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

[<gdemetrion@xxxxxxx>]

Thanks Ruth,

That was helpful.

Allow me to offer some additional comments:

Ruth (a) the ontology is completely different.  In RTS, RB affirms the existence of dispositional properties, i.e., powers that things have.  He also seems to hold, there, that things fall into natural kinds, on the basis of powers that they hold essentially (i.e., powers in virtue of which they are what they are).  I have always thought of Popper as holding to a modern mechanistic ontology, one in which matter is not thought to have internal dispositional properties, essential or otherwise.

George:  I might quibble over the word "completely," both in terms of its substance and its perhaps unintended rhetorical force in the case you are making.  On dispositional properties, Popper isn't averse, though I would agree with you that he would not be so inclined, unless the evidence pushed that way to accept the (neo-Aristotelian?) claim that things fall into natural kinds.  Thus, your emphasis on scientific essentialism, upon which over time I'm hoping you'll be able to share something of substance  No, I don' think Popper is arguing against internal dispositional properties, though he would be more interested in searching out what they would be through conjecture, better argument and refutation than focusing a lot of attention on ontological claims.

Ruth:  The epistemology is completely different.  In RTS, RB argues that laws don't have anything to do with regularity -- they are not statements of regularity but rather statements about what things have the potential to do, under certain circumstances, given what they are.  The saying of this, note, follows from an ontology in which things are seen to have essential dispositional properties.  Popper, meanwhile, is not saying that laws don't have anything to do with regularities.  Instead, he is saying that, because of the problem with induction, regularities cannot be known with certainty to hold over time, and so laws must be thought of as provisional conjectures, rather than as certain knowledge.

George: Again, allow me to press you a bit on the word "completely," which I think by definition is inherently exaggerating in terms of highlighting differences over convergences.  Yes, this emphasis by Bhaskar on powers and tendencies rather than laws per se is perhaps something that is new, though Dewey in the 1920s and 30s spoke a great deal of the relationship between potentiality and actuality. Popper doesn't focus on it, though, given all his work on physics, I assume speaks of forces and he is well aware of and empathetic to post-Newtonian developments.  His focus, rather, is on problem solving rather than definitions and the philosophy of theory building based on his notion of versimilitude grounded in a rigorous analysis of the facts on the ground as well as new ones discovered or brought to light and comparison of theoretical constructs that bear on the case at hand in his search of greater coherencies and compactness.  Yes, there is a modernist strain in his philosophy, though one that is profoundly mediated by a very strong fallibilistic orientation.  I think it is this rather than the impact on him of the "induction problem" which grounds his skepticism even with his hopes to the contrary on his skepticism in attaining knowledge of regularities with certainty.  On that, what are Bhaskar's warrants in making any such claims.  From the little I've read of TRS my sense is that his reach exceeds his grasp even as he makes important contributions in emphasizing the ontological over the epistemological.  In Popper's terms, Bhaskar's theories about causation reside in the realm of World Three Knowledge, Bhaskar's highest level, the category where Popper places any enduring human construct, however illuminating, still an evolutionary approach in terms of human knowledge building.

Ruth:  What does a Bhaskarian resolution offer on the grounds of research design that might be missing from a Popperian approach?  (a) Resolution of what?

George:  Let's go with causation, knowledge construction, and truth.

Ruth:  While both support experimentation in the natural sciences, for Popper advance is via falsification of provisional general statements about regularities whereas for RB advance is via the artificial isolation and identification of ever-deeper levels of causal process.

George:  Yes, agreed as far as this goes, though a more pervasive convergence is a fallibilistic understanding of science based on a construct of truth as a regulative ideal which in their varying ways provides strength to a postpositivist theory construction and research design mediating positivism and neo-positivism and constructivism and postmodernism.  Also, in his research design Popper accepts various approaches shaped by the needs of the problem at hand including artificial isolation of key variables and ever-deeper levels of causal process.  His concept of versimilitude presupposes the latter and requires the most effective research designs possible without which substantial scientific theory building cannot pertain.

Ruth:  I don't think that this argument rests on "faith" in the intelligibility of experimentation, because I think that such intelligibility is something that one can argue for, on good (though not absolute) grounds.  That there are external things with powers is the "philosophical" ontology, as RB puts it, that he proposes.  "Scientific" ontology - that is, claims about what the powers are of this or that thing - RB leaves to scientists.  But I don't think that he thinks that they are a matter of faith either, but rather of argument to the best possible explanation, so far as we (or they) can tell.

George:  I don't see faith and intelligibility as radically opposed, though they are on a continuum.  Perhaps I would suggest that to the extent that Bhaskar's reach exceeds his grasp in resolving the epistemology-ontology relationship I would suggest that there is operating an element of faith that helps fill the gap in the substance of knowledge needed in the realization of any certainty that underlie his presuppositions. Your point on  making the "argument to the best possible explanation, so far as we (or they) can tell," however seemingly apparent, is very similar to Popper's interpretation of versimilitude and Dewey's concept of "warranted assertions."  Again, the work that you've been referencing of scientific essentialism may shed further light, though I do argue on faith, that we can know, and even know a great deal, yet always in part in whidch faith as the substance of knowledge helps fill the gap.  Otherwise we are making a move beyond fallibilism.

Best,

George Demerion
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