philosophy of science

TuringEquivalent wrote:

kennethamy wrote:

rosborne979 wrote:

kennethamy wrote:

If everything is a profound delusion, then what is a profound delusion? Why not try the word, "insanity"? Really now, have you any reason at all to think that even what are not profound delusions are profound delusions? If so, can you tell me about it?

What are you talking about?

Are you challenging my terminology, because I already said I don't know what to call it. And I tried to describe what I meant.

Or are you questioning some concept? If so, I don't understand what you are asking. Sorry.

Exactly what I said. It is simply false that everything could be a profound delusion (whatever that might mean) for just the same reason that it is false that all money could be counterfeit money.

It is not justified to think we live in the matrix. This is obvious. It is not obvious to me why you think such possibility must be false. To give another example. We might not be justified in believing Ghosts, but Ghosts might indeed exist. The former deals with the ground of our beliefs, but the latter assert what things actually exist.

So far as I can tell, the Matrix (and similar fantasies) are (at best) just logically possible. That they are logically possible simply means that their supposition is not logically contradictory. That is no reason to think they are true, and, indeed, we have every reason to think that they are false. For any rational purposes, when you have no reason to think that some hypothesis is true, and every reason to think that it is false, that is as close to proof as you need for the falsity of the hypothesis.

Modern mathematics and much of modern science is at least partly based on an erroneous assumption, i.e. the idea that there is such a thing in the world as proving something.

In real life, there is only such a thing as proving something to somebody's satisfaction. If the intended audience is too thick to comprehend the proof or too ideologically committed to some other idea or paradigm (as in the case of evolution and evolosers) to accept or deal with proofs or disproofs, then they will simply go on changing their pet theories every few years and basically throwing **** at the wall hoping some of it will stick. At that point the question ceases to be scientific and becomes political.

...one can always avoid falsification by rejecting some necessary hypothesis for the theory....

TuringEquivalent wrote:

...one can always avoid falsification by rejecting some necessary hypothesis for the theory....

I think that Popper would have countered that modifying a theory to escape refutation would destroy its scientific status.

TuringEquivalent wrote:

...one can always avoid falsification by rejecting some necessary hypothesis for the theory....

I think that Popper would have countered that modifying a theory to escape refutation would destroy its scientific status.

wandeljw wrote:

TuringEquivalent wrote:

...one can always avoid falsification by rejecting some necessary hypothesis for the theory....

I think that Popper would have countered that modifying a theory to escape refutation would destroy its scientific status.

So if our hypothesis was that Mary did not have a fever as shown by the thermometer, but it turned out that there was something wrong with the thermometer so that Mary did not have a fever, then, according to Popper, that would destroy the scientific status of the hypothesis that Mary had a fever? Could that be true.

wandeljw wrote:

TuringEquivalent wrote:

...one can always avoid falsification by rejecting some necessary hypothesis for the theory....

I think that Popper would have countered that modifying a theory to escape refutation would destroy its scientific status.

Why? There are many instance where maintaining the theory works when a contradiction with experiment occur. This is precisely how people discover unobservable planets back in the days. They can reject the inverse square law, or reject background assumption.

TuringEquivalent wrote:

wandeljw wrote:

TuringEquivalent wrote:

...one can always avoid falsification by rejecting some necessary hypothesis for the theory....

I think that Popper would have countered that modifying a theory to escape refutation would destroy its scientific status.

Why? There are many instance where maintaining the theory works when a contradiction with experiment occur. This is precisely how people discover unobservable planets back in the days. They can reject the inverse square law, or reject background assumption.

I did not mean to imply that any modification would destroy the scientific character of a theory. A theory is no longer scientific if modifications succeed in making refutation impossible.

Thousands of alternative realities could exist. What if water was a hallucinogen, and you're really pink elephant, and any evidence to the contrary was caused by the water? It's in more than eighty percent of your body, how could you sober yourself without dying? What if space, energy, and matter is an illusion and your conscious is a spaceless existent thing that has simply conjured this reality?

There are so many things that MIGHT be true it only makes sense to believe the reality we observe.

Essentially, nothing but thought and existence is certain and anything might be true, but it doesn't matter.

The reason that all money could not be counterfeit money is that there then could be no real counterfeit money, since you have destroyed the distinction between counterfeit and genuine money; similarly, not everything could be a profound delusion (whatever that means) since if everything were a profound delusion, we would have no idea what a genuine profound delusion would be...

kennethamy wrote:

The reason that all money could not be counterfeit money is that there then could be no real counterfeit money, since you have destroyed the distinction between counterfeit and genuine money; similarly, not everything could be a profound delusion (whatever that means) since if everything were a profound delusion, we would have no idea what a genuine profound delusion would be...

So it would be possible then to say that - "not everything could be reality (whatever that means) since if everything were reality, we would have no idea what a genuine reality would be." If I may borrow your reasoning here.

If everything is not reality, then there must be something that is not reality. How do we determine what is reality and what is not reality? Is there a scientific test for this? Suppose we identify reality as "T", and proof of reality as, say, "p". Do you see where I'm going with this?

Samm

So if our hypothesis was that Mary did not have a fever as shown by the thermometer, but it turned out that there was something wrong with the thermometer so that Mary did not have a fever, then, according to Popper, that would destroy the scientific status of the hypothesis that Mary had a fever? Could that be true.

I did not mean to imply that any modification would destroy the scientific character of a theory. A theory is no longer scientific if modifications succeed in making refutation impossible.

Popper intended falsifiability to be the characteristic that distinguishes a scientific theory from a non-scientific theory.

kennethamy wrote:

So if our hypothesis was that Mary did not have a fever as shown by the thermometer, but it turned out that there was something wrong with the thermometer so that Mary did not have a fever, then, according to Popper, that would destroy the scientific status of the hypothesis that Mary had a fever? Could that be true.

Our hypothesis is: "Mary did not have a fever as shown by the thermometer."

Findings: "There was something wrong with the thermometer so that Mary did not have a fever."

(Secondary?) hypothesis is: "Mary had a fever."

Is "the scientific status of the" (secondary) "hypothesis" destroyed?

Ken, I hope you can see that this is not making a whole lot of sense.

Samm

SammDickens wrote:

kennethamy wrote:

So if our hypothesis was that Mary did not have a fever as shown by the thermometer, but it turned out that there was something wrong with the thermometer so that Mary did not have a fever, then, according to Popper, that would destroy the scientific status of the hypothesis that Mary had a fever? Could that be true.

Our hypothesis is: "Mary did not have a fever as shown by the thermometer."

Findings: "There was something wrong with the thermometer so that Mary did not have a fever."

(Secondary?) hypothesis is: "Mary had a fever."

Is "the scientific status of the" (secondary) "hypothesis" destroyed?

Ken, I hope you can see that this is not making a whole lot of sense.

Samm

So, if Mary has a fever as shown by the thermometer, then either Mary has no fever, or the thermometer is wrong. No scientific status of any hypothesis is being destroyed (whatever that may mean). How did that suddenly show up? The issue is about testing hypotheses. If the thermometer shows 96.8 (or whatever normal is supposed to be" then either Mary has no fever, or there is something wrong with the thermometer. And no scientific status of any hypothesis has even been wounded.

kennethamy wrote:

SammDickens wrote:

kennethamy wrote:

So if our hypothesis was that Mary did not have a fever as shown by the thermometer, but it turned out that there was something wrong with the thermometer so that Mary did not have a fever, then, according to Popper, that would destroy the scientific status of the hypothesis that Mary had a fever? Could that be true.

Our hypothesis is: "Mary did not have a fever as shown by the thermometer."

Findings: "There was something wrong with the thermometer so that Mary did not have a fever."

(Secondary?) hypothesis is: "Mary had a fever."

Is "the scientific status of the" (secondary) "hypothesis" destroyed?

Ken, I hope you can see that this is not making a whole lot of sense.

Samm

So, if Mary has a fever as shown by the thermometer, then either Mary has no fever, or the thermometer is wrong. No scientific status of any hypothesis is being destroyed (whatever that may mean). How did that suddenly show up? The issue is about testing hypotheses. If the thermometer shows 96.8 (or whatever normal is supposed to be" then either Mary has no fever, or there is something wrong with the thermometer. And no scientific status of any hypothesis has even been wounded.

kennethamy

the question of science goes on and on , hence my thread on whether reality existed before we Humans existed or not

the making of NO sense continues

I think that philosophy majors not taking science and math courses limit their ability to analyse the real world and go on and on about sematics and build word games that are meaningless. Their recourse in defense is to go into a fantasy word game.