Subject:
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Re: Critical Thinking
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 4 Dec 2000 22:35:39 GMT
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Viewed:
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524 times
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Mr. Pieniazek:
I tend to side with Mr. Irvine on this one, and I believe (although I'm not
sure) that you are missing his point. In an earlier post, you wrote:
> He didn't say that, exactly. He said every "meaningful" (paraphrasing) • true
> claim is falsifiable and then proceeded to show why non falsifiable claims
> don't help us in our understanding.
When Mr. Irvine challenged the author's statement as being (apparently)
self-defeating, you responded with:
> When I put meaningful in quotes I was shorthanding for the author's
> definition that a claim that doesn't tell us anything isn't meaningful. If • I
> claim that "either I danced with a pink elephant last night, or I didn't",
> you don't get much chance to disprove it, and you also don't get a lot of
> predictive power out of it.
The question, with this in mind, can be put as follows: Is the author's
statement -- "[E]very [meaningful] true claim is falsifiable." -- meaningful
according to your definition above? Doesn't it tell us something? If it
does, can it pass its own test? That is, is it falsifiable?
If not, it would appear to be self-defeating? I think that an alternative
would be to say that having some method of falsification is helpful, but not
necessary to evaluating truth claims.
> If you want to disprove the author's statement, produce a claim that is • true
> but not falsifiable. But make sure it's a meaningful claim, that is, that • it
> passes the other tests, and that it predicts things. My pink elephant claim
> is true and not falsifiable but fails the predictive test.
If the author's statement is true, is it also falsifiable? If it isn't,
then this is what Mr. Irvine has already done in his prior posts - he has
produced exactly the type of claim you've asked for. If it is falsifiable,
then the author's principle holds, but we have yet to see exactly how it
might be falsified.
Some things may be verifiable but not falsifiable. For example, it would be
logically possible to verify my immortality (narrowly speaking) if I
witnessed my own death. But without such immortality, I could never falsify
it, since I wouldn't be around to make such an evaluation. So falsification
is subject to certain epistemic limitations.
Furthermore, it seems logically possible that God (minimally, an
extraordinarily intelligent and powerful being) could create a universe and
beings within that universe limited so as to be unable to even conceive of a
falsification for His existence.
Thanks and take care,
Steve
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Critical Thinking
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| (...) I might well be. In fact he well may be right that if this is a claim, that it's subject to its own test, and may well fail it. But I'm not sure that I agree that this particular yardstick has to be able to measure itself. That, I think, may (...) (24 years ago, 4-Dec-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Critical Thinking
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| In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Jeromy Irvine writes: <snip> Think about Goedel and whether the author's statements are part of the system they describe or not. They aren't. But since you won't do that thinking... When I put meaningful in quotes I was (...) (24 years ago, 1-Dec-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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