How and why does one go about believing unfalsifiable claims?

Thorongil

All non-scientific claims are by most definitions unfalsifiable, which therefore includes all the claims made by philosophers. One might say that the presence of a logical fallacy might constitute a philosophical claim being falsified, but how often does one find clear cut examples thereof? And one man's logical fallacy is another man's misinterpretation of his position.

One might, on the basis of this fact, conclude something similar to what the logical positivists did and claim that all unfalsifiable claims are at best meaningless. The trouble with this position is that it appears self-refuting. The claim that all unfalsifiable claims are meaningless cannot itself be falsified. Thus, all the logical positivist has done is demonstrated the incoherence of his own position.

Alternatively, one might conclude that believing in unfalsifiable claims is a matter of probability. One can never know for certain whether the unfalsifiable claims one believes in are true, but one can be reasonably confident that they are. The problem here is that this seems to beg the question. Whence the reasonable confidence? On what basis can one know that said claims are more probably true than not unless one knows the truth beforehand?

As a third option, one might wish to pull the rug out from under the original claim that only non-scientific claims are unfalsifiable. The fact that a scientific hypothesis can be confirmed through experiment need not entail that the hypothesis is true. On the other hand, perhaps this isn't required for assent to the alleged truth of the hypothesis, which would be merely provisional. Unfalsifiable claims might similarly be accepted provisionally, in the absence of their being shown to be fallacious.

But why believe something even provisionally? The last response might be a kind of skeptical quietism of the Wittgensteinian variety: whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent. But this dictum would, in practice, require us to be mutes our whole lives. Not even Wittgenstein lived up to it.

I myself lean toward the third option. The self-refuting nature of logical positivism is such that there must truth out there to find, and not merely by scientific means. There is no harm in believing as true claims that one technically accepts in a provisional manner. Mere disagreement with the claims doesn't render them false, so the person who merely disagrees can be safely ignored. If the claims can be shown to be fallacious or empirically falsified, then their acceptance is no longer required. If two people believe mutually incompatible claims which appear to have roughly the same weight of reason and evidence behind them, then there may be pragmatic reasons to accept one and not the other that will depend on the character of the individual. Here a leap of faith may occur of the kind Pascal, Kierkegaard, and James speak of.

Deleted User

Is it possible to know something with absolute certainty? It seems more likely that all things are mere possibilities due to the fact that often our own senses and reasoning possess faults and cannot be depended on entirely.

Michael Ossipoff

↪Thorongil

Who knows? But, for whatever reason, the unfalsifiable proposition known as Materialism is very popular here.

Michael Ossipoff

TheMadFool

↪Thorongil

Very interesting. Thanks for the post.

Truths can't be falsified but lies can/must be falsified.

Consider a belief x. In the beginning we don't know if it's true or false.

Proving x may be possible. Is this enough? Of course if we make the right moves (logic and premises) we can be sure of x. Is it necessary to be able to prove it false? No.

However, the above situation is an ideal one. Everything about an argument that proves x must be perfect in a logical sense.

This is far from what the actual reality is. Our knowledge of the external world is based on competing hypotheses. The situation becomes confusing as sometimes some or all hypotheses can fit with the data. Said otherwise, we can prove hypotheses x, y, or z are all true.

So, we need a different tool in our bag - the ability to disprove. Falsifiability!

jkg20

↪Thorongil

As a third option, one might wish to pull the rug out from under the original claim that only non-scientific claims are unfalsifiable. The fact that a scientific hypothesis can be confirmed through experiment need not entail that the hypothesis is true. On the other hand, perhaps this isn't required for assent to the alleged truth of the hypothesis, which would be merely provisional. Unfalsifiable claims might similarly be accepted provisionally, in the absence of their being shown to be fallacious.

I'm not clear what this third option is. If by "pulling the rug out from under" you mean something like "negate", the negation of the claim "Only non-scientific claims are unfalsifiable" would be "there exists at least one scientific claim that is unfalsifiable". But what would a scientific claim that is unfalsifiable look like? An example might help me understand. A scientific hypothesis that has been confirmed is not an unfalsifiable claim, since it remains possible that some future experiment will disconfirm it. Perhaps "pull the rug out from under" means something different?

The logical positivists, by the way, had a more sophisticated notion of meaning than just simply "if it's not falsifiable it's not meaningful" - I'm not a logical positivist by any means, but it seems a little unfair to condemn a whole philosophical movement on the basis of a strawman.

Harry Hindu

↪Thorongil

What other means is there for seeking truth if not logic and reason? If there is no way to prove what you believe, then why believe in it at all? Should it not simply be a placeholder where other beliefs with the same amount of evidence hold the same amount of weight? Believing in unfalsifiable claims is just a personal preference of one claim over another when both have the same amount of evidence to support them - none.

This is why I work from the bottom-up -of not believing in things that simply do not have any evidence to support them and then when evidence arises, belief is a bit more reasonable. The simplest explanations are the better explanations. Explanations that do not make other unfalsifiable claims in order support them are better explanations.

Harry Hindu

Who knows? But, for whatever reason, the unfalsifiable proposition known as Materialism is very popular here — Michael Ossipoff

Actually both materialism and idealism have both been falsified. The fact that the material interacts with the mental, and vice versa, is falsifiable evidence that the universe is neither one or the other, but something else entirely.

jkg20

↪Harry Hindu

What kind of idealism are you talking about and who falsified it? Your example begs the question against at least one form of idealism that I'm aware of (the empirical idealism of Berkeley) rather than prove that it is false.

Thorongil

Who knows? But, for whatever reason, the unfalsifiable proposition known as Materialism is very popular here. — Michael Ossipoff

Is it? I seem to recall a poll on that, but I've forgotten the results. It wouldn't surprise me, as materialism is the default metaphysical position of modernity.

Thorongil

If by "pulling the rug out from under" you mean something like "negate", the negation of the claim "Only non-scientific claims are unfalsifiable" would be "there exists at least one scientific claim that is unfalsifiable". — jkg20

No, the negation is to the obverse of the original claim, which is that scientific claims are falsifiable. So I am negating that claim by saying that perhaps scientific claims are unfalsifiable just like everything else.

I'm not a logical positivist by any means, but it seems a little unfair to condemn a whole philosophical movement on the basis of a strawman. — jkg20

You haven't shown that I have committed any straw man. I explicitly said I was speaking about "something similar" to what the logical positivists said, so, with great irony, you have created a straw man of my position.

Michael Ossipoff

Actually both materialism and idealism have both been falsified. The fact that the material interacts with the mental, and vice versa, is falsifiable evidence that the universe is neither one or the other, but something else entirely. — Harry Hindu

...according to an unverifiable and unfalsifiable belief called "Dualism".

The metaphysics that I've proposed here (an Idealism) makes no assumptions, posits no brute-facts, and says nothing that anyone would disagree with.

There are abstract if-then facts. ...where "are" is used in the weak sense that such facts can be stated, with no claim made about their "reality" or "existence", whatever that would mean.

I've spoken of complex systems of inter-referring abstract if-then facts, and pointed out the uncontroversial fact that there's inevitably one such system whose events and relations are those of your experience. ...again, with no claim about the "realty" or "existence" of that system.

There's no reason to believe that your experience, and the world in which it is set, are other than that abstract logical system of abstract if-then facts.

What I've suggested is unfalsifiable? Well, it would be falsified if you could show that one of my statements about it is false or leads to a contradiction.

I'll remind you that an if-then fact can be true without its premise being true. There's no particular reason to believe that the premises of the abstract if-then facts that I speak of aren't all false.

When we criticize propositions for unfalsifiability, there's an implication that they're unverifiable too.

What does it take to verify my claims? I claim nothing other than that there are abstract if-then facts, in the sense that they're statable.

Michael Ossipoff

jkg20

↪Thorongil

One might, on the basis of this fact, conclude something similar to what the logical positivists did and claim that all unfalsifiable claims are at best meaningless. The trouble with this position is that it appears self-refuting. The claim that all unfalsifiable claims are meaningless cannot itself be falsified. Thus, all the logical positivist has done is demonstrated the incoherence of his own position.

Read the last sentence, looks to me like you are making a claim about the logical positivists being self-refuting on the basis that they equate falsifiability with meaningfulness.
1) Logical positivists were verificationists, not falsificationalists.
2) Sophisticated logical positivists made room in their theories for non-verifiable claims to play a role in discourse, and hence have meaning.
3) Karl Popper introduced the "falsifiability" vocabularly, but not to demarcate meangingfulness from non-meaningfulness, but to demarcate the scientific from the non-scientific.

Janus

One might, on the basis of this fact, conclude something similar to what the logical positivists did and claim that all unfalsifiable claims are at best meaningless. — Thorongil

Is there an actual argument for the claim that all unfalsifiable claims are meaningless, as opposed to being merely...well, unfalsifiable? Do we need to characterize unfalsifiable conjectures or statements as "claims" at all, or is that not tendentious?

Actually, the Logical Positivists' claim was that unverifiable hypotheses are meaningless. It was Popper who introduced the inverse notion to 'verifiability': 'falsifiability'. As far as I know Popper did not assert that unfalsifiable hypotheses are meaningless, merely that they could not be counted as scientific hypotheses.

The claim that all unfalsifiable claims are meaningless cannot itself be falsified. — Thorongil

And the claim that the claim that all unfalsifiable claims are meaningless cannot itself be falsified. And the claim that the claim that the claim....it must be unfalsifiable claims all the way down...or up! The same goes for verifiability.

On what basis can one know that said claims are more probably true than not unless one knows the truth beforehand? — Thorongil

On the basis of consistency and coherency with experience, perhaps?

As a third option, one might wish to pull the rug out from under the original claim that only non-scientific claims are unfalsifiable. The fact that a scientific hypothesis can be confirmed through experiment need not entail that the hypothesis is true. On the other hand, perhaps this isn't required for assent to the alleged truth of the hypothesis, which would be merely provisional. Unfalsifiable claims might similarly be accepted provisionally, in the absence of their being shown to be fallacious. — Thorongil

Popper already pointed out that scientific hypotheses can never be verified (proven to be true), and it is doubtful as to whether they can ever be definitively falsified either. I think the strength of Popper's argument consists in the idea of falsifiability in principle, not in definitive or actual falsification.

Thorongil

No one reads.

Janus

↪Thorongil

You say "No one reads". What does that mean? Does it mean that no one interprets what you have written the way you insist that they should? That no one agrees with you?

I see jkg20 got in some of the same points I made just before me. Why do you think the points we, and everyone else who has responded to the thread, have made do not address the issue(s) you wanted to raise? Perhaps you did not express yourself clearly enough. Why not have another go now that you have the statements by others to highlight against the purported differences with what you are concerned with?

Thorongil

No más.

Srap Tasmaner

↪Thorongil

The question in the title is a good one, but something seems to go wrong in the way you analyze it.

(For instance, since you reverse Popper's test, "My keys are in the kitchen", being falsifiable, becomes a scientific claim. Maybe that's kinda okay, but is that really what you wanted? Where you say "falsifiable" do you really mean something more like "empirical"?)

I'd like to plump for some probability approach. You argue that we'd have to know the truth to know how close we're getting to it. I can't believe that's right but I don't have a tidy counterargument. (And I won't invoke Apo.) Maybe this would be a good part of the post the explore further.

(No irony here. I recognize I'm expressing a tentative commitment I can't quite justify. That seems to me in the neighborhood of the thread.)

Picking up from the thread on Hume next door, what about our faith in the uniformity of nature, or the validity of induction? What's the overlap between claims for which no justification can be provided and claims that cannot be falsified? (I recall Andrew reading Hume as leaving room for the mystical.)

Janus

You argue that we'd have to know the truth to know how close we're getting to it. I can't believe that's right but I don't have a tidy counterargument. — Srap Tasmaner

I think it follows that we would have to know the truth to know how close we're getting to it, but then if we knew the truth we would not merely be close to it, we would have arrived!

Can we ever know with absolute certainty, the truth, or at least know that we know it? Could absolute certainty ever be anything more than a feeling? Is a feeling of absolute certainty reliable?

On the other hand, it seems that we could have reason to believe that we are getting closer to the truth without having to know what the truth is. My earlier answer to Thorongil's question (which wasn't strictly about knowing how close to the truth we are)

On what basis can one know that said claims are more probably true than not unless one knows the truth beforehand? — Thorongil

was:

On the basis of consistency and coherency with experience, perhaps? — Janus

To flesh this out, we assess the plausibility of claims against our own experience and against our understanding of the knowledge we have acquired from the collective pool of human experience which is culture. There cannot be any absolute standard of plausibility because intersubjectivity (which is the closest we can get to objectivity) must always incorporate an ineliminable element of subjectivity.

Srap Tasmaner

↪Janus

I think @Thorongil's claim is wrong in a simpler way, or confused about probability in a way that needs a different kind of response.

If I roll a fair die, it's more likely that I'll not roll a six than it is that I will. Obviously I don't need to know what I'll roll to know this.

Issues:
1. I've loaded the question by making the die "fair".
2. If we want to avoid (1) holding by definition, could we claim empirical certainty that a die is fair? Another probability seems more like what we want. Then we're headed toward the old argument about whether considering anything probable requires considering something certain. (C. I. Lewis, if memory serves, versus Richard Jeffrey.)

Janus

Then we're headed yourself the old argument about whether considering anything probable requires considering something certain. — Srap Tasmaner

I am not familiar with that exchange, but I would say that we inhabit a kind of "hermeneutic circle" of culturally mediated knowledge wherein the plausibility of claims can be assessed (although obviously not precisely) without needing to be absolutely certain of anything. The very notion of being absolutely certain seems on examination to be fatally paradoxical. I prefer the pragmatist take which is 'absence of reasonable doubt'. Reasonableness is itself not something precisely determinable, but consists in contextual normativities and personal self-knowledge, authenticity and good will

Shawn

All non-scientific claims are by most definitions unfalsifiable, which therefore includes all the claims made by philosophers. — Thorongil

How does one know that? What criteria are we applying here to validate or invalidate unfalsifiable claims as 'unfalsifiable'?

Janus

How does one know that? What criteria are we applying here to validate or invalidate unfalsifiable claims as 'unfalsifiable'? — Posty McPostface

I think you meant to say 'what criteria are we applying here to validate or invalidate ̶u̶n̶f̶a̶l̶s̶i̶f̶i̶a̶b̶l̶e̶ claims as 'unfalsifiable'', no?

A claim is unfalsifiable if you cannot think of any way in which it could be falsified, or in other words, anyway in which it could be definitely tested. It would seem that there are countless such claims. Some examples might be:

There is an afterlife

God exists

The universe is infinite

Time is the moving image of eternity

Blind Will is the ontological basis of reality

The Universe is indifferent to our existence

This argument was given in good will

If you could imagine an experiment which would be able to (in principle) definitively falsify any of these claims, then those claims would not qualify as unfalsifiable, and they would be then counted as scientific or empirical claims.

The more we think about it, the more we may come to think that no claim is absolutely falsifiable; which would mean that the line between scientific and non-scientific claims is somewhat blurred.

Caldwell

Is it possible to know something with absolute certainty? It seems more likely that all things are mere possibilities due to the fact that often our own senses and reasoning possess faults and cannot be depended on entirely. — Lone Wolf

Yet we act with absolute certainty all the time. Do we hesitate entering our house each time we come home? No? Oh cause we know it's our address, that's our street, that's the entrance to our house. And yes, those are our family members, no doubt.
There are things we can doubt, but not this, as Wittgenstein says.

Srap Tasmaner

Reasonableness is itself not something precisely determinable, but consists in contextual normativities and personal self-knowledge, authenticity and good will — Janus

I think we largely agree, I just want the specifics, so that leaves a lot of work to do. For example, I don't want to lean on a word like "context" without a model of what context will actually do for us. It's why David Lewis's Convention is so important to me these days; the game theory take on norms gives you a mechanism.

Janus

It's why David Lewis's Convention is so important to me these days; the game theory take on norms gives you a mechanism. — Srap Tasmaner

I don't know; I think the attempt to explain context mechanistically is wrong-headed and doomed to failure. To explain something mechanistically is to explain it, as Heidegger says, in a "de-worlded' manner. I think context is like subjectivity; it cannot be objectified without losing the every think you are attempting to explain.

You cannot drag it out of the hermeneutic circle; it must be explained from within the circle in terms of its hermeneutic and phenomenological relations with everything else. A purely analytic approach is not going to get us anywhere unless we are dealing with mechanical devices like internal combustion engines, and even then.... some synthesis is also needed. I wouldn't characterize game theory (insofar as i know anything about it, which is not much) as mechanistic in any case, so maybe you are not really thinking in terms of "mechanism"?

Srap Tasmaner

↪Janus

Well, "mechanism" is a somewhat inelegant term -- I just mean the specific way something gets done. In the game theory approach, there's choice and agency, expectations, intentions, preferences, all that. We're not talking about any kind of determinism.

Context is fine, but it's too big. It's all well and good to say that whether "It's raining" is true depends on context, but it's better to say that "It's raining" is true iff at the time and place of utterance it is raining and English is being given a standard interpretation -- and we'd want to fill that out more. There are things about the context that don't matter for the question at hand. Nothing depends on context tout court; there are always features of the context that do the actual work.

Another example is the sort of thing Grice called attention to under the heading of "implicature". Stock example: I ask whether we should stop for gas and you reply, "There's not much between here and [our destination]." In context, that's a "yes". We can say more though: we can fill in the missing premises so that "yes" is actually entailed, and that's what allows me to infer "yes" from what you say. (And that also gives you room to cancel the implicature.) And we can fill in a lot about each participant's expectations and intentions that justify the whole operation.

I think in the long run we might end up in pretty similar places, but I'm for analyzing the crap out of everything, and formalizing everything in sight.

Sam26

↪Thorongil

Whether or not a belief is unfalsifiable depends on the argument for the belief. One cannot simply list certain beliefs and say, these are unfalsifiable. Many religious arguments are unfalsifiable, and many atheistic arguments are unfalsifiable, and I'm here thinking of self-sealing arguments, which are by definition unfalsifiable. Most of these kinds of arguments fall under the heading of being vacuous.

Whether a belief or argument is falsifiable depends on why you believe it's true, not simply that you have a particular belief. Some arguments may be unfalsifiable in one setting, and not in another, it has to do with how the argument is framed.

SherlockH

↪Thorongil

A lot of thoeries in physics can not really be entirely proven. One argument people often bring up is gravity. I think the thing which makes a claim bad is the reasoning. We have different types of reasoning. Like inductive and deductive reasoning. If a person makes an educated guess and is right but didn't test thier thoery the argument is valid. If say a person does a bunch of tests to come to a conclusion its valid. Ill use doctors as example. Lets say a doctor of years of training makes an educated guess on what a patient has and is right but has not tested the patient his argument might be valid. He made an educated guess based on logic and what he knows. If say a different doctor does 20 tests and comes to the same conclusion its valid. If a third doctor says the diagnoses is incorrect becuase the patient is his mom, hes an idiot so fire him. This auctually comes up a lot in House the tv show. The smartest doctor there makes a lot of educated guesses and is often right. While most of the doctors argue for more test.

How and why does one go about believing unfalsifiable claims?

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