What I’m not seeing in the Critical Rationality tradition, so far, is a workable account of how scientific theories do get confirmed in practice. (Which clearly does happen and is important, contra Popper’s early views.)
Maybe @DavidDeutschOxf has a good story about this?
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Popper's later views were that scientific theories did not get confirmed, either. At least, not ultimately. The closest he came to "confirmation" was a temporary cessation of criticism of a theory until the scientist(s) could think up new criticisms.
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Thanks; that is what I’ve read. (Embarrassed to say I haven’t read Popper himself.) I don’t find this view helpful. It doesn’t seem to describe how science works in practice. It doesn’t give normative guidance for practice. And the logic doesn’t really work either, afaict.
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Lest I get axe-grindy, Popper is the only normative guide I've heard of. You won't get a criteria of demarcation of science out of Kuhn, for instance. His "normal science" is based on social norms, not methodological norms- which is what Karl Popper is *all about*.
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Replying to @averykimball @Meaningness and
Dude, Popper is *easy* to read. He aint Wittgenstein. I mean, he really got after Hegel for obscurantism in "The Open Society And Its Enemies", he tries to be clear and straightforward. "Conjectures And Refutations" is only 500 pages and really fun weird.
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Yes… my problem is that based on secondary sources, I’m not expecting to find a workable story there. So it’s hard to justify reading 500 pages, if it’s likely I’ll say “yup, he had no answers to the obvious objections” in the end.
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What might the obvious objections be?
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What I don’t expect to find are believable accounts of what the criteria for refutation are, and of what order to test conjectures in. (I’m happy to drop this if you don’t want to go further!)
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Sorry if I seem grouchy! Feel free to suspend this convo at any time. Spoilers: Popper never gives a criteria for *ultimate* refutation, as a refutation is also never final- it can be criticized, also. If you *want* that, Popper won't deliver.
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Replying to @averykimball @Meaningness and
And the order is "test the conjectures that you guess matter most to the problem you are trying to solve." Popper never shuts up about solving problems- it's the driving motivation for all his thought.
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Well, if the whole story were “science means coming up with hypotheses and testing them,” no one could object, but it would be trivial. Unless there’s an account of how you guess which conjectures matter most, and why you’d tentatively discard one and move on.
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