[lit-ideas] Comment on Ross on Gardner on Popper on Induction
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2010 12:26:12 +0000 (GMT)
At
http://www.friesian.com/gardner.htm
Ross writes:
"Popper doesn't help his case against people like Gardner in two respects: (1)
If a probability theory is ever possible to quantify the degree of confirmation
of a scientific theory, this will be a scientific theory like any other, and
thus will be the fruit, not of induction, but of mathematical imagination, to
be confirmed (probabilistically) or falsified (deductively) like any other
theory. It will be neither produced nor justified by induction. Not wanting to
give an inch on probability, Popper perhaps misses the chance to use this
point. And (2) Popper doesn't have a very good theory on the epistemology of
particular/existential statements describing experience. He says they are
"caused" by experience, which really strips them of epistemic force. But
Gardner's critique overlooks such a problem and so takes no advantage of it."
Brief comments:-
re (1): it is unclear how "a probability theory...to quantify the degree of
confirmation of a scientific theory...will be a scientific theory like any
other" - for how would such a theory be falsified without, say, assuming that
the evidential parameters are _representative_ in the sense that what holds
within them holds within wider parameters; and would this assumption be
scientific or itself falsifiable? [Bear in mind that P's theory of how a
_probabilistic theory_ can be falsified involves some, critically discussed and
adopted, conventions as to what constitutes a sufficiently _representative_
sample; and this does not validate any general _"probability theory"_ in the
confirmationist sense but only provides a means for assessing specific
_probabilistic theories_]. {P's theory for assessing _non-probabilistic_
theories also stresses the unavoidable role of critically-adopted "conventions"
and their centrality to scientific method}. So it is unclear
to me that there is "a point" here that P fails to use.
re (2): it is also unclear why exactly Ross thinks P lacks "a very good theory
on the epistemology of particular/existential statements describing
experience"; or why saying that such statements "are 'caused' by
experience...really strips them of epistemic force".
P's _LdF_ was published in a very compressed form. P does say that a basic or
test statement, say "Here is a white swan", may be caused by a sense
experience: his point here is that accepting a causal role for experience is
logically distinct from giving experience a justificatory role - or, to put it
in reverse, P is pointing out that denial of an inductive justificatory role
for experience, even at the level of a test-statement,
does not mean denying any [causal] role for experience.
Admitting this view puts universals and particulars closer together than
usually is the case*, P conceives the role of experience as logically analogous
in both the case of a US like "All swans are white" and a TS like "Here is a
white swan": in both cases experience may act as a causal prompt but its
logical role is as a test of the truth of the relevant statements.
It is true that P in _LdF_ does not go into detail into the process by which
experience _may_ prompt or cause statements or the adoption/rejection of
statements; but the epistemic force of experience [or, better, _observation_]
is as a test of the truth of TS and the epistemic force of a TS is as a test of
a US. So I do not see how conceding a causal albeit non-inductive role for
experience/observation, strips TSs of epistemic force, or indeed strips
"experience/observation" of epistemic force.
Nor was it a particular concern of P's, within the remit of the _logic of
reseach_, to engage in analysing a process that causally had more to do with
psychology than epistemology - especially as one of his points is to show how
epistemological analysis of the logic of scientific discovery can be done
without engaging in psychological analysis.
Donal
Athens of the North
*This assimilation of USs and TSs from a logical POV is defended partly because
a TS must use its terms as "universals" and not merely as unreproducible
one-offs without law-like properties: a TS that used the term "water" merely to
denote an entity that was an unreproducible one-off and that lacked law-like
properties would not itself be testable e.g. how would we know it was water,
rather than something merely with the appearance of water?
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