I recently saw this liberal video on conspiracy theories:
youtube.com
They claim that Historical Materialism and Freud's theories are pseudoscience because they cannot be falsified.
Is this true? Do historical materialists have no predictable power?
If historical materialism cannot be falsified, what is an alternative scientific lens to view capitalism through?
Literally what?
Of it could. It's just that all attempts at "debunking" it have been hilariously bad
of course*
In order for something to be scientific, it has to be falsifiable. Historical materialism is a theoretical lens of viewing history, but literally anything can be viewed under historical materialism. Just like everything can be viewed in Freudian terms.
It has no predictable power. It's simply an explanation after the fact.
Who the fuck cares whether something is "scientific"? All knowledge is based on unprovable assumptions. Read Wittgenstein.
Falsifiability is basically a meme at this point. In real everyday science it's not particularly useful since we use theories all the time, often as assumptions for larger systems, that cannot be falsified. The major criteria in science/philosophy of science now is explanatory power and evidence.
Historical materialism and marxism in general definitely has explanatory power, being able to describe and explain the present state of our world in great detail and precision.
I don't consider myself an expert here, but the idea that historical materialism is pseudoscience because it's unfalsifiable is nonsense. Additionally, as Marx himself points out in one of the Preface's to Capital Vol. 1, what he's trying to do is to develop a social science, a way of looking at social phenomena scientifically. He is clearly aware of the issues trying to do so entails, since you cannot take a social process into a lab and examine it in isolation. Historical materialism is part of Marx's solution to that problem.
trust in the scientific method takes a leap of faith. fuggin logik'd
Of course, Historical Materialism is not a hard science, and the only reason it's still considered science is historical reasons (the things regarded as science were different back then).
And right now, there's a bunch of stuff that cannot be considered as science when confronted with Popper's Falsifiability. For example, evolutionary psichology or Holla Forums's race realism.
That's not to say that Historical Materialism is bad for not being scientific, or even yet, comparable to Holla Forums's bullshit. Even if some could argue that scientific knowledge is more useful than non scientific knowledge (I might believe that), the truth is that not all the knowledge is scientific and probably will never be (SPOILER: most knowledge is not scientific )
Also, falsifiability is one step beyond the clasic "scientific method" on the Wittgenstein's ladder, but still is a simplification. Science entrails more than just refuting things as tried to explain.
Don't fall for the STEMlord meme that "science is best because scientific method" nor the libarts meme "Science is based on assumptions"; they're both stupid simplifications. You can start with " Structure of Scientific Revolutions" and go beyond. (protip: any semblance of Historical Materialism in the book is not a coincidence ;^] ).
Esperanto mojosas!
I'm kind of new to Marxism so let me ask this, why do people think that historical materialism isn't falsifiable? Are they referring to the most basic assumption of it i.e. that the world and the minds in it are of a material nature or are they referring to more specific things like classes that act because of the material conditions they find themselves in? The former obviously can't be the case, otherwise every science by that definition would be a pseudo-science and the latter is falsifiable. So, what assumptions are people exactly referring to when they make that claim or do I have the wrong idea about what something being falsifiable exactly means?
people who like the label "scientific socialism" apparently.
That's one of many positions in philosophy of science. Check out Imre Lakatos, for instance.
This is just pure ignorance.
Yeah it's not like the "scientific" in scientific socialism is extremely contextualized or anything
What books are most relevant to this?
I disagree, sciences major criteria is accurate prediction. You can think of plenty of equally expliatory hypothesis for how a system in the world works to fit around the evidence that you have, but until you can start predicting the future with it then its a worthless method of thinking. Chemistry is not alchemy because I can use it to make predicitons about how two chemicals that have never been mixed will interact, sure at first I might start mixing random things but only as a means to aquire the knowledge to predict later outcomes.
Not that guy, but I'll ask what is your background of philosophy of science or science in general.
Since most of the work on "programmes" is a critique of Popper and Kuhn, you'll need to at least be familiar with them.
If you have a good mathematic background, "Proofs and Refutations" is an entertaining read.
I would say that "For and Against the method" is a good and bad introduction. It was supposed to be a joint work between Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend, sadly Lakatos died, but we have the correspondence between the 2, and lectures from Lakatos.
Lakatos' work is approachable without a heavy background, but beware of Feyerabend. That guy can be pretty spooky if you blindly believe in his words.
Complete newfag on the level of reading the Greeks, actually. I better give it more time.
You can start, as I recommended before, with Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. It's actually a pretty easy read, so easy that critics consider it weak, but anyway it's a great introduction to the world beyond the "holy scientific method" that rationalists love to ignorantly repeat.
Check it out
It isn't a science.
Reading this thread after Hegel is making my head hurt.
Thank you comrade, will read this too.
Neniu parolas la lingvon. Kial eĉ provi?
That's actually just a hangover after Hegel.