RE: Falsifiability
July 16, 2016 at 10:05 pm
(This post was last modified: July 16, 2016 at 10:13 pm by Alex K.)
(July 16, 2016 at 9:58 pm)joseph_ Wrote: But is it realistic to *only* believe things that are falsifiable (and can the standard of falsifiability be drawn in such a way that itself is falsifiable)?
Disclaimer: I haven't watched the vid yet (maybe tomorrow).
The first question - I think we necessarily have to make assumptions about the world serving as working hypotheses, so to say, that aren't falsifiable, but more or less educated guesses. I make the assumption that my wife isn't a philosophical zombie but has conscious experience like me. I assume that I don't live in a perfect simulation and the world is "real". I assume that the laws of gravity aren't suddenly suspended if I decide to jump off of a tower tomorrow and therfore don't do it. Those are all unfalsifiable assumptions that one might call beliefs. They are founded on evidence, although they are all non trivial questions- the one about the gravity e.g. goes to the heart of Hume's problem of induction (that there is no strictly logical way to derive anything about what happens in the future from what happened in the past)
Nor can the validity of the standard of falsifiability , afaik, be made into a falsifiable hypothesis.
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition
