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

["Mervyn Hartwig" <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ruth, George

Ruth re research design:

>(b) There have GOT to be people better able to speak to this than I am.

Ruth, I think you've already gone way beyond the call of duty in your
generous response. My response to George's questions is to point out that
this is not a catechism class. Suggest you do some in-depth reading in CR,
George, and put up some ideas of your own re the answers, then it would be
reasonable to expect other people to comment. That's what this list is all
about, not question and answer sessions.

Mervyn



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ruth Groff" <RGroff1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List"
<critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, June 22, 2007 1:22 AM
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Quick on Popper and falsification


Hi George,

There may well be others who know Popper better than I do, but here's what
I'd say.

You wrote:

(1) What does Bhaskar offer in the realm of scientific (rather than social
scientific) philosophy that isn't incorporated into Popper's thought.


In my view:

(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.

(b) 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.

There's more that you could say, but these basic differences are different
enough that I'll stop with them.


You wrote:
(2)  What does a Bhaskarian resolution offer on the grounds of research
design that might be missing from a Popperian approach?

(a) Resolution of what?

(b) There have GOT to be people better able to speak to this than I am.

(c) As a very, very, very minimum, I'd say that 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.

You wrote:
However, I don't think Popper goes so far as to "the idea that things have
intrinsic dispositional properties."

Right.  He would reject intrinsic dispositional properties, whereas RB would
not.


You wrote:
(3)  In the most radical sense do Bhaskar's ontological theories move
outside the realm of a faith claim in which (excuse the biblical reference,
which I believe here is relevant, at least rhetorically) "Faith is the
substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things [only partially]
seen?"

As I said, I'm pretty sure that I think that RB's strongest argument for
dispositional realism is his immanent critigue of the conditions of
possibility of the intelligibility of experimentation.  I don't think that
this argument rests on "faith" in the intelligibility of experiemntation,
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.

Hope this is helpful!

I really like reading Popper, I should say for the record.  I think he gets
a bum rap.

Warmly,
Ruth



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