It is difficult to assess Grice's final theory. He died in 1988, but his first
book came out in 1989, (c) Herbert Paul Grice. Then came, once dead, "The
conception of value" (that Judith Baker typed from Grice's tidy and penciled
unpublication) in 1991, and "Aspects of reason" (that R. O. Warner typed from
Grice's tidy and penciled unpublication) in 2001. There are LOADS of
unpublications by Grice in "The Grice Collection" -- so we may safely claim
that his final theory is never final -- or rather 'finalised'. On top, there is
ANOTHER philosopher named Grice, "Russell Grice", so one has to be careful
there (Grice -- that is Russell Grice -- is famous for his essay on the grounds
of moral judgement.
Helm writes:
"I take it [Speranza is] mentioning Popper because of my reference. In which
case this is the way Weinberg would (did) respond."
Thanks, I did mention Popper because I like to popper my posts with a Popperian
reference every now and then, also -- just to amuse McEvoy -- as he amuses me
by mocking the Griceists.
Helm goes on to quote a question and answer exchange between Horgan and
Weinberg.
Horgan's question to Weinberg is a brief one: "Comment?" (Recall the Britishism
so common as coming from the Queen of England, "No comment" -- Grice: "But
surely 'no comment' IS a comment." -- This is the "'No Comment' Is A Comment'
Implicature" identified by Grice. To be fair to Horgan, he prefaces his
'comment?' with some name dropping:
Horgan: "Paul Steinhardt [not to be confused with Paul Grice] has argued that
multi-verse theories, because they are not falsifiable, are not scientific.
Comment?"
Implicature: "I hope you love my use of Popperian jargon, 'falsifiable'? I
would use 'refudiable', but I would not know if you heard of Palin."
Weinberg's answer is implicatural in nature, Popperian and Griceist at the same
time. I thank Helm for quoting it in full, and here is an exegesis.
Weinberg indeed HAS a comment.
It goes:
"I don’t agree."
i.e. "with the name you drop, Paul Steinhardt -- not to be confused with Paul
Grice."
Weinberg does NOT implicate that he further agrees to disagree. As Geary notes,
"'Not to agree' is different from [he says 'than', because that's the Memphis
vernacular] 'disagree': Thus, my dog does not agree that I overfeed him, nor my
plants that I overwater them. Nor my wall that I overpaint it. A wall does not
disagree. But it would be otiose on my part to rephrase all those statements
with, say, "My wall disagrees that I overpaint it.""
Weinberg goes on:
"First of all,"
The implicature is that a 'second of all'. Geary notes: "Second of all" is
hardly used, which is a pity. 'Third of all' IS used, but in only certain areas
of New York's Upper East Side. It is not clear that the 'all' refers to."
Geary is wondering if the 'all' corresponds to what Venn calls a 'universe of
discourse.
Grice merely notes that "first of all" "implicates that at least a second item
should follow -- otherwise it's otiose."
Weinberg goes on:
"this business"
monkey business?
"of falsifiability is a silly criterion imposed on physical science by Karl
Popper,"
To be fair to Popper (Grice liked to call himself 'silly' -- "I am silly;
therefore, I exist." Grice was implicating that he was well aware that,
etymologically, 'silly' means 'blessed', as in Aelfric's reference to the
'silly virgin Mary' in the first translation into Anglo-Saxon of the Bible --
where 'silly' cannot BUT mean 'blessed' -- by the holy ghost, of course),
falsifiability MAY be a blessed criterion. And while Popper 'imposed' it to
physical science, I know a philosopher (nay, sociologist, too, even) or two,
who imposed it on science in general -- notably the social sciences.
Weinberg fails to note that Popper is perhaps refudiating Ayer -- Sir Freddie,
if you must -- who had tired the "Mind" readership with essays on
'Verifiability if you please' and such. The whole analytic movement was
fighting with a decent version of the VERIFIABILITY criterion (of 'meaningless'
sure). Popper comes up with the opposite idea -- 'falsifiability' -- and
stressing that it's NOT a criterion of meaning, but of 'science' --
'demarcation' between 'science' and what Popper unpoetically calls
'non-science'. Perhaps The Final Theory is, as Grice would have it,
eschatological in nature, and thus metaphysical, and thus, strictly, part of
'non-science'. Perhaps this is Weinberg's implicature, in which case the
'silly' is uncalled for.
Weinberg (the surname means, the mountain of wine, in German -- cfr.
Wine-borough) goes on:
"[Popper, that is] who was looking for some way of discrediting Marxism and
psychoanalysis."
Or rather Heidegger. Popper knew Carnap, and Carnap hated Heidegger, who once
said, and in class, too:
i. Nothing noths. -- "Nothing noths like nothing, trust me."
Carnap decided that (i) was "nonsensical" ("ein Piece von Nonsense"), since it
was 'ill-formed' as a sentence. The sentence by Heidegger is the focus of those
essays by Ayer in "Mind". Popper notes that (i) is unfalsifiable -- but then he
also notes that it is 'nonsensical'. Popper then approached Reichenbach, so
it's not all about his discrediting Marxism and psychoanalysis. For Reichenbach
had argued:
ii. This raven is black
This other raven is black
And this other raven is black
In fact, all ravens I have so far seen are black
----
Therefore, all ravens, _simpliciter_, are black
(This is called the Reichenbach "Raven" Example). Popper argued that an
universally quantified utterance ("All ravens are black") does not add much to
ornithology. What do are swans. Popper's example:
iii. This swan is white.
This other swan is white
But this swan that Sir Richard Willoughby has just brought from Australia,
and it's now at the Regents Zoo, is black.
----
Therefore, 'All swans are white' is FALSIFIED.
The falsifier, "This swan is black" falsifies the universally quantified
utterance ("All swans are white"), and it's this type of counterexamples that
scientists should be looking for (To give another example: "Newton says all
apples falls to the ground when they mature, but this one, which I was able to
catch in the area, went up in the air, with such a speed -- E = mc2 -- that
this refutes the adage, "What goes up must come down.")
Popper's attitudes towards Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis contrast with
Grice's. Grice loved "ontological Marxism", "For any entity that I care to
posit, if it works, it exists.". Popper criticized Marx (a 'follower' of Hegel,
in his view, in "Open Society"). Their attitudes to Freud were also different.
Popper found that any utterance containing "id", "ego" and "super-ego" were not
behaviouristic in nature, and thus unfalsifiable (e.g. Freud's theory of slips
of the tongue -- or Anna Freud's theory of defense mechanisms of the ego). For
Grice, and D. F. Pears, in "Motivated irrationality," Freud is just falling
victim of a few category mistakes, having to do with intentionality, personal
identity, and stuff.
Note that if Weinberg's exegesis is right, why does he care to mention Marxism
and psychoanalysis when he has JUST noted that Popper allegedly imposed the
criterion of falsifiability on 'physical' science. Surely neither Marxism nor
psychoanalysis count as 'physical', even if Freud had studied medicine for a
time, and there's something 'physical,' perhaps to Marx's infra-structure.
Weinberg goes on:
"Our most important theories,"
cfr. Grice "'Important' Is Not Important" Implicature
"like Newtonian mechanics and quantum mechanics, are not falsifiable, because
they do not make predictions by themselves, but provide general frameworks for
more specific theories, which do make predictions."
I would think they are unfalsifiable in different ways. Newtonian mechanics IS
possibly falsifiable (vide Kuhn, "The structure of scientific revolutions").
Quantum mechanics keeps changing (Grice never understood what to make of the
'quarks' -- in "Actions and Events" -- This he does in his criticism of Donald
Davidson, the philosopher, as a 'scientific realist.').
"Further,"
This is Weinberg's follow-up to his "First of all". Strictly, "Further of all,"
but it does not sound 'nice'.
Weinberg:
"[I]f we find some future theory that DOES make successful predictions about a
lot of things, which turn out to be TRUE (rather than false),"
This disqualifies Quine's point about 'truth-value gaps' -- his example, "The
king of France is bald": neither true nor false -- Grice disagrees: it's false.
Weinberg concludes, in the passage kindly transcribed by Helm:
"and if that theory also predicts the existence of a multiverse, we should take
that prediction seriously even though it can’t be tested directly."
The implicature can be that it can be tested IN-directly. Or that it cannot be
tested _simpliciter_. Since implicatures are indeterminate by nature, it's
difficult to see what Weinberg implicates (and in any case, if you SEE an
implicature, you have sharper eyes than most).
Weinberg's use of 'existence' is anti-Popperian. Suppose we symbolise
Weinberg's favourite neologism, "multi-verse" with "m". He is using the
existential quantifier:
iv. (Ex) mx
i.e. the multi-verse exists.
-- a theory that 'predicts the existence of a multiverse'.
But how can we PROVE existence? Is existence a predicate? Logicians have noted
long ago that you cannot prove a negative existential ("There are no unicorns
in Zimbawe"). But positive existentials are just as vague. "Exist" is a piece
of philosophical jargon that should not be used freely. Ex-istence contrasts
with In-sistence (vide: Grice, "Aristotle on the multiplicity of being". So we
have to be careful when it comes to (iv). Does it mean:
v. A multi-verse occupies a spatio-temporal continuum.
Or some such. I.e. we need to provide a criterion for existence (vide Strawson,
"Individuals: an essay in descriptive metaphysics"). Also, "predicts the
existence of a multiverse" is difference from "proves that something I care to
call a multiverse occupies a spatio-temporal continuum" -- cfr. the proof of
the pudding is in the eating, and the exception PROVES the rule.
Granted, Weinberg's use of 'testability' (as in "even though it cannot be
tested directly") is, against his will, Popperian in nature and spirit. "It
can't be tested directly" may be rephrased in Popperian parlance as "it cannot
be falsified directly" -- or "it cannot be made the subject of a test that
would prove its verification or falsification, as the case might be".
In any case, Popper never speaks of 'falsified', but 'falsifi-ABLE' which is a
metaphysical claim ignored by Weinberg. And it's this 'modal' suffix, '-able'
that goes against the very idea of a final anything, including 'theory'. Or
not, of course!
Cheers,
Speranza
