[lit-ideas] Re: Darwiniana
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2012 22:06:28 +0000 (GMT)
________________________________
From: "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
>"we cannot tell whether it is analytic, synthetic-untestable or
synthetic-testable simply by looking at it - we can only tell by looking at
the
METHODS used to defend the truth of the statement."
That looks like early verificationism.>
Hardly. It has nothing to do with 'verificationism' as a doctrine of sense and
nonsense; nor has it anything to do with 'verificationism' as a doctrine that
takes it that there is verification in a logical sense - an inductive logical
sense. If there is a logical characteristion to the method here it is
'falsificationism' - as the "methods used to defend the truth of the statement"
are synonymous with the question "what would the proponent of its truth accept
as its falsification?"
In my understanding, it must be a 'falsificationist' method in this sense
because the only relationship between propositional content and reality may be
characterised by saying that propositional content is always equal to what it
rules out being the case [rather than what it rules in, for it only rules
anything 'in' insofar as it rules its negation 'out']:- so when we ask what
"All swans are white" says, as content, it says 'what it rules out', and 'what
it rules out' is there being a 'non-white swan'; so "All swans are white" is
equivalent to "There are no non-white swans". And to say content is always
equal to what it rules out is to say content is always equal to its class of
potential falsifiers [i.e. the class of what it denies to be the case].
This is so no matter what method we use to decide whether there are non-white
swans:- if the method of defence is analytic, namely that we rule out non-white
swans as a matter of definition because to be a swan is always to be white [so
a non-white swan becomes an analytically or logically impossible structure], it
is still the case that the content of "All swans are white" is "There are no
non-white swans" (albeit the existence of "non-white swans" is here now not an
empirical possibility, being analytically impossible, and so "All swans are
white" is here never empirically falsifiable). So when defended as an analytic
truth, "All swans are white" rules out nothing that could have existence, since
it asserts a non-white swan is 'logically' impossible, and so could never exist
- and so its class of potential falsifiers is empty (according to its own
truth).
In this connection, it is clear that if Darwinism is analytic it is empty of
content that explains what exists since, if analytically true, it addresses
nothing that could have existence; and this is true of all analytic 'truths' -
and so the feeling that some analytic truth expresses some actual content may
arise only from confusing the analytic truth with some synthetic variant of
itself (as we might think "survival of the fittest" as a definitional truism
tells us something substantive because we confuse it with some "survival of the
fittest" that tells something about how things actually are, though this cannot
be but an illusion where we have read something 'synthetic' into the
'analytic').
(snip)
>The important, to me, bit about that Grice is the idea of "synthetica priori"
>which seems what Popper, "that tottering, old metaphysician," was looking
for.>
In a sense this is what Popper is looking for: his sense of synthetic is
straightforward enough, but the explanation of the difference between a priori
and a posteriori is not perhaps so straightforward.
What ought to be emphasised is that whatever 'synthetic a priori' knowledge
there is (and there is tremendous amount in Popper's view), in Popper's view it
is still a branch of conjectural knowledge - that is, simply because knowledge
is synthetic, and a priori in the sense of prior to experience, does not mean
it is a priori valid or necessarily true. Even if it is synthetic a priori
knowledge that is true, it will be contingently true.
Donal
England
Other related posts:
