What is "Falsifiability" and O'ism's view of it?

[The Wrath]

Okay, I am not an expert on Objectivism, but I cannot understand the Objectivist position on the concept of falsifiability. The general consensus among people on this board seems to be that science should not be falsifiable. I disagree, and here's why:

For a scientific theory to be "falsifiable" means merely that you must be able to state the conditions under which it would be proven false. People on this board take it to mean that a theory must actually be proven false. This is not the way that Karl Popper or Thomas Kuhn use the term.

So, a scientific theory is valid if and only if you are able to state the conditions under which it would be disproven. Thus, the theory of gravity is valid because we can state the conditions under which it would be proven wrong. If I dropped my pencil and it just hovered in the air, gravity would be proven wrong. I have just demonstrated how the theory of gravity is falsifiable, but I have not proven it wrong because such a phenomenon has not been observed.

Freud's theory of psychoanalysis is not falsifiable. Any evidence you come up with to prove psychoanalysis wrong will just elicit some whacked-out response about how you have repressed sexuality that stems from your toilet training when you were 3.

A better example is that of Creation. You can present a Creationist with evidence for Evolution, perhaps by carbon-dating a dinosaur bone to show that it is millions of years old. What will the Creationist say? "God made it that way." So, after all the evidence that exists of the world being billions of years old, a Creationist can evade reality simply by saying that God intentionally made it to look older than it really is. There is no way to disprove such a theory. Since God exists outside of the universe, then there is no evidence which cannot be shrugged off with a simple "God made it that way on purpose." This theory is not falsifiable, because any Creationist will be incapable of stating conditions under which he would be proven wrong. Thus, it is not a valid theory.

So, assuming that my definition of falsification is correct (which I'm about 99% sure it is), tell me where I'm wrong. If my definition is incorrect, please explain.

[JMeganSnow]

It's not your definition they're quibbling with, so how do your comments apply to this discussion?

[The Wrath]

So, assuming that my definition of falsification is correct (which I'm about 99% sure it is), tell me where I'm wrong.

Being able to state the conditions under which something would be disproven is a far cry from actually being able to disprove it. That's my point, and it's a distinction that I think other people in this discussion have failed to make.

[Adrian Hester]

Okay, I am not an expert on Objectivism, but I cannot understand the Objectivist position on the concept of falsifiability. The general consensus among people on this board seems to be that science should not be falsifiable. I disagree, and here's why:

For a scientific theory to be "falsifiable" means merely that you must be able to state the conditions under which it would be proven false. People on this board take it to mean that a theory must actually be proven false. This is not the way that Karl Popper or Thomas Kuhn use the term.

No, you misunderstand. Popper set up falsifiability as the criterion or definition of science. This (and certain of its consequences, as I mentioned in my earlier post) isn't good enough.

[The Wrath]

It isn't sufficient, but it's still necessary.

[DavidOdden]

For a scientific theory to be "falsifiable" means merely that you must be able to state the conditions under which it would be proven false.

The word "falsifiable" means "capable of being shown to be false". In order to show that a statement is false, it has to be false. That, of course of "show" but not "claim" -- you can claim that something is false without it actually being false. But in order to show that something is false, it has to actually be false.

People on this board take it to mean that a theory must actually be proven false.

No, that's clearly not true. That's the difference between the potential and the actual -- it may be possible to demonstrate something, even though it has not already been done.

This is not the way that Karl Popper or Thomas Kuhn use the term.

Can you point me to a couple places where Kuhn uses the term "falsifiable"? I just don't recall that being his bag -- he's more into the "science is all social ediface" routine. As for Popper, it's true that he uses the word "falsifiable" in a special way, but I won't use the word incorrectly; however, you will notice, I hope, that in post #24 and other places I've identified the valid concept of question-begging as being the evil that is supposedly guarded against by "falsificationism". The guy who started all of this was apparently following some mystic rather than Popper, so the focus on Popper's errors hasn't been that strong -- it would probably be best to focus this specifically on the epistemological crimes of Popper, if you really want to pursue this.

So, a scientific theory is valid if and only if you are able to state the conditions under which it would be disproven.

Or proven: but wait, I hate to pick, but you don't have the Popperian view stated correctly. Falsifiability is Popper's so-called "criterion of demarcation". It has nothing to due with validity. A theory which is false is not valid.

Nobody here is arguing for Freudian psychology or divine creation. The issue is scientific epistemology -- is it possible it have scientific knowledge. Popper does not correctly identify the principle that distinguishes contentless verbiage like Freudian psychology or Creationism from real scientific theories like Newtonian gravity or evolution. The real crime of Popperianism is not the term "falsification", but the fact that it is thoroughly nihilistic. I don't want a science with falsifiable statements, I want a science with testable, true statements. If you can show that all of my statements are false, then I would not have any knowledge, which would suck.

[The Wrath]

You have science with testable statements. In science, however, things can only be disproven. You cannot empirically prove that gravity works the way we think it does by any other means than disproving all of the alternatives. Given that our explanation seems to be the best, we accept it as true, but it can't be proven.

[DavidOdden]

You have science with testable statements. In science, however, things can only be disproven. You cannot empirically prove that gravity works the way we think it does by any other means than disproving all of the alternatives. Given that our explanation seems to be the best, we accept it as true, but it can't be proven.

This is the part that I'm saying is wrong. Things can be proven in science. Do you understand why Popperian epistemology doesn't even allow you to disprove a scientific statement?

[A.West]

DavidOdden's statements are consistent with what I've read/seen on this topic.

I've seen Popper's nihilistic epistemology applied in my field (finance), leading to destructive results. In effect, it tells academics to abandon induction as a means to knowledge, because the only real knowledge you can have is of what has been proven false. Implied by this falsafiability concept is that all "testable", (including highly rationalistic) theories that have not yet been proven false, are essentially equal. This rationalistic, anti-inductive bias has encouraged finance academics to spend most of their time working on existing databases and statistical methods, each hoping to disprove (falsify) each others' rationalistic hypotheses. Overall, very little time is spent going out into the finance world, talking with investors, companies, and other market participants trying to formulate concepts and principles based upon actual observations of the world.

Ultimately, Popper's approach is anti-knowledge, anti-certainty, anti-Aristotle. While I can see how some could be attracted to its surface appeal to "hard-headed" scientific method, it takes the exact opposite approach required of a healthy epistemological method. And there's nothing good in "falsifiability" that would not already be required by the process of integration (namely, recognizing that contradictions do not exist).

[The Wrath]

Things can be proven in science.

How? How can you prove that gravity works the way we think it does? I think we can be fairly certain, but I won't rule out the possibility that we're wrong. If the history of science has taught us anything, it's that our most basic scientific beliefs often turn out to be wrong. Newtonian physics may very well be correct, but I don't see how we can claim to know for absolute certain that it won't be replaced with something more consistent, in the future.

Do you understand why Popperian epistemology doesn't even allow you to disprove a scientific statement?

...not really. I was afraid that this conversation would quickly rise above my head, and it appears that I was right.

[Hal]

Do you understand why Popperian epistemology doesn't even allow you to disprove a scientific statement?

No. Later philosophers have argued that there's no such thing as a critical experiment because of (eg) confirmation holism, but this certainly wasnt part of Popper's epistemology. Popper thought that conclusive falsification was possible, even though he turned out to be wrong.

Things can be proven in science

This is primarilly an argument over the definition of the word 'proof'. By Popper's definition of that word, it is correct that scientific theories cannot ever be conclusively proven true. But I suspect that you mean something quite different by 'proof' (and I would agree that your definition is more condusive to the practice of good science than Popper's).

For Popper, 'proving' something means showing that it absolutely cannot turn out to be incorrect - ie that it is literally impossible for any future observation to contradict the theory. And as Hume pointed out, this cannot be done. But there are other possible meanings of 'proof', one of which is "find enough confirming evidence for a statement so as to make it irrational/arbitrary to doubt it". And if this is the definition we agree to use, then we can prove our theories to be true.

Edited December 14, 2005 by Hal

[DavidOdden]

How? How can you prove that gravity works the way we think it does?

You get the short version here: have you read OPAR chapter 5? Having ruled out arbitrary claims as unworthy of our attention, we focus on evaluating evidence relevant to the claim at hand. Sometimes you have some supporting evidence, but not enough to rule out alternative claims and perhaps evidence that is equivocal. As far as the latter is concerned, there may be an instrumental reading that appears to contradict the claim, but you also know that under those conditions, the instrument is not fully reliable -- i.e. you are not sure what the facts are in this case. That gives you a reason to doubt, and it tells you where you should direct your attention. You can reach that state where all of the evidence points towards the claim, and no evidence indicated that a competing claim is possible. That is when you are certain, and the claim is proven.

I think we can be fairly certain, but I won't rule out the possibility that we're wrong.

You really should read OPAR 5. Human knowledge is limited and it is contextual. The possibility of error does not preclude the notion of proof.

As for Popper and his nihilism, again I suggest Stove for a free read. The essence of Popper's claim is that a "for all X" statement cannot be proven true except by inspecting an infinity of entities, which cannot logically be done; but you can refute such a statement by pointing to an X where the claim is false. The "it's not logically possible" claim rests on the false assumption of actual infinities, and without actual infinities there is no argument from principle. There is of course the argument from practicality, so it's not at all practical to inspect all men in order to validate a claim about "all men", because we can't determine things about some men decades dead or ones who live in the remote wilds of Patagonia. There are also many scientifically untestable claims, ones which we don't yet have the machinery for. The latter is apparently not a problem for Popperian scientology, since we don't have to be limited to the "merely practical", and we can allow claims that cannot be practically tested. The foundation of the "cannot test all cases" claim is also imaginary -- there are no actual infinities. So it's imaginarily possible to do an exhaustive test, and thus no logical problem for Popper to overcome. Imagination is a tricky thing.

Virtually every scientific observation is founded on a very deep hierarchy of universal truths. Suppose you have a physical claim X which predicts that if you mix A with B, the temperature should rise 20c in 2 minutes. The story goes, if you replicate that result a million times, you can't be sure whether you'll get the same results the next time you do the experiment. On the other hand, if the temperature rises only 4c, then the claim is supposedly falsified and you now know that you didn't know X -- you have no knowledge, other than that X is not so. Without the falsifier, you can strongly suspect but not know that X is true; with the falsifier, you can know that X is false, or so they claim,

Of course if it is not true that the temperature rose only 4c, then rejection of X is wrong. You may feel firmly convinced that you saw a certain number on the meter at one point and another number on the meter two minutes later, but relating that to the claim that there was a temperature rise depends crucially on accepting as valid a particular universal physical theory Y about temperature and meters. If theory Y has been disproven, then of course it isn't a valid basis for refuting another theory. So we have to assume, then, that theory Y is plausible but still unknown. The consequence is that because you don't know that the theory of thermometers is true, you don't know that the supposed temperature rise recorded at that time is actual, and therefore you don't know if X has been refuted. So more correctly, in Popperian nihilism, you can neither know for certain that a claim is true, or that a supposedly refuting observation is true (and this the claim is false). If you cannot know that something is true or that it is false, you know nothing, which is nihilism.

[TheEgoist]

For another trashing of Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn and Feyerabend, click this thang.

David, have you any recollection of what was in that link?

[DavidOdden]

David, have you any recollection of what was in that link?

Yeah, it seems to have moved or something, to here. This is David Stove's Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists, which I believe at one point was hosted by James Franklin.

[Plasmatic]

Very good book but remember Stove accepts the analytic distinction.

Edited July 3, 2010 by Plasmatic

[TheEgoist]

Yeah, it seems to have moved or something, to here. This is David Stove's Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists, which I believe at one point was hosted by James Franklin.

Ah, okay. I've read that. Was wondering if it was something else I hadn't seen on the subject. Criticism of Popper abounds. Criticism of Kuhn is more rare.

EDIT: Appears that is hosted by my very own undergrad institution? Sweet.

Edited July 3, 2010 by TheEgoist