Magee, an author McEvoy usually quotes, wrote a book that we may entitle
"The Quintessential Popper." I am often sceptical of such books. It's like
when you attend a literature course at uni (as L. Helm may agree with me
there) and you find the instructor (and the whole body of his uni behind him)
COMPELLING you to BUY (as textbook) "A Guide To Emerson". I.e. some critic
entitles himself (or herself) as the 'exegete' of an author that can VERY
WELL explain his or her self!
In a message dated 1/23/2016 4:02:47 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
[P]opper did _not_ (ever) propose his criterion as "demarcating science
vs. nonsense", and so Ayer is way off the mark. And so it is way off to mark
to suggest "Ayer was not so off the mark". In fact, it should amaze that
Popper is still treated as if he were some 'meaning-philosopher' despite his
multiple disavowals."
This mark (off which I and Sir Freddie Ayer are) may well be related to
Mark, the prince of Cornwall. The Mercians (an old tribe of old England) were
thus called because they were _in_ the mark (which being unable to
pronounce the 'k' sound, pronounced 'ch' -- hence the English marches
neighbouring
with Wales). McEvoy often writes from Salop, which I believe is IN THE
MARKS.
The mark was that
i. Science is science.
ii. Science is composed of meaningful utterances.
iii. Therefore, whatever Popper was (or "is," if you like the historical
present like I do -- "Napoleon dies on an island but was buried in Paris.")
doing, what he was doing RELATES to _meaning_.
iv. Vide Wheeler's philosophy of science. Science encompasses _meaning_ as
we know it.
McEvoy:
"On one hand, Popper's mature philosophy understands that science
originates from non-science and thus that non-science or metaphysics is not
only
'not nonsense' but makes a most important contribution to science - it's the
feeder-system for what become theories formulated so that they are testable,
and it also sets frameworks which guide and influence what kinds of
explanation we seek in testable terms. [Hence we can take Newton, Einstein and
Darwin and, science aside, draw out a metaphysics of the world from their
work]."
Thanks. Indeed, to
v. nonsense = metaphysics
is perhaps abrupt. Ramsey made this abrupt step, prompted by Witters.
Because Witters was saying that philosophy was important nonsense, and Ramsey
said that philosophy (Ramsey was a mere reader of maths at Cambridge, never a
philosopher) was UNimportant nonsense.
McEvoy:
"Otoh, Popper's view is that decrying as nonsense what we can understand
[e.g. "God is merciful"] is paradoxical and unconvincing, that it leads to
dogmas of sense and nonsense that impede proper understanding of the merits
of the theories expressed, and that just as almost anything with sense can
be treated as nonsense (if we adopt a stringent enough criterion of sense)
so almost any nonsense can be given some sense if we are so inclined (as
some modern poetry proves)."
Well,
vi. God is merciful.
is an interesting case, because that is a DOGMA indeed, of the Catholic
Church. I don't think Luther, for example (who sticks -- to use the historical
present) holds that (vi) is true. Indeed, Luther may well mean that
vi. God is NOT merciful.
-e.g. He allows terrible things like the eruption of the Vesuvius, killing
thousands of good Italian folk south in Naples.
Usually, if "p" is nonsense, the negation of "p" (~p) is ALSO nonsense. But
some disagree, including Grice. E.g.
vii. Caesar is a prime number.
is an example (by Ramsey, a mathematician) of nonsense. But
viii. Caesar is not a prime number.
is boringly ("or not so", as Geary adds) true.
This may relate to Science. For the negation of the theory of evolution
Dawkins deems 'nonsense'.
McEvoy:
"In terms of people like Ayer, and the Vienna Circle, Popper saw very
clearly that there cannot be an 'empirical criterion of sense' that does not
run
into the problem that no such criterion can be derived from empiricism,
and so the criterion must always be nonsense according to its own strictures
[nor did Popper accept the Tractarian view that this 'nonsense according to
its own strictures' is acceptable]."
One should distinguish
ix. empiricism
from
x. inductivism
It may well be that such a principle cannot be reached INDUCTIVELY.
Empiricism comprises not just empirical propositions, but what Kneale calls
(Grice loved Kneale) "meta-empirical" propositions, which are like axioms, and
are neither empirical nor reached by induction, enumerative or other. So
Popper is simplifying matters. But then did Grice (only that when Grice did
it,
he said it: "Grice to the Mill.").
McEvoy:
"This is one of the fundamental reasons why his own empiricist criterion
was never remotely offered as a criterion of sense. It seems to me obvious
that Popper's views are much better than the rival views above, and that
those rival views - that might lumped together as versions of "logical
positivism" - ought to have collapsed in credibility under the weight of
Popper's
critique. Yet the truth is that while "Logical Positivism" did collapse
partly for the reasons given against it by Popper"
-- which perhaps are best summed up by his views on the asymmetry (if
that's the word he used) between "all" and "none". Thus a universally
quantified
utterance ("All ravens are black") can only be reached by induction and is
all ways open-ended, but one singular negation, "Except this raven here is
yellow.") REFUDIATES the AFFIRMATIVELY universally quantified utterance
("All ravens are black") and sticks to the reverential status Popper gives,
initially, to the counterexample ("Not all ravens are black; since this here
raven is yellow") itself refudiable ("On second thoughts, it _is_ black:
it is the light that makes the raven _seem_ yellow -- vide Grice, "The
causal theory of perception").
McEvoy:
"[I]t also collapse[s]because its 'language-based' philosophy of sense was
replaced by later philosophies of sense that were less stringent and less
science-based - but much of these later philosophies remain trapped within a
framework of largely futile 'meaning-analysis' from Popper's pov."
But if philosophy of sense is language-based (vide Hacker/Baker, "Sense
and Nonsense in the philosophy of language" -- they wanted their book to be
published by Clarendon, who refudiated it, and it got published by the minor
Oxonian publisher of Blackwell's) so is the philosophy of science.
Indeed, Geary sometimes pronounced 'sense' to _rhyme_ with 'science', but
then he is a poet.
Cheers,
Speranza
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