Statism and the Null Hypothesis (from Fail Quotes)

Started by Ex_Nihil0, November 24, 2010, 01:48:09 AM

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Quote from: Virgil0211 on December 02, 2010, 12:25:57 AM
The topics eventually covered the subject of 'what is real', 'what is truth', and so forth. We concluded at one point that reality was relative, as everyone defines and interprets things their own way (Green to one may be 'lime green' to another, and may be something completely different to someone who's colorblind). This eventually led to the idea that you couldn't be 100% sure whether or not reality was real, or semi-real, etc. That, combined with a bit of an adolescent obsession with finding conflict, led to the focus on arguing and rhetorical methods.

I hope that helps a bit.

I hope it does, because nobody thus far has understood what I was getting at until you.  Once upon a time, I did see a distinction between fact and opinion, but if no two people see the same shade of green, then the fact something is colored green becomes indistinguishable to the opinion that something is green.  Perceptions and the paradigms that affect them do matter.


Quote from: surhotchaperchlorome on December 01, 2010, 10:24:22 AM
But that standard you quoted is how scientific theories work.
That this, in order to be accepted, they must be logically consistent (no contradictions!) and conform to all available evidence.
Yet you said science is based on falsification which is valid.
Ergo, UPB is still valid.

Just something I wanted to point out and to add to what Shane has stated on the subject of science, verification, falsification, etc.

That isn't falsification, its verification.  The Verification Principle has two criterion for cognitive meaning 1.) the statement must be logically consistent, and 2.) must be supported by evidence.  The problem with verification is the question: If only the statements supported by evidence are meaningful, how is this supported by evidence?  It isn't supported by empirical evidence, so those who cling to it, like Stephan are being dogmatic.

Falsification's criterion are different and apply to demarcation, not cognitive meaningfulness. In order for a hypothesis to be scientific, it must be possible to falsify it (i.e. it must be testable).  It is more related to the method of science then a theory of meaning.   

Another distinction between falsification and verification is the type of reasoning they use.  Falsification uses only modus tollens while verification uses both modus ponens and modus tollens, and considers meaningfulness at the same time.

Quote from: MrBogosity on December 01, 2010, 03:37:57 PM
YOU'RE the one who brought up induction.

Bringing up induction was necessary to show the uncertainty of science, but it seems that I have much more to explain.

Quote from: surhotchaperchlorome on December 02, 2010, 12:13:10 AM
Yet it was a quote to me, which is generally considered the same as a reply to the post quoted. :3
I've seen you mention the word sophism many times now.  What do you mean by that in this context?

And don't get me wrong, I do like philosophy, I wouldn't be participating in this debates/discussions if I didn't.
It's just that it can get a bit frustrating at times when listening to guys like FlowCell when they start to blather on about stuff they either clearly don't understand.
If he did he would be able to explain it easier and with less free passes, special pleading, etc.

Anybody who only respects John Locke and Stephan obviously didn't study philosophy.  If you had studied it, what I say wouldn't be "blather" or fallacious to you.  Don't get upset just because because I've pointed out the unsettling idea that modern science does not provide certainty or truth.  Human beings love certainty, which is why they get upset when they are confronted with its fallacious nature.  This is why both religious people and particular scientists who dogmatically cling to pet theories get upset when they are shown to be wrong.  One should never be emotionally attached to any theory or idea, ever, yet it happens anyway because its human nature to do so.  This is why Stephan hates modern philosophy. 

Scientists can get very annoyed with philosophers mostly because the philosopher gets mired in the fine details minutia of careful reasoning, but the moment a scientists says that "why" is a stupid question (especially because of his own inpatients with philosophy) is the moment his slits the throat of science with dogmatic reasoning.

...
Oh, please do go on.
Fierce intelectual debates such as these always give me wood.

December 02, 2010, 05:39:41 AM #47 Last Edit: December 02, 2010, 06:59:41 AM by Ex_Nihil0
Quote from: MrBogosity on December 01, 2010, 07:06:02 AM
Yes, it is, but what you think it has to do with this discussion is a complete mystery to me.

Those ideas AS CONCEPTUALIZED BY THE GREEKS were WRONG. Science just used the terms because they discovered something kinda-sorta similar.

Shane, every theory is wrong to some degree or another.  Of course the concepts invented by the Greeks were wrong, but they weren't completely wrong.  In order to realize that atoms exist, you first have to conceptualize they exist before you can test for them.  You can't sit there and tell me that the Greek concept of the atom didn't provide any inspiration for the actual discovery of atoms.  You may as well through out Origin of Species because Darwin didn't know about DNA with your logic.  Darwin would have had to use metaphysics to explain how evolution actually worked in order to fill in the gap that his ignorance of DNA left him with.  What ever his place holder was, was clearly not falsifiable at the time, just like the imagined atoms of the Greeks.  It wasn't until science advanced enough to test these hypothesis that they became scientific ideas.  This is why I get so enraged when somebody like Dawkins says "Why" is a stupid question.  If you don't ask why, you won't imagine things like atoms and DNA.  Not asking "why" shuts down science in its tracks.  He may as well be telling people to shut up and calculate.  Its dogmatic and shows a great deal of ignorance regarding philosophy and the good it has done to science.

I thought this argument ended with Kuhn's distinction between "normal science" and "extraordinary science".  

QuoteThen you need to go back to grade school. Statements of fact can NEVER be statements of opinion, and vice-versa.

Once upon a time, when I was still a conservative, I saw a distinction between fact and opinion, but when I realized that two people can empirically see the same thing and give two completely different reports, I realized that the distinction between fact and opinion is heuristic at best and at worst, a meaningless artifact of the human mind's craving for certainty.  Children need certainty in order to function because of their limited cognitive abilities, but I believe it is the cause of children living in a "magical" world.

he only way a fact could be distinguished from opinion is if a given fact were a certain fact (i.e. a statement of truth).  

QuoteAnyone who says that hasn't actually read Popper. Popper posited falsification as a SOLUTION to the problem of induction. We conclude that the sun rises every morning because of induction: since it always has, we conclude that it always will. This idea could be falsified if one day the sun does not rise. But until that happens, there is no reason to reject the assumption. As long as it is potentially falsifiable, the continued failure to do so makes acceptance rational.

Falsification addresses the problem of induction, but it doesn't solve it.  The problem of induction boils down to certainty of fact, or rather, the lack of it.  If Falsification solved the problem of induction, science would be a method of determining truth, rather then theory.  Let's just go right to the core issue of science which is the assumption that the universe is rational.  This assumption by induction that is falsifiable, but not provable.  Because it cannot be proven as a universal truth, their isn't 100% certainty that the universe is rational 100% of the time or in all places or scales.  Like all swans being white, the accuracy of the statement cannot be determined until such time that it is falsified.  

I will conceded that everything ultimately does boil down to induction when it comes to science when it comes to the assumption that the universe is ration, but beyond that, it is important to note that the methods of science are not limited to just induction when solving a problem.  My example of abduction works under the inductive assumption that the universe is rational, making abduction an induction by extension, but not directly so.

QuoteOn the other hand, the assumption that the sun will stop rising one day is NOT falsifiable, as no matter how many times the sun rises once could always say that the day is not here yet.

Yep.

QuoteThat ignores the point I made above about the sunrise, as well as the fact that we have a convergence of such perceptions from multiple independent lines of inquiry. The more you do that, the more closely the idea can be considered to match reality.

Yes, multiple lines of inquiry does give you corroboration, but their is no way to tell how closely a theory matches reality unless you have the truth of reality to compare to your theory!

I imagine reality or, if you will, the truth to be analogous to the north poll.  Like a compass pointing north, a theory points to truth, but it can't tell you how close to the "truth" you actually are or even if the truth really is a place.  All you know is that the more precise the compass, the more accurately it points to what you reason is probably real.

QuoteYou may dispute the shape of the Earth all you want, in that there is uncertainty of precisely how oblate the spheroid is; but it will never, ever EVER be a cube.

Under the current paradigm, your statement would be accurate.  However, it doesn't rule out the possibility that much of what we see could be illusory.  Granted, that isn't a scientific statement, but only because a scientist can't do anything with it and still call himself a scientist, not because is isn't true.  Although we accept the paradigm that the Earth is some type of spheroid and interpret all of our data based on that paradigm, we must remain agnostic that everything we think is true is actually false.  

QuoteNo, it very much is! For the refusal to make a falsifiable statement is the hallmark of fantasy.

How could you EVER find out if a non-falsifiable statement is true?

Firstly, falsification is a method, not a standard of truth discovery.  Popper never said it was anything but a method of critical investigation.  Secondly, nobody said anything about refusing to make a falsifiable statements.  I'm only pointing out that non-falsifiable statements are part of the scientific process because theories cannot account for all anomalies.  In order to account for anomalies, sometimes it is necessary to imagine factors that cannot be falsified at the present moment.  Instead, such non-falsifiable theories must be able to make predictions of empirical observation.  In other words, you have to make assumptions and use a modus ponens argument.  The presents or absence of predicted observations, however, does not confirm or falsify a non-falsifiable theory.  To do so would be to affirm the consequent or deny the the antecedent respectively.  It just gives an indicator if science is on the right track, but it is far from confirmatory.  Sometimes you just have to wait until non-falsifiable theories become falsifiable as technology and methodology improve.  

String theory is a non-falsifiable theory, but people seem to like it because of its mathematics, so scientists attempt to make predictions based on this theory to see if they are on the right track.  Maybe one day we will find direct evidence of strings, but until then, string theory isn't scientific.  And that isn't to say that String Theory refuses to make falsifiable statements, because it doesn't refuse.  On the contrary, it doesn't make falsifiable statements because it is impotent to do so!  Technology and methodology need to catch up in order for String Theory to move from non-falsifiable theory to falsifiable theory.

QuoteMaybe you should actually READ Popper, and not what other people have written about him. You have a very distorted view of what he said. Again, falsification is the very thing that gives inductive reasoning its validity. So he only rejected inductive reasoning with regards to verification. And I think if you look back at your claims objectively, you'll see that you've run afoul of this.

As I said before, I'm not just talking about Popper alone, but of other science philosophers as well, including Kuhn.  Wasn't it you who brought up Popper, or am I wrong?  I guess that doesn't really matter.  In any case, Falsification does give us a way to deal with the problem of induction, but it is not a solution to it as I stated above.  Verification tried to solve the problem through modus tollens and modus ponens, which I posit are both required to determine truth.  So, if you want to say falsification solves the problem of induction, it only solves it for modus tollens, not for modus ponens.

QuoteThere's no contradiction between that an induction--and they all use inductive reasoning in that they make the (falsifiable!) assumption that the more consistently they find something, the more likely it was to be the case in general.

I concede the point that science is based primarily on induction, however, there is no way to calculate likelihood based on induction.  In fact, that's the big problem with induction and why you can't use it to rule out metaphysical statements.  Their isn't a way to calculate the likelihood finding things like leprechauns, elves, and unicorns.  They aren't part of science because we feel they are unlikely, but because they aren't falsifiable, which brings us back to the true reason falsification exists, which is demarcation.  All though any given ad hoc hypothesis may be true, falsification rules them out as scientific, not as being real.

QuoteIs there any reason why I shouldn't?

You shouldn't invoke mathematics because it is a deductive process of pure reason, while science is an inductive process based on empiricism.  They are completely different even though they compliment each other well. The burger is not the same as the bun.

QuoteBullshit. As I just pointed out, the concept of falsification works VERY well there. Just ask Euclid.

Mathematics are a tool of science, but they are not the same.  The fact that you can use modus tollens in math is an irrelevant comparison to science when you are dealing with a purely logical framework where all assumptions are assumed true.

QuoteOr look for the proof that the square root of 2 is irrational for another example.

Proofs in mathematics only prove mathematical conclusions.  They don't prove scientific theories or determine facts as truth.  Again, what's the point in bringing this up?  If philosophical proofs can't determine what is real, what makes you think mathematical proofs could?

QuoteNo, it had a great deal to do with it! Look at how they viewed atoms vs. how they really are. We call them atoms not because we verified their existence, but because we found something kinda sorta similar and decided to use the same word.

As I said above, you can't find an atom unless you are looking for one before you find evidence for it.  Every metaphysical concept looks completely different from its empirical counterparts.  If that wasn't so, then their would be no surprises in science.  I'm sure Darwin's concept of a hereditary factor looked nothing like what DNA or chromosomes actually look like.  That shouldn't mean he was completely wrong.

Sure, if I used the concept of the atom according to the ancient Greeks, I'd probably be confused at first, but at least now we have the ability to falsify their concept and refine the theory, which the Greeks didn't have the ability to do at the time.  If they had the ability to falsify their theory at the time, I'm sure they would have modified it accordingly.

QuoteIf you do physics experiments using the Greek concept of the atom, you're going to become very confused very quickly.

Same as above.

QuoteThat's the DEFINITION of cherry-picking!

Cherry picking would be me ignoring failures when I'm making an argument for a universal statement.  I'm making the case that some, not all, metaphysical statements are useful to science.  This is an argument in the particular, so all I need is at least one example of a metaphysical statement to be of use to science in order to for my argument to be valid.  Sorry, but there is no fallacy here, though I do appreciate you giving me the opportunity to clarify myself further.

QuoteNo, peer review is a formal process of finding the mistakes in a scientific finding. It's like grading a paper, only much moreso.

Basically, you rephrased what I said in your own words and then said I was wrong.  Our opinions of what peer review is are not in conflict in the least.  Finding mistakes in a theory is the same as making a theory "less bad".  Peer review isn't just about how scientists interact with one another on a professional level.

You aren't talking to me, you are talking past me.

Quote from: Gumba Masta on December 02, 2010, 02:42:13 AM
...
Oh, please do go on.
Fierce intelectual debates such as these always give me wood.

I accept your statement as sincerer flattery.

Quote from: Ex_Nihil0 on December 02, 2010, 02:16:55 AMDon't get upset just because because I've pointed out the unsettling idea that modern science does not provide certainty or truth.

No one's saying it does. Stop it.

QuoteScientists can get very annoyed with philosophers mostly because the philosopher gets mired in the fine details minutia of careful reasoning,

No, they get annoyed because philosophers continually make unfalsifiable statements and pretend that they're valid.

Quotebut the moment a scientists says that "why" is a stupid question

Name ONE scientist that does that. A scientific theory is all about the "why." (And the "how" as well.)

December 02, 2010, 07:18:28 AM #50 Last Edit: December 02, 2010, 07:20:34 AM by Ex_Nihil0
Quote from: MrBogosity on December 02, 2010, 07:00:42 AMNo, they get annoyed because philosophers continually make unfalsifiable statements and pretend that they're valid.

In philosophy, a statement is valid as long as it is logically sound.  Its up to the scientists to show if the assumptions are reasonable or not, but the fact is, assumptions are unavoidable.

QuoteName ONE scientist that does that. A scientific theory is all about the "why." (And the "how" as well.)

Including "how" would be moving the goal post, but I can certainly give you one for "why", and that would be Richard Dawkins and another gentlemen he cites as his source for "why" is a stupid question.

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If you can get past the Spanish parts, Richard Dawkins says this clearly and distinctly in this three way debate between the atheist side, the theist side and the agnostic side.  I think his remarks are between a quarter and half way through, though I could be way off.  Its been about a week since I watched this.

If a scientist rejected both "how" and "why", he'd be a mathematician, not a scientist. j/k.

Quote from: Ex_Nihil0 on December 02, 2010, 05:39:41 AMShane, every theory is wrong to some degree or another.

Claptrap worthy of creationists. The theory of the round Earth is not wrong (just insufficiently specified). The theory of the cube Earth is totally and completely wrong.

Just like, Newton's theories weren't wrong. Einstein didn't prove them wrong, he just defined the scope in which they work. Something having a scope in which it applies doesn't make it limited or wrong.

QuoteYou can't sit there and tell me that the Greek concept of the atom didn't provide any inspiration for the actual discovery of atoms.

Actually, I can do exactly that! It was when chemists discovered the law of conservation of mass and the law of multiple proportions that they realized that chemicals could be broken down into discrete elements. It wasn't until they discovered that elements react to each other in ratios of whole numbers that the ancient concept of the "atom" was brought in to explain it--and even then, it was only a metaphor. The name just stuck. But these atoms possess NONE of the qualities that ancient atomism said: they're not indivisible, they're not particles (they're collections of particles), they're not indestructible, they're not immutable, they're not infinite...really, you could say that modern chemists were inspired more by corpuscularism than by atomism.

QuoteYou may as well through out Origin of Species because Darwin didn't know about DNA with your logic.

Not the same at all. Not only was Darwin's work about natural selection, which is much more well-supported today than it was in Darwin's time, DNA absolutely confirms it! The discovery might have revealed that heredity worked in a way that makes natural selection impossible. It didn't.

QuoteDarwin would have had to use metaphysics to explain how evolution actually worked in order to fill in the gap that his ignorance of DNA left him with.

Darwin made up the concept of gemmules to do that. And in that, he was absolutely 100% WRONG.

QuoteWhat ever his place holder was, was clearly not falsifiable at the time, just like the imagined atoms of the Greeks.

Actually, it was--little did Darwin know that Gregor Mendel was doing experiments which falsified gemmules at the very time he was writing about them!

QuoteThis is why I get so enraged when somebody like Dawkins says "Why" is a stupid question.

Quote with reference or it didn't happen. (And I mean him talking about it in terms of scientific theory, not religion or anything else.)

QuoteOnce upon a time, when I was still a conservative, I saw a distinction between fact and opinion, but when I realized that two people can empirically see the same thing and give two completely different reports, I realized that the distinction between fact and opinion is heuristic at best

What you SHOULD have concluded is that eyewitness testimony is the lowest form of evidence, as science does.

QuoteChildren need certainty in order to function because of their limited cognitive abilities,

No, they don't. Believe me, I'm a parent. The certainty is foisted on them by adults.

QuoteIf Falsification solved the problem of induction, science would be a method of determining truth, rather then theory.

There's that creationist-esque misunderstanding of the word "theory" again. Your sentence is akin to saying that cooking is a method of making pies, rather than space ships.

QuoteThis assumption by induction that is falsifiable, but not provable.

NOTHING is provable outside of pure mathematics.

Quoteit is important to note that the methods of science are not limited to just induction when solving a problem.

No one said they were.

QuoteI imagine reality or, if you will, the truth to be analogous to the north poll.  Like a compass pointing north, a theory points to truth, but it can't tell you how close to the "truth" you actually are or even if the truth really is a place.

A compass CAN tell you the distance to the North Pole. Well, a compass and basic trig.

QuoteHowever, it doesn't rule out the possibility that much of what we see could be illusory.

That would be an unfalsifiable concept. It's therefore useless at trying to gauge reality.

QuoteFirstly, falsification is a method, not a standard of truth discovery.  Popper never said it was anything but a method of critical investigation.

Separating critical investigation from truth discovery is foolhardy at best.

QuoteIn order to account for anomalies, sometimes it is necessary to imagine factors that cannot be falsified at the present moment.

This shows you just don't understand what you're talking about. A scientific theory doesn't have to be falsified RIGHT NOW, just theoretically at some point when the technology becomes available.

QuoteYou shouldn't invoke mathematics because it is a deductive process of pure reason,

That is EXACTLY what allows me to use these examples to refute you. We KNOW for 100% CERTAIN that there are infinite primes. We KNOW for 100% CERTAIN that the square root of 2 is irrational. And all we need to get there is the concept of falsification--which is exactly what you say it CAN'T do!

QuoteCherry picking would be me ignoring failures when I'm making an argument for a universal statement.  I'm making the case that some, not all, metaphysical statements are useful to science.

But it's a post-diction, not a prediction. You can't do it after the fact; it has to be stated ahead of time which ones would be correct and which ones not, or else you're not saying anything at all.

Quote from: Ex_Nihil0 on December 02, 2010, 07:18:28 AMIn philosophy, a statement is valid as long as it is logically sound.

Incorrect. Validity and soundness are two different things. This is a perfectly valid argument:

P1: All horses are rockets.
P2: All rockets are mammals.
C: All horses are mammals.

It's valid because the conclusion follows naturally from the premises. But it is NOT sound, because both premises have to be true in order for the conclusion to be true. As it turns out, the conclusion IS true, but only by luck.

The Computer Science expression of this concept is Garbage In, Garbage Out. In order to test for soundness, you need to test for the accuracy of your premises. And the ONLY way to do that is through falsification.

QuoteIncluding "how" would be moving the goal post, but I can certainly give you one for "why", and that would be Richard Dawkins and another gentlemen he cites as his source for "why" is a stupid question.

I'm not sitting through a 2-hour debate just for this. Give me a timecode. And again, as I already said, if he's talking about religion and not scientific theory, it's a bogus example.

December 02, 2010, 10:22:11 AM #53 Last Edit: December 02, 2010, 11:46:34 AM by surhotchaperchlorome
Wait a minute...
Quote from: Ex_Nihil0 on December 02, 2010, 05:39:41 AMOnce upon a time, when I was still a conservative, I saw a distinction between fact and opinion, but when I realized that two people can empirically see the same thing and give two completely different reports, I realized that the distinction between fact and opinion is heuristic at best and at worst, a meaningless artifact of the human mind's craving for certainty.  Children need certainty in order to function because of their limited cognitive abilities, but I believe it is the cause of children living in a "magical" world.

You ARE one of those post-modernist woos!
"When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world—'No. You move.'"
-Captain America, Amazing Spider-Man 537

Quote from: Ex_Nihil0 on December 02, 2010, 02:16:55 AM
I hope it does, because nobody thus far has understood what I was getting at until you.  Once upon a time, I did see a distinction between fact and opinion, but if no two people see the same shade of green, then the fact something is colored green becomes indistinguishable to the opinion that something is green.  Perceptions and the paradigms that affect them do matter.

All internal angles of a four-sided shape will equal 360 degrees when added together.

December 03, 2010, 01:49:20 PM #55 Last Edit: December 03, 2010, 10:03:49 PM by surhotchaperchlorome
Alright, I'm going to be blunt.
After reading this post, I haven't really been reading any of FlowCell's posts, outside of stuff Shane has quoted in his replies.
Between the constant flow of TL : DR bs emanating from what I have read, and how much Shane has refuted, it sounds like he really don't know what he's talking about...
I guess Stefan really was right regarding the issue with Modern Philosophers not acknowledging self detonating statements (something FC does many times in this thread).

As for your point that "science doesn't provide certainty or truth" (however those words are defined), in the absolute sense, I guess, but then, I never claimed that anything supported here was absolute, be it science, OR UPB.

The idea seems to be that, given the senses and logic aren't perfect, we shouldn't consider them as arbiters of truth (ignoring the self detonating statements there).
However, given that our senses (empiricism/observation) and our logic are about all we have, I'd say it's not a terrible policy either, especially given how questionable, flimsy and shaky (if not outright fallacious) the alternative seems to be.

Put another way, if what you call "rationality" can be "an intuitive truth", then why not 'verification', or anything else?
Basically, what I'm getting from this is that because nothing is certain, we can't rely on observation, but then, how do we progress at all?
Basically, that would just mean that don't learn anything we don't already know.
This is probably why philosophy is as Stefan describes it too, stagnant.  Because it doesn't tell us anything we don't already know.
Hell, at least math rearranges that which we already know in different ways and proves useful.
Besides the philosophy of liberty, philosophy doesn't seem to useful.
You could claim that the latter is irreverent, but that would betray the principle of human action; and would admit the entire branch to be nothing but intellectual masturbation.
"When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world—'No. You move.'"
-Captain America, Amazing Spider-Man 537

Quote from: Ex_Nihil0 on November 27, 2010, 01:42:13 AM
One of the benefits of deontological ethics, however, is that everybody should come to the same conclusions if we all use logic and the same assumptions.
And besides the lack of empiricism (read: observed evidence), how is this different from the verification that you so dislike?
And how is not being grounded in the real world (e.g. with evidence) something desirable, if it is to be descriptive?

Quote from: Ex_Nihil0 on November 27, 2010, 01:42:13 AMAs for your problems with the first maxim, that is dealt with in the first and second maxims.  Since you aren't allowed to manipulate anybody, according to the second maxim, it would be wrong to impose your vision of morality on somebody else.  Also, the third maxim says that everybody should be their own moral authority, which also means that morality cannot be imposed on somebody else.  Just as you could not impose your moral authority on a homosexual, you also could not impose your moral authority on an ax murderer.  So far, everything matches up pretty well with, the philosophy of Liberty.  However, if one were to base their morality on falsification of authority alone, I think one would not be obligated to volunteer information to an ax murderer.  And, in fact, you would be free to act on your impulse to defend your friends and family from an ax murderer by what ever means are necessary.
Actually, no it doesn't solve a single problem.
Again, I could just as well say, "but if people are their own moral compasses and do that all the time, nobody gets fed, and everybody dies, therefore people being their own moral compasses is immoral."
In fact, I could even go as far as saying that, "If all of humanity has to just do anything one thing all the time, regardless of what it is, we all end up unhealthy if not dead and extinct because of it; therefore all actions are immoral."
So tell me again why Kant is a good philosopher again?
He doesn't seem all that bright if you ask me.
"When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world—'No. You move.'"
-Captain America, Amazing Spider-Man 537

Quote from: MrBogosity on December 02, 2010, 08:18:22 AM
That is EXACTLY what allows me to use these examples to refute you. We KNOW for 100% CERTAIN that there are infinite primes. We KNOW for 100% CERTAIN that the square root of 2 is irrational. And all we need to get there is the concept of falsification--which is exactly what you say it CAN'T do!

And as you yourself said, falsification IS a part of verification.  I don't know if you meant something different when you talked about the 'principle of verification' as being 'invalid' in this earlier post:
Quote from: MrBogosity on November 30, 2010, 10:03:56 AM
FlowCell:  There is just no getting around the fact that scientific consensus is not a standard of truth.  Corroboration is not confirmation.
Shane:  Which is EXACTLY why the verification principle is false!

"When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world—'No. You move.'"
-Captain America, Amazing Spider-Man 537

That's exactly it: corroboration tells you nothing. Only falsification can. Without it, the door is not only wide open for Confirmation Bias, it's been sent an invitation and met by a valet.

December 03, 2010, 03:46:20 PM #59 Last Edit: December 03, 2010, 03:55:47 PM by surhotchaperchlorome
OK, but I'm what I'm getting at is, did you mean two different things when you said "verification" (as in, "falsification is an important part of verification") than when you talk of the "principle of verification"?
If the two mean the same thing, that means that falsification is also invalid.

Also, you seem to define "Verification" differently than FlowCell does.
"When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world—'No. You move.'"
-Captain America, Amazing Spider-Man 537