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

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?

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. — Pfhorrest

There is no certain criteria as to what counts as evidence, though, and this all the more so given your position.

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. — Pfhorrest

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

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. — Pfhorrest

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. Faith as it is generally understood is believing in the absence of empirical evidence. The faithful will not see themselves as believing in the absence of evidence tout court, but they will counts different things as evidence than the empiricist will. So it is only from the perspective of the empiricist that the faithful believe in the absence of evidence. 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.

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. — Pfhorrest

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

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.

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. — Pfhorrest

Yes, but one would expect that only if one believed the system to be perfectly accurate at all scales. People, assuming a certain metaphysics, did believe that, now they no longer do. GR probably has its limitations too. They are both models, correct within their limits. GR if "finer grained" than NM, but doesn't falsify it, because within its limits of scale NM is perfectly accurate. So GR does not "faslify" NM, but demonstrates its limitations. You are yet to show what about NM is falsified by GR. You might want to say that the belief in its perfect accuracy is falsified; but that is not an inherent part of NM.

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. — Pfhorrest

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.

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. — Pfhorrest

The contrast, as I already pointed out, is really only between people who accept different kinds of things that they count as evidence. It is your prejudice against the idea that there could be any other kind of evidence than the empirical or the logical which leads you to characterize the faithful as refusing to question their beliefs. (Note; I think it is certainly true that there there can be no inter-subjectively corroborable evidence other than the empirical or the logical, but when it comes to what experiences or scriptures or whatever one counts as sufficient evidence for their own beleifs the inter-subjective corroborability of such "evidnece" may be, with perfect consistency seen as irrelevant).

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. — Pfhorrest

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

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? — Pfhorrest

This is a poor example, because it is not realistic. What could the presence or absence of baryons have to do with the natural or artificial origin of the Face on Mars? (Again the fact that baryons have nothing to do with the question shows the role of inductive thinking; no plausible mechanism by which baryons could have anything to do with the origin of the Face on Mars can be given. Such plausible mechanisms are made possible by our inductive understanding of the world and its invariant law-like processes).

Please supply a real world example.

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.

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?

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.

Should it?

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.

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. — Pfhorrest

Showing an inaccuracy does not falsify a theory. We need to know why that inaccuracy is appearing. In the case we are discussing the inaccuracy was thought to be caused by some hidden planetary or asteroids, but is now according to GR thought to be caused by the greater warping of space in close proximity to the sun. That was only known due to GR, so if NM was falsified it was indeed GR that falsified it. I don't agree that it was falsified, though, it was merely shown to be limited insofar as it is unable to account for the warping of space.

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

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.

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).

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.

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. — Pfhorrest

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.

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. — Pfhorrest

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

Suppose Steve and I are watching a high-stakes poker tournament, and Steve tells me that one of the players has a tell, but it takes a stopwatch to "see" it: whenever they raise after thinking less time than the last player to bet, they're bluffing. I'm doubtful, so we test his theory as we watch, and it works just the way he said: always bluffing when raising and quicker, never bluffing when not raising or slower.

That's certainly a falsifiable theory. Shouldn't I have greater confidence in it now? Steve thinks so: "We watched twelve hands and I was right every single time." What theory was Steve's competing with? There were no other theories. The null hypothesis? That's just another way of saying that observations can be confirmatory.

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.

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

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

So,

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. — Pfhorrest

So now you claim that it has been verified that there is not such a mass. That would mean, could only mean, that the GR idea of space being warped has been verified to be correct.

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. — Pfhorrest

You haven't explicitly conceded that, so how would I know? 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.

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. — Pfhorrest

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.

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. — Pfhorrest

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. (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).

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

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

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? — Pfhorrest

I can't ignore what hasn't been presented. I never "ragequit" the thread; I said that if you continued to say the same baseless things I would not continue. Since then the thread has either taken a slightly more interesting turn, or else I have managed to somehow magically increase my level of interest. Who knows; but in any case there was never any rage.

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.

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. — Pfhorrest

God never makes any difference in the world, but only in the individual who believes.

Individuals are part of the world.

Individuals are part of the world. — Pfhorrest

Exactly, individuals are not the world, but only a part. So then God can only indirectly make a difference in the world, by mediating through individuals. God has no direct relation to the world, except perhaps for pagans.

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

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

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

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. — Pfhorrest

Although we cannot presently know it is always possible there is a mass we cannot detect. In any case NM is highly accurate in most cases, so the most we can say is that there are situations it apparently cannot deal with, not that it is false.

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. — Pfhorrest

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.

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. — Pfhorrest

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.

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

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. — Pfhorrest

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.

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. — Pfhorrest

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

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. — Pfhorrest

The answers in math are provably right or wrong. There are no provabnly right or wrong answers in ethics, aesthetics, epistemology, or metaphysics, etc. It's simply not a good analogy.

Right, so by your very own argument God makes a difference in the world. But that still doesn't tell us whether God exists or not. 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.

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. — Pfhorrest

Is that a universal fact? Does making a difference to a part always make a difference to the whole? Say I change a tire on my automobile, does it become a different automobile? Or, does it become the same automobile with a different part?

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.

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

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.

I'm not going to bother responding to anything else because it's just you making the same (what I consider either baseless or trivial) assertions over and over. I have tried to show why I think they are baseless, but it repeatedly falls on deaf ears, so I have reached the limit of my patience.

I'll just leave you to think about a few points against your position that I consider germane and important:

• If the growth of science were based on falsification alone, then we would expect to see far more examples of theories which have been falsified.

• In order to falsify anything definitively there are many things that must be confirmed, and even then neither the falsification nor the confirmation is absolutely definitive (deductively certain) obviously.

Most scientists accept theories on the basis that all predicted outcomes have been consistently observed. Of course this is the same as to say that contradictory results have not been observed; but the point is that we do have reason to believe theories which are consistent with all known observations, and not merely because they are yet to be falsified, but also because they are consistent with our entire knowledge of what we think of as the laws of nature (which themselves could only be falsified if the nature of nature suddenly changed, something which is by no means logically ruled out, but which seems to be vanishingly unlikely to thinking people, and lack of falsification alone gives no reason to have any such confidence).

The fact that it seems vanishingly unlikely cannot be based on the lack of falsification alone, because that alone tells us nothing about how many confirmational observations have been made. From the point of view of falsification considered on its own absent confirmation something has either been falsified or not, and this is simplistic black and white thinking.

I have no doubt you will respond to this; probably with some more of your assertions that I don't understand falsification etc., but I won't be responding further. I've given you my honest assessment of what you have been claiming and have said all I have to say on this subject.

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).

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

No, I'll prove myself a liar and just say this one last thing: falsification and verification are two sides of the one coin as I see it. On this I'm satisfied to agree to disagree with you, since this issue itself cannot be definitively resolved by confirmation or disconfirmation issuing from any empirical observation, or mathematical or logical deduction.

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).

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). — Pfhorrest

I can't help myself either because this response shows again that you have not been listening to what I've been saying. I have been pointing out that the deductive inferential fallacy: "if P then Q, Q, therefore P" is not relevant to the empirical domain.

"If artificial, then tool marks, tool marks therefore artificial" is indeed not deductively valid as I've acknowledged. It is however inductively useful, and is just the kind of inductive inference commonly employed in science, because if gives us good reason to think that the phenomenon is artificial.

"If not-artificial, then not tool-marks, tool marks therefore not-not-artificial" is indeed deductively valid, but it relies on the (unproven) premise that tool-marks could not exist on a natural structure. The proper conversely expressed verificationist counterpart to "if not-P then not-Q, Q, therefore P"; would not be "if P then Q, Q, therefore P", but "if Q then P" (if tool-marks then artificial), which is precisely the unproven premise in "if not-P then not-Q, Q, therefore P".

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

I want to return to this to clear up what may have been a misunderstanding. When I say that if rock formations display tool marks then we know they have been modified, I don't mean that we know that with deductive certainty, because we don't. We know it in the same sense that we can be said to have any scientific knowledge, none of which is infallible. So "know" in this context means something more like "have very good reason to think" or "have no reason to doubt".

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 I've said in this thread contradicts anything you've said there, though.

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

"If not-artificial, then not tool-marks, tool marks therefore not-not-artificial" is indeed deductively valid, but it relies on the (unproven) premise that tool-marks could not exist on a natural structure. The proper conversely expressed verificationist counterpart to "if not-P then not-Q, Q, therefore P"; would not be "if P then Q, Q, therefore P", but "if Q then P" (if tool-marks then artificial), which is precisely the unproven premise in "if not-P then not-Q, Q, therefore P". — Janus

If you read this carefully you'll see that the falsificationist argument "if not-P then not-Q, Q, therefore P" relies on the the premise "if Q then P". No one expects "if Q then P" to be proven, nothing in science is proven. The conjecture is "if there are tool marks, then we can reasonably believe that the structure is artificial". This conjecture is reasonably based on countless instances of experience.

Can you really though? I mean, pragmatically speaking, in an ordinary sense, sure you can: you can look at Jon and see his hair is blonde. But in a technical sense, in the way Banno and Isaac are on about, it's always possible to instead revise a bunch of other beliefs to account for why it seems to you like Jon has blonde hair but somehow he really doesn't. — Pfhorrest

That's inevitably true of falsification as well.

Falsification is important because you cannot affirm general laws empirically. You can never show that all swans are white; you can only show that this swan is white. The falsification that all swans are white is the confirmation that this swan is not white.Most knowledge isn't about general rules (I think?).

the other, which I call "cynicism" (whereby it is necessary to reject any belief until reason is shown to accept it), is what I'm arguing against, and which you seem to be arguing for here. — Pfhorrest

Effectively yes, although you refer to it as rejection -- forging a belief 'X is not shown therefore not true' -- whereas equally if not more important is suspending judgment: 'X and ~X are not shown therefore I do not believe X or ~X'. This is contrary to the idea that X ought to be tentatively accepted until falsified, and avoids the problem of tentatively accepting both X and ~ X.

For any reason put forth in support of some opinion is itself another opinion, for which the justificationist must then, if consistent with this principle, demand yet another reason. But that in turn will be some other opinion, for which the same demand for justification must be made. And so forth ad infinitum. — Pfhorrest

I don't see a problem with this. Pragmatically, it's not ad infinitum but to some degree of consistency. One explores an idea in the context of other ideas one finds uncontroversial. Sometimes one or more of those ideas become overthrown (one has to examine the context, i.e. examine new ideas that are consequences of the idea under consideration), sometimes everything fits nicely, sometimes it just doesn't fit at all.

Sorry this is late, I apparently failed to hit send.