----- Original Message ----- From: "andie nachgeborenen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, June 13, 2003 8:22 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Falsifiability and the law of value
> This was unnecessary. First of all, the reasons that > have motivated most skeptics who have thought about > the matter to reject the LOV or LTV -- like me -- are > not that it is an "unscientific notion" that cannot be > "falsified," but that it is a bad scientific notion > whose time is up bewcause it has not proved to have > any explanatory value or theoretical use, other than > employing a shrinking group of true believers > increasingly arcane defenses. Second, only the crudest > and most mechanical sort of Popperianism (not > Popper's) would proceed proposition by propostion > through a body of theory, testing the "scientificity" > of each independently of others, so this would be a > really dumb objection if somewone were to make it. > Third, no one has. Everyone involved, except Ian, who > rejects the vulgar interpretation of Popperianism but > thinks is it is really important to engage with straw > men, acknowledges that there is no alternative to > evaluating theories as wholes, which means that it's > no prob from a demarcation criterion pov if a bit of a > theory that does important work isn't falsifiable on > its own. If it's not falsifiable in the context of the > wholed theory, as with notions like "Oedipus complex," > that's a problem. > > jks ======================= Please don't conjecture that I hold a view which I don't. How many straw men did you deal with before you came to the Rorty-ization that they were straw men? The problem with your sfw is the attitude it conveys; disdain and contempt when disagreement occurs is counterproductive to communication. It's part of the reason 'regular' folks hate many scientists, arrogance is a public bad. Ian
