Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 10:20:54 -0800
From: John Fox <J.Fox-AT-latrobe.edu.au>
Subject: Re: PKF: On Liking Popper AND Feyerabend ...


In reply to Kenneth Allen Hopf:

I suppose if I shoot my mouth off I am obligated to defend or
retract when challenged.

On induction.  Yes, Popper changed the state of play enormously and
largely for the better.  (For an elaboration my "With Friends Like
These" in Sankey & Nola's _After Popper Kuhn and Feyerabend_, this
year.)  But "solving the problem"?Š  Another matter.

First, what did Popper _say_ his solution
was?  That we could decide about laws by _falsifying_ them.  How was
this supposed to be relevant, given that the traditional problem about
laws was: on what grounds we could reasonably believe them _true_?
Briefly, he restated the problem more generally, so that it became that
of deciding _about the truthvalue_ of laws.

Everyone had known that some laws could clash with observations.
But this was simply not relevant to the traditional problem of induction.

Apart from that, Popper was just reiterating Humean inductive scepticism.

Which is absurdly extreme.  To think that any beliefs about the future, or
that any laws are likely to be reliable in the future, are unreasonable, is
close to loony; anyone whose causing of deaths or pregnancies is based
on their eschewing all such beliefs as "unreasonable" is irresponsible in
the extreme.  The saner Popperian critics of induction, inductive logic
etc. have abandoned it; e.g. Alan Musgrave (as I argued e.g. in my
"Deductivism Surpassed", Australasian Journal of Philosophy late
last year).

Since some such beliefs are rational, a decent account of rationality
should display them as rational, explain their rationality.  Providing
such a defensible account would be a significant part of solving the
problem of induction.  Popper didn't try.  He proclaimed  (as a virtue)
that he didn't believe in belief, hinting that that way lay totalitarianism.
Rather pompous, dogmatic and perversely point-missing, I think.

Still, we - I, at any rate - owe the old man an enormous amount.  He
_was_ the PKF of his era - a constantly illuminating and constantly
irritating gadfly.

(Now there's a compliment to annoy the hell out of both their shades.)

Best wishes
John Fox

John F Fox
Philosophy
La Trobe University
Bundoora, Vic 3086
Australia


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