[lit-ideas] Re: A Connoisseur's Guide to the Noumenon
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 10:16:58 -0400
My last post today!
We are using 'connoisseur' and wondering what Popper might have said about
it.
In a message dated 9/10/2014 9:25:02 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx asks:
>where dost Popper ever remark thus?
-- i.e. that connoisseurs are no connoisseurs.
Well, for starters. There's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_rationalism
"Critical rationalism is an epistemological philosophy advanced by Karl
Popper. ... [A] [c]ritical rationalist[... such as Popper was] hold[s] that
scientific theories and
ANY OTHER CLAIMS TO KNOWLEDGE
[emphasis Speranza's]
can and should be rationally criticized, and (if they have empirical
content) can and should be subjected to tests which may falsify them. Thus
claims to knowledge may be contrastingly and normatively evaluated. They are
either falsifiable and thus empirical (in a very broad sense), or not
falsifiable and thus non-empirical. Those claims to knowledge that are
potentially
falsifiable can then be admitted to the body of empirical science, and then
further differentiated according to whether they are retained or are later
actually falsified. If retained, further differentiation may be made on
the basis of how much subjection to criticism they have received, how severe
such criticism has been, and how probable the theory is, with the least
probable theory that still withstands attempts to falsify it being the one to
be preferred."
The argument goes on as follows.
Suppose a connoisseur says:
i. I am a connoisseur.
By the law of Descartes, this yields.
ii. If I am I connoisseur, I can't be wrong.
But Popper, as per the above, challenges the consequent of (ii),
iii. I can't be wrong.
Therefore, Popper is suggesting (or at most implicating) that there are no
'true'* connoisseurs.
Cheers,
Speranza
* Grice calls "true" in "true connoisseur" a trouser-word. "I borrow the
phrase from Austin. Sexist, I confess but should do for now" (Grice thought
'trouser word' a sexist expression because it is expanded by Austin as "the
word that wears the trousers" -- implicating that there is a gender
implicature in the wearing of this piece of costume that some Scots may cancel
on
occasion).
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