critical rationalism blog

Habermas is probably the last high-profile member of the Frankfurt School of German Marxists. Google up Frankfurt School for more information, other key players were Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse. These were big names in decades past but the world has moved on, although I think Habermas still has a following.  He bought into the so- called “Positivism Debate” between Popper and Adorno in 1961 when he argued that Popper was a positivist (among other deficiencies).  This is Popper’s account of that strange episode and the strange book that came out of it.

Karl-Otto Apel was an important supporter of Habermas due to his criticism of Popper and critical rationalism. Some years ago one of my colleagues at work showed me a book with one of Apel’s articles in it, and I wrote a rejoinder for an email list. The text turned up by accident when I was looking through old folders in My Documents so here it is. On of the features is the way he drew on Peirce (Charles Sanders) and Wittgenstein. I subcribe to a Peirce email list that is devoted to close readings of works of the Master without any reference to contemporary problems that I can see.

To give the flavour of the article:

He sets out to subject critical rationalism to a ‘metacritical examination’, “I shall investigate whether – and if so, in what sense – the principle of foundations or justifying reasons can be replaced by the principle of criticism, or whether some kind of philosophical foundation is not itself presupposed by the principle of intersubjectively valid criticism”.

He isprepared to concede the principle of fallibilism, in some sense, to logic and mathematics [this is weird, logic and maths can be regarded as tautologous systems where the question of fallibilism in the empirical senses does not apply]. BUT he goes on “I would like to claim – in a sense to be described later, that evidence in the sense of indubitable certainty is methodologically indispensable for the empirical sciences”. 

He refers to Wittgenstein “On Certainty” and quotes “The game of doubt itself presupposes certainty”.  He writes “In other words, doubt – and thereby criticism in Popper’s and Albert’s sense – is not explicable as a meaningful language game without in principle presupposing at the same time indubitable certainty”… with further attributions to Wittgenstein.

Finally Apel wraps up with a restatement of his basic point – “any choice that could be understood as meaningful already presupposes the transcendental language game as a condition of possibility”.  The key to all this seems to be the notion of transcendence. Does this mean “beyond criticism” or simply “not yet subjected to criticism” (and so unconsciously assumed)?  

The notion of transcendence seems to work as a kind of block to further investigation or criticism. How can this be sustained?  We may accept that a language of some kind is a precondition of any kind of communication, or indeed for discursive thinking. Further we may accept that at any moment we are making unconscious assumptions, conscious assumptions that we have not yet subjected to criticism, assumptions that we know are false (but have no better ones to work with), and even assumptions that we do not have time to criticise (because it is way past our bedtime). These considerations may work as pragmatic limits to criticism, however they do not represent logical limits to criticism. And that is the point of critical rationalism, or Bartley’s twist on it.

I don’t know how much of Apel’s kind of talk that you can stand, but have a look and see what you think.

This book makes interesting reading in parallel with Popper’s introductory lectures on the philosophy of science. Jim Watson’s  book The Double Helix demonstrated how  Watson and his colleague Francis Crick engaged in Popperian “conjecture and refutation”;  here Crick did even better because he reflected on the way they worked and he especially explained the role of criticism.  For a more complete summary of the book, see here.

It is amusing to note that neither he nor Watson were officially working on DNA. Crick was writing a thesis on the X-ray diffraction of polypeptides and proteins (despite being 30 years old he had no doctorate due to the wartime disruption of his studies) and Watson went to Cambridge to help Kendrew crystallize a big protein (myoglobin).

“Jim and I hit it off immediately, partly because our interests were astonishingly similar and partly, I suspect, because a certain youthful arrogance, ruthlessness, and an impatience with sloppy thinking came naturally to both of us” (64).

They had no data of their own “Jim and I never did any experimental work on DNA, though we talked endlessly about the problem. Following Pauling’s example we believed that the way to solve the structure was to build models. The London workers [Wilkins and Franklin] followed a more painstaking approach.” (65)

There is an interesting account of the papers that they wrote, and the very cautious claims that they made about the helix in the first Nature paper in April 1953. Crick wanted to put the genetic implications up front but Watson was afraid that over-ambitious claims could rebound against them if they turned out to be wrong. “He suffered from periodic fears that the structure might be wrong and that he had made an ass of himself.” (66).

Crick devoted a few paragraphs to Rosalind Franklin, suggesting that there is no feminist issue, she had a different conception of research methods and was not prepared to think beyond the data in hand. Her personal disagreements with Wilkins were more of a problem; she was not interested in DNA (Willkins told her to work on it, and she thought he just wanted her to work as an assistant rather than as an independent researcher). She was about to leave the unit to work on Tobacco Mosaic virus with Bernal. She died five years later, long before the Nobel was awarded.

Some people, especially inductivists and feminists, think that Crick and Watson cheated by being so competitive and unconventional in what is often depicted as a race for the Nobel Prize. Crick’s defence was they were just in a hurry to get the truth, or at least to get a result and this was a matter of enthusiasm rather than competition (they were just trying to help, like good government workers).

“In our enthusiasm for the model-building approach we not only lectured Maurice Wilkins on how to go about it but even lent him our jigs for making the necessary parts of the model. In some ways I can see that we behaved insufferably (they never did use our jigs) but it was not all due to competitiveness. It was because we passionately wanted to know the details of the structure.”

He regarded that enthusiasm as a big plus in their favour, and he nominated a couple of others. They had no external pressure to make progress so they could attack the problem intensively for a while and then turn their minds to other things (so  they didn’t go stale or become frustrated by slow progress).

“Our other advantage was that we had evolved unstated but fruitful methods of collaboration, something that was lacking in the London group. If either of us suggested a new idea the other, while taking it seriously, would attempt to demolish it in a candid but non hostile manner. This turned out to be quite crucial. In solving scientific problems of this type, it is almost impossible to avoid falling into error. [as noted] Now, to obtain the correct solution of a [complex] problem usually requires a sequence of logical steps. If one of these is a mistake, the answer is often hidden, since the error usually puts one on completely the wrong track. It is therefore extremely important not to be trapped by one’s own mistakes.” (70) [my emphasis].

STANDARD CRITICISMS and ERRORS

1. The falsifiability criterion is about meaning.

2. “Falsification cannot be decisive”.

3. Failure to draw the distinction between falsifiability (a matter of logic and the form of     statements) and falsification (a practical matter).

4. “Scientists don’t practice falsification”.

5. “Falsificationism is refuted by the history of science”.

6. Popper was subjected to effective criticism by Lakatos/Kuhn/Feyerabend.

7. The failure of Popper’s theory of verisimilitude casts doubt on his whole program.

8. “There is no getting away from induction/justificationism”.

9. From Habermas: “Popperism is a form of positivism, it is analytical and provides no dialectic or effective theory of criticism”. In addition Popper’s dualism facts and values,  is/ought or propositions and proposals, provides no leverage for criticism of the status quo.

SHORT REPLY

Some of the above are really in the category of “schoolboy howlers” especially the first, and it is disconcerting to find them recycled by scholars of high repute, such as A C Grayling who wrote that statements falling foul of Popper’s demarcation are “vacuous”.

On 2 and 3, Popper pointed out that falsification cannot be decisive (p 49-50 of LSD) so it is hardly a criticism to raise this. Confusion on this point arises from (3), the failure to separate the logic of the situation from the practical problems and procedures of scientists at work. Quine endorsed the logic of the demarcation criterion (1974, x) and acceptance of this would have saved the positivists and logical empiricists from two or three decades of wasted effort on their verification criterion. Back in the real world, Popper made the turn to the critical appraisal of the conventions or “rules of the game” that are required to address the practical problems of testing theories.

4. “Scientists don’t practice falsification”, meaning they don’t want to subject their theories to criticism and tests. Some do and some do not. Those who do are likely to be more effective researchers than those who do not. Some people do not follow the advice of their doctor, their dentist or the instructions that come with their appliances. How smart is that? Scientists who do not criticize their own ideas will most likely find that other people will do so, hence the importance of the social aspect of science that Popper described in Chapter 23 of OSE (1945).

5. The idea that Popper’s ideas are refuted by the  history of science is based on the false assumption that Popper thought that a theory should be discarded at the first sign of adverse evidence.  Apparent refutations, negative evidence, “disconfirmations” signal that there is a problem. More work is required, maybe for years, decades or even centuries. Popper insisted that a new theory or research program takes time to demonstrate its fertility and a highly successful theory should only be supplanted by a better one.

6. As for the criticism from Lakatos, Kuhn and Feberaband: Lakatos invented “naïve falsificationism” to successfully confuse the issues. Kuhn at one point suggested that Popper should be criticized as a naïve falsificationist even though he was not a naïve falsificationist. When he retreated from his initial (and interesting) position to a more coherent (and less interesting) stance he conceded that Popper’s approach was correct at times of crisis, meaning a serious conflict between rival theories, which for Popper was practically all the time. Feyerabend abused Popper and his wife but in terms of substance he merely repeated Popper’s dictum that there is no such thing as “scientific method”.

7. Popper’s attempt to develop a formal measure of verisimilitude (truthlikeness) did not deliver and he gave it away as soon David Miller pointed out he error. This was one of Popper’s projects that did not work. Not for nothing was he a fallibilist!

8. There are four, or maybe five or six kinds of induction which permit writers like O’Hear to appeal to induction at every stage of the scientific enterprise. Popper’s target was the so-called logic of induction which is supposed to assign valid, meaningful or helpful numerical probabilities to explanatory general theories and his arguments on this topic have not been refuted. The last resort of inductivists (apart from the program of Bayesian subjectivism) is usually the claim that we need the “inductive” assumption that there are regularities or laws or propensities and patterns in nature. Popper pointed out (1935, 1959) that this is a metaphysical theory about the world and using the label “induction” is merely a verbal strategy to defend inductivism.

The claim by Habermas and others that Popper is just a slightly deviant positivist is not sustainable in view of the full extent of Popper’s “deviance” which can be explained by the four “turns” (conjectural, objective, social and metaphysical). As for Popper’s defence of the status quo, the distinction that he drew between factual propositions and social or moral proposals was explicitly designed to give reformers a lever to change the status quo.

Work is proceeding to document some of the extent of defective Popper sholarship. The outline can be found on this page that I have set up to avoid putting up monster posts on this site.

The idea is to produce a cheap ebook that will not have to go through the standard publishing process and will also circumvent the bookshops.

Companion volumes will provide equally cheap cribs or primers on the major works. Several of these are in draft form.

The Logic of Scientific Discovery, The Poverty of Historicism, The Open Society, Conjectures and Refutations, Objective Knowledge.

Criticism and comments can be put up here or sent off line to rchampATbigpondDOTnetDOYau

Ian Jarvie studied anthropology at the London School of  Economics, drifted into Popper’s orbit and became a research assistant. He has done good work in partnership with Joe Agassi and he is one of the Popperian quiet achievers like Peter Munz, producing a steady stream of  publications  to break new ground and demonstrate the fertility of  critical rationalism. He was also a prime  mover in the journal Philosophy of the Social Sciences, an excellent journal that functions as an open house that caters for all shades of well-argued opinion.His book Concepts and Society (1972) was an exciting application of Popper’s “hot off the press” ideas on world 3 objective knowledge.

His work on Popper’s  social turn calls for a radical re-reading of Popper, alonside the non-justificationist “Bartley and Miller” reading and the metaphysical turn prompted by Joe Agassi.

His website has some important unpublished papers including a tribute to Bill Bartley and a paper on the 20 or 30 problems in sociology and politics that Popper helpfully addressed in The Open Society and its Enemies (in your face to people who think Popper was only an eccentric positivist in the philosophy of science).

Alan Musgrave took a chair in New Zealand, repeating Popper’s journey to the end of the earth, though by choice (to take a Chair at a very young age) rather than necessity (to escape the Holocaust).

In an interview for the Australian journal Metascience he provided some very illuminating insights into the atmosphere at the London School of Economics in the prime of the (doomed) Popper and Lakatos partnership. And into the duties of Popper’s research assistants.

Popper was a workaholic, of course. Every day-except Tuesdays when he came to the LSE-he worked. He wrote long-hand in huge letters, casting pages to the floor. His wife picked them up, numbered.them, and typed them.

What did I do? I opened his voluminous mail and replied to most of it. I ferreted out stuff for him. Most important, I read his manuscripts and criticised them.

Was that at his request?

Of course. Mind you, it was hard going. My first encounter was typical. He had ‘written something and invited me to `correct’ it. He warned me that he was old and sick, so I should not be too hard on him. With the temerity of youth, I said that a comma was misplaced and that `As to X’ should be `As for Y. Out came the OED, Fowler, and a host of other sources.

An hour later I was stylistically vanquished. Those for whom English is a second language know and care more about it than the English. After a day of this, the `sick old man’ drove me to the station at 10 p.m., and I promptly fell asleep on the train, exhausted.

His works.

Alert observers may have noticed occasional references to the Austrian tourist-turned-Brit Karl Popper in my scribbling over the years, starting around 1972 when the story broke about Popper’s encounter with Bazza Mackenzie. That story never made the mainstream media. Like that story, his associates have mostly travelled under the radar. They deserve more recognition. No mafia don ever survived without loyal soldiers who were prepared to go on the matresses, or write a letter to The Times newspaper.

Barry Gower on Scientific Method.

The question that has to be asked about recent books on the philosophy of science is: Does this book explain the four “turns” that Karl Popper introduced? These are (1) the conjectural turn, to explain that even our best scientific theories may be false, (2) the objective turn to focus on scientific knowledge in its public or objective form, rather than subjective beliefs, (3) the social turn to be aware that the scientist works in a community and there is a need for conventions or “rules of the game” to maintain standards of criticism and best practice and (4) the rehabilitation of metaphysics, in defiance of the positivists and logical empiricists, in the form of “metaphysical research programs”.
This book does not score very well on that test however on the positive side the historical approach is very good, introducing concepts in relation to scientific episodes: Galileo on new methods for a new science, Francis Bacon on experiments, Newton on rules for reasoning, Herschel (the astronomer), Mill and Whewell on the use of hypotheses, Venn and Peirce on probabilities as frequencies, Keynes on probability logic, Reichenbach and Popper on induction.

Two  reviewed on Amazon.  Sosa and  Okasha.

And another, not listed on Amazon US

David E. Cooper, World Philosophies: An Historical Introduction. Blackwell, Oxford, 1996.  530 pp

This is a very ambitious book, large enough to provide potentially useful information about philosophies from India, China and Greece to modern times, including non-Western philosophies. The author noted that such a venture would be very rash without the assistance of critically-minded friends and he acknowledged several people who commented on individual chapters.

“My greatest debt, however, is to Robert L. Arrington and Anthony O’Hear,  both of whom…devoured ‘the whole damn thing’. In return, their comments, detailed and meticulous, have provided me with much food for thought, converted into revisions which have made the final product a good deal better than the original one.”

Anthony O’Hear is a serious Popper scholar and the author of one of the first books devoted to Popper’s work (1980), so any references to Popper in this book should be especially informative and accurate. In view of the “turns” that Popper introduced, the reader approaches the chapter on Twentieth-century Western Philosophies with great expectations. Continue reading →

Another very unsatisfactory introduction to the philosophy of science.

So far Popper’s critique of inductive logic has not been effectively answered, although some people like to use the term to apply to (1) the process of forming a hypothesis or (2) the expectation that the world behaves in regular or consistent way. Popper denied (1), insisting that there is no “logic” or algorithm for discovery, and he accepted (2) not as a form of induction but as a metaphysical theory about the nature of the universe (to behave in a consistent and regular manner, even if underlying regularities or patterns are hard to find).

A lot of space is devoted to Kuhn and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, “unquestionably the most influential work of philosophy of science in the last 50 years.” Okasha correctly pointed out that this created a huge stir at a time when the movement of logical empiricism was decaying. However this impact had nothing to do with the merits of Kuhn’s ideas because positivism and logical empiricism were intellectually dead in the water after Popper developed and published his ideas in the 1930s. Okasha wrote that the positivists paid little attention to the history of science but that did not apply to Popper who always urged the historical approach, for example in the Preface to the The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959).

“Why did Kuhn’s ideas cause such a storm?” One reason was the failure of positivism/empiricism to solve its problems: to find a theory of meaning that worked, and to make inductive logic credible. It was stale and boring. The thrill of its iconoclastic attack on all and any school of thought that did not use the correct scientific method was exhausted. Red-blooded students in the swinging sixties needed something more exciting and the concept of scientific revolutions was just the thing to capture the spirit of the age. In fact paradigm theory itself became boring when Kuhn recanted most of his early views.

There is some talk about Kuhn’s “highly controversial philosophical theses” like the turn to history (anticipated by Popper) his insistence on the “theory-dependence of facts” (also anticipated by Popper) and his focus on the social context of science. Actually Popper anticipated that as well, in chapter 23 of The Open Society and its Enemies (1945).

Popper refused to be drawn into the “logic” or methods of discovery, his focus was the logic of criticism and testing. The nearest that he came to advice on this topic was in the 1983 Preface to the first volume of The Postscript, Realism and the Aim of  Science where he suggested that you should fall in love with problems and pursue them relentlessly in an imaginative and critical manner.

Elsewhere he wrote that it helps to have a lot of ideas, but there is no way to guarantee that your ideas will be good ones, but the more ideas you have and the more critically you thinkg about them, the better. You need to think critically to minimise the time on research programs that have already been shown to lead nowhere. That is also why  he advocated the historical method, to understand the roots of problems and to know how other people have tried to solve them.

Others have have suggested that people need to find out how they think most effectively – by drinking a lot of coffee, or walking in the park between intensive periods of work in the study or the library for example.

So here are some off the cuff ideas developed party by reading around the topic and put into practice in a small way in the course of postgraduate work in a large, world-standard rural research facility in Adelaide a few decades ago. Incidentally, working under the supervision of Keith Barley, the man who lent me The Open Society and its Enemies when I annouced that I was leaving because my research interests had shifted from agriculture to the social sciences.

Be interested in a lot of things and especially the problematic aspects of those things where more work needs to be done.

Get a good working understanding of all the rival schools of thought in the discipline, not just the one where you were trained. It might not be the most robust and helpful school of thought and if you don’t check out the others (properly) you will never find that out.

Try to have personal contacts in those schools of thought, if possible people who are alert and interested enough to be in touch with developments before they are published (which can take years). Similarly have contacts in the different branches of your own field. This will only work if you can explain your interests in a way that makes contact with their interests. You should also be able to explain your interests in a way that makes sense to  your non-professional friends and your family and especially your mother in law (either Richard Hamming or a Nobel in economics said that about the mother in law). While you are doing that you will remember some important things that you had forgotten and you will find out that there are some things that don’t know and they are important as well.

Make personal contacts in other disciplines where your problems and interests lead. If you can’t find any work in other disciplines that is relevant to yours, you are not trying hard enough (mathematics does not count).

See Hamming, Mills and Koestler. Hamming and Mills are all a bit wordy, you can do a quick skim to find that you need.

Koestler was even more wordy and I dont recommend that you bother to chase up The Act of Creation which draws a very long bow about the springs on creativity through what he called the “bissociation of matrices”. He applied this to the Ah moment of mystical enlightenment, the Ah Ha moment of scientific creativity and the Ha Ha moment of making a joke. The creative bissociation occurs when a line of thought in one matrix (context) makes the right kind of contact with a line of thought in another matrix (context or discipline). Peter Medawar cast a very jaundiced eye over this book and triggered an exchange of letters with Koestler when he wrote a stinging review.

Whatever the merits of the theory, I read the book quite early in life, possibly during the honours year and it encouraged me to persist with a kind of “all over the place” approach, reading widely inside my (then) field of agriculture (specializing in soil science) and outside in literature, psychology, comparative religion, history, education etc.