I had to read up on Popper. But he is best understood by first understanding David Hume and the is-ought problem. David Harriamn's book is a great introduction and in the context of the history of science.

After a few minutes of looking through Popper's arguments, the comparison of Mizrahi to Popper is a good first approximation.

I need to learn more about Popper. Other than my exposure to philosophy 30 years ago as a student and then to what I learned from reading AR's books and hanging out in the Gulch, I would consider my philosophy background more limited than it ought to be. It is time to read "Philosophy: Who Needs It".

Thanks for the education and the advice, db. I am sure that I was not adequately prepared to defend Objectivism against

From what I read of his work, yes, it does appear that he considers himself of a friend of science and that his approach is to describe/observe what scientists actually do. He broke the scientific method down into four steps that conceptually I agreed with. There were some items that sounded Objectivist and others that definitely did not. I really was not quite sure what I would be going up against. Reading through what he wrote gave me a better appreciation for Objectivism's combination of simplicity and general applicability. Mizrahi's arguments seemed reasonable. Somehow, however, they seemed hollow, and I really couldn't pinpoint why I felt that way. Thanks again, db.

The article about god illustrates my points. Mizrah attacks the argument for the existence of god because of Jewish survival. He is right the argument is poor, but he uses this best explanation (IBE) test, which is update Karl Popper. So this article confirms my thoughts in about the first paper.

2nd Question: At some point this idea relies on the idea that there is not an objective reality (subjectivism). Of course we interpret the world based on what we know. The most interesting points in science happen when we find out that the experiment does not comport with these concepts. For instance, when we find out that a feather falls as fast as a lead ball in a vacuum, but that was not what we expected, then we have learned something important.

The philosophy of science is dominated by the problem of induction (I posted a book review of David Harriman’s book on this point – excellent read). Karl Popper provided his pseudo solution, which was that science gropes toward better approximations and that the difference between science and non-science is that a scientific is falsifiable. However, science never provides us with real knowledge.

This paper (Why the Ultimate Argument for Scientific Realism Ultimately Fails) is about Epistemic Scientific Realism and the no-miracles argument for ESR. The NMA is explained as no-miracles argument’, after Putnam's (1975, p. 73) claim that realism ‘is the only philosophy that doesn't make the success of science a miracle’ (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Mizrahi is arguing against the NMA as justification for ESR. From my reading about scientific realism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy it appears that ESR attempts to solve the problem of induction with this idea that we infer to the best (closest fit) answer. I would consider this just Karl Popper updated although I think philosophers who pursue this area would argue that they are just describing what scientists actually do.

In my opinion a lot of the non-sense in this area is the result of defining knowledge as essentially omniscience or perfect knowledge. I would define knowledge as information and concepts that explain reality. As a result, knowledge is always contextual. For instance, it is not wrong or shows a lack of knowledge to assume the Earth is flat if I am building a standard house. If you don’t get this guy to agree that knowledge is not omniscience (perfect knowledge) you will never have a useful discussion with him.
Second of all you will have to get him to agree that A is A and that A is knowable. Most likely this guy is a Platonist of one sort or another where at best we see the world through a fog. If the law of identity holds and we can trust our senses (again this does not mean they are infallible – that would violate the law of identity) then induction reasoning is perfectly valid. Identity implies causation and causation means that we can trust our senses. It also means there is only one reality (I call this the uniqueness theorem) and therefore there is a correct description of reality, however that description is always contextual since knowledge is contextual.

My guess is that this guy believes he is a friend of science and his approach is to describe/observe what scientists actually do. Probably the best thing you could do is give him a copy of David Harriman’s book The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics http://www.amazon.com/Logical-Leap-In.... Then discuss these issues in the context of this book. Anything else is likely to be frustrating. Although he might be willing to interview about what you do under the idea that he is gathering information on how science really works.

I may upset some of our philosophy profs, but I think if you are going to call yourself an expert in the philosophy of science you ought to at least have an undergraduate degree in a hard science or engineering.

He appears to make the same mistake as Popper and many others. His definition of knowledge is Omniscience. I will take a look at this in more detail over the weekend.