[lit-ideas] Re: The Quintessential Popper
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2016 20:33:22 +0000 (UTC)
Notably, back in the early days, when Popper read Ayer and tried to refudiate
Ayer's criterion of verifiability-in-principle for a criterion of
falsifiability-in-the-end, philosophers thought he (Popper, the quintessential
Popper) was proposing a criterion of demarcation, as Ayer was, of _meaning_.>
It is true that some critics of Popper, like Ayer, took Popper as proposing his
'demarcation criterion' as a criterion of meaning when Popper never did propose
it as a criterion of meaning: one source of this misinterpretation was that
they offered their own verifiability-criterion as a criterion of meaning and
took any rival criterion as also being a criterion of meaning. If the
falsifiability-criterion were a criterion of meaning then it would, according
to itself, be meaningless (because unfalsifiable) - but happily Popper's actual
views never suffered from this grave and obvious defect, though the
verifiability-criterion did (because meaningless according to its own
strictures).
Ayer led this false charge against Popper in the English-speaking world. But
Popper's own critique of the verifiability-criterion predated his awareness of
Ayer and was based on (1) Popper's acquaintance with the views of the Vienna
Circle [to which he was dubbed the 'official opposition'] (2) Popper's own
failed but strenuous attempts to make a verifiability-criterion work (not
something evident from Popper's published writings but from the reconstruction,
of how Popper arrived at his published views, in Hacohen's first-rate
biography). To think Popper's _LdF_ was intended as a 'refudiation' of Ayer is
like thinking FDR proposed the New Deal to 'refudiate' Donald Trump.
>But no, Popper said his criterion was one for demarcating 'science'. Was he
being an essentialist?>
No: what Popper was doing was making a normative proposal based on very simple
(but profound) logical considerations. The value of this proposal lies largely
in how it clarifies, in logical terms, what makes science valuable (i.e. its
highly testable character). In this way, the normative proposal throws much
light on what should be described as valuable science - but it is a proposal
that remains fundamentally normative because it cannot be derived from any
facts about science (though it pertains to and illuminates such facts) nor
derived/deduced from logic (though it amounts to a proposal as to how to apply
logical considerations to the evaluation of science).
Hope that clears everything up.
DL
On Friday, 22 January 2016, 20:06, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Friday, 22 January 2016, 12:25, "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx"
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
We were discussing Chanel No. 5, etc. -- and I was wondering. One thing is i.
The quintessential Popper i.e. Popper (cfr. "The quintessential Hitchcock").
And another: ii. The quintessential Popperian. Notably, back in the early days,
when Popper read Ayer and tried to refudiate Ayer's criterion of
verifiability-in-principle for a criterion of falsifiability-in-the-end,
philosophers thought he (Popper, the quintessential Popper) was proposing a
criterion of demarcation, as Ayer was, of _meaning_. But no, Popper said his
criterion was one for demarcating 'science'. Was he being an essentialist? He
might have changed, but _essences_ as D. Hume said (he hated essences)
_remain_. And then there's the quintessential Grice. Cheers, Speranza
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