Can you suggest a good statement by Popper of his final position? He seemed to be a) forever railing that people misunderstood him b) frequently changing his positions. So it is hard to know what to criticize.
And given he seems to be in low repute among professional philosophers (that I have spoken to) it would be good to hear the elevator pitch as to why understanding his ideas in detail is a good use of our time.
You could start with the criticisms in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry.
(simplified)
a) Refutation requires acceptance of the theory underlying the experiment that refuted the theory. E.g. Think of all the theory that needs to be accepted to agree that the Michelson-Morley experiment refuted absolute space-time. So if you cannot prove any theory refutation also fails.
b) All critical tests are actually repairable and are not fatal even if failed. Also all tests are probabilistic—you never have a 100% refutation. The way anomalies are actually dealt with is way beyond the scope of Popper’s theory.
c) The importance of auxiliary hypotheses in any test. It is argued that Popper, in dealing with this issue, greatly reduced the scope of his theory, and made it far weaker and more subjective.
Can you suggest a good statement by Popper of his final position? He seemed to be a) forever railing that people misunderstood him b) frequently changing his positions. So it is hard to know what to criticize.
And given he seems to be in low repute among professional philosophers (that I have spoken to) it would be good to hear the elevator pitch as to why understanding his ideas in detail is a good use of our time.
You could start with the criticisms in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry.
(simplified)
a) Refutation requires acceptance of the theory underlying the experiment that refuted the theory. E.g. Think of all the theory that needs to be accepted to agree that the Michelson-Morley experiment refuted absolute space-time. So if you cannot prove any theory refutation also fails.
b) All critical tests are actually repairable and are not fatal even if failed. Also all tests are probabilistic—you never have a 100% refutation. The way anomalies are actually dealt with is way beyond the scope of Popper’s theory.
c) The importance of auxiliary hypotheses in any test. It is argued that Popper, in dealing with this issue, greatly reduced the scope of his theory, and made it far weaker and more subjective.