woodbine wrote: ↑February 11th, 2020, 4:31 pm
The crux of my point is this.
If a theory is unfalsifiable it means all evidence will be (can be made to be) consistent with the theory.
Well, seems about right.
Yet, a theory is unfalsifiable until it is - and then we should check on the case in point.
There are, indeed, hypothesis that are somehow crafted to be non falsifiable. The brain in the vat is one - remember "The Matrix" (which overlaps, but it is not exactly the same). Sometimes people argue that they have a way to falsify it, but to date I do not really know of one who made it. In this breed we have had, as of recently, the idea that we are all a computer simulation run by some future civilization to study the ancients... Now, if your idea is that someone outside the universe made the universe, meaning all we can possibly observe, then I guess we can't find a way to falsify it.
I guess this is what you call "hard unfalsifiability".
Other hypothesis are not so unfalsifiable, at least as a matter of principle. I would not exactly know if the the parallel universes idea, which for many is a fact supported by Quantum Mechanics, qualifies as an unfalsifiable hypothesis - I confess I did no research on this. However, it is IMO some unwarranted idea, some undue translation to ontology of a model of physics (and, yet, who can really draw a line between a model and ontology...), I do not think it's impossible that some day research will make this idea non plausible - which would not constitute a confutation, anyway. Here it is not about finding the black swan, but to conjecture at least the conditions that may lead to falsify some theory. This one seems to me something in between your 'hard' and 'soft' falsifiability.
Regardless, If it is possible to search for a black swan, then "all the swans are white" is falsifiable. Yet, that would not automatically lead to abandon the theory, one should then check on the condition that make the black swan possible and design the theory 2.0, which would still include parts of version 1.
woodbine wrote: ↑February 11th, 2020, 4:31 pm
Consistency with a hypothesis is the most that can be claimed of evidence.
If it is non falsifiable, then anything and its opposite will be compatible with it.
A valuable consistency would be if some 'evidence' could be (logically) derived from the hypothesis (obviously, that would be a form of reverse engineering).
woodbine wrote: ↑February 11th, 2020, 4:31 pm
Therefore claiming that some particular piece of evidence is consistent with an unfalsifiable theory is meaningless.
(That's what I mean by negating evidence)
I guess I agree with that. At least from a methodological point of view, it's pointless to argue for or against, if anything *and* its opposite are compatible with the theory. So, why calling that' evidence', if its negation would do too? Besides, that would cast a doubt on the value of the theory, if we are talking epistemology, of course. Then the theory is probably ready to be clipped by the principle of economy, Occam's razor. It's not heuristic.
woodbine wrote: ↑February 11th, 2020, 4:31 pm
And I am defining evidence as "that which is proposed by the believer as a reason for belief".
Maybe it's just semantics, but if there's evidence, then it's no longer a matter of belief.