Great piece. This resonates with lots of problems I had with Deutsch (while also appreciating much of his overall project). I like his ambition in building a framework out of four pillars that are broad and important (Darwin, Turing, Popper, Everett). But the giveaway is that the whole thing stopped in about 1950, meaning that all the weird findings from cognitive science can’t be integrated. These all have implications for meaning, abstractions, knowledge, representation, etc. And the sociological stuff is obviously true. Like anything, if you look at the behaviour of Deutschians or neo-Popperian online, clearly this is a worldview, a source of meaning & identity. Which, as you say, is not bad in itself. But it ain’t disinterested epistemology.
All I learned from this article above is Deutsch poisoned most people’s understandings of Popper. Popper’s epistemology comes from something called process philosophy or Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. It’s basically a more Anglo-analytic turn of German idealism. It’s impossible to synthesize with Turing machines in any way, among other problems. I haven’t yet read all of this but at least one other person before me seems to have decided the problem is people, mostly meaning Deutsch, deliberately misconstrue Popper. https://www.elliottemple.com/essays/deutsch-interview
That’s interesting. I didn’t know Popper was influenced by Whitehead. In my reading of him, I did think that a version of conjecture and refutation would be compatible with some kind of pragmatism. But then he starts talking about Worlds 1,2,3 & it gets more metaphysical.
This is why I hate philosophy. James literally wrote the book on pragmatism but in many ways his interest in quackery was about a metaphysical realm beyond. Meanwhile the other “fathers of pragmatism” — Dewy (who called himself an instrumentalist I believe) & Pearce (who called himself a “pragmaticist”) — were explicitly trying to avoid metaphysics, especially that of Hegel & his acolytes. Whether or not they & later pragmatists achieve this is debatable. But I believe it’s still part of the branding of pragmatism that it is practice- and results-focused rather than trying for a better metaphysics or better epistemology viz. a more accurate “picture” of the world. Anyway this is all vague I admit. PS I’m a philosopher & something of a pragmatist but I admit that doesn’t mean much.
My main problem with some followers of Deutsch is that they treat the laws of physics not as fallible propositions but as final answers. I do not agree that the insights of Deutsch are inconsequential. On the contrary, they explain the centrality of trial and error in both natural and human problem solving and protects us from the hubris that is a key source of human error. The number one cause of human tragedy is thinking we have found the ultimate truth.
A lot of this article seems to be based on not really understanding the difference between philosophy and science. As David and Brett explain often, it is about testability.
The “clash of ideas” you describe is when 2 competing theories arise and you can test them against each other. Testability is a criteria for science. So the example about the book doesn’t track.
Also your critique of Deutsch about AI is not what he is saying. He is talking about AGI - artificial general intelligence - which is basically people. AI and AGI are not the same thing, and David makes this clear many times in writings and podcast etc.
You also criticize about the quest for truths, and I don’t recall there ever being that. The quest is for best explanations- and those explanations are never completed.
Introspection and philosophy are not science because they are not testable.
I’ll take it David Deutsch is a radical skeptic, but then David Deutsch misinterprets Popper. Popper believes in participatory epistemology, not radical skepticism. https://youtu.be/219X-uquzTA?si=EqSf21sgCgreccOQ Popper’s epistemology is derived from the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. That doesn’t mean Popper agrees with him on everything, but Popper’s epistemology is clearly an extension of Whitehead’s process philosophy. It’s also less radical skepticism and more William Jamesian pragmatism. That also doesn’t mean they all agree, for example Bertrand Russell was a famous agnostic, ANW was a pantheist, and William James had religious beliefs, but once you see the common threads Popper’s epistemology becomes easier to understand, as well as the ways it’s widely misunderstood and the misunderstandings are disseminated by people like David Deutsch. You will probably also like the Schelling diagrams that come before the Goethe diagrams if you’re wondering where all the opposite categories come from, and even the Hegel diagrams that came after. Yes, the philosophy of science you’re taught in school is a direct descendant of German idealism, but people don’t see that because of Bill Nye and whatever.
Great piece. This resonates with lots of problems I had with Deutsch (while also appreciating much of his overall project). I like his ambition in building a framework out of four pillars that are broad and important (Darwin, Turing, Popper, Everett). But the giveaway is that the whole thing stopped in about 1950, meaning that all the weird findings from cognitive science can’t be integrated. These all have implications for meaning, abstractions, knowledge, representation, etc. And the sociological stuff is obviously true. Like anything, if you look at the behaviour of Deutschians or neo-Popperian online, clearly this is a worldview, a source of meaning & identity. Which, as you say, is not bad in itself. But it ain’t disinterested epistemology.
thanks for reading, and beautifully put
All I learned from this article above is Deutsch poisoned most people’s understandings of Popper. Popper’s epistemology comes from something called process philosophy or Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. It’s basically a more Anglo-analytic turn of German idealism. It’s impossible to synthesize with Turing machines in any way, among other problems. I haven’t yet read all of this but at least one other person before me seems to have decided the problem is people, mostly meaning Deutsch, deliberately misconstrue Popper. https://www.elliottemple.com/essays/deutsch-interview
That’s interesting. I didn’t know Popper was influenced by Whitehead. In my reading of him, I did think that a version of conjecture and refutation would be compatible with some kind of pragmatism. But then he starts talking about Worlds 1,2,3 & it gets more metaphysical.
Pragmatism is metaphysical. Isn’t William James the guy who went to revivals and seances to defend them?
This is why I hate philosophy. James literally wrote the book on pragmatism but in many ways his interest in quackery was about a metaphysical realm beyond. Meanwhile the other “fathers of pragmatism” — Dewy (who called himself an instrumentalist I believe) & Pearce (who called himself a “pragmaticist”) — were explicitly trying to avoid metaphysics, especially that of Hegel & his acolytes. Whether or not they & later pragmatists achieve this is debatable. But I believe it’s still part of the branding of pragmatism that it is practice- and results-focused rather than trying for a better metaphysics or better epistemology viz. a more accurate “picture” of the world. Anyway this is all vague I admit. PS I’m a philosopher & something of a pragmatist but I admit that doesn’t mean much.
Here is Brett Hall’s refutation https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-_907srdU90
My main problem with some followers of Deutsch is that they treat the laws of physics not as fallible propositions but as final answers. I do not agree that the insights of Deutsch are inconsequential. On the contrary, they explain the centrality of trial and error in both natural and human problem solving and protects us from the hubris that is a key source of human error. The number one cause of human tragedy is thinking we have found the ultimate truth.
A lot of this article seems to be based on not really understanding the difference between philosophy and science. As David and Brett explain often, it is about testability.
The “clash of ideas” you describe is when 2 competing theories arise and you can test them against each other. Testability is a criteria for science. So the example about the book doesn’t track.
Also your critique of Deutsch about AI is not what he is saying. He is talking about AGI - artificial general intelligence - which is basically people. AI and AGI are not the same thing, and David makes this clear many times in writings and podcast etc.
You also criticize about the quest for truths, and I don’t recall there ever being that. The quest is for best explanations- and those explanations are never completed.
Introspection and philosophy are not science because they are not testable.
I’ll take it David Deutsch is a radical skeptic, but then David Deutsch misinterprets Popper. Popper believes in participatory epistemology, not radical skepticism. https://youtu.be/219X-uquzTA?si=EqSf21sgCgreccOQ Popper’s epistemology is derived from the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. That doesn’t mean Popper agrees with him on everything, but Popper’s epistemology is clearly an extension of Whitehead’s process philosophy. It’s also less radical skepticism and more William Jamesian pragmatism. That also doesn’t mean they all agree, for example Bertrand Russell was a famous agnostic, ANW was a pantheist, and William James had religious beliefs, but once you see the common threads Popper’s epistemology becomes easier to understand, as well as the ways it’s widely misunderstood and the misunderstandings are disseminated by people like David Deutsch. You will probably also like the Schelling diagrams that come before the Goethe diagrams if you’re wondering where all the opposite categories come from, and even the Hegel diagrams that came after. Yes, the philosophy of science you’re taught in school is a direct descendant of German idealism, but people don’t see that because of Bill Nye and whatever.