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@ Biogeographist: Given that you are the person that wants the most to expand beyond what is currently in the section Falsifiability#Lakatos'_falsificationism, which I think is fine but difficult, you should take the lead. My idea would be that at first you do not mention Popper when you refer to the view point of Bunge, Rescher, etc. The reason is that there an issue of due weight, precision and also of not implying anything in Wikipedia's voice when we consider the confusion that exists around Popper. Perhaps, Rescher found it useful to refer to a common view on Popper's philosophy, especially the view that it does not have any inductive or similar component, which is clearly false, because Popper himself referred to his methodology as quasi-induction. It is also perhaps perfectly fine that he did that in his publications. As you say, he was an excellent philosopher and he knew what he was doing. It's not for us to judge. Indeed, as you say, he simply referred to a common view on Popper in a way that helped explain his work. However, this does not mean at all that it is fine that we include that content in the article even it is well attributed. For the article, we need to understand what is being said by Rescher, all aspects, including his view on Popper's philosophy, and decide whether it is relevant to the article, consider due weight, etc. and be precise. What I mean is that, if it is not appropriate to say "Rescher says that Popper's view is XYZ" in a precise manner, for any reason, due weight, not relevant to the context, etc., then it's not better, perhaps even worst, to imply it in an ambiguous manner. Again, I do not mind that we say "X said that Popper's view is YZ", even if Popper said the opposite of YZ, as long as it said in the right context, where it is relevant and that we respect due weight, etc. Given that this is not an article about Popper, I do not think it should be a big issue to remove content that implicitly present the view of philosophers on Popper's philosophy. This is not going to resolve all possible differences between us, but I think it would help a lot. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 02:11, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
those sources are good ... but I want to see some secondary sources. When I said "I want to", I was speaking only of my own contribution to the article; I was not saying that other editors need to find secondary sources. I have not read Thornton (or if I read it, I have forgotten what he said), so I will look at that in my review of secondary sources. The problem with Popper is that, if I am not mistaken, he only engages with Lakatos and Kuhn, and not with Miller. Also, Popper says that it's wrong to call him a "naive falsificationist" (and I get the impression that Popper objects not only to the fact that "naive falsificationism" refers to a philosophy that is not his but also that the word "naive" is insulting), but he does not say that it is wrong to call him a falsificationist (with no qualifier), only that he does not use the term himself. That may be why Miller feels free to proudly use the term falsificationism. If Popper had asked people not to use it, I do not doubt that Miller would have refrained from using it. Biogeographist ( talk) 16:20, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
I think that Miller's use of the term falsificationism may be a bad idea. I don't know what you are trying to do. If you are trying to see a single meaning or a central point common to all use of "falsificationism" in the literature, I don't think it's a good idea and it might even create confusion by suggesting that the term was used in a consistent manner in the literature. In fact, this is why I say it was a big concession on my side, perhaps a mistake, to accept that we use "falsificationism" in a very broad manner. Well, when I made this concession, I somehow give the meaning that I attach to this very broad term, which is a generalization perhaps not used by Miller nor Lakatos: As you see, this is very broad. It certainly does not exclude the use of corroborations. It does not exclude Popper's philosophy, because his logical criterion and his methodology can certainly be seen as a way to approach the problems of falsifications, by using the fact that the logical side is free from the experimental issues and the problems that cannot be covered logically are covered within rational critical discussions. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 17:13, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
Miller's use of the term falsificationism may be a bad idea, that was a bad way of phrasing it. More neutrally stated: Can the conflict between Miller and Watkins about whether Miller's falsificationism is correctly associated with Popper be clearly resolved in favor of one or the other, or are both interpretations valid? This is an interesting question that may have a place in the article, especially if the question is addressed in another source.
If you are trying to see a single meaning or a central point common to all use of "falsificationism" in the literature, I don't think it's a good idea and it might even create confusion by suggesting that the term was used in a consistent manner in the literature.I agree; that's not my point.
In fact, this is why I say it was a big concession on my side, perhaps a mistake, to accept that we use "falsificationism" in a very broad manner.I am not suggesting using "falsificationism" in a broad manner. That's why I didn't understand your argument about general and specific cases at Talk:Falsifiability. I am in favor of clarifying the different uses of the term in historical context. Biogeographist ( talk) 17:29, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
So, I interpret your question simply as whether Miller was fairly exposing Popper's philosophy? I think that it is certainly a very valid question, which we should clearly have in mind when we read him and Popper, etc. This is basic. However, once we have our answer, I don't see that we need to expand on this in the article. Instead, we use our understanding, as we have no choice as to do, to write the article. This is different than addressing the question as a subject in itself in the article. I already give my answer to the question. Miller is quite close to Popper. Otherwise, Popper would have criticized him. The key difference is that he is less interested than Popper to address the limitations of the logical side. Because of that, I find him much less interesting than Popper. It's logical that Popper would not have criticized Miller on that, because Popper himself considered that this part of his writing was important to help people accept his philosophy, but was nevertheless complementary to his philosophy, not what epistemology should be rigorously about. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 18:11, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
Now I am thinking that trying to start by writing the lead section is approaching the problem backward. It would be better to try to start writing the body in a draft article first. I will probably start with a "History" section. For now, I would start with Popper's LSD and its translation into English in 1959. As far as I know currently, falsificationism as a term didn't start to be used until after LSD was translated into English, although the problems of falsification date back to the original publication of LSD in the mid-1930s. The first appearance of the term that I have found is in: Buchdahl, Gerd (March 1965). "A revolution in historiography of science". History of Science. 4 (1): 55–69. doi: 10.1177/007327536500400103. Buchdahl's article is a review of key books by Kuhn and Agassi. This is very significant since both Buchdahl and Lakatos are using the term "falsificationism" to talk about issues that arise in the confrontation between Kuhn and Popper, and Popper's 1982 discussion of the issue also focuses on this. Biogeographist ( talk) 18:17, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
I think of the article as a history of points of view on falsificationism and related problems of falsification and corroboration. This taken together with the key history points that you proposed looks good. My only concern is that, even though Miller is close to Popper in his respect of the importance of the logic, he does not present well how Popper motivates his view using the evolutionary perspective, etc. I would say that how critical discussions can work is not as clear with Miller than with Popper, because Miller sticks more on the logical side. In that sense, his replies are not truly representing Popper's view and we can understand Watkins's position in that light. So, it will be good to use other sources in addition to Miller at the end. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 22:13, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
@ Biogeographist:, I had a long discussion with Loew_Galitz in Talk:Falsifiability#False_statement_in_the_lede_(highlighted) and Talk:Falsifiability#Extreme_request_for_mechanical_verification_in_the_lead.. This discussion sheds light on the difficulties that some people might have to understand the subject, but above all it made me realize the importance of the Quine-Duhem thesis in Falsificationism. When you read the Introduction in Harding 1976, it appears as essentially the same subject. I would suggest that the history begins with the Quine-Duhem thesis.
We should try to see what's the conceptual difference between the two articles Falsificationism and Quine-Duhem thesis. Falsificationism can be seen as a study of the Quine-Duhem thesis: a search for a way to work with it, to make it less problematic. Popper proposed Falsifiability as a logical criterion in the light of the Quine-Duhem thesis. It's sad that we always explain Falsifiability in the light of Hume's problem when it could as well be explained, perhaps even better explained, in the light of the Duhemian problem. They are both problems in the growth of science, which we can refer as the general problem of induction. Hume focused on verifications in the general notion of induction whereas Duhem focused on falsifications also in the general problem of induction. It's very naive to think that Popper was only concerned by Hume's problem (the verification aspect) and did not address the Duhemian problem (the falsification aspect). Popper did not call his philosophy "falsificationism", but it nevertheless fits within the above view on falsificationism. With Lakatos, falsificationism has developped as a distinct inductivist approach, opposed to Popper's philosophy, but it certainly fits within this view on falsificationism also. The term "falsificationism" was originally used by Buchdahl, Lakatos and others in the context of a criticism or misunderstanding of Falsifiability. It's paradoxical, but yet fundamental, that they turned the Quine-Duhem thesis against Popper's philosophy. The point is that the Quine-Duhem thesis seems central.
We have to bring these views on Popper's philosophy, because it's a reality in the literature, but these point of views must be clearly attributed so that Popper's philosophy is never misrepresented. I mean, clearly many authors will present Popper's philosophy in a way that allow them to explain their contribution, but often it's biased and it cannot be stated in Wikipedia's voice. Also, these specific (biased) views on Popper's philosophy must only be stated when they are relevant, not implied in a confusing way there and there in a way that violates WP:due. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 12:36, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
that the history begins with the Quine-Duhem thesis, since LSD was originally published long before Quine intervened (but, interestingly, LSD was translated into English after Quine intervened, so LSD was written in a pre-Quinean context but read in English in a post-Quinean context). It's certainly an issue that should be addressed in the proper historical order with attention to the primary and secondary sources (e.g., Duhem and Quine were not saying exactly the same thing, and they were writing in different contexts). One secondary source is Thornton 2007. Biogeographist ( talk) 16:18, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
In the case of Duhem, it was of course the holism and conventionalism which Neurath adapted early on. (Mach, incidentally, viewed Duhem's main work as a continuation of his own efforts.) If today one speaks of the Duhem-Quine thesis, one really should speak of the Duhem-Neurath-Quine thesis in order to indicate the historical development of these ideas.
Here auxiliary hypotheses and the background knowledge may be seen as a part of the initial conditions. i.e., initial conditions may include every thing else in the system besides the theory itself. For example, in "All swans are white", "Being a swan" is a very complex "initial condition": the conclusion that the bird (or the thing) is white depends on this initial condition, which includes a lot of background knowledge and auxiliary hypotheses. This is also Popper's interpretation of himself: in the index of his 1959 translation, the entry "Quine-Duhem thesis" asks to see "Systems", which refers to this text. My argument could also have been that the Duhemian problem was described by Duhem (1861–1916) way before 1934. Here is an excerpt from Ariew 2020:Let p be a conclusion of a system t of statements which may consist of theories and initial conditions. [...] By means of this mode of inference we falsify the whole system (the theory as well as the initial conditions) which was required for the deduction of the statement p, i.e. of the falsified statement. Thus it cannot be asserted of any one statement of the system that it is, or is not, specifically upset by the falsification. Only if p is independent of some part of the system can we say that this part is not involved in the falsification.
So my argument could have been that the Duhemian problem preceded Popper's work, but it's more fundamental than that. My argument is that not only the Duhemian problem preceded Popper's work, but it was also well known by the Vienna circle before Popper's work. Ariew 2020 also says:Against this dogma Quine suggests that “our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually, but only as a corporate body” (1953, 41), and, in a footnote of the reprinted article in his collected essays, From a Logical Point of View, says that the doctrine was well argued by Pierre Duhem.
The key point is that Duhem's problem was background knowledge in Popper's environment when falsificationism (in the form of criticism) surfaced. It was well understood very early by Popper, Lakatos and most likely Buchdahl as well. The issue in falsificationism was not a misunderstanding of Duhem's problem, but a misunderstanding of the distinction between the logic side and methodological side of science and its relevance to the general induction problem, i.e, the problem of how to explain the growth of knowledge. So, this background knowledge should be explained first and then the real issue described in the light of this background knowledge.Duhem’s work was important for members of the Vienna Circle, including Otto Neurath and Philipp Frank, as it had been for Ernst Mach. Despite Duhem’s conservative beliefs, his work was also taken up by participants in the Viennese political scene, such as Friedrich Adler, who had translated La théorie physique into German in 1908. The Duhem thesis surfaced fully in Anglo-American philosophy in the 1950s through the work of W. V. O. Quine.
that the history begins with the Quine-Duhem thesis; I hope you would agree. Your source, Ariew 2020, says that Duhem and Quine didn't say exactly the same thing. The same could probably be said of Neurath. All of this needs to be laid out in proper historical context. Here is a copy of the first English edition of LSD in the Internet Archive. I searched for "Quine" in it; Quine's name doesn't appear anywhere, not even in the index. In a later edition, some indexer added "Duhem-Quine thesis" to the index, but it's an anachronistic index entry.
Wow! I was just looking for other places where Popper mentions Quine, and on pages 238 and 239 of Conjectures and Refutations (1962), the same pages where Popper mentions both Duhem and Quine, Popper also uses the term "falsificationist" twice, implicitly refering to a group that includes himself! So perhaps the first person to use the term "falsificationist" was Popper himself, to refer to himself! Amazing! I'm adding Conjectures and Refutations to the list of primary sources above! Biogeographist ( talk) 21:29, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
On page 228 it's not even implicit, it's fully explicit: "Falsificationists (the group of fallibilists to which I belong) believe..."! Biogeographist ( talk) 21:48, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
picking a sentence out of context! That's exactly the opposite of what I'm advocating! Biogeographist ( talk) 22:51, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
By the way, this is a good example of what I said above: But if Popper was not perfectly consistent and unambiguous in everything he wrote, then multiple valid interpretations are possible (although still not all interpretations would be valid—not everything goes).
Someone who only reads Conjectures and Refutations could argue from the evidence in that book that Popper considers himself a falsificationist. Someone who only reads the 1982 Introduction to Realism and the Aim of Science, where Popper wrote "my views on science (sometimes, but not by me, called 'falsificationism')", could argue from the evidence in that introduction that Popper does not consider himself a falsificationist. But a historical contextualization of both texts would show: In 1962 Popper wrote that he counted himself among the falsificationists, and twenty years later he wrote that he did not call his views falsificationism. And a historical contextualization of both texts would show what happened in those intervening twenty years that may have caused Popper to change his position. That is an example of why the historical approach is so important: it gives a deeper view.
Biogeographist (
talk) 22:37, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
I'm not advocatingandpicking a sentence out of context! That's exactly the opposite of what I'm advocating!
How can we clear up confusions about how the term is used if we don't mention and explain such uses? That has to be part of it.As I said, it has to be relevant in the context. The context where it would be relevant is a section that deals specifically about the different, often conflicting, uses of the terms falsificationism and falsificationist. I see what might be your position. You might be thinking that people are perhaps confused by the different uses of these terms and, if we don't cover that, then they might misunderstand what we say and even think that we misrepresent the literature. However, there is a danger that we remain at the level of confusion when we deal with confusion. I think that the most important is to present the important concepts in a way that is verifiable without getting caught in terminological issues. It is important to primarily put our attention in communicating the key point of views as clearly as possible using terms that are not ambiguous given the context. This is what will help the most to remove confusion. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 23:38, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
This section was written the best I could many years ago. Falsifiability was in an horrible state when I started to work on it, especially regarding falsificationism. I believe my section was an improvement, but it's difficult to present in a single section what Lakatos wrote in a complete article. When, I started to translate it in French (which I did not do finally), I saw that the match with Lakatos description was not accurate. It's not bad, but still not exactly how Lakatos describes these different falsificationisms. I don't remember exactly what was the issue and whether I corrected it. Anyway, most likely, if I had to write it again, it would be different. Or may be I would not focus too much on the specific way Lakatos describes these different falsificationisms. The way I see it now is that Lakatos's falsificationisms (dogmatic, naive, sophisticated) present Lakatos misunderstanding of Popper's philosophy. For example, the dogmatic falsificationist of Lakatos is very much like the logical falsificationist in Popper's philosophy. However, in Popper's philosophy, this dogmatic or logical falsificationist still exists, whereas somehow Lakatos consider that Popper got rid of him. The naive falsificationist is the falsificationist that only consider the logical use of the logical falsificationist (given an empirical basis) on the methodological side. This is Popper when he says that epistemology should only consider the logical aspect, i.e., the Popper that says that biological or evolutionary aspects are not a part of epistemology. Again Lakatos considers that Popper is getting rid of the naive falsificationist when he discusses the role of metaphysical theories and metaphysical research programs and other notions that cannot be justififed logically. However, Popper always considered the distinction important. This naive falsificationist still exists and it was always there. The sophisticated falsificationist that Lakatos saw partially in Popper philosophy is the falsificationist that accepts the importance of metaphysical theories and research programs. This sophisticated falsificationist was there very early in Popper's philosophy. Certainly, the role of metaphysics was there in 1934. But, even metaphysical research program is as old as 1949. He wrote a footnote in Schilpp p. 175 to explain that he used the concept in lectures as early as 1949. The reason why Lakatos says that it's only a partial sophisticated falsificationism is because of the metaphysical part. He wanted very much a verifiable sophisticated falsificationism, verifiable in accordance with some new general inductive principle. He explains that very clearly. This is why, he explains, he uses the term methodological research program, not metaphysical research program. He proudly says that it distinguish him from Popper's limited sophisticated falsificationist. However, he did not succeed. So, Lakatos was never more than a sophisticated falsificationist that promotes the use of metaphysical research programs. Anyway, the key point is that Lakatos saw an evolution in time in Popper's philosophy, which was not there at all. They just represent different focuses of Lakatos on different aspects of Popper's philosophy that were quite stable over his entire carreer. In other words, for Popper, it was always the case that a scientist must be like the dogmatic falsificationist some times, like the naive falsificationist other times and as the (partial) sophisticated falsificationist yet other times. Popper did not explain that explicitly. Instead, Popper wrote that he did not want to enter into these terminological distinctions made by Lakatos and that Lakatos used them to misrepresent his intellectual history. Nevertheless, this analysis helps an understanding of the sources and comes very naturally when we do understand the sources. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 01:18, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
I am not proposing to use this in the article. Just as a consideration of a source's sources has no place in an article, but is encouraged in a talk page to evaluate the source, this analysis is only offered to evaluate Lakatos paper and help us decide how to present it and see how relevant it is. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 03:24, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
@ Biogeographist: The context of my analysis of Lakatos's falsificationisms is that editors must use their understanding of a source to evaluate its relevance and the weight that it must have in different contexts. An example of this, different from the above, but still an example of the same general principle, is when editors consider the source's sources. They cannot refer to source's sources in the article, unless the author does it explicitly, but certainly editors can and should often consider the source's sources to better understand the author. Some people, even experienced editors, refer to this as "allowed original research in the talk page". I disagree with the use of this expression, because "original research" has a technical negative meaning in Wikipedia and anything that helps understand the source is best seen as opposed to original research, because when you don't understand the source as deeply as needed, you are very likely to do some form of original research. My point is also that original research should not be associated with people that claim or seem to believe that they know better. Original research can also and perhaps more often be done by editors who claim to have the most common view on a subject. If it is really the most common view and it is presented as such with a good understanding of the sources in respect of WP:due, then it is fine and it is not original research. Yes, but only when we can identify the sources for this most common view and have a good understanding of it in terms of these sources. My point is that the valid argument that we must write for a large audience cannot justify that we do not need to understand the sources and only present our limited understanding under the umbrella of the "most common view". Anyway, perhaps you agree with all of this and it was not necessary to expand on this. In terms of our specific case here, my point is that it is useful to understand that a lot in Lakatos's falsificationism is only Lakatos's perspective on Popper's philosophy and it cannot be presented in Wikipedia's voice and if we are in a very general context, as you wish to be, then I don't think it should have a lot of weight. I still think that an article that focuses on Lakatos's falsificationism would be justified and then, in that context, going into the details of Lakatos's falsificationism would be justified without violating WP:due. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 11:24, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
if we are in a very general context, as you wish to be, then I don't think it should have a lot of weight.I agree with that. Thanks also for everything else you said in this section, which is useful to think about, although I don't have any specific comment about it right now. I personally am not very interested in contributing to an article only about Lakatos, so I will continue to focus on preparing for a more general article. If you want to write an article on Lakatos, I would repeat that an article about his paper " Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes" would be more than justifiable and very welcome, just like there is an article about Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery, and indeed I think the latter article should also be expanded to summarize Popper's book in greater detail. Biogeographist ( talk) 22:59, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
As soon as we want to be general, we need to ask what is the difference between a large perspective on falsificationism and a broad coverage of the Quine-Duhem thesis, eventually larger than what is done in Quine-Duhem thesis? My point is that the Quine-Duhem thesis (the two versions as described by Lakatos) covers most of the problems of falsification. Both subjects are attached to the Vienna Circle. There is an important overlap. If you remenmber our previous discussions, you will see that I am not against overlap. I always argued that it's fine that almost the same subject is covered using different perspectives in different articles as long as it is not used to do POV fork, which is taken care of when the two articles refer to each other adequately, i.e., the readers can easily see the big picture. So, I am not asking the question in a negative manner. I do think, however, that we need to clarify what is the perspective specific to this article and how it is different from a perspective that would be natural for a broad coverage in Quine-Duhem thesis. One way to create a distinction would be to use a focus on terminology, but then I would disagree. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 23:35, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
This brings us back to a previous discussion regarding the role of the Quine-Duhem thesis and the Duhemian problem in this article. At the conceptual level, I consider that it's a background knowledge that was essentially known by all parties when falsificationism was discussed in the 60's and also essentially known through the Duhemian problem even earlier when LSD was first written in 1934. In particular, I would oppose a description of Popper's philosophy that does not address the Duhemian problem followed by a criticism that is based on the Duhemian problem. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 23:54, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
@ Dominic Mayers: Above you wondered how this article would be different from Quine-Duhem thesis. That got me thinking about how this article would be different from other articles as well, and I concluded that this article is not necessary. I would be happy with a disambiguation page at Falsificationism together with greater detail in the other relevant articles like critical rationalism, Quine-Duhem thesis, falsifiability, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, and a new article on Lakatos's " Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes". Biogeographist ( talk) 13:00, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
currently there is no problem, but it would be better to also have a separate article on " Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes" that could be properly linked from elsewhere in the encyclopedia. I just don't think that Falsificationism should be about Lakatos. Biogeographist ( talk) 15:27, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
Dominic Mayers ( talk) 15:41, 16 January 2022 (UTC)the tests Popper sets out are white-glove affairs of logical analysis . . . it is little wonder that they seem to tell us only that there is an error somewhere and that they are silent about its source. We have to become shrewd inquisitors of errors, interact with them, simulate them (with models and computers), amplify them: we have to learn to make them talk.
You wrote I just don't think that Falsificationism should be about Lakatos.
If we only have an article that covers Lakatos's falsificationism (and name it "Falsificationism"), then it does not matter what we think, it would be a fact and, if there is a single article that uses the name in the title, there is no justification for a disambiguation page. In particular, having
Critical Rationalism as an entry in a
Falsificationism disambiguation page does not respect the normal use of disambiguation pages in Wikipedia, because a disambiguation page is not used to help readers decide among articles that are conceptually related. It must be used when lexically similar titles are used by different articles. I would not be so surprise that you can find examples where a disambiguation page is used for conceptually related pages with entirely different titles, but it's not the intended purpose and I am opposed to an abuse of disambiguation pages. If, as you suggest, no article uses the name "falsificationism" in its title, then we even less need a disambiguation page. It's better to present the results of the search engine or do a redirect to a page such as
Critical rationalism or
Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes and use an About template at the top of this article to present other uses. You seem to disagree with me that Falsificationism is a lot associated with Lakatos and in this I include the fact that, most of the times, when it is associated with Popper it is in the same line of thought as Lakatos, so it is still Lakatos's falsificationism. I know that you might feel that, nevertheless, most people still associate falsificationism with Popper, but most people make this association in a way that is similar to Lakatos's way in the following sense that they then view the Quine-Duhem thesis as a criticism of falsificationism. In other words, the term "falsificationism" is irreversibly compromised in the literature and I refuse to present this confusion, even if it is wide spread, in Wikipedia's voice. Creating a disambiguation page only to associate
Critical Rationalism as a possible meaning of Falsificationism is already too much. It's way better to use an About template, because then it's part of the article. I would really prefer a redirect to
Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes with an about template. This would do the maximum to compensate for the confusion that exists in the literature regarding falsificationism.
Dominic Mayers (
talk) 16:19, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
different falsificationisms in Popper's philosophy? It sounds to me like you just made up that idea, so I would like to see your sources that explicitly say that.
Meanwhile, will you please provide sources that substantiate your claim that there are "different falsificationisms in Popper's philosophy"?I already explained in one or two paragraphs above that I consider this as part of an understanding of the source, not something that I plan to include in any article. Please read Lakatos description of his different falsificationisms, especially dogmatic vs naive, and then read Popper insistence that we must separate logic and methodology, if you don't see that the dogmatic falsificationist described by Lakatos with
match pretty well with the always existing logical side in Popper's philosophy, then I am at a lost. The issue, if you understand that there is a good match, is that Lakatos says that this dogmatic falsificationism is only an early stage of Popper's philosophy, whereas Popper insists that it is an essential part of his philosophy used to define falsifiability as a purely logical criterion. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 17:39, 16 January 2022 (UTC)If a theory is falsified [in the usual sense], it is proven false; if it is falsified [in the technical sense], it may still be true.
— Imre Lakatos, Lakatos 1978, p. 24
You wrote I asked myself if there is another example that is closer to this one, and the word
Universalism popped into my head as a possible example.
I looked at
Universalism (disambiguation) and indeed
Open individualism is an example of a completely different name with no lexical connection with Universalism. But my point went further than that. Unless, there is a possible confusion between
Open individualism and another article in the disambiguation page at the conceptual level–i.e., an incorrect conflation of two distinct concepts, it's not the same thing as in our case. The existence of a conceptual confusion makes an important difference. I don't think a disambiguation page does a good job in such a case. Besides, even if you found a few isolated example that matches very well with our case, including the conceptual confusion, I don't think it would be a strong argument to justify that we do the same. It would still not be the most standard use of a disambiguation page.
Dominic Mayers (
talk) 18:15, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
I don't think a disambiguation page does a good job in such a case.I could agree with that, but that would be just as true of disambiguation in a hatnote, so more generally no simple disambiguation would do a good job in this case. So the answer to the question in the heading of this section would be: Yes, we need a general article on falsificationism to clear up conceptual confusion. Biogeographist ( talk) 18:27, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
In contrast, having the readers get to the article on Lakatos's falsificationism when they use the search term "falsificationism" will immediately bring them to question themselves about this confusion: I am not sure that is true, but we could be empirical about it and test that option. ( Falsificationism had basically 8 average daily pageviews before the end of December, so the stakes are pretty low here; we can afford to experiment. The most likely outcome here is that nobody actually uses the Falsificationism redirect anyway.) Like I said, I am not very interested in contributing to an article only about Lakatos, but I guess I would be willing to accept redirecting Falsificationism to " Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes" as an experiment, and watch the page and see what happens over a few months. Biogeographist ( talk) 19:28, 16 January 2022 (UTC) and 19:57, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
OK, I see two options that I consider possible:
I have no problem with the first option, except that dealing explicitly with confusion within an article might not be so easy and efficient. The idea is to challenge in the most direct manner the most likely confusions using redirects, hatnotes and articles that present point of views in the clearest manner. Most people that are redirected to a page on falsificationism that is clearly not Popper's philosophy will be challenged, but it's good. We want that. The point is that it's often not true that they actually want to see Popper's philosophy. More often, they might want to know more about falsificationism as presented in some texts and it's not truly Popper's falsificationism, even if the author claims or suggests it. We want to make sure the misunderstanding that it's Popper's philosophy is being challenged. The hatnote will make sure that the readers are not mislead and are well informed. I understand that we could put a hatnote at the top of an article on Popper's philosophy and redirect there, but I find it a bit artificial. Normally, someone that searches for falsifiability or critical rationalism knows what he wants. It's clear and there should be no need for a hatnote. The hatnote is way more natural on top of the article about falsificationism, because this is the term that is confusing. Because this is where the hatnote is natural, it is also where the redirect should go. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 20:41, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
I was looking at Popper's view on the Duhemian problem. This problem is often explained in terms of auxiliary hypotheses defined as the hypotheses that are required for the experiment to work as planned. An example of auxiliary hypothesis that uses this definition is the hypothesis that the telescope is properly designed and the associated theory of observation is correct. This is the way the expression "auxiliary hypothesis" is used here and here. With this definition, the Quine-Duhem thesis becomes the statement that a required auxiliary hypothesis can be false instead of the theory. However, this is not the way the expression "auxiliary hypothesis" was usually used by Popper and Lakatos and perhaps many others in the Vienna circle. Lakatos used the expression 'ceteris paribus clause' instead of auxiliary hypothesis to refer to these required hypotheses. For Lakatos and Popper, most of the times, the expression auxiliary hypothesis refers instead to a modification of the theory or of the background knowledge, but this is different. Let us use "explanatory auxiliary hypothesis" to indicate that we refer to this other meaning (I just coined this expression for the purpose of this discussion). In this case, the explanatory auxiliary hypothesis is added to protect the theory against falsification. It's different, because the explanatory auxiliary hypothesis must be true to save the theory (by explaining away the falsification), whereas a ceteris paribus clause must be false to save the theory. Perhaps the idea is to turn the negation of a ceteris paribus clause into an explanatory auxiliary hypothesis. For example, an explanatory auxiliary hypothesis would be that the theory of the telescope is incorrect and must be modified. The explanatory auxiliary hypothesis would even go further and provide the new theory of the telescope. The situation gets even more confusing when we realize that there are two categories of ceteris paribus clauses and thus two corresponding categories of explanatory auxiliary hypotheses. A ceteris paribus clause might not be about any theory of observation, but only about the initial condition. For example, the clause that the telescope is not defective is not the same as the clause that the theory of the telescope is correct. Correspondingly, the explanatory auxiliary hypothesis that the given telescope was defective is not the same as a new theory for how telescopes fundamentally work. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 12:40, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
But in spite of Friedman's work to restore the idea that conceptual frameworks of physics are stratified, his inclusion of mathematical principles in the category of constitutive principles is a step in the direction of Quine's centrality: it undermines the application of the factual–nonfactual distinction to different components of our conceptual frameworks. I have argued that those principles that define and interpret basic theoretical concepts should be distinguished from the formal prerequisites or auxiliaries that the principles presuppose, and all of these principles and prerequisites, which together constitute frameworks of empirical investigation, should be distinguished from the empirical hypotheses whose formulation they permit. This allows us to better recognize the salient differences in methodological character. In particular, separating mathematical auxiliaries, on the one hand, from coordinating principles and empirical hypotheses, on the other, allows us to distinguish the factual from the nonfactual components of our theoretical frameworks.
— Ryan Samaroo in Samaroo 2020
That article by Paul Hoyningen-Huene that you found is about the economist Milton Friedman, a very different guy, but an easy mistake to make. I didn't look at the Bruce Caldwell book, but that is probably Milton Friedman too, since it is about economics and it was published before Michael Friedman published his major works.
When I brought up Samaroo's comments on Michael Friedman, I was free-associating to something I had recently read. Carl Hempel was one of Friedman's teachers, and Friedman's analysis of scientific theory-change is very much in the tradition of the 20th-century philosophers (both logical empiricists and Popperians) who were doing what Rudolf Carnap called "the rational reconstruction of science". I was wondering how Friedman's account might be useful for putting auxiliary hypotheses in a larger analytical framework. Friedman is really insistent that Quine's view is insufficient. But I agree that I was probably "barking up the wrong tree" there.
A more useful reference for putting auxiliary hypotheses in a larger analytical framework (not the only way to do it, but one way) may be an article I once read by Ian Hacking ( Hacking 1992). In that article, Hacking classifies laboratory science into 15 elements, in three groups (1–5 are "ideas", 6–10 are "things", 11–15 are "marks"). I have to list all the elements below so that his subsequent remarks on auxiliary hypotheses will make sense:
After making those 15 distinctions, Hacking then has a section titled "Extending Duhem's Thesis" that may be worth quoting at length:
Duhem (1906) observed that if an experiment or observation was persistently inconsistent with theory, one could modify theory in two ways: either revise the systematic theory (3) or revise the auxiliary hypotheses (in which we include both topical hypotheses [4] and modeling of the apparatus [5]). His classic example was astronomy, not a laboratory science, but the message was clear. Should a theory about the heavens be inconsistent with data, he said, we may revise astronomy, or modify either the theory of the transmission of light in space or the theory of telescope (5). But that is only the beginning of the malleability of my fifteen elements. For example, we can try to modify the telescope or build a different kind of telescope. That is, try to save the systematic hypothesis by adapting the detector (8).
Several recent contributions help to enlarge the Duhemian vision.... Duhem, Pickering, and Ackermann point to interplay among several subsets of the elements (1)–(15). Pickering attends to the modeling of the apparatus and the working of the instruments: we acknowledge data as data only after we have gotten handmade apparatus to work in ways that we understand. Duhem emphasized the intellectual elements (1)–(5). Ackermann, observing that data can be understood in many ways or not at all, put the emphasis on a dialectic involving theories and interpretation, regarding instruments and the data that they produced as fixed points. We should learn from all these authors. Let us extend Duhem's thesis to the entire set of elements (1)–(15). Since these are different in kind, they are plastic resources in different ways. We can (1) change questions; more commonly we modify them in midexperiment. Data (11) can be abandoned or selected without fraud; we consider data secure when we can interpret them in the light of, among other things, systematic theory (3). But it is not just Ackermann's interpretation of data by theory that is in play. Data processing is embarrassingly plastic. That has long been familiar to students of statistical inference in the case of data assessment and reduction, (12) and (13). Because statistics is a metascience, statistical methodologies are seldom called into question inside a laboratory, but a consultant may well advise that they be. Data analysis is plastic in itself; in addition any change in topical hypotheses (4) or modeling of the apparatus (5) will lead to the introduction of new programs of data analysis....
The truth is that there is a play between theory and observation, but that is a miserly quarter-truth. There is a play between many things: data, theory, experiment, phenomenology, equipment, data processing.
— Hacking 1992, pp. 52–55
Hacking says some other relevant points, but that is more than enough already. The point here is that the different kinds of "auxiliary hypotheses" are very easy to understand when they are (1) clearly internally differentiated/classified and (2) located in a larger analytical framework. And all of this would be even clearer if it were illustrated with a graphical diagram. Biogeographist ( talk) 17:35, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
these distinctions fail to bring out the importance of the theory-laden nature of observations. That impression is probably due to what I have excerpted from Hacking's chapter. Notice that none of the elements is "observation". Element 15 is another name for theory-ladenness, for example. I could say more but it would probably be a diversion as you said. Biogeographist ( talk) 19:38, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
unless there is a specific point that you want to make that needs more precision, we can abstract away from these distinctionsand
He and others made these distinctions when needed without referring to them explicitly and, in fact, often went much further than these distinctions suggest: Yes, to construct an adequate analytical framework one first has to clarify the problem or question at hand. (I imagine that is why "questions" is number 1 in Hacking's list of elements above.) Hacking considered his framework to be good enough for his questions or purposes in that chapter, and no doubt other thinkers, such as Popper and Friedman, thought their analytical frameworks were good enough for whatever questions and purposes they were pursuing in a given work. I am certainly not suggesting that Hacking's framework would be adequate for all purposes.
Notes
On a related subject, in the specific context of an opposition to an excessive conventionalism, Popper warned against explanatory auxiliary hypotheses. This was misinterpreted by Lakatos as if Popper was fundamentally against explanatory auxiliary hypotheses. On the contrary, Popper's insistence on the importance of the logical side is a way of saying that the ceteris paribus clauses are important and we must use them to do science. Working on the logical side is similar to accepting the ceteris paribus clauses. To put it in another way, the logical side contains by default, without the need to state them, the ceteris paribus clauses. At the same time, Popper was fully aware of the methodological issues, of the Duhemian problem and of the problem of induction. He was also aware that he needed an evolutionary perspective, metaphysical research programs, quasi-induction, etc. to explain the growth of knowledge. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 12:40, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
The title needs to be specific enough so that it's clear that the article does not cover all meanings of falsificationism. I would have used falsificationism, but it would have been an invitation to cover all meanings of the term in the literature and it's better to have a clear focus. Yet, the title should not present a too narrow scope such as only one specific work of Lakatos. The concept that I wish to cover is the notion of falsificationism that is often criticized and, unfortunately, also often inadequately attributed to Popper. This naive notion is not referred to by Lakatos only. Even Lakatos says that Kuhn refers to it. The title "Naive Falsificationism" is not perfect, because Lakatos used this term in a very narrow manner as different from dogmatic falsificationism. On the other hand, it's only Lakatos that used it in this very narrow manner. For many authors, naive falsificationism includes Dogmatic falsificationism. In fact, for some authors, naive falsificationism means what Lakatos calls dogmatic falsificationism and they do not discuss what Lakatos calls naive falsificationism. For example, I do not believe that Kuhn used the distinctions that Lakatos created. "Naive falsificationism" as a title should be taken in its broadest sense. It would still be narrow enough. I created a draft in Draft: Naive Falsificationism. Currently, it only contains a cut and paste of the section that exists in Falsifiability. It has to be adapted and extended to make it less specific to one work of Lakatos. I might even use the historical approach that Biogeographist suggested, but addding the Duhemian problem as the primary context that precedes every thing. The only difference is that the objective is to clarify the notion of Naive falsificationism in its context, certainly including Popper's philosophy. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 16:09, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
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@ Biogeographist: Given that you are the person that wants the most to expand beyond what is currently in the section Falsifiability#Lakatos'_falsificationism, which I think is fine but difficult, you should take the lead. My idea would be that at first you do not mention Popper when you refer to the view point of Bunge, Rescher, etc. The reason is that there an issue of due weight, precision and also of not implying anything in Wikipedia's voice when we consider the confusion that exists around Popper. Perhaps, Rescher found it useful to refer to a common view on Popper's philosophy, especially the view that it does not have any inductive or similar component, which is clearly false, because Popper himself referred to his methodology as quasi-induction. It is also perhaps perfectly fine that he did that in his publications. As you say, he was an excellent philosopher and he knew what he was doing. It's not for us to judge. Indeed, as you say, he simply referred to a common view on Popper in a way that helped explain his work. However, this does not mean at all that it is fine that we include that content in the article even it is well attributed. For the article, we need to understand what is being said by Rescher, all aspects, including his view on Popper's philosophy, and decide whether it is relevant to the article, consider due weight, etc. and be precise. What I mean is that, if it is not appropriate to say "Rescher says that Popper's view is XYZ" in a precise manner, for any reason, due weight, not relevant to the context, etc., then it's not better, perhaps even worst, to imply it in an ambiguous manner. Again, I do not mind that we say "X said that Popper's view is YZ", even if Popper said the opposite of YZ, as long as it said in the right context, where it is relevant and that we respect due weight, etc. Given that this is not an article about Popper, I do not think it should be a big issue to remove content that implicitly present the view of philosophers on Popper's philosophy. This is not going to resolve all possible differences between us, but I think it would help a lot. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 02:11, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
those sources are good ... but I want to see some secondary sources. When I said "I want to", I was speaking only of my own contribution to the article; I was not saying that other editors need to find secondary sources. I have not read Thornton (or if I read it, I have forgotten what he said), so I will look at that in my review of secondary sources. The problem with Popper is that, if I am not mistaken, he only engages with Lakatos and Kuhn, and not with Miller. Also, Popper says that it's wrong to call him a "naive falsificationist" (and I get the impression that Popper objects not only to the fact that "naive falsificationism" refers to a philosophy that is not his but also that the word "naive" is insulting), but he does not say that it is wrong to call him a falsificationist (with no qualifier), only that he does not use the term himself. That may be why Miller feels free to proudly use the term falsificationism. If Popper had asked people not to use it, I do not doubt that Miller would have refrained from using it. Biogeographist ( talk) 16:20, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
I think that Miller's use of the term falsificationism may be a bad idea. I don't know what you are trying to do. If you are trying to see a single meaning or a central point common to all use of "falsificationism" in the literature, I don't think it's a good idea and it might even create confusion by suggesting that the term was used in a consistent manner in the literature. In fact, this is why I say it was a big concession on my side, perhaps a mistake, to accept that we use "falsificationism" in a very broad manner. Well, when I made this concession, I somehow give the meaning that I attach to this very broad term, which is a generalization perhaps not used by Miller nor Lakatos: As you see, this is very broad. It certainly does not exclude the use of corroborations. It does not exclude Popper's philosophy, because his logical criterion and his methodology can certainly be seen as a way to approach the problems of falsifications, by using the fact that the logical side is free from the experimental issues and the problems that cannot be covered logically are covered within rational critical discussions. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 17:13, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
Miller's use of the term falsificationism may be a bad idea, that was a bad way of phrasing it. More neutrally stated: Can the conflict between Miller and Watkins about whether Miller's falsificationism is correctly associated with Popper be clearly resolved in favor of one or the other, or are both interpretations valid? This is an interesting question that may have a place in the article, especially if the question is addressed in another source.
If you are trying to see a single meaning or a central point common to all use of "falsificationism" in the literature, I don't think it's a good idea and it might even create confusion by suggesting that the term was used in a consistent manner in the literature.I agree; that's not my point.
In fact, this is why I say it was a big concession on my side, perhaps a mistake, to accept that we use "falsificationism" in a very broad manner.I am not suggesting using "falsificationism" in a broad manner. That's why I didn't understand your argument about general and specific cases at Talk:Falsifiability. I am in favor of clarifying the different uses of the term in historical context. Biogeographist ( talk) 17:29, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
So, I interpret your question simply as whether Miller was fairly exposing Popper's philosophy? I think that it is certainly a very valid question, which we should clearly have in mind when we read him and Popper, etc. This is basic. However, once we have our answer, I don't see that we need to expand on this in the article. Instead, we use our understanding, as we have no choice as to do, to write the article. This is different than addressing the question as a subject in itself in the article. I already give my answer to the question. Miller is quite close to Popper. Otherwise, Popper would have criticized him. The key difference is that he is less interested than Popper to address the limitations of the logical side. Because of that, I find him much less interesting than Popper. It's logical that Popper would not have criticized Miller on that, because Popper himself considered that this part of his writing was important to help people accept his philosophy, but was nevertheless complementary to his philosophy, not what epistemology should be rigorously about. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 18:11, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
Now I am thinking that trying to start by writing the lead section is approaching the problem backward. It would be better to try to start writing the body in a draft article first. I will probably start with a "History" section. For now, I would start with Popper's LSD and its translation into English in 1959. As far as I know currently, falsificationism as a term didn't start to be used until after LSD was translated into English, although the problems of falsification date back to the original publication of LSD in the mid-1930s. The first appearance of the term that I have found is in: Buchdahl, Gerd (March 1965). "A revolution in historiography of science". History of Science. 4 (1): 55–69. doi: 10.1177/007327536500400103. Buchdahl's article is a review of key books by Kuhn and Agassi. This is very significant since both Buchdahl and Lakatos are using the term "falsificationism" to talk about issues that arise in the confrontation between Kuhn and Popper, and Popper's 1982 discussion of the issue also focuses on this. Biogeographist ( talk) 18:17, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
I think of the article as a history of points of view on falsificationism and related problems of falsification and corroboration. This taken together with the key history points that you proposed looks good. My only concern is that, even though Miller is close to Popper in his respect of the importance of the logic, he does not present well how Popper motivates his view using the evolutionary perspective, etc. I would say that how critical discussions can work is not as clear with Miller than with Popper, because Miller sticks more on the logical side. In that sense, his replies are not truly representing Popper's view and we can understand Watkins's position in that light. So, it will be good to use other sources in addition to Miller at the end. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 22:13, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
@ Biogeographist:, I had a long discussion with Loew_Galitz in Talk:Falsifiability#False_statement_in_the_lede_(highlighted) and Talk:Falsifiability#Extreme_request_for_mechanical_verification_in_the_lead.. This discussion sheds light on the difficulties that some people might have to understand the subject, but above all it made me realize the importance of the Quine-Duhem thesis in Falsificationism. When you read the Introduction in Harding 1976, it appears as essentially the same subject. I would suggest that the history begins with the Quine-Duhem thesis.
We should try to see what's the conceptual difference between the two articles Falsificationism and Quine-Duhem thesis. Falsificationism can be seen as a study of the Quine-Duhem thesis: a search for a way to work with it, to make it less problematic. Popper proposed Falsifiability as a logical criterion in the light of the Quine-Duhem thesis. It's sad that we always explain Falsifiability in the light of Hume's problem when it could as well be explained, perhaps even better explained, in the light of the Duhemian problem. They are both problems in the growth of science, which we can refer as the general problem of induction. Hume focused on verifications in the general notion of induction whereas Duhem focused on falsifications also in the general problem of induction. It's very naive to think that Popper was only concerned by Hume's problem (the verification aspect) and did not address the Duhemian problem (the falsification aspect). Popper did not call his philosophy "falsificationism", but it nevertheless fits within the above view on falsificationism. With Lakatos, falsificationism has developped as a distinct inductivist approach, opposed to Popper's philosophy, but it certainly fits within this view on falsificationism also. The term "falsificationism" was originally used by Buchdahl, Lakatos and others in the context of a criticism or misunderstanding of Falsifiability. It's paradoxical, but yet fundamental, that they turned the Quine-Duhem thesis against Popper's philosophy. The point is that the Quine-Duhem thesis seems central.
We have to bring these views on Popper's philosophy, because it's a reality in the literature, but these point of views must be clearly attributed so that Popper's philosophy is never misrepresented. I mean, clearly many authors will present Popper's philosophy in a way that allow them to explain their contribution, but often it's biased and it cannot be stated in Wikipedia's voice. Also, these specific (biased) views on Popper's philosophy must only be stated when they are relevant, not implied in a confusing way there and there in a way that violates WP:due. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 12:36, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
that the history begins with the Quine-Duhem thesis, since LSD was originally published long before Quine intervened (but, interestingly, LSD was translated into English after Quine intervened, so LSD was written in a pre-Quinean context but read in English in a post-Quinean context). It's certainly an issue that should be addressed in the proper historical order with attention to the primary and secondary sources (e.g., Duhem and Quine were not saying exactly the same thing, and they were writing in different contexts). One secondary source is Thornton 2007. Biogeographist ( talk) 16:18, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
In the case of Duhem, it was of course the holism and conventionalism which Neurath adapted early on. (Mach, incidentally, viewed Duhem's main work as a continuation of his own efforts.) If today one speaks of the Duhem-Quine thesis, one really should speak of the Duhem-Neurath-Quine thesis in order to indicate the historical development of these ideas.
Here auxiliary hypotheses and the background knowledge may be seen as a part of the initial conditions. i.e., initial conditions may include every thing else in the system besides the theory itself. For example, in "All swans are white", "Being a swan" is a very complex "initial condition": the conclusion that the bird (or the thing) is white depends on this initial condition, which includes a lot of background knowledge and auxiliary hypotheses. This is also Popper's interpretation of himself: in the index of his 1959 translation, the entry "Quine-Duhem thesis" asks to see "Systems", which refers to this text. My argument could also have been that the Duhemian problem was described by Duhem (1861–1916) way before 1934. Here is an excerpt from Ariew 2020:Let p be a conclusion of a system t of statements which may consist of theories and initial conditions. [...] By means of this mode of inference we falsify the whole system (the theory as well as the initial conditions) which was required for the deduction of the statement p, i.e. of the falsified statement. Thus it cannot be asserted of any one statement of the system that it is, or is not, specifically upset by the falsification. Only if p is independent of some part of the system can we say that this part is not involved in the falsification.
So my argument could have been that the Duhemian problem preceded Popper's work, but it's more fundamental than that. My argument is that not only the Duhemian problem preceded Popper's work, but it was also well known by the Vienna circle before Popper's work. Ariew 2020 also says:Against this dogma Quine suggests that “our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually, but only as a corporate body” (1953, 41), and, in a footnote of the reprinted article in his collected essays, From a Logical Point of View, says that the doctrine was well argued by Pierre Duhem.
The key point is that Duhem's problem was background knowledge in Popper's environment when falsificationism (in the form of criticism) surfaced. It was well understood very early by Popper, Lakatos and most likely Buchdahl as well. The issue in falsificationism was not a misunderstanding of Duhem's problem, but a misunderstanding of the distinction between the logic side and methodological side of science and its relevance to the general induction problem, i.e, the problem of how to explain the growth of knowledge. So, this background knowledge should be explained first and then the real issue described in the light of this background knowledge.Duhem’s work was important for members of the Vienna Circle, including Otto Neurath and Philipp Frank, as it had been for Ernst Mach. Despite Duhem’s conservative beliefs, his work was also taken up by participants in the Viennese political scene, such as Friedrich Adler, who had translated La théorie physique into German in 1908. The Duhem thesis surfaced fully in Anglo-American philosophy in the 1950s through the work of W. V. O. Quine.
that the history begins with the Quine-Duhem thesis; I hope you would agree. Your source, Ariew 2020, says that Duhem and Quine didn't say exactly the same thing. The same could probably be said of Neurath. All of this needs to be laid out in proper historical context. Here is a copy of the first English edition of LSD in the Internet Archive. I searched for "Quine" in it; Quine's name doesn't appear anywhere, not even in the index. In a later edition, some indexer added "Duhem-Quine thesis" to the index, but it's an anachronistic index entry.
Wow! I was just looking for other places where Popper mentions Quine, and on pages 238 and 239 of Conjectures and Refutations (1962), the same pages where Popper mentions both Duhem and Quine, Popper also uses the term "falsificationist" twice, implicitly refering to a group that includes himself! So perhaps the first person to use the term "falsificationist" was Popper himself, to refer to himself! Amazing! I'm adding Conjectures and Refutations to the list of primary sources above! Biogeographist ( talk) 21:29, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
On page 228 it's not even implicit, it's fully explicit: "Falsificationists (the group of fallibilists to which I belong) believe..."! Biogeographist ( talk) 21:48, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
picking a sentence out of context! That's exactly the opposite of what I'm advocating! Biogeographist ( talk) 22:51, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
By the way, this is a good example of what I said above: But if Popper was not perfectly consistent and unambiguous in everything he wrote, then multiple valid interpretations are possible (although still not all interpretations would be valid—not everything goes).
Someone who only reads Conjectures and Refutations could argue from the evidence in that book that Popper considers himself a falsificationist. Someone who only reads the 1982 Introduction to Realism and the Aim of Science, where Popper wrote "my views on science (sometimes, but not by me, called 'falsificationism')", could argue from the evidence in that introduction that Popper does not consider himself a falsificationist. But a historical contextualization of both texts would show: In 1962 Popper wrote that he counted himself among the falsificationists, and twenty years later he wrote that he did not call his views falsificationism. And a historical contextualization of both texts would show what happened in those intervening twenty years that may have caused Popper to change his position. That is an example of why the historical approach is so important: it gives a deeper view.
Biogeographist (
talk) 22:37, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
I'm not advocatingandpicking a sentence out of context! That's exactly the opposite of what I'm advocating!
How can we clear up confusions about how the term is used if we don't mention and explain such uses? That has to be part of it.As I said, it has to be relevant in the context. The context where it would be relevant is a section that deals specifically about the different, often conflicting, uses of the terms falsificationism and falsificationist. I see what might be your position. You might be thinking that people are perhaps confused by the different uses of these terms and, if we don't cover that, then they might misunderstand what we say and even think that we misrepresent the literature. However, there is a danger that we remain at the level of confusion when we deal with confusion. I think that the most important is to present the important concepts in a way that is verifiable without getting caught in terminological issues. It is important to primarily put our attention in communicating the key point of views as clearly as possible using terms that are not ambiguous given the context. This is what will help the most to remove confusion. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 23:38, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
This section was written the best I could many years ago. Falsifiability was in an horrible state when I started to work on it, especially regarding falsificationism. I believe my section was an improvement, but it's difficult to present in a single section what Lakatos wrote in a complete article. When, I started to translate it in French (which I did not do finally), I saw that the match with Lakatos description was not accurate. It's not bad, but still not exactly how Lakatos describes these different falsificationisms. I don't remember exactly what was the issue and whether I corrected it. Anyway, most likely, if I had to write it again, it would be different. Or may be I would not focus too much on the specific way Lakatos describes these different falsificationisms. The way I see it now is that Lakatos's falsificationisms (dogmatic, naive, sophisticated) present Lakatos misunderstanding of Popper's philosophy. For example, the dogmatic falsificationist of Lakatos is very much like the logical falsificationist in Popper's philosophy. However, in Popper's philosophy, this dogmatic or logical falsificationist still exists, whereas somehow Lakatos consider that Popper got rid of him. The naive falsificationist is the falsificationist that only consider the logical use of the logical falsificationist (given an empirical basis) on the methodological side. This is Popper when he says that epistemology should only consider the logical aspect, i.e., the Popper that says that biological or evolutionary aspects are not a part of epistemology. Again Lakatos considers that Popper is getting rid of the naive falsificationist when he discusses the role of metaphysical theories and metaphysical research programs and other notions that cannot be justififed logically. However, Popper always considered the distinction important. This naive falsificationist still exists and it was always there. The sophisticated falsificationist that Lakatos saw partially in Popper philosophy is the falsificationist that accepts the importance of metaphysical theories and research programs. This sophisticated falsificationist was there very early in Popper's philosophy. Certainly, the role of metaphysics was there in 1934. But, even metaphysical research program is as old as 1949. He wrote a footnote in Schilpp p. 175 to explain that he used the concept in lectures as early as 1949. The reason why Lakatos says that it's only a partial sophisticated falsificationism is because of the metaphysical part. He wanted very much a verifiable sophisticated falsificationism, verifiable in accordance with some new general inductive principle. He explains that very clearly. This is why, he explains, he uses the term methodological research program, not metaphysical research program. He proudly says that it distinguish him from Popper's limited sophisticated falsificationist. However, he did not succeed. So, Lakatos was never more than a sophisticated falsificationist that promotes the use of metaphysical research programs. Anyway, the key point is that Lakatos saw an evolution in time in Popper's philosophy, which was not there at all. They just represent different focuses of Lakatos on different aspects of Popper's philosophy that were quite stable over his entire carreer. In other words, for Popper, it was always the case that a scientist must be like the dogmatic falsificationist some times, like the naive falsificationist other times and as the (partial) sophisticated falsificationist yet other times. Popper did not explain that explicitly. Instead, Popper wrote that he did not want to enter into these terminological distinctions made by Lakatos and that Lakatos used them to misrepresent his intellectual history. Nevertheless, this analysis helps an understanding of the sources and comes very naturally when we do understand the sources. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 01:18, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
I am not proposing to use this in the article. Just as a consideration of a source's sources has no place in an article, but is encouraged in a talk page to evaluate the source, this analysis is only offered to evaluate Lakatos paper and help us decide how to present it and see how relevant it is. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 03:24, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
@ Biogeographist: The context of my analysis of Lakatos's falsificationisms is that editors must use their understanding of a source to evaluate its relevance and the weight that it must have in different contexts. An example of this, different from the above, but still an example of the same general principle, is when editors consider the source's sources. They cannot refer to source's sources in the article, unless the author does it explicitly, but certainly editors can and should often consider the source's sources to better understand the author. Some people, even experienced editors, refer to this as "allowed original research in the talk page". I disagree with the use of this expression, because "original research" has a technical negative meaning in Wikipedia and anything that helps understand the source is best seen as opposed to original research, because when you don't understand the source as deeply as needed, you are very likely to do some form of original research. My point is also that original research should not be associated with people that claim or seem to believe that they know better. Original research can also and perhaps more often be done by editors who claim to have the most common view on a subject. If it is really the most common view and it is presented as such with a good understanding of the sources in respect of WP:due, then it is fine and it is not original research. Yes, but only when we can identify the sources for this most common view and have a good understanding of it in terms of these sources. My point is that the valid argument that we must write for a large audience cannot justify that we do not need to understand the sources and only present our limited understanding under the umbrella of the "most common view". Anyway, perhaps you agree with all of this and it was not necessary to expand on this. In terms of our specific case here, my point is that it is useful to understand that a lot in Lakatos's falsificationism is only Lakatos's perspective on Popper's philosophy and it cannot be presented in Wikipedia's voice and if we are in a very general context, as you wish to be, then I don't think it should have a lot of weight. I still think that an article that focuses on Lakatos's falsificationism would be justified and then, in that context, going into the details of Lakatos's falsificationism would be justified without violating WP:due. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 11:24, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
if we are in a very general context, as you wish to be, then I don't think it should have a lot of weight.I agree with that. Thanks also for everything else you said in this section, which is useful to think about, although I don't have any specific comment about it right now. I personally am not very interested in contributing to an article only about Lakatos, so I will continue to focus on preparing for a more general article. If you want to write an article on Lakatos, I would repeat that an article about his paper " Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes" would be more than justifiable and very welcome, just like there is an article about Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery, and indeed I think the latter article should also be expanded to summarize Popper's book in greater detail. Biogeographist ( talk) 22:59, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
As soon as we want to be general, we need to ask what is the difference between a large perspective on falsificationism and a broad coverage of the Quine-Duhem thesis, eventually larger than what is done in Quine-Duhem thesis? My point is that the Quine-Duhem thesis (the two versions as described by Lakatos) covers most of the problems of falsification. Both subjects are attached to the Vienna Circle. There is an important overlap. If you remenmber our previous discussions, you will see that I am not against overlap. I always argued that it's fine that almost the same subject is covered using different perspectives in different articles as long as it is not used to do POV fork, which is taken care of when the two articles refer to each other adequately, i.e., the readers can easily see the big picture. So, I am not asking the question in a negative manner. I do think, however, that we need to clarify what is the perspective specific to this article and how it is different from a perspective that would be natural for a broad coverage in Quine-Duhem thesis. One way to create a distinction would be to use a focus on terminology, but then I would disagree. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 23:35, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
This brings us back to a previous discussion regarding the role of the Quine-Duhem thesis and the Duhemian problem in this article. At the conceptual level, I consider that it's a background knowledge that was essentially known by all parties when falsificationism was discussed in the 60's and also essentially known through the Duhemian problem even earlier when LSD was first written in 1934. In particular, I would oppose a description of Popper's philosophy that does not address the Duhemian problem followed by a criticism that is based on the Duhemian problem. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 23:54, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
@ Dominic Mayers: Above you wondered how this article would be different from Quine-Duhem thesis. That got me thinking about how this article would be different from other articles as well, and I concluded that this article is not necessary. I would be happy with a disambiguation page at Falsificationism together with greater detail in the other relevant articles like critical rationalism, Quine-Duhem thesis, falsifiability, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, and a new article on Lakatos's " Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes". Biogeographist ( talk) 13:00, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
currently there is no problem, but it would be better to also have a separate article on " Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes" that could be properly linked from elsewhere in the encyclopedia. I just don't think that Falsificationism should be about Lakatos. Biogeographist ( talk) 15:27, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
Dominic Mayers ( talk) 15:41, 16 January 2022 (UTC)the tests Popper sets out are white-glove affairs of logical analysis . . . it is little wonder that they seem to tell us only that there is an error somewhere and that they are silent about its source. We have to become shrewd inquisitors of errors, interact with them, simulate them (with models and computers), amplify them: we have to learn to make them talk.
You wrote I just don't think that Falsificationism should be about Lakatos.
If we only have an article that covers Lakatos's falsificationism (and name it "Falsificationism"), then it does not matter what we think, it would be a fact and, if there is a single article that uses the name in the title, there is no justification for a disambiguation page. In particular, having
Critical Rationalism as an entry in a
Falsificationism disambiguation page does not respect the normal use of disambiguation pages in Wikipedia, because a disambiguation page is not used to help readers decide among articles that are conceptually related. It must be used when lexically similar titles are used by different articles. I would not be so surprise that you can find examples where a disambiguation page is used for conceptually related pages with entirely different titles, but it's not the intended purpose and I am opposed to an abuse of disambiguation pages. If, as you suggest, no article uses the name "falsificationism" in its title, then we even less need a disambiguation page. It's better to present the results of the search engine or do a redirect to a page such as
Critical rationalism or
Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes and use an About template at the top of this article to present other uses. You seem to disagree with me that Falsificationism is a lot associated with Lakatos and in this I include the fact that, most of the times, when it is associated with Popper it is in the same line of thought as Lakatos, so it is still Lakatos's falsificationism. I know that you might feel that, nevertheless, most people still associate falsificationism with Popper, but most people make this association in a way that is similar to Lakatos's way in the following sense that they then view the Quine-Duhem thesis as a criticism of falsificationism. In other words, the term "falsificationism" is irreversibly compromised in the literature and I refuse to present this confusion, even if it is wide spread, in Wikipedia's voice. Creating a disambiguation page only to associate
Critical Rationalism as a possible meaning of Falsificationism is already too much. It's way better to use an About template, because then it's part of the article. I would really prefer a redirect to
Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes with an about template. This would do the maximum to compensate for the confusion that exists in the literature regarding falsificationism.
Dominic Mayers (
talk) 16:19, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
different falsificationisms in Popper's philosophy? It sounds to me like you just made up that idea, so I would like to see your sources that explicitly say that.
Meanwhile, will you please provide sources that substantiate your claim that there are "different falsificationisms in Popper's philosophy"?I already explained in one or two paragraphs above that I consider this as part of an understanding of the source, not something that I plan to include in any article. Please read Lakatos description of his different falsificationisms, especially dogmatic vs naive, and then read Popper insistence that we must separate logic and methodology, if you don't see that the dogmatic falsificationist described by Lakatos with
match pretty well with the always existing logical side in Popper's philosophy, then I am at a lost. The issue, if you understand that there is a good match, is that Lakatos says that this dogmatic falsificationism is only an early stage of Popper's philosophy, whereas Popper insists that it is an essential part of his philosophy used to define falsifiability as a purely logical criterion. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 17:39, 16 January 2022 (UTC)If a theory is falsified [in the usual sense], it is proven false; if it is falsified [in the technical sense], it may still be true.
— Imre Lakatos, Lakatos 1978, p. 24
You wrote I asked myself if there is another example that is closer to this one, and the word
Universalism popped into my head as a possible example.
I looked at
Universalism (disambiguation) and indeed
Open individualism is an example of a completely different name with no lexical connection with Universalism. But my point went further than that. Unless, there is a possible confusion between
Open individualism and another article in the disambiguation page at the conceptual level–i.e., an incorrect conflation of two distinct concepts, it's not the same thing as in our case. The existence of a conceptual confusion makes an important difference. I don't think a disambiguation page does a good job in such a case. Besides, even if you found a few isolated example that matches very well with our case, including the conceptual confusion, I don't think it would be a strong argument to justify that we do the same. It would still not be the most standard use of a disambiguation page.
Dominic Mayers (
talk) 18:15, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
I don't think a disambiguation page does a good job in such a case.I could agree with that, but that would be just as true of disambiguation in a hatnote, so more generally no simple disambiguation would do a good job in this case. So the answer to the question in the heading of this section would be: Yes, we need a general article on falsificationism to clear up conceptual confusion. Biogeographist ( talk) 18:27, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
In contrast, having the readers get to the article on Lakatos's falsificationism when they use the search term "falsificationism" will immediately bring them to question themselves about this confusion: I am not sure that is true, but we could be empirical about it and test that option. ( Falsificationism had basically 8 average daily pageviews before the end of December, so the stakes are pretty low here; we can afford to experiment. The most likely outcome here is that nobody actually uses the Falsificationism redirect anyway.) Like I said, I am not very interested in contributing to an article only about Lakatos, but I guess I would be willing to accept redirecting Falsificationism to " Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes" as an experiment, and watch the page and see what happens over a few months. Biogeographist ( talk) 19:28, 16 January 2022 (UTC) and 19:57, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
OK, I see two options that I consider possible:
I have no problem with the first option, except that dealing explicitly with confusion within an article might not be so easy and efficient. The idea is to challenge in the most direct manner the most likely confusions using redirects, hatnotes and articles that present point of views in the clearest manner. Most people that are redirected to a page on falsificationism that is clearly not Popper's philosophy will be challenged, but it's good. We want that. The point is that it's often not true that they actually want to see Popper's philosophy. More often, they might want to know more about falsificationism as presented in some texts and it's not truly Popper's falsificationism, even if the author claims or suggests it. We want to make sure the misunderstanding that it's Popper's philosophy is being challenged. The hatnote will make sure that the readers are not mislead and are well informed. I understand that we could put a hatnote at the top of an article on Popper's philosophy and redirect there, but I find it a bit artificial. Normally, someone that searches for falsifiability or critical rationalism knows what he wants. It's clear and there should be no need for a hatnote. The hatnote is way more natural on top of the article about falsificationism, because this is the term that is confusing. Because this is where the hatnote is natural, it is also where the redirect should go. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 20:41, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
I was looking at Popper's view on the Duhemian problem. This problem is often explained in terms of auxiliary hypotheses defined as the hypotheses that are required for the experiment to work as planned. An example of auxiliary hypothesis that uses this definition is the hypothesis that the telescope is properly designed and the associated theory of observation is correct. This is the way the expression "auxiliary hypothesis" is used here and here. With this definition, the Quine-Duhem thesis becomes the statement that a required auxiliary hypothesis can be false instead of the theory. However, this is not the way the expression "auxiliary hypothesis" was usually used by Popper and Lakatos and perhaps many others in the Vienna circle. Lakatos used the expression 'ceteris paribus clause' instead of auxiliary hypothesis to refer to these required hypotheses. For Lakatos and Popper, most of the times, the expression auxiliary hypothesis refers instead to a modification of the theory or of the background knowledge, but this is different. Let us use "explanatory auxiliary hypothesis" to indicate that we refer to this other meaning (I just coined this expression for the purpose of this discussion). In this case, the explanatory auxiliary hypothesis is added to protect the theory against falsification. It's different, because the explanatory auxiliary hypothesis must be true to save the theory (by explaining away the falsification), whereas a ceteris paribus clause must be false to save the theory. Perhaps the idea is to turn the negation of a ceteris paribus clause into an explanatory auxiliary hypothesis. For example, an explanatory auxiliary hypothesis would be that the theory of the telescope is incorrect and must be modified. The explanatory auxiliary hypothesis would even go further and provide the new theory of the telescope. The situation gets even more confusing when we realize that there are two categories of ceteris paribus clauses and thus two corresponding categories of explanatory auxiliary hypotheses. A ceteris paribus clause might not be about any theory of observation, but only about the initial condition. For example, the clause that the telescope is not defective is not the same as the clause that the theory of the telescope is correct. Correspondingly, the explanatory auxiliary hypothesis that the given telescope was defective is not the same as a new theory for how telescopes fundamentally work. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 12:40, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
But in spite of Friedman's work to restore the idea that conceptual frameworks of physics are stratified, his inclusion of mathematical principles in the category of constitutive principles is a step in the direction of Quine's centrality: it undermines the application of the factual–nonfactual distinction to different components of our conceptual frameworks. I have argued that those principles that define and interpret basic theoretical concepts should be distinguished from the formal prerequisites or auxiliaries that the principles presuppose, and all of these principles and prerequisites, which together constitute frameworks of empirical investigation, should be distinguished from the empirical hypotheses whose formulation they permit. This allows us to better recognize the salient differences in methodological character. In particular, separating mathematical auxiliaries, on the one hand, from coordinating principles and empirical hypotheses, on the other, allows us to distinguish the factual from the nonfactual components of our theoretical frameworks.
— Ryan Samaroo in Samaroo 2020
That article by Paul Hoyningen-Huene that you found is about the economist Milton Friedman, a very different guy, but an easy mistake to make. I didn't look at the Bruce Caldwell book, but that is probably Milton Friedman too, since it is about economics and it was published before Michael Friedman published his major works.
When I brought up Samaroo's comments on Michael Friedman, I was free-associating to something I had recently read. Carl Hempel was one of Friedman's teachers, and Friedman's analysis of scientific theory-change is very much in the tradition of the 20th-century philosophers (both logical empiricists and Popperians) who were doing what Rudolf Carnap called "the rational reconstruction of science". I was wondering how Friedman's account might be useful for putting auxiliary hypotheses in a larger analytical framework. Friedman is really insistent that Quine's view is insufficient. But I agree that I was probably "barking up the wrong tree" there.
A more useful reference for putting auxiliary hypotheses in a larger analytical framework (not the only way to do it, but one way) may be an article I once read by Ian Hacking ( Hacking 1992). In that article, Hacking classifies laboratory science into 15 elements, in three groups (1–5 are "ideas", 6–10 are "things", 11–15 are "marks"). I have to list all the elements below so that his subsequent remarks on auxiliary hypotheses will make sense:
After making those 15 distinctions, Hacking then has a section titled "Extending Duhem's Thesis" that may be worth quoting at length:
Duhem (1906) observed that if an experiment or observation was persistently inconsistent with theory, one could modify theory in two ways: either revise the systematic theory (3) or revise the auxiliary hypotheses (in which we include both topical hypotheses [4] and modeling of the apparatus [5]). His classic example was astronomy, not a laboratory science, but the message was clear. Should a theory about the heavens be inconsistent with data, he said, we may revise astronomy, or modify either the theory of the transmission of light in space or the theory of telescope (5). But that is only the beginning of the malleability of my fifteen elements. For example, we can try to modify the telescope or build a different kind of telescope. That is, try to save the systematic hypothesis by adapting the detector (8).
Several recent contributions help to enlarge the Duhemian vision.... Duhem, Pickering, and Ackermann point to interplay among several subsets of the elements (1)–(15). Pickering attends to the modeling of the apparatus and the working of the instruments: we acknowledge data as data only after we have gotten handmade apparatus to work in ways that we understand. Duhem emphasized the intellectual elements (1)–(5). Ackermann, observing that data can be understood in many ways or not at all, put the emphasis on a dialectic involving theories and interpretation, regarding instruments and the data that they produced as fixed points. We should learn from all these authors. Let us extend Duhem's thesis to the entire set of elements (1)–(15). Since these are different in kind, they are plastic resources in different ways. We can (1) change questions; more commonly we modify them in midexperiment. Data (11) can be abandoned or selected without fraud; we consider data secure when we can interpret them in the light of, among other things, systematic theory (3). But it is not just Ackermann's interpretation of data by theory that is in play. Data processing is embarrassingly plastic. That has long been familiar to students of statistical inference in the case of data assessment and reduction, (12) and (13). Because statistics is a metascience, statistical methodologies are seldom called into question inside a laboratory, but a consultant may well advise that they be. Data analysis is plastic in itself; in addition any change in topical hypotheses (4) or modeling of the apparatus (5) will lead to the introduction of new programs of data analysis....
The truth is that there is a play between theory and observation, but that is a miserly quarter-truth. There is a play between many things: data, theory, experiment, phenomenology, equipment, data processing.
— Hacking 1992, pp. 52–55
Hacking says some other relevant points, but that is more than enough already. The point here is that the different kinds of "auxiliary hypotheses" are very easy to understand when they are (1) clearly internally differentiated/classified and (2) located in a larger analytical framework. And all of this would be even clearer if it were illustrated with a graphical diagram. Biogeographist ( talk) 17:35, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
these distinctions fail to bring out the importance of the theory-laden nature of observations. That impression is probably due to what I have excerpted from Hacking's chapter. Notice that none of the elements is "observation". Element 15 is another name for theory-ladenness, for example. I could say more but it would probably be a diversion as you said. Biogeographist ( talk) 19:38, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
unless there is a specific point that you want to make that needs more precision, we can abstract away from these distinctionsand
He and others made these distinctions when needed without referring to them explicitly and, in fact, often went much further than these distinctions suggest: Yes, to construct an adequate analytical framework one first has to clarify the problem or question at hand. (I imagine that is why "questions" is number 1 in Hacking's list of elements above.) Hacking considered his framework to be good enough for his questions or purposes in that chapter, and no doubt other thinkers, such as Popper and Friedman, thought their analytical frameworks were good enough for whatever questions and purposes they were pursuing in a given work. I am certainly not suggesting that Hacking's framework would be adequate for all purposes.
Notes
On a related subject, in the specific context of an opposition to an excessive conventionalism, Popper warned against explanatory auxiliary hypotheses. This was misinterpreted by Lakatos as if Popper was fundamentally against explanatory auxiliary hypotheses. On the contrary, Popper's insistence on the importance of the logical side is a way of saying that the ceteris paribus clauses are important and we must use them to do science. Working on the logical side is similar to accepting the ceteris paribus clauses. To put it in another way, the logical side contains by default, without the need to state them, the ceteris paribus clauses. At the same time, Popper was fully aware of the methodological issues, of the Duhemian problem and of the problem of induction. He was also aware that he needed an evolutionary perspective, metaphysical research programs, quasi-induction, etc. to explain the growth of knowledge. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 12:40, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
The title needs to be specific enough so that it's clear that the article does not cover all meanings of falsificationism. I would have used falsificationism, but it would have been an invitation to cover all meanings of the term in the literature and it's better to have a clear focus. Yet, the title should not present a too narrow scope such as only one specific work of Lakatos. The concept that I wish to cover is the notion of falsificationism that is often criticized and, unfortunately, also often inadequately attributed to Popper. This naive notion is not referred to by Lakatos only. Even Lakatos says that Kuhn refers to it. The title "Naive Falsificationism" is not perfect, because Lakatos used this term in a very narrow manner as different from dogmatic falsificationism. On the other hand, it's only Lakatos that used it in this very narrow manner. For many authors, naive falsificationism includes Dogmatic falsificationism. In fact, for some authors, naive falsificationism means what Lakatos calls dogmatic falsificationism and they do not discuss what Lakatos calls naive falsificationism. For example, I do not believe that Kuhn used the distinctions that Lakatos created. "Naive falsificationism" as a title should be taken in its broadest sense. It would still be narrow enough. I created a draft in Draft: Naive Falsificationism. Currently, it only contains a cut and paste of the section that exists in Falsifiability. It has to be adapted and extended to make it less specific to one work of Lakatos. I might even use the historical approach that Biogeographist suggested, but addding the Duhemian problem as the primary context that precedes every thing. The only difference is that the objective is to clarify the notion of Naive falsificationism in its context, certainly including Popper's philosophy. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 16:09, 21 January 2022 (UTC)