Karl Popper - Science: Conjectures and Refutations - Section V and VI

In section V, Popper takes issue with Kant's solution to the problem of induction. He then goes on to introduce the distinction between the dogmatic and the critical attitude.

[kristinwatkins]

These videos have been very interesting and helpful in my own understanding of Popper and I thank you Gjibers for this. However, I think the analysis of what Popper is doing with the notion of "expectations" here is mistaken, though I could be wrong. I interpret Popper's analysis of "expections" to be about how we have a specific kind of in-built cognitive predisposition to impose regularities onto the world, and create categories which make certain events we experience similar in order to make inductive inferences which he claims to be irrational. The baby example I took him to be saying that babies "expect" to be fed, in the sense that they have hunger and think that said hunger can be satisfied, and become upset when it is not. Now this is he claims can be unconscious and so it's not an "active" conscious belief on the part of the infant, but just a basic instinctual reaction which may be be realised, the baby can starve to death. It's not that the child literally, consciously expects an adult or any specific entity to provide it food, it's that the child must have a basic predisposition that hunger can be satisfied by something we call "food". Popper ends up calling this kind of behaviour neurotic and thinks the psychoanalysts are right in their analysis of this. To correct this kind of predisposition which he calles dogmatic, we need a "critical attitude", so we postulate these "expectation" in a very basic sense, but then once we have that self reflective critical analysis of things and recognize that these fundamental assertions are not always realised, ala Kant, then we can truly start to live up to his ideal of creating bold hypotheses that we aren't committed to as being necessarily true or gives us knowlegde of the world, but we are better able to abandon them when we meet conflicting evidence when said hypotheses are put to the test. In other words, he's calling attention to what he thinks is a deep-seated psychological attitude and then offering a praxis or way of thinking to militate against that dogmatism and make us more comfortable with the idea that or basic "beliefs" are not absolute and are always subject to revision.

My interpretation could be wrong but I'd be interested in your thoughts on it

[clumsydad]

induction opens up possibility, finding relationships, a type of brainstorming. considering all our epistemology is questionable anyway, induction is an extremely sensible approach; following reasoned arguments in a speculative process

[richardcollins]

Victor - great lectures as usual, your reputation based upon inductive reasoning now demands the same high standard :-) Thinking about deductive arguments and prediction. Surely if I put only copper coins into a bag I know by deduction that any coin I pull out will be copper. It starts to get interesting if a trusted person hands you the bag and says there are only copper coins in it. Have I missed something with his line of thought? Also I would love to know what you think of Critical Realism that seems to bridge the lacua in the Hume/Popper debate. For example it would be great if you did a series on one of Bhaskar's books - .for example The Possibility of Naturalism: 'A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences'. If nothing else it would give me a great reason to buy a copy. i'd settle for any that you care to choose, of course.