (and others here) in subsequent pieces, but I will just add here that it is actually not true that Popper is "highly respected" by most philosophers of science. Virtually all of them are aware that Popper's exclusively deductivist philosophy of science is a complete non-starter. If you can manage to keep an open mind, and believe Popper's own words, I will even prove that to you as we go on.

Tal says:

"You are of course free to 'think' whatever you want. I would only suggest that in a discussion about Popper, what he himself reveals about his views should count for far more than what you, or any person, happens to want to 'think' about them."

... And your recent explosions on Sam Harris? Please, Tal. People are laughing.

It is not my intention to threadjack.

I'm talking about the subjects you brought up in part 1 and 2. I think that is fair.

---

Tal Bachman wrote: "Thus for Popper, as he says so often, no amount of success in attempting to falsify a theory can be rationally taken to mean that that theory is likely more true than any other as-yet unfalsified theory."


My response:
I'll let Popper himself respond to this:
"...preferable the theory which tells us more; that is to say, the theory which contains the greater amount of empirical information or content; which is logically stronger; which has the greater explanatory and predictive power; and which can therefore be more severely tested by comparing predictive facts with observations. In short, we prefer an interesting, daring, and highly informative theory to a trivial one."
-- Karl Popper ("Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Knowledge", from CR)

Two different unfalsified theories are not automatically equal. He is clear about this.



Edited 11 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2014 09:58PM by archytas.

It's very simple to me, having the whole range from genius to idiot in my family. Really smart people, like really dumb people, see the world in black and white. For totally different reasons. I equate it to Popper's synonymizing "knowledge" with "the absence of knowledge."

But reasoning, deduction, logic often elude those at both ends of the scale. There is nothing on either end to question. There is a huge difference between Popper, someone with a philosophical nature and someone who can tell you every law of mathematics and physics, but can't form a genuine independent thought that someone hasn't told them.

I'm finding these threads fascinating. It seems to be a series of arguments over what some person said or didn't say. As to what Popper said, perhaps we should consult with the abhorrent Mr. Harris or the atheist rapist or the despicable Dawkins.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2014 06:21PM by thingsithink.

thingsithink Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm finding these threads fascinating. It seems
> to be a series of arguments over what some person
> said or didn't say. As to what Popper said,
> perhaps we should consult with the abhorrent Mr.
> Harris or the atheist rapist or the despicable
> Dawkins.

<grin>

We can simply watch you devolve for real-time proof.



HH =)

I stand corrected about Popper's goals, which I was unaware of. As stated, I am but a wannabe philosopher.

That being said, I hope I am wrong in thinking that the substance of your argument for Popper's "insane" beliefs is:

1. Popper thought absolute knowledge of the physical world was impossible (which you somehow link to "equivocation" on the words "knowledge" and "guessing" which you say are confusing but seem clear enough to me in the way he uses them).
2. Only in a world of absolute certainty would any sane person get on an airplane because it isn't absolutely certain that it would be safe (or some such implication?).
3. Popper got on airplanes (to use but one of your examples)
4. Therefore Popper's beliefs were insane.

As I said, I hope I am wrong. Maybe if you laid it out in premises and conclusions, instead of this free-form insinuation and yes, what looks like your own variety of equivocation, format, there would be something to evaluate and understand.

To succeed at this line of thought:
A> define "insane"
B> demonstrate how Popper's "beliefs" fit your definition

Otherwise there is no way to evaluate your position.

In my mind, the problem with Popper was in assuming you could "falsify" a theory much more conclusively than you can "verify" it. In other words, why does his skepticism stop with his principle of falsification?

There is even some possibility that Popper himself was impaled on Hume's fork, as he might have been guilty of mixing the "relations of ideas" with the "matters of fact".

I am aware that many believe Thomas Kuhn falsified Popper's principle of falsification, but in my estimation he did so only in a pragmatic, not a rationalist, sense.

But these are arguments against his positions. Not against his "sanity."

It looks like you accused his views of being "insane" (no equivocation on that word, Tal?) because he pointed out what any thinking and rational being has herself or himself realized at one time or another: that our "knowledge" of the outside world is not on so sure a foundation as we think. So when Popper uses "knowledge" it is in this sense. And all of your quotes showing his "equivocation" are in reality seemingly innocuous statements of this obvious fact.

And Tal, you seem to want the word "rational" to mean "reasonable" in Popper's quotes, places where Popper clearly means to use it in the hard, philosophically 'rationalist' sense.

If you can "prove" that we are not "ideas in the mind of God" a la Berkeley, or "brains in a vat" being made to think the world around us is real when it is not, or any number of other highly unlikely but NOT impossible scenarios, then I will join with you in your denunciation of Popper's, or Hume's, or Sextus's skepticism.

To me, people who claim to "know" this or that fundamentally unknowable thing are the "insane" ones. Especially when they apply arbitrary and critical adjectives like "insane" to them.

What do you think?

How we love to lose ourselves in minutiae almost forgetting that reality doesn't care how we see it.

I think that you are saying that you think that knowledge of something that is or was a guess to begin can never be knowledge since it's origins cannot have accounted for every probability. You know being a guess and all. There is an allusion to a teapot, with the inference that however low the probability, it is dishonest to dismiss it. And there is the underlining idea that things that are worth knowing are doomed forever to wonder in a desert of unasked questions. Unasked because no one knows that they should ask them.

Tal, is there anything at all that after being hypothesized once was 100% replicable 100% of the time?

I feel as though this is building towards some sort of exciting conclusion, you have exposed the perversity of Richard Dawkins (some of which I agreed with), the sloppy thinking of genocidal Sam Harris, now the insanity of Karl Popper! What pray tell is the end game, what is the thematic thread here?

Maybe he's trying to start his own church.

I think the thesis is " Everyone is Full of Bullshit ", but I'm not sure.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/23/2014 08:22PM by ladell.

Well we neither one can speak for Tal but my money's on what you just said ladell.

We're all full of it.

Taking a crap is healthy and essential to life.

Well said