Re: To JD & Ian re Popper: Aid to the poor benighted Marxist-Leninists Amongst Us Please!

[Ian Murray <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hari Kumar" <hari.kumar@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 5:27 PM
Subject: [PEN-L] To JD & Ian re Popper: Aid to the poor benighted
Marxist-Leninists Amongst Us Please!


> The conversation went:
> > I noticed that a major element of Crews' critique of Freudianism (in
> the
> >New York REVIEW OF BOOKS a few years ago) is that it can't be falsified
> (following Popper's >criterion). Unfortunately, this seems to apply to
> all_  of social science (and to Popper).
> ======================
> Popper deplored the issue of reflexivity and self-reference from the
> moment it was turned on his own conjectures...........
> Ian
> COMMENT: Can you both expand? I am aware of Muarice Cornforths's "The
> Open Philosphy & The Open Society" - [not read it for many eyars now] -
> but to what body of work are you two talking about?? - ???? - ??????
> Thx,
> hari

==========================================

[the demarcation problem has been with us since at least Sextus
Empiricus--the problem of the criterion/regress]


>From Chapter 1 of "Conjectures and Refutations"

The problem which troubled me at the time was neither, "When is a theory
true?" nor, "When is a theory acceptable?" My problem was different. I
wished to distinguish between science and pseudo-science; knowing very
well that science often errs, and that pseudo-science may happen to
stumble on the truth.

I knew, of course, the most widely accepted answer to my problem: that
science is distinguished from pseudo-science_or from "metaphysics"_by its
empirical method, which is essentially inductive, proceeding from
observation or experiment. But this did not satisfy me. On the contrary, I
often formulated my problem as one of distinguishing between a genuinely
empirical method and a non-empirical or even a pseudo-empirical
method-that is to say, a method which, although it appeals to observation
and experiment, nevertheless does not come up to scientific standards. The
latter method may be exemplified by astrology with its stupendous mass of
empirical evidence based on observation-on horoscopes and on biographies.

But as it was not the example of astrology which led me to my problem I
should perhaps briefly describe the atmosphere in which my problem arose
and the examples by which it was stimulated. After the collapse of the
Austrian Empire there had been a revolution in Austria: the air was full
of revolutionary slogans and ideas, and new and often wild theories. Among
the theories which interested me Einstein's theory of relativity was no
doubt by far the most important. Three others were Marx's theory of
history, Freud's psycho-analysis, and Alfred Adler's so-called "individual
psychology."

There was a lot of popular nonsense talked about these theories, and
especially about relativity (as still happens even today), but I was
fortunate in those who introduced me to the study of this theory. We
all-the small circle of students to which I belonged-were thrilled with
the result of Eddington's eclipse observations which in 1919 brought the
first important confirmation of Einstein's theory of gravitation. It was a
great experience for us, and one which had a lasting influence on my
intellectual development.

The three other theories I have mentioned were also widely discussed among
students at that time. I myself happened to come into personal contact
with Alfred Adler, and even to co-operate with him in his social work
among the children and young people in the working-class districts of
Vienna where he had established social guidance clinics.

It was during the summer of 1919 that I began to feel more and more
dissatisfied with these three theories-the Marxist theory of history,
psychoanalysis, and individual psychology; and I began to feel dubious
about their claims to scientific status. My problem perhaps first took the
simple form, "What is wrong with Marxism, psycho-analysis, and individual
psychology? Why are they so different from physical theories, from
Newton's theory, and especially from the theory of relativity?"

To make this contrast clear I should explain that few of us at the time
would have said that we believed in the truth of Einstein's theory of
gravitation. This shows that it was not my doubting the truth of those
other three theories which bothered me, but something else. Yet neither
was it that I merely felt mathematical physics to be more exact than the
sociological or psychological type of theory. Thus what worried me was
neither the problem of truth, at that stage at least, nor the problem of
exactness or measurability.It was rather that I felt that these other
three theories, though posing as sciences, had in fact more in common with
primitive myths than with science; that they resembled astrology rather
than astronomy.

I found that those of my friends who were admirers of Marx, Freud, and
Adler, were impressed by a number of points common to these theories, and
especially by their apparent explanatory power. These theories appeared to
be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields
to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to have the effect
of an intellectual conversion or revelation, opening your eyes to a new
truth hidden from those not yet initiated. Once your eyes were thus opened
you saw confirming instances everywhere: the world was full of
verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. Thus
its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did
not want to see the manifest truth; who refused to see it, either because
it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions which
were still "un-analysed" and crying aloud for treatment.

The most characteristic element in this situation seemed to me the
incessant stream of confirmations, of observations which "verified" the
theories in question; and this point was constantly emphasized by their
adherents. A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every
page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history; not only in
the news, but also in its presentation-which revealed the class bias of
the paper-and especially of course in what the paper did not say. The
Freudian analysts emphasized that their theories were constantly verified
by their "clinical observations." As for Adler, I was much impressed by a
personal experience. Once, in 1919, 1 reported to him a case which to me
did not seem particularly Adlerian, but which he found no difficulty in
analysing in terms ofhis theory of inferiority feelings, although he had
not even seen the child. Slightly shocked, I asked him how he could be so
sure. "Because of my thousandfold experience," he replied; whereupon I
could not help saying: "And with this newcase, I suppose, your experience
has become thousand-and-one-fold."

What I had in mind was that his previous observations may not have been
much sounder than this new one; that each in its turn had been interpreted
in the light of"previous experience," and at the same time counted as
additional confirmation. What, I asked myself, did it confirm? No more
than that a case could be interpreted in the light of the theory. But this
meant very little, I reflected, since every conceivable case could be
interpreted in the light of Adler's theory, or equally of Freud's. I may
illustrate this by two very different examples of human behaviour: that of
a man who pushes a child into the water with the intention of drowning it;
and that of a man who sacrifices his life in an attempt to save the child.
Each of these two cases can be explained with equal ease in Freudian and
in Adlerian terms. According to Freud the first man suffered from
repression (say, of some component of his Oedipus complex), while the
second man had achieved sublimation.According to Adler the first man
suffered from feelings of inferiority (producing perhaps the need to prove
to himself that he dared to commit some crime), and so did the second man
(whose need was to prove to himself that he dared to rescue the child). I
could not think of any human behaviour which could not be interpreted in
terms of either theory. It was precisely this fact-that they always
fitted, that they were always confirmed-which in the eyes of their
admirers constituted the strongest argument in favour of these theories.
It began to dawn on me that this apparent strength was in fact their
weakness.

With Einstein's theory the situation was strikingly different. Take one
typical instance-Einstein's prediction, just then confirmed by the
findings of Eddington's expedition. Einstein's gravitational theory had
led to the result that light must beattracted by heavy bodies (such as the
sun), precisely as material bodies were attracted. As a consequence it
could be calculated that light from a distant fixed star whose apparent
position was close to the sun would reach the earth from such adirection
that the star would seem to be slightly shifted away from the sun; or, in
other words, that stars close to the sun would look as if they had moved a
little away from the sun, and from one another. This is a thing which
cannot normally be observed since such stars are rendered invisible in
daytime by the sun's overwhelming brightness; but during an eclipse it is
possible to take photographs of them. If the same constellation is
photographed at night one can measure the distances on the two
photographs, and check the predicted effect.

Now the impressive thing about this case is the risk involved in a
prediction of this kind. If observation shows that the predicted effect is
definitely absent, then the theory is simply refuted. The theory is
incompatible with certain possible results of observation-in fact with
results which everybody before Einstein would have expected. This is quite
different from the situation I have previously described, when it turned
out that the theories in question were compatible with the most divergent
human behaviour,so that it was practically impossible to describe any
human behaviour that might not be claimed to be a verification of these
theories.

These considerations led me in the winter of 1919-20 to conclusions which
I may now reformulate as follows.

(1) It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every
theory-if we look for confirmations.

(2) Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky
predictions;that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question,
we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory-an
event which would have refuted the theory.

(3) Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain
things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.
(4) A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is
nonscientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of theory (as people often
think) but a vice.

(5) Every genuine testof a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to
refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of
testability; some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation,
than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.

(6) Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of
agenuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a
serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in
such cases of"corroborating evidence.")

(7) Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still
upheld by their admirers-for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary
assumption, or by re-interpreting theory ad hoc in such a way that it
escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues
the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least
lowering, its scientific status. (I later described such a rescuing
operation as a "conventionalist twist" or a "conventionaliststratagem. ")

One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific
status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.