Dear Julian, Thank you thank you thank you! -:) Steve At 21:11 19/10/00 +0100, you wrote: >It's annoying to have to put in a good word for this vastly-over-rated (not >least by himself) thinker -- but falsifiability is *quite* a good idea as a >test of whether a set of notions is, so to speak, advanced in good faith. >(And his anecdote against Adler, which he uses to illustrate his >disillusionment with confirmationism, is certainly both funny and >well-directed). > >It's just a pity that it's logically disabled as a prescription for practice >(the Duhem-Quine problem); moreover Popper should have known this (since >Duhem preceded him by two or three decades) and the fact that he doesn't >deal with this objection is evidence of either ignorance or deception. > >I note that Nicky (hi -- good to hear from you again) asks for justification >of the claim that falsifiability is the *only* criterion for scientificity; >this would certainly be a hard claim to justify, and even Popper never >claimed this about his stock-in-trade. > >In fact, I seem to recall that he went to some lengths to point out the >curious and unfortunate consequence of the falsifiability criterion that >preposterous theories (e.g. "the moon is made of green cheese") are -- being >highly falsifiable -- highly scientific. > >In his #4166 Jerry questions the usefulness of what he describes as "the >empiricist method" in comprehending capitalism: to try and nip in the bud >any discussion at cross-purposes, could Jerry clarify whether he means >"empiricist" or "empirical"? > >Id' certainly agree with him about the former; if the latter, I think I'd >want to say that empirical investigation helps us to check whether our >would-be comprehension of capitalism is actually engaging with the reality >of it. > >Julian > > Dr. Steve Keen Senior Lecturer Economics & Finance University of Western Sydney Macarthur Building 11 Room 30, Goldsmith Avenue, Campbelltown PO Box 555 Campbelltown NSW 2560 Australia s.keen@uws.edu.au 61 2 4620-3016 Fax 61 2 4626-6683 Home 02 9558-8018 Mobile 0409 716 088 Home Page: http://bus.macarthur.uws.edu.au/steve-keen/
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