17
   

Define "Evidence"

 
 
farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Sat 31 Oct, 2015 10:06 am
@Fil Albuquerque,
Quote:
. I have the best interests of science at heart. Most people including scientists themselves often fail to see the point
Sciences have taken more and more to INTERDISCIPLANARY approaches to many investigations. So cross fertilizations by swapping "jargon" has been ongoing for many decades.

Im not sure what you would mean "re: PHILOOSOPHY" when we speak about equations of continuity or field equations , the language, if it preceeds the science, gets a bit confusing.
MY example of that is how the computer sciences have usurped the languages of art, science etc and rendered many useful terms gibberish.
"Newest" isnt always "Best"


Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Sat 31 Oct, 2015 10:19 am
@farmerman,
...equations without concepts are not even gibberish. Just hieroglyphs...
farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Sat 31 Oct, 2015 10:28 am
@Fil Albuquerque,
Maybe we have to set up glossaries of terms for equation shorthand
everybody knows "G" or "c" or "lambda" (except in physical chem where we have 3 unique lambdas
layman
 
  1  
Reply Sat 31 Oct, 2015 10:35 am
@farmerman,
Quote:
Theres a big difference twixt "False" and falsifiable".


There's a difference, often big, sure.

Quote:
Actually, your Jupiter statement is NOT falsifiable at this juncture


It is just as falsifiable, "in theory," as the example you gave, to wit:

Quote:
For exa,mple if I say that "mammals descended from synapsid reptiles in the late Permian", is falsifiable if I can find a fossil mammal earlier than the late Permian or that I can show that it descended from "Fish".


Likewise, if we ever go to the center of the planet Jupiter and see no city, then my statement has been falsified.

Your example is based merely on things that theoretically "could" happen, but which have not, and which have no way of being "tested."
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Sat 31 Oct, 2015 10:38 am
@farmerman,
You see I don't question "G"...I merely state the obvious...whatever "G" is, is its own...

...I don't deny phenomena have solid ground. I deny we can know it.
Nonetheless whatever we've got in the ride it is no less real. Prevented it works for our goals we do pretty well with our own "knowledge".

The distinction that makes me unique in A2K is that I don't really fit in neither side...I am a no man's land kind of person here. I don't mind it, a no man's land is an actual quiet place to be.
0 Replies
 
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Sat 31 Oct, 2015 10:55 am
...go figure, from me to me, I can reconcile "metaphysics" with pragmatism...
...an odd synthesis...
0 Replies
 
layman
 
  4  
Reply Sat 31 Oct, 2015 10:58 am
@layman,
Quote:
Your example is based merely on things that theoretically "could" happen, but which have not, and which have no way of being "tested."


It seems obvious that, using that standard, just about any claim, however absurd, could be called "falsifiable."

What I was indirectly suggesting, Farmer, is that you might want to refine your notion of what Popper meant by "falsifiability" as a criterion for eliminating "pseudo-science" from the realm of actual science. And that's all it is. It is not a definition of science, per se.

I realize that this suggestion subjects me to the ever-present risk of you concluding that I am a fundamentalist Christian with a creationist agenda. But, honest, it aint about that.
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Sat 31 Oct, 2015 11:05 am
@layman,
That's the problem isn't it ? America is plagued with this religious fundamentalism...an European like me, far from such context runs the risk of being confused in the paranoia of black and white America style problem solving...

...one ought to kill metaphysics to set the "stooopid" aside back there...
0 Replies
 
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Sat 31 Oct, 2015 11:10 am
I would invite Farma to come n live his golden days in Europe, but I guess its to late for him...to much "murikan" in his cholesterol by now... Wink
layman
 
  1  
Reply Sat 31 Oct, 2015 11:15 am
@Fil Albuquerque,
Quote:
I would invite Farma to come n live his golden days in Europe, but I guess its to late for him...to much "murikan" in his cholesterol by now...


Fil, for many Americans (myself included) any mention of the word "European" immediately evokes an image that you want to slap plumb silly.
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Sat 31 Oct, 2015 11:23 am
@layman,
I bet it does... Wink
0 Replies
 
neologist
 
  2  
Reply Sat 31 Oct, 2015 12:05 pm
@Fil Albuquerque,
Fil Albuquerque wrote:
. . . We don't have true proof of anything unless we agree to it socially, what we usually call sufficient reasoning reviewed by peers and specialists....
Interesting observation. And, I would agree.
But, don't we risk ad populum conclusions?
layman
 
  3  
Reply Sat 31 Oct, 2015 12:26 pm
With regard to a topic Farmer is very fond of (evolution) and speaking of Popper, Popper once said this about the Darwinian theory of evolution driven by natural selection:

Quote:
I now wish to give some reasons why I regard Darwinism as metaphysical, and as a research programme. It is metaphysical because it is not testable. One might think that it is....[But] Darwinism does not really predict the evolution of variety. It therefore can not really explain it. At best, it can predict the evolution of variety under "favourable conditions".


For the record, Popper later claimed to have "recanted" this stance, but he really didn't in any substantial way. Later he was to say:

Quote:
Nevertheless, I have changed my mind about the testability and the logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation.


But did he really recant? Not much. In that same presentation he also said:

Quote:

I have in the past described the theory as "almost tautological", and I have tried to explain how the theory of natural selection could be untestable (as is a tautology) and yet of great scientific interest...I still believe that natural selection works in this way as a research program.

Really severe tests of the theory of natural selection are hard to come by, much more so than tests of otherwise comparable theories in physics or chemistry....

The theory of natural selection may be so formulated that it is far from tautological. In this case it is not only testable, but it turns out to be not strictly universally true...


http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/popper/natural_selection_and_the_emergence_of_mind.html

Still, it should be noted that Popper never said Darwinism was of no value simply because he saw it as a "metaphysical research program." Even if, by his own criterion, it is not "science," it still helps scientific research, he said, and served a valuable function in helping focus research.

0 Replies
 
layman
 
  1  
Reply Sat 31 Oct, 2015 01:43 pm
More from Popper:

Quote:
I found that those of my friends who were admirers of Marx, Freud, and Adler, were impressed by a number of points common to these theories, and especially by their apparent explanatory power. These theories appeared to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred...

A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history... As for Adler, I was much impressed by a personal experience. Once, in 1919, I reported to him a case which to me did not seem particularly Adlerian, but which he found no difficulty in analysing in terms of his theory of inferiority feelings, although he had not even seen the child.

Slightly shocked, I asked him how he could be so sure. "Because of my thousandfold experience," he replied; whereupon I could not help saying: "And with this new case, I suppose, your experience has become thousand-and-one-fold." Science, Pseudo-Science, and Falsifiability 1962


I have yet to see a case where "natural selection" doesn't provide an answer for virtually "everything," at least not within it's circle of devout adherents. Popper himself even borrowed the concept to explain the way free will might work.
Fil Albuquerque
 
  3  
Reply Sat 31 Oct, 2015 03:40 pm
@layman,
You are quite right on one thing Evolution from a inner spacetime pov DOES explain almost everything ! The only thing you get wrong is to not believe it !
layman
 
  3  
Reply Sat 31 Oct, 2015 04:05 pm
@Fil Albuquerque,
Quote:
Evolution from a inner spacetime pov DOES explain almost everything ! The only thing you get wrong is to not believe it !


There are those who would say the same to you if you replaced "evolution" with "God," I'm sure. Not sure they would use the phrase "inner spacetime pov," though. I wouldn't. I have no clue what that's even supposed to mean, actually.
0 Replies
 
layman
 
  1  
Reply Sat 31 Oct, 2015 04:14 pm
@Fil Albuquerque,
Popper again, on the topic of Neo-Darwinism:

Quote:
The unsatifactoriness of the explanation lies in the fact that we can explain too much with this kind of assumption: almost everything that can happen, and even things that cannot happen.

[This is probably with it in mind, I'm not sure.]. And we should be worried whenever there are no alternatives--whenever a dominant theory becomes too exclusive. The danger to progress in science is much increased if the theory in question obtains something like a monopoly.

But there is an even greater danger: a theory, even a scientific theory, may become an intellectual fashion, a substitute for religion, an entrenched ideology.

I think that this is quite a serious problem at a time when intellectuals, including scientists, are prone to fall for ideologies and intellectual fashions. This may well be due to the decline of religion, to the unsatisfied and unconscious religious needs of our fatherless society. During my lifetime I have witnessed, quite apart from the various totalitarian movements, a considerable number of intellectually highbrow and avowedly non-religious movements with aspects whose religious character is unmistakable once your eyes are open to them.


0 Replies
 
layman
 
  2  
Reply Sat 31 Oct, 2015 04:22 pm
@Fil Albuquerque,
Quote:
You are quite right on one thing Evolution from a inner spacetime pov DOES explain almost everything !


Would the "inner spacetime pov" be the type of thing that would say that the assertion that "matter attracts matter" (or, these days, "curved spacetime") explains gravity, I wonder? If so, would the word "gravity" alone suffice as a complete explanation for, say, the planetary orbits, and all other similar motion in the universe?
farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Sat 31 Oct, 2015 05:10 pm
@layman,
just came back to this thread after an afternoon on the water (spotting ducks) and I think Ive lost the entire POV of this thread.
SOmetimes we are not meant to understand, and I dont feel like catching up. (ADD you know)
layman
 
  1  
Reply Sat 31 Oct, 2015 05:17 pm
@farmerman,
OK, Farmer, fair enough. I suspect you wouldn't like the route I took after your mention of Popper anyway.
 

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