RG1: Online reading group: Value, Price and Profit - Marx

The postulate of falsifiability has been largely done away with inside the scientific community. It's Popperian bollocks, to be frank, and I would suggest a reading of Kuhn or Lakatos, if you want to know how bourgeois scientists dealt with it. The basic critique (Lakatos) is that if everything must be falsifiable, then you're not dealing with science (the study of our surroundings and ourselves) but with logic (or a religion of logic). The fact that capital (and the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory etc.) is impossible to grasp using the pure predicate logic disproves the postulate of falsifiability. The illusion that a theory must be quantifiable in order to be scientific must be one of the more ridiculous comments I've heard. In what way can a science regarding social structuring and entrapment (the critique of political economy) be quantifiable? Where are the quantities? If you think that Marx's theory is about telling us how much profit a company produces, you are way off.

Gurrier, if you think monopoly is interchangeable with hegemonic power relation, do you think the monopolies (in the most broad sense- for instance a monopoly of violence) are unique to capitalism? What Marx does is explain the basis of capitalism, the things that are unique to it that mark it out as a new social system of exploitation which has developed through the class struggle. Your complaint seems to be that what is an explanation of how capitalism functions (in order to destroy it, not to astrologise it), is not an all embracing theory of power relations.

That's complete rubbish.

The is a meant is an example of not is identical to.

Well, then you might care to explain to me why scientific theories such as the theory of capital (as first explained by Marx in Capital) and the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory, would be unscientific, since they are not falsifiable in the sense that there are predictions which will be either approved or falsified. Since none of these are strictly logical (which, frankly, no science is), it is impossible to produce such definite predictions that would render the theory true or false (a Popperian notion, which comes from his fetisch for logics). But, hey, let's abandon evolutionary theory, that sounds fun.

The other thing you said about quantification is even more ridiculous, since not even Einstein's theory of relativity is based on quantification, but rather a different qualitative understanding of macrophysics. Its hermeneutic value is the greatest advancement of the theory of relativity relative to the theory of mechanics.

As Darwin pointed out and an enormous number of evolutionary scientists never cease to point out today in their arguments with creationists, evolutionary theory is eminently falsifiable. For example: discover a human fossil in a strata under a dinosaur fossil. Discover a complex organism with a non-eukaryotic cell structure and no evidence of any intermediate forms - the whole strength of evolutionary theory is that there are so many things that could be discovered that might falsify it but exactly zero of them have been discovered.

The idea that working science has dismissed the idea of falsifiability can only come from a complete ignorance of science in practice. If you propose a theory in a scientific setting, I can guarantee you that the very first question that every single scientist will ask is "what is the test?"

Good grief *bangs head against desk*. Einstein's theory of relativity became accepted because it predicted the motion of distant planetary bodies more accurately than Newtonian physics - that is to say, its predictions were measured, tested and proved to be a more accurate model of the real world than the competition. Since then it has been subject to a vast number of other tests - from measuring the slowing down of time on transatlantic flights with atomic clocks, to the red shift of rays eminating from the big bang. If it had not produced and passed these tests - any of which could have returned negative results - it would be merely another interesting abstract concept for philosophers to dream about on a par with string theory and indeed it is likely that nobody would ever have heard of it. Similarly, quantum physics was only accepted because its predictions proved incredibly accurate when tested against reality. That is how and why scientific theories get accepted.

gurrier: Yes, you have to test a theory, and it has to be testable. This has of course nothing to do with the postulate of falsifiability, and if you had followed the debate on philosophy of science you would know that. The postulate of falsifiability implies that if you find that a "prediction" (most sciences now adays do not deal with temporal predictions, that is a phenomenon we left with La Place and his demon) is false it falsifies the entire theory. This would imply that all scientific theories are unscientific, since it contends that science is logical and that you can falsify a scientific theory (ie. correlating with the real world) by a logical operation, which you can not. Especially not if you deal with theories of human interaction, and qualitative research conducted on most universities around the globe does not have this idiotic set of ideas.

And once again, the quantifiable part of Einstein's theory of relativity is of minor importance, since its real use is its hermeneutic and heuristic value, it gives us a better understanding of the phenomenons at hand and it gives an understanding of more phenomenons than the mechanistic physics. One of the tests which were conducted, was the bending of distant star lights round the gravity of the sun, which affirmed the theory that mass bends space (a qualitative understanding, and not something you can quantify). Come on, if you knew scientific theory and had been involved in the study and discussion of it you would know this...

The logical empiricists did not think that a test must be able to produce a negative result (which is an aside from falisifiability, e.g a white swan for all swans are black).

They did however think that quantifiability was an ideal that science should strive towards quantifiability, or that all scince be reduced to mathematical science (physics). Nowadays this is thought of as too stringent, so whether or not something has quantitaive laws it can still be thought of as a genuine science.

A few points.

1. As it has been used on this thread (recall that it first came up when some people dismissed the idea that evidence that contradicted the predictions of the LTV was relevant) and as it is used in practice, the idea of falsifiability just means that your tests must have the potential of producing negative results. Which is what we mean when we say, for example, that intelligent design, or the existance of god, are unfalsifiable. Of course, anybody who thinks that it is possible to show a theory to be categorically false in a complex universe is living in cloud cuckoo land. Perhaps there are some philosophers who produce such nonsense, but I don't think anybody pays them much attention and I'm certainly not going to start now. In practice theories are dismissed once the weight of negative results accumulates to such a stage where they require so many caveats to correlate them with the real world that it becomes pointless to continue to use the theory. Sciences are generally positioned on the 'hard' (eg particle physics) to 'soft' (eg sociology) on the complexity of the problme space (with hard sciences have a relatively simple problem space and soft sciences having a more complex one) according to the potential for introducing such caveats and dismissing negative evidence due to the effects of variables that have been eliminated from the model.

If you doubt that this is how scientists use the concept of 'falsifiability' - as a corrolary of testability - do a google for "intelligent design" unfalisfiable - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=on&q=%22intelligent+design%22+unfalsifiable&btnG=Search

some 20,000 results. The idea of falsifiability - in the sense that I have put it above - is most emphatically in use today. In the sense that you are using it, it is just a straw man and I find it hard to believe that anybody could ever have genuinelly used it in such a sense - but then again I suppose it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that there are some philosophers out there talking such rubbish and arguing with each other about such silly notions while being ignored by the rest of us.

2. All testable theories make predictions - predictions about the results of experiments. That's the standard terminology and it's not the same thing as making 'temporal' predictions.

This is missing the point. Einstein's theory is only useful because it has passed the tests - falsifiable tests - which were set before it. Of course it is interesting because of the qualitative insights that it gives us about the nature of the universe, and in particular the relationship of time, space and matter. However, if it gave us this insight yet failed to provide falsifiable tests, it would be useless and would be unknown today.

No this first came up when people said that Marx wasn't scientific. And I responded (as did a few other people) that this is meaningless because scientific doesn't refer to anything meaningful. And statements such as 'It's not scientific' are little more than appeals to a non-existent authority, in the sense that what is scientific is not definite. The fact that we are still debating this would suggest that I was right.

The issue on LTV was that 'the evidence' was irrelavent.

To say that this is a bit arrogant is putting it mildly.

I wrote earlier

The reason I put in their professions beside their names was because for the most part (with the exception of Popper) their theories on science arose from analysing 'science' from the inside trying to work out how science developed. They all (again with the exception of Popper and Quine) also were historians of science.

I mean you can dismiss this debate on the basis that 'oh, they were mere philosophers arguing with each other about such silly notions while being ignored by the rest of us' but then you'd be left standing on water. Because you'd be left giving nothing but your opinion on what 'science' is. Which although it might be right would be very subjective.

As for whether they are or are not 'ignored by the rest of us'. I can tell you a few things.

For one the 'science' that I study- economics has had debates about its methodology before. One of the main texts was 'he Methodology of Positive Economics' by friedman. http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/friedman.htm And afterwards he read popper agreed with him there were loards od debates and the 'philosophers of science' were dragged in most people insisting on the objectivity of economics used popper others such Deirdre N. McCloskey who wrote The Rhetoric of Economics drew in all the philosophers and defended a kuhnian/quinian/feyerbandian approach. But for popper the philosopher you claim is ignored was definitely not ignored. Indeed, he was their great philosopher who gave economics feet up until McCloskey showed that those feet had been kicked out long ago. I know this because one of my 4 essays this x-mas was on the scientific status of econometrics (using statistics and modeling in economics).

Secondly, I was reading a textbook in neurobiology recently that in their bit on the scientific status of neurobiology banged on about popper.

Thirdly, I was in a friends house last year (last year I had a friend ) who studies science and in the bit on methodology it banged on about popper.

Fourtly, about three years ago some science lecturer sent his students to the philosophy dept. course on 'the philosophy of science', in order to learn about popper.

Fiftly, I don't know how many science students i've talked to and when I say that I study philosophy (giving it up in 1 week now - ahhh) they've responded with oh so did you study popper. I say yeah, but they've nver heard about any of the other philosophers. Or rather they've heard about the one 'philosopher' who was a 'science' sycophant, but haven't heard about the historians of science who've produced works of philosophy.

What does that mean 'I don't think he perceived any deeper than he needed to for his theory'. I don't think he percieved any deeper than he did when he perceived the thngs that make up his theory? That's a bit of a tautology.

And 'I don't think he looked nearly deep enough'!! The only way I can think of going deeper than Marx would be if there was anything 'deeper' than the human subject. I don't know if anyone thinks that. More could be said but as Marx said "To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter. But, for man, the root is man himself." How much 'deeper' do we need to go? How much 'deeper' would be 'enough'?

Gurrier, are you just being argumentative here?

Oh jesus, don't be such a pedant. You seem to be trying to delimit science from the rest of human thought. And then creat other hierarchies in human thought between 'rationality' and the i suppose 'irrationality'. I'd argue that you cannot clearly divide off rationality and irrationality and you cannot clearly divide off science from non-science. I'd argue that these categorisations are pragmatic and not inherent or objective. That doesn't knock science or rationality. It just prevents confusing claims that x is rational/scientific with either the claim that x is true, or the claim that x is more worthy of consideration than y.

There might not be an immediately evident contradiction but they are not the same thing. Science has a lot of attributes. The question is does it have on that distinguishes it from the rest of human thought? Is there a criterion that you need to be a science? If so what is it? Quantifiability, Falsifiability, 'Logic and analysis' something else? They are not the same thing. So what is the criterion?

Personally i'm not pushed about whether something is called a science or not. If a theory makes sense and is useful then I figure fine use it.

The theory that falsiafiability is the defining charachteristic of science is not a theory?

Explain.

There's an awful lot of putting thoughts into my head going on there. To attempt to return to the very, very basic point that I was making.

1. Theories need to be testable or they are essentially no different to religions

2. Testability implies that the tests may return negative results (ie results that contradict the predictions of the theory). This is what is commonly known as falsifiability. I don't know if somebody somewhere has tried to claim that falsifiability is an absolute logical negation, but if they did they were utterly wrong.

How such simple and obvious things (I really don't think I've said much else) can lead to such a furore mystifies me.

surely the problem is this - if we are trying to distinguish between science and religion, then presumably this is because we want our knowledge of the world to be based on how it really is, not on a pre-conception of how it is; the aim of testing, therefore, is to ensure against prejudice when we make claims about how the world is; but - and this is the problem - how do we ensure that we interpret the results of the test in a non-prejudicial way?

I think the problem is that, ultimately, we can't distinguish between science and religion - both are different types of belief-system, and we are unable to grant absolute validity to one or the other. we just have to choose on the basis of our own personal preferences, backgrounds, and experiences.

if we follow this line of thought, then, we can see why you experienced so many objections to your claims about testing/falsifiability - Popper explicitly sought to design a system of knowledge-building that prevented the creation of grand schemes of thought - the most dangerous one (for him) being Marxism. But, equally, those of us who view contemporary global social relationships as exploitative and coercive would be required, under Popper, to somehow prove this view by testing - the presumption being that we can't just see exploitation and coercion. Popper has done a lot, thereore, to prevent people from making claims about how the world is - leading many people who want to criticise (as part of a process of changing) the world to reject him and his theories of falsifiability.

Or metaphysics. The logical positivists would describe them as "meaningless".

Falsfiability according to Popper is an absolute logical negation. Google it or something! Some philosophers of science would argue that a test does not have to return a negative result - the logical empiricists for example. If you don't believe me then google it!

But this is a theory. I can't see anyway of testing it. Does this make it a religion? Is your theory of theory a religion???

I'm not being pedantic, you are really turning a hell of a lot of things into religion if any theory that is not testable is a religion.

...

It's elementary logic, but if you wanted to formulate it as a theory, it would go something like this.

The best way to adopt useful theories about the world so that they are considered 'generally accepted' is to form hypotheses, test them and if the results of the tests do not correlate with the predictions of the theory, modify the theory, form new hypotheses, test them and so on ad infinitum....

If we wanted to test this theory we would need to measure in some way, shape or form the usefulness of things formulated with this method. While this is not entirely objective - like anything that has a human dimension - but it is rather hard not to see the vast amount of evidence behind it - I refer you to the output of all science since Galileo. On the other hand, the competition has... urm?

But, to return to my furry friend. If you do not consider testing theories against reality to be important, what grounds do you have to consider Marx's theory of value superior to the 'whims of the bunny' theory of value?

It is impossible to do so entirely in all facets of life, but reality has a habit of assisting us in this irrespective of our prejudices. We do have almost entirely objective means of measuring some things - mass, velocity, etc. When we are dealing with less 'hard' science, we have all sorts of other tools at our disposal - statistical measures of correlation for example. So, while we are certainly never going to be able to measure lots of things entirely objectively, we can do our best as long as we want to and don't just want to confirm whatever prejudices we started with.

Do you think that transatlantic flights normally work simply due to the fact that the passengers believe it will? Could we swap our airplanes for flying carpets as long as we could convince everybody to believe in it? This type of post-modern equation of science and religion as similar belief systems is so woefully wrong - even delusional - it gives me grave concern about where our species is going.

Well Popper was wrong. For one thing he had no real concept of complex systems and we now know that it is essentially impossible to prove anything at all. We can accumulate evidence in support of hypotheses and show how they are generally applicable when applied to reality - when dealing with a system of such complexity, with so many inter-related variables, as human society, it is absurd to think that anything at all can be proven. We can, on the other hand, identify general trends and tendencies - but they are only useful insofar as we can demonstrate their applicability to the world.

Could you expand on this because you seem to be agreeing with me here. That ultimately there is no objective defining charteristic of science. Which, is really all I've been saying.

I've been concluding from the absence of any objective distinguishing criterion that people shouldn't use the judgement 'x is/isn't scientific'. Because it comes down to nothing more than a spurious appeal to authority.

I am not attacking science or the social status of science. I'm just pointing out that science is like any other human endeavour that trys to increase human knowledge; its one of approximations. And that it has no fundamental objective points of difference to the rest of human thought.

Science can and does function without needing to distiguish itslef from the rest of human thought. And it should continue to do so. An attack on the idea of 'scientific' is not an attack on science.

If you're saying that every theory that is not testable is equivalent to "the bunny" then (I think) so is materialism (and dualism), as (I think) this is metaphysical and hence unverifiable. What about atheism - what test do you propse for the non-existence of God - (I think) it would be impossible

Well, Popper did not believe in conclusive proof, but corobboration (and falsification).

Are you saying that neither will there ever be? In that case are there ever any objective defining characteristics of anything? If there are, it sounds a little far out to me for science to be a particular almost sui generis class of thing (undefinable). Besides which isn't that a definition?

There is a method - which I outline above: hypothesis - test - refinement of hypothesis - repeat which defines it, plus lots of fairly important corroloraries such as Occam's razor that are universally accepted. There are also other methods employed for the formulation of theories - such as bullshiting, dreaming, post modernism and wishful thinking, which are generally defined by their lack of the test part.

No, it is a shorthand for saying "you're not employing this method" - no appeal to authority there - normally because the part about testing the hypothesis against reality is ignored, normally because the theory won't stand up to the iron rule of reality. If you look back to when the particular phrase was first employed on this thread, you will see that it was used in exactly this sense - Joe Black employed it as a result of an argument about the LTV which he believed was based on the premise that the LTV wasn't a theory that could or should be tested. Incidentally, it's not a phrase I ever use since one often finds that you have to go through extraordinarily long explanations of what it refers to in order to defend it against the common misconception that it is an appeal to authority.

Well there are lots of bits of human thought which don't accept testability at all (religion being the most common, much of academia being another) and this is something that does fundamentally separate a scientific way of looking at the world from them. The social status of science or scientists or science as a specialist subject is not the same thing at all. The method is innate to humans and is very much an everyday thing, everybody employs it all the time.

I'm much more fond of 'scientific' than I am of science - much of which isn't remotely scientific and often your average joe has a more scientific outlook than a scientist may. Scientific as a concept just means a method of thought that is rooted in reality and wishes to understand the world rather than to mystify it as so much else does.

stop beating around the bush and answer the question!

I have been arguing at length that it is not testable so I am hardly going to be able to give you a test for it. On the other hand, Occam is a very useful principle when it comes to eliminating such untestables.

Take it up with cph_shwarma - he appears to differ on his interpretation of Popper. I have only read a tiny amount of Popper (and Kuhn, Quine etc - only enough to convince me that I was wasting my time) and am going on his reports.

I would be quite careful to say things like this, since they aren't very correct. This time around I'm talking about Occam's razor, which is hard-wired into every logicist. It is merely a statement that one should have as little presuppositions as possible, but this has of course nothing to do with science. It is a mere logical guideline. Occam's razor was used by theologians in the middle ages as a tool to discard science, since they judged the scientific theory by the standards of logic, which in this case was in favor of the church.

If you have two presuppositions: 1) God exists and 2) the Bible is true, you will be able to beat almost any scientific theory, since they rely on a number of onthological presuppositions. The question of validity in the presupposition is of no concern to the logicist...

The question of validity of the presupposition is certainly of concern to the scientist though and I don't believe you when you say that it is of no concern to anybody ever who has used occam's razor - anything to back this up?

We can formulate it as "use the simplest theory which accounts for the given data" and while this may once have included god, he was shaved off a long time ago.

from wikipedia:

my emphasis

from isaac newton:

Say you have a theory with the two presuppositions (unproven assumptions): 1) God exists and 2) the Bible is true, the entire theology comes out of this, so you can ground a theory on almost anything in it.

Now say you have a theory with the three presuppositions (unproven assumptions): 1) The world comes out of nothing, 2) The world is determined and 3) The world is of a material character. You would be able to form theories which were similar to the one above, but of a different character. Since the one above has fewer unproven assumptions Occam's razor will "choose" the church version. I hope here to demonstrate why Occam's razor is bullshit, since one can not seperate a dubious unproven assumption from a correct unproven assumption, and any attempt to do so will be based on religion or ideology...

No, you're wrong. If you were to base your theory on these assumptions you would be almost right, on the other hand, if you were to say:

1) The origin of the universe is unknown and I will therefore not use a particular theory of origin on which to base my theory.

2) matter exists

You have zero unproven assumptions (although if you want to consider Solipsism you could argue against point 2, but there is no point in that as solipsism is a fundamentally uninteresting problem space and, besides, this assumption is made by all other competing theories as well, including those based on religion).

Your third 'assumption' is not an assumption, it is the conclusion that one reaches from occam's razor. Your first assumption is not necessary and your second assumption is incorrect.

Of course any method or logical maxim is not very useful if you don't undestand it or apply it properly.

It sounds as if you are using methods to justify statements other than "tests", I would have thought that there is no test for the existence of matter, or the non-existence of God - so to hold positions on these questions would be "unscientific".

The Divine assumptions you posit make use of materialism in the day to day workings. God created the earth, light, animals etc. Therefore this explanation has to make sense in material terms as well. In other words, the Divine assumption is using materialism in its detailed explanation of the world. So in fact the Divine assumption doesn't have two assumptions as you state. It has five: it has the three material ones [1) The world comes out of nothing, 2) The world is determined and 3) The world is of a material character.] plus it has the two divine ones layered on top. Therefore Occam's razor will favour the materialist explanation.

This makes the Divine assumption view less attractive than the material explanation because it a) is using materialism to explain the details b) is unnecessarily increasing the assumptions without comparably increasing the explanatory power of the theory. c) is actually decreasing the clarity of the explanations as we are left with no explanations as to what caused the existence of a fantasitically complex being such as God.

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Assumptions can be investigated for corroborating evidence. This is a hallmark of scientific disciplines (sometimes over the long term and by people other than the proponents of a particular theory.) Thus the evidence for the competing claims for the Bible/God can be weighed against that for the materialist explanation. The fact that something starts out as an assumption does not mean that it must always remain so. In fact the detailed historical criticism levelled at the Bible since Renaissance times has greatly undermined confidence in these assumptions. The materialist starting points are more tentative in that they never have had the force of absolute truth at their disposal but stronger in that they are doing a better job of standing up to criticism.

Hi,

I haven't been fully keeping up with this debate, but just on a point of clarification, it appears that people are misunderstanding Occam's Razor, with the consequence that a totally untenable proposition is being defended in its name.

The theory is nothing at all like this.

Rather, it is the thesis that we 'should not multiply entities beyond necessity', or in a simpler language you should make no more assumptions than those that are needed. This isn't about the numerical quantity of assumptions! If, to prove conclusion X, one only needs premises A and B, one should not (following Occam's Razor) assume a presmise, C. The principle says nothing (at least in its scientific and philosophical form) about whether X should be supported by A and B, or by P and Q (or by P, Q and R); it's entirely silent on that question. Basically: once you've got sufficent premises, stop!

Here is Wikipedia on Occam's Razor. It shows there's been some different theses that have fallen under the name, but the one I've described is the original one, and the one that you'll find used in any sort of philosophy of science or knowledge.

Some people seem to be defending the view that any conclusion with less premises is preferable, which is obviously not the case. It looks like some people are not even saying that the conclusions have to be equivalent, and are implying that the principle helps decide between different sets of premises for the same principle. It does neither; and if it did, it would be obviously wrong.

Edit: clarify example above