The Demarcation Problem: Falsificationism 

Colin S, you’re very welcome! I hope some of my other videos can also be helpful to you.

My apologies, NS! I didn't get a notification when you first commented. I'm really glad to hear that, and I sincerely appreciate the compliment.

Thank you, Kitt--I'm very glad that you're enjoying them and that they're helpful to you.

Thank you, Jon-and I even had lots of fun making it! I'm glad that you found it helpful.

It definitely can! If a theory were logically inconsistent, e.g., that would be a big problem with the theory (although, I should note, logical consistency isn't a necessary feature of fruitful scientific theories-there are certain interpretations of quantum phenomena that are either logically inconsistent or that require a non-classical logic). Thomas Kuhn has a really nice paper that I return to over and over (and that's saying something, because I'm generally pretty unimpressed by Kuhn, despite his popularity) in which he discusses the empirical and theoretical trade-offs that confront any theory. E.g., we might be entirely fine with a logically inconsistent theory if the theory seems to explain and predict the empirical data better than any other theory. The paper's called "Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice," and I've just uploaded it for you here: drive.google.com/file/d/1WxhWAdX9UJ579w6a3YO-SgVp8j1lnWLr/view?usp=sharing The specific issue when it comes to Popper, however, will be that Popper wants to define "falsifiability" in terms of empirical evidence alone, and logical evidence is non-empirical. Of course, someone could update Popper's theory to include logical evidence as a source of falsification, but then we might end up losing good theories that have explanatory and predictive power because they can't meet whatever logical test we set for them, and we'll probably also be unable to exclude lots of clearly unscientific theories, simply because those theories don't run afoul of the logical test we set (e.g., astrology, which has absolutely no scientific value, is generally entirely logically acceptable).

Just realized that I actually have a lecture on the Kuhn article that I mentioned in my previous comment! So I uploaded it and it's available right here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Mg9w-8tjV_Y.html

@@autodidactstoolkit Thanks for taking the time to write such an elaborate answer. At least elaborate by RU-vid standars (haha). You largely cleared the confusion I had in my initial comment. Thanks for that. Is it really that difficult for scientists to adopt a theory for it's explanatory & predictive power and equally make use of a logical test, even though both can't include each other?

Same, I come back to the same conclusion.

Or even: IS there a demarcation criterion? The standard presumption has been that since science is so awesome, there MUST be a thing that separates science from nonscience, otherwise, it would be difficult to explain science's awesomeness. Check out my video on Larry Laudan's view of scientific methodology for an approach to scientific methodology and demarcation that claims that while there is a difference between science and nonscience, that difference is neither immutable nor definite-it can move and there are gray areas where not only is it not clear whether a discipline or investigation is science or nonscience, there might be no fact of the matter in such cases; the discipline or investigation might count as both at once (or neither at once).

Thanks for the answers, makes sense

@@autodidactstoolkit what do you think about David Deutsch's emphasis on science and philosophy needing explanations that are "hard to vary?" I think it's a great thesis and encompasses so much more than science.

Hello. I remember that in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume gives his reason why it is the case that we use induction out of psychological habit. He points to a cognitive pressuposition that humans must (psychologically) make just in order to continue to live normally and make predictions about reality: this is the "principle of the uniformity of nature". This "hidden" principle is precisely the belief that justifies the use of induction, logically (for if nature is uniform, if its "Laws" or mode of opperation is unchanging, then it follows that "the future will resemble the past", which justifies the proposition that inductive reasoning can reach "law-like" knowledge of nature simply by enumerating suffient past instances of the recurrence of certain phenomena), and psychologically (because, since we pressupose - as a given - that nature is uniform, it becomes absolutely rational to use inductive reasoning to explore such world, that is, from a purely psychological perspective). Therefore, I think that Hume did not just "described" that induction is done out of habit, but tried to "explain" why and how that is the case. From a strict logical point of view, induction is not "justified", at least not in the same way as simple a priori deduction is. If people search for an absolutely certain and rational foundation for induction, well, then, Hume's argument seems enough to disproove that induction works. So, there is no possible solution. But, if you want some other form of "solution" (maybe a more pragmatic one, and less strictly logical...), then we really need another philosopher, and a new argument, if we want a solution for the problem of induction.

I’ll work on one!

I really appreciate the feedback, Jimini, and I understand and sympathize with the criticism. My reason for doing things the way I'm doing them is so that the content is maximally accessible to people with different abilities and capacities. E.g., people who are hearing-impaired can read the text, people who are seeing-impaired can listen, people with language-processing disorders can both see and hear the lecture, people with ADHD can scroll through the lecture looking at the text and stop when they find what they're looking for, etc.

Falsifiability in terms of the philosophy of science is the ability for a scientific hypothesis to be shown false via actual or possible empirical evidence. Since falsificationism itself is not a scientific hypothesis (it is a philosophical hypothesis) and since the logical evidence used to show the unworkability of falsificationism is not empirical evidence, there’s no self-undermining here.

How dare you.

Mr Jerkface, if you have any questions about the material, I’d be happy to do what I can to help you understand it.

@@autodidactstoolkit i take it reading comprehension is an issue for you, then. thank you. no.

@@mrjerkface9367 name checks out.