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User:Dominic Mayers/sandbox/Notes on falsifiability

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These are notes written about Popper's falsifiability.

Criticism of the third world

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Popper approached the dualism objective versus subjective knowledge with two different perspectives.

Diverse notes

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Lakatos mentions that Popper, in Open society and its enemies wrote: "in the case of a scientific theory, our decision depends upon the results of experiments. If these confirm the theory, we may accept it until we find a better one. If they contradict the theory, we reject it". This suggest naive falsificationism with a rule to justify the rejection of a theory. However, Lakatos note also that Popper already in 1934 in his original version Logik der Forschung of The Logic of Scientific Discovery wrote: "In most cases we have, before falsifying a hypothesis, another one up our sleeves", thus showing that Popper was not referring to a fixed rule that could be used in a justification method.

Musgrave seems to have rejected fallibility.[A] This might be related to the notion that knowledge is justified true belief.

Watkins argued against Popper's notion that basic statements are tested.[B]

Quine considered epistemology as a part of psychology.[C]

Nicholas Rescher considered that induction must be accepted pragmatically without further justification[D] and that knowledge is standardly justified true belief.[E]

Kevin Meeker and Frederick F. Schmitt argue that even in David Hume we can see a view that knowledge is justified true belief.[1][2] However, Kenneth R. Merrill rather says that Hume adopted a point of view similar to Hume who saw epistemology as a part of psychology.[3] Moreover, Schmitt's view on "justification" is not a logical justification: in this manner there is no contradiction.

James Van Cleve consider induction can be justified if we restrict to the cases where we have uniformity of nature.[F]

Rohit Parikh and Adriana Renero argued that the popular belief that plato adopted JTB as the definition of knowledge is incorrect.[4] This is also a point made by Zina Giannopoulou.[5]

Sven Bernecker and Fred Dretske wrote that after Edmund Gettier raised a problem with the JTB definition of knowledge no epistemologists found an acceptable variation on this definition.[G] On the other hand, Paul Boghossian wrote that JTB is the standard, widely accepted definition of knowledge.[H]

Leemon McHenry on Maxwell and Popper

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Maxwell rejects the widely-accepted view of standard empiricism that scientific theories are accepted or rejected solely by confrontation with the evidence. He believes instead that what is required to explain the progress of science is a commitment to metaphysical principles that underlie our notion that the universe is comprehensible.[6][7]

Herbert A. Simon on Falsifiability and theoretical languages

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Notes

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  1. ^ Musgrave 2004, p. 30: "I do not agree with those Popperians who flirt with the idea that 'false knowledge' makes sense."
  2. ^ Watkins 1984, Sec. 7.2: "All we are getting, under this first interpretation, is a lengthening chain of derivations: no tests are being made."
  3. ^ Hylton & Kemp 2020: "The epistemologist, therefore, reflects on science from within science; there is no theory of knowledge distinct from science. 'Epistemology', Quine says, '...is contained in natural science, as a chapter of psychology'"
  4. ^ Almeder 2005, p. 2: Almeder wrote about Nicholas Rescher: "On the question of nonbasic knowledge, or scientific knowledge, he has consistently argued in Methodological Pragmatism and elsewhere that while particular scientific theses established by the inductive methods of science may be false (although we must presume them to be true when strongly confirmed), rationality requires us to use such a method because they generally tend to produce more effectively supplementable beliefs about the physical world than any other methods available."
  5. ^ Almeder 2005, p. 3: "Rescher's proposal is that we construe the relationship between knowledge and justified true belief not as a definition, but as a merely standardistic or generalized linkage under which "Standardly, knowledge is justified true belief" is a perfectly acceptable generalization, not only plausible but largely unproblematic. For Rescher, in the context of an epistemological standardism, interpreting such generalizations in a standardistic way does not allow the definition to be annihilated by counterexample."
  6. ^ Cleve 1984: "I shall assume that we know how to restrict the predicates involved in these inferences so as to avoid Goodman’s paradox about the grue emeralds.” That is, I shall assume that we have at least a partial answer to the ‘“‘new riddle” of induction—which are the good inductive inferences, the ones that are justified if any are? —in order to tackle the traditional problem —are even these inferences justified?"
  7. ^ Bernecker & Dretske 2000: "Whatever the reality of the tradition [that knowledge is JTB], no epistemologist since Gettier has seriously and successfully defended the traditional view."
  8. ^ Boghossian 2006: "[when] our belief [...] is both justified and true; according to the standard, widely accepted Platonic definition of knowledge, then, our belief counts as knowledge."

Abbreviated references

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  1. ^ Meeker 2013.
  2. ^ Schmitt 2014.
  3. ^ Merrill 2008.
  4. ^ Parikh & Renero 2017.
  5. ^ Giannopoulou 2021.
  6. ^ McHenry 2013, p. 234.
  7. ^ Brown 2000, p. 125.

References

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  • Boghossian, Paul (2006). Fear of Knowledge: Against relativism and constructivism. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199287185.
  • Bernecker, Sven; Dretske, Fred I., eds. (2000). Knowledge: Readings in Contemporary Epistemology. Oxford University Press.
  • Giannopoulou, Zina (2021). "Plato: Theaetetus". The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved July 31, 2021.
  • Parikh, Rohit; Renero, Adriana (2017). "Justified True Belief: Plato, Gettier, and Turing". Philosophical Explorations of the Legacy of Alan Turing. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science. pp. 93–102.
  • Cleve, James Van (1984). "Reliability, Justification, and the Problem of Induction". Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume IX: Causation and Causal Theories. pp. 555–568.
  • Schmitt, Frederick F. (2014). Hume’s Epistemology in the Treatise: A Veritistic Interpretation. Oxford University Press.
  • Merrill, Kenneth R. (2008). Historical Dictionary of Hume’s Philosophy. The Scarecrow Press.
  • Meeker, Kevin (2013). Hume’s Radical Scepticism and the Fate of Naturalized Epistemology. Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Almeder, Robert (2005). "Rescher, Nicholas (1928–)". Encyclopedia of Philosophy. encyclopedia.com.
  • Musgrave, Alan (2004). "How Popper [Might Have] Solved the Problem of Induction". Philosophy. Vol. 79, no. 307. Cambridge University Press on behalf of Royal Institute of Philosophy. pp. 19–31.
  • Hylton, Peter; Kemp, Gary (2020). "Willard Van Orman Quine". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  • Watkins, John W.N. (1984). Science and Scepticism. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691072949.
  • Brown, Lonnie (2000). Book Review: The Comprehensibility of the Universe: A New Conception of Scienceby Nicholas Maxwell. Vol. 25. Sage Publications. pp. 125–130. Retrieved 2 May 2021. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
  • McHenry, Leemon (2013). "Popper and Maxwell on Scientific Progress". In McHenry, Leemon (ed.). Science and the Pursuit of Wisdom. Studies in the Philosophy of Nicholas Maxwell. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 233–248. doi:10.1515/9783110319439.
  • Rynasiewicz, Robert A. (1983). "Falsifiability and the Semantic Eliminability of Theoretical Languages". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 34 (3): 225–241. Retrieved 3 May 2021.
  • Simon, Herbert A. (1985). "Quantification of Theoretical Terms and the Falsifiability of Theories". The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 36 (3). Retrieved 5 May 2021.
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