Re: [Critical-Realism] Quick on Popper and falsification

["Ruth Groff" <RGroff1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Mervyn,

You wrote:

No.  Popper overlooks that in order to demonstrate just one falsifying 
instance of an empirical invariance, some proposition within some 
theoretical framework has to be accepted, i.e. be regarded as 
non-conjectural ...

I definitely used to think this.  But I'm not so sure now.  I think that Popper thinks that a plain old observation statement will do it.  No need for non-conjectural knowledge-claims.  If the law amounts to "All sheep are white," all that is needed to falsify it is to say "I see a black one."

Of course, once you want to know what makes the black one be a sheep too, you're on a slippery slope towards scientific essentialism.  But that gets to what kinds of things laws tell you, I think, not to whether or not single observation statements, rather than non-conjectural knowledge-claims, are enough to falsify general statements.

Another way to think of it, it seems to me, is that with Popper the conjectural part is entirely a response to the induction problem -- it has to do with whether what you think you know will hold next time too, not whether you might be wrong this time.  See what I mean?  Sorry if not clear; I seem to have been up all night for no good reason.

Warmly,
r.

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