> On Apr 2, 2015, at 11:00 AM, Jon Awbrey <[email protected]> wrote: > > An empirical proposition is falsifiable if a counterexample is logically > possible. When we go for a long enough time without observing a > counterexample, which may involve creating experimental conditions under > which a counterexample should occur, then we begin to believe that there is > some natural constraint ruling against it and we act on that belief as if it > were true. And it may well be — time will tell. > > One of Popper's problems was that he did not always distinguish the logical > status of an unfalsifiable proposition from the psychological status of a > proposition that some people do not wish to disbelieve.
Just coming back and *way* behind in posts. But I agree that the problem with logical positivism and in particular Popper’s purported refutation was confusing logical status with the more complicated issues. Popper notes that logical positivism treats laws in a logical form like “All X is Y” so a single counter-example refutes it but a slew of positive examples don’t confirm it. This seems really insightful until you move from the logical form to the question of doing the reduction to the logical form. Then you find that everything is so theory laden that a falsification is no better than a confirmation. So for instance if you had a measurement that the Newton’s law was wrong (ignoring relativity for now) do you say you’re refuted Newton or do you assume there’s an other body out there or something else you’ve missed? Quine gets at this. While Quine has his own problems he does avoid a lot of the oversimplifications of the logical positivists or most of their first generation of critics. Honestly I’ve long thought the Vienna Circle just took a series of missteps by missing several of Peirce’s key insights. (To be fair Peirce just wasn’t well known and most of pragmatism was seen through the lens of James who tended not to follow Peirce’s logic) While the positivists adopt a verification account quite similar to the pragmatic maxim how they use it goes very much against the spirit of it. Albeit in a different direction from how James used it.
----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
