[lit-ideas] Re: Confessions of a Sexual Methodist
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2009 16:34:19 +0000 (GMT)
--- On Tue, 3/11/09, Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> As Popper says, "a spectrum of
> Griceans".
To my knowledge he never said, or wrote, such a thing.
> Method, Popper holds, is what we don't need.
More accurately, there is no royal road to truth in the sense of a method [=
procedure, recipe] that guarantees it. In addition, there are several important
other senses in which "scientific method" does not exist. What does exist for
Popper is the scientific method of testing bold conjectures by observation:
e.g. deducing a test-statement from a UG/law in conjunction with initial
conditions and observing whether the test-statement holds true. In this sense
we do need method and indeed we need 'methodological conventions' or normative
rules to pursue science.
> Feyerabend (who knew Grice
> well (*) (*and could not stand cross examining students
> with him at Berkeley, "I
> cannot see the point of having a student discuss with Grice
> for 45 minutes the
> aptness of 'There is no rhinoceros in the
> fridge'") went further with his
> Portian, Anything goes.
"Anything goes" was Feyerabend in one of his phases (he was close to returning
to a more orthodox Popperian position before his death, I understand):- the
problem is while "anything goes" is a sound enough methodological maxim at the
theory-generation stage, if we hold to it at the theory-elimination stage then
"everything stays".
Donal
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