The Realism of Popper and Russell

JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY AND DEVELOPMENT, 2017

This paper extracts from Popper's assertion that he had turned his back on induction. Popper believed he had 'solved' the 'problem of induction' by providing a noninductive account of corroboration. Popper used the term 'corroboration' rather than 'confirmation' since he believed that the latter term is too closely allied to the notion of the inductive or probabilistic support that a theory can receive from evidence. However, Popper admitted to a “whiff of inductivism” in his later years with the assumption that science can progress towards greater verisimilitude. In spite of David Miller's restatement and defence of Popper's critical rationalism and Miller's repudiation both of ampliative inferences and all conceptions of confirming evidence, the “whiff of inductivism in Popper's science still stands. This paper acknowledges this unavoidable “whiff” of inductivism in Popper's hypotheticodeductive corroboration. By using Clark Glymour's bootstrap inferences to represent very severe testing of a theory, I aim to make clear that through some richer methodological processes we can further support Popper's idea of severity of testing inductively as well as show that the testing of hypotheses and the legitimate processes of scientific inquiry can be conducted through a plurality of methods.

dialectica, 1980

Popper against inductivism * by Daniel ROTHBART ** Summary After presumably cleaning science of induction, Karl Popper claims to offer a purely noninductivist theory of science. In critically evaluating this theory, I focus on the allegedly noninductive character of this theory. First, I defend and expand Wesley Salmon's charge that Popper's dismissal of induction renders science useless for practical purposes. Without induction practitioners have no grounds for believing that the predicted event will actually take place. Second, despite Popper's demands to the contrary, his theory of science is shown to rest on induction. In particular, the function he attributes to background knowledge in testing a scientific hypothesis requires induction. Zusammenfassung Nachdem er die Wissenschaft von der Induktion gereinigt hat, behauptet Popper eine rein nichtinduktivistische Wissenschaftstheorie vorzulegen. Indem ich diese Theorie kritisch untersuche, richte ich meine Aufmerksamkeit vor allem auf ihren angeblich nichtinduktiven Charakter. Zunachst vertrete und erweitere ich W. Salmons Auffassung, wonach Poppers Verwerfung der Induktion Wissenschaft fur praktische Zwecke unbrauchbar macht. Denn ohne Induktion hat man keine Grunde fur die Annahme, dass ein vorausgesagtes Ereignis eintreten wird. Des weiteren wird gezeigt, dass Poppers Theorie trotz gegenteiliger Behauptungen selbst auf Induktion beruht. Im besondern setzt die Funktion, die er dem Hintergrundwissen fur die Bewahrung einer Hypothese zuspricht, Induktion voraus. Rksumk Popper pritend avoir lib&& la science de I'induction et offrir une thCorie strictement non inductiviste de la science. Evaluant de faGon critique cette thkorie, I'auteur se concentre sur son caractbre soi-disant non inductif. D'abord, il reprend et dkveloppe I'accusation de Wesley Salmon selon laquelle la renonciation poppkrienne B I'induction rend la science inutilisable dans des buts pratiques. Sans induction, les praticiens n'ont aucune raison de croire que l'kvknement prCdit va effectivement se produire. I1 montre d'autre part que, en dipit des dtnCgations de Popper, sa thCorie de la scienceet en particulier Ie r6le qu'elle attribue B un arrisre-plan de savoir dans I'Cpreuve d'une hypotheserepose sur l'induction.

Karl Popper: Critical Appraisals

Lettera Matematica International Edition, 2014

A scientific theory must be falsifiable, and scientific knowledge is always tentative, or conjectural. These are the main ideas of Popper’s Logic of Scientific Discovery. Since 1960 his writings contain some essential developments of these views and make some steps towards epistemological optimism. Although we cannot justify any claim that a scientific theory is true, the aim of science is the search of truth and we have no reason to be sceptical about the notion of getting nearer to the truth. Our knowledge can grow, and science can progress. Nevertheless, Popper’s theory of approximation to the truth is problematic and is still the subject of studies and discussions.

1972

This paper considers objections to Popper's views on scientific method. It is argued that criticism of Popper's views, developed by Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Lakatos, are not too damaging, although they do require that Popper's views be modified some¬what. It is argued that a much more serious criticism is that Popper has failed to provide us with any reason for holding that the methodological rules he advocates give us a better hope of realizing the aims of science than any other set of rules. Con¬sequently, Popper cannot adequately explain why we should value scientific theories more than other sorts of theories ; which in turn means that Popper fails to solve adequately his fundamental problem, namely the problem of demarcation. It is sug¬gested that in order to get around this difficulty we need to take the search for explana¬tions as a fundamental aim of science.

Philosophy Research Archives, 1976

E-3 'ordinary-language analysis*. Popper argues against such methods in the English-edition preface to The Logic of Scientific Piscovery.-3 To be fair, he is here explicit in his expressed conc e m not to exclude any method philosophers may find helpful in handling their problems. But he does argue that ordinarylanguage analysis investigates common-sense knowledge. If our interest is in such problems as the growth of knowledge, he suggests, our concern should more properly be a study of the sophisticated form of knowledge of the sciences. The im plication that common-sense knowledge is relatively stagnantthat it would tend, much more so than scientific knowledge, to be seen as the final word-would in Popper's view Incline a study of it toward essentialism, i.e. the doctrine that it is possible to arrive at final explanations. I have little doubt that Popper would in general regard conceptual analysis and its cognate methods as forms of essentialism, and therefore to be avoided. He has emphasized that ordinary language is full of theories.** But when these theories are treated as concepts to be analyzed, he would argue, essentialism is the almost inescapable result. Being in this way at the same time attracted and repelled, I attempted to shift the conflict onto Popper, i.e. to see these opposing tendencies as a reflection of a confusion in Popper's position. This paper is the result of that attempt. It is thus a form of internal criticism, within the bounds set by Popper's thought itself. What is the confusion? It is, broadly speaking, that Popper has a well developed set of assumptions concerning the nature of human agents, when his general methodological approach is that no assumptions with the a priori status he grants these should be allowed. These assumptions are contained in his 3 The Logic of Scientific Discovery (New Yorks Harper, 1968), pp. 15-23. Il e.g. Conjectures and Refutations, p. 130. 486

Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 2003

Most philosophers of science maintain Confirmationism's central tenet, namely, that scientific theories are probabilistically confirmed by experimental successes. Against this dominant (and old) conception of experimental science, Popper's well-known, anti-inductivistic Falsificationism ('Deductivism') has stood, virtually alone, since 1934. Indeed, it is Popper who tells us that it was he who killed Logical Positivism. It is also pretty well-known that Popper blames Wittgenstein for much that is wrong with Logical Positivism, just as he despises Wittgenstein and Wittgensteinian philosophers for abdicating philosophy's true mission. What is not well-known, however, especially because Popper neglected to tell us in 1934, is that Wittgenstein is very much an ally. It was Wittgenstein who rejected induction in the strongest possible terms as early as 1922, and it was Wittgenstein who similarly rejected Confirmationism approximately four years prior to Popper. The aims of this paper are to illuminate the substantial agreements between Popper and Wittgenstein and, by doing so, to clarify their important disagreement regarding the status of "strictly universal," scientific theories (or hypotheses).

The very title of my paper may cause many eyebrows to be raised. For anyone who is familiar with Popper's philosophy of science knows well that he distinguished clearly between two types of historical processes, namely, the process of conceiving a new scientific theory or idea and the methods of examining it logically, and asserted that the task of the philosophers is not to ponder on these actual thinking processes whereby a new scientific theory comes into being. The logical analysis of scientific knowledge, instead, is restricted to an examination of contents of linguistically formulated scientific theories and of the post-generational evaluative procedures of scientists. One might naturally ask what then the point behind an inquiry like this is since Popper himself was mainly concerned with post-generational justification and bequeathed the detailed study of theory creation to the psychologists and the historians. There are two principal reasons which motivated this examination. Firstly, what is generally found as the Popperian notion of creativity and scientific discovery in the literature of philosophy of science is reasonably different from what closer readings of his earlier and later works reveal. Secondly, an analysis like this can illuminate problems of theory change and scientific progress, which undoubtedly are important to philosophy of science in general and Popper in particular. This implies a crucial point, namely, that progress of scientific knowledge, contrary to what philosophers of science generally used to believe, is not the subject matter of a single discipline. In this paper I attempt to make apparent the shortcomings that the disciplinary splitting of the topic of advancement of knowledge (in science) entails.

2013

Abstract: The very title of my paper may cause many eyebrows to be raised. For anyone who is familiar with Popper’s philosophy of science knows well that he distinguished clearly between two types of historical processes, namely, the process of conceiving a new scientific theory or idea and the methods of examining it logically, and asserted that the task of the philosophers is not to ponder on these actual thinking processes whereby a new scientific theory comes into being. The logical analysis of scientific knowledge, instead, is restricted to an examination of contents of linguistically formulated scientific theories and of the post-generational evaluative procedures of scientists. One might naturally ask what then the point behind an inquiry like this is since Popper himself was mainly concerned with post-generational justification and bequeathed the detailed study of theory creation to the psychologists and the historians. There are two principal reasons which motivated this ex...