Tal's epistemology (and DCP's)

[_A Light in the Darkness]

and, in rejecting falsificationism as a foundation for science, we in no way deny that falsifiability is a virtue for a theory, conjecture or hypothesis.

Sure. Just because Popper's falsificationism isn't good doesn't mean that falsification isn't important for understanding scientific methodology. I'd also add to my previous comments, if it wasn't clear, that Popper is more popular among practicing scientists and the educated public than in philosophy proper. He's still a significant figure there, though.

[Guest]

Since this is a forum about Mormonism, have Popper's philosophies ever actually been used by any Mormon apologist to defend Mormonism? I can't imagine it would behoove any Mopologist to claim we can't really know if Mormonism is true or not, though I suppose they could use Popper to show it's impossible to disprove Mormonism, but wouldn't that be a mistake? It seems self-evident (at least to me) that the historical and doctrinal claims of Mormonism have been sufficiently falsified to cast enough doubt on the statement, "I know the church is true", that no one should believe the Mormon church to be true, though they cannot know without a doubt that it is not true.

Perhaps no one can know for a certainty that Mormonism is absolutely false, but it seems employing Popper's flawed, but still useful falsification renders Mormonism's truth claims beyond believability.

I think these are very good points, and probably what this whole thread is 'really' about!

I'd say one point is: Just because two people may agree on a 'system' of knowledge, doesn't mean that one or the other won't try and 'twist' it a bit. Or perhaps as much as they can. In fact, you can argue that it is inevitable.

But I'd say the more important point is that it's one thing to say: 'Science needs to work this way, or that way'.
It's another thing to say 'Science can only tell us so much', or 'Limiting yourself to science isn't that sensible'. THAT's what I hear a lot of from religious folks. Not about whether Popper had it right. Or Kuhn. Or Kant. Or whoever...
If your not 'limiting' yourself to scientific inspection, then does it really matter that much?

I mean, I've been spending a decent amount of time annoying Tal, so I guess I should be fair and annoy some Mormons too...
I would say that 'apologists' tend to use the scientific method only when it is 'convinient'. And when it isn't, it can be neatly discarded like a dirty rag.
If that's how science is to be treated, then it's not about whether Popper was 'dead on', or the 'problem of induction' being solved - or whatever else. As has been said many times, science has moved on steadily and consistently - regardless of not actually solving, once and for all, these kinds of philosophical disputes.

When it comes to Mormonism, I'd say it's down to whether you are justified in moving 'past' scientific investigation, or not. But I'm sure others see it differently! :D

[_KimberlyAnn]

I think these are very good points, and probably what this whole thread is 'really' about!

I told you I'm getting smarter! ;)

I would say that 'apologists' tend to use the scientific method only when it is 'convinient'. And when it isn't, it can be neatly discarded like a dirty rag.

Mormonism is so internally inconsistent there's no way to use consistency in defending it! You're spot on - Mormon apologists use whatever methods they can to defend their beliefs, even if they contradict themselves, and I believe for a large part of the flock it works. Many people aren't going to wade through the maze of Mormon apologetic material, it's incredibly tedious, and I believe it's designed to be that way. Just knowing there are smart people who believe in and defend Mormonism is enough for much of the flock and when the apologetics are too convoluted to read through, most people don't even bother. It's enough just to know it's there. Sad, really, isn't it?

At any rate, when people routinely suspend reason it makes it nearly impossible to reason with them.

KA

[_Gadianton]

Since this is a forum about Mormonism, have Popper's philosophies ever actually been used by any Mormon apologist to defend Mormonism? I can't imagine it would behoove any Mopologist to claim we can't really know if Mormonism is true or not, though I suppose they could use Popper to show it's impossible to disprove Mormonism, but wouldn't that be a mistake? It seems self-evident (at least to me) that the historical and doctrinal claims of Mormonism have been sufficiently falsified to cast enough doubt on the statement, "I know the church is true", that no one should believe the Mormon church to be true, though they cannot know without a doubt that it is not true.

Perhaps no one can know for a certainty that Mormonism is absolutely false, but it seems employing Popper's flawed, but still useful falsification renders Mormonism's truth claims beyond believability.

KA

Popper might be useful in guaging apologetics. He says to be a science, it must be falsifiable. The Limited Geography Theory attempts to make the Book of Mormon so small and insignificant that it would be nearly impossible to test it and prove it false. Hamblin goes this route if I remember right. He then tries to link this to legitimate history and say, basically, if we can't accept the Book of Mormon, we can't accept history in general.

Kuhn is called upon once in a while by apologists. John Gee invokes him at the end of one of his papers, assuring us that Egyptology doesn't know everything and perhaps, after it goes through one of those revolutions Kuhn talks about, it will prove the Book of Abraham. Kuhn is brought up all the time on FAIR. Wade regularily brought him up. Kevin Christiansen is a huge disciple of Kuhn and has all these papers on "paradigms".

[_KimberlyAnn]

The Limited Geography Theory attempts to make the Book of Mormon so small and insignificant that it would be nearly impossible to test it and prove it false. Hamblin goes this route if I remember right. He then tries to link this to legitimate history and say, basically, if we can't accept the Book of Mormon, we can't accept history in general.

LOL! He'd better notify all the non-Mormon historians and send them a Book of Mormon.

[_Tal Bachman]

Hi Renegade

You make a lot of good points. First, a riff on your first one (still no life).

I would like to see quote 3A in context.

No problem. Notice how reasonable Popper sounds here - and notice too how, despite all the quotes indicating the profoundest skepticism I've produced here, and of which the mere opening any one of his books will instantly furnish dozens more, denies that his position is one of skepticism. All he admits to here is qualms about the possibility of absolute knowledge (which he nevertheless claims in another place should serve - in some inconceivable way, given its utterly elusive nature according to Popper - as a "standard for our criticism"):

Quote 3A.1:

"32. Dynamic Scepticism: Confrontation with Hume

"The position here defended is radically different from what has in modern times been called 'scepticism', at least since the Reformation. For in modern times scepticism is described as the theory which is pessimistic with respect to the possibility of knowledge. But the view proposed here hopefully adheres to the possibility of the growth of knowledge, and therefore of knowledge. It merely removes the quality of certainty which common sense assumed as essential to knowledge, and shows that both certainty and knowledge are different from what the commonsense theory assumed. One will hardly describe as a sceptic a man who believes in the possibility of the unlimited growth of knowledge."

No, it does NOT "merely" remove "the quality of certainty" - not even close.

Popper, as I have shown in quote after quote, regularly goes MILES beyond this. For example, he goes so far as to say, over and over, that "scientific knowledge" should not be presumed to have any surer footing than the wildest of guesses, nor can it ever gain any surer footing. When scientific knowledge has been defined in this way, how can it really ever be susceptible to "growth"? How, I ask again, does it make sense to talk about a "growth of GUESSES"? When Popper wishes to sound reasonable or defend himself against charges of irrationalism or profoundest skepticism, he is quite happy to use what Stove calls "success words", like "knowledge" and "growth", and "progress", and the like. But as soon as he finds his footing again, he is off talking once more about how he has "solved the problem of induction", and solved it by denying that inductive reasoning exists - which leaves him no choice but to deny that any belief can be justified (for exactly the same reason as that one's guess about the inherently unknowable winning lottery number can never rise to the level of "justified belief"), and on and on. That is, not even the "success words" can obscure, in the end, that Popper has gotten himself into a terrible muddle. His whole project is to save science from Hume's charge of irrationality; but in wrongly accepting fully Hume's arguments against induction as a starting point, he winds up just as irrationalist as his mentor. The only difference is, Hume, to his credit, concedes this, while Popper goes to his grave denying it - perhaps because he had deceived himself most of all.

Where was I?....

This is all a mess. Popper either blatantly contradicts himself, or privately, spontaneously creates, and reserves unto himself, new word definitions, which leave the entirely wrong impression, or both. Either way, it is a mess.

Consider, for example, the passage I just quoted, with its vainglorious championing of "the growth" of what he calls "scientific knowledge" (which he in other places calls "guesses"), with this statement:

"As far as I am concerned 'I do not believe in belief', as E.M. Forster says; and I especially do not believe in belief in science. I believe at most that belief has a place in ethics, and even here only in a few instances".

Compare Popper's words, "I especially do not believe in belief in science", with his self-description, quoted above in 3A.1, as "a man who believes in the possibility of the unlimited growth of knowledge". How can it be disputed that at least one of these things must be misleading? I suppose we could split hairs and say that it is possible to believe in the growth of something, while not believing in belief in that something; but that seems rather to be approaching the case of the atheist who believes that "God's dominion is ever-increasing"...

Consider another example. This is an excerpt from 1E above:

"...But, I said, what we call 'scientific knowledge' was hypothetical, and often not true, let alone certainly or probably true (in the sense of the calculus of probability)."

Yet in another place, Popper says:

"Consequently, I want to begin by declaring that I regard scientific knowledge as the best and most important kind of knowledge we have - though I am far from regarding it as the only one". ("In Search of a Better World", p. 3).

So, according to Popper, the "best and most important kind of knowledge" is knowledge which is "often not true". How, I ask, can "often untrue knowledge" be better and more important than, say - oh, I don't know - probably true knowledge? (And that is even granting that knowledge even permits such modifiers as "probably true"...).

There is, as it happens, a pretty revealing passage in his essay "The Logic of the Social Sciences" (I mean, "revealing" in the way the Nicene Creed, or a Book of Abraham rescue attempt, is "revealing"). Popper writes:

4A). "I propose to begin my paper on the logic of the social sciences with two theses which express the contrast between our knowledge and our ignorance.

"First thesis: We have a fair amount of knowledge." (...)

"Second thesis: Our ignorance is boundless and sobering". (...)

"Of course*, my two theses about knowledge and ignorance only appear to contradict one another. The chief cause of this apparent contradiction lies in the fact that the word 'knowledge' is used in a rather different sense in each of the two theses." "In Search of a Better World", p. 64-65.

WELL -

BRAVO. But it is a half-muted "bravo", because this essay was only published, at least in English, in 1994 - literally, after a half century of Popper remorselessly gutting words like "knowledge" and "growth" and "discovery" whenever it suited his purposes, while at the same time often using them in their standard sense (without specifying) whenever that suited his purpose (for example, when he wished a certain idea to sound far more plausible than it should). But at least, here we have it from the horse's mouth, and we now can have no doubt that there is the very real possibility, whenever Popper uses the word "knowledge", that by it he might mean "the most baseless of inherently uverifiable guesses", OR "the ordinary sense in which if I know that it is raining, it must be true that it is raining, so that knowledge implies truth" - or anything in between.

And needless to say, for any philosophy to require, for purposes either of plausibility or explication, the use of the same word to describe our mental state vis-a-vis the possibility that it is raining, when we are standing outside getting soaked with rain, AND our mental state vis-a-vis the possibility of having chosen the one correct lottery number out of a literal infinity of numbers, and even worse, under the understanding that we will NEVER be able to find out whether we have chosen correctly or not, is - I submit - a very good indicator that there is something PROFOUNDLY WRONG in it. But, I submit, we knew that already, once we knew that Popper's philosophy would make it essentially impossible for him to admit that more is known now - known in any sense of the word known which doesn't mean "not known, or even justifiably believed, at all" - than it was when his donkey-riding ancestors were wandering about lost, starving, and thirsting in the deserts of Palestine 4000 years ago. (No, I am not saying there is nothing of value in Popper's thought; here I am just focusing on a few particular problems).

Now, David Stove. His book "Scientific Irrationalism: Origins of a Postmodern Cult" will be of great interest to anyone interested in all this (for one thing, it is the funniest, most sarcastic book of philosophy you'll ever read). In it, Stove undertakes to answer the question as to why the essentially irrationalist philosophies of Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and Imre Lakatos, should ever have been believed by sensible people, and also, from where it all derives (of course, as Popper said so often, just from Hume's problems with induction). The main part of his answer is their highly misleading use of language.

I've just grabbed this book off my shelf so here are a few quotes from it. To begin with, he makes the point which I began my own comments here with:

"Everyone would admit that if there has ever been a growth of knowledge it has been in the last four hundred years. So, anyone reluctant to admit (this), must, if he is consistent, be reluctant to admit that there has ever been a growth of knowledge at all. But if a philosopher of science takes a position which obliges him, on pain of inconsistency, to be reluctant to admit this, then his position can rightly be described as irrationalism or relativism...

"How do they manage to be plausible, while being in general so irrationalist as they are?"

Stove answers that the four in question "conflate questions of fact with questions of logical value, or the history with the philosophy of science". But since this too should be relatively easily seen, he sets out to show "in detail how the general tendency to conflate the history with the philosophy of science is carried out in the writings of our authors, in such a way as to disguise their irrationalism and make it plausible".

Stove continues:

"If you wish to recommend a philosophy of science to readers who are sure to find the irrationalism in it implausible, then your literary strategy must clearly be a mixed one. Irrationalism which was open and unrelieved would be found hopelessly implausible. So your irrationalist strokes must be softened, by being mixed with others of an opposite kind, or again by being disguised as themselves of an opposite kind..."

"An extreme form of mixed strategy is, simple inconsistency: that is, assert an irrationalist thesis, but also assert others which are inconsistent with it. Popper furnishes many examples of this, of which the following is one. He staggers us by denying that positive instances confirm a universal generalization, but reassures us by allowing that negative instances are, as we always thought they were, disconfirmatory...

"A strategy which is mixed in the above sense while falling short of inconsistency, can take the form of stating as the aim of science something which common sense would agree to be at least one of its aims; while also saying other things which imply that it is impossible to achieve this aim" (I've included numerous examples of this tendency, for example, Popper's statement that absolute truth should serve as a standard in all our investigations, while outrightly denying that we can ever have ANY reason whatsoever to believe that we have grasped even a molecule of absolute truth).

"Popper and Lakatos both do this. They say the aim of science is to discover true laws and theories. But they also say, concerning any law or theory, that because it is universal, its truth is exactly as improbable, even a priori, as the truth of a self-contradiction: in other words, impossible" (see appendix vii from "Logic of Scientific Discovery")

Skipping ahead...

"Yet another form that a mixed strategy can take is, of course, equivocation: leave them guessing what it is you really believe, the irrationalist bits, or the other ones" (he then cites several examples from Kuhn...).

Stove then explains in detail the rhetorical strategy which he calls "neutralizing success-words". Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, and Feyerabend, he says, "use the language of success about science - words importing more or less of cognitive achievement, such as 'knowledge', 'discovery', 'facts', 'verified', 'understanding', 'explanation', 'solution (of a problem)', and a great many more besides - they use this language quite as freely as do any of those older historians of science whom they despise....Their substantive philosophy, however, is not really consistent with applying, to science, such words in their ordinary success-implying sense. So while they use the language of success, they neutralize it. Not all the time, of course: sometimes they use these words in their ordinary sense..."

(...)

"For sheer bald neutralizing of success-words, however, Popper remains in a class of his own...Popper has left monuments of the art which are not likely ever to be excelled. He actually seems to prefer neutralizing the very strongest of success words, and to prefer to do it as publicly as possible: that is, in the very titles of his books and articles". (One of Popper's most famous essays is found in his book "Objective Knowledge". It is entitled "Conjectural Knowledge").

Stove continues:

"'The Logic of Scientific Discovery', indeed! There is scarcely a word in it, or anything else Popper ever wrote, about scientific discovery, and the reason is as simple as it is sufficient. 'Discovery' is a success-word, and of the strongest kind: it means the same as 'discovery of what is true or what exists'. The history of science, therefore, to the extent that it has been a history of discovery - as it has been so markedly in the last four hundred years, for example - is a history of success. But that is not the way that Popper sees the history of science, far from it. For him the history of science is a succsion of 'problems', 'conjectures and refutations', Socratic or pre-Socratic dialogues, 'critical discussions. It is all talk. In this context any vivid reminder of an actual scientific discovery would be as out of place as a hippopotamus in a philosophy class."

Here is Stove on the outrageous phrase I mentioned above: conjectural knowledge:

"...Often enough...he uses (the word "knowledge") with its normal success-grammar. But when he wishes to give expression to his own philosophy of science he baldly neutralizes it. Scientific knowledge, he then tells us, is 'conjectural knowledge'. Nor is this shocking phrase a mere slip of the pen, which is what anywhere else it would be thought to be. On the contrary, no phrase is more central to Popper's philosophy of science, or more insisted upon by him. The phrase even furnishes, he believes, and as the title of one of his articles claims, nothing less than the 'solution to the problem of induction'.

"In one way of course this is true, and must be true, because any problem clearly must yield before some one who is prepared to treat language in the way Popper does. What problem could there be so hard as not to dissolve in a sufficiently strong solution of nonsense? And nonsense is what the phrase 'conjectural knowledge' is: just like, say, the phrase 'a drawn game which was won'. To say that something is known, or is an object of knowledge, implies that it is true, and known to be true. (Of course only 'knowledge that' is in question here). To say of something that it is conjectural, on the other hand, implies that it is not known to be true. And this is all that needs to be said on the celebrated subject of 'conjectural knowledge'; and is a great deal more than should need to be said".

Okay...sorry :P. Got kind of carried away there.

3D.) "Truth - absolute truth - remains our aim; and it remains the implicit standard of our criticism" ("Realism and the Aim of Science", 25).

We can hope to beleive that we are getting closer and closer to 'absolute' truth, but we never nessesarily reach it. And would have no way of actually knowing for sure when we reached 'absolute truth' anyway.
You seem to see this notion as ridiculous, crazy and self-defeatist.
I see it as healthy (if kept in due persepctive), backed up by history and practically obvious. And yet I also see it as fairly obvious that we DO 'know' more than we did 500 years ago. I don't think those two concepts are contridictory. Not if your willing to accept that you can't know that 'blood flows in your veins' in the same way that you know that '2 + 2 = 4'.

I mentioned 3D only to point out that we cannot use use a thing as the "standard of our criticism", which - according to Popper - is in every way entirely unapproachable for us. Popper, once again, doesn't make any sense...

I have to run, more later.

[_Tal Bachman]

Before I start in on Kuhn, does anyone wanna ask me anything? I've been trying to respond to Tarski's original questions, and so I fear skipping over things here and there in the thread. But now that I've probably said all I need to say about Popper, is there something I haven't addressed?

[_A Light in the Darkness]

When scientific knowledge has been defined in this way, how can it really ever be susceptible to "growth"? How, I ask again, does it make sense to talk about a "growth of GUESSES"?

Popper believed that "guesses'" had qualities such that we could say some are better than others. That's what allows for growth. This isn't growth in knowledge in the sense you require, perhaps, but it isn't clear how this isn't begging the question in the context of your argument. Whatever the flaws of falsificationism, you have to realize that inductive confirmation isn't the only available criterion for thinking some theories better than others. RoP, to his credit, seems to get this. I think you need to make this question less rhetorical so you can think about it more.

[_Tal Bachman]

Just had a look over the thread and saw HumbleLight's comment:

That's where the quotemining of Popper is coming from.

I don't know what you mean by that (?). Not a single one of the quotes I've posted here was taken out of Stove's book, though Stove might have used there some that I used. I don't think so, though. In fact, just looking through this book again now, there aren't many extended quotes at all, often just short phrases here and there. You'll see if you read the Stove book. Do you find it surprising that I should be able to read Karl Popper books on my own? I'd read through most of Popper's stuff long before I'd ever even heard of David Stove (I first heard of Stove only about a year ago, reading in Keith Windschuttle's book, "The Killing of History", which I also recommend).

Like Ray and some of these other guys, you come on strong, but what is there underneath? By the way, perhaps a new low for you in non-logic is your beyond lame insinuation, or whatever it is, based on Stove's piece on women. Get your head going, bro. And oh yes, Master Intellect - I'm still waiting to see ONE quote from you supporting your slur that David Brooks is a "rabid misogynist". May I suggest that shame should forbid you from making any insinuations - even the ones that make you look ridiculous - about the numerous quotes I've posted here from Popper, all of which substantiate my points, when you yourself won't even produce one single quote for a very nasty, personally insulting, characterization of Brooks?

Take your insult back, or show your quote. Either one is better than sounding sniveling, or shameless, isn't it?

Turn your "Light" on, Light, let's go.

[_Tal Bachman]

Yes, Light - some "guesses" were to be "preferred" (Popper's word) on the most specious, and detached-from-reality grounds. Do you really need another 3000 word essay from me on "verisimilitude" versus "probability"? Why don't you just read "Conjectures and Refutations" yourself and think critically about it? You seem never to have done so...Why should I do all the work? I'd be surprised if you even OWNED a single Karl Popper book - I sure don't remember seeing any corroborating quotes from you in this thread by him...

Get it going, bro. I need SUBSTANTIVE criticism, not weird hit and run things with no corroboration at all.