Posted on 04/06/2003 10:12:13 AM PDT by Hank Kerchief
Lately we have seen the notion of falsifiability represented as a fallacy. This is itself, a fallacy.
The concept of falsifiability is a greatly misunderstood but legitimate part of the scientific method (a rigorous application of reason to evidence). Consider this statement made as an objection to falsifiability, "Falsifiability can be a valuable intellectual tool: it can help you to disprove ideas which are incorrect. But it does not enable you to prove ideas which are correct." In fact, that is exactly what "falsifiability" does do, and without it, no scientific hypothesis can be proven.
In science, a proposed hypothesis is not considered valid if there is no experiment that can be performed that would, if the hypothesis is incorrect, fail. If such an experiment can be performed, and it "fails to fail," it is proof (or at least very good evidence) the hypothesis is correct.
No doubt the prejudice against this very useful objective method lies in the name, "falsifiability." It does not mean the scientist must attempt to prove a hypothesis false, but the very opposite. "Falsifiability," is the method by which a hypothesis may be proven true. It also does not mean that a hypothesis must be assumed correct until it is falsified.
The idea of falsifiability protects the field of science from being obliged to entertain as, "possible," any wild hypothesis on no other basis than it cannot be disproved. If a hypothesis is correct, there will always be a test or experiment that it would fail, if it is incorrect, which when performed proves the hypothesis correct by not failing (or incorrect by failing).
If no test can be devised for testing a hypothesis, it means the hypothesis has no consequence, that nothing happens or doesn't happen because of it and nothing depends on it being right. If this were not true, whatever depended on the hypothesis could be tested. There is absolutely no reason to entertain a notion that has neither purpose or consequence.
"But why not perform experiments to verify rather than falsify?" In fact, all experiments performed to test a hypothesis are attempts to verify it. If such a test could "pass" even if the hypothesis were incorrect, passing the test would prove nothing. Passing a test is only, "proof," if passing is only possible when the hypothesis is true, which means the test must fail (the hypothesis will be falsified) when the hypothesis is untrue. A test which cannot falsify a hypothesis, if it is incorrect, cannot prove it, if it is correct.
To say a hypothesis is not falsifiable means that it cannot be proved (or disproved), and, therefore, is unacceptable as a scientific theory.
It is very unfortunate that this concept is misunderstood by many who are otherwise quite rational and objective. The principle not only applies to science, but almost all complex or abstract concepts. The attempt to verify any conjecture by means of a method that cannot discriminate between those conjectures which are true and those which are false can never discover the truth. Only a method which distinctly demonstrates a conjecture is false, if it is, can verify those conjectures that are true.
The concept of falsifiability sweeps away mountains of irrational rubbish masquerading as science, philosophy, ideology, and religion. One question that must be asked about any doubtful proposition or conjecture is, "how can this be disproved if it is false?" If there is no way to test if the proposition is false, there are no rational grounds whatsoever for assuming the proposition to be true.
(Excerpt) Read more at hpamerica.com ...
I confess, I have been teasing you! But it's a great story. I don't know what you've read about the Oneida Colony. Probably little more than that a Massachusetts preacher hit out for the hinterlands and tried to establish some kind of communal, self-sufficient church society. That would be true, so far as it goes.
But did you hear the part about John Humphrey Noyes -- the founder of this sect -- being physically expelled from Massachusetts by an act of the legislature? Kicked out, in fact? And for why?
Apparently, Pastor Noyes was a devoted student of the Holy Scriptures. As such, over time he seems to have come to some kind of [gnostic and most probably heretical]conclusion that the exhortation to "Love thy neighbor" logically established the practice of "the community of wives" -- translated, in Marxian terms, as the "community of 'free love.'"
Then, in what probably really p*ss*d of the locals, Noyes suggested that a kind of "compensatory payment" would be due for any enjoyment of the glories of free love. That was specified in the doctrine of Karrezza.
I haven't got a clue where he got this doctrine from; some say from some esoteric Middle-Eastern cult. I don't know the origin; but I can explain the principle: You can have all the "free love" you want, provided that you never achieve orgasm.
One does not explicitly learn whether one might achieve orgasm with "state permission" or not. That is, whether this might be some kind of "licensable" activity, from which "the powers that be" might rake in revenues.
In any case, it appears Noyes never exploited that potential revenue source. What he did was move his followers and his ideology to Upstate New York, circa 1840, to test the system of his ideas.
The system was wholly communitarian, with common ownership of all the means of production, including land and just about everything short of personal implements -- but including women which, presumably, came under the head of "communitarian resources."
Anyhoot, the history is silent as to the details of what followed (which must have been quite messy). What it tells us is Oneida Colony aspired to be a self-sufficient agricultural community, supplementing whatever could be got from those means by organized small-scale manufacture. I gather they started out with mousetraps.
There were reports that the labor pool shrank relentlessly. There was no incentive to work (people fed, clothed, and sheltered you whether you worked or not); and enjoying the "community of wives" must have been an almost compelling distraction to many. The mousetrap business suffered for workers, and finally failed....
The "blow-by-blow account" of the demise of Pastor Noyes littler "social experiment" is no longer extant, if it ever was. Suffice it to say that, in the end, there was a miracle: Even today, Oneida survives as a commercial brand name. Apparently, the core of this failed experiment somehow managed to transmute itself into a going commercial enterprise. Oneida to this day is a familiar household name, when it comes to such things as tableware, etc.
Go figure, PatrickHenry!
Well now ... if you discover something, and you die before you can communicate it to anyone, what do we have? You don't have much of anything, because you're dead. If you live, and tell the world, and no one agrees with you, what do we have? Either you're an unappreciated genius, or you're a whacko. Do you really think it's up to you to be the sole judge? That's a tough one. Truth isn't left up to a majority vote.
If you live, and publish, it may be that your theory will be tested, will survive the tests, and will be accepted, as with other theories. If you wrote it all out and then died before your work was known and tested, I guess we can say that you had hit upon a good theory, and never lived to enjoy the fame that would have been yours. But let's not get hung up on this "truth" business. Theories aren't true, they're just useful, supported, well-tested, etc.
Ah yes. Never give them your essence. General Ripper must have been raised in that community.
Ah; but your argument was of the form: "if you can't disprove the existence of "X," "X" must exist."
PH merely used the Pluto example to illustrate the fallacy of you reasoning.
The rule is that the burden of proof lies on he who makes the positive assertion. Existence of a thing is a positive assertion that has to be backed up with evidence, or it becomes a gratuitous assertion, which can be denied gratuitously.
Attempting to transfer the burden to those who don't accept your gratuitous assertion is, as Rand said, an "epistemological injustice" as proving the negative is generally not feasible as a matter of logic; it requires the production of evidence of a thing not existing, or not happening.... when in fact such negative conditions manifest themselves by lack of evidence.
Yeah, something like that, PH. Are you laughing as hard as I am?
"Mandrake, do you know why I only drink pure rain water and grain alcohol?"
Actually, this idea is related to what I had in mind. If all those who had ideas that were valid waited for community approval before pursuing them, how much would have been lost. (The Wright Brothers come to mind.)
Someone once demonstrated a working wireless radio for Thomas Edison, before Marconi had patented his version. Edison made the colossal mistake of pronouncing it an amusing toy for children which had no practical application.
Obviously, a working radio was "proof," but the hapless inventor, instead of relying on that proof, relied on the opinion of an, "expert," and lost his opportunity.
If that inventor had my view, that the purpose of proof is to ensure one's own thinking is correct, and having proved, by demonstration, wireless radio worked, he had persued a patent instead of the approval of a peer, the entire history of radio might have been different, and the inventor a lot richer.
Hank
I think maybe the hypothesis about the construct systems a la George Kelly's work/grid did not show a sufficient difference to void the null hypothesis. The rest, I recall, did.
One of the other variables that did show a significant difference was on empathy as measured by the Comrey.
Oof! I hope dredging up such, "memories," provide you some kind of satisfaction.
The only point I find interesting is the figure, 0.001, which I think is high, if a percentage of religious beliefs that are likely to be true were meant.
Thanks for that, anyway.
I liked your pervious post more, because, I agree, with your bias, "people are worth it." However, I am very selective about which people that means.
Hank
Same here. I took a Formal Logic class in college and was amazed that people actually get paid to teach that kind of sillyness.
"All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are Socrates. Which means that all men are homosexuals."
God is not a deceiver and would never contradict Himself.
We have a theory, that oxygen is why things burn, etc. That is our model of reality at this time. It might be right, and it might be wrong, but it isn't "proved" in the mathematical sense, to me. I am willing to allow that there is some addition or correction that may yet be forthcoming - although I will continue to use the "oxygen theory" as if it were fact, until such time comes as it is disproven.
By the way, I do not agree at all that, "Newtonian theory is wrong and requires at least QM and relativity to correct for the influence of the wave nature of matter, time dilation at non-zero velocities and near gravitational objects," because Newtons' laws never addressed these phenomena, and within the context of Newton's laws, relativity and quantum mechanics expand and add refinements to Newton's laws, but certainly do not cancel any of them.
On the contrary, the orbit of Mercury was measurably different from Newton's prediction, even within the limited means of 100-year-ago astronomers, and this deviation was precisely due to the Sun's gravity and its general-relativistic alteration of space-time in Mercury's vicinity. In fact, all the planets suffer this same influence, although Mercury is the only one where that influence is obvious. Today, GPS satellites orbiting the earth, with atomic clocks aboard, have to be corrected for the different rate of time passage up there, as opposed to down here on earth, again for gen-rel reasons. Newtonian theory contains no mechanism for time dilation near planets, and so predicts no time correction needed. This is wrong.
In fact, I doubt if anyone could have conceived of the QM and realtivity laws if Newton had not laid the groundwork, so Newtons's laws are the rough work of which the later theories are only the polish.
That may be, but how science makes progress is a different issue than if theories can be "proved."
If newton's laws are, "untrue," so are QM and relativity which depend on Newton's laws.
Yes and no. Yes, they are untrue because they don't take into account the quantum nature of gravity itself. So they must be wrong. But no because, QM and relativity don't "depend" on Newtonian physics at all. They are their own independent theories that stand or fall on their own merits, independent of Newtonian mechanics. However, it is true that both theories reduce to Newtonian physics in the limit of low velocites (for special rel.) and weak gravity (for gen. rel.) and high quantum number (for QM). This is called the "correspondence principle" - that theories must correspond to their classical counterparts. Where the theories diverge is near light-speed, near black holes or neutron stars and at atomic or molecular sizes. In those cases, it is facially evident that Newtonian physics is a complete failure. Technically, there are relativistic effects even for baseballs and cars driving, but they are extremely minute and very difficult to measure, which is why Newtonian physics lasted as long as it did, and works well enough for most things.
That is at the heart of faith. If you have proof, you wouldn't have faith, you would have rational belief.
If God does exist and you did not have faith you have lost all. If He does not exist and you have faith then you have lost nothing.
Faith is orthogonal to science. I do not believe science is capable of answering whether God exists or not. What exactly are anyone's beliefs in God are a personal matter and not subject to such discussion.
LOL. There is no shortage of the scientifically challenged here.
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