If the premises of the argument are only probable, not certain (which, as you say, is true), then the valid form of argument can give probablistic support, but the invalid form still gives no support. If there probably won't be tool marks unless it's artificial, and there seem to be tool marks, then it seems it's probably artificial. That's a valid inference.

But "if it's artificial it'll probably be made of rock, it seems to be made of rock, therefore it seems it's probably artificial" is just as invalid as if we were speaking of certainties. It's not about the certainty, it's about the form through which support is supposedly lent. Even if we're only talking probabilities, the form still matters.

Nothing is better than heavenly bliss.

But a ham sandwich is better than nothing.

Therefore a ham sandwich is better than heavenly bliss?

if God is all-power and can cleanse the soul why wouldn't He do so immediately after death — robbiefrost

Or before birth, filling the world with nobody but perfect saints and heroes who do no wrong, not because they can’t, but because they wouldn’t, they’re just not the kind of people who would want to.

I for one am happy to hear attacks on Biden and the Democratic mainstream from the left as Streetlight here is doing, so long as the upshot of it isn’t something like “Dems are equally bad as Reps” or “don’t bother voting” or “you’re bad for voting D” or something. It’s good to raise awareness of the problems that D and R have in common, so long as the upshot isn’t counter to the pragmatic choices that have to be made to keep the worse of them out of power.

falsification and verification are two sides of the one coin as I see it — Janus

Because you're not seeing the different issue at hand, and only focusing on the one that you think I'm talking about, but I'm not.

On this I'm satisfied to agree to disagree with you — Janus

I don't actually disagree with what you're saying (falsifying P proves that not-P, falsifying not-P proves that P; knowing that something is false tells you its negation is true).

It's just a non-sequitur that's not contrary to what I'm saying ("if P then Q, Q, therefore P" is not the same kind of inference as "if not-P then not-Q, Q, therefore P"; the latter is valid, the former is not, even though they both prove the same theory P via the same observation Q).

There are signs that rock formations are natural, and there are signs that they have been modified. If rock formations display tool marks then we know they have been modified. — Janus

Sure, because natural rocks would not have tool marks, so we can falsify that they are natural, leaving non-natural, i.e. modified, artificial, whatever you want to call it, as the only alternative.

You can tell some theories are better than others based on differences in what they predict, and observations that go against the predictions of some but not others, thus falsifying some, and keeping the others.

If you only look at observations that don't go against any of their predictions -- like looking to see whether the rock formations are made of rock, which every theory predicts -- then your observations will tell you nothing.

Can you not see that it's falsification doing the heavy lifting here?

I keep repeating this because you keep failing to acknowledge that this is the point, and not any of the non-sequiturs you keep bringing up instead.


But if you're tired of this, feel free not to respond. I'm tired of this thread too, and only respond because I can't help myself.



BTW, something useful to me came out of this discussion after all. Because of my mention to you earlier about how I had once used "dogmatism" in place of "fideism", but discarded it because "dogma" had etymological roots that suggested a narrower application than I wanted for it, I looked up the etymology of it again and found that I had been wrong about that.

So now I'm switching to using "dogmatism" in place of where I've been using "fideism", and instead adopting "fideism" as an umbrella term encompassing both "dogmatism" and "liberalism": two different kinds of "faith".

Spurred by that, I also remembered a similarly annoying conversation with Isaac (I think, and perhaps others) where he(/they) took different implications from my term "objectivism" than I meant, thinking it meant more like what I call "transcendentalism", when I really meant only something that might otherwise be called "universalism".

So, I decided to also change to saying "universalism" where I've been using "objectivism", and instead adopting "objectivism" as an umbrella term encompassing both "universalism" and "transcendentalism.

This nicely mirrors the pre-existing way that I had "criticism" and "cynicism" as two kinds of "skepticism", one that I support and one that I oppose.

And I realized that I could also stick "phenomenalism" and "nihilism" under the umbrella of "subjectivism", each contra one of the subtypes of "objectivism".

So now:

• "Objectivism" is what I name the broader category that encompasses both:
  - universalism (which I support) and
  - transcendentalism (which I oppose).
• "Subjectivism" is what I name the broader category that encompasses both:
  - phenomenalism (which I support) and
  - nihilism (which I oppose).
• "Fideism" is what I name the broader category that encompasses both:
  - liberalism (which I support) and
  - dogmatism (which I oppose).
• "Skepticism" is what I name the broader category that encompasses both:
  - criticism (which I support) and
  - cynicism (which I oppose).

Say I change a tire on my automobile, does it become a different automobile? — Merkwurdichliebe

It’s not a completely different automobile, but your automobile is now different than it was before.

Inaccuracy is not a black and white thing; there are obviously degrees. — Janus

Things can be more inaccurate or less inaccurate, but they are either accurate (completely) or inaccurate (to some degree). Being inaccurate is the same thing as being false (for a descriptive proposition at least). Things can be more or less false, but they have to be completely non-false to be true.

Although we cannot presently know it is always possible there is a mass we cannot detect. — Janus

That is basically what I just said. This tangent is besides the point though. Either there is some mass there despite our best efforts to find one failing, or NM is false. That it's close enough to true in some contexts is irrelevant.

That just isn't necessarily so. Her love may have a profound effect on her, but for her own reasons she keeps it entirely hidden.

[...]

No again you are making unwarranted assumptions; there may be no observable consequences of her not being in love, just as there may be no observable consequences of her not being in love. — Janus

If there are literally zero observable consequences to her state of love, then her being in love or not makes no difference whatsoever -- because if it make any difference, we could in principle tell whether she was in love or not based on those differences.

You're conflating a trivial colloquial sense of hiding the evidence of something with there being literally no empirical evidence of it. Burying some treasure somewhere obscure and so hiding it from the world isn't the same thing as making that treasure have no empirical properties and making it in principle impossible to tell whether the treasure exists or not. Your wife can hide her feelings, obfuscate them, trick you into thinking she's feeling something she's not, but if her feelings make any difference at all, then by that difference there is in principle some way to tell what they are. (Or at least, back to the point, what they aren't).

If natural and artificial can be tested for that means there are observable marks of each that confirm one or the other. — Janus

No, that falsify one or the other. It's about the form of the inference, again. This is the whole point that you just keep missing.

You can show that something is non-natural if it's missing things it would have if it were natural, and you can show that something is non-artificial if it's missing things it would have if it were artificial, and if natural just equals non-artificial and vice versa, then you can conclude that it's whichever one you didn't just disprove.

But you can't show that something is artificial just because it has things it would have it if were artificial, unless those are also things it wouldn't have if it were non- artificial. We would expect the Face on Mars to be made of rock whether it was natural or artificial. So reasoning "if it's artificial it'll be made of rock, it's made of rock, therefore it's artificial" is fallacious (and obviously so, which is why nobody actually does that); it would be made of rock even if it were natural.

The consequent needs to be something a non- artificial scenario wouldn't have -- like tool marks, say -- and in that case, observing that falsifies the claim that it's non-artificial, it doesn't confirm the claim that it is artificial.

If it did confirm it, then the same form of reasoning could also confirm both that it's natural and that it's artificial from the fact that it's made of rock. That'd clearly be fallacious (which is why nobody actually does that), which shows that form of reasoning, confirmationism, to be fallacious.

Do you get that? This is the important point I keep repeating and you keep ignoring.

so by your very own argument God makes a difference in the world. — Janus

No, by my responses to Merk, if God makes a difference in believers then he makes a difference in the world. Stating (or implying) a conditional is not affirming its antecedent.

But that still doesn't tell us whether God exists or not. — Janus

If the antecedent above were true, it would. If God existed and did something to believers that wasn't consistent with the non-existence of God, observing the believers having that done to them would show us that God existed.

Again, you misunderstand the nature of faith. People care about the existence of God and believe or disbelieve in it because of the effect belief or disbelief has on them. — Janus

So you're saying people don't actually care whether or not God really exists, they only care about the impact that believing he exists has on them, whether or not he really does? In that case I don't care what they believe, since they're not concerned with the truth, they're not trying to figure out what's real or not, they're just trying to make themselves feel good. Good for them feeling good, but I don't want to argue about the truth with someone not interested in it.

The point is that any God people care about will make a difference to them, and hence to the world, however small that difference might be. The difference could even be indiscernible to all but the believer. — Janus

You seem to be confusing the effects of God existing with the effects of believing that God exists. Believing that God exists clearly has an observable effect on people, and consequently on the world. But that doesn't prove anything about whether those beliefs are correct or not. To know whether they're correct or not, we have to know what the implications on the observable world would be if he didn't exist compared to if he did. Then we could try to find observations contrary to those implications, and so falsify the claim that he doesn't exist.

If there are no implications one way or the other, then the belief in him is beyond questioning, and since we must question all beliefs if we care at all about figuring out what's true, we must reject all beliefs about such things that are not amenable to questioning.

Sure, and all that says more about you than anything else. — Janus

It says that so-called "religious experiences" are not evidence of God's existence.

The answers in math are provably right or wrong. There are no provabnly right or wrong answers in ethics, aesthetics, epistemology, or metaphysics, etc. — Janus

Then what are you here arguing about? If nobody's right or wrong, what do you care whether people say things you think are wrong? What's the point in convincing anyone otherwise?

In any case, it's just your opinion that there are no right or wrong answers in those fields, it's not even a broadly accepted opinion, and I think it's a provably wrong opinion.

Making a difference to a part of a thing makes a difference to that thing.

Individuals are part of the world.

Like I said, the principle is established in the Constitution — Harry Hindu

A principle is established in the Constitution, but other less formal principles are established through other means, including mere tradition, or self-consistency. If one group makes an argument that such-and-such is the right way to do things, when it's convenient for them, but then goes against the very thing they argued for when that would be inconvenient for them, they're violating their own claimed principles, even if they're not going against constitutional principles.

No. You're not. You are arguing for more of the same TWO-party system. Two-party = Black and White. No parties = No black or white — Harry Hindu

I am definitely not arguing for the same two-party system. I vote 3rd party whenever possible, including for president this year. I'm talking about the behaviors of the two parties that we currently have within the system that we currently have that makes a two-party system inevitable.

You do realize that political parties are not part of the formal framework of the US government at all, right? The constitution doesn't say anything about parties. George Washington warned against partisanship. The US is set up to be formally a no-party system. But people form parties anyway, and the only way to prevent that is to disallow freedom of association. In practice, "no-party" states are just single-party states.

And because of our first-past-the-post electoral method, it's statistically guaranteed that we will end up with two dominant parties. I don't think either of them are good. I just think one is clearly more bad than the other. And until we can somehow change things so third parties are actually practically viable, which we totally should do, it's only pragmatic to favor the one that's less bad over the one that's more bad.

If it weren't for, you know... all the dire practical consequences of Trump refusing to concede... I'd be eagerly looking forward to seeing him forcibly escorted from the White House on Jan 20th.

But, you know... there are all those dire consequences, so, I'd rather those go away than get to watch the amusing spectacle.

None of our models can ever be definitively shown to be accurate models of reality, or for that matter be shown not to be. — Janus

You got the first half right, but the second half wrong. It's trivially easy to show a model to be inaccurate.

So now you claim that it has been verified that there is not such a mass. — Janus

I'm sidestepping all the complex Quinean stuff about background theories ladening our observations, because you're having trouble understanding just the simple straightforward problems with confirmationism that don't depend on any of that.

Either there is not such a mass, or some much deeper and more subtle assumptions according to which we interpret our experiences are wrong. We've searched thoroughly for such a mass and found nothing, so either we're doing something subtly and fundamentally wrong with how we search for things in space, or there is no such mass and so NM is false.

That would mean, could only mean, that the GR idea of space being warped has been verified to be correct. — Janus

Something more like GR than NM has to be true, yes. Whatever the accurate model is, it has to agree with GR's predictions within that domain. That doesn't mean that GR specifically is completely accurate, and we actually know that it's not. But it's more accurate than NM in every domain, and so less wrong than NM; and if we hadn't already found problems with it, it could still have been possibly right, while NM is in any case definitely wrong.

In any case the fact that people can pretend things doesn't alter the fact that whether your wife loves you or not cannot be empirically demonstrated. The bit about her brain state being "observable in principle" is irrelevant, because that would require that a certain pattern of neural activity could be reliably verified to be equivalent to being in love. But you say no verification is possible. — Janus

If her love has any effect on the world at all, and isn't just some kind of epiphenomenon, then it will make an observable difference of some sort, from which we can in principle tell whether or not she's in love.

The lack of any causal effect on the world, and so the unobservableness of mental states in principle, is a primary argument against epiphenomenalism and the like.

You don't have to verify the correlation between being in love and observable neural states, you just need to be able to falsify the alternative. What would be the observable consequences of her not being in love? If those are not observed, then she is in love.

This is just a repeat of your same misunderstanding of what falsification is about. It's not at all about whether the thing being tested is phrased as a negation of something else or not. You can always rephrase something as just a different term that doesn't involve negation: "natural" and "artificial" can be taken as negations of each other, and either tested for without saying "not-" the other.

Whether there's a "not" in the proposition being tested is completely irrelevant. It's about whether you're deriving support for it from observing its expected consequences, or from observing things contrary to the expected consequences of its negation. Those aren't the same thing, in the same way that f(x) is not equivalent to ~f(~x), for whatever f() and x. In this case, f() is "the consequences of" and x is some theory. Observing the negation of the consequences of the negation of some theory is not just the same thing as observing the consequences of the theory.

I've already said that I think there cannot be any empirical evidence either confirming or dis-confirming the existence of God. It would help if you read more carefully. — Janus

Yes, and I'm just conceding that you can define what you mean by "God" that way, but lots of people define what they mean in different ways, and too often people are not consistent with which definition they use. They'll retreat to the "untestable" definition to protect themselves from having to change their beliefs, and then proceed to make decisions on the assumption of a God that actually intervenes in the world and so would be testable.

The latter is the only kind of God anyone would have any reason to care about the existence of anyway, since the former kind by definition would make no noticeable difference on the world whether he existed or not -- since if he did make a difference, that would be a way to test for his existence.

Exactly what I've been saying all along; that some beliefs are faith-based insofar as there cannot be any inter-subjectively corroborable evidence to confirm or dis-confirm them. Your preference for rejecting such beliefs is just that, and nothing more; your preference. — Janus

It is not just a preference, I have given an argument for it. Beliefs about transcendental things cannot be questioned, so if we must subject all beliefs to questioning then we cannot hold beliefs about those those. We must subject all beliefs to questioning if we care at all about the truth because not questioning beliefs is a surefire way to avoid making any progress toward the truth. We should care about the truth if we care about anything at all because all progress in every domain hinges on having correct beliefs and correct intentions, as all actions are guided by the difference between our beliefs and intentions. If you don't care about anything... well, I don't believe that you don't, but if you truly didn't, then I wouldn't care about your opinions, and there'd be no point continuing discussion.

(Of course I agree that such beliefs cannot be argued for or against because that would require inter-subjective corroboration of some sort; either empirical or logical; we probably agree about that much. But I also think that no one has the right to determine what should or should not reasonably motivate privately held beliefs, because you have no way of knowing what another has experienced). — Janus

If they have experienced something, then that is empirical evidence... for something. FWIW, I have frequently experienced the "religious experiences" some point to as evidence of God, and I remain an atheist, because supposing the existence of God is far from the best explanation for those experiences, and raises far more problems than it would solve even if it were.

Not a good example; in math there are determinably correct and incorrect answers. — Janus

You presume there are not in philosophy, ethics, etc? I have arguments why you should presume to the contrary, but I've already given them in previous threads and don't want to rehash that here. We've been over objectivism before just like we've been over empiricism before.

Not having convinced people that something has been determined to be correct is not the same thing as it not actually being correct. Look at all the people right here on this forum who disputed the determinably correct mathematical fact that 0.99... = 1.

Showing an inaccuracy does not falsify a theory. — Janus

It absolutely does. That's what falseness is: not being an accurate model of reality.

In the case we are discussing the inaccuracy was thought to be caused by some hidden planetary or asteroids — Janus

If NM was correct, we would expect there would be some previously unaccounted-for mass causing the unexpected motion of Mercury. So either there is such a mass, or NM is incorrect. There is not such a mass, so NM is incorrect.

Nonsense, she might act as though she loves you and yet not; or conversely act as though she doesn't love you even though she loves you. — Janus

In a colloquial sense, sure, people can pretend things. You're not arguing in good faith here anymore if you think I wasn't conceding that.

Notably, you ignored the bit about her brain state being empirically observable in principle.

Like I said, it depends on what you mean by "God". — Pfhorrest

No, it also depends on what you count as evidence and how you define omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence, and how you think an infinite eternal being would manifest those qualities (whether you think human understanding of those qualities is adequate). — Janus

That's all a part of that definition of God.

If you define God differently, sure, you can come up with something that's not falsified yet.

Or something that's not testable at all. Better be consistent with that definition though and not act as though anything is evidence of God acting on the world or something.

Even if we accept fro the sake of argument that it merely depends on what you mean by "God", the questions remains as to whether the existence of a transcendent God, however that is otherwise specified, can be confirmed or disconfirmed. — Janus

Any transcendent anything cannot be tested. It also has no effect whatsoever on anything in the world, because that is exactly what makes it transcendent and impossible to test. And that is all the reason to reject belief in any such things.

Right, so if we believe one philosophical idea rather than another it is merely a matter of faith then because it is believing without inter-subjectively corroborable evidence. — Janus

Math is not subject to empiricism either, but that doesn't mean all mathematical theorems are just taken on faith.

Not everything is a claim about reality, so not everything is tested against empirical experience, but every claim of any sort has some sort of truth-maker against which it is to be tested, philosophical and mathematical and ethical claims included.

It appears as though you are going to continue to simply assert this without giving any good examples of how it supposedly works. — Janus

It appears as though you are going to continue ignoring the plentiful examples I have given over and over again of the absurd implications that would follow if confirmationism were a sound method of inference.

Didn't you ragequit this thread already, yesterday?

Before you were unaware of a pattern in your observations. Steve pointed out a pattern. So far it holds up. You now have a belief where you had none before. Continuing to see the pattern doesn't give more reason to hold that belief than you already had just from noticing the pattern he pointed out in the first place.

Cases where it looks like confirmationism is working, like you keep giving, are cases where it’s falsification doing all the heavy lifting. — Pfhorrest

To do what though? — Srap Tasmaner

To differentiate the merits of different theories.

The cases where confirmation seems to work, the ones Janus has been giving at least, are cases where observations can show one of several competing theories false. The counter-cases I've provided where confirmationism is useless in comparing competing theories are all absurd because nobody would bother doing an observation that can't distinguish between them, but confirmationism as an account of science implies that those cases should nevertheless give support to the theories not being differentiated from each other.

Again, what about quantum mechanics and evolution? Neither body of theory is entirely satisfactory to much of anyone, but the fundamentals are the most confirmed scientific theories we have ever had, and that seems to matter to scientists an awful lot. — Srap Tasmaner

They are the least wrong theories in their respective fields we have. That they have known faults just means that there are some still-less-wrong theories we need to find. Until we find those alternatives, these theories, plus ad hoc exceptions as necessary to limit their application to domains outside those in which we know they fail, are the best we have to work with.

Nothing in any of that is against anything in my view.

GR does not "faslify" NM — Janus

This fundamentally misunderstands falsification. One theory does not falsify another. Observations falsify theories. And showing an inaccuracy of one is the same thing as falsification.

It is only evidence to those who believe that humans notions of omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence are sufficient to understand God.

And even if that were accepted, a transcendent God who did not possess such attributes could be believed in without fear of encountering any empirical evidence for or against its existence. — Janus

Like I said, it depends on what you mean by "God".

Lack of ability to empirically test a belief is not reason to reject the belief, unless you count empirical evidence as the only kind of evidence for a belief. — Janus

Yep. As established in my earlier thread on empirical realism, I think the whole of a thing’s reality is its empirical properties.

The belief that your wife loves you cannot be definitively empirically tested, because however she treats you, you can never be certain about her motivations or psychological pathologies. — Janus

Her behavior is evidence of her mental state; all empirical properties of everything are behaviors of some sort of another.

Even then, her brain state is in principle empirically observable, even if that’s impractical with today’s technology, leaving only gross motor behavior to go on.

Most philosophical ideas cannot be empirically tested. How would you test whether there is a Platonic realm of Forms, for example? — Janus

Most properly philosophical ideas (in today’s narrower sense excluding “natural philosophy”) are not beliefs about the facts of the world, but ideas about the framework through which to investigate things like (but not exclusively) the facts of the world. Since they’re not making claims about reality, empiricism is not relevant to them; which is good, because whether or not to use empiricism is one of those topics, and if it were to be settled empirically that would be circular.

Please supply a real world example. — Janus

There won’t be any reasonsble examples of real scientists doing things so obviously wrongly as to make clear to you what the problem is, because real scientists aren’t that stupid.

The point is that accounting for what real scientists do with confirmationism would suggest that absurd cases like this were perfectly fine, because they follow the same confirmationist form.

Cases where it looks like confirmationism is working, like you keep giving, are cases where it’s falsification doing all the heavy lifting. That nobody would even try a case that isn’t like that suggests that falsification more accurately models our intuitions, even though we intuitively say otherwise.

What does it mean to say it is not correct, though? What specific part of it is not correct, as opposed to merely not accurate enough? — Janus

To say it’s not correct is to say that some observations one would expect on account of it are contrary to the observations that are actively had.

For example, Mercury does not move in the way one would expect from NM.

Give me an example of the evidence you have in mind. — Janus

If what you mean by “God” involves being all knowing, all powerful, and all good, then the occurrence of evil is evidence against the existence of such a God.

Dismissing an argument as being merely semantics seems like a cop out. If you want to give new or eccentric meanings to terms you should be able to support their use. — Janus

Give me a better word to use for the refusal to question an opinion, then; something that contrasts it with being open to an opinion not yet proven. I think those are both different sense of “faith”, and I could think of an alternative name for the former but not the latter. I did also consider “dogmatism” over “fideism” once, but the principle I’m naming is not only applicable to beliefs but also intentions, and “dogma” etymologically refers to beliefs specific.

I’m always open to new words, and frustrated with some of the word choices I’ve had to make already, so better alternatives are welcome.

But to say they believe against the evidence is a step too far, given that what is believed is not subject to empirical verification or falsification. — Janus

If what they say is not subject to empirical testing, then that is on itself a reason to reject the belief, because that makes it unquestionable in principle, and all beliefs must be questionable in principle.

But also, lots of people believe in a God that is subject to empirical tests, since their concept of God is supposed to actually have some noticeable impact on the world.

This is as clear as mud. Please give an example. — Janus

We went over many examples before.

If the Face On Mars was artificial, we would expect it to be made of baryons.

It is made of baryons.

Therefore it’s artificial?


Or:

If it was natural, we would expect it to be made of baryons.

It is made of baryons.

Therefore it’s natural?


No, because it would be made of baryons whether it was natural or artificial. That’s not a prediction that rules any possibility out, and it can’t confirm every contrary thing that it doesn’t rule out, so it confirms nothing.


But if it was artificial, we would expect to find tool marks.

We do not find tool marks.

Therefore it is not artificial.

“Not artificial” = “natural”.

Therefore it is natural.

Or is it the same because we are always relying on some theory without adequate justification? — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, that's what I meant. ("Theory" and "belief" are being used as rough synonyms here, along with "model" or "hypothesis"). Only a (wholly impracticable) completely non-theoretical approach relying on nothing but the aggregate of our particular experiences, without extrapolating at all, would not be sticking our necks out like that, and nobody does or in practice can do that, and it would be horrendously inefficient to do so even if we could. It's entirely pragmatic to trade the risk of error for the ease of theory.

Here's a challenging question for your position: what exactly do you think it was about NM that was falsified by GR? — Janus

The whole picture of NM. Which is not to say every piece of the picture, but the conjunction of all of the pieces together. (The negation of a conjunction is not the negation of every conjunct, only of some of the conjuncts).

That NM is still good enough for some purposes is besides the point. We know for sure that NM is not completely correct.

(We also already know for sure that GR and QM are not completely correct, but they are still less wrong than NM, and we don't yet know what in turn is less wrong than them).

I think people cannot believe something contrary to evidence that they accept as such. — Janus

The bold part is important. Finding reasons to reject that some observation is evidence to the contrary of a belief is exactly the behavior that someone clinging to that belief in the face of evidence would do. (Yes, it's also something that's sometimes done by people who aren't doing that, and we can't know for certain based just on that behavior whether they are doing it or not; only the person doing it themselves can know, if even they do. As already gone over extensively with Isaac in this thread).

there is no evidence that God doesn't exist — Janus

Depending on what you mean by "God", there is, or sometimes it's not the kind of thing held susceptible to evidence at all, and so must be rejected on those grounds.

faith is belief in the absence of evidence, not belief against evidence — Janus

This is a semantics game again. I specify two different terms, "liberalism" and "fideism", exactly to avoid playing this semantics game. I'm not against believing in the absence of evidence, I am against believing against evidence. Call those whatever you like, names don't matter except for convenience.

The problem with your view is that on the basis of its logic there can be no evidence for anything, only evidence against. What you fail to see is that if there cannot be evidence for anything, then there cannot be evidence against anything either; they are two sides of the one inductive coin. — Janus

Repeating this over and over again despite my repeated refutations isn't going to make it true.

It's possible to prove something true by falsifying the predictions of it's negation. It's not possible to prove something true by confirming its own predictions. Different kinds of proof, not different kinds of statements. That is the important distinction. And neither of those is "induction"; that's something else entirely, that comes well before the stage of testing like that.

No, the value of a theory is mostly in its explanatory framework, the way it allows us to abstract patterns in many many observations into simple easy-to-use rules. Like I said earlier, we could (in principle, but not in practice) just keep an unorganized list of all our observations as our "theory" and never worry about it ever being falsified, but that wouldn't be useful. Theories give us something much more useful to work with than that, but at increased risk of epistemic error.

There's two things that seem to be getting conflated here: one of them is what makes a theory useful, and another is what makes observations useful. Theories are useful for the reasons stated above. Observations are useful for telling us which theories are wrong and which are maybe not wrong. In adopting theories instead of just keeping unorganized lists of observations, we save effort, but at the cost of sticking our necks out and make assumptions without adequate justification, which could therefore be wrong. In making observations targeted at checking where they might be wrong, we make sure that our theories are not wrong in at least that respect, and so are safe to use at least in that domain.

That theory is useful in guiding what observations to make doesn't change that the usefulness of the observations in turn is in differentiating which possibilities they rule out and which they don't. Theory guides observation by giving us a target of something to try to rule out.

One reason to bother with theory is to know what kinds of observations there are, which should count as the same kind of thing -- so not really adding constraints, or not much -- and which are genuinely different, and especially which would be surprising. — Srap Tasmaner

Sure, I agree with that, and I’m not at all advocating that we go without theory in any way.

I agree that finding a theory to continue passing potential falsifications is a surprising thing — like “wow this is working out surprisingly well, good guess Einstein!” — and the more observations we have made, even if they haven’t falsified the actual theories we have, the more progress we’ve made, on account of the ranges of potential theories we’ve eliminated, the restrictions on remaining theories we’ve placed.

It’s something like the relativity of wrong, if you’re familiarity with that. Newtonian physics is wrong, but it’s not AS wrong as Aristotelian physics. I picture concentric rings, or like topographic lines, centered on whatever the complete truth is, where we draw a new innermost ring with every observation, and the further out in the rings a theory is, the “more wrong” it is. As we keep drawing more and more rings, and a theory continues to still be within the innermost ring, it is “elevated” RELATIVE to the others in the outer rings, even those we never enumerated in the now-outer rings.

But the thrust of falsificationism in this metaphor is that that relative elevation is in fact due to each new ring lowering the possibilities outside of it: the things still remaining within the inside ring merely retain their initial elevation. But that doesn’t mean no progress has been made, because the progress is in the drawing of the rings (and so weeding out the possibilities outside of them), not in actually elevating the things in the middle.

The Dems made the exact same argument when Trump had a vacancy to fill. The only difference was that the Reps had control of the Senate. — Harry Hindu

The difference is that the Reps had already established a principle about “too close to the election” that had denied the Dems their rightful appointment, so the Reps then denying their own principle was a naked power grab.

You have to consider the two events together. If the Dems had been that hypocritical I would be just as critical of them, but I really don’t think they would have been, since Dems are all about the process and civility and compromise even when the Reps are making naked power grabs in response. (That’s a criticism of the Dems there, BTW; I think that’s a weakness, you don’t respond to cheaters by playing extra fair yourself).

The only problem is that I'm not a nihilist nor do I adopt fideism — Harry Hindu

I put those terms in scare quotes for a reason. “They’re all equally bad” applied to opinions generally rather than political parties is the “nihilism” I’m against, and “mine is right because it just is” applied to opinions generally rather than political parties is the “fideism” I’m against. I realized that the argument I’m making against you is formally analogous to the usual argument against nihilism, just regarding political parties rather than opinions generally.

Your problem is that you think there are only two choices. Those that can only think in black and white terms are the lazy thinkers. — Harry Hindu

I’m explicitly arguing AGAINST black and white thinking here. You act like the only alternative to naked partisanship is “they’re all equally bad”. That’s thinking the only alternative to white is black. I’m arguing that that’s not the case, that there are shades of grey between partisanship and “they’re all equally bad”, that you can recognize the faults of both parties and still see that one has more faults than the other. To deny that is lazy black-and-white thinking.

agree with that, and that's perfectly fine in principle, but how rare are such cases; where two scientific theories predict exactly the same things? Can you think of a single example — Janus

They never predict all of the exact same things (else they would be exactly equivalent, different formulations of the same thing), but there is usually significant overlap. GR, QM, and Newtonian physics all agree about their predictions on the medium scale we humans are accustomed to. So pointing at a ballistic missile flying as Newton would predict isn't evidence in favor of Newton vs GR, because GR also makes that same prediction. To decide between them, you have to pick a prediction that they disagree on; and then you've ruled out whichever one loses, but not supported the remaining one in any way against any other theories that also make that same winning prediction.

And I've said it is the comprehensive and cohesive knowledge that is based on inductive thinking, assumptions, investigations and analyses that enables a choice between competing hypotheses — Janus

It's the investigations and analyses that do the heavy lifting there. Inductive thinking and assumptions give you your competing hypotheses. Analysis of those gives you the expected observations. Investigation, i.e. empirical observation, compared against those expectations tells us which hypotheses we can keep and which we have to throw away. But it's the "throwing away" part that makes progress: we can no better tell between any of the "keepers" based on investigations that let us keep them, all we can tell is whether they're okay to keep or whether they must be thrown away.

Firstly I did not say that we would see the same X in case they were geological and in case they were artificial, so your first part here is irrelevant. — Janus

I'm not saying you said that, I'm pointing that out as the problematic scenario that demonstrates why confirmationism doesn't work. If the predictions do not falsify one of the possibilities, then seeing those predictions pan out tells us nothing, it doesn't distinguish between alternative possibilities. It doesn't matter if you see what your theory predicted, unless other theories predicted otherwise; it's the falsification of them that tells us something. Seeing something your theory predicted can't distinguish between that theory and any other theory that would also predict the same thing, and so tells us nothing.

I haven't said that there are other alternatives in this case — Janus

You said 'Geological means not merely "not artificial".' That implies that you think there could be something not geological, without being artificial; or something not artificial, without being geological; i.e. there's (at least) a third option.

I have said that scientists generally think inductively, and that this way of thinking and the hypotheses it generates have worked to develop the body of knowledge we call science — Janus

And I've said that induction is perfectly fine as a way of generating hypotheses, but it doesn't help us pick between competing hypotheses. The latter is where science differs from guessing and intuition.

Anyway it has become obvious to me that you are heavily invested in your own ideas, regardless of the fact that I and others have shown them to be either trivially true (in the deductive context) or mistakenly applied (in the inductive context) so if you don't produce any new arguments I am going to leave you to it. — Janus

Fine with me, I'm tired of repeatedly trying to get through to people who are saying things I already agree with as though they contradict me and then ignoring the actual arguments to the contrary of their other assumptions. I'm eager to let this thread die and move on to something different.

I think it's a normal (both as in common and as in correct) process for understanding to become more "fossilized" over time, at least in one sense, as that's an inevitable consequence of education and experience.

While I think the product of such education and experience should always be understood to be a work in progress, always open to question and revision, it should still in time become more and more hardened such that questions to which it does not already have answers become more and more difficult to find, and so large revisions to it become more and more difficult to make.

Learning is all about narrowing down the available options about what might be true and what might be good, reducing the range of what is thought to be possible and permissible. When we are completely ignorant early in life, so far as we have any reason to think, life is full of almost limitless possibilities and almost anything is okay. But as we learn more and more, we discover that more and more things either can't be or shouldn't be, and the intersection of things that both can and should be gets smaller and smaller.

That's different, though, from saying people should give up on exploring the options, just because they probably won't make any progress that hasn't already been made by someone else before; or worse still, that there's something wrong with a person who would dare even try that.

Just like the Supreme Court vacancy fiascos at the end if the Obama and Trump administrations where the Reps and Dems reversed roles, one claiming we should wait until after the election while the other said that the president gets to select a new judge. — Harry Hindu

The problem with the SC vacancies issue is hypocrisy on the part of the Republicans. Normal procedure was that when a justice dies the president appoints a new one modulo Senate confirmation. With the late vacancy under Obama the Republican-controlled Senate flatly refused to even consider any confirmation, on the grounds that it was "too close to the election". It was bad enough to break with normal procedure to do that, but with that new precedent established, they should then have done the same with the late vacancy under Trump, and Democrats calling for them to stick to the new procedure that the Republicans just established four years earlier is not hypocritical with the Democrats' earlier opposition to establishing that new procedure. Both times, the Democrats were saying "don't break established procedure just to benefit yourselves". But the Republicans did break the procedure, once in one direction and then later in the opposite direction, contradicting their own earlier arguments, for their own benefits. THAT is hypocrisy.

I'm not going to defend the Democrats as any kind of paragons of virtue, both parties are FUBAR, but that doesn't mean they're both equally bad. "They're all equally bad, there is no difference" is just a lazy way of avoiding having to figure out which is better or worse, every bit as lazy as "my position is right because it just is because it's mine now shut up you're a bad wrong person".

(Hey look, it's my principles against "nihilism" and "fideism" showing up in an unexpected place, again).

You're a more experienced musician than me, so I shouldn't have to remind you that this mindset is the antithesis to the creative urge itself. Do you think Pink Floyd started the recording sessions for Dark Side thinking "we have to make a record that's better than Abbey Road"? — Noble Dust

I've felt very discouraged in a similar vein to this from people on this forum regarding the creation of philosophy, not music. Like an attitude of "how dare you be so arrogant to think you could ever possibly come up with anything better than what others have already come up with before you." Okay, so I guess everybody ought to just give up at everything forever starting yesterday, because the odds of anyone ever improving on anything are so low, and it's unforgivable arrogance to even act like it might be possible, by trying.

The vast bulk of science based on thinking that way is (for all intents and purposes, although not absolutely of course) settled though, so I can't see the point of your objection. — Janus

It has been settled by falsificationist methods: the alternatives have been shown false or at least much less likely or less parsimonious. Things are settled by showing the faults of their alternatives. That is “the scientific method” inasmuch as there is such a thing. You keep claiming otherwise and I’m hesitating to engage with that because it’s beside the philosophical point what people do actually do — they could still be wrong even if it’s the popular way — but in matter of fact science is not done confirmationally and hasn’t been for a long time, since the problems with that were first pointed out.

In the inductive terms of science "if these were geological we would see X, we see X, therefore they are geological" is not fallacious at all — Janus

If they were geological we would see X.

If they were artificial we would see X.

We see X.

Therefore... nothing. We’ve learned nothing.


To learn anything it needs to be:

If they were geological we would see X.

If they were artificial we would see not-X.

We see X.

Therefore they are not artificial.

Therefore if the only alternative to artificial is geological (which you’ve just denied) then we can conclude they are geological;

Else, we only know they’re not artificial somehow or another, not necessarily geological.

the point is that scientists routinely do think that way, and the justification is that it works, has worked, to produce the comprehensive and (mostly) coherent body of knowledge we call 'science'. I don't know how many times I (and others) will have to try to make this clear before you finally get it. — Janus

Nobody here is denying science. I am (and many others, in actual publications, not here on this forum, are) denying that science works the way you say it works. I don’t know how many time I will have to try to make this clear before you finally get it.

Beliefs are not propositions. Beliefs are states of mind equivalent to a tendency to act as if... — Isaac

This is a purely semantic disagreement that has no bearing on the substance of anything.

(I'm curious, since you're a working psychologist, do you differentiate between sensations, perceptions, and beliefs? I learned of the sensation-perception distinction that I employ in my philosophy from psychology classes, and it sounds like the sense of "belief" you're using is more or less what I would term a "perception" instead, so I wonder if and how you differentiate "belief" from "perception", presuming you also differentiate "perception" from "sensation" as my old psych textbooks said to do).

it's like telling people that they ought to breathe. — Isaac

It's like arguing against arguments that you ought not breath, or claims by people that they don't breath, on the grounds of the clear trouble you'd get into if you didn't, and that no matter how much you may try not to, you're going to end up doing it anyway, or else dying, so stop saying that you don't or telling other people not to. Instead, embrace the fact that you can't help but breath (or else die), and focus on doing it as well as possible.

both of these scales contain subjective judgements — Isaac

Repeatedly asserting that doesn't make it so.

I find it to be foundationalist. It appears to cement each 'foundation' and then move on — Isaac

Foundationalism isn't just any deduction from prior premises, it's only holding some premises to be immune to questioning. But I start off with questioning certain possible premises, finding them to inevitably lead to problems, and then further exploring the area of possibilities remaining once those are excluded. Possibilities that fall into the area already excluded are not live possibilities anymore, and the simple fact that that area has already been excluded doesn't mean that the possibility of them is not open to question.

(ETA: I just wrote something relevant to this in a different thread:

...end ETA.)

properly their consequeses should no less be considered reasons to reject/alter the prior conclusions — Isaac

Later consequences can be considered reasons to modify prior assumptions made within the realm of remaining possibilities, but they cannot be reasons to say that previous reasons to exclude certain possibilities are not good reasons anymore. The old reasons that lead to the exclusion of those possibilities and the new reasons from the new problems found have to be considered in tandem to narrow down the range of remaining possibilities; neither old nor new reasons can justify breaking back out into a range previously excluded by the other.

Right. So how do resolve Van Inwagen's position about possibilities which are 'for sure wrong'? — Isaac

You'll have to clarify this, because I think I've already answered this question, and if you don't think I have I don't know what you're still asking.

Are you suggesting that 'absurd' is some kind of objective measurement? — Isaac

In the general use of the word, no, but in the technical sense used in a reductio argument, yes.

confirmatory evidence just obviously does matter — Srap Tasmaner

"I'm just obviously right" is not an argument. I don't doubt that many people act like it matters. But there's good reason to think that it doesn't, once you actually think about why it would or wouldn't.

Have you considered following the Quantitative Way? (LessWrong, SlateStarCodex, Overcoming Bias, et al.) — Srap Tasmaner

From my exposure to them, they're all about Bayes Theorem, which I mention in the OP as being continuous with my own approach:

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

It kinda seems like a lot of the nominal disagreement with me maybe stems from missing things like this that were right there in the OP, to instead attack some preexisting straw concept of falsificationism that I don't adhere to.

we are induced to think that belief in the invariances that we unfailingly observe is justified by lack of any observed counterexamples — Janus

That sounds like you're saying we in fact tend to think that way, which I'm not disputing. I'm disputing that there is any reason why we ought to think that way rather than otherwise; anything that says that way is the right way to think.

Also, again, it doesn't settle anything between people who both think that way but come to different conclusions that way. You see one pattern, someone else sees a different pattern in the same data, and then you see something new that fits your pattern... but if it also fits their pattern, we've learned nothing new. You need to see something that doesn't fit at least one of the patterns to judge between them.

the falsification of the belief that the features are artificial just is the confirmation that they are geological — Janus

Since he seems to be using "geological" just to mean "not artificial", then sure. But that conclusion was not reached by the confirmationist process: it was not "if these were geological we would see X, we see X, therefore they are geological", which would be wholly fallacious. It was "if these were non-geological (artificial), we would see Y, we don't see Y but instead X, therefore these are not non-geological, or in other words they are geological (non-artificial)". It's the difference between those two processes that's the point here.

On the basis of past experience and the knowledge accumulated therefrom, of course; in other words from inductive investigation and analysis. This is the way (or one of the main ways) that science works, and no amount of armchair philosophizing will change that. — Janus

Nobody here is disputing that past experiences matter or that we accumulate knowledge from them, or advocating "armchair philosophizing" in place of empiricism. The issue at question is the process by which experiences are applied to our beliefs to develop knowledge. My position is that experiences that agree with your beliefs do not elevate them over any alternatives, unless those experiences are also counter to the alternatives, because it's only experiences that go counter to some beliefs that elevate the alternatives over them.

I agree that only non-categorical statements can be verified by observation — Janus

I’m not talking about categorical or not, nor about particular atomic statement at all. I’m talking about how experiences in agreement with your (entire set of) beliefs don’t give justification to your beliefs over others, they don’t tell you anything about the relative merits of your beliefs compared to the alternatives; unlike how experiences counter to your beliefs give you justification for discarding your beliefs in favor of others.

But now that you mention non-categorical beliefs, there is an asymmetry there: you can never finish falsifying (at least empirically) a non-categorical belief, because the negation of “there are some
black swans” is “there are no black swans” and you can never be sure that you just haven’t seen whatever black swans there are YET.

They saw verification as provisional. — Janus

But there is no rational reason to think that the truth of the consequent of an implication gives even weak support to the antecedent. It’s not just less than certainly, it’s nothing at all.

Likewise, when predictions fail to be observed this does not logically disprove an hypothesis; there may always be other unknown factors in play. — Janus

This is only if you’re talking about one atomic statement, which we already went over extensively in this thread is not what we’re talking above. Falsification is falsification of the entire set of beliefs, and in that sense it is certain disproof, because you still have to change something about your beliefs or another.

When predicted results are observed, all that is verified is that we might be onto something — Janus

But we already might have been onto something, so nothing new is learned.

when predicted results are not observed all that is verified is that we might not be onto something. — Janus

No, rather, they we are definitely off track, somewhere or another, even if it's not perfectly clear where.

We all start with basic assumptions taken to be self-evident — Janus

That's just asserting foundationalism, and so begging the question.

Your argument against fideism and nihilism; your assumption that they must lead to problems, is just such an assumption — Janus

It is not an assumption, its an inference. You're familiar with reductio ad absurdum, no? You start with the hypothetical assumption of some premises, derive an absurdity from them, and conclude the actual rejection of those premises. That's what I do to both fideism and nihilism, and then proceed from their negations.

If, as I suspect, your problem with those is that they either believe without evidence (fideism) — Janus

That's not fideism, that's merely what I call "liberalism". Fideism is believing against evidence, flatly rejecting the possibility that some particular part of your beliefs could be wrong, and so rearranging the rest of your beliefs however possible to excuse away evidence against those protected parts.

or deny all evidence (nihilism) — Janus

That's not nihilism. I'm not sure exactly what you mean there. The counterpart to fideism in epistemology is what I call "cynicism", which I reject because it leads to nihilism (which is an ontological position, with a counterpart I call "transcendentalism", which in turn leads to fideism), which is basically an overzealous skepticism, saying "prove it or lose it" to every belief, including those offered in proof of those ones, and those offered in proof of those in turn, ad infinitum, resulting in the demand that you reject all beliefs, forever, i.e. nihilism.

I find that people generally tend to follow that as well, but only until it becomes inconvenient for them, and they often switch to the alternatives when it comes to what standards they hold other people to. E.g. it's not uncommon to insist that someone else prove their beliefs or else reject them (cynicism), or to hold one's own beliefs as beyond question when someone else challenges them (fideism), which is different from posing challenges to someone else's beliefs (which is merely criticism, not cynicism), or holding one's own beliefs without first proving them (which is merely liberalism, not fideism).

A blank space on the page, not saying anything at all, isn't the same thing as denying everything that could possibly be written in there. The default truth-value of a proposition isn't false, but null. If it were false, then we would start out with an enormous mess of contradictions, because every proposition and its negation would be false: e.g. "God exists" would be false, and "God doesn't exist" would also be false.

If you want a visual analogy like that, you can take your blank page, and write all propositions that are true in green ink, and all propositions that are false in red ink. Since every proposition has a negation, for anything you write in green you'd also have to write its negation in red, and vice versa everything you write in red you'd have to write its negation in green. Erasing a green proposition isn't the same thing as writing a red one.

discouragement of egregious (if not just blatant) behavior that is destructive to others — Outlander

Which should be proportional to that destruction, no?

So if you do something destructive to others that's easily fixed, even if only because of modern technology, then having to do or pay someone else to do that easy fix is discouragement proportional to the destruction.

You're suggestion that the ease of fixing something with modern technology means restitution is infeasible suggests that you think that such restitution "isn't punishment enough". But if the destruction caused is so easily fixed, then having to do the easy fix should be punishment enough. Looking for more punishment beyond that is just retributive.

Meanwhile if you do something destructive that is not easily fixed, or even unfixable (like murder), then you're going to have to do a lot more to make up for it, perhaps indefinitely more if it can't be made up for.

If the prospect of that makes you give no fucks and just do whatever regardless of the harm to others, then you've put yourself in the same category as anyone else who is like that for any reason, and need to be locked up for others' safety until that changes.

If instead you would rather (and are able to) live freely in polite society still, and just owe an unlimited debt for your crime, then that's an option too.

TBH I do pragmatically think that the debt owed even for murder should be finite, but then we're tasked with calculating the value of a human life, and I don't know how to begin approaching that project.

I agree with all of that already, the comment of mine you're responding to was just a narrow response to Bookworm's conundrum in a scenario where we didn't do that.

As I said above, I don’t actually support retributive punishments at all, but if it’s a question as to which is worse for the criminals, just let them decide.

My point about restitution is that if machines really can fix things that cheaply, then the severity of the crime itself is diminished, so the punishment SHOULD be less. The point isn’t to make the criminal work hard as retribution, it’s just to make things right for the victim.

If the harm isn’t reparable, then the restitution the criminal owes is unlimited, and they’ll be paying for it the rest of their lives, even if what they can pay is a trivial amount.

And if they’re still an active harm to others, then as I said above already, that’s a reason to keep them
locked up.

But just retribution isn’t.

Which is 'worse' for the prisoner? — The Questioning Bookworm

(Aside from the problems with retributive justice in general...) Make it optional and let them decide? Stay in this cage for 5 years or get flogged and leave immediately, your call. You're free to leave so long as you go through the flogging (and the amount of flogging decreases with time serves, until there's none after it's all been served).

You can't "restitute" that today seeing as all they'd be good for is physical labor and you have machines that can do the work of 50 men at 2 cents an hour for current without any chance of hostility/subversion/laziness/purposely not working. — Outlander

It it takes machines 2 cents to restore the damage caused by a crime, then fine the criminal 2 cents and pay the machine-owners to do the restitution.

When restitution becomes easier thanks to technology, the damage done by the crime is proportionally less serious, because it's easily fixed, so it costing the perpetrator less in restitution is perfectly reasonable.

Punishment in general should only be preventative and restorative, never retributive. Hurting someone (including locking them away as a kind of hurting them) just to get back at them for hurting someone else is pointless and ethically unjustifiable.

If they need to be locked up (or in any other way acted upon) to prevent them from causing harm to others, then to the extent that's necessary it's justifiable, and beyond that is unjustifiable.

After they have harmed others, they can be forced to make restitution to the others, either by doing whatever it necessary to make it right themselves if they can and will, or by taking property from them to pay others to make it right. If it can never be made right, like a murder, then taking property from them forever is appropriate.

Obviously the very notion of victimless crimes violates these principles horribly, and others can probably supply the statistics (if they haven't already upthread) that in America at least, and probably many other places too, most people get locked up for victimless crimes.

There is a clear motive for the ruling class to support the status quo, because you can't rule people except when they break the law, and in the US, you literally can't legally enslave people unless they break the law, in which case it's then perfectly fine, go right ahead! Is it any surprise that those we lock up and permit the enslavement of are disproportionately the same class of people who were previously just enslaved without any such prerequisite?