I expected to cringe but that actually make me smile and chuckle a little.

Ojai always sounded like a nice place, so I'm happy for you that you live there. — Hippyhead

Thanks! I grew up here and have fought tooth and nail to remain here; California housing has gotten so expensive over my lifetime that it feels like my entire generation are going to be forced out of the state, or else live in tiny run-down trailers like I do.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "the" Krishnamurti school. There are several schools in the area owned by various theosophist groups. I did a summer program at Oak Grove School which is part of the Krishnamurti Foundation (I also used to live down the street from it and walk past it on the way to my public elementary school as a kid), and there's also the Happy Valley School in Upper Ojai which was founded by Krishnamurti, Aldus Huxley, and Annie Besant. There's also the Krotona Institute which is mostly a library and gardens but I think they might do some kind of other educational stuff there? I used to walk their gardens a lot back in the Before Times (they've been closed to the public since COVID-19 started).

We can only hope that he will, against the Republicans who're about to drop him like a rock, and then he'll split the right-wing vote.

Then again, this election did show that alot of the electorate, including a large portion of Republicans, still value Trumpism, so it does put the future identity of the party into question — Mr Bee

Maybe we'll get lucky, and Trump will spur a split in the Republican party; if the Republicans won't have him back, he might run on his own platform, and take a big chunk of the Republican vote with him.

In order to advocate it you must at least have judged that there exist people which do not follow this method — Isaac

We can of course know when they tell us, but that's not the scenario you asked about; you asked how we can tell. There are plenty of people who tell us that they use (and advocate the use of) fideistic methodologies; basically all of "Reformed epistemology" is about that. See for contemporary examples William Lane Craig or Alvin Plantinga.

you've advocated this method on a board dedicated to the discussion of philosophy, not class of primary school children whom you might prima facie suspect of benefiting from guidance. — Isaac

You always seem to forget that I consider all of the philosophy I'm advocating to be a shoring-up of common sense against badly done philosophy. I'm not trying to say that ordinary people all do things wrong and here's the secret way to do it right. I'm trying to explicate what is right about the way most people usually do things, and identify the kinds of deviations from that that can lead to ludicrous philosophical nonsense.

So you cannot dismiss anyone's though process without that dismissal simply being grounded on the fact that you personally find their revision of C (rather than revision of B) to be 'unreasonable' in the circumstances - yet you've given no account at all of how you justify that assessment. — Isaac

See the several preceding posts where I discuss parsimony as the rationale behind things like "unwieldy". The rest of those quote snips are either explicitly describing someone else's subjective judgement, or speaking loosely in conversation (assuming that we have some common ground in our casual, on-the-ground opinions, that I can refer to, despite our disagreement on technical philosophical things) and not as part of explicitly defining my philosophical position.

The more you write the more convinced I become that you're not arguing in good faith, but either have some kind of vendetta against me in particular (for reasons I can't even guess) or else just always argue to "win" rather than have an honest cooperative investigation of ideas.

I said already earlier that induction is a perfectly fine way of coming to your initial beliefs -- not that you need any reason to believe anything, rationally speaking, on my account, but in light of that, induction is as good of one as any.

My only point about induction is that it doesn't prove anything. If you induce from a pattern of white swans that all swans are white, and someone else disagrees, pointing to more white swans doesn't rationally settle that argument, i.e. it doesn't show that you're right and they're wrong, or even that you're more likely to be right and they're more likely to be wrong. (Consider the possibility that they're from Australia and know firsthand that there are black swans; no number of white swans you show them will matter at all to them.)

far-fetched (would require modifying too many other assumptions). — Pfhorrest

less weird (requires modifying fewer other assumptions) — Pfhorrest

But more than the amount of modifications, it's about the amount of exceptions to an otherwise more parsimonious system of beliefs. If you have the choice between a parsimonious system plus a huge mountain of exceptions, or a slightly less parsimonious system that's still more parsimonious than the other plus its mountain of exceptions, it's pragmatically more useful to go with the latter.

If we didn't care about parsimony at all, we could always just hold a belief system that consists of an unorganized list of all of the uninterpreted particulars of every experience we've ever had, but that wouldn't mean anything to us, it wouldn't show us any connections between things or highlight any patterns in any way that allows us to usefully interact with the source of those experiences. The whole reason to form theories at all instead of just keeping unorganized lists of experiential minutia is to have that easier-to-use, more-parsimonious abstraction to work with, so it's counterproductive to pick a less-parsimonious explanation when a more-parsimonious one that equally fits the experiences is available.

On the whole I have no real objections to any of this. I do think it's not really an argument against anything I've been saying, because I'm not claiming that the background beliefs in discussion are explicitly held -- that's precisely what makes them "background", that they're assumptions it didn't even occur to us that we had taken any position about until something we didn't expect happens and we're pressed to explain what exactly about our expectations was in error.

It also fails to account for the fact that investigating actually works -- it shouldn't, because you can always just reject the new observation, or you can find some way to take it on-board without falsifying anything, always. — Srap Tasmaner

I think the reason for that is that the adjustments that must be made to consistently accommodate the new observation without falsifying the most obvious thing it would falsify (the thing you nevertheless want to continue believing it) quickly become more and more unwieldy.

"Strange radio signal? Maybe it's an equipment error. No. Maybe it's something on the dish. Pigeons were on the dish, now they're not, so that fixed it? No. Maybe something else is still on the dish. There was dirt on the dish, now there's not, so that fixed it? No. Maybe there's... invisible dirt on the dish? No, that's too far-fetched (would require modifying too many other assumptions). So maybe there is a real radio signal. Is it coming from other terrestrial sources? No. Other astronomical sources? No. Could there be... invisible sources? That's almost as far-fetched as invisible dirt. (But lets check anyway... nope). So maybe there really is a microwave-frequency signal coming from all directions? Well it looks like it's either that or something like invisible dirt, and as weird as some cosmic microwave background radiation is, that's less weird (requires modifying fewer other assumptions) than invisible dirt."

Ojai Valley, CA.

Last night around sunset I took a walk around a nice neighborhood with my girlfriend, discussing the election as we went. As we passed a house with a “this is Trump country” sign on its lawn, I thought to myself “I’m glad I live in this sleepy little town where I don’t have to worry about the possibility of violent outbursts over the election results”.

And then from inside that house came shouts of “fucking Joe Biden and his fucking she-n*gg*r”, and as we walked quickly away more shouts of “Biden’s a fucking white n*gg*r is what he is” and such.

Sigh.

I did, and the gist of it seemed to be that conservatives have good points that we should all be able to agree about, on a list of issues where progressives and conservatives usually disagree.

On my account philosophical claims are not properly claims about what is or isn't real to begin with, and so are not the kind of claims that are made true or false by empirical observation. Other kinds of claims that are not about what is or isn't real -- like philosophical claims, logical/mathematical claims, and moral claims -- can be tested by means other than empirical observation, and so do not necessarily demand fideism. (There are still some such claims that are held to be beyond any testing, and those kinds of claims do demand fideism, and for that reason I am also against them, but all philosophical claims don't fall into that category).

Fideism proper really only applies to beliefs that are unverifiable. Such beliefs are obviously also unfalsifiable, — Janus

Yes, I call that “transcendentalism” and reject it precisely because it demands fideism. I considered mentioning that in my response to Isaac just above, because that is a circumstance where you can be sure someone is using fideism since there is no alternative then, but I decided not to complicate things.

We can’t necessarily tell what epistemological method someone else is using in the third person. We can plausibly guess at it, judging from their discursive behavior, but of course we can’t actually read other people’s minds and see whether they are willing to revise B and just find revising C more plausible, or if they hold B as beyond question.

That doesn’t mean we can’t discuss the merits of using different methods ourselves in the first person. Which is all I do in my arguments for my methodology: illustrate why doing things otherwise is more likely to lead you into or keep your in error than this way, so it’s in your interest, if you care about figuring out the truth, to do it this way. It’s not all about judging other people.

It's fun to parade around in our supposed moral and intellectual superiority, but one of the price tags for that is a Supreme Court stuffed with conservatives for the next generation. — Hippyhead

So instead we should just preemptively concede to the conservatives on everything?

The common ground that Trump’s base and the progressive base have is that almost all of them are poor and suffering for the benefit of a handful of wealthy elites. That should be something that everyone can rally around. But no, doing anything about that would be socialism... much better to blame the Jews for letting Mexicans take all our jobs...

The Democrats are the anti-Russia party — jamalrob

Is that not a new development since the advent of Trump-Russia collusion? I remember in 2017 thinking it strange that it was the Democrats not the Republicans who were making such a big deal about how Russia Is Bad.

So, what is it you imagine the fideist thinks in our scenario that is different from the critical rationalism you espouse? They believe A. They believe B, they believe C (which logically contradicts B without some additional beliefs - ie contradicts A). What then? Using a real example, what does this mythical fideist then think? — Isaac

A fideist thinks at least one of their beliefs is not subject to question. In any of the A-B-C scenarios we've been discussing, they hopefully will admit to A (not be explicitly logically inconsistent), and probably have some B that they hold immune to question, and so will resort to revising C.

Take for concrete examples any tortured argument that some evidence that seems to disprove a religious belief isn't really the evidence it seems to be because [convoluted excuses]. Or substitute "religious belief" with "conspiracy theory"; the pattern is the same. Anyone who clings to some particular belief with unreasonable tenacity and will jump through whatever mental hoops necessary to excuse or dismiss any evidence that would otherwise apparently disprove it.

They're not allowed to explain C away using any revisions or further beliefs, because that's just 'critical rationalism' apparently. — Isaac

No, they are allowed to explain away the observations by revising C. That's something that critical rationalism has in common with fideism, and different from justificationism, not something unique to critical rationalism. I've only been arguing against your apparent claim that critical rationalism cannot do that and still be critical rationalism, not that that is something only critical rationalism can do.

Fideism shares the "liberalism" part of my "critical liberalism"*, but it negates the "criticism" part of it: the fideist agrees with me that you are free to hold beliefs without proving them first, but also thinks that you may hold beliefs as utterly beyond disproof.

What I term "cynicism" (comprised mostly of justificationism minus that parts that jump ship to fideism) instead shares the "criticism" part with me, but negates the "liberalism" part: the "cynic" agrees with me that everything is subject to questioning and might be disproven, but also thinks that you have to conclusively prove anything before it's okay to believe it.

*(The term "critical rationalism" is not "criticism + rationalism" in the same way that my term "critical liberalism" is "criticism + liberalism", even though they mean the same thing. Instead, it's "rationalism inasmuch as it it critical, but not inasmuch as it is 'cynical'", where "not 'cynical'" is precisely the thing that I mean by "liberal").

It is. Your claim is the ability to falsify them, not change them around. — Isaac

Being epistemically compelled to change beliefs just is falsifying them. It feels like you're being intentionally obtuse here. If you can't (without inconsistency) keep believing things exactly like you believed them before, but have to make some change to what you believe, then the conjunction of the things you believed before has been falsified. To insist that it has to be one particular belief that you were specifically setting out to test that is falsified in order for it to count as falsification is to argue against the strawman of dogmatic falsification.

It really seems like we're getting into a stupid argument over what does or doesn't count as "falsification", when that's not even the main label I apply to my views; I only mention it as another name more commonly given to them, even narrower than "critical rationalism", which I what I started out talking about in the other thread, so as not to bring my specific epistemological framework into it too much. The unique thing about critical rationalism / falsificationism that my view shares is the principle I call "liberalism", which says to go ahead and hold beliefs even if you can't prove them conclusively.

But the aspect of my view you seem to be arguing against is the one I call "criticism", which is a disambiguated subtype of the broader category commonly called "skepticism" (as @Kenosha Kid called it earlier) or "rationalism" generally. It's just the negation of fideism, where that in turn is the claim that some beliefs are beyond question, beyond refutation, unable to possibly be shown false or incorrect or wrong. You seem to be taking the even further stance that all beliefs are like that, which really surprises me coming from you, because I had you figured for the hard-science irreligious type, but now you seem to be saying "everyone can just believe whatever they like and there's no figuring out who's right or wrong". (Including, because you're jumped on this strawman before too, any less boolean degrees of rightness or wrongness, not just some black-and-white absolutism).

No, as I said below, usually all that's needed is additional beliefs - no changes required. — Isaac

Adding a belief to your set of beliefs is changing that set of beliefs, and as above, if you're epistemically compelled to make that change, that's the same thing as that set of beliefs being falsified.

a) Why is throwing out C a much taller order? In the vast majority of complex cases, the idea that our observations are incorrect is the most go-to answer to any inconsistencies. We can't even trust our observations with the simplest of matters (see optical illusions), so when it comes to interpreting complex scientific experiments, rejecting C is the number one choice. — Isaac

This is a good point. I was imagining the rain dance example scenario, where "throwing out C" means positing invisible rain, not the radio telescope example scenario, where "throwing out C" means positing dirt on the dish. I did only say that throwing out C was "probably", not "necessarily", a taller order, but yes, which revision to your beliefs is a bigger, less pragmatic hassle will vary from scenario to scenario.

b) More importantly, you're doing your old trick of completely ignoring the bits of the counter argument you don't like. — Isaac

You mean the parts I've already given counter-counter-arguments to? Yeah, I don't proceed on the assumption that something I just showed false was actually true.

I've just explained how there's no need to reject C, one usually adds beliefs to C — Isaac

And I've just explained how adding to C is changing C, and changing away from something just is rejecting it.

In Srap's example, "C" is the set of all of the background assumptions made when first making the observation, which include that the dish is clear of debris. Upon seeing an unexpected signal, a possible revision to the beliefs to account for that is "maybe there is dirt on the dish". Because "there is no dirt on the dish" was one of the beliefs within C, positing that maybe there is dirt on the dish is a change to C, a change away from the old C to some new set of background assumptions very much like C but different in whether there is thought to be dirt on the dish. That constitutes a rejection of C.

(Of course, in the actual case of Srap's example, that replacement for C in turn was quickly falsified itself, as the observations expected from the hypothesis that there is not dirt on the dish soon failed to materialize, when they didn't see any dirt on the dish. Sure, they could have still hypothesized invisible dirt instead of abandoning that hypothesis, but supposing there's a CMB was less of a huge change to the accepted view than everything that would be required to suppose there's invisible dirt on the dish).

The additional beliefs which allows C+B is underdetermined by the range of available additional beliefs which would do that job. — Isaac

Yet nevertheless additional beliefs are required, which constitutes a change away from the previous set of beliefs, which constitutes a rejection of that set of beliefs as it was. That the new set of beliefs is very similar to the old one doesn't make a difference.

I don't see how it can do that when it necessarily relies on the inductive assumptions that have been codified as the so-called laws of nature. If nature were not assumed to be invariant, then all of science would be utterly at sea; and I can't see how falsification could help with that, because the compass is always abductive reasoning based on induction (the expectation that the law-like behavior of things will remain as it has been found to be). Falsification can never be definitive, any more than verification can. How much less definitive would it be if there were no inductive assumption that the laws of nature cannot change? — Janus

Assuming that there are some invariant laws of nature or another is not itself induction. Only seeing a lot of examples of a pattern and taking that as evidence that that pattern is an invariant law of nature is. Falsificationist methods still look for invariant laws of nature, but rather than inductively inferring them, they try to find bounds on what they could be. That's what the video demonstrates: finding examples of your hypothesis being right doesn't tell you anything. Finding out what hypotheses are wrong tells you something useful.

But again they can be reversed to make verification and falsification logically equivalent. So, I could assert "Not all swans are white", and the observation of a black swan would verify this claim just as it falsifies the obverse claim "No swans are white". — Janus

The observation of a black swan would falsify that all swans are white and whatever background assumptions, which does indeed then entail that not all swans are white or some of those background assumptions are false; but that's just because "there exists a non-white swan" is logically equivalent to "not all swans are white", so if there seems to be a non-white swan then either there is indeed a non-white swan or some of your assumptions through which you're interpreting the apparent observation of a non-white swan are false.

The observation of a black swan would tell you nothing at all about whether "no swans are white". Just flip it around for the obvious counterexample: medieval Europeans would have claimed that no swans were black, and looking around to see lots of white swans... would not confirm that, because they always might, and eventually would, come across some black swans anyway. There being no white swans doesn't even demand that there be any black swans... there could be no swans. It's true that there are no pink unicorns, not because there are lots of blue unicorns, but because there are no unicorns at all.

When it comes to science inductive and abductive reasoning is all we have. — Janus

On a justificationist account, sure.

The critical rationalist / falsificationist account is aiming precisely to rectify that problem.

Induction is fine as a way of generating hypotheses, by identifying patterns in observations. But then when it comes to seeing if those hypotheses really work out, finding out if they're really true, seeing that the pattern you suspects always holds has continued to hold so far doesn't really tell you much of use.

That last sentence reminds me of a great little video that turns out to be about exactly this subject:

applying the abstracted logic of deduction to inductive reasoning — Janus

The whole point is that inductive reasoning is not valid. No number of observations of the consequent of an implication can tell you that the antecedent of it is true. It's invalid for one case, and it's still invalid after a million cases.

If all swans are white, then this swan will be white... this swan is white, therefore all swans are white? Of course not, but that swan is also white, and that one too, I've seen a million white swans, so clearly all swans must be white, no? Oh look, here's that new bird from Australia... (Also: here's a green leaf... and a million other green leaves. "All swans are white" = "All non-white things are non-swans", and a green leaf is a non-white non-swan, so a million green leaves proves that all swans are white... no?)

OTOH even a single observation of the negation of the consequent validly tells you the antecedent is false.

The thing is, the antecedent is more complicated than you'd initially assume, a la:

If we don't see fossil remains that show such a development that does not falsify the hypothesis of evolution definitively, because the fossils may have been destroyed by processes of which we are not aware. — Janus

This is the underdetermination and theory-laden-ness that Isaac and Banno keep harping on, which is completely correct, but is not a point against falsificationism. It's not so simple that "if evolution then fossils"; it's actually "if evolution and a bunch of other assumptions then fossils". Not seeing fossils doesn't necessarily falsify evolution, but it falsifies something; if you don't reject evolution, then you have to reject some of those assumptions that would lead you to expect to never have evolution with no fossils, and in either case you're rejected something you believed on account of evidence that was contrary to the conjunction of all your beliefs.

Formally, you've got "if (A and B and C and ...) then Z", and "not-Z", therefore "not (A and B and C and ...)" or equivalently "not-A or not-B or not-C or ...".

Observations don't demonstrate any belief to be either true or false, they underdetermine. — Isaac

They underdetermine precisely because they are theory-laden and those theories with which they are laden can always be changed to change what the observation is taken to mean. Changing those theories to reinterpret the observation in a way that doesn’t falsify the theory you’re trying to test is still changing what theories you believe in response to observation. That you have a choice of which theories to change doesn’t undermine that.

Try it in these terms...

Belief A is a belief about logic {X and ~Y, where X implies Y, is inconsistent}.
Belief B is an inductive belief {that X implies Y}
Belief C is a belief in an observation {that I just observed X and also ~Y}.

Resulting from C one could believe ~C, ~B, or ~A. One cannot believe A, B, and C. But we knew this all along. Prior to C, one could believe A and B. After C, one could believe A and B. C hasn't changed anything — Isaac

Belief C hinges on the theories with which the observation is laden. If you reject C, then you have to change those beliefs that would otherwise lead you to conclude that C. If you accept C, then you have to reject B (or A, but if we’re getting into the realm of possibly rejecting logical entailments then we’re free to be wildly inconsistent and not reject anything; all this is premised on caring about logical consistency).

In any case, you have to reject some beliefs you already had: either throw out B (the obvious first choice), throw out some part of the background beliefs that lead you to believe C (probably a much taller order), or throw out A (if you just want to give up on logical consistency entirely).

Not with sufficient additional beliefs about C, and additional beliefs don't falsify anything. — Isaac

If you have to add additional beliefs to hang on to your belief system — your belief system cannot retain consistency with your experience without adding those other beliefs —then you have falsified the negations of those beliefs. You still had to change something about your belief system, because the belief system exactly as you had it before proved irreconcilably with observation, i.e. it was falsified.

Are you also upset at all the Jews and gays and Poles etc who lived in 1930s Germany and failed to stop the rise of the Nazis? They were Germans too, so it’s their faults as well, right?

No observation rules this belief out. It is ruled out by logic, it doesn't require any observation at all. — Isaac

But other (background) beliefs would compel us to interpret our observations (i.e. laden them with the theory contained in those beliefs) as demonstrating that self-contradictory belief to be so. Since a self-contradictory belief cannot be so — which we already knew, yes — we cannot within contradiction maintain those beliefs according to which our our observations demonstrate the contradictory belief to be true.

You keep saying I’m just repeating claims, but I’m repeating parts you apparently didn’t read, since they’re already addressing the criticisms you yourself are repeating.

If we ignored the potential fallibility of our background beliefs, an observation that is contrary (as interpreted by those background beliefs) to the particular belief we’re aiming to test would straightforwardly falsify that belief. That’s dogmatic falsificationism. Confirmation holism rightly points out in response to that that those background beliefs through which we’re interpreting our observations are themselves as subject to revision as the belief we’re aiming to test.

But that still leaves you with an observation that your background beliefs plus the theory under consideration together say should be impossible — logically impossibly, in conjunction with all those beliefs. All those beliefs and the thing they would have you say you observed cannot all be true at once. So, given that you did certainly observe something or other, you’ve either got to straightforwardly follow the implications of that observation (as interpreted through your background beliefs) on the falsity of the theory under consideration, or change something else about those background beliefs to allow you to reinterpret your observation as something else that doesn’t falsify the theory in question.

Either way, the observation of something your beliefs say should be logically impossible compels the revision of some beliefs or others to avoiding having to conclude that you observed something logically impossible.

Am I the only one who knows Biden is going to win? — Baden

I am reasonably confident that Biden will win the presidency, but much less confident that the Democrats will take control of the Senate, which IMO is a much bigger deal.

Say you think fire is phlogiston. On account of that you expect to see certain things. You go make observations and you see those things. On that basis, you hold your theory that fire is phlogiston to be confirmed. This is a case of affirming the consequent: you think that A implies B, you see B, and you take that as evidence for A. That's a textbook fallacy.

Now say instead you think fire is not phlogiston. On account of that you expect to see certain things. You go make observations and you don't see those things. On that basis, you hold your theory that fire is not phlogiston to be falsified. That is a case of modus tollens: you think that not-A implies not-B, you see B, and you take that as evidence that A. That's a valid inference.

In Georgia, for instance, which will probably decide control of the senate, the Republican is currently beating the Democrat by a reasonably small margin, but there are about as many votes remaining to be counted as any of the candidates already have... and those are all the mail-in ballots, as they weren't allowed to start counting them until the polls closed. Mail-in ballots skew Democratic, so it's very likely there will be a blue shift as the count continues.

Large population, like any state with a lot of them.

I'd be happy to work less and for less money, if people would demand less money from me to just keep on living where I am, so I didn't have to go work to get that money that they demand from me.

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

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).

Then there's the discursive difference, in terms of "epistemic rights", of critical rationalism (of which falsificationism is just the empirical species) vs justificationism: under critical rationalism you are permitted any belief by default until reason to prohibit it is found, while under justificationism you are prohibited any belief by default until reason to permit it is found.

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

"Taking things on faith" in the sense you seem to mean there is the exact same thing as I mean by "believing because you feel like it": something just seems true to you, you can't conclusively prove that it is, but you believe it anyway because you pragmatically have to believe something or other.

"Faith" in the sense of the fideism I'm opposed to is not just that. That is just the principle of "liberalism" I mentioned in the OP. Fideism is the opposite of the principle of "criticism" I mentioned in the OP. In terms of epistemic rights as above, fideism is not merely taking beliefs as permitted by default (which I'm for), but as obliged by default, as epistemically necessary, and so immune to questioning (which I'm against).

The opposite of the "liberalism" I mentioned in the OP, what I called "cynicism", either requires you resort to fideism in the above sense to find some ground to build up from, or else resign yourself to nihilism, having no ground to build from. "Liberalism", the opposite of that "cynicism", frees from needing a ground to stand on, letting you just float (so long as you avoid things that would drag you down), and so saves you from nihilism without resorting to fideism.

I think the Georgia senatorial election is probably actually the most important one this year, as the real big bad of recent politics has been Mitch McTurtleFace far more than Trump, and Georgia is the only state with close odds on its senate race that might flip from red to blue, losing the Republicans their senate majority and finally stripping Mitch of his long-abused power.

:up:

I'm not sure exactly what point you're arguing for here.

Previously I thought you were arguing along the same lines as Isaac and Banno that you can't ever conclusively falsify any particular belief because you can always revise a bunch of other beliefs instead to excuse retaining that particular belief in the face of evidence that would otherwise seem contrary.

But now you seem to be saying that you can, with enough effort and checking, conclusively rule out some of the possible alternative explanations (the equipment isn't working, the dish is dirty, etc) and so be compelled to accept some particular conclusion (there actually is microwave-frequency radiation coming from every direction in the sky).

I actually agree with both of those things, in different ways. Technically you can always make something up to excuse any observation without it compelling you to reject some particular belief you want to retain. But practically there comes a point when what you have to make up to excuse the observation is so far-fetched, meaning that it requires you to change so much else about your belief system, that it doesn't make pragmatic sense to go that route rather than the far more parsimonious route.

E.g. with my previous example scenario about the rain dance theory, you could excuse the apparent lack of rain, without rejecting that you did the right dance and that that dance causes it to rain, by saying that the rain is invisible, intangible, etc. But then you have to rearrange all the rest of your beliefs to accommodate such a thing as undetectable rain. Probably far easier to just reject the rain dance theory. Actually, it's probably easier still to just reject the belief that you did the dance right. But then after trying all the different variations on dances, checking all the other confounding factors -- just like running a diagnostic on the equipment, making sure the dish is clean, etc -- at some point it becomes more plausible, requires fewer stretches of the imagination (modifications of other beliefs), to just reject the rain dance theory entirely.

A) is not what falsification is about — Isaac

See earlier about strawmanning falsification. Actual falsification that Popper et al supported is not the dogmatic falsificationism that Quine et al opposed.

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

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.


I’d also like to repeat to you the same question I posed to Banno. If you think it is not possible to show any opinions to be incorrect, what exactly are you trying to do by arguing against mine? If you’re right to think that nothing can be wrong then I’m consequently not wrong to think that some things can be wrong.

And again, I really really didn’t expect the “sometimes beliefs can be shown to be incorrect” part of this to be the hot-button issue, but rather the “you’re not required to show that your beliefs are correct, you can just have them as you like (until they’re shown incorrect)” part, which I’d think you would like (besides the part in parentheses).

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

The meat of the process happens when "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". If you think you did the right dance, and dancing supposedly makes it rain, but it doesn't seem to rain, and then you decide to resolve that conflict by rejecting the apparent fact that it didn't rain, then you're going to have to revise a whole lot of something or other to explain in what way it "actually did rain" even though it doesn't appear in any way to have rained to you. Invent a deceiving demon, or invisible rain, or something to excuse the appearance of no rain despite the "reality" you want to claim that it did rain.

And likewise with any of the other decisions you could make to resolve the conflict: reject that you did the dance right, or reject that dancing causes it to rain, and you have to revise whatever beliefs lead you previously to believe that you were doing the dance right, or that that would make it rain.

You have some complete network of beliefs according to which you ought to conclude from your experiences (i.e. you have all these theories that laden your observations such that you interpret them to mean) that 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.

I was thinking of the murderer at the door. What exactly did he say that was not quite that?

Kant though lying was always wrong even to save a life but capital punishment was A-OK. Whatever merits his formal philosophy may have had, as a person he doesn’t seem to have been all that great at applying it consistently.

faer — TheMadFool

Is this some neologism for "their"?


In any case, as to the actual question, I suspect that people's intuitions don't separate mind and body when it comes to personal identity, and sexual attraction and revulsion runs largely on intuitions, so a person who in any way "is your sister", mentally or physically, will still seem sexually repulsive.

But now you're talking about ceteris paribus clauses and that's a whole 'nother minefield, as Nelson Goodman showed. — Srap Tasmaner

Ceter parabis clauses are exactly the thing at issue here. Falsification in the Popper sense, but not the strawman sense, doesn't assume there are any ceter parabis clauses. If you think that dancing causes it to rain, without any ceter parabis clauses, that means you think that if you dance then it will rain, period. So if you do actually dance (you didn't dance wrong or something) and it doesn't actually rain (it didn't just seem to not rain somehow), then your belief that dancing makes it rain must be false as stated. But maybe some modified version of it, with ceter parabis clauses, could still be true.

Perhaps it's the wording; perhaps you mean something like 'free to entertain possibilities, without justifying them from the ground up'. This — Janus

Yes, I think perhaps you're attaching too much significance to the word "believe". To me, to believe something just means to think it's true, not any kind of special faithful commitment to it. You're free to think whatever seems true to you is true, for no more reason than it just seems true to you, even if different things equally seem true to others in account of the same information -- that's underdetermination there -- until such time as some limits on what could possibly be true are found.