Giddens on Popper and positivism

Giddens on the postpositivistic philosophy of science in Bottomore and Nisbet (eds) A History of Sociological Analysis, Basic Books, 1978. In the Questia library.

After a lengthy account of the progress of positivism in the philosophy of science from theVienna Circleof logical positivists to logical empiricism Giddens moved to the “postpositivistic” attack on the “orthodox model”. He named several authors involved in this attack (Toulmin, Feyerabend, Hesse, Kuhn) and then noted that Popper had preceded them. Some of the positivists confused the issues by insisting that Popper was really one of them, due to the interest in science that they shared, so his differences were internal to the movement. Consequently Giddens found  “The points at issue are not easy to disentangle…one should mention…his complete rejection of induction and his concomitant rejection of “sensory certainty”…his substitution of falsification for verification…his defence of tradition which, in conjunction with the critical spirit, is integral to science; and is replacement of the logical positivist ambition of putting an end to metaphysics by revealing it is nonsense  with the aim of securing criteria of demarcation between science and pseudoscience”.

As to the similarities which he perceived, “Popper shares the conviction that scientific knowledge, imperfect though it may be, is the most certain and reliable knowledge to which human beings can aspire…and, like the logical positivists, his characterization of science is a procedural one: science is separated from other forms of tradition insofar as its theories and findings are capable of being exposed to empirical testing and therefore to potential falsification”.

In fact the similarities are not quite what Giddens takes them to be. Popper was never concerned with certainty, or its surrogate, probability.

Moving on to the critique of Popper.

“Popper’s philosophy possesses the boldness of formulation that he requires of science itself: the appeal of his substitution of falsification for verification derives in large part from the simple and incisive way in which it disposes at a stroke of the traditional dilemma of induction. But the simplicity of the notion is belied by difficulties which it conceals”.

The first difficulty that he sees is the problem of verisimilitude rather than truth as the aim of science, unless we assume that we can proceed by successively refuting a finite series of theories in order to come closer to the truth. “Second, the very idea of falsification, which looks so precise and clear presented as a logical solution to difficulties of induction, becomes quite murky when applied to the analysis of actual scientific activities of testing and comparison of theories”

This is an example of SE (Standard Error) number x, the failure to take account of the distinction that Popper repeatedly drew between falsifiability (which depends on the logical form of a statement) and falsification which is the practical activity of testing. Popper pointed out that a scientist who is confronted with an apparent refutation of his theory can discount the evidence and adopt any number of defensive moves, some of which may be legitimate, provided that they lead to an advance in the discussion (perhaps shifting the focus to some problematic aspect of the experimental design or exploring the possibility of mulfunction of the equipment) and are not simply used to fend off any possibility of serious criticism. This is not “murky” it is just the way things are. Popper devised a number of conventions to maintain the standard of criticism in the game of science (otherwise you have left the game): Giddens suggests “this is not very convincing, and one could claim here that Popper is hoist with his own petard: namely to propose that any instance which does not accord with the thesis should be disregarded as “unscientific procedure”.”

The significance of the picturesque turn of phrase “hoist with his own petard” eludes me. Popper’s proposals about testing theories are not theses which may be true or false, they are proposals to maintain high standards of testing in scientific practice. Giddens should either dispute the need to maintain such standards, or if he accepts that high standards are desirable then he needs to identify problems with Popper’s proposals, and maybe even suggest better ones.

Instead of doing that, Giddens calls “foul” on Popper’s proposal and states that “One of the consequences of Kuhn’s work is to affirm that this will not do, and the same holds for that of Feyerabend and Lakatos”.

What will not do? Attempts to maintain high standards of criticism? Of course high standards of criticism are not always met. Extensive historical research is not required to establish this but how does it represent a criticism of Popperian critical rationalism?

Moving on to The Critique of Positivism in Frankfurt Philosophy

He explains that positivism in these circles has a broad and diffuse meaning. . The background to this is theFrankfurtproject to “critique the tendency of development of Western culture since the Enlightenment” which has in the view of theFrankfurtschool, brought about “the domination of modern culture by technical rationality” which represents a new form of domination which the project aims to unmask. According to Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York, 1972), the result is that:

“Subject and object are both rendered ineffectual. The abstract self, which justifies record-making and systematisation, has nothing set over against it but the abstract material which possesses no other quality than to be a substrate of such possession. The equation of spirit and world arises eventually, but only with a mutual restriction of both sides. The reduction of thought to a mathematical apparatus conceals the sanction of the world as its own yardstick. What appears to be the triumph of subjective rationality, the subjection of all reality to logical formalism, is paid for by the obedient subjection of reason to what is directly given. What is abandoned is the whole claim and approach of knowledge: to comprehend the given as such; not merely to determine the abstract spatio-temporal relations of the facts which allow them just to be grasped, but on the contrary to conceive them as the superficies, as mediated conceptual moments which come to fulfillment only in the development of their social, historical, and human significance.”

This is the type of verbiage which prompted the ambition of the original logical positivists  to outlaw metaphysics as strictly meaningless and Giddens points out thatFrankfurtcritical theory is a defensive reaction to the positivists. Popper always insisted that the verifiability criterion would not work, being both too and too narrow (it excludes laws of nature expressed as universal generalizations along the lines “all swans are white”) and the more appropriate response is to maintain standards of simplicity and clarity in exposition and criticism, analogous to standards of testing where evidence is being used critically.

Giddens then described the so-called “positivism debate” starting with Popper’s presentation of “twenty-seven theses” on the logic of the social sciences at the meeting of the German Sociological Association atTubingenin 1961. Adorno followed with his paper, which Popper expected to be a rejoinder to his theses, however Adorno did not engage with the theses but claimed that Popper’s critical rationalism was too limited, being essentially positivistic and analytical instead of dialectic,

“In contrast, dialectical theory of society must indicate the gaping discrepancy between practical questions and the accomplishment of technical tasks—not to mention the realization of a meaning which, far beyond the domination of nature achieved by manipulation of a reified relation, no matter how skilful that may be—would relate to the structure of a social life-context as a whole and would, in fact, demand its emancipation.” ⁷²

So dialectical or critical theory must transcend the boundaries of critical rationalism as expressed by Popper. Furthermore, the separation of fact and value (which Popper defended in Chapter 5 of OSE as the dualism of propositions and proposals) is claimed by Habermas to condemn practical questions to irrationality, or to the “closed world” of mythology and the meaningless nonsense which positivism was determined to cast out.

That is a travesty of Popper’s views in several different ways, most strikingly because the point of Popper’s dualism of “is” and “ought”  was to overcome any tendency to accept what exists at the time (in the social world) as the way things ought to be (so don’t try to change anything). He wanted to maintain a domain of values and aspirations for social improvement, a world of values that transcend the way things are at the present time, and provide criteria for improvement. Strangely, Giddens and the Habermas and his colleagues appear to be ignorant of the arguments in TheOSE, otherwise they would not press such an absurd line of argument against him, fully as absurd as the charge of positivism.