[lit-ideas] Re: Putnamiana
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2016 08:07:05 +0000 (UTC)
Philosophers, it seems to me, are generally a hard-headed sort, seldom given
to admitting error. >
The inability to face up to mistakes (and pathological evasion of refutation)
may also be called "soft-headed". In philosophy, this tendency is no doubt
linked to the fact that the subject lacks decisive observational tests to
resolve its disputes.
In this context, it is ironic that Putnam argued for a philosophy of science
where scientists were pathological evaders of refutation and there was nothing
in scientific method to stop them.
His argument is essentially simple (though not the way he presents it) and
relies on confusing a logical possibility with what methodologically (a) is
best (b) drives scientific best practice (this (a) and (b) dovetail).
Take a refutation where an observation ['O'] appears to falsify a theory ['T'].
No matter how straightforward such a refutation may look, it is the case that
there is more to the picture, logically: we must also factor in background
knowledge ['BK'], for example, and in cases of deriving a positive prediction
we must also factor in 'initial conditions' ['IC'] (because a positive
prediction can only follow from T given IC).
Now consider this supposed 'refutation' in terms of a 'blame game': it is
always logically possible to evade a refutation by saying the error does not
lie with T but with O itself [e.g. the apparatus was faulty] or with some
hitherto undiscovered flaw in our BK or our supposed IC.
Yet it would be a mistake to treat this logical possibility as showing that,
from the pov of sound method, we can always evade any refutation - and it would
be a gross mistake to think that the pathological evasion of refutation is
characteristic of scientific method. Yet both mistakes - and a few others like
thinking IC are always necessary for refutation (they are not, because a
negative and falsifying prediction can be deduced from T without them) - are at
the heart of Putnam's paper in Popper's Schilpp volume.
In that paper will also be found several "priority claims" that though they fit
well with Putnam's "arrogant tone" (as Popper well describes it) cannot be
sustained e.g. that Putnam was among the first to realise that, logically, a
refutation can always be evaded, when Popper for one had recognised this from
the start. Putnam suggests he is putting forward views that mark a major
advance on anything written by Popper, and as if Popper's views belong to a
bygone age of thought now surpassed, but the truth is that Putnam's paper did
not herald any ground-breaking new philosophy of science. This is unsurprising
given it rests on elevating the logical possibility of 'always evade
refutation' into some kind of methodological key-stone.
It is hard to understand how there has been any kind of scientific progress if
Putnam's views were true as a characterisation of science (i.e. that the aim of
science is to evade refutation). So what kind of audience would take Putnam's
views seriously? One trained in modern philosophy after the 'linguistic turn':
for to allege the aim of science is to evade refutation is precisely the kind
of paradoxical-sounding nonsense that appeals to some philosophers, many of
whom are scientifically illiterate and also hostile to science (or what they
understand of 'science').
DL
On Wednesday, 16 March 2016, 1:39, Mike Geary
<jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I thank you for your cooperation in this matter. Philosophers, it seems to
me, are generally a hard-headed sort, seldom given to admitting error. But
then, I've never met a real philosopher, not in person, so perhaps I am in
error in my judgment of philosophers. I don't know how to say that in Latin.
Ego non scio illud in Latina. Sed hatwa heta eckha: Ia on'tda nowka owha ota
aysa hatta nia Atinla.Thank you for your attention. Sophia left me. John
Michael Patrick Geary Philosopher in disguise of Memphis. Check out my newest
publication at Grove Press: Morning Thoughts In The Afternoon Gazette .
On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 7:07 PM, Redacted sender Jlsperanza for DMARC
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In a message dated 3/15/2016 7:37:16 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx refers to the Putnams (Hilary Whitehall Putnam
and his
second wife, Ruth Anna Jacobs; his first wife is Erna Diesendruck) and how
"Jewishly interested" they were.
Geary comments:
"Jewishly interested? I assume [that is to be interpreted to mean that
the Putnams] became interested in Jewish culture and not that Jews have a
unique manner of being interested in things. But I shouldn't have to assume
what you mean. Please refrain from such constructions."
I will.
I would say that it was Ruth Anna Jacobs Putnam who was perhaps more
Jewishly interested.
Mrs. Putnam's bat mitzvah marked an introduction to Judaism she never had
as a child.
It was different with Mr. Putnam.
Mrs. Putnam was born in Munich. Her mother was Jewish. When Mrs. Putnam was
5, her parents, openly opposed to the Nazis, went into hiding and sent
their daughter to live with her paternal grandparents, who initially tried to
raise her as Christian.
But Mrs. Putnam began viewing herself as a Jew.
She was expelled from high school because of her heritage.
"I was expecting any day to be arrested," Putnam tells me in a voice tinged
with a slight German accent.
(Interestingly, Mr. Putnam's first language, "if not mother tongue," as
Geary may testify) was French.
Mrs. Putnam escaped detection on her grandparents' farm.
Mrs. Putnam later reunited with her parents in the United States and went
on to college.
On the year Mr. Putnam had divorced Erna Diesendruck, Mrs. Putnam married
Mr. Putnam.
Mr. Putnam, like Mrs. Putnam, also had a Jewish mother.
The Putnams, though, attempted to establish a Jewish home for their
children.
At Passover, the Putnams would try to get invited to other Jews' homes for
Seders, having "no idea how to do it ourselves," Mrs. Putnam said,
chuckling.
Their eldest son, Samuel Putnam (Mr. Putnam has a daughter by his first
wife, Erika Putnam) said he wanted a bar mitzvah, delighting his mother.
"It was," Mrs. Putnam said, "like spitting in [the Nazis's] eye[s]".
Sam's parents -- the Putnams, that is -- also began studying Jewish ritual
and Hebrew and attending services.
Mr. Putnam celebrated a rather belated bar mitzvah ("better late than
never") and four years later, Mrs. Putnam did the same.
When Mrs. Putnam looks back on that day, she sees herself sending the same
message as all bat or bar mitzvah celebrants - whatever they are age --
"We are not going to finish [the Nazis'] work for [them]. We are not going to
assimilate."
Incidentally, Mr. Putnam started his PhD dissertation at Harvard under
Quine, but finished it on the other coast, at UCLA, under Reichenbach and
Carnap.
Some philosophers -- even some Griceians! -- were saddened by Mr. Putnam's
turning to pragmatism and also to mainland European French philosophy --
after all his first language was French -- (Perhaps in keeping with that,
commented a student, he began to chain-smoke a pipe -- while Grice always
prefers cigarettes).
On Harvard campus Putnam disrupted the classes of Richard Herrnstein and
he lived in a commune with students before moving to a Boston suburb.
Putnam once imagined a planet that precisely duplicates ours except that
the clear liquid which its inhabitants drink and swim in (and also, in their
doppelgänger English, call "water") is not H2O but has a different chemical
constitution, XYZ. Putnam called it twater.
Both Oscar on Earth and Oscar on Twin Earth are “molecule for molecule
identical”, therefore in exactly the same mental state (whatever that involves
psychologically and neurally) when they think, or talk, of "water" or
"twater".
Yet, Putnam argues, Oscar would not mean water if he is thinking and
talking about the stuff that Twin-Earthers call "water", or "twater".
Putnam later turned to the study of Jewish philosophy and smoking a pipe.
(It can be alleged that Martian-type thought experiments Putnam borrowed
from Grice in "Some remarks about the senses" -- vide Coady, "The sense of
the Martians").
Grice would say: "I used to be very formal, until Putnam, of all people,
said I was _too_ formal."
(Grice means in the use of symbolisms: in his clothes he was never THAT
formal!)
Cheers,
Speranza
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