Help with falsifiability!

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_attano_
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Re: Help with falsifiability!

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woodbine wrote: February 7th, 2020, 7:26 pm Can an unfalsifiable hypothesis be demonstrated to be true, beyond reasonable doubt by evidence, or does the fact that no evidence could falsify it mean that the value of all evidence is negated?

My first thoughts were that evidence would indeed be useless but I hope someone can help confirm or deny it.
Short answer is: yes, if the hypothesis is a tautology. Just go to some logic 101 online, and you'll see, Truth tables should count as a demonstration.
As for the 'negated value of evidence', you may want to develop that further, because it seems a kind of vague notion.
Regardless, at the end of the day, what is evidence exactly? "There are no facts, only interpretations".
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Re: Help with falsifiability!

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Steve3007 wrote: February 9th, 2020, 4:41 am Prof Bulani wrote:
Wouldn't the existence of one black swan allow us to evaluate if this statement is true or false?
It would allow us to evaluate it as true but not as false. As I said, the proposition "there exists at least one black swan" can only be shown to be false by looking at every swan in the Universe to confirm that it is not black.
Yes - I think "there exists at least one black swan" would be rewritten to generate the hypothesis "no black swans exist". This is a general, contingently true falsifiable statement that encourages the search for black swans.
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Re: Help with falsifiability!

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Wossname wrote:Yes - I think "there exists at least one black swan" would be rewritten to generate the hypothesis "no black swans exist". This is a general, contingently true falsifiable statement that encourages the search for black swans.
In my earlier post I simply contrasted the falsifiable (but not verifiable) hypothesis "all swans are white" with the verifiable (but not falsifiable) hypothesis "there exists at least one black swan". They're standard examples used in discussing the concepts of falsifiability and verifiability.


Generally, the laws of physics tend to be of the same form as "all swans are white" and they're based on spotting patterns of "whiteness" in finite numbers of "swans". i.e. Induction.

Example: all objects with mass exert a force on each other with a magnitude that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them and which is in the same direction as the vector which represents their spatial separation. And the acceleration of all objects with mass is equal to the force acted on them divided by their mass.

Note that these propositions use the word "all"; a word that represents an arbitrarily large number of objects. But Newton (possibly apocryphally) came to this conclusion about "all" objects by observing two objects. An apple and the Moon.

That's Induction for you. From the finite to the arbitrarily large.
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Re: Help with falsifiability!

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Steve3007 wrote: February 11th, 2020, 4:27 am by Steve3007 » Today, 8:27 am

Wossname wrote:
Yes - I think "there exists at least one black swan" would be rewritten to generate the hypothesis "no black swans exist". This is a general, contingently true falsifiable statement that encourages the search for black swans.
In my earlier post I simply contrasted the falsifiable (but not verifiable) hypothesis "all swans are white" with the verifiable (but not falsifiable) hypothesis "there exists at least one black swan". They're standard examples used in discussing the concepts of falsifiability and verifiability.


Generally, the laws of physics tend to be of the same form as "all swans are white" and they're based on spotting patterns of "whiteness" in finite numbers of "swans". i.e. Induction.
Yes i was really agreeing with your general point.

How about, "All swans are non-black"?
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Re: Help with falsifiability!

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Wossname wrote: February 10th, 2020, 12:06 pm I think "there exists at least one black swan" would be rewritten to generate the hypothesis "no black swans exist". This is a general, contingently true falsifiable statement that encourages the search for black swans.
I think you could only falsify "no black swans exist" if you examined every swan that exists, so it is falsifiable only in theory, due to the difficulty of completing the examinations of all the swans. So your rephrasing doesn't really offer a falsifiable alternative, I'm afraid.
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Re: Help with falsifiability!

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Wossname wrote: February 11th, 2020, 5:44 am How about, "All swans are non-black"?
The same problem, I'm afraid. You have to examine every swan that exists, to confirm none of them are black.
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Re: Help with falsifiability!

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Yes i was really agreeing with your general point.
Yes, I was just expanding on it and exploring it a bit.
How about, "All swans are non-black"?
In terms of the method of reasoning that the example is supposed to illustrate, I don't think that's any different from "all swans are white". It's still falsifiable but not verifiable.
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Re: Help with falsifiability!

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Steve3007 wrote: February 11th, 2020, 5:48 am
Yes i was really agreeing with your general point.
Yes, I was just expanding on it and exploring it a bit.
How about, "All swans are non-black"?
In terms of the method of reasoning that the example is supposed to illustrate, I don't think that's any different from "all swans are white". It's still falsifiable but not verifiable.
"It's still falsifiable"? So it counts if it can only be falsified in theory?
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Re: Help with falsifiability!

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Pattern-chaser wrote: February 11th, 2020, 5:47 am by Pattern-chaser » 1 minute ago

Wossname wrote: ↑4 minutes ago
How about, "All swans are non-black"?
The same problem, I'm afraid. You have to examine every swan that exists, to confirm none of them are black.
If all swans were white, how is this any different from having to observe all of them to confirm none are not?
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Re: Help with falsifiability!

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Pattern-chaser wrote:"It's still falsifiable"? So it counts if it can only be falsified in theory?
Yes, It can be falsified by finding a finite number of black swans. (One will do it.) But, as you said, it can only be verified by examining a potentially infinite number of swans.

I don't know what you mean by "counts".
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Re: Help with falsifiability!

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Prof Bulani wrote: February 8th, 2020, 8:54 pm Isn't a hypothesis, by definition, falsifiable? Can you give an example of an unfalsifiable hypothesis? Because I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be a hypothesis.
An alien civilisation from outside the universe created this universe.

I don't see how this could be falsified. We cannot receive information from before the "Big Bang " or from outside the universe.
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Re: Help with falsifiability!

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woodbine wrote: February 7th, 2020, 7:26 pm Can an unfalsifiable hypothesis be demonstrated to be true, beyond reasonable doubt by evidence, or does the fact that no evidence could falsify it mean that the value of all evidence is negated?

My first thoughts were that evidence would indeed be useless but I hope someone can help confirm or deny it.
The falsifiability is not about the evidence, its about the statement of theory that you use the evidence to make. The evidence can demonstrate that the theory is good or bad, falsifiably or not.
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Re: Help with falsifiability

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_attano_ wrote: February 9th, 2020, 10:31 pm
woodbine wrote: February 7th, 2020, 7:26 pm Can an unfalsifiable hypothesis be demonstrated to be true, beyond reasonable doubt by evidence, or does the fact that no evidence could falsify it mean that the value of all evidence is negated?

My first thoughts were that evidence would indeed be useless but I hope someone can help confirm or deny it.
Short answer is: yes, if the hypothesis is a tautology. Just go to some logic 101 online, and you'll see, Truth tables should count as a demonstration.
As for the 'negated value of evidence', you may want to develop that further, because it seems a kind of vague notion.
Regardless, at the end of the day, what is evidence exactly? "There are no facts, only interpretations".
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.

Consistency with a hypothesis is the most that can be claimed of evidence.

Therefore claiming that some particular piece of evidence is consistent with an unfalsifiable theory is meaningless.
(That's what I mean by negating evidence)

And I am defining evidence as "that which is proposed by the believer as a reason for belief".

Where I need be clearer is with falsifiability.

I am defining an unfalsifiable hypothesis as "one which no logically possible evidence could falsify". Hard unfalsifiability.

This definition would exclude any "swan" examples and the like because it is logically possible (though practically impossible)that every swan on Earth could be examined. Soft unfalsifiability.
You could also using induction, get very close to the truth by examining a large enough sample of swans


My Alien Hypothesis which claims that "the universe was created by an alien civilisation from outside our universe" - is unfalsifiable by my "hard" definition and it is hypotheses such as these where all evidence is useless in justifying belief.
This type of hypothesis is also impervious to inductive reasoning. We have no other universes to compare ours with.

So I conclude that no logically possible evidence can demonstrate an unfalsifiable hypothesis as true. (or false)
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Re: Help with falsifiability!

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woodbine wrote:This definition would exclude any "swan" examples and the like because it is logically possible (though practically impossible)that every swan on Earth could be examined.
The "swan" examples aren't literally about swans. They're intended to illustrate a logical point about propositions that include the word "all", or similar, and which are therefore about arbitrarily large sets; sets which are potentially infinite. It is logically impossible to examine every member of an infinite set in finite time. So any proposition which requires us to do that is unverifiable. And the negation of that proposition is unfalsifiable.
My Alien Hypothesis which claims that "the universe was created by an alien civilisation from outside our universe" - is unfalsifiable by my "hard" definition and it is hypotheses such as these where all evidence is useless in justifying belief.
You're making the hypothesis unfalsifiable by pre-defining it as unfalsifiable by (presumably) defining the universe as everything that we could ever possibly detect. If you're going to do that, then there are plenty of other possible unfalsifiable propositions which are similarly pre-defined. e.g:

"There is an angel behind me that always disappears whenever I try to detect it by any method."
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_attano_
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Re: Help with falsifiability

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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.
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