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Ben Says:
I don't know how Peirce and others have missed
the distinct and irreducible logical role of verification. I keep an eye open
regarding that question, that's about all. I don't have some hidden opinion on
the question. Tom Short argued that there is a problem with answering how it is
that semiosis learns to distinguish sense from nonsense, and Tom argued that
Peirce saw this problem. I wasn't convinced that Peirce saw the problem, and I
think that it's the verification problem; I can't help thinking that if Peirce
had seen it, he would have addressed it more aggressively.
REPLY:
I don't think Peirce overlooked anything like
that, Ben. It is just that verification is not a distinctive formal
element in inquiry in the way you think it is, and Peirce's approach to logic as
theory of inquiry doesn't mislead him into thinking that one has to give a
formal account of such a thing. Oh, well, one can of course explain about
how publication works, and how people are expected to respond to the making of
research claims to do what one can describe as "verifying" them. That
would involve discussing such things as attempts to replicate experimental
results, which can no doubt get complicated in detail owing to the fact that it
would only rarely involve exact duplication of experimental procedures and
observations of results, the far more usual case being the setting up of related
but distinguishable lines of experimentation whose results would have rather
obvious implications for the results claimed in the research report being
verified or disverified, depending on how it turns out. I don't think
there would be anything very interesting in getting into that sort of detail,
though.
Take a common sense case of that. You tell
me that you observed something on the way over to my house to see me, e.g. a
large fire at a certain location, and I think you must have made a mistake since
the edifice in question is reputed to be fire-proof. So I mosey over
there myself to check it out and, sure enough, the fire is still going on at the
place you said. Claim verified. Of course, some third person hearing
about this might think we are both mistaken or in collusion to lie about it, and
having some financial interest in the matter, might not count my report as a
verification of your claim. So he or she might mosey over and find that we
were both confused about the location and there was no fire at the place
claimed. Claim disverified. But then some fourth person . .
. Well, you get the idea. So what is the big
deal about verification? (This is pretty much what Jim Piat was saying,
too, perhaps.)
The question is, why have philosophers of science
so often gotten all agitated about the problem of verification as if something
really important hinged on giving an exact account of what does or ought to
count as such?
You tell me, but my guess is that it is just the
age old and seemingly insatiable but really just misguided quest
for absolute and authoritative certainty. Why this shows up in the
form of a major philosophical industry devoted to the production of
theories of verification is another matter, and I suppose that must be explained
in terms of some natural confusion of thought like those which make it seem
so implausible at first that we can get better control over our car when it goes
into a skid if we turn the car in the direction of the skid instead of by
responding in the instinctively reasonable way of trying to turn it in
opposition to going in that unwanted direction. Okay, not a
very good example, but you know what I mean: something can seem at first
completely obvious in its reasonableness that is actually quite unreasonable
when all relevant considerations are taken duly into account. some of which are
simply too subtle to be detected as relevant at first. Thus people
argue interminably over no real problem. It happens a lot, I should
think.
In any case, a will-of-the-wisp is all
that there is in the supposed need for some general theory of
verification. There is none to be given nor is there any need for
one. People make claims. Other people doubt them or accept them but
want to be sure and so they do something that satisfies them, and others, noting
this, are satisfied that the matter is settled and they just move on. Of
maybe nobody is ever satisfied. That's life. Of course it can
turn out at times that it is not easy to get the sort of satisfacion that counts
for us as what we call a verification because it settles the matter in one way,
or a dissatisfaction because it settles it in a contrary way. But that is
all there is to it. Maybe there are fields or types of problems or issues
in which the course of experience of inquiry about them has resulted in the
development and elaboration of procedures that are regarded as having
verification or disverification as their normal result, but that will surely
just be because that particular sort of problem or subjectmatter happens to
require analysis of a certain rather complex kind involving a lot of detailed
procedure. I don't know what can lie at the end of it all, though, other
than the fact, if it is a fact, that people have finally had enough of it to not
feel any need to do anything further. That culminating de facto acceptance
is of course always capable of being mistaken. Such is the view of
the fallibilist who is not a pathological sceptic.
Joe Ransdell
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