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Popper heavily criticizes the value of explanation. He gives examples of really great "explanations" that have almost zero empirical value (things like psychoan

Popper heavily criticizes the value of explanation. He gives examples of really great "explanations" that have almost zero empirical value (things like psychoanalysis). Hard to see how it could be a "straw man."

akvadrako 7y ago
I don’t think that’s true. One of the most prominent figures to continue developing popper’s philosophy is David Deutsch, and he emphasizes good explanations. Being a good explanation means, among other things, it has a wide range of applicability and is hard to adjust if predictions don’t work out. Psychoanalysis wasn’t a good answer.
- logicchop 7y ago
  It's easy to go read Popper. Look for his discussions of Adler.
vixen99 7y ago
But as we know, these examples are not 'great', they're lousy explanations because they are not testable. Good explanations are another matter altogether as Deutsch points out in his criticism of the instrumentalist view of quantum theory.
Animats 7y ago
"Science is prediction, not explanation." - Fred Hoyle.
- mannykannot 7y ago
  Which is rather ironic, considering how long he continued to oppose the big-bang theory even after its successful prediction of background radiation (and the explanation of isotope ratios is as good as a prediction, given that the processes are no longer happening.) I'm wondering if he made that statement specifically to avoid these issues?
- lorriman 7y ago
  I heard Fred Hoyle when he came to lecture at my school in the 80s (a prestigious, rich boys school). It was one of the few places willing to give him the time as his views were vaguely in line with Christian creationism though he was an atheist, ironically. It was doubly ironic in that the school was Catholic and Catholic Christianity is not biblically literalist. In fact the inventor of the Big Bang theory eventually became a Catholic priest. hahaha!
lisper 7y ago
> Popper heavily criticizes the value of explanation You have misunderstood Popper. Psychoanalysis is an example he cites of a bad explanation (because it's not falsifiable). He doesn't criticize explanation in general. That would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
- mannykannot 7y ago
  Furthermore, if I have understood Popper's criticism of psychoanalysis, he thought it was treating these bad or unsupported 'explanations' / just-so stories as if they provided, or could substitute for, real evidence.
  - lisper 7y ago
    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/ "[Popper] discovered the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Adler (he served briefly as a voluntary social worker with deprived children in one of the latter’s clinics in the 1920s), and listened entranced to a lecture which Einstein gave in Vienna on relativity theory. The dominance of the critical spirit in Einstein, and its total absence in Marx, Freud and Adler, struck Popper as being of fundamental importance: the pioneers of psychoanalysis, he came to think, couched their theories in terms which made them amenable only to confirmation, while Einstein’s theory, crucially, had testable implications which, if false, would have falsified the theory itself."
    - claudiawerner 7y ago
      >he dominance of the critical spirit in Einstein, and its total absence in Marx, Freud and Adler What's ironic about this is not only that Marx and Freud inspired the entire school of critical theory today, but that Marx, Freud and Nietzche are the "big three" when it comes to the culture of suspicion and criticism. I'm not sure how Popper could claim the lack of the critical spirit in Marx when Marx's major thesis was a critique of political economy and capitalism which had not been attempted an nearly such a deep and rigorous level until Marx. Successive Marxists after Marx have been very critical of Marxism too. It makes me wonder whether Popper ever read Marx at all when he thinks like this. And for all the talk of the lack of critical spirit, it's odd that scientists dogmatically cling to the theory of falsifictaionism, even in Popper's sufficient and necessary criterion.

akvadrako 7y ago

I don’t think that’s true. One of the most prominent figures to continue developing popper’s philosophy is David Deutsch, and he emphasizes good explanations. Being a good explanation means, among other things, it has a wide range of applicability and is hard to adjust if predictions don’t work out. Psychoanalysis wasn’t a good answer.

logicchop 7y ago
It's easy to go read Popper. Look for his discussions of Adler.

vixen99 7y ago

But as we know, these examples are not 'great', they're lousy explanations because they are not testable. Good explanations are another matter altogether as Deutsch points out in his criticism of the instrumentalist view of quantum theory.

Animats 7y ago

"Science is prediction, not explanation." - Fred Hoyle.

mannykannot 7y ago
Which is rather ironic, considering how long he continued to oppose the big-bang theory even after its successful prediction of background radiation (and the explanation of isotope ratios is as good as a prediction, given that the processes are no longer happening.) I'm wondering if he made that statement specifically to avoid these issues?
lorriman 7y ago
I heard Fred Hoyle when he came to lecture at my school in the 80s (a prestigious, rich boys school). It was one of the few places willing to give him the time as his views were vaguely in line with Christian creationism though he was an atheist, ironically. It was doubly ironic in that the school was Catholic and Catholic Christianity is not biblically literalist. In fact the inventor of the Big Bang theory eventually became a Catholic priest. hahaha!

lisper 7y ago

> Popper heavily criticizes the value of explanation You have misunderstood Popper. Psychoanalysis is an example he cites of a bad explanation (because it's not falsifiable). He doesn't criticize explanation in general. That would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

mannykannot 7y ago
Furthermore, if I have understood Popper's criticism of psychoanalysis, he thought it was treating these bad or unsupported 'explanations' / just-so stories as if they provided, or could substitute for, real evidence.
- lisper 7y ago
  https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/ "[Popper] discovered the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Adler (he served briefly as a voluntary social worker with deprived children in one of the latter’s clinics in the 1920s), and listened entranced to a lecture which Einstein gave in Vienna on relativity theory. The dominance of the critical spirit in Einstein, and its total absence in Marx, Freud and Adler, struck Popper as being of fundamental importance: the pioneers of psychoanalysis, he came to think, couched their theories in terms which made them amenable only to confirmation, while Einstein’s theory, crucially, had testable implications which, if false, would have falsified the theory itself."
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
    >he dominance of the critical spirit in Einstein, and its total absence in Marx, Freud and Adler What's ironic about this is not only that Marx and Freud inspired the entire school of critical theory today, but that Marx, Freud and Nietzche are the "big three" when it comes to the culture of suspicion and criticism. I'm not sure how Popper could claim the lack of the critical spirit in Marx when Marx's major thesis was a critique of political economy and capitalism which had not been attempted an nearly such a deep and rigorous level until Marx. Successive Marxists after Marx have been very critical of Marxism too. It makes me wonder whether Popper ever read Marx at all when he thinks like this. And for all the talk of the lack of critical spirit, it's odd that scientists dogmatically cling to the theory of falsifictaionism, even in Popper's sufficient and necessary criterion.