There are some popular books that cover informal logic etc. Parker and Moore's "Critical Thinking" or Ruggiero's "Beyond Feelings" are good starting points and popular. A good intro book will cover arguments, informal fallacies, some formal fallacies, problem solving strategies, persuasion/rhetoric, and personal barriers ( a bit of psychology). :)
I am debating someone on the origin of life and it's possible cause. (The means in which inorganic matter became/can become living organisms). His argument is that it's more useful to have a purely natural cause origin as a default position prior to evidence otherwise. My argument is that because there's not even a single inference to cite that supports such a purely natural cause, much less any evidence; there is no reason to hold a naturalist presupposition on scientific methodology when studying life's origin. I mentioned that the syntactic and semantic properties found in linguistic are also found in DNA/RNA commands. He claims such commands are "the map" and that I am conflating the "map" with the "terrain". However, I don't see DNA/RNA as a map but more like software built within chemistry. And regardless, the protein chain and living cell and up is the resulting terrain and no less inexplicable. I started to think about how I could falsify his (modern science's) claims of this when no mater what I presented as evidence for engineering theory over a purely naturalistic theory for life's origin; they could simply dismiss my argument as; "engineering like, manufacturing like, designed like, commuter like, software like..." It seemed that it was the Biologists that were "special pleading" when it is true that in any other scientific field; if and when syntactic and semantic properties are discovered, this is automatically attributed to intelligent agency as the cause. Only Biological fields make such an exception and they do so solely under a naturalist presupposition and nothing more for support. Please help me answer this question I have; Does the claim in Biology for living organisms having a purely naturalistic origin hold any predictable means of falsifiability? If so, how? I can make a prediction that we will find a message from God in outer space that will provide evidence He exists. Biologists make a prediction that a purely natural means will be found that explains how the inorganic becomes living organisms. Neither of these claims in my opinion have falsifiability with this assumption alone, thus neither are a valid scientific claim by this alone. * Here is my question; Has anyone ever outlined any means of falsifiability for the claim that the origin of living organisms must have a purely naturalistic means? This also inspired me to write this; *My New Logical Fallacy: The Naturalistic Phenomenon Fallacy; 1. Asserting that a particular thing must be of a purely natural origin/cause without any supporting scientific based inferences or data. (Holding a purely naturalistic default position as "more likey" without any vaild inferences or any actual data of support.) 2. Claiming that something must have a natural cause or natural origin only because it seems, looks or acts natural, while not requiring further explanation such as, "by what actual natural means?" Asserting something is a natural phenomenon without an explanation of how this natural phenomenon came to be in a natural way. 3. Any hypothesis or theory that concludes something is of natural origin or naturally caused but this conclusion is solely and wholly supported or solely and wholly based only on naturalistic presuppositions. Feel free to respond and critique. Thanks, Wg Williams
Why should someone think about whether they are justified in believing it, when it's unfalsifiable? What they should do is explore it for errors, through criticism. If it has an error it should be replaced. The search for justification just delays criticism indefinitely.
You see you are smart. Most people are not. And if you want evidence to this claim look at flat earthers for example. If any evidence contradicts there claim, they say "oh fish eye lenses" or "oh the government wants to hide it from us" which makes there statement unfalseafiable. They dont argue. They just claim they are right
Rather, "can I in principle refute this? can I name conditions under which this won't be true?" I don't think falsifiability can be reduced to testability
History is a subset of science. Therefore, any statement about what somebody in the past did or caused should be required to be backed up with as much evidence and peer reviewed scientific papers as evolution or dark matter or black holes or manmade climate change.
I am currently conscious is falsifiable. You can make that claim to an anesthesiologist who can then put you sleep and you no longer make that claim...until you wake up again and claim to be conscious.
How could one falsify the belief that I have an immaterial aspect, like a soul or a spirit? Or is this similar to my consciousness being unfalsifiable?
It somewhat depends on what you mean by the soul. Some versions could be falsified - ie "there is a part of yourself that is inherent to you separate from the brain". Thus to test this damage to the brain should be unable to change certain parts of your personality. In fact case studies on people who have experienced brain damage in different locations of the brain have had dramatic personality changes that make this version of the soul likely false. Other versions of the soul might not be falsifiable.
@@josiahferguson6194 Thanks for the response! Could this definition of the soul (inherent part of personality separate from the brain) be falsified if the model claimed that the brain functions only as a medium for the soul, and if you damage certain parts of the brain, the soul loses a tool for expressing itself (eg cannot feel anger or remorse)? Kind of like damaging an antenna on a radio. I'm just curious to know how far the falsifiability criteria can be taken. Thanks.
@@manafro2714 I can't think of a way to falsify that version. One way to think about it is to consider how you would go about testing the claim. If any test would be the same with this model of the soul or without it -- ie the brain responds in a certain way and since the soul can only communicate through the brain, is there any difference in a test of the brain between the soul controlling the decisions vs the brain doing it? Maybe people with multiple personalities could disprove it since in certain case studies these different personalities have dramatically different beliefs and interests, which would make it difficult for 1 agent (in this case the soul) to be communicating such different and contradictory beliefs. From what I have read, all the versions of the soul that I have looked at are either unfalsifiable or have been falsified.
self'-consciousness belongs to self-evident truths of reflection. We are conscious of phenomena that is before our minds. We cannot test that I am imagining a sunset, but since it is personally self-evident to me, it is not a universal truth or proposition, but I am still conscious of what I picture in my mind.
The theory “I am conscious” is falsifiable Imagine there is an artificial intelligence, that has been programmed to generate a self or identity process, and programmed to assume that there is such a thing as conscious, and that identity process has that quality. Philosophical zombie That there is a self as a discreet object (reification fallacy) and not a processes, is E Cants begging the question error.
If the zombie is built exactly like a human, and behaves exactly like a human, then how can we logically or experimentally prove it is not conscious? I think it's still an unfalsifiable statement
For #1 I can see how the statement "there isn't a planet" is (easily) falsifiable, but not "there is a planet". Unless you can map the whole area (and make assumptions like the planet is not invisible). Perhaps this is clearer if we take something we don't know eg "there is a planet beyond Pluto"
If you specify the terms it can be falsifiable. E.g a planet with a certain size in a certain place with a type of matter thats the same as all the planets we know. What's left: -planets on subatomic scales -planets in other places of the universe -invisible planets. So if you make the implicit assumptions clear you can't envoke most things. Implicit is the definition of a planet. I can also keep saying "all swans are white" because i decided to define black swans as a different type of animal. So there is some linguistic tautology WE SET THE BOUNDS AND DONT TEST UNIVERSALIST STATEMENTS....like "is Newton's universal theory false" vs "is Newton's theory false within what we are observing, with current knowledge" and definately absolutely not "is Newton's theory true"
Although this video is very old now, and you likely have upgraded your thinking on the subject, I would like to challenge the classic Descartes "I think therefore I am" type of proposition. Or as you worded it; "I am currently conscious". There are numerous ways to falsify this in principle. For example, it might be argued that the present (which is implied in the word "currently") is truly observable, even by you, the agent doing the conscious thinking in question. Skip to the end if you want the solution. Otherwise, if you are so inclined, keep reading. We don't know a great deal about what it means to be conscious, how it forms, or why we seem to think we are conscious, but we do know its limitations. Should we drink a lot of alcohol or injest other drugs into our blood stream, we know this influences our consciousness. And our best theories tell us the brain is responsible for consciousness. The mechanisms for how the brain does this, which neurons fire, which cells interact, is not relevant. All one needs to accept is that the brain does this, since injecting alcohol into your fingers or even other vital organs, doesn't directly influence your consciousness. Thus we can say with quite high certainty, that your consciousness whether it be a process, the result of physical interactions between atoms in your brain, or whether it be a physical entity onto itself somehow, we know whatever it is, it is located somewhere within in the walls of your cranium. Now we also know different parts of the brain are responsible for interpreting different things, language, speech patterns, sight, sound, smells, abstract thinking, spatial awareness, you name it. We don't experience any of these things as being seperate departments of consciousness subjectively. To us, to be conscious, to have an experience, is a whole package. We know this can't be true in a literal sense though, since removing parts of the brain, removes parts of this experience. In fact you can remove quite a lot of the brain, and the subject might not be able to see or hear or feel pain anymore, but they will still tell you they are conscious. And the only evidence we even have of its existence to begin with, is that everyone feels like they have it, and communicate that they have it to others. That truly is all we have to go on at the moment: If someone says they are conscious, we assume they are telling the truth. I'm not going to get into the whole AI debate, whether a computer is then conscious should it say to us it is. But needless to say, we finally get to the crux of the entire argument: Whatever it is you want to label as consciousness, is derivable from physical processes. Or at the very least, so highly influenceable, from its birth due to fetal development, a purely physical process, to its death from being smashed with a hammer, that it is meaningless to even split hairs here over whether it is a physical process. And if it's physical, it can be understoof by science in principle. One can locate it. It would speak to reason that if it has a definite location, as it must, since no conscious mind has ever survived outside the walls of a cranium to our knowledge, then it must also take time for information to reach said definite location. This means that even if you treat consciousness as one object in space, located somewhere within a human skull, you cannot meaningfully claim you are "currently" conscious. All you can say is that an arbitrarily small amount of time ago, a signal reached your brain, and before you could utter the words - hell before you could even think the thought that you are conscious, time will have passed, and as such you are no longer, strictly speaking, in the present. *So, how is the statement "I am currently conscious" falsifiable?* 1) One can demonstrate as I did above, the present cannot be experienced subjectively, the laws of physics do not allow for this. One can of course think they are experiencing consciousness in the present, just like one can think all sorts of other unfalsifiable fairy theories no one would take seriously. But since the only evidence we have of consciousness is our own experience of it, we cannot justify our experience with our own experience. It would be like trying to define what a meter is using a meter stick. It is circular. 2) One can demonstrate that consciousness, no matter how you define it, is too poorly defined to be useful. I could claim a "xyghrothax" exists. But before we can even determine if the claim is falsifiable or not, I need to define what the hell a "xyghrothax" is well enough. I could say "it's a thing that exists", but that's not entirely useful, is it? That's just a tautology. You need to be able to define the thing in question before an attempt to claim it is reasonable can even be made. I will give just one example of a poor definition, since I have ranted on for long enough: "Consciousness is a unique experience that emerges from interpreting sensory input. Even identical sensory input may be be interpreted differently and give rise to a differing experience in consciousness". Now what's wrong with this definition? Well the experience is entirely dependant on your sensory input. If your eyes recieve an image of an unknown man, chances are your consciousness will experience this image of the man. Maybe thoughts appear about the man. Whatever the thoughts are, there's almost a guarantee they will not be identical among 2 different consciousnesses. What's even worse, is if new information about the man is given to the subject, and the same image is shown of him, the exact same sensory input, both subjects will once again have new thoughts about him, though they are more likely to be in line this time, assuming they interpreted the fact about the man they were given earlier the same. One could even imagine a third subject, who sees the man, but is busy thinking back on a memory, has their thoughts an entirely different place, and thus the sensory input doesn't affect them. So now what are we left with? What can we say about a conscious mind that has been subject to sensory inputs, say an image of a man? That it experiences the first version of the man, the second version with the facts, or no man at all because it wasn't paying attention? In fact in the latter case, one could imagine 2 subjects thinking the same thought despite being bombarded with different sensory input. Sensory input does not help us define consciousness one bit! And yet, we know sensory input must be necessary for us to experience anything at all. Would would it even mean to experience something without sensory input? Hopefully you get the point already. There's tons of ways to question consciousness, it is not just a given. You can claim all you want that you really are experiencing **something** but since you cannot define what, not even in the most general of general terms, it is not a claim to be taken seriously. And by the way, I do think we are conscious, but I also recognize it is not out of scientific or logical reasons, I do not have a way to defend it, it is simply an axiom I operate under out of necessity, until a better axiom comes along.
my basic suggestion would be to study cogantive bias and logical fallacies. 7 years too late. lol. But a wealth of knowledge is available on the internet about both. You don't actually need to read books to become breathtakingly good at critical thinking. You can basically wreck havoc on anyone who tries to debate you after you know them because even though not ev eryone does quite a few of us do.
Claim 8 is a tautology, i.e. it is universally true. I think you should have delved more on tautologies: apart from being non-falsifiable, they are also useless: they don't discriminate any outcomes and don't predict anything. Psychology claims are difficult to test, because every individual is different and may choose to react differently, thus we need large statistical samples just to justify the claim "on average case" (while the actual average instances may not exist) and even then the chosen sample sometimes is biased (e.g. professors just experiment on their students and then media tends to extrapolate the claims to general public). Also social sciences like economics and politics instead of testable facts, tend to rely on a game theory and theory of mind.
Thank you for the insights., esp about psychology and s sciences. As for tautologies, I believe some unfalsifiable claims are tautologies, but not all of them. Also, I don't believe tautologies are useless or tell us nothing about the world, for they are the forms by which we conceive/constitute/exp the world. They may very well be false... though we cannot imagine it. For example, If I am born with irremovable green goggles on, the world will appear green and unfalsifiably so. "__________ is green" will always be true, even tautologously true, for the green goggled species. Space/time may be like this... unfalsifiable, tells us about the world, but not real. Introduction to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Part 1 of 4) In Logic, 3 tautologies (identity, noncontradiction and excluded middle) are fundamental to reasoning, but their scope is propositions.... anyway, good points, and I agree that some unfalsifiable forms of knowledge are tautologies, but I wouldn't say all. The closest video I have to this discussion is Introduction to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Part 1 of 4)
I probably said smth wrong: I don't claim that all unfalsifiable claims are tautologies, tautology is just a special case. Item 8 is really very general, it assumes much less than green goggles and a concept of greenness :-)
*"the chosen sample sometimes is biased (e.g. professors just experiment on their students and then media tends to extrapolate the claims to general public)."* - I learnt about that in one of my free online ethics classes just the other week! It's called WEIRD; that most psychological studies are done on people from 'western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic' countries, which gives a biased sample result when people take most modern psychology results as human averages :) Most psychological studies are WEIRD :)
Paul, can we use history as a form of testing? or does this take too much risk in being false and should we be able to reproduce our test in the present moment in order to justify it?
+JonathanB00K3R It's a good question I have not thought about. I believe the Civil War happened and I could imagine what the world now would be like if it hadn't happened back then. For example, there would be no books on the Civil War now, no artificats of the sort we find in the places we find, etc. I can imagine what would PROBABLY make it dubious/false that the C War happened, but those conditions are not present. Indeed, there is much evidence to support the Civil War happened. So, it seems reasonable to believe the Civil War happened in the past. This is partly because we know what the world would be like now if it had not happened. Falsifiability is usually limited to scientific theories, but I think it is helpful when thinking about any idea, theory, belief, what have you. Of course, there are some unfalsifiable forms of knowledge.
+teachphilosophy it makes sense that it would be limited to science only because we take time in science to use tools such as the scientific method and equipment to test and verify our beliefs or hypothesis. Thanks a ton that helped clarify my thoughts and now I have one more tool :)
I haven't watched the entire video but is your position because something is unfalsifiable therefore it is untrue? If this is the case the premise doesn't follow the conclusion
@@teachphilosophy What do we deem as an entity? Does your reflection in a mirror count as an entity? It is you, it moves as you do, it thinks as you do, but it is not you; it is but a reflection of you. It both exists, and does not exist, at the same time.
Good lesson on falsifiable reasoning as I'm trying to get a better idea of how to apply it for my current science studies in college. I will note that your example 10 seems to be biased though. C14 dating is based on several assumptions and you are also making several unformitarian claims that are unfalsifiable. YEC start with a top down approach to origins eith naturalists/empiricists starting with a bottom up approach. A good measure of scientific reasoning can try and make predictions from both ideas. Otherwise, good video, thanks.
Uniformitarianism, outside of being a pragmatic assumption rather than a scientific theory, is falsifiable in principle. YEC don't use a top down approach, it's mere dogmatism. And ID is to science as apologetics is to philosophy: done backwards to defend a presupposition.
There are many dating methods beyond carbon dating. Also radiometric dating is just one of many approaches to determining the age of things (including the Earth). It is absolutely beyond debate at this point that the earth is older than 8000 years old. The only people that argue against that do so from a dogmatic perspective, not from a scientific one.
+teachphilosophy Just watched the video. You tried to define "conscious" as "awareness". But how do you define "awareness"? You think you are aware of a green wall is again unfalsifiable. Only when you show someone else by say write on it with a red pen we can be sure you are aware of the wall. If you do nothing, we may assume you are aware of the wall, but so may traffic accident happened based on assumptions like this. I know you must be a philosophy professional with years of experience, but I would suggest you try to apply falsifiability strictly to everything. You may find some questions become simpler. The drawback may be those questions become less interesting.
Popper's falsifiability criterion is no longer accepted as that which distinguishes science from pseudoscience, for example. See/google Philosophy Bites podcast and interview with M Pigliucci. But I still have great respect for falsifiability even though there are some unfalsifiable forms of knowledge and it is no longer considered to be the mark of science. Finally, the fact that I am aware of the green wall and that it is unfalsifiable is very important and useful... one only needs to read the work of Chalmers, Dennet, or the neuroscientist Greenfield to see that awareness of this peculiar quality of consciousness is guiding some scientific minds in the quest to solve it...
+teachphilosophy Thank you for all these pointers. I feel my understanding of falsifiability is more extended from yours and maybe not aligned with what you and everyone else means when they say falsifiability.
+sunshineo23 Sunshine, thank you for your insights and excellent questions. I always benefit from good conversations. You may indeed have some great insight into falsifiability. Write or speak about it in some format so we can all benefit. Best, Paul
"Scientific theories should be falsifiable in principle." True. Of course not all justified beliefs are falsifiable in principle." Of course not, since no beliefs are justifiable. None. And theories aren't beliefs. This is a non-sequitur. " but you need strong reasons for such unfalsifiable beliefs" Why have you changed the subject from theories to beliefs? You have still to explain the relationship between falsifiability and justification.
Number 9. Absolutely not. Falsifiable means that if it weren't true then it could be shown that it wasn't. Good luck with that vs any religion. And sadly to all religious people the fact that their religion isn't falsifiable is a strength.
It seems that a counterexample to falsifiability would indeed be a theory that is true and unfalsifiable (or that we don't know whether it is falsifiable, because there could be a way we can imagine it to be false but don't have the tools to think that way yet). That counterexample seems to be something that falsifies (provides contrary evidence to) the theory of falsifiability ('TOF' henceforth). If on the other hand TOF is UNfalsifiable, it seems hard to justify why it is an exception to what it preaches with anything else than an ad-hoc justification. So at first impression it looks to me that there is something paradoxical about TOF. But this may change as I elaborate on it (after all, I have to make sure that what leads to a paradox is itself falsifiable ;) EDIT: actually this whole objection need not be falsifiable if it leads to show that TOF is untenable). EDIT 2: TOF is about scientific theories, and is not itself scientific, so it is not vulnerable to its own claims. Hence my objection seems irrelevant. EDIT 3: Why are claims, principles or theories about differentiating science from pseudoscience (e.g. TOF), not scientific? (And why is the answer to that question also not scientific?)
haha, excellent analysis and questions Modus Operandi. :) At some point, we simply cannot solve a problem at the level it was created. In my opinion, there is no scientific solution to this philosophical problem.
teachphilosophy Thanks for your feedback :) I'm not particularly looking for a scientific solution, but trying to understand if claims about scientific claims ('meta'-scientific claims?) are themselves scientific. If so, then TOF is also a scientific claim and some objections to it seem to stand, as it's subject to its own tenets. If not, then not ;)
***** teachphilosophy I don't know if falsifiability is really a theory, especially not in a scientific sense. I think it is really more of an axiomatic assertion that has demonstrated its usefulness in the pragmatic epistemology of the methodological naturalism of scientific thought. If we ever invent a more useful principle than falsifiability, then we could just replace it as an axiom. So is falsifiability falsifiable? Maybe, but we won't know until a more useful principle is created to replace it axiomatically.
