Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant

Yes, I think you've gotten through to me. You're willing to hold strong opinions regarding the core discipline of the Western Tradition in a state of abject ignorance, on the grounds that actually educating yourself on the topic before forming such an opinion is analogous to committing suicide in order to understand suicide.

That's as bizarre a rationale for willful illiteracy as I can think of. You seem content with it, and I wish you well.

Great question. Instead of trying to reconcile my weak prose with a giant like Popper, I'll instead try to summarize my understanding of him, taken mainly from my reading Objective Knowledge and Conjectures and Refutations. Let me know if this helps.

With Popper it's important to put things in context. He's reacting to the developments in Positivism/Verificationism and the rather famous problems it had. Falsification is related to Methodological Naturalism in that both are provisional hedges against unwarranted leaps within science, the problem of induction in particular (see: Hume and induction), as well as the historic difficulties in establishing the relationship between subject and object -- what I think in my mind and what I know about the world external to my mind (see: well, Hume and Kant).

Popper's view is that science is must be understood as merely conventional, not declarations of objective truth about the state of the world. So, falsification is a way of acknowledging this limitation while establishing a language for moving science forward within its appropriate boundaries. We no longer say a scientific theory is "verified," or even that one "believes" it to be true (Popper doesn't "believe in belief") -- this would imply a direct statement of truth about the world. Rather, we say we have a conjecture that has not been falsified. All of science, as "Objective Knowledge," is really the collection of language in books and articles and journals (what Popper calls "World Three") that contain the most useful conjectures that have been accepted by convention into the community, that have not been falsified.

This is why the idea of "falsifiability" is so important. If something has no criteria by which it can be shown to be false, then it cannot qualify as a candidate for citizenship in World 3.

This works as a provisional, conventional set of boundaries around science and useful guideposts that show the best kind of science as rooted in empirical experience and observation.

Look, I sympathize. Philosophy, as the core discipline of human thought, has established beyond any doubt that there are limits to empirical human inquiry, and scientists don't like that idea. The standard response of scientific cheerleaders like, for instance, Lawrence Krauss, is to simply sniff at the entire enterprise, and assume there must be some problem with "those philosophers," rather than entertain the notion that there may, in fact, be limitations to reason and scientific inquiry.

This is fine. If you're too lazy and content in your own unexamined assumptions to read a few hundred pages of the men who did the hard work that gave you your entire livelihood, it will not affect your ability to do practical research.

But let's be clear about some of the practical implications of that position:

* Science does not need to be rational in any meaningful sense. (Go ahead and try to reinvent that idea without falling ass-backwards into the same problems "those philosophers" have been working through for centuries. Go ahead, I'll wait.)

* It does not need to be consistent within its own assumptions.

* Science is de facto "true", simply by virtue of being practiced by someone who claims to be doing science.

* Since we've now abdicated the rigorous discipline of establishing secure definitions, the notion of empirical science is now free-floating, ad hoc, and vulnerable to redefinition at any turn. The only thing required is for a group of men who call themselves "scientists" who have a different agenda to take control of a majority of significant journals or the community at large and impose their definition by fiat.

Philosophy may seem to be arcane and needlessly obsessed with definitions. And when its obscure language intrudes into the hard work of real empirical research, it can seem to be a giant non sequitur that can be easily ignored, as science moves forward (whatever "forward" means, now that we can't establish what is truly salutary and what is not).

But such willful ignorance not only skirts the fact that it was such philosophical examination of the limits and range of human knowledge that actually established science to begin with, that sort of ignorance sets enormously dangerous precedents, a sort of intellectual stare decisis for the future of human inquiry. It opens the door to sophistry, demagoguery and ultimately pure irrationalism.

History is long, and intellectual tyranny is opportunistic. Whatever integrity and above-board intentions you think scientists can maintain in the long-term, on good will alone and not deep self-awareness of core philosophical discipline is absurdly naive. Without a community committed to rationality (which is what philosophy does even if it only sets up negative limitations that seem unsatisfactory to scientists who want carte blanche to do whatever they want), then the entire discipline in the long term most likely will be taken over by non-rational concerns: commercial, military, governmental or even religious.

Absent the basic language provided by philosophy that can give at least some basic definitions and intellectual rigor for what is and isn't "science" (again, good luck reinventing all that), welcome back to the pre-socratic age of sophistry, demagoguery and a new Dark Ages. Just give it a century or so -- buy hey, you won't be around, so why worry?

The thing I find odd is that I've followed Luke for some years and he's remarkably well read on these topics and assuredly know of the complications with this stance. I find his Scientific Narrative argument (Science has solved other problems, why should X be the last to fall?) problematic but he seems to lean heavily on it.