We are considering whether Dr. Dillner is a Popperian. McEvoy is engaged in
some study of Dillner's issue in her regular (otiose?) column in THE GUARDIAN.
She usually frames her 'issues' as 'dilemmas', to implicate she attended, once,
a philosophy course ("the horns of the trilemma"). In McEvoy's wording, this
concerns his post-Popperian epistemology, not "of knowledge" but, one "based
around how women 'know' to synchronise menstruation" -- which crucially
ascribes tacit knowledge, as Chomsky would have it -- as Dillner uses the
'trouser word' in the title to her essay under discussion ("Do women’s periods
really synchronise when they live together?"). (J. L. Austin, 'with typical
sexism,' Grice adds, refers to 'really' as a "trouser word" -- the "word that
wears the trousers" -- vide Austin, "Sense and Sensibilia" -- Austin's point is
that 'really' is really otiose).
McEvoy rightly identifies some red herrings, such as the Irishness of Dillner's
opponent, one McClintock (In McEvoy's wording, "since the time of St. Killian
of Columbanus, patron saint of Jam Rags, no one in the Irish countryside has
ever menstruated.")
What motivated McEvoy to dedicate his second essay to a refudiation of Dillner
(granting "things are not going well") are precisely the two horns of Dillner's
dilemma (there's a third horn, but we can safely ignore it):
a) Dillner's evolutionary approach. Here McEvoy candidly asks (section 56 of
his essay):
"It is unclear to me how 'synchrony' [of female menstruation] would impede the
"single dominant male"."
As long as it is not unclear to the single dominant male, I suppose we could
safely ignore the issue ('safely ignore' is my pet phrase, this week).
"Single," as Grice notes, is not polysemous ("Do not multiply senses beyond
necessity"). It can _mean_ but not as per sense, 'not-married' ("not married
dominant male") or can mean 'only one, singular". The fact remains that males,
dominant or not, single or not, are NOT the main concern of Dr. Dillner's
solution to her own dilemma (trilemma, but we can safely ignore her third
horn).
Synchrony, incidentally, did impede De Saussure, who distinguished beween
synchrony and diachrony. E.g. 'chien' (De Saussure's mother tongue was French)
may mean, via synchrony, one thing, and via diachrony, another ("Such is
linguistics, as I invented!," he used to joke from the balcony of his villa in
Switzerland).
b) synchrony.
So, is Dillner a Popperian. For McEvoy, she [i.e. Dillner] is.
This occupies the whole chapter V of McEvoy's essay, so we should provide a
detailed exegesis (It will most likely be published as a book, as most PhD
dissertations are, in UK, by Palgrave/Macmillan).
McEvoy writes in one of his drafts to his thing (he has changed thesis advisors
thrice already):
"[The case for Dillner as a Popperian is clear:] Popper would rightly say
[McEvoy uses the potential, 'would', seeing that Popper is dead -- in
historical prose, the indicative is also correct, "Popper rightly says"] that
one counter-example refutes a universal generalisation [about the issue
discussed by Dr. Dillner] but he would accept that one apparent
'counter-example' cannot refute a probabilistic claim [such as the claim put
forward by Dr. Dillner]."
McEvoy gives an illustration which does NOT relate to Dillner's discussion, but
which is otherwise relevant:
"If the probability of rolling 6 on a dice is 1/6, this is not refuted because
in a series of 1000 throws 6 occurs less or more than 1/6, nor is it
straightforwardly refuted if 1 turns up 1000 times in a row."
After the 'exemplary example,' as Geary would put it ("people think examples
are by necessity exemplary, but they are not"), McEvoy goes on:
"This leads onto the complex problem of how we understand probabilistic claims
in terms of non-inductive testability."
It is only THEN that McEvoy attacks the topic raised by Dillner:
"It would seem", where McEvoy uses Grice's favourite verb, 'seem' (vide his
"Causal Theory of Perception" -- "That pillar box seems red to me -- and to
everybody else who is not Daltonian, for that matter"] menstrual synchronicity
is a theory of a probabilistic rather than non-probabilistic kind."
Since it is synchronicity which led McEvoy to write the essay in the first
place, it is natural he wants to say more about this:
"[The theory of menstrual synchronicity"] is [Dr Dillner want it or not] a
theory of a propensity towards menstrual synchronicity, not of an absolute
fixed rate at which menstrual synchronicity obtains."
-- where the keyword is 'propensity' for which McEvoy has a footnote on Romano
Harre.
McEvoy goes on:
"An absolute fixed rate [at which menstrual synchronicity] *might* be refuted
by any deviation from it (which constitutes a counter-example), but a
_propensity_ [towards mentrual synchronicity] of a probabilistic sort would NOT
be straightforwardly refuted by the same deviations."
McEvoy goes on to expose the application of Popper's falsificationism to
probabilistic and non-probabilistic theories, and notes that "this key
difference explains why more of Popper's [Logic of Scientific Discovery] is
taken up with the problem of applying falsificationism to probabilistic
theories than is taken up by the relatively more straightforward case of
non-probabilistic universal laws [about which Dr. Dillner could not care less]."
There is a special footnote as McEvoy goes on to apply (if not via conceptual
analysis') how this especially touches on Popper's 'propensity theory of
probability' and that the universe may be characterised as a set of 'changing
propensities for change'.
The references are fascinating.
Cheers,
Speranza
----
REFERENCES
Dillner, Luisa. "Do women’s periods really synchronise when they live together?"
Popper on menstrual synchronicity -- various sources.
Grice, "Is "Males don't menstruate" analytic?", unpublication.
Geary, How to impede the dominant male in menstrual synchronicity: a repartee
to Luisa Dillner.
A study claims that the dates of house-mates’ periods move, then align – but
that long-held belief is being challenged by evidence and new studies.
In other words, the first study has been 'refudiated'.
Do women’s menstrual cycles align when they live together?
Dillner writes:
"You know what happens when women live together."
"They start to menstruate together."
"Suddenly everyone craves chocolate and runs out of tampons at the same time.
Not only that, but the chosen cycle often seems to belong to the most
assertive
woman." (Vide Grice on the concept of 'assertion', and his polemic with
Dummett as to
whether conditional assertion ("If it rains, we go to the cinema") is an
assertion).
Dillner goes on:
"Well that’s biology for you – it must be pheromones or the lunar cycle or
something. Evolutionary anthropologists have suggested that synchrony would
prevent any one woman being monopolised by a single dominant male."
Cfr. Popper on Darwinism.
"Ever since Martha McClintock [an Irish surname], a psychologist from Harvard,
published her study of 135 female living in a together, it has been an
accepted
truth that menstrual cycles synchronise when women live together."
Dillner goes on:
"McClintock's] study, based on an analysis of about eight cycles per woman,
found that roommates and close friends saw the average number of days between
the starts of their periods fall from eight or nine to five days."
"A control group of randomly chosen women had cycles that remained 10 days
apart from each."
But, and this is what makes Dillner's piece a dilemma that McEvoy thinks
refudiates his post-Popperian epistemology, not "of knowledge" but "based
around how women 'know' to synchronise menstruation" -- which ascribes tacit
knowledge, as Chomsky would have it.
"A study performed later than McClintock's, however, found that 80% of women
believed in the synchronising phenomenon with 70% saying that it was a
pleasant
experience."
"It’s a powerful concept after all – that the empathy of women can make their
periods fall in line. But is it really true?"
Dillner offers a solution to the dilemma.
"Well, if you are one of the 80% of women who believes in synchronicity –
brace
yourself. It isn’t a thing."
"Since McClintock’s study there has been enough research with NEGATIVE [i.e.
refudiatory] results to move menstrual synchronicity into urban mythology."
Dillner goes on:
"Many studies have tried to replicate McClintock’s findings – some have
succeeded, but more have not."
Dillner goes on:
"Criticisms of McClintock’s work include statistical errors – not controlling
for chance in the results and inflating the initial differences in the onset
of
menstrual cycles that led to synchronicity being over stated."
Dillner goes on:
"A study of Dogon women in west Africa, who were segregated into menstrual
huts, found no synchronicity over 763 days and no effect of the moon on
periods
(and these were ideal test conditions, as there was no electricity)."
Not for Geary, who likes to watch television at night. (But then he does not
live in West Africa -- cfr. "Memphis", keyword: northern Africa).
Dillner goes on:
"A study of 186 women in China who lived together for a year also found no
synchronicity."
On the other hand, at that time Sting (an Irish surname), of Police fame, was
composing a song
on Synchronicity, with a different implicature.
Dillner goes on:
"But the researchers pointed out that the start of periods varied for women,
and cycles were often variable, which could give the false impression of
synchronicity."
A 'false impression' is like a false idea, only different.
Dillner goes on:
"Menstrual cycles can vary from between 21 to 35 days. Stress, weight loss or
illness will all disrupt periods. A study of 26 lesbian couples found no
synchronicity but did find individual menstrual cycles varied by up to 10
days.
So despite the internet refusing to let this myth die –"
or refudiating to let this myth perish --
"you are the owner of your menstrual cycle and no friend, however close, can
control it."
By stressing the 'you', Dillner rightly impedes the single dominant male,
which is indeed the third horn of her dilemma, in evolutionary terms.
