Explaining things that do not need explanation. — Banno

To people who already agree, sure. But what of those who disagree, like Hume does on induction? Just let their arguments go unaddressed, instead of refuting them?

I'd really like to take "this is obviously true" as a compliment, but people like you seem to want to make it an insult.

Denying induction is also irrational. — Banno

If you mean that there can be no reason to think one way or the other about induction, then I pretty much said exactly that at the end of the previous page:

These are things like the assumption of objectivity about which we could not possibly know one way or the other whether they are true, but which we cannot help but assume one way or the other through our actions, and without the assumption of which we could not possibly hope to ever know anything, thus pragmatically requiring us to always act as though they are true or else give up all hope of knowledge. — Pfhorrest

There is some scholarly disagreement about what exactly Hume's point was, but the widely-held interpretation is that it means that unless the problem of induction can be surmounted, induction does not provide any reason whatsoever to believe anything.

From the SEP article I just linked:

Hume’s argument is one of the most famous in philosophy. A number of philosophers have attempted solutions to the problem, but a significant number have embraced his conclusion that it is insoluble. There is also a wide spectrum of opinion on the significance of the problem. Some have argued that Hume’s argument does not establish any far-reaching skeptical conclusion, either because it was never intended to, or because the argument is in some way misformulated. Yet many have regarded it as one of the most profound philosophical challenges imaginable since it seems to call into question the justification of one of the most fundamental ways in which we form knowledge. Bertrand Russell, for example, expressed the view that if Hume’s problem cannot be solved, “there is no intellectual difference between sanity and insanity” — SEP

So we can know that induction works (that we can extrapolate patterns into the future) because it always has before, so we can extrapolate that pattern into the future?

(If it's not clear, I'm pointing out that that's circular reasoning, which is the root of the problem of induction, and the post you're responding to is my solution to that problem).

So, here's a great example: you cite just two possibilities; the impossibility that the laws of nature could have suddenly changed and things might just morph at random from white to black to purple or whatever is implicit in the way you arrive at what you consider possible. This is entirely on account of inductive expectation; it's not logically prescribed that the laws of nature cannot change. — Janus

If the laws of nature had just changed such that swans could now change color willy-nilly, or even if they had always been such that that was possible, then that would make “all swans are white” no longer (or maybe never have been) true, so changing your belief that all swans are white would cover that.

More generally though, on this topic of the laws of nature not changing: that is not something we believe because of induction, but something we must believe to do induction. If we don’t assume that that’s the case, then there is no reason to expect patterns to continue as we have seen them do thus far.

On my account, that is one of the background assumptions not about the content of reality per se but which we use to structure our experience of reality whatever its contents should be. It’s up there with assuming there are physical substances that bind together all of the attributes of things and not just improbably coincidental constant conjunctions of the same attributes moving through space in unison.

These are things like the assumption of objectivity about which we could not possibly know one way or the other whether they are true, but which we cannot help but assume one way or the other through our actions, and without the assumption of which we could not possibly hope to ever know anything, thus pragmatically requiring us to always act as though they are true or else give up all hope of knowledge.

:up: :100:

On the other hand, if one opts for the panpsychist view that mind is an elemental feature of the world, then one must account for the apparent lack of mental features at the fundamental level." --SEP — frank

That is easily accounted for by recognizing that the kind of “consciousness” that is everywhere (phenomenal consciousness, the subject of the hard problem) is not really “mental” in the substantive sense we usually mean, but just a trivial metaphysical thing that doesn’t add anything to the predicted functionality of anything as observable in the third person — it just posits that there is also a first-person perspective on that exact same functionality.

The substantive sense we usually nean is instead access conscious, the subject of the “easy” problem, which is philosophically easier because it doesn’t require anything metaphysically strange, just ordinary functionalism. But it is substantially harder because it requires an understanding of precisely what function fulfills our ordinary understanding of “consciousness”, which is an empirical question beyond the purview of philosophy.

I agree that music has primarily emotional meaning, though I don’t know that that needs to be limited to religious contexts.

I see analogues of musical concepts in all manner of time-based phenomena, and I think the first hypothesis about predictability was on the right track. When things happen over and over again people can get bored and annoyed but also sometimes comforted. When patterns suddenly change that can be surprising in either an exciting or frightening way. When things happen in an entirely unstructured way that can be anxiety inducing but then if pattern emerge out of that structure there’s a pleasant feeling of discovery. If multiple patterns interact with each other in different ways that’s likewise a pleasant thing to realize, to feel like you’re noticing the connections between these things.

Sound is all about patterns of changes over time (pitch is just frequency), and all kinds of musical concepts are further refinements upon that (harmony is when multiple frequencies share certain relationships, rhythm and tempo are also all about frequency of notes). Musical ups and downs, breaks and shifts, all all about establishing and then changing patterns over time.

I think we’re wired to have emotional responses to patterns like that more generally, to get bored of repetition but also to fear unpredictable change, to get intrigued by noticing patterns and the relationships between patterns, etc, and music just directly pushes all those emotional buttons in the most straightforward way divorced from any broader real-world context.

Conversely, applying musical concepts to the real world can be a way to make life more pleasant. Comforting patterns but with interesting change-ups, allowing one movement to complete before beginning another, etc. (Likewise, applying musical concepts to other forms of art, like fiction writing, can make it more interesting and pleasant as well).

Neither confirmationists, nor fideists, nor nihilists, nor any of your stated targets believe they can predict the future with 100% percent accuracy. So none of them are disproven by your statement that observing something surprising contradicts a belief (an expectation) that we wouldn't. — Isaac

You’re the only one bringing up any belief about being able to predict the future perfectly. That’s not anything I’m talking about at all.

I’m saying that if you see something and think “whoa a black swan, I didn’t think those were possible...” and then either “I guess they are possible after all” or “it must be fake somehow”, you’ve revised the beliefs you initially had. (Switching to black for this example to illustrate how either is a plausible option).

If instead you see the same thing and think “oh look, somebody painted that swan black...” then you don’t have to revise any beliefs because a fake black swan is what your background beliefs initially lead you to perceive and that doesn’t contradict any other beliefs such as that all swans are white.

You're saying that the probability of A and B ("then what you're observing must be very improbable") is P(A and B) — Isaac

No, I’m saying that if P(A) is small and P(B) is small then P(A)*P(B) is small. “P(A)*P(B)” is the probabilistic equivalent of “A and B” in the same way that “P(A|B)” is the probabilistic equivalent of “A if B”.

Which beliefs? I never believed that all my observations are accurate and unambiguous. What I believed prior to seeing the purple swan was that some observations turn out to be true and others don't. — Isaac

So you were not surprised by the apparently purple swan, and it was consistent with your prior beliefs? Then you have no contradictory observations to falsify anything. You just saw something consistent with your expectations.

P(A|B) is not the same as P(A and B). — Isaac

I never said it was. I say that the probabilistic equivalent of a conditional statement is a conditional probability: the probabilistic equivalent of "B if A" is "P(B|A)". (I did misleadingly say that "P(B|A)" was equivalent to "P(B if A)", but that was for a natural-language reading of "B if A", and that equivalency is only problematic when "B if A" is taken as a strict material implication).

Not the belief that I haven't seen any purple swans (I'm presuming I was deceived). — Isaac

Other way around: you change the beliefs which initially lead you to construe your experience as genuinely seeing a real purple swan, if you instead conclude that you must have been deceived.

If you already believed that you were being deceived into seeing a purple swan, then none of your beliefs would change, but then your experience wouldn't be contrary to your prior beliefs either (you would be expecting to see what appears to be a purple swan), so there would be no prompt to change any beliefs, and so no falsification.

Yeah I really don’t get the objection to SLX’s comments now that the election is over. We did the necessary evil of voting for the lesser evil, now we’ve got a better target to attack who might more conceivably budge a little if pulled hard enough from “his side”, so let’s get to the attacking and the pulling. Congratulations Biden, thank you for defeating Trump, now fucking do something good instead of just coasting on being the lesser evil.

In this case it seems somewhat plausible that it was precisely the election of Obama that triggered the backlash that lead to Trump. His election spurred hope for minority identities, while his administration did little to address the systemic economic problems that plague people of all types alike. This both pissed off the pre-existing contingent of bigots who were just unhappy that anyone not exactly like them was in charge, and left a lot of other people, who are demographically like them but may not have been so explicitly bigoted before, still hurting despite the promises of hope and change, and looking for a scapegoat to blame for that. Hence the motley assortment of everyone already anti-left and everyone who the so-called “left” of America had let down, scrambling for any “outsider” to shake things up... and there’s Trump.

I had thought that you said early on in this thread and repeatedly thereafter that it doesn't matter what we believe (that is falsifiable) as long as it hasn't been falsified. — Janus

Yes, which means that induction is a perfectly fine way of coming up with beliefs. There's nothing wrong with using induction to get to something or another to believe. It just can't tell you that your beliefs are more right than some other beliefs.

But it's also possible that different processes for coming up with beliefs will be more or less productive in coming up with beliefs that are unlikely to be falsified. Believing that patterns you've observed are likely to continue (i.e. induction) could very well be one of those safer methods (and I'm intuitively inclined to say it probably is, but I don't have any arguments to that effect).

Yes, but that "strictest sense" as I already said applies to everything; it is merely the fact that there is not any absolute certainty; no deductive strength proof of anything, when it comes to empirical matters. But that is really a useless wasteland of weeds we don't need to get into.

You could say the same about black swans; that it could never be absolutely proven that they are in fact swans. — Janus

Yes, that's correct. But it is that "strictest sense" that we're talking about here. It's in that sense that although we can never be sure any particular set of beliefs is the correct, we can be sure that some particular set of beliefs is an incorrect one, if e.g. that particular set of beliefs says both that all swans are white and that the thing we're seeing right now is a purple swan. We can't be sure which of those (or which part of which of them) is incorrect, but we can be sure that the world definitely isn't exactly like that, it's different than we thought in some way or another.

I never said inductive thought generally was to be dispensed with entirely. I've repeatedly said induction is a fine way to come up with beliefs in the first place.

Where falsification does all the heavy lifting is in deciding between competing beliefs that both fit some pattern that induces us to believe them. In that case, observing something that is predicted by one of them doesn't help at all (contra what hypothetico-deductive confirmationism would have us think), unless it's also against the predictions of the other (i.e. falsifying it).

The point about the interconnected beliefs was discussed at length earlier with regard to confirmation holism and theory-laden observation etc. If you observe something that agrees with all of your beliefs, you've learned nothing, as described above. If you observe something that's contrary to any of your beliefs, then you've learned that that combination of beliefs is not possible. It may not be that you have to reject the one belief you thought you were testing -- you could reject some other beliefs instead -- but still you've learned that you have to change something about your beliefs.

This was what I was bringing up with the purple swan earlier. You can't be sure that you've observed a purple swan, because the observation of what seems like a purple swan could always be interpreted as not really a purple swan if you change some of your background beliefs instead. So in the strictest sense, you haven't confirmed that there exists at least that one purple swan, even though in a colloquial sense we can often be sure enough for practical purposes.

That does means likewise that you can't be sure that you've falsified that all swans are white. But you can be sure that you've falsified something, because you can't both keep all of your background beliefs that lead you to interpret that observation as a purple swan, and also keep your belief that all swans are white. If you see something that seems to be a purple swan according to your background beliefs, you've got to reject either some of those background beliefs, or the belief that all swans are white. In either case, the full set of beliefs you had before are now known to be for sure false, even if you don't know exactly what change to your beliefs is the best one to make yet.

This still accords with Bayesian reasoning, because you could reason along the same lines, but probabilistically instead of in those absolute statements. If the thing you're observing is very likely to be a real purple swan given your background beliefs, and yet it's very likely that all swans are white given what you believe about swans, then what you're observing must be very improbable. Contrapositively, some or other of the beliefs that lead you to believe you're observing that must be very improbable: either your background beliefs, or your beliefs about swans. But it's very unlikely that you're both probably right about all swans being white, and probably really seeing a purple swan, so you're probably wrong about at least one of those things.

Trump's transformation of the Republican party into the tinfoil-hat-nutjob-circus party is complete. :victory: — Baden

And the fact that about half the voters voted for him anyway is a commensurate condemnation of the state of American culture.

If we want democracies to survive, they should be non-capitalist, social democracies. — Benkei

:up: :100:

(Of course, the right seems to increasingly realize the obviousness of this, and are now openly attacking democracy as “mob rule” in opposition to capitalist “liberty”).

We've had massive improvements in standard of living thanks to our capitalist economy. — Paul Edwards

Most of my generation have barely any hope of ever paying off a home. Two generations ago a man my age who wasn’t well on his way to that goal would have been a complete failure. I’d gladly trade some GiB of RAM for a real house of my own, one I could raise a family in. We have a lot of cheap fancy toys now, but the actual necessities of life are increasingly out of reach for most people. That’s not progress, that’s failure.

Note also that capitalism is the *natural* form of trade (no-one in charge of setting prices) — Paul Edwards

“Capitalism” is not synonymous with “free market”. I never said anything against a free market. The social experiment that’s failing the world is the concentration of capital ownership in increasing fewer hands. That destroys the freedom of the market.

If you can’t even differentiate capitalism from a free market you’re not educated enough to be participating in this conversation.

I'm sure you've got your pet idea which is guaranteed to work and be better than what we have now, and it's a crying shame that no-one has implemented it to date — Paul Edwards

They have actually, but then literal fascists destroyed it almost immediately. Funny thing that.

America today is not better for most people than America 40 years ago. Stainism or Maoism is not the only alternative to what we’re doing now.

As opposed to the massive social experiment that’s been failing all over the western world for the past four decades, and threatening to take the entire planet with it now.

secular capitalist liberal democracies — Paul Edwards

Too bad one of those things has to spoil the great civilization that the other three together would make.

Mostly just wanted to give you a :up: in return, but one thing:

Conversely "Some swans are purple" can never be definitively falsified, but could be definitively verified. — Janus

Only given certain background assumptions which theory-laden that observation, which assumptions may themselves be false (and so that conclusion as well). One can be certain of having had some experience that seems to them to have been of a purple swan, but one can never be definitively certain that “there exists at least one purple swan” is in fact the correct interpretation of that experience, e.g. maybe you have been somehow deceived and in fact there are no purple swans despite this convincing appearance of one.

Of course that also applies to falsifying particular universal hypotheses — maybe your falsifying observation isn’t genuine somehow — but in that case you’ve still falsified the conjunction of that particular hypothesis and the rest of the background theory that ladens your observations such that the hypothesis seems falsified.

I don’t recall any supporters’ names being taught, and my search on SEP suggests that it’s merely a traditional view:

Originally, Glymour presented his sophisticated neo-Hempelian approach in stark contrast with the competing traditional view of so-called hypothetico-deductivism (HD).

...

For one thing, the very idea of hypothetico-deductivism has often been said to stem from the origins of Western science.

Etc.

Can you cite any texts by, for example, Ayer or the Logical Positivists that explicitly identify their thinking with the syllogism in question? — Janus

I already clarified that verificationism and confirmationism don’t mean the same thing here.

Do you really believe there have been any philosophically significant confirmationists stupid enough to base their whole system of thought on an invalid syllogism, though? — Janus

Apparently, since there's a whole name for that methodology and it was taught as one of the several views discussed in my university philosophy of science class.

but you stopped short of admitting that your identification of confirmationist thought with the invalid syllogism was incorrect — Janus

Because it's not incorrect, it's just a different sense of the word "confirmationism" than you're using. Hypothetico-deductivist confirmationism is just like I've been saying confirmationism is, because that's the thing I've been arguing against since the very beginning.

Which is as I've said many times before, I'm not strawmanning you're position, you're identifying yourself with the position I'm arguing against and then saying that that position isn't actually like that but is instead like something I never disagreed with.

Yeah I already addressed all of that in my last post, so if you're not going to read the whole thing, maybe just don't bother responding to it.

I'll just repost the most important bit that I think cleared everything up.

--------

the correct formulation for confirmationism is "if Q then P", — Janus

I just went to look up a quote about confirmationism in a reliable source, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, to settle this merely nominal dispute once and for all, and I found something interesting: there are two mutually contradictory things both called "confirmationism".

I learned confirmationism in school as synonymous with the hypothetico-deductive method, which to quote SEP means:

e HD-confirms h relative to k if and only if h ∧ k ⊨ e and k ⊭ e; — SEP

Where e is some evidence, h is some hypothesis, k is some set of background assumptions, and ⊨ is a symbol for entailment, i.e. necessary implication.

So on that hypothetico-deductivist confirmationist account, if the hypothesis (and background assumptions) entail the evidence (but the background assumptions alone don't), then seeing that evidence confirms the hypothesis. That is exactly what I have been saying confirmation claims, except using "P" for the hypothesis+assumptions together, and "Q" for the evidence: that if P implies Q, and Q is the case, then P is the case.

But, it seems, Hempel's model, which I learned in school as something against confirmationism and more a step toward falsificationism -- because it says exactly the opposite of that hypothetico-deductivism above, just like falsification does -- is apparently also called "confirmationism", and I'm guessing that that's where you're coming from, Janus. Hempel's account says:

e confirms h relative to k if and only if e disconfirms ¬h relative to k. — SEP

Which is pretty much the same thing falsification says, except it doesn't call that "confirming" h, because falsificationism uses the term "confirmation" to refer to hypothetico-deductive confirmation. It just says that that's falsifying ¬h, which of course entails that h as well.

I won't have time to read both of those in their entirety tonight, but just reading the opening of the Lewis paper, he also says:

I shall take it as established that the assertability of an ordinary indicative conditional A -> C does indeed go by the conditional subjective probability P(C|A). — David Lewis

Which seems to be the same thing as I'm saying. I don't yet know how he reconciles that with the bit you've quoted. I suspect that perhaps this will turn out to be a roundabout way of saying that natural language conditionals don't mean exactly what material implications mean, i.e. a natural language assertion of "if P then Q" doesn't just mean "not(P and not Q)", but instead it means something more like the "(Q|P)" in probabilistic notation. If so then that's fine with me, as I'm using conditionals in a natural language way here, not especially tied to them meaning precisely what material implication means.

ETA: Yep that looks like it, as just below your quote from Jeffrey he writes of Lewis' work:

That is David Lewis’s “trivialization result”. In proving it, the only assumption needed about ‘if’ was the eqivalence (2) of ‘If X, then if C then D’ with 'If X and C, then D'. — Richard Jeffrey

Which equivalence hinges on the conditionals being taken as material implications.

It would make it seem much more like you are arguing in good faith, rather than doubling down on your position if you actually responded to what I am arguing here, (and others have argued) rather than playing a 'tit for tat' game of accusing me of poor reading comprehension, simply because I won't acquiesce to your stipulations. — Janus

I accuse you of poor reading comprehension because I have been responding to your arguments, and you never seem to understand the responses. You are mostly putting forth things that I don't disagree with, as though they disprove the things that I am saying. So I'm not going to put forth counter-arguments to show that the things you're putting forth are wrong, because they're mostly not. They're just beside the point of anything that I was saying in this thread, not against it, and I'm trying to show you why that is.

For example:

tools marks are thought to be a sign strongly suggestive of artificial structures, and that conjecture is confirmed, although not logically proven, by countless examples drawn from experience — Janus

This is what I mean about you changing the focus of the discussion. First we were talking about how we could test whether or not the Face was artificial. We could test that using the implication of tool marks to artificiality, and we were discussing the right way to use that implication to test for artificiality. But now you're talking about how we could know whether tool marks imply artificiality. That's a different thing. In a complete investigation that is a further question that we could step back and ask too, but it's not the same question we were asking about at the start.

Anyway, on to the meat of things.

"If P then Q, Q, therefore P" is simply an invalid deduction. Confirmationism is an inductive, not an invalid deductive, thought process. — Janus

I have repeated over and over again that I'm not simply talking about deductive vs inductive implications. I'm talking about the direction of implication. Inferrring from "if P then probably Q", and "probably Q", to "probably P", all merely probabilistically, is still not a good inference.

(I'm saying "good" instead of "valid" here so you don't think I mean non-probabilistic deduction; I've done that before as well. Also, probabilistic inference is not the same thing as induction, but let's leave that aside for now).

Meanwhile, inferring from "if Q then probably P, and "probably Q", to "probably P", even if it's all merely probabilistically, is a good inference.

And that is the whole point of falsificationism, because "if Q then P" is logically equivalent to "if not P then not Q", as you already know.

(This is another place where you've been just talking past me. You speak as though you pointed out the equivalence of those to me, and that that defeated my point, when I already knew they were equivalent, and I in turn pointed out that switching from "if P then Q" to "if Q then P" makes all the difference; I never objected to "if Q then P", only "if P then Q", because the former is equivalent to falsification, and the latter is the only kind of confirmationism I'm against here).

So if you're affirming that the good direction of inference is from "if Q then (probably) P", and "(probably) Q", to "(probably) P", and you're not saying that the inference from "if P then (probably) Q", and "(probably) Q", to "(probably) P", is a good inference, then you're completely agreeing with me, even if you think you're not.

the correct formulation for confirmationism is "if Q then P", — Janus

I just went to look up a quote about confirmationism in a reliable source, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, to settle this merely nominal dispute once and for all, and I found something interesting: there are two mutually contradictory things both called "confirmationism".

I learned confirmationism in school as synonymous with the hypothetico-deductive method, which to quote SEP means:

e HD-confirms h relative to k if and only if h ∧ k ⊨ e and k ⊭ e; — SEP

Where e is some evidence, h is some hypothesis, k is some set of background assumptions, and ⊨ is a symbol for entailment, i.e. necessary implication.

So on that hypothetico-deductivist confirmationist account, if the hypothesis (and background assumptions) entail the evidence (but the background assumptions alone don't), then seeing that evidence confirms the hypothesis. That is exactly what I have been saying confirmation claims, except using "P" for the hypothesis+assumptions together, and "Q" for the evidence: that if P implies Q, and Q is the case, then P is the case.

But, it seems, Hempel's model, which I learned in school as something against confirmationism and more a step toward falsificationism -- because it says exactly the opposite of that hypothetico-deductivism above, just like falsification does -- is apparently also called "confirmationism", and I'm guessing that that's where you're coming from, Janus. Hempel's account says:

e confirms h relative to k if and only if e disconfirms ¬h relative to k. — SEP

Which is pretty much the same thing falsification says, except it doesn't call that "confirming" h, because falsificationism uses the term "confirmation" to refer to hypothetico-deductive confirmation. It just says that that's falsifying ¬h, which of course entails that h as well.

I get the feeling that maybe your point is that zero probability is not quite identical to impossibility, just very close. But even given that that's the case, it's not counter to my main thrust here, since as explained to Janus above, I'm not depending on these implications I'm loosely using here being completely strict absolute deductions; the same points I'm making apply even if they're taken only to be probabilistic relationships, as I'll explain more to Srap below right now.



Bayes theorem is:
P(H | E) = P(E | H) * P(H) / P(E)

Some simple algebra can rearrange that to:
P(H | E) * P(E) / P(E | H) = P(H)

Things like “P(X | Y)” are often phrased as “the probability of X given Y”, but that means the same thing as “the probability that X is true if Y is true” or “the probability that if Y is true then X is true” or “the probability that Y implies X”. “X given Y” = “X if Y” = “if Y then X” = “X implies Y”. It’s all the same thing. Just wrap a “the probability that” around any of those and you have what “P(X | Y)” means.

So we can rephrase the above formula as:

P(E implies H) * P(E) / P(H implies E) = P(H)

Meanwhile, the standard form of a falsificationist inference is:

~H implies ~E, and E, therefore H.

or equivalently:

E implies H, and E, therefore H.

If we want to make that probabilistic instead, using formal notation instead of just sticking “probably”s in there as I’ve been doing because I assumed we were all smart people who can read between the lines, we’d then have:

P(E implies H) * P(E) = P(H)

or if you like:

P(H | E) * P(E) = P(H)

The only difference between that and Bayes formula is that Bayes also has P(E | H) in the denominator on the left (of the rearranged presentation), i.e. the probability of the hypothesis is also inversely proportional to the probability that the hypothesis implies the evidence, i.e. the probability of the evidence given the hypothesis.

In other words, not only does Bayes theorem say that the more probably that the evidence implies the hypothesis, the more probable the hypothesis is true — which is exactly what falsification says, since “E implies H” is equivalent to “~H implies ~E” — additionally, the more probably that the hypothesis predicts the evidence, the less probable that the hypothesis is true — the exact opposite of what confirmationism would have you think.

That is to say, the standard form of a confirmationist inference:
H implies E, and E, therefore (probably) H.

rendered into proper probabilistic notation would be:
P(H implies E) * P(E) = P(H)

or if you like:

P(E | H) * P(E) = P(H)

where the first term there is exactly what Bayes theorem has the inverse of, in addition to also having the converse (“P(E implies H)” or "P(H | E)").

Let me repeat all that. Falsification rendered probabilistically:

P(H | E) * P(E) = P(H)

Bayes theorem, algebraically rearranged:

P(H | E) * P(E) / P(E | H) = P(H)

Versus confirmationism rendered probabilistically:

P(E | H) * P(E) = P(H)

So if anything, Bayes theorem is doubling down on falsificationism vs confirmationism, besides just rendering the whole thing into a probabilistic form.

Subtract your tentative holding true of untested beliefs, which the above does not require, and we're more or less on the same page. — Kenosha Kid

I also don't require it, I only permit it, so it sounds like we agree.

I said exactly that in the OP, and have referred back to or requoted it many times since.
— Pfhorrest

You really didn't, and if you had said it you'd be wrong — Srap Tasmaner

If I said the thing that you just said, I'd be wrong?

What I said was:

Beliefs not yet shown false can still be more or less probable than others, as calculated by methods such as Bayes' theorem. Falsification itself can be considered just an extreme case of showing a belief to have zero probability — Pfhorrest

And you said:

if you take a Bayesian approach you still get falsification as a special case — Srap Tasmaner

Sounds like the same thing to me.

Conditional probability is a whole different animal from material implication, and no adding of "probably" changes that, as David Lewis showed, like, forty years ago. — Srap Tasmaner

Can you please elaborate on this? My adding of "probably" to the conditionals under discussion was not meant to be a formal thing at all, but a loose way of phrasing the idea that, as I said in the OP:

if you are frequently observing phenomena that your belief says should be improbable, then that suggests your belief is epistemically improbable (i.e. likely false), — Pfhorrest

Which as I understand it is what Bayes is all about.

Pretty much the whole process you describe is consistent with the approach I advocate, as I already said to Srap when he said similar things earlier. It’s the weeding out of alternatives (even if we haven’t enumerated them yet) that progresses our knowledge, and multiple models that equally well survive that process are not elevated by the process but are merely equal co-survivors of it.

As far as I can tell, nothing will budge Pfhorrest from his position. Nor should anything, in a sense, since the principles in play are not themselves falsifiable. That's irony or necessity, as you like, I suppose. — Srap Tasmaner

Not empirically falsifiable of course because these are not empirical issues, but open to logical falsification, like reductio ad absurdum or something, sure. I am not clinging to these principles against arguments to the contrary, because nobody has actually said anything to the contrary of my principles. They’ve only been attacking strawmen and saying things I already agree with as though that refutes the things I think, or conflating multiple things together so as to sneak in something unsupported along with something I already agree with.

Conditional probability is a better fit for both, and if you take a Bayesian approach you still get falsification as a special case — Srap Tasmaner

I said exactly that in the OP, and have referred back to or requoted it many times since.

Is there an earlier post that makes it clearer what sort of feedback would be more useful to you? — Srap Tasmaner

No, I’m not looking for anything in particular. I just wish that clarifying that I am not actually against the things you think you’re refuting me with would settle these nominal disagreements. The kinds of responses were fine at first (besides Isaac objecting to having the discussion at all), I just wish it wouldn’t go around in circles so much.

It is not evidence against ~Higgs, since there are potential theories that could explain the same data with more than one particle. But the more signals corresponding to expected decay chains we see (more have been discovered very recently), the better founded the belief that the Higgs mechanism is a good model of reality. — Kenosha Kid

Why do those observations not equally lend support to the other theories that are just as consistent with them? I suspect you can actually provide an answer, because I trust that working physicists actually are smart enough to be using sound methods.

So I’m expecting that there is something about each of those alternative theories that is less consistent with all of the observations than the Higgs is; that each theory concords with fewer observations, or expects those observations with lower probability, or some combination thereof. In other words, the observations weigh against the other theories more than they do against Higgs. That is just a probabilistic version of falsification, which I mentioned in the OP and have requoted three times since then.

By "mostly unfalsified", I assume you mean falsified with less than 100% certainty. — Kenosha Kid

I mean a theory that at worst says that the observations we’ve made are a little unlikely. Complete falsification is when a theory says that the observations that we see are not possible, which thus renders that theory (epistemically) impossible (i.e. certainly false). A theory saying the observations we see are merely improbable in turn makes the theory (epistemically) improbable, which is a lessened version of falsification, or a partial falsification if you will.

Third, where evidence against not P is evidence for P. Is the ball under the left cup or the right? Assuming the ball is under one of the two cups, falsifying the theory it is under the left cup is identically evidence for it being under the right cup. There's no distinction between falsifying ~P and verifying P. — Kenosha Kid

Like I’ve been saying to Janus over and over, that’s beside the point. Sure, if you can show that not-P implies not-Q, and that Q, then you can show that P, via falsifying not-P. But that’s not what falsification was ever against.

What it’s against is saying that if you can show that P implies Q, and that Q, then you can show that P. That’s what confirmationism says, and what falsificationism denies.

Either of those can be rendered probabilistic instead of absolute as you like, and the same difference applies.

LOL — Janus

You know, I’m getting kind of tired of being condescended to by someone with such obvious reading comprehension difficulties.

I know you were talking about the same P and Q. But as I just said in my last post, we were talking before about how to test whether P or not using Q, and then you suddenly switched to talking about why we think that Q implies P.

I also know you were talking about Q implying P already (and how that’s equivalent to not-P implying not-Q), but that reversal from P implying Q just is switching from confirmationism to falsification.

"If P then Q, Q, therefore P" is confirmationism.
"If Q then P, Q, therefore P" is falsificationism, because it's equivalent to
"If not-P then not-Q, Q, therefore P".

You’re not showing that confirmation is hidden within falsification, you’re showing that falsification is the thing we need to do instead of confirmation, which is my whole point.

But I’ve explained all this many times before and you didn’t get it then so I don’t know why I expect you to get it now either.

:100: :up: :clap:

Of course it is; beliefs that derive from well-examined repeated experience should inspire more confidence than those which do not. — Janus

Which is to say, beliefs that have survived many potential falsifications.

I'm not changing the example at all. The belief that the face on Mars is artificial can be checked by examining whether or not tool marks are evident. If they were evident we would have good reason to believe that the face is artificial, if they were not evident we would have no reason to believe the face is artificial. — Janus

Let P = "the face on Mars is artificial"
Let Q = "there are tool marks on the face of Mars"

We're previously been discussing how we would test P. My entire point on that subject has always been that P implying Q, plus Q being true, does not give support to P; only not-P implying not-Q (or equivalently, Q implying P), plus Q being true, would give any support to P.

In your previous post before this one, you mentioned "The belief that tool marks are the main sign of artificial rock formations". That's not our "P". That's "if Q then P" (if I'm generous in interpreting you there, and you didn't mean "if P then Q" instead).

Let R = "if Q then P".

We believe R based on repeated observations wherein it is never the case that Q and not-P, which suggests to us that not(Q and not-P), which is equivalent to Q implying P. That's what it seems like you're saying, and that's a perfectly fine reason to come to believe that.

But now say we want to test that belief against other possibilities, maybe because someone else doesn't think the evidence suggests that belief, or just because we're undecided between multiple interpretations of the evidence ourselves.

To test R, we need to derive an implication from not-R. Call that implication not-S. I don't know what that implication would be off the top of my head, but maybe you can come up with something that would have to be false if "Q implies P" was false, and we can call that thing "S".

If R merely implied S, and S were true... that wouldn't give us any support for R. We'd still be free to believe R, just because it seems true to us, but if it seemed false to someone else, or we were undecided on it ourselves, we wouldn't have anything decide that disagreement or indecision with... unless the non-R possibility also implied a non-S observation, in which case we could rule out that possibility, but still not all possible alternatives to R.

Only if not-R (any and all alternatives to R, any scenario where R was not the case) implied not-S, and S were true, would that give us support for R.

especially if it's opposite or negation is evidenced albeit unproven — Kenosha Kid

I consider that a good (but not complete) reason to disbelieve something. You probably shouldn’t believe things that are probably false. I’ve said above (in the OP and requoted twice since then) that I’m not advocating a black and white view: things that are not completely falsified can still be epistemically unlikely, and you’re not completely wrong to believe those, but you’re taking a big risk. (I actually think this is perfect analogous to risky but not impermissible behavior, as well: it’s not wrong per se but you probably shouldn’t do it).

Not at all, you can always have evidence for something. A witness testimony is evidence that the accused was at the scene of the crime, for instance. It just isn't proof. Evidence for something is always incomplete; evidence against it is always terminal. That is the whole point of falsification as I understand it.

We're not a million miles apart but the above distinction is the difference. Evidence is not all or nothing. There are many degrees between a completely arbitrary unfalsified belief and a well-founded unfalsified belief. — Kenosha Kid

I would say instead that there are many degrees between a completely falsified belief and a mostly-unfalsified one. See the discussion above with Janus about the different kinds of probabilistic inferences. If P probably implies Q and Q seems to be the case, that doesn’t even give you the tiniest additional support for P; but if Q implies P (or equivalently not-P implies not-Q) and Q seems to be the case, then that does give incomplete support to P, but only because it’s equivalent to a probabilistic falsification: something that’s likely to be false if P were false seems to be true, so P is probably true, precisely because not-P is probably falsified.

To be "consistent with the world" just is to be confirmed by observation — Janus

It’s to be not falsified, but that’s not the same thing as being confirmed.

The belief that tool marks are the main sign of artificial rock formations does not derive from falsifying anything but from countless confirmations that those rock formations displaying tool marks are indeed artificial. — Janus

Where our beliefs originate from is not the issue at hand here. How to decide between conflicting beliefs is. You’re also changing which belief you’re talking about in the example. First you were talking about the belief that the face on Mars is artificial. Tool marks were the implication of that belief that we would check that belief against. Now you’re talking about the belief that that implication is true. We would need a different implication from that belief in the first implication in order to test whether the belief in the first implication were false or not, and that testing would have to be done falsificationistically.

you're arguing against the deductively invalid form of arguemnt "If P then Q, Q therefore P", because you associate it with verificationism or confirmationism — Janus

Just confirmationism, not verificationism as in the Positivists. Confirmationism is something broader (as in less specific, less comprehensive) than verificationism; non-verificationists can still be confirmationists.

And as I've just said a bunch of times, it's not just about deductive validity. It's that that form of argument doesn't even give probablistic support to P. If you reverse (or equivalently negate) the antecedent and consequent of the first premise, then it does, yes, but that's precisely the switch from confirmation to falsification.

repeated observations coupled with an enormous accumulated body of theory based on those observations does give us good reason to think in many contexts that when we observe what is predicted we are warranted to hold (always provisionally) many things to be confirmed. — Janus

That's precisely the same thing as "it's probable that if P [the body of theory] then Q [the predicted observations], Q, therefore probably P". Which there's no good reason to think, and plenty of good reason to think otherwise. (I'm avoiding the word "valid" here because you'll think I'm talking about deduction again).

If you reverse the P and the Q, or equivalently negate them, then there is good reason to think that way, yes. But that's precisely the switch from confirmation to falsification.

So it is the liberal part I'm referring to: that any given belief should be considered justified enough to be tentatively accepted — Kenosha Kid

It's the "enough" part that matters there. It's not that you should tentatively accept it, but that you should not demand proof from others if they want to tentatively accept it. (Nor, if you yourself feel inclined to accept it, demand proof from yourself or else reject it; if it seems true to you, go ahead and believe it).

This would include any absurd yet so far untested belief that I might make up: that spiders are telepathic, or that The Great Geoff lives on an asteroid orbiting the black hole at the centre of our galaxy, or that the CIA are controlled by a secretive Inuit conglomerate. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, if you're inclined to believe those things, then go right ahead, and if someone else is, let them, unless you have reason to suggest you or they should not. (NB that this doesn't mean that you have to accept whatever nonsense someone else is inclined to believe, just that if either of you wants to change the other's mind, you need to show that they're wrong, not just point out that they can't show that they're right).

But this is not what I suggested. I said that I can suspend judgment on either given no facts to support either. We aren't obliged to take a firm position on everything. Do I believe Jesus lived or not? Neither. I don't know, and I don't really care. It's a matter of supreme indifference to me. — Kenosha Kid

Then that is not the thing I call "cynicism", and I think that's perfectly fine.

the view that ideas must be falsified or held tentatively as true — Kenosha Kid

That's not my view. My view is that non-falsified beliefs are permissible beliefs (that you can hold them as true without committing an epistemic error), not that they are obligatory beliefs (that you must hold them as true or else you're committing an epistemic error).

The more evidence for an unfalsified idea — Kenosha Kid

The inability to ever have evidence for something, rather than merely against the alternatives, is the whole point of falsificationism.

However strongly justified a belief, a reasonable person must reject it the moment they see it falsified. In the meantime, so long as the belief is both falsifiable and consistent with the world, the believer is perfectly justified in holding it to be as if it were true, i.e. to have assumptions about the world. — Kenosha Kid

:up: That's exactly my position as well.

This is not correct, you keep presenting it backwards; which amounts to refuting a strawman. — Janus

I’m refuting the thing that’s called “confirmationism” in distinction from “falsificationism”. If that’s not the thing that you support, then that’s great, but that’s the thing that’s called that name in philosophy of science. I’ve been saying since the beginning that what you’re saying isn’t counter to what I’m saying, because what I’m say is precisely an argument against that form of inference. It’s not a straw man just because you don’t support it; I didn’t start out arguing against you, saying this is what you believe, you just came in arguing nominally against what I was saying, with things that weren’t actually against it.

Yes, I get that, and like I said in my last post, "That falsification only gives probabilistic support to the contrary doesn't change that seeing something a theory predicts doesn't even make it more likely, never mind certain, that the theory is true."

Seeing something to the contrary of what the negation of your theory predicts does show your theory true, though. And if the negation of your theory only has something predicted to be unlikely, then seeing that something only makes your theory likely true. I even mentioned this in the OP, and have quoted it again later in the thread since:

But this does not imply that all beliefs not yet shown false are equal. Beliefs not yet shown false can still be more or less probable than others, as calculated by methods such as Bayes' theorem. Falsification itself can be considered just an extreme case of showing a belief to have zero probability: if you are frequently observing phenomena that your belief says should be improbable, then that suggests your belief is epistemically improbable (i.e. likely false), and if you ever observe something that your belief says should be impossible, then your belief is epistemically impossible (i.e. certainly false). — Pfhorrest

Your "if Q then P" is, as you said, a equivalent to "if not-P then not-Q". If that is (probably) true, and Q is true, then P is (probably) true. But that's the falsificationist method, not the confirmationist method.

The confirmationist method would say that if "if P then Q" is (probably) true, and Q is true, then P is (probably) true, and that's simply not a valid way of reasoning, even with the "(probably)"s in there.

This is contrary to the idea that X ought to be tentatively accepted until falsified — Kenosha Kid

I never said it ought to be, only that it may be. Pending evidence either way, both X and ~X are permissible beliefs. To say that pending evidence either way, both X and ~X are impermissible beliefs (what I mean by "cynicism") would make it impossible to ever have evidence either way (because you would need some beliefs to be the evidence, but you couldn't hold those without others that you also aren't permitted to hold yet, ad infinitum), and so impossible for any belief in anything to ever be permissible.

(It might be worth reiterating here that by "belief" I don't mean anything anywhere near dogmatic, merely "thinking something is true". There are all kinds of things we think are true, but are perfectly open to evidence that they're not).

other ideas one finds uncontroversial — Kenosha Kid

Is it okay to believe in those things you think are uncontroversial without first proving that they're correct from the ground up? My "liberalism" says yes, and its negation I call "cynicism" says no.

You've been saying over and over that seeing something predicted by a theory (or belief, etc) gives at least probabilistic support to the theory. That's straightforward confirmationism. Nobody ever argued that confirmationism gave total support, only that it gave some support. The falsificationist counterargument is that confirmation gives no support. Seeing something a theory predicts doesn't even make it more likely, never mind certain, that the theory is true. That falsification only gives probabilistic support to the contrary doesn't change that.