David Stove and his bizarre inductivist legacy

David Stove. It’s not supposed to be good form to speak ill of the dead so I’ll try to stick to his work. If he didn’t have a cult of personality surrounding him this wouldn’t be necessary.

Way back in the 70s in Sydney University, David Stove spearheaded a counter-attack against an alleged Marxist take over of his department. What Wikipedia won’t tell you is that the Marxists asked for a class to be taught on Marxism, this was the supposed opening volley of the war.

Stove opposed it on the grounds of it being ideological, which at first seems rational. Rational unless you consider that this standard wasn’t applied evenly in view of Stove’s conservative adherence to classical inductivism being essentially polemical rather than “ideologically neutral”.

This first volley (really a reasonable request in and of itself) by the Marxists was enough to trigger a culture warrior response from Stove that was designed to ward off a Marxist take over, effectively meaning that Stove’s justification for denial was a fallacious slippery slope argument. A class isn’t a take over.

Not that I’d want a take-over of Marxist a priorism at my Uni, but I think Stove could have been a little more even handed. It’s not like he was free from contributing to prejudice, ideology and pseudo-science himself.
In the 80s, Stove churned out polemics against philosophers who took Hume’s Problem of Induction seriously (tarring Popper by way of a supposed guilt-by-association with Feyerabend). Stove was a classical inductivist and Hume’s Problem of Induction, if indeed a problem, sounded the death knell for his philosophy. This was in line with Stove’s 1970s attack on Hume’s skepticism*.

Stove is often lionized as possibly Australia’s greatest philosopher of science. This is usually (if not exclusively) by those who happen to hold compatible political views with Stove. Little if any of these people actually take to his work with a critical eye. It’s as John Quiggin said of climate change “skeptics”; so the only people deluded by… [Stove] …on this topic are those complicit in their own delusion, believing an implausible story because it suits their ideological or cultural/tribal prejudices.

And you would have to be deluded (or at least logic impaired) to buy some of the rubbish that Stove was selling.

In Cricket versus Republicanism, Stove told us that there is no reason to assume that women were not innately intellectually inferior to men because of their statistically poorer performance in this respect. Stove didn’t stop there, he also argued that women were intellectually inferior. He also said the same thing of other undesirable traits and race.

Now for some, there is a knee-jerk reaction that says “sexist! racist!”, which usually gets a response along the lines of “politically correct censorship! Whaaaaa! Academic witch-hunt!” While Stove’s views on race and sex may have been unpalatable, being unpalatable didn’t make them wrong.

What made them wrong is that Stove’s assertions were argued cum hoc ergo propter hoc, that is to say he implies causation from correlation which is an act of fallacious logic. Think of it. A philosopher of science who had the education of thousands as his responsibility, incapable of picking up on a basic, formal logical fallacy at the core of his reasoning. Worrying.

There is something that should be said of the conservative fans of Stove; they are inconsistent in their application of Stove’s epistemology. For example, if we used Stove’s cum hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning we could argue; conservatives fare worse in academia, their achievements being statistically less than that of progressives, therefore conservatives are innately inferior at performing in academia.

Suddenly, the Stovian culture warrior will switch from correlation to (spurious) causation as a counter-proof; Marxist / Leftist / post-modern / politically-correct witch hunt! If you go away from this piece with only one idea, go away with this; Stove’s conservative fans don’t reach their conclusions by way of reasoned argument, they select whatever line of argument confirms their prejudice.

If a particular argument of theirs happens to be valid, it’s just a coincidence.

People often talk about group think rhetorically. This fallacious reasoning going un-criticised by Stovians (and their uncritical fans) is an example of true and proper group think. Bolt, Windshuttle et. al.; don’t expect one of them to raise a hand to point out these mistakes.

If we ignore, distort or trivialise causal considerations such as genetic drift while inductively interpreting select data, we can (fallaciously) argue about “kinds” of organisms that differentiated after their ride on Noah’s Ark just like Ken Ham does. You can see what Ken Ham is up to with his “kinds”, along with point-by-point coverage of his errata here on YouTube. (Warning: about 45mins long).

You can argue almost anything if you selectively include or exclude considerations of causality and do it inductively. Stove was overly dismissive of existing and potential sociological and environmental (i.e. causal) factors when he declared women intellectually inferior to men. You can see why this kind of epistemology is popular with propagandists of an instrumentalist leaning.

Keith Windschuttle in his book The Killing of History, in a foreword before expanding upon Stove’s attack on Karl Popper** , Windschuttle at least paid due respect to part of Popper’s philosophy of science. He acknowledged that Popper’s falsificationism had kept shonks out of the sciences.

I think we should consider this a confession as to why Stove is so popular amongst conservative culture warriors. Whatever his intentions, this is what Stove has left us.

~ Bruce

* Incidentally, when you hear a global warming denier call themselves a skeptic, check if they are classical inductivists. Very often with prominent Australian “climate change skeptics” you can find a chain of uncritical and unwavering parroting of inductivists leading back to David Stove (usually through Keith Windschuttle, “climate change skeptics” often being “Stolen Generation Skeptics” as well). Also familiarise yourself with Marcello Truzzi’s piece on pseudo-skepticism (don’t worry about the “New Age” font, it’s a parody). If you can get your head around it, you’ll soon realise that these “climate change skeptics” are nothing of the sort.

** For crying out loud Windschuttle/Stove, “neutralising success words”? “Jazz age”? It’s epistemology/philosophy of science, not aesthetics!