display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
19 ideas
| 22188 | Give Nobel Prizes for really good refutations? [Gorham on Popper] |
| Full Idea: Popper implies that we should be giving Nobel Prizes to scientists who use severe tests to show us what the world is not like! | |
| From: comment on Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1934]) by Geoffrey Gorham - Philosophy of Science 2 | |
| A reaction: A lovely simple point. The refuters are important members of the scientific team, but not the leaders. |
| 18284 | Particulars can be verified or falsified, but general statements can only be falsified (conclusively) [Popper] |
| Full Idea: Whereas particular reality statements are in principle completely verifiable or falsifiable, things are different for general reality statements: they can indeed be conclusively falsified, they can acquire a negative truth value, but not a positive one. | |
| From: Karl Popper (Two Problems of Epistemology [1932], p.256), quoted by J. Alberto Coffa - The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap 18 'Laws' | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a logician's approach to science, but I prefer to look at coherence, where very little is actually conclusive, and one tinkers with the theory instead. |
| 7780 | Falsification is the criterion of demarcation between science and non-science [Popper, by Magee] |
| Full Idea: According to Popper, falsification is the criterion of demarcation between science and non-science. | |
| From: report of Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1934]) by Bryan Magee - Popper Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: If I propose something which might be falsified in a hundred years, is it science NOW? Suppose my theory appeared to be falsifiable, but (after much effort) it turned out not to be? Suppose I just see a pattern (like quark theory) in a set of facts? |
| 16830 | We don't only reject hypotheses because we have falsified them [Lipton on Popper] |
| Full Idea: Popper's mistake is to hold that disconfirmation and elimination work exclusively through refutation. | |
| From: comment on Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1934]) by Peter Lipton - Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) 05 'Explanation' | |
| A reaction: The point is that we reject hypotheses even if they have not actually been refuted, on the grounds that they don't give a good explanation. I agree entirely with Lipton. |
| 6794 | If falsification requires logical inconsistency, then probabilistic statements can't be falsified [Bird on Popper] |
| Full Idea: In Popper's sense of the word 'falsify', whereby an observation statement falsifies a hypothesis only by being logically inconsistent with it, nothing can ever falsify a probabilistic or statistical hypothesis, which is therefore unscientific. | |
| From: comment on Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1934]) by Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: In general, no prediction can be falsified until the events occur. This seems to be Aristotle's 'sea fight' problem (Idea 1703). |
| 6795 | When Popper gets in difficulties, he quietly uses induction to help out [Bird on Popper] |
| Full Idea: It is a feature of Popper's philosophy that when the going gets tough, induction is quietly called upon to help out. | |
| From: comment on Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1934]) by Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: This appears to be the central reason for the decline in Popper's reputation as the saviour of science. It would certainly seem absurd to say that you know nothing when you have lots of verification but not a glimmer of falsification. |
| 3856 | Good theories have empirical content, explain a lot, and are not falsified [Popper, by Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: Popper's principles are roughly that one theory is superior to another if it has greater empirical content, if it can account for the successes of the first theory, and if it has not been falsified (unlike the first theory). | |
| From: report of Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1934]) by W.H. Newton-Smith - The Rationality of Science I.6 |
| 7446 | The idea of inductive evidence, around 1660, made Hume's problem possible [Hume, by Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Hume's sceptical problem of induction could not have arisen much before 1660, for there was no concept of inductive evidence in terms of which to raise it. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739]) by Ian Hacking - The Emergence of Probability Cont 19 | |
| A reaction: Hacking is the expert, but Ideas 1683 and 1886 suggest there was some thinking on the problem in the ancient world. The worry about whether the future would be like the past must occasionally have bothered someone. |
| 2198 | We assume similar secret powers behind similar experiences, such as the nourishment of bread [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We always presume, when we see like sensible qualities, that they have like secret powers, and expect that effects, similar to those which we have experienced, will follow from them. …Thus, we expect bread to nourish us, from previous experience. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.29) |
| 2204 | All inferences from experience are effects of custom, not reasoning [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All inferences from experience are effects of custom, not reasoning. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.I.36) |
| 2201 | Induction can't prove that the future will be like the past, since induction assumes this [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible that any arguments from experience can prove the resemblance of the past to the future, since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of this resemblance. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.32) |
| 2203 | If we infer causes from repetition, this explains why we infer from a thousand objects what we couldn't infer from one [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If after the constant conjunction of two objects (e.g. heat and flame) we are determined by custom alone to expect the one from the appearance of the other,this explains why we can draw an inference from a thousand objects which we couldn't draw from one. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.I.36) | |
| A reaction: This is Hume's best statement of the problem of the difficulty of demonstration the logic of induction. |
| 2199 | Reason cannot show why reliable past experience should extend to future times and remote places [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The main question on which I would insist is why reliable past experience should be extended to future times, and to other objects, which for ought we know, may be only in appearance similar. …No reasoning can show this. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.30) |
| 2202 | Fools, children and animals all learn from experience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is certain that the most ignorant and stupid peasants - nay infants, nay even brute beasts - improve by experience. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.33) |
| 7779 | There is no such thing as induction [Popper, by Magee] |
| Full Idea: According to Popper, induction is a dispensable concept, a myth. It does not exist. There is no such thing. | |
| From: report of Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1934]) by Bryan Magee - Popper Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This is a nice bold summary of the Popper view - that falsification is the underlying rational activity which we mistakenly think is verification by repeated observations. Put like this, Popper seems to be wrong. We obviously learn from experiences. |
| 6350 | Premises can support an argument without entailing it [Pollock/Cruz on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Contrary to what Hume supposed, it must be possible for the premises of an argument to support a conclusion without logically entailing it. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by J Pollock / J Cruz - Contemporary theories of Knowledge (2nd) §1.2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to me an extremely important point, made with nice clarity. It is why people who are good at logic are not necessarily good at philosophy. The latter is about thinking rationally, not following the laws of deduction. |
| 3598 | Hume just shows induction isn't deduction [Williams,M on Hume] |
| Full Idea: All that Hume has really shown with his argument is that induction is not deduction. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.29) by Michael Williams - Problems of Knowledge Ch.18 |
| 3860 | Science cannot be shown to be rational if induction is rejected [Newton-Smith on Popper] |
| Full Idea: If Popper follows Hume in abandoning induction, there is no way in which he can justify the claims that there is growth of scientific knowledge and that science is a rational activity. | |
| From: comment on Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1934]) by W.H. Newton-Smith - The Rationality of Science III.3 |
| 12176 | Science does not aim at ultimate explanations [Popper] |
| Full Idea: I contest the essentialist doctrine that science aims at ultimate explanations, one which cannot be further explained, and which is in no need of any further explanation. | |
| From: Karl Popper (Conjectures and Refutations [1963], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: If explanations are causal, this seems to a plea for an infinite regress of causes, which is an odd thing to espouse. Are the explanations verbal descriptions or things in the world. There can be no perfect descriptions, but there may be ultimate things. |