Is to demarcate to define: most German dictionaries say so. They say that
to 'conceptually demarcate' (there's no such thing as split infinitives in
German) is to define.
In a message dated 4/15/2016 6:03:55 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, McEvoy
writes:
"We could quibble over whether Popper would ever say this (I concede he
might, but would probably drop the "exactly") - the point is _it is
different_: we are talking about whether something depends on a conceptually
sound
definition in the philosopher's sense or should be regarded as a conceptually
sound definition - but Popper's demarcation criterion is not really like
that."
Or as Liza Minbelli would say, "exactly like that." Ebb and Kander once
wrote a song for her, "Exactly like me."
---- EXCURSUS: Popper on not exactly and Minnelli on 'exactly':
http://www.masterworksbroadway.com/blog/liza-in-her-prime/
"It wouldn’t be a Liza concert without a self-deprecating comedy song, and
Kander and Ebb wrote her a honey here: “Exactly Like Me,” in which
Minnelli laments how many women she meets or hears about claim to resemble
her.
Like all of us who hear such a sentiment, she’s appalled when she finally
gets to see these so-called dead ringers."
--- END OF EXCURSUS.
McEvoy:
"Popper's falsificationist criterion opposes a verificationist criterion
but not on grounds that the verificationist criterion is not "conceptually
sound" but on the ground it is premised on a form of inductive logic that is
neither valid nor necessary to characterise science."
Perhaps he means 'to DEFINE science'? (Just teasing).
McEvoy:
"Popper's falsificationist criterion also explains how a scientific theory
can be judged having scored a success, by passing tests that could falsify
it, as well as explains why many scientific statements are scientifically
not important - and these important explanatory effects are not part of a
offering a conceptually sound definition."
I'm not sure I would apply 'sound' to a definition, in any case. Doesn't
'sound' (in its only sense, of course) applies first to a piece of reasoning?
To use Grice's example:
i. I am an Englishman
-----
ii. Therefore, ∴ I am brave.
This is a 'sound' argument.
McEvoy:
"It is conceivable there might be a valid inductive logic and that
verifiability might be defined as the chracteristic of science, and so a
verificationist approach cannot be dismissed as conceptually unsound - and so a
fa
lsificationist approach cannot be preferred on purely conceptual grounds.
These are some of the reasons, aside Popper's view that conceptual analysis
generally is a hoax, why he never defended his falsificationist approach qua
conceptual analysis - for the arguments in its favour are logical and
methodological, not "conceptual". O look, my face is turning blue."
Figuratively. But I'm not sure we need to introduce 'sound'. Let's check
the etymology:
--- EXCURSUS ON 'SOUND': Can a definition be 'sound'?
"Sound" was used in Old English (they added y- or ge-, "gesund") to mean
"free from a special defect or injury".
As when the father of Ida, queen of Bernicia, said:
"Your baby is sound, bless the Lord!"
Something, like a baby, is sound when it is safe, having the organs and
faculties complete and in perfect action.
It comes from a Germanic root "swen-to,", healthy, strong.
A cognates in Old Saxon is "gisund", in Old Frisian "sund", in Dutch
"gezond", in Old High German "gisunt".
German "gesund," that Popper would use, means "healthy," as in the
post-sneezing interjection,
"Gesundheit!"
There's also Old English "swið". "strong," Gothic swinþs "strong," German
geschwind "fast, quick". There are connections in Indo-Iranian and
Balto-Slavic.
The use of this lexeme bearing a PHYSICAL sense of 'sound' to mean,
figuratively, "right, correct, free from error" is from mid-15c. only.
Meaning "financially solid or safe" is attested from even later: c. 1600.
Of sleep, "undisturbed," it's from 1540s.
In its usage of "holding accepted opinions", the usage is from 1520s.
As applied to definitions is McEvoyian.
If one verifies a record, one does something. If one falsifies a record,
one does not exactly does the opposite. Popper knew this.
Still, he stuck with the lexeme 'falsch', a Latinate expression:
"lässt sich eine wissenschaftliche Hypothese zwar niemals erweisen, wohl
aber, wenn sie FALSCH ist, widerlegen, und es fragt sich deshalb, ob nicht
Tatsachen beigebracht werden können, welche mit einer der beiden Hypothesen
in unauflöslichem Widerspruch stehen und somit dieselbe zu Fall bringen."
Many analytic philosophers are strongly critical of Popper's philosophy of
science.
As Bartley noted, Popper was not really a participant in the contemporary
professional philosophical dialogue.
Quite the contrary, he has "ruined that dialogue" (Bartley's strong
phrasing).
According to Rafe Champion (one of my champions), Popper's ideas have
failed to convince the majority of professional philosophers because his theory
of conjectural knowledge does not even pretend to provide positively
justified foundations of belief.
Nobody else does better, but they keep trying, like chemists still in
search of the Philosopher's Stone or physicists trying to build perpetual
motion
machines.
"What distinguishes science from all other human endeavours is that the
accounts of the world that our best, mature sciences deliver are strongly
supported by evidence and this evidence gives us the strongest reason to
believe them."
That anyway is what is said at the beginning of the advertisement for a
recent conference on induction at a celebrated seat of learning in the UK. It
shows how much critical rationalists still have to do to make known the
message of "Logik der Forschung" concerning what empirical evidence is able to
do and what it does.
Some falsificationists saw Kuhn's work as a vindication, since it provided
historical evidence that science progressed by rejecting inadequate
theories, and that it is the decision, on the part of the scientist, to accept
or
reject a theory that is the crucial element of falsificationism.
Foremost amongst these was Imre Lakatos.
Lakatos attempted to explain Kuhn's work by arguing that science progresses
by the falsification of research programs rather than the more specific
universal statements of naïve falsification.
In Lakatos' approach, a scientist works within a research program that
corresponds roughly with Kuhn's 'paradigm'.
Whereas Popper rejected the use of ad hoc hypotheses as unscientific,
Lakatos accepted their place in the development of new theories.
In their "Fashionable Nonsense" (published in the UK, trust the kingdom to
be different, as "Intellectual Impostures") Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont
criticized falsifiability on the grounds that it does not accurately describe
the way science really works.
Sokal and Bricmont argue that theories are used because of their
successes, not because of the failures of other theories.
Their discussion of Popper, falsifiability and the philosophy of science
comes in a chapter entitled, musically, "Intermezzo in D flat" which contains
an attempt to make clear their own views of what constitutes truth, in
contrast with the extreme epistemological relativism of postmodernism.
Sokal and Bricmont write:
"When a theory successfully withstands an attempt at falsification, a
scientist will, quite naturally, consider the theory to be partially confirmed
and will accord it a greater likelihood or a higher subjective probability.
But Popper will have none of this. Throughout his life he was a stubborn
opponent of any idea of confirmation of a theory, or even of its probability,
but the history of science teaches us that scientific theories come to be
accepted above all because of their successes."
Sokal and Bricmont further argue that falsifiability cannot distinguish
between astrology and astronomy, as both make technical predictions that are
sometimes incorrect.
Some economists, such as those of the Austrian School, believe that
macroeconomics is empirically unfalsifiable and that thus the only appropriate
means to understand economic events is by logically studying the intentions of
individual economic decision-makers, based on certain fundamental truths.
Karl Popper at first spoke against the testability of natural selection but
recanted, "I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status
of the theory of natural selection, and I am glad to have the opportunity
to make a recantation."
Much of the criticism against young-earth creationism is based on evidence
in nature that the earth is much older than adherents believe.
Confronting such evidence, some adherents make an argument (called the
Omphalos hypothesis) that the world was created with the appearance of age:
i.e. the sudden appearance of a mature chicken capable of laying eggs.
This hypothesis is, sadly to Popper, not really falsifiable since no
evidence about the age of the earth (or any astronomical feature) can be shown
not to be fabricated during creation.
Theories of history or politics that allegedly predict future events have a
logical form that renders them not falsifiable -- or verifiable for that
matter.
Such theories claim that for every historically significant event, there
exists an historical or economic law that determines the way in which events
proceeded.
Failure to identify the law does not mean that it does not exist, yet an
event that satisfies the law does not prove the general case.
Evaluation of such claims is at best difficult.
On this basis, Popper "fundamentally criticized historicism in the sense of
any preordained prediction of history",[ and argued that neither Marxism
nor psychoanalysis could be defined as science, although both made such
claims.
Again, this does not mean that any of these types of theories is
necessarily incorrect, or, figuratively 'unsound' (as when Ida's baby could
have
been unsound if it lacked the right arm or something).
Popper considered falsifiability a test of whether theories are scientific,
not of whether propositions that they contain or support are true.
Many philosophers believe that mathematics is not experimentally
falsifiable, and thus not a science according to the definition of Karl Popper.
However, in the 1930s Gödel's incompleteness theorems proved that there
does not exist a set of axioms for mathematics which is both complete and
consistent.
Karl Popper concluded that "most mathematical theories are, like those of
physics and biology, hypothetico-deductive: pure mathematics therefore turns
out to be much closer to the natural sciences whose hypotheses are
conjectures, than it seemed even recently."
Other thinkers, notably Imre Lakatos, have famously and successfully
applied a version of falsificationism to mathematics itself.
Like all formal sciences, mathematics is not concerned with the validity
of theories based on observations in the empirical world.
Rather, mathematics is occupied with the theoretical, abstract study of
such topics as quantity, structure, space and change.
Methods of the mathematical sciences are, however, applied in constructing
and testing scientific models dealing with observable reality.
Albert Einstein wrote, "One reason why mathematics enjoys special esteem,
above all other sciences, is that its laws are absolutely certain and
indisputable, while those of other sciences are to some extent debatable and in
constant danger of being overthrown by newly discovered facts."
If 'falsch' is Latinate, what were the Romans thinking?
They were not. "Falsum" is the neutre of "falsus", from 'fallo', to
deceive, trick, dupe, cheat, disappoint -- if you are looking for a definition,
or something.
Cheers,
Speranza
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