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Questions

Question

Good evening!
1. Is Popper’s intention in the principle of falsification mainly that although it is impossible to know what the necessary causal reason is, it is nevertheless possible to know what is not the cause by ruling things out and isolating them through experiment?
2. Why is it impossible to reconcile David Hume by saying that science does not reflect reality itself, but does reflect what we are capable of perceiving? (This is not Kant’s claim, since he made a claim about the world—that this is what we see—but I am asking whether perhaps we really do see the noumenon, only we interpret it according to our own perception.)
Is the answer that if so, that still does not mean we will always interpret it that way, since this is only contingent psychology that could change?
3. The thought experiment about a person who does not know Chinese is well known: if he were to remain in a room for an infinite amount of time, he would be able to communicate with a Chinese speaker even though he does not understand him (because he would always respond. For example, when they ask him in Chinese whether he is hungry, after some time he would respond with a word meaning yes even without understanding its meaning, but he would understand that using it brings him food). About this I would like to ask: doesn’t that itself mean that he understands? After all, he knows that this word is connected to the concept of “food,” since as a result of it he receives something to eat.
It seems to me that the intention is that he does not know the exact context of the speaker himself, but is it correct to say that there is a different kind of context? True, the speaker may have additional meanings in these words and not only that they represent the context of food, but at least he knows by way of negation what the word does not represent, doesn’t he? Or perhaps it is still possible that the words have meanings that he thinks he has ruled out, but in fact he is mistaken?
Thank you very much!
 
 

Answer

1. I do not see any connection at all between the principle of falsification and the question of causality.
2. I did not understand.
3. John Searle’s Chinese room. The point is not that he receives food, but that he receives an electric shock if his answer is irrelevant. He has no way of understanding the meaning of what he says, but he will always give a relevant answer.

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