[lit-ideas] Re: The Immortality of Popper
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2013 21:30:17 -0500 (EST)
Thanks to D. McEvoy for the clarification between valid deductions and
invalid inductions.
McEvoy had written, in Lit-Ideas, some time ago (rather than some time in
the future):
"'All men are immortal' is scientific because testable; whereas 'All men
are mortal' is not per se testable or scientific, for its potential
falsifier - an immortal person - is not observable."
I provided the alleged counterexample:
I wrote, basing myself on the above observations by McEvoy:
"Popper proves that it is testable that "Popper is mortal" is observable."
--- by contra-position to Popper's claim that, "Popper is immortal" is
not
observable.
McEvoy comments:
"Hmm."
----- vide Grice, "The implicature of "hmm"".
And goes on:
"This [i.e. the claim that "Popper is mortal is observable"] ... seems to
[be or become or subsist, or supervene on] the product of some confusion
of
thought."
Why?
Well, because, as McEvoy goes on:
"[D]espite the fact that it is true that the state of being dead may be
"observable" or testable by observation, ..."
--- although most likely not by Popper hisself, as my argument would
require.
"in contrast to the state of being "immortal" which is not "observable",
and so "Popper is mortal" is observable".
Yet, McEvoy objects:
"[T]his fact [i.e. that someone can prove that Popper died] would NOT
[seem to -- guarded phrase mine -- Speranza] mean this fact may itself be
"proved" in a testable way."
And why?
Well, as McEvoy goes on:
"[J]ust because we may observe Popper 'in a state of being dead' would
not
mean that the claim "Popper 'being dead' is observable" is itself
observably true or testable _in that same sense_]. But [I] am tiring
[myself] now."
I don't think so.
We have different scenarios, as it were.
Popper died.
This seems to have proved that Popper was, after all, mortal (_contra_
the
subject-line of this thread).
McEvoy seems to suggest that Popper's "Cartesian" soul (if he had one)
belongs to another thread. But I don't think so.
"Popper in a state of being dead" is an anti-Wittgensteinian phrase.
As Wittgenstein more than once expressed, "Death is not part of life".
(He
thought that to have a book, "The Life of Wittgenstein" would be
tantamount to having a book simply entitled "Wittgenstein" -- It's
different with
"The Life and Opinions of Wittgenstein" -- which is NOT equivalent,
truth-conditionally, if implicaturally, to "Wittgenstein's Opnions".
To simplify things, we can distinguish between
Popper-1
Popper-2
Popper-3
Popper-1 is Popper-as-he-belongs-to-what-he-calls-World1.
Popper-2 is Popper-as-he-belongs-to-what-he-calls-World2
Popper-3 is Popper-as-he-belongs-to-what-he-calls-World3.
It may do to revise tests of verifiability, unverifiability, and
falsifiability for each claim, and resume. Or not.
Cheers,
Speranza
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