46 ideas
| 22358 | Scientific objectivity lies in inter-subjective testing [Popper] |
| Full Idea: The objectivity of scientific statements lies in the fact that they can be inter-subjectively tested. | |
| From: Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1934], p.22), quoted by Reiss,J/Spreger,J - Scientific Objectivity 2.4 | |
| A reaction: Does this mean that objectivity is the same as consensus? A bunch of subjective prejudiced fools can reach a consensus. And in the middle of that bunch there can be one person who is objecfive. Sounds wrong. |
| 20320 | Truth is what unites, and the profound truths create a community [Jaspers] |
| Full Idea: Truth is what unites. ...[p.145] The most profound truth is that which all men might understand so as to form one community. | |
| From: Karl Jaspers (Philosophy [1932], vol.2) | |
| A reaction: Nice slogan, for robust realists like me. The hallmark of truth is our convergence on it. This is a 20th century existentialist perfectly expounding the enlightenment dream. The best rhetoric is truthful rhetoric. |
| 11946 | Propensities are part of a situation, not part of the objects [Popper] |
| Full Idea: Propensities should not be regarded as inherent in an object, such as a die or a penny, but should be regarded as inherent in a situation (of which, of course, the object was part). | |
| From: Karl Popper (A World of Propensities [1993], p.14), quoted by George Molnar - Powers 6.2 | |
| A reaction: Molnar argues against this claim, and I agree with him. We can see why Popper might prefer this relational view, given that powers often only become apparent in unusual relational situations. |
| 12177 | Human artefacts may have essences, in their purposes [Popper] |
| Full Idea: One might adopt the view that certain things of our own making, such as clocks, may well be said to have 'essences', viz. their 'purposes', and what makes them serve these purposes. | |
| From: Karl Popper (Conjectures and Refutations [1963], 3.3 n17) | |
| A reaction: This is from one of the arch-opponents of essentialism. Could we take him on a slippery slope into essences for evolved creatures, or their organs? His argument says admitting an essence for a clock prevents using it for another purpose. |
| 5451 | Popper felt that ancient essentialism was a bar to progress [Popper, by Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Karl Popper vehemently rejected the essentialism which underpins Plato and Aristotle, taking it to be a major obstacle to political, moral and scientific progress. | |
| From: report of Karl Popper (Open Society and Its Enemies:Hegel and Marx [1945]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.179 | |
| A reaction: This makes Popper sound like an existentialist, which seems unlikely. Modern essentialism would say the opposite about science - that hunting for external imposed laws is a red herring, and we should try to understand essences. |
| 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 |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 20323 | Freedom needs knowledge, the possibility of arbitrariness, and law [Jaspers] |
| Full Idea: Without knowledge there is no freedom ....and without an arbitrary act there is no freedom, ....and there is no freedom without law. | |
| From: Karl Jaspers (Philosophy [1932], vol.2) | |
| A reaction: He emphasises that an arbitrary act is not a free act, but it is a precondition for being free. The submission to law is active freedom. If you believe in education (and you should) you must believe that knowledge is liberating. |
| 20322 | I am aware that freedom is possible, and the freedom is not in theory, but in seeking freedom [Jaspers] |
| Full Idea: Either there is no freedom or it is in asking about it. But what makes me ask is an original will to be free, so my freedom is anticipated in the fact of asking. I cannot prove it first, then will it. I will it because I am conscious of its possibility. | |
| From: Karl Jaspers (Philosophy [1932], vol.2) | |
| A reaction: This presents the subjective claims for free will rather more persuasively than usual. I am conscious of a possibility that I might flap my arms and fly, so that doesn't establish anything. But yearning to be free is a sort of freedom. |
| 20324 | My freedom increases as I broaden my vision of possiblities and motives [Jaspers] |
| Full Idea: I become free by incessantly broadening my worldly orientation, by limitlessly visualising premises and possibilities of action, and by allowing all motives to speak to me. ...The more the totality determines my vision the freer I know I am. | |
| From: Karl Jaspers (Philosophy [1932], vol.2) | |
| A reaction: This matches my naturalistic view of responsibility for actions, which are those performed by the 'full' and knowing self. I note that freedom comes in degrees for him, so he presumably don't believe in absolute freedom. It is wholly subjective. |
| 20318 | My helplessness in philosophising reveals my being, and begins its upsurge [Jaspers] |
| Full Idea: Philosophising, not knowing, brings me to myself. The helplessness to which philosophising reduces me when I doubt its origin is an expressions of the helplessness of my self-being, and the reality of philosophising is the incipient upsurge of that being. | |
| From: Karl Jaspers (Philosophy [1932], vol.2) | |
| A reaction: I like the sound of 'philosophy as a way of life', and loosely aspire to it, but I'm still not sure what it means, other than a good way to pass the time. The idea that it leads to higher modes of being sounds a bit arrogant. But it is a good thing! |
| 20321 | The struggle for Existenz is between people who are equals, and are utterly honest [Jaspers] |
| Full Idea: The struggle for Existenz has to do with ...with utter candour, with the elimination of all kinds of power and superiority, with the other's self-being as well as with my own. | |
| From: Karl Jaspers (Philosophy [1932], vol.2) | |
| A reaction: This is reminiscent of Aristotle's conclusion that democracy is the society which is most conducive to true friendship. I like Jaspers's idea that existential enquiry is a team game. |
| 20325 | Once we grasp freedom 'from' things, then freedom 'for' things becomes urgent [Jaspers] |
| Full Idea: Once the question of 'freedom from what?' has been answered by shattering all objectivities, the question of 'freedom for what?' becomes all the more urgent. | |
| From: Karl Jaspers (Philosophy [1932], vol.2) | |
| A reaction: A quintessential existentialist idea, and its most appealing aspect. Message to all teenagers: don't get bogged down in what you are prevented from doing, but focus on what you can do. The first problem will melt away. (Unless you are in handcuffs....). |
| 20317 | Mundane existence is general, falling under universals, but Existens is unique to individuals [Jaspers] |
| Full Idea: Mundane being, the being we know, is general because it is generally valid for everyone. ...Existenz is never general, and thus not a case that might be subsumed as particular under a universal. | |
| From: Karl Jaspers (Philosophy [1932], vol.2) | |
| A reaction: I'm trying to visualise a mode of existence which would fulfil only me, answering to my unique nature, but it looks like a vain delusion. I may be a one-off combination, but I see all of my ingredients in various other people. |
| 20319 | We want the correct grasp on being that is neither solipsism nor absorption in the crowd [Jaspers] |
| Full Idea: We want our philosophising to illuminate the free, original, communicative grasp on being that will let us meet the constant threat of solipsism or universalism in existence. | |
| From: Karl Jaspers (Philosophy [1932], vol.2) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like the political wing of existentialism: the aim to get the right relationship between citizens - not too withdrawn, and not swallowed in the crowd. Liberal democracy, I should think. |
| 20315 | 'Existenz' is the potential being, which I could have, and ought to have [Jaspers] |
| Full Idea: There is the being which in the phenomenality of existence is not but can be, ought to be, and therefore decides in time whether it is in eternity. This being is myself as 'Existenz'. | |
| From: Karl Jaspers (Philosophy [1932], vol.2) | |
| A reaction: This is quintessentially existentialist, in its claim that my mode of being could be quite other than it is. Personally I aim to fulfil the being I've got. Play the cards you have been dealt. |
| 20316 | Every decision I make moves towards or away from fulfilled Existenz [Jaspers] |
| Full Idea: My Existenz, as a possibility, takes a step toward being or away from being, toward nothingness, in every choice or decision I make. | |
| From: Karl Jaspers (Philosophy [1932], vol.2) | |
| A reaction: The existential idea of action involves what you are, as well as what you do. There seems to be a paradox. My being is plastic, and can change enormously, so I should take responsibility for the change. But who is in charge of the changes? |
| 23125 | Most good social changes are incremental, rather than revolutionary [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: More permanent positive social change is made incrementally rather than by revolutionary transformation. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard liberal response to revolution. Revolutionaries obviously consider such a claim to be very naïve, and a failure to grasp how deep the changes need to go. |
| 23126 | Conservatives often want peace, prosperity and tolerance, but not social fairness [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Many conservatives want their world to be peaceful, properous, and pluralist, just as liberals do, but they don't particularly care that it be fair. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: Every conservative will have a sense of what is fair (such as appropriate punishments, and keeping of contracts), but they are more inclined to think that fairness must be fought for by individuals, not imposed by governments. |
| 23132 | Conservatives believe obedience and rank are essential to social order [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The idea that the appearance of submission and obedience and rank are essential to order is at the heart of the conservative ideal. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: [He has just quoted Edmund Burke writing of Marie Antoinette] I once heard Richard Hare say that he thought social order would be best modelled on the army. A colleague once told me that obedience is a prime duty of a school teacher. |
| 23128 | The opposite of liberalism is dogmatism [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The opposite of liberalism is not conservatism but dogmatism. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: Nice. It pinpoints the liberal opposition to both extremes of normal politics. It might make anarchists their allies, though! |
| 23142 | People are fallible, so liberalism tries to distribute power [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Liberalism makes the idea of fallibility into a political practice by trying not to have too much power concentrated in one place or part of the system. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: There is a potential inefficiency and failure to focus on key goals implicit in this aim. It may be a good idea for a peacetime democracy, but a terrible idea for a wartime army. To stop corruption, don't let anyone do anything? |
| 23143 | Liberals have tried very hard to build a conscience into their institutions [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: What liberalism can say on its own behalf is that no system of power in human history has tried harder to insert a corrective conscience into its institutions. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: What we are learning in recent years is that wonderful liberal institutions can be quietly eroded by the forces of darkness, once those forces have sufficient control of the media to hide what they are doing. The 'rule of law' is wobbling. |
| 23141 | Left-wingers are inconsistent in their essentialist descriptions of social groups [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: A criticism of the left is that it is essentialist at some moments, and wildly anti-essentialist at others. We can call this opportunistic essentialism. Gender is fluid - except for transgender kids. Race is a construction - except for white races. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Interesting. Gopnik's solution seems to be to abandon all social essentialism as wicked. In this context he is probably right, but I am firmly committed to the idea that many entities in the world have essential natures. 'Bourgeois'. |
| 23124 | Liberal community is not blood ties or tradition, but shared choices, and sympathy for the losers [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The liberal idea of community is not one, as it is for many conservatives, of blood ties or traditional authority. It rest on the idea of shared choices …including even a sense of sympathy for those caught on the losing side of the argument. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: The key point is that most liberals (other than extreme libertarians) have a strong sense of community, contrary to the standard criticisms offered by communitarians. |
| 23127 | Liberal community includes flight from the family, into energetic reforming groups [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Where conservatives believe in the renewal of traditional community, liberals believe as well in the flight from family and tradition into new kinds of communal order. …It is an idea of assembling confidence and energies for reform. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: He cites Greenwich Village as an example. This suggests that his vision is a little narrow. His communities are for radicals who flee to join like minds in big cities. Politics must care about community for those left behind. Pubs, sport and pets. |
| 23129 | Right-wingers attack liberal faith in reason, left-wingers attack its faith in reform [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The right-wing critique of liberalism is largely an attack on its overreliance on reason; the left-wing one, mostly an attack on its false faith in reform. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: I doubt whether sensible liberals do rely too much on reason, though they do rely of scientific evidence (after peer review!). No one can doubt that lots of reforms have occurred, so it must be frustration with the very slow process. |
| 23133 | Cosmopolitan liberals lack national loyalty, and welcome excessive immigration [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Critics say liberal cosmopolitanism is indifference to national loyalty, making them easily contemplate going elsewhere and, worse still, welcoming in the world through unsifted immigration. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: There is certainly some truth in this. Not all liberals are so cosmopolitan, though. It is interesting to observe whether people who retire stay in their old community or move to somewhere quite new. |
| 23138 | Modern left-wingers criticise liberalism's control of culture [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Most left-wing critiques of liberalism now turn more often on its cultural power and its cultural illusions. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: As opposed to older Marxists critiques of the exploitation of workers. This is certainly fertile ground for interesting studies of our culture. It is very hard to grasp the influence had by the endless stories we expose ourselves to. |
| 23139 | Liberalism's attempt to be neutral and colour-blind erases cultural identities [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The 'colour-blind' universe of 'neutral' liberalism is actually an attempt to erase cultural identity and history. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is the modern critique of liberalism [centred on the Intersectionality of Bell Hooks or Kimberlé Crenshaw], which analyses alienated minorities, and their emphasis on their difference in response. It can lead to 'identity politics'. |
| 23135 | Classic Marxists see liberalism as the ideology of the bourgeoisie [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The classic Marxist account shows liberalism as merely the ideology of the bourgeoisie. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: The word 'merely' does an awful lot of work in philosohy! I suspect that 'bourgeoisie' is self-defining here - as the believers in liberalism - given that lots of Marxists emerge from the middle classes. |
| 23140 | Environmental disasters result not from capitalism, but from a general drive for growth [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: It is the drive for growth, not capitalism in particular, that makes environmental disasters happen. Those caused by the command economics of Eastern Europe were far greater than even the worst known in Western Europe. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: So the next question is whether you can have capitalism without a drive for growth. I would have thought not, given the role recycled profit plays in driving capitalism. Command economies are more easily swept away. |
| 23130 | Popular imperialism gives the poor the belief that their acts have world historical meaning [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Popular imperialism is the cosmopolitanism of the poor, the lever by which the small and impotent come to believe that their acts have world historical meaning. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: It is not only the poor who like imperialism. The focus of this popular attitude is the armed forces, and especially the army, where personal bravery is most obvious. The army gets strong support, no matter how dubious are its activities. |
| 23131 | Patriots love their place, but nationalists have a paranoid ethnic hostility [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The patriot loves his place and its cheeses; …the nationalist has not particular affection for the place, but employs his obsessive sense of encirclement and grievance on behalf of acts of ethnic vengeance. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: 'Vengeance' seems a bit strong. John Le Carré said nationalists are distinguished by the need to have enemies. Russia is particularly obsessed with 'encirclement'. |
| 23136 | Liberal free speech is actually paid speech [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: What liberals call free speech or a free press is invariably paid speech. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: He give this as the left-wing view of liberalism. The much-hated social media are a substantial breech in this tendency. Sales of newspapers are declining everywhere, so the battle is for television channels. |
| 23134 | A 'free' society implies a free market, which always produces predatory capitalism and inequalities [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: 'Free societies', as a matter of practical fact, always mean free-market societies - and free markets will never sponsor more than predatory capitalism. Inequalities always emerge. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is part of his account of left-wing objections to liberalism. The crux of the liberal view is a conviction that the worst of capitalism can be restrained. This began to look doubtful once huge multinational companies emerged. What to do? |
| 12175 | Galilean science aimed at true essences, as the ultimate explanations [Popper] |
| Full Idea: The third of the Galilean doctrines of science is that the best, the truly scientific theories, describe the 'essences' or the 'essential natures' of things - the realities which lie behind the appearances. They are ultimate explanations. | |
| From: Karl Popper (Conjectures and Refutations [1963], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the seventeenth century doctrine which was undermined by Humeanism, and hence despised by Popper, but is now making a comeback, with a new account of essence and necessity. |
| 12179 | Essentialist views of science prevent further questions from being raised [Popper] |
| Full Idea: The essentialist view of Newton (due to Roger Cotes) ...prevented fruitful questions from being raised, such as, 'What is the cause of gravity?' or 'Can we deduce Newton's theory from a more general independent theory?' | |
| From: Karl Popper (Conjectures and Refutations [1963], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: This is Popper's main (and only) objection to essentialism - that it is committed to ultimate explanations, and smugly terminates science when it thinks it has found them. This does not strike me as a problem with scientific essentialism. |