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Two Paradoxes Of Falsification
Nov. 2nd, 2014 10:31 amTwo paradoxes of "falsification":
(1) When you reject an idea, theory, or proposition because it can't be falsified, you've in effect said that it's false because it can't be falsified.
(2) The statement, "Theories cannot be verified, but they can be falsified," doesn't survive the challenge, "Can you verify that the theory has been falsified?"
I'm making a bunch of what I consider good assumptions but ones that most people who use the word "falsification" don't make, the most crucial being that, no matter a theory's merits and problems, it's not under challenge until there's a competitor and that it's not shown to be wrong (or false or untrue or superseded or worthless or vacuous or whatever) until it's been replaced. Also that, when used as a reason for rejecting a theory, there's no important difference between "wrong" and the terms that I followed it with in parentheses, including "false."*
Fwiw, I've never actually read more than two paragraphs in a row by Karl Popper, the person whom the term "falsification" is most often associated with. So you shouldn't assume this post applies to Popper, though maybe it accidentally does.
[EDIT: What I originally had in the 3rd paragraph was "it's not wrong (or false or untrue or superseded or worthless or vacuous or whatever) until it's been replaced"; I've now added the phrase "shown to be" in front of "wrong," since without the added phrase, what I wrote was potentially ambiguous (see my second comment below)]
(1) When you reject an idea, theory, or proposition because it can't be falsified, you've in effect said that it's false because it can't be falsified.
(2) The statement, "Theories cannot be verified, but they can be falsified," doesn't survive the challenge, "Can you verify that the theory has been falsified?"
I'm making a bunch of what I consider good assumptions but ones that most people who use the word "falsification" don't make, the most crucial being that, no matter a theory's merits and problems, it's not under challenge until there's a competitor and that it's not shown to be wrong (or false or untrue or superseded or worthless or vacuous or whatever) until it's been replaced. Also that, when used as a reason for rejecting a theory, there's no important difference between "wrong" and the terms that I followed it with in parentheses, including "false."*
Fwiw, I've never actually read more than two paragraphs in a row by Karl Popper, the person whom the term "falsification" is most often associated with. So you shouldn't assume this post applies to Popper, though maybe it accidentally does.
[EDIT: What I originally had in the 3rd paragraph was "it's not wrong (or false or untrue or superseded or worthless or vacuous or whatever) until it's been replaced"; I've now added the phrase "shown to be" in front of "wrong," since without the added phrase, what I wrote was potentially ambiguous (see my second comment below)]
