So the sensible view, the mainstream attitude in secular culture, is that mind must be accounted for in terms of neural processes, because they’re at least in principle explicable in physicalist or scientific terms, or so it’s believed. — Wayfarer
All I see are objections to physicalism based on what I think are fairly simplistic misunderstandings of what the physicalists are saying. — Janus
What other terms could they be explicable in? How else could you explain mind other than as a function of the brain? — Janus
Guess what one of the core tenets of my position is? — creativesoul
If the mind could be fully explained, then we'd have a neural account for propositions, as Banno has pointed out. But we don't have anything like that. — Marchesk
Each of my three propositions above is unfalsifiable. And according to you, necessarily true. How do you reconcile the nonsense? — tim wood
They only appear as "unfalsifiable" because you have not defined your terms, — Metaphysician Undercover
The Black Hole Information Paradox is a big issue in physics because information loss would mean processes cannot in principle be time reversible, which is not the case with most of physics. — Marchesk
Did anyone understand the article? I'm responding to your examples. If you're examples aren't good representations of what was said in the article, it makes me wonder if you understand what you read, or if you have critically examined what you read in the article.Did anyone actually read the article? — Banno
Well, not quite, although that's the pop view. Unfalsified theories are not assumed to be true. They are taken as helpful, to greater or lesser extents, and hence the need for Lakatos' research programs to acknowledge the variety of unfalsified theories. For my money, Feyerabend put paid to Poppers program (alliteration unintended...), showing firstly that it did not solve the problem of induction, and secondly that it is not the way science actually works. — Banno
And if it's neither, then the statement is verifiable and falsifiably shown to be nothing other than an unjustified belief, which is to say that it is neither true or false, which is to say that the statement is useless.A statement is verifiable if it can be shown to be true.
A statement is falsifiable if it can be shown to be false. — fdrake
Thermodynamics teach that information can be lost, is in practice lost all the time, and thus that some events are irreversible. When you burn a book and spread the ashes, it becomes hard to read. When somebody dies, she becomes hard to resuscitate. When a species becomes instinct, it’s hard to recreate it... If tomorrow our planet was swallowed by a black hole, I imagine the planet would melt into some particle soup, and us too. I seriously doubt that we would be able to keep talking about Schopenhauer and Descartes on the forum, unaffected. — Olivier5
What is it you think "unfalsifiable" means? — Banno
Consider statements of the form "there exists an x such that p(x)", those are verifiable but not falsifiable. Why? To verify it, all you need to do is find an example, to falsify it, you need to go out and look at everything ever and evaluate whether there's an x in it such that p(x). "There exists a non-white swan" - go out and find it. You think there isn't one? Have you looked everywhere? — fdrake
I wouldnt need to look everywhere, only where swans live, or in its genetic code where there would be the potential for non- white feathers to be expressed, just as one might have the code for brown eyes in their genes even though they have blue eyes.Consider statements of the form "there exists an x such that p(x)", those are verifiable but not falsifiable. Why? To verify it, all you need to do is find an example, to falsify it, you need to go out and look at everything ever and evaluate whether there's an x in it such that p(x). "There exists a non-white swan" - go out and find it. You think there isn't one? Have you looked everywhere? — fdrake
I wouldnt need to look everywhere, only where swans live, or in its genetic code where there would be the potential for non- white feathers to be expressed, just as one might have the code for brown eyes in their genes even though they have blue eyes. — Harry Hindu
They only appear as "unfalsifiable" because you have not defined your terms, "God", "exist". Once you provide clear definitions you'll see what I mean. That "unfalsifiable" could mean something other than true is only the case when terms are ambiguous. — Metaphysician Undercover
In principle, burning a book is reversible — Marchesk
I am very interested in how you define unfalsifiable, or how you might describe the process of deciding a proposition is unfalsifiable. — tim wood
You do see how all of this is not clear, yes? The status of Marxism or Freudianism each depends on definition(s). And as it happens, the 1919 "confirmation" by measuring Mercury's precession was at the limit of the sensitivity of the devices as used and within their margin of error - by luck and narrow margin. Non-confirmation in that effort would have meant nothing but non-confirmation.He gave two examples of hypotheses, or sets of hypotheses, that could not be falsified, namely, marxism and freudianism. Conversely, Einstein's theory of relativity was confirmed by observation of stellar paralax in 1919. — Wayfarer
Which is akin to what I've been saying. The more specific we are with our definitions, the more falsifiable those definitions are. To assert the existence of some thing that contradicts the category you are defining the thing as (ie there are planets smaller than mercury that exist) either means that we adjust the definition of the category, or put the thing in a whole new category. The latter occurred when we categorized Pluto as a dwarf planet, instead of a planet.They only appear as "unfalsifiable" because you have not defined your terms, "God", "exist". Once you provide clear definitions you'll see what I mean. That "unfalsifiable" could mean something other than true is only the case when terms are ambiguous. — Metaphysician Undercover
In my understanding the point of falsifiability is to distinguish empirical hypotheses; if a proposition can’t be falsified by observation or evidence, then it’s not an empirical proposition. This has flared up in physics in respect of string theory and the multiverse; one side is arguing that these theories are not falsifiable in principle, so, not empirical, so, not really science; the other side is accusing those critics of being popperazi. — Wayfarer
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