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Great clarification of Popper’s position—and of how it differs from Deutsch’s. Very insightful. I see what you mean about there being no room for positive arguments, and that labeling explanations as good or bad can itself be a form of positive argument. Still, I find value in the distinctions Deutsch makes when describing theories as good, bad, better, fundamental, deep, or anti-rational. Unfortunately, I don’t yet know how to reconcile that, nor do I have a satisfactory alternative theory or criticism to offer. I’d like to revisit this later, but I have a busy stretch coming up, and I expect the discussion will take some real research and time—so I’d rather not start it just yet.

For now, I’ll leave a few breadcrumbs (mostly notes to self) to pick up later.

Deutsch’s idea of a “good explanation” seems to involve the following elements:

Structure: Whether the explanation is built the right way—that is, whether it describes the mechanism of how and why something works rather than appealing to authority, source, or mere results. The “hard-to-vary” criterion also seems tied to this structural quality.

Resilience: Whether it stands up to repeated criticism and testing. Deutsch agrees that general relativity and quantum theory are “wrong” in the Popperian sense—since they have gaps or domains where they fail—yet he still counts them among our best explanations because they’ve been repeatedly tested and shown to work reliably within their applicable domains.

Depth and reach: A hallmark of a good explanation is that understanding it allows you to understand a range of other phenomena as well. Deutsch even suggests there’s a kind of convergence toward a unified theory of everything—hinting at a deep link between reality and its propensity to be explained.

#2108·Edwin de Wit, 8 days ago