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

["Mervyn Hartwig" <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ruth

Thanks.

If for Popper a law is just a statement with no purchase on the way the
world really is, what you're saying doubtless follows. Is he that much of an
empiricist? (PS: I see that George says he's not). If on the other hand laws
refer in some sense, it doesn't seem to me to follow. (For CR, as you know,
laws are both statements in the TD and real powers in the ID).

Mervyn


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ruth Groff" <RGroff1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List"
<critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2007 10:53 AM
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Quick on Popper and falsification


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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