#104 (C&R Chap 10, Part V) - The Duhem-Quine Thesis

It's only taken us 104 episodes of talking incessantly about Karl Popper to get one of the most important and popular criticisms of falsification: The Duhem-Quine thesis. Should we wrap the podcast here? Is it game over?

We discuss

• Does AI need more economic thinking?
• The role of background knowledge in conversation
• The allure of verificationism
• The Duhem-Quine thesis
• The role of competing theories in combatting the thesis
• Are conspiracies the price we pay for independent thinking?

References

• Michael I. Jordan on ML Street Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AREWYbVtX64
• Our conversation with Ben Recht: https://www.incrementspodcast.com/91

Quotes

People involved in a fruitful critical discussion of a problem often rely, if only unconsciously, upon two things: the acceptance by all parties of the common aim of getting at the truth, or at least nearer to the truth, and a considerable amount of common background knowledge. This does not mean that either of these two things is an indispensable basis of every discussion, or that these two things are themselves ‘a priori’, and cannot be critically discussed in their turn. It only means that criticism never starts from nothing, even though every one of its starting points may be challenged, one at a time, in the course of the critical debate.
- C&R, Chap 10

While discussing a problem we always accept (if only temporarily) all kinds of things as unproblematic: they constitute for the time being, and for the discussion of this particular problem, what I call our background knowledge. Few parts of this background knowledge will appear to us in all contexts as absolutely unproblematic, and any particular part of it may be challenged at any time, especially if we suspect that its uncritical acceptance may be responsible for some of our difficulties. But almost all of the vast amount of background knowledge which we constantly use in any informal discussion will, for practical reasons, necessarily remain unquestioned; and the misguided attempt to question it all—that is to say, to start from scratch—can easily lead to the breakdown of a critical debate. (Were we to start the race where Adam started, I know of no reason why we should get any further than Adam did.)
- C&R, Chap 10

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