Episode 94: Stephen Hicks on Critical Rationalism vs Objectivism
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[00:00:00] Blue: Hello out there today on the theory of anything podcast we speak to professor of philosophy Steven Hicks After taking a look at his work again in preparation for this podcast It really hit me hard that he is one of the most persuasive and influential voices out there defending liberalism and reason in his books explaining post -modernism and Nietzsche and the Nazis it becomes clear that the history of bad ideas is more than that just an abstract thing But something with monumental importance for human life and prosperity Rather than focus on this aspect of his work, which is widely known We thought we’d ask him questions related to critical rationalism and epistemology more generally and see where the Conversation takes us and I could not have been happier with the result though I wish we could have gone on for many more hours Hello, welcome to the theory of anything podcast We’re here with professor Hicks and of course as always Bruce Nielsen. How are you guys doing? Good. Well, thanks for the invitation This moment right now in my life is one of the highlights I would say I am thrilled for the opportunity to speak to you professor Hicks Thank you so much for coming on our humble podcast Your stuff has gotten millions and millions of clicks and I would expect hundreds more after today So, thank you Just
[00:01:36] Blue: to explain my background a little bit with your work before I get into the questions about critical rationalism I took a critical theory class in college in the 90s Truthfully, I did not see it as political at all at the time I just thought it was a bunch of confusing weird stuff that I probably wasn’t smart enough to understand Then fast forward a little bit to 2016 Jordan Peterson came out with his YouTube lectures Heard somewhere that that you were a big influence or that he got his stuff on postmodernism from you Which I suspect there’s some truth to that at least that led me to your book explaining postmodernism Which I just devoured and then devoured again Reading your book now it seems to me more than a the book about obscure and kind of boring philosophers It was to me a new new way to look at history really a History that goes beyond It’s the history of ideas that go beyond left and right it put Enlightenment and counter enlightenment thinkers and you know, I just it just came alive for me really it’s it’s such a good book
[00:02:53] Red: No, it’s wonderful here. Thanks for that feedback and
[00:02:56] Blue: it’s just so different than what I heard in school I find it very very convincing and it has really affected my worldview for what it’s worth.
[00:03:05] Green: I had a philosopher friend recommend your book to me and I Really enjoyed it too. It was kind of in some ways my introduction to postmodernism trying to make it under get an understanding of it
[00:03:18] Red: Thanks for letting me know that’s great
[00:03:20] Blue: and then so before we move on to critical rationalism I thought I could ask you professor Hicks If you could vote to make your book part of the school curriculum and force every child to read it Would you vote for such a lot because I might be tempted to you think about all the terrible stuff all the crap We make these kids read why not one good one?
[00:03:46] Red: Well force is the operative word there so as a deep liberal guy I’m going to have to say no on that so What I would hope for is that enough teachers and professors think it’s good and they will Recommended in a way that says this is something sexy great for your mind an intellectual adventure read this book
[00:04:08] Blue: I thought you might say that Carl Popper said a Rationalist is a man who would rather be unsuccessful in convincing another man by argument than Successful in crushing him by force intimidation threats or even persuasive propaganda So I think you would agree with Popper on that at least yeah,
[00:04:28] Red: yeah, well said Yeah, the popper is one of the the great liberals so I enjoy reading him for that very much
[00:04:35] Blue: Good good. Okay first question about Justificationism or the idea that there are certain kinds of ideas that are just in the true camp and that’s all there is to it Carl Popper on the other hand Said that knowledge grows not from a feeling of certainty But as we sincerely but fallibly seek to criticize our own best ideas So truth has a direction Which is really so much different than relativism the classic example that I’m sure you’ve heard is about Newton’s laws being replaced by general Relativity when this perspective begun to sink in for me. It was a serious aha moment in my life But I’m curious how you an objectivist who is also quite familiar with papyri and epistemology How do you think about this? fallibilist idea that knowledge grows from a woven web of guesses
[00:05:32] Red: All right, that’s a lot in there I would just say is it we have to do some serious unpacking right from the beginning you connected justification Ism to truth to certainty,
[00:05:49] Blue: okay,
[00:05:50] Red: and So certainty is perhaps a goal To say that something is true is a Statement about a proposition and justification Ism is to focus on the process By which we would reach something that we might call true or not So if I want to say just to take a simple example That it is true that you and I are talking now right, so that’s the the The end product right or the end result a proposition that I have made you and I are talking That is true. That’s to take a meta stance with respect to the proposition So first we’d have to get sorted out what we mean by True or what are we going for when we were talking about true? And then justification is to focus on the follow -up questions anytime you want to say Something is true the question is how do you know so it’s not focusing on the content That you’re striving to believe or recommending that someone believes you’re talking about how you got there and Then as philosophers we take a meta stance With respect to those claims about the justificatory claims. So in this case, we might say You and I are talking if you ask me how do I know that?
[00:07:24] Red: Then I would say some things about what I’m seeing what I’m hearing My beliefs about how the internet works and so forth that Justifies my claim You and I are talking if I want to then say well that claim is true Then that’s presupposing that I understood what the proposition is I’ve understood the justification claims that I’m making a judgment call about that entire package Now then the certainty concept and then is to say well the way cognition works is sometimes we are Justified in believing various things sometimes we think we know things that are true But we’re not yet ready to make a claim of certainty So the certainty claim is then often a meta claim about everything that has gone on before So I might say You and I are talking That’s the claim. I go through my justification process. I see you. I hear you etc. etc And then you might then say to me Well, how certain are you of that and then I would step back on that whole process and I would look for doubts I would look for weaknesses. I would consider various skeptical possibilities and then make a pronouncement so bottom line then is to say Before we can get to fallible ism Which is one of the meta epistemological theory so to speak about the whole shebang I think we should start by talking about what do we mean by justification? What do we mean by truth? What do we mean by certainty?
[00:09:13] Green: so actually I Would like to hear your thoughts on your own question that you just asked So what if you’re talking to somebody and we’re talking that you’re talking about Justification ism or certainty Or fallible ism. What are those terms mean to you like what do you have in mind when when you think about the? Those concepts I should say instead of terms.
[00:09:35] Red: No, no, that’s great. So these are all yet the core epistemological concepts, so the way I would frame this is by I always start to develop mental psychology so if we take a Freshborn child so to speak comes into the world and The child then starts perceptually be interacting with the world now at that point We’re not going to be using Concepts like Whatever is going on in the content of the child’s mind I’ll just say he is he certain of anything right or is he justified in whatever? So he’s reaching for this or you poke him and he starts to cry so we would have a an initial interaction between a human being with a cognitive set of apparatus perceptual Features and so forth interacting with the world So I think we would start by having some account as Epistemologists of what goes on with respect to the sense perception how that all works Then what we seem to know is as children develop Seven eight nine months or so they make a cognitive leap and they start using words And they use the words in ways that are picking out
[00:10:56] Red: Categories of things and we then think what goes on there is the child has formed a concept where Say there are several cats in the household The child is aware of all of them as individuals But at the same time is now in a position to say the cats form a different group And there is a word that I use it as think to do Talk about the cats and I don’t use that to talk about mommy and daddy and sister and so on And then children start to put together have all sorts of words That are conceptual as far as we know Most other animal species don’t do this They are very sophisticated at sensing very sophisticated at perception Maybe as far as we can tell dolphins and maybe some dogs and chimpanzees have some rudimentary abstract concepts, but human beings definitely do and That’s a something that then needs to be teased out Then we know By the time kids are again a year and a half to two and a half They start taking individual concepts and putting them together in more sophisticated units that we call sentences Or a proposition so I might say you know the kid might say cat is in the kitchen or The Kids sitting at the table knocks over the drinking glass. Okay, I hit glass glass fall floor Cat scared cat run kitchen and already what we then have is a whole lot of Perceiving that has gone on but all of that captured in the form of a whole network of Concepts that were formed individually kitchen cat glass, etc.
[00:12:49] Red: And then put together in a Proposition that’s now telling a little story now Then we increase The sophistication with which we can put these propositions together by the time kids are four or five We are reading stories to them and that might require that they hold 20 or 30 Propositions in their mind to see how it all develops they start learning more Sophisticated causal understandings about how the world works they would say the whole routine to get ready for school of eating and You’re brushing their teeth and putting their clothes on and walking out to the street and Looking both ways to cross the street to wait for the school bus It’s going to take them to the school So they have an entire then causal Understanding of that and then wait just we might just call that they’re getting ready for school routine But they have that as a sort of quasi theory in their head. So it’s an increasingly developmental Powerful cognitive structure that we’re developing now when we are then starting to do epistemology And we’re trying to figure out what’s going on here because all of this is open -ended We become better Perceivers and sensors hopefully as we get older we start to form more more concepts And we’re able to define our concepts explicitly more sophisticatedly.
[00:14:16] Red: We’re able to put concepts into increasingly complicated Propositional structures and we have an understanding of grammar and how all of that aids us to put our propositions together In these structures, we’re then going on to put a lot of propositions together in narratives And put a lot of propositions together in logical structures that we call then causal theories about the world So as epistemologists then what we are interested in doing is Following his developmental story is working out. What’s going on in sensation? What’s going on in perception? What’s going on in conception? What’s going on when we form propositions? What’s going on when we put together narratives and what’s going on when we put together? Logical structures or when we are doing logic. So that then is to say, you know, I’ve got a six -fingered hand here I think there are six sub big questions that we have to talk about first Before we’re going to talk about more sophisticated things like what we are doing as mature adult scientists right with very sophisticated mathematics very sophisticated experimental structures and already Many many years of building up a causal understanding of the world plus hearing lots of competing Understandings of the world. I think it’s at that point where more pointedly questions about justification and truth and when we are certain or not Start to have some traction So that’s already a lot just to put out there. So let me just pause there for reactions
[00:15:56] Blue: What you said I think leads right into my next question Which is about theory ladenness and maybe you kind of already addressed it, but you know, this idea that our observations are essentially interpretations informed by our theories so I think that would mean that empiricism is false and that Carl Popper argued that observations alone cannot Confirm a theory Maybe I can just ask how does this concept of theory ladenness? Work relate to it to what you’re saying here
[00:16:36] Red: Yeah, again, I say the the issue of theory ladenness comes Much later in the developmental cognitive story and as you say One version of theory ladenness is as you put it that so to speak we have prior Theories that are in build This is going to be the hardcore Rationalist version the way philosophers use rationalism Technically that we have either innate ideas That are already a theory or we have innate structures in a more content way that set us up for having certain theories about the world and That then when we are observing the world those dictate What we are going to see and how we’re going to see in strong form or they shape In some way what we are going to see and then this becomes important because if we have a now sophisticated Philosophy of science that says our theories are telling us about reality and The question then is how do we come to know reality if we start with the empiricist story and say well We observe reality and then build up conceptual structures and propositional structures and so on then we are Trapped in a kind of circle that we cannot get out of right and that is going to lead us to reject empiricism so what we then need to do is I think we need to go back to the developmental issue before we start talking about theories and theories are logically connected networks of propositions First we have to already have talked about logic and we have to have talked about propositions so where does logic come from where do propositions come from and Unless you want to believe that we are born with full -blown sets of propositions in our head or
[00:18:52] Red: entirely kind of network structures that Pre -suppose or predispose us to believe a certain causal understanding of reality Then you have to go back and say the propositions come from Integrating concepts the concepts come from Integrating percepts and those are based on sensory contact with the world that initially is not Theory -laden so that’s a long way of saying that Before we talk about theory -ladenness in that robust sense. We need to go back and talk about the basic theories of Sensation and perception and that’s where there’s a big divide between The empiricists and the rationalists at that level, but also where do we get our initial abstract concepts from and The different theories of concepts also divide empiricists and Rationalists and sets them up for going giving different accounts of where propositions logic and Narrative theories come from if we go back to Say the child fresh from the womb The initial question is going to be what do we make of? the content of that child’s cognitive apparatus and what do we make of The cognitive apparatus itself So do we say initially there are innate ideas there or is the child cognitively a blank slate that’s one issue and Then we know that we have a brain and that the brain of the human being is different from the brain of other animals So there are some sort of cognitive capacities there. What is the nature of those cognitive capacities? Are they capacities that respond to reality or are they capacities that when activated? structure and shape reality Those I think are the two basic questions So before we start talking about Critical rationalism we have to get back to those basic rationalism versus empiricism issues
[00:21:06] Green: So in your answer not the one you just gave but the one before that it seemed like you emphasized Linguistics or language quite a bit Do you like what’s the connection between in your opinion? I guess what’s the connection between? The questions we’re asking here and the human ability to have language and do you to any degree buy into the severe war hypothesis Mm
[00:21:30] Red: -hmm Yes, so I think when we’re talking about language, that’s an umbrella term for everything that is conceptual and beyond so I think as soon as the child is forming and demonstrably able to use words from the initial word data mama doggy or whatever it is the child is Entering into the language realm and that’s the first question. What is going on? Conceptually or inside the child’s cognitive apparatus that enables them to do so and right off the bat Right, we have a debate here between those who say that the child is aware perceptually this is now the empiricist position of entities and the actions that those entities are engaging in and perform some form of abstraction and Forms a new mental unit that we call a concept and applies a label to it the other side wants to say that there are Three Installed so to speak in the cognitive apparatus right ways of grouping perceptual inputs and then what is going on there is perceptual inputs are coming in and this innate Structure that we will call an abstract structure is being imposed on that and that’s what is then presented to the mind So that’s the basic issue then as you scale up Children have any number of individual concepts. They start to put them together Then we’re doing more sophisticated language, but still language then the children start learning and automating what we call grammatical rules Subject predicate what modifies subjects what modifies predicates and so forth So grammar as a discipline or as a science becomes important Then and this but this is still part of language then we take those propositions and we start to put it in Logical structures if this then that well that didn’t happen.
[00:23:37] Red: So the first thing can’t be true There’s a logical operation that’s built in there Or either this or that and then I can see that didn’t happen So it must be this that disjunctive operation is there then the question is where do we get that? disjunctive operation from that ability to structure propositions that way and reach a conclusion so to answer your question is then to say language is a concepts and The theory of definition that goes with that Proposition formation and the theory of grammar that goes with that and then beyond that Networks of propositions that are either fictional and with the theory of narrative or they’re claiming to be factual Which is then theory of logic. So Language then is the whole shebang beyond the perceptual level
[00:24:37] Green: So I was actually going to ask so the way you you’re using the term language You you said that that starts maybe even I guess you didn’t actually say this But I was kind of maybe reading in that it starts before the child can even speak So let’s say you had an adult who didn’t learn language They would probably still have concepts Would you still consider them having a kind of internal language or do they not form? Concepts in your mind unless they can actually speak
[00:25:06] Red: So well no someone who is mute.
[00:25:09] Green: Oh, sorry I mean, they didn’t learn a language someone who did not learn a language But
[00:25:14] Red: do you mean like a wolf boy raised out?
[00:25:17] Unknown: Yeah,
[00:25:17] Red: great into society at age 25 Whatever something like that, you know, I don’t I don’t know I Think so But I think they would have a private language, so I don’t think language is fundamentally social language is about My mind or my cognitive apparatus responding to reality It has a huge social component that enables us to communicate with us and in many cases We learn language socially, but that well done is teachers and parents pointing to reality such that the child can make the connection between the word or the concept and reality itself, but as a Thought experiment the specific example wolf boy raised right with a pack of wolves until age 25 Then reintegrates or we meet some human beings would that person spontaneously? Generate concepts and propositions and so forth I Don’t know I think so, but I think that would be something that would have to be put to the Experimental test.
[00:26:35] Green: Okay. I I came across a book on Amazon about a man who did not learn language Yeah, that was actually what it came to my mind And I also
[00:26:44] Red: there’s another thing we haven’t gotten to yet, but I do think Part of it and this is also why all the questions about justification and probability Insurgency and truth and so forth become important is that Once we get to that conceptual level or start doing the conceptual I don’t think that’s an automatic process in human beings I think that’s a volitional process when we are bombarded by a sensory and perceptual stimuli our Sensory faculties respond automatically and I think a certain amount of integration happens automatically there but I think it takes work to Look at things look at this thing look at that thing attend to the ways in which they are similar and Different from other things. I think that takes volitional effort So one reason why someone might not ever Develop their own language absent social interaction and social encouragement Might just be that they are they’re lazy or they just never think to do that They just develop a certain number of more or less automatic basic level cognitive routines and they never They need to do so. I think there’s a huge amount of encouragement that parents do with the infant You know to try to get the infant you know to focus on their face because they want to interact with the child and to Verbalize in various ways and to present things to the children all of which Incentivizes the children to start using their cognitive apparatus in a more sophisticated way So I don’t know that would happen Well, it wouldn’t happen automatically But I do want to leave open the possibility that someone just might never never start doing that
[00:28:28] Blue: Okay, well, let me ask you a more general question then about critical rationalism Yeah Where do you I mean, obviously you’ve you’ve read popper and Sounds like you’re sympathetic to a lot of his ideas and and but where do you feel that popperian epistemology Goes wrong. Where does it go off the rails in your good question?
[00:28:53] Red: Yeah, good question indeed? I Think a popper is one of the good guys in setting aside Political philosophy So we just focus on philosophy of science. I think he’s yeah, he’s pro science He’s pro reason. He’s pro logic up to a certain point he thinks of science as a progressive project right and one that’s been enormously successful and a whole lot better than Shall we say the competing epistemologies that have been developed? So I think of him as You know 80 to 90 percent good guy and I love reading popper and I’ve learned a learned a huge amount from him So where I think popper goes wrong is on these issues that we started to get to it’s at the fundamentals to put it in history of philosophy terms in the debate between the empiricists and the rationalists popper Has absorbed enough David Hume You know in his own words He is partly humian and Hume’s version of Empiricism we call sensationalism Which I think is a faulty theory of sensation But that leads you to have a certain understanding of what concepts are that we call Nominalism and that also leads to very deep fundamental problems And that’s what leads popper Even though he thinks that if empiricism is true it ultimately has to be a kind of humane empiricism That leads him to adopt the rationalist side of the equation and again to put it in history of philosophy terms the answer to Hume in the 18th century was Immanuel Kant and Again in popper’s own words. He is he says enough of a Kantian to accept that our Basic perceptual interaction with the world cannot be as the empiricist habit has to be in a more updated
[00:31:08] Red: rationalistic form and that is what leads him then to start seeing concepts as The it’s hard to put the language to it here But as barriers between us and reality that somehow we need to try to work our way around or as obstacles So then immediately we are Trying to be rational and conceptual and logical and all of the stuff that comes out as good Kantianism does But we’re never going to be able to get back to reality So short answer is to say there is enough Hume in popper to set him up for Kant and I think Kant is the big disaster He’s got he’s got he’s got elements of Kantianism and when those pop up those Lead him into trouble. Those are the ones that Not put it in so much historical philosophy terms, but in his own generation it is the Kantian elements in his Philosophy that the coonians and the fire of endians go after and exploit and then take in Increasingly skeptical directions and so what popper is doing is fighting a kind of rear guard Defensive maneuver at that point trying to say yes I am bare bones Kantian on these conceptual structures, but I think we can still save the day for a pro Reason understanding of science. So that’s one one thing the other thing is Now we’re not talking about concepts and perception what we’re talking about logic And we haven’t gotten there yet, but his falsifiability is a negative program And I think that falsifiability is part of a mature philosophy of science But popper goes very strongly into denying that there’s any logic of confirmation There’s no so to speak positive epistemology, there’s only a A negative epistemology worked out.
[00:33:14] Red: That’s what falsifiability ends up being And then if you ask why there’s no logic of confirmation Then he has an account of induction And his account of induction comes from david hume And again, uh, there’s a skepticism in hume’s account of induction That’s based on his sensationalism and his nominalism But popper adopts that significantly enough and so Those elements lead him to have I would say he has half an epistemology there Oh, even though that half of the epistemology is true so To do that again again, we would have to go back and be talking about Kant And the divide between the empiricists and the rationalists and whether really it comes down to a battle between hume and Kant
[00:34:10] Green: so, um I actually have mixed feelings on I’ve I I’m suppose I’m completely in the popper camp of falsificationism But I don’t really like that term much and I kind of avoid using it mostly um but uh When we talk about positive, um epistemology I actually would maybe even to some degree agree with you that popper seems like he goes a little bit too far But what do you have in mind when you talk about? um positive epistemology that you feel is missing from popper So
[00:34:48] Red: I think at this point we can take up the The first Question that peter raised and the first big concept was justification So what do we mean by justification because we know we come up with all sorts of Abstract concepts and propositions and so on We also know right at some point some of them are just products of our imagination I’m not trying to understand reality. I’m just making stuff up I also know that sometimes I am trying to understand reality, but I make mistakes I come to Places where I think there’s something must be false or something that cannot be true So at that point we realize that Whatever is in the contents of our consciousness. We just can’t take it as justified or take it as true Uh, and so we then start asking ourselves. Well, why is it sometimes that when I use my cognitive apparatus? I Am out of touch with reality And sometimes when I use my cognitive apparatus, I stay in touch with reality So that then requires some introspection and study and guidance from other people about Different ways in which I can use my cognitive apparatus and at that point What we’re looking for is what ways of using my cognitive apparatus When I am attending to it keeps me in contact with reality And what ways of using my cognitive apparatus take me away from reality?
[00:36:20] Red: So we start to sort ways of using our cognitive apparatus Then what we then say is The ones that we don’t like those are the ones that lead you in the direction of falsehood The ones that we do like those are the ones that lead you in the direction of truth And we’re trying in principle to figure out what those ways are and those ways then We call the Justificatory methods that is to say ways of using your cognitive apparatus such that if you use them you are I don’t want to just use the word justified here, but you are is legitimate for you to believe The end product Because that method is a good method where it’s a method of justification So what that then means though, I think is we need to have a good theory of Sensation so if you’re going to be justified We know that sometimes our senses are differently conditioned You know if I’m sick or if I’m not sick or if the light conditions are whatever So if I am going to pay attention to My senses then I am looking for those things if I have looked for those things that can mislead my senses Uh and not found any then I am justified if I am using words right When am I justified to use a concept then I say well, where does this concept come from? Well, you know what facts of reality give rise to it Do I have a clear definition of this word or am I just throwing the word out there because I’ve kind of heard it in various ways Because we know sometimes words can be used equivocally buzzily in various Misleading ways.
[00:38:10] Red: So one of the things we learn is Pay attention to the definitions of words And if you have done that and you can define your terms clearly Then you are justified in using that word in this context Then when I’m putting the words together in various structures I know that if I do just to take some logical examples if I do Denying the consequent That is a good method of putting propositions together if I use denying the antecedent That’s a misleading way of putting propositions together So anytime I’m doing things that involve several logical operations What I need to do since I know some of them are good and some of them are bad Pay attention to which methods I am using If I find I’ve been consistently using the ones that we’ve identified as the good ones Then I am justified in believing the output. So Justification then is a process of self -consciously attending to Everything we’ve done in a given cooperation given cognitive operation from the observational base to forming the core concepts To checking and double checking the logical network that puts all the concepts together Then we say If you’ve done that you are justified if you have not done that then you are not yet justified in doing so So um
[00:39:43] Green: hopper At least my take on poppers. Let me just admit that this is my interpretation Although I can show quotes from popper that where he says these things He doesn’t like most paparians I talk to are completely against justificationism of any kind But when I read popper, I see him as shifting justificationism from justifying justification of certainty that the theory is true to justification of why I would prefer this theory over a different theory And I feel like that’s a very subtle difference But like a really big difference because the out this gets back to fallibilism The outcome would be that you never actually justify the theory itself. It’s it’s always just conjectural But you could be justified to prefer one theory over another perhaps even for the reasons that you just outlined because One was based on a logical apparatus and one wasn’t or something along those lines Probably many many reasons for why you might prefer one theory over another No, I think that’s
[00:40:49] Red: right that there’s a kind of a hard popper and a soft popper interpretation So so does falsificationism come down to saying We’ve tried our damnedest to falsify this hypothesis and we’ve failed at falsifying it ever so therefore we can Uh find ourselves justified in preferring that hypothesis, right? I’m not making any sort of a strong claim now the hard pop hopper thesis though is On the other side of the falsificationism whether there is a kind of smuggling in of a positive logic of confirmation because So as we say, I have a hypothesis and we’ve tried our damnedest to Falsify it so we’re being good scientists We have the right mindset and then we run some experiment and it goes against what the Hypothesis predicts So we’re considering it As a falsified candidate And then we say well, can we modify the theory? Can we double check the experiment and so forth and we go through all of that again? And we say no there’s no way to save the theory. There’s no way to Save the experimental because the experiments were all done, right? So therefore we have to consider the theory falsified and that’s a hard Conclusion the theories out we reject it and we go off and look for some other theory and some sort of hypothesis And then the hard question for the hard papyrian falsification interpretation there is to say well You did all of those experiments say yesterday or last week or last year or whatever And now it’s a year later Is that hypothesis still falsified?
[00:42:41] Red: And if your answer is yes, it is still falsified one good falsification shoots the whole thing out Then there is the danger of running into a kind of circle again because If you want to say we falsified it once and double checked everything But we are going to consider it falsified a year later Or two years later or falsified for all time That is a kind of positive generalization That then is to say we think or we know that if we Did the same experiments in the same circumstances we would get the same results And that’s a positive claim about the causal nature of the world and that Is either a circle or it’s a violation of a strong falsifiability hypothesis
[00:43:32] Green: So David Deutch wrote a paper that was specifically about Carl Popper’s Pistemology with some adaptations on his part And the way he tried to address exactly what you just raised is he he claimed that You can’t actually falsify a theory until There is a new replacement theory in place that allows you to explain Why the previous theory worked, but it was wrong So maybe sound off on that a little because that that is definitely Maybe different than what I read in popper, but it’s at least fits well within popperian critical correctionalist approach to epistemology
[00:44:16] Red: But at the first blush it sounds like the first option where we would say We’re not going for a hard popperianism rather. We’re going to say we’ve tried to falsify this theory And we think we have succeeded at doing so or maybe we haven’t succeeded at doing so But uh, it’s the best thing we have going Compared to everything else historically. So we’re just going to hang on to it Until we’re looking or until we find some other some other theory down the road So then the question is going to be in the early stages of the new theory What’s going to make that one preferable? And the only thing that it would have going for it would be that it has not yet been falsified Absent having done anything right at that point. So here I think is where Thomas Kuhn Would start to have some traction on this version of Of the a false ability Because Kuhn wants to say well, yeah, the the old theory runs into problems And we we think it’s Falsifiable, but the old guard doesn’t want to let it go And even the new guard doesn’t quite want to let it go because they don’t have anything else to go back on But then a new paradigm or a new hypothesis comes along And uh, some people say this is this is great. This is sexy It’s going to be able to solve all of the problems But we don’t really know yet because we haven’t really tested it out So the move from Abandoning the old theory and jumping into the new theory Kuhn wants to say that’s really a kind of act of faith right at that point There are at least that it’s not
[00:45:59] Red: Rational or it’s not logical at any point that all you could do is Jump into the new theory and see how it goes
[00:46:08] Green: Okay, so yeah, I that’s actually the way I would read an interpret kuhn too He does seem like to me like he is that that is what he is saying um Let me just say
[00:46:19] Red: one more thing if we don’t mind because I think this takes us back to one of our earlier questions because part of the kunian package then is to say When you jump into the new theory the core concepts That then get built into the theoretical formulations and the logical structures Are incommensurable or cannot be mapped on to the old ones So it’s not a matter of a rational linguistic translation from one to the other And so what that then is to say is the papyrians If they’re going to save themselves from this kunian Criticism have to be able to say no We can define the concepts in a way that is objective Or is universal or properly grounded and do Translations across different theories that means we have to go back and have a very good theory of concepts
[00:47:22] Green: So, you know, I don’t I don’t really have a disagreement with kuhn at a kind of rough rule of thumb level I I think it’s rather obvious that There are sometimes in science something like revolutions. There is sometimes in science something like incommensurability But it’s not too hard to think of examples that don’t seem to fit his mold and like just a straightforward one might be Newtonian physics versus general relativity and how we switched from Coming to accept new Newtonian physics as faults compared to general relativity Um, I you know, maybe you know more about this than I do But I guess I don’t really see a strong problem with incommensurability with how that Took place. There was definitely a social element to it. I think kuhn gets you know nails that completely that it it took a while for um, there were beats of the tests to finally kind of Get people to give up on newtonian physics and realize that there really was something to general relativity But I would struggle to point to uh, any true strong or at least There’s probably always some incommensurability, but a strong case of incommensurability there But what would what would be your thoughts on that? Is this is this a counter example to kuhn or Um, or do you do you feel like maybe kuhn still has this nailed even in a case like Newtonian physics to general relativity?
[00:48:47] Red: No, I I don’t think kuhn has it nailed at all I I’m just speaking hypothetically as a kuhnian in reaction to the purion claim. No, I think kuhn is great often as a sociologist of science But I think he’s a disaster as a philosopher of science. Yeah, okay
[00:49:07] Green: I’m with you on that and I get a lot out of his book, but I definitely cannot
[00:49:12] Red: Yeah sign on to his and he’s quite right about you know, a lot of the political shenanigans that go on And there is a whole individual psychology and social psychology issue about changing your mind and Being a scientist in the the real sense the way popper wants us to wants us all to be So then the question would be To take the philosophies of science poppers and kuhns and try to map them on to the key history of science examples so transition from Newtonian to to Einsteinian physics or Going from the kind of special creation theories of human origins to evolutionary Theory origins and then within the evolutionary theory origins Transitions from kind of lamarckian accounts to more Darwinian accounts and so on So, uh, I think that would be fun And on my view, I don’t think that the kuhnian Incommensurability account is true I think the scientists are very well able to conceptualize and Reconceptualize and state There is a relativity issue there In the early stages of trying to form new scientific concepts But I think they they know what they are doing the issue with respect to kuhn is that he comes in with a heavily Kantian slash sub pure war understanding of Uh, of language in general, but certainly concepts in particular Uh, and I think also there’s uh, just to take another strain that’s feeding in Broadly pragmatic philosophy approaches coming out of John Dewey And then in the next generation quine And the quine do hem thesis about language and incommensurability of translations
[00:51:18] Red: I think that’s also which was developed in the in the 40s and 50s is also In kuhn’s thinking and that then I think is what sets him up for his strong version of the incommensurability thesis So I think again the only way to attack that though is to go back to the fundamental issues of language Where do word slash concepts come from? Where do we get our capacity for? Propositional structure come from where does grammar come from is it an innate structure? Or is it a an abstraction from relationships that we’re observing in reality? So those core epistemological issues have to be addressed And how you address that was going to Determine how things play out when you are doing very high level philosophy of science like Kuhn and popper are doing
[00:52:12] Blue: Okay, thank you So, you know at least to me an average dude I’m not a philosopher or a scientist Critical rationalism seems to fit more into my life as something like an attitude towards life rather than a methodology I think that maybe bruce has a little bit different take on that but that’s kind of And maybe they’re interrelated concepts to be fair But the the you know once I started getting into critical rationalism. I started seeing Conversations even with my family even at work as something more like a search for truth Then a then just something to I don’t know fill up time or something and the popper quote that I think most personifies this attitude Is I may be wrong and you may be right, but by an effort we make it nearer to the truth I think about that all the time I’m curious. Is there an iron rand quote that sticks out in your mind as something that best That resonates with you as promoting the right attitude towards this life
[00:53:24] Red: No, I think the the sentiment that you’ve described personally in the popperian sentiment is is beautiful I think rand would agree entirely with it rand liked to quote Aristotle Or at least an account of Aristotle in his methodology as The the passionate quest for passionless truth So the idea is that there is a truth And reality is what reality is Facts are facts and that’s fundamental for her That’s the axiomatic thing in her philosophy and how she Justifies that’s another another side issue But our fundamental then obligation is to Orient our value or our cognitive structure And make the top value coming to no reality as it is So that small objective orientation Is in part a set of epistemological strictures Once we work them out and instead of epistemological enablers once we work them out The tools of rationality tools of scientific method are enormously Empowering in our individual lives and in our in our social lives supposing we’re we’re sharing those And so they then become also normative principles That we we we adopt in our lives and they stop simply being a bunch of abstract prescriptions But we the way you put it I think was the word attitude Once you make them part of who you are They it is your attitude toward the world. It is how you function individually In relation to reality and then since other people we live in the same reality We want to navigate that reality together. Sometimes we need to be on the same page so to speak Using those same epistemological tools together as in that case a joint quest to To understand reality and live better in it.
[00:55:26] Red: So that’s why I think uh, yeah, I think rand is Is is great on the epistemological issues that she addressed Poppers spent more time working on more epistemological issues than rand ever did But there was a huge overlap between the two of them Just in closing I would say Uh, while they are both pro science pro reason pro logic It is on those issues of the fundamental status of sense perception and concepts where There is a divergence rand is a a kind of more sophisticated empiricist And I think popper is fundamentally a kind of rationalist And I I still like the critical rationalist label for describing him but Those differences need to be teased out
[00:56:18] Blue: Okay, one more yes. No question So the if that’s okay.
[00:56:23] Unknown: Oh
[00:56:23] Blue: the um So one of the things that dutch emphasizes is that knowledge grows into Uh is infinite. We’ll never know the last thing that’s uh ever Could be known that so presumably our descendants will you know, everything that we believe now will seem like Primitive superstition to our to our descendants and that Um, so there is no theory of everything this this concept that there’s a theory of everything is is just wrong Does that seem right to you or is objectivism something like a theory of everything? I mean, do you think in in yeah, you understand that’s an
[00:57:04] Red: interesting thing to think about Uh, the question or the the proposition or the assertion. I think it’s still a little ambiguous to me So do we say that there’s There are some individual things that are just unknowable or is in principle You know every individual thing that exists or any individual event knowable So then I would say I think in principle everything is knowable There’s nothing that exists that cannot come to be known The more interesting question though, uh, the other side of that ambiguity would be to say when we are doing our philosophy or our science and what we’re trying to do is in a more principled way Right and an abstract way say here are say the 10 20 or 30 Principles about the way the world works and everything that exists in the universe operates according to those principles that we’ve discovered Uh, are all of those knowable And there I would have to say I don’t know because I don’t know enough about the science I could be able to say there aren’t such You know 20 such governing principles or everything can be reduced to four fundamental forces or Ultimately, it’s going to be 150 000 or different kinds of forces out there I think I’d have to be agnostic on that. That’s me as an individual But what I think I then would say is, um, I don’t think any one individual Can ever come to know Everything because I do take that complexity argument.
[00:58:40] Red: Just any number of combinations that are out there Are are beyond the capacity of any individual mind Right now, even with the amount of time that we would have to spend on it So I would leave it as a an agnostic split decision on that question
[00:58:56] Blue: Well, maybe maybe when we go post post biological on the Dyson spare or something All
[00:59:02] Red: right. Yeah, I think I’m enough of a humanist that I’m interested in In the human answer to that question Okay Can I
[00:59:11] Green: just ask one really quick questions? I know we’re out of time to what degree do you consider yourself an objectivist?
[00:59:18] Red: Uh Oh, that’s a good question. Um You know interestingly, I think the I am an objectivist But I don’t think of myself fundamentally as an objective I think the right way for scientists or philosophers or anybody who’s serious is to say that first and foremost, I’m a philosopher and These are the theories that I think are the best philosophers. I think if you try to reverse that order And you go into intellectual life saying I am a papyrian or I’m an objectivist Uh, I think that limits you that you’re more interested in Living up to the label rather than pursuing the truth. So what I would say though is Yeah, as a as a philosopher On the issues that ran wrote, uh, she’s great There are some things that I’ve not thought thought through all the way So I would remain slightly agnostic on those issues Um, but I maybe I would say the same thing about popper But I would say I am more Objectivist than papyrian as great as I think both of them are All
[01:00:32] Blue: right. Thank you. That’s a great answer and I I cannot wait to edit this and listen to it again and Most likely again and again.
[01:00:41] Red: So He’s not lying when he said for the nice amount of territory. Yeah, great questions guys I really appreciate that.
[01:00:48] Blue: Yes. You coming on here. Thank you so much. Okay pleasure Hello again If you’ve made it this far, please consider giving us a nice rating on whatever platform you use or even making a financial contribution Through the link provided in the show notes As you probably know, we are a podcast loosely tied together by the popper dutch theory of knowledge We believe david dutch’s four strands tie everything together So we discuss science knowledge computation politics art and especially the search for artificial general intelligence Also, please consider connecting with bruce on x at b nielsen 01 Also, please consider joining the facebook group the mini worlds of david dutch where bruce and I first started connecting Thank you
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