Yeah, it is the same topic — Banno
It is only when one wishes assert one belief over another that reasons need to be presented to show the other belief to be in some way wrong, — Pfhorrest
eliminating those that can be shown to be incorrect — Pfhorrest
it seemed like you and Banno were questioning that, implying that there is no way of sorting beliefs at all, them all just being held non-rationally and so immune to any rational process of comparison. — Pfhorrest
Lack of proof is just nothing, the starting point — Pfhorrest
Thus one can never in any way positively confirm any beliefs to be true — Pfhorrest
The idea seems to be that we start with every possible belief.
A, ~A, B, ~B, C, ~C... — Banno
The obvious thing to do is to take on board Popper's grand conjecture; take something as true - anything - and then see if you can disprove it. — Banno
The trouble is, if you are going to show that the grand conjecture is false, you are going to need something that is both incompatible with that conjecture, and true... — Banno
Your process isn't 'sorting beliefs'. It's pointing out that you ought to do some choosing between those that are contradictory. — Isaac
Repeating it doesn't just make the counter-arguments go away. Lack of proof is not the starting point. It is neurologically impossible to derive a belief without proof and extremely difficult (read impossible for all but the severely mentally ill) to maintain one contrary to all proof. — Isaac
Thus one can never in any way positively confirm any beliefs to be true — Pfhorrest
I don't think that's shown, or right. — Kenosha Kid
If I believe Jon has blonde hair, I can positively affirm this. — Kenosha Kid
For this reason, I prefer a default position of scepticism for want of a good cause to entertain the idea. — Kenosha Kid
No, you don't, on your very own account — Banno
Anything goes. It didn't rain because the third violinist hit a bum note, or because the chorus girl's mum was a non-believer. — Banno
Anything goes. — Banno
In which case the simple belief that dancing makes it rain is false, and needs to be modified with something else that takes into account the violinist's performance or people's beliefs too. — Pfhorrest
But now you're talking about ceteris paribus clauses and that's a whole 'nother minefield, as Nelson Goodman showed. — Srap Tasmaner
an important thing is that some beliefs are about the relations between other beliefs. If C = "A implies B", then you can rule out the possibility of belief D = "A and ~B and C". You still don't know whether C, and if C, whether A or ~B, but you know for sure that ~D. — Pfhorrest
since you are putting an essentially undefined set of beliefs on the table, you have far too many options for disconfirmation. — Srap Tasmaner
In any of those cases, you're also going to have to rearrange the rest of your beliefs somehow or another to accommodate whichever of those you chose to revise. There's going to be many, many ways you could revise the rest of your beliefs to accommodate any of those. But somehow or another, you've got to change something, on pain of inconsistency, since you can't consistently believe that dancing makes it rain, you danced, and it didn't rain. — Pfhorrest
You can always save some atomic proposition by sacrificing others instead, but every time something seems to happen contrary to what your complete system of belief says should happen, you've got to make some change or another to your complete system of belief, — Pfhorrest
The actual testing of the theory "doing a certain dance causes it to rain" has no effect whatsoever on the conclusion you claim that test yields "you can't consistently believe that dancing makes it rain, you danced, and it didn't rain" We knew that by the laws of logic before we did the test. — Isaac
you did the dance, that that should cause it to rain, but that it didn't rain. Yet you can't conclude all of those things at once. So you have to change something about that complete network of beliefs (the theories ladening your observations) to allow you to interpret your experiences in a way that doesn't imply that contradiction. — Pfhorrest
A) is not what falsification is about — Isaac
B) we knew was true no less prior to the 'testing' than we did after it. This fact was completely unaffected by the actual testing of the theory
C) helps us not one iota to sort our beliefs because the only one we must reject is that we can believe contradictory things concurrently, a belief which we never had in the first place. — Isaac
1. Falsification of p is necessarily confirmation of not-p, however general not-p might be. It follows that the logic of falsification is no different than the logic of verification. — Janus
2. No one believes anything just because they feel like it, so the benefit flowing from that purported freedom is an illusion.
3. No system allows us to sidestep fideism, because given the scope of human knowledge, any individuals will necessarily take the majority of her or his beliefs on faith. — Janus
The logical forms of falsificationism and confirmationism/verificationism are completely opposite: one is the valid deduction of modus tollens, the other is the fallacy of affirming the consequent. One is "if P then Q, not Q, therefore not P" (valid), the other is "if P then Q, Q, therefore P" (fallacious). — Pfhorrest
Actual falsification that Popper et al supported is not the dogmatic falsificationism that Quine et al opposed. — Pfhorrest
We knew prior to the testing that we could not hold beliefs that would result in a contradiction. We did not know prior to the testing that our beliefs would result in a contradiction.
According to the beliefs we held before, what we seem to have observed should not have been logically possible, and therefore should not have been observed. Yet we seem to have observed it anyway. Therefore we must revise the theories ladening those observations, so that what we observed is not interpreted as being that logical impossibility. — Pfhorrest
some beliefs are about the relations between other beliefs. If C = "A implies B", then you can rule out the possibility of belief D = "A and ~B and C". You still don't know whether C, and if C, whether A or ~B, but you know for sure that ~D. — Pfhorrest
you think it is not possible to show any opinions to be incorrect, what exactly are you trying to do by arguing against mine? — Pfhorrest
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