Popper and After - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Popper and After is a book by David Charles Stove

David Stove

David Charles Stove , was an Australian philosopher of science.His work in philosophy of science included detailed criticisms of David Hume's inductive skepticism, as well as what he regarded as the irrationalism of his disciplinary contemporaries Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, and Paul...

first published by Pergamon Press

Pergamon Press

Pergamon Press was an Oxford-based publishing house, founded by Paul Rosbaud and Robert Maxwell, which published scientific and medical books and journals. It is now an imprint of Elsevier....

in 1982. It was subtitled Four Modern Irrationalists. Popper and After has since been reprinted as Anything Goes: Origins of the Cult of Scientific Irrationalism and Scientific Irrationalism: Origins of a Postmodern Cult .

Stove concisely explains both the aim of this book and its structure in the first part of a very short preface:

Preface
Part One Philosophy and the English language: How Irrationalism About Science is Made Credible
Chapter 1. Neutralizing Success-Words
Chapter 2. Sabotaging Logical Expressions

Part Two How Irrationalism About Science Began
Chapter 3. The Historical Source Located
Chapter 4. The Key Premise of Irrationalism Identified
Chapter 5. Further Evidence for this Identification
Notes
Bibliography

Neutralizing Success-Words

Stove starts chapter one by clarifying the sort of view that would uncontroversially constitute an irrationalist position regarding science.
Stove then advances his reading of the philosophers he is criticising: "Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, and Feyerabend, are all writers whose position inclines them to deny (A), or at least makes them more or less reluctant to admit it. (That the history of science is not "cumulative", is a point they all agree on)." Popper himself had given a 1963 summary of his thoughts the title "Conjectures and Refutations
Conjectures and Refutations
Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge is a book written by philosopher Karl Popper.Published in 1963 by Routledge, this book is a collection of his lectures and papers that summarised his thoughts on the philosophy of science...

: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge", seemingly endorsing (A) in almost identical language. Nonetheless, the question Stove addresses in the chapter is "How do these writers manage to be plausible, while being reluctant to admit so well-known a truth as (A)?"

A general answer to this question is offered: "the constant tendency in these authors to conflate questions of fact with questions of logical value, or the history with the philosophy of science." Stove claims this tendency is "widely recognized", but waives both this general answer (and its supporters) in favour of seeking a more specific account.

Stove's first step in refining the general answer is observing what he calls mixed strategy writing in the authors he is examining. He uses this expression, since it is not always clear to him whether the writing expresses "equivocation

Equivocation

Equivocation is classified as both a formal and informal logical fallacy. It is the misleading use of a term with more than one meaning or sense...

" or "inconsistency

Consistency

Consistency can refer to:* Consistency , the psychological need to be consistent with prior acts and statements* "Consistency", an 1887 speech by Mark Twain...

". What is common to the examples Stove offers is that something well-known is mixed with something extraordinary, without the clash being resolved; the "irrationalism" is introduced simultaneously with orthodoxy, rendering it more plausible to the reader—disbelief is suspended

Suspension of disbelief

Suspension of disbelief or "willing suspension of disbelief" is a formula for justifying the use of fantastic or non-realistic elements in literary works of fiction...

.
A straight-forward example is provided by Thomas Kuhn's description of "paradigm shift

Paradigm shift

A Paradigm shift is, according to Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , a change in the basic assumptions, or paradigms, within the ruling theory of science...

", where he asserts the well-known fact that the world is the same after "paradigm shift" as before.
Yet, at the same time, Kuhn also suggests that solutions to problems achieved under old paradigms are lost, redundant or "un-solutions" under new paradigms—denial of (A) above.

Examining Kuhn's use of the word solution more closely, Stove notes that Kuhn sometimes uses it in the ordinary way regarding practical knowledge, but at other times in a weaker sense, specific to Kuhn's theory, that a solution is relative to a paradigm, people, place and time. This equivocation on solution actually provides Stove with an answer of exactly the type he was looking for. All his authors, with many similar words, show similar equivocation. Stove lists knowledge, discovery, facts, verified, understanding, explanation and notes the list is far from complete. Idiosyncratic

Idiosyncrasy

An idiosyncrasy is an unusual feature of a person . The term is often used to express eccentricity or peculiarity. A synonym may be .-Etymology:...

weak senses of these words are a characteristic of the writing of his subjects that explains clearly how a reader, presuming ordinary use of language, might believe them to be expressing something more orthodox than is, in fact, their intention.

At this point, Stove coins the expression neutralizing success words and provides an uncontroversial example from everyday language to illustrate it.
Stove also provides a quote from Paul Feyerabend (1975:27) explicitly directing his readers to "neutralize" his success words or not, according to their own preferences.

Sabotaging Logical Expressions

Chapter two begins with the following, precisely worded definition of logical expression.
Stove notes that logical expressions can be sabotaged, just as success-words can be neutralized. He spends some time clarifying the relationship between these phenomena, since they are similar in intention but not, in fact, identical. Rather, they work together in the following way.
He also articulates the distinction in an informal (and wittily expressed) way, that sabotaging logical expressions is like derailing cognitive achievement en route, so that it can never arrive anywhere; while neutralizing success-words is more like blowing up any cognitive achievement at the destination, so it can never be recognized as having arrived.

Stove now presents a common method of sabotaging logical expressions in a generalizable form.

This simple pattern of expression makes historical rather than logical assertions (like an encyclopedia documenting debate, without making any truth-claims about what is said, only that it was said, see de dicto and de re

De dicto and de re

De dicto and de re are two phrases used to mark important distinctions in intensional statements, associated with the intensional operators in many such statements. The distinctions are most recognized in philosophy of language and metaphysics....

Example:

Eeyore
Eeyore
Eeyore is a character in the Winnie-the-Pooh books by A. A. Milne. He is generally characterized as a pessimistic, gloomy, depressed, anhedonic, old grey stuffed donkey who is a friend of the title character, Winnie-the-Pooh....

: Kanga told me Winnie-the-Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear, is a fictional anthropomorphic bear created by A. A. Milne. The first collection of stories about the character was the book Winnie-the-Pooh , and this was followed by The House at Pooh Corner...

said, "Pigs can fly."
Piglet
Piglet (Winnie the Pooh)
Piglet is a fictional character from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh books. Piglet is Winnie-the-Pooh's closest friend amongst all the toys/animals featured in the stories...

: Well, do you believe it?
Eeyore: Yes I do, that's exactly the kind of thing Pooh would say. [de dicto] OR
Eeyore: I don't know, you tell me, you're a pig. [de re]

Knowledge about what people say is different to knowledge about the matters they discuss. Stove accuses his subjects of making statements about scientific discourse, when their readers expect statements about the science itself.

The historical source located

Stove notes that in part one he has only demonstrated how an irrational position might be expressed, in such a way as it had some appearance of credibility, not that such a position is actually held by the subjects of his study. He now turns to establishing this second point. The philosophers he is criticising not only use language in unusual ways, but do indeed also make plain language assertions of an irrationalist nature. Stove presents examples of what he believes are the clearest statements of irrationalism in their writing. Ultimately he considers providing examples from Karl Popper suffices. He presents the quotes and paraphrases apparently in ascending order of irrationality.

"There are no such things as good positive reasons."
"Positive reasons are neither necessary nor possible."
A scientific theory is, not only never certain, but never even probable, in relation to the evidence for it.
A scientific theory cannot be more probable, in relation to the empirical evidence for it, than it is a priori, or in the absence of all empirical evidence.
The truth of any scientific theory or law-statement is exactly as improbable, both a priori and in relation to any possible evidence, as the truth of a self-contradictory proposition.
"Belief, of course, is never rational: it is rational to suspend belief."

Stove seems to restrain his witticisms in the course of presenting the evidence above. However, as he presents the last quote, he appears to experience his astonishment at such a statement as though again for the first time, expressing this via his characteristically barbed wit. Not only could Popper bring himself to make the last assertion, he is sufficiently comfortable with it to supply of course. Not only does Popper consider belief to be irrational, he considers this to be common knowledge!

Returning to serious analysis, Stove next presents Popper's own explicit endorsement of David Hume

David Hume

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...

's scepticism regarding induction

Inductive reasoning

Inductive reasoning, also known as induction or inductive logic, is a kind of reasoning that constructs or evaluates propositions that are abstractions of observations. It is commonly construed as a form of reasoning that makes generalizations based on individual instances...

"I agree with Hume's opinion that induction is invalid and in no sense justified."
"Are we rationally justified in reasoning from repeated instances of which we have experience to instances of which we have had no experience? Hume's unrelenting answer is: No, we are not justified. ... My own view is that Hume's answer to this problem is right."

This explains where many of Popper's ideas have come from—he shares Hume's scepticism about induction.

Stove considers this establishes what he set out to show in the chapter since, "Popper's philosophy of science is at any rate not more irrationalist than that of Feyerabend, Kuhn, or Lakatos, and at the same time, as a matter of well-known history, Popper's philosophy owes nothing to theirs, while Kuhn's philosophy owes much, and the philosophy of Lakatos and Feyerabend owes nearly everything, to Popper."

However, he explains that establishing both that these writers are irrationalists, and where their irrationalism comes from historically, still leaves the question of what it is they believe that leads them to accept this irrationalist conclusion. What implicit premise

Premise

Premise can refer to:* Premise, a claim that is a reason for, or an objection against, some other claim as part of an argument...

grounds their confidence in such an otherwise unattractive conclusion?

The key premise of irrationalism identified

In chapter four, Stove presents Hume's argument for scepticism about the unobserved (A in diagram and table below), quoting from three primary sources — A Treatise of Human Nature
A Treatise of Human Nature
A Treatise of Human Nature is a book by Scottish philosopher David Hume, first published in 1739–1740.The full title of the Treatise is 'A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects'. It contains the following sections:* Book 1:...

, An Abstract [of A Treatise of Human Nature] and An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding is a book by the Scottish empiricist philosopher David Hume, published in 1748. It was a revision of an earlier effort, Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, published anonymously in London in 1739–40...

. He supports his reading by quotes from the secondary literature, where his interpretation of Hume might otherwise be challenged. He concludes that deductivism

Hypothetico-deductive model

The hypothetico-deductive model or method, first so-named by William Whewell, is a proposed description of scientific method. According to it, scientific inquiry proceeds by formulating a hypothesis in a form that could conceivably be falsified by a test on observable data...

(O in diagram and table below) is the "key premise of irrationalism". In Stove's words, "Nothing fatal to empiricist philosophy of science ... follows from the admission that arguments from the observed to the unobserved are not the best; unless this assumption was combined, as it was with Hume, with the fatal assumption that only the best will do [emphasis original]." He concludes the chapter with the following diagram and table.

David Hume's scepticism *per* David Stove
E}
H}	E}					F}		→	M+}
J}	→	→	→	I}	F}	→	N}	O}		→	C}

||→||M}||colspan="7" align="right"|}||→||A||
|-
|H}||→||L||→||K}||colspan="6" align="right"|D}||colspan="2" align="right"|}||
|-
|G}||colspan="10" align="right"|E}||→||B}||
|-
|colspan="11" align="right"|F}||
|-
|}

A	Scepticism about the unobserved	There is no reason to believe any contingent Modal logic Modal logic is a type of formal logic that extends classical propositional and predicate logic to include operators expressing modality. Modals — words that express modalities — qualify a statement. For example, the statement "John is happy" might be qualified by saying that John is... proposition Proposition In logic and philosophy, the term proposition refers to either the "content" or "meaning" of a meaningful declarative sentence or the pattern of symbols, marks, or sounds that make up a meaningful declarative sentence... about the unobserved.
B	Empiricism Empiricism Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...	Any reason to believe a contingent proposition about the unobserved is a proposition about the observed.
C	Inductive Scepticism	No proposition about the observed is a reason to believe a contingent proposition about the observed.
D	Impotence of the a priori A priori and a posteriori (philosophy) The terms a priori and a posteriori are used in philosophy to distinguish two types of knowledge, justifications or arguments...	No necessary truth is a reason to believe any contingent proposition.
E	Accessibles necessary or observational	A proposition is directly accessible to knowledge or reasonable belief if and only if it is either a necessary truth or a proposition about the observed.
F	Reasons must be accessible	If P is a reason or part of a reason to believe Q then P is directly accessible to knowledge or reasonable belief.
G	Induction is invalid without Resemblance	Any inductive argument is invalid Validity In logic, argument is valid if and only if its conclusion is entailed by its premises, a formula is valid if and only if it is true under every interpretation, and an argument form is valid if and only if every argument of that logical form is valid.... , and the validator of it is a Resemblance Thesis.
H	Resemblance is a contingent feature of the Universe	A Resemblance Thesis is a contingent proposition about the unobserved.
I	Resemblance is not provable a priori	A Resemblance Thesis is not deducible from necessary truths.
J	No contingents provable a priori	No contingent proposition is deducible from necessary truths.
K	Resemblance is not provable a posteriori	A Resemblance Thesis is not deducible from propositions about the observed.
L	Induction to Resemblance is circular if valid	A Resemblance Thesis is deducible from propositions about the observed only when to the latter is conjoined a Resemblance Thesis.
M	The validator of induction not necessary or observational	Any inductive argument is invalid, and the validator of it is neither a necessary truth nor a proposition about the observed.
M+	No validator of induction is necessary or observational	Any inductive argument is invalid, and any validator of it is neither a necessary truth nor a proposition about the observed.
N	Invalidity of induction incurable	Any inductive argument is invalid, and any validator of it is not a reason or part of a reason to believe its conclusion.
O	Deductivism	P is a reason to believe Q only if the argument from P to Q is valid, or there is a validator of it which is either a necessary truth or a proposition about the observed.

Further evidence for this identification

Having established that it is specifically deductivism that characterises his subjects, and leads them first to scepticism regarding induction and then to scepticism about any scientific theory, Stove now observes that deductivism is a thesis that of itself would incline a proponent towards language like that discussed in part one of Popper and After.
Stove provides examples and further evidence before finally turning to a brief, common-sense defense of scientific reasoning.

Stove modifies this argument to suit induction and concludes the book with some strong words regarding the climate of discourse in the philosophy of science current at the time of publication.

Reviews

(Also published as Foreword to Anything Goes.)

External links

Relevant entries in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a freely-accessible online encyclopedia of philosophy maintained by Stanford University. Each entry is written and maintained by an expert in the field, including professors from over 65 academic institutions worldwide...

:

Bird, Alexander. "Thomas Kuhn". August 2004.
Morris, William Edward. "David Hume". July 2007.
Preston, John. "Paul Feyerabend". February 2007.
Thornton, Stephen. "Karl Popper". October 2006.

Contents