Understanding Falsifiability: Misconceptions and Clarifications
School
Sierra College**We aren't endorsed by this school
Course
PHIL 2
Subject
Philosophy
Date
Dec 11, 2024
Pages
2
Uploaded by BaronQuailPerson1269
§3. Common misunderstandings of falsifiabilityPeople often misunderstand Popper’s criterion, so let me clarify some things:If a claim is falsifiable, it doesn’t mean that the claim is actually false. This would be absurd; it would be like saying that Popper thought that all science is false! A claim can be falsifiable even if there’s no actual evidence that show it to be false (even if it hasn’t been falsified by an observation). The claim “Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light” is falsifiable because we can define in advance that if we were to find an object that travels faster than light, the claim would be false. This doesn’t mean that we have actually found an object that travel at such speed. If a claim is falsifiable, it doesn’t mean that the claim is actually false. A claim is falsifiable if it is possible to define, in advance, a state of empirical affairs such that, if they were to occur, the claim would be false. In other words, if it’s possible to think in advance of what would need to happen in the physical world for the claim to be false. If it’s not possible to think of a state of the world that would make the claim false, then the claim is not falsifiable.The fact that I can think of a possible state of empirical affairs that would make the claim false doesn’t mean that the claim is actually false. For example, the claim “Pigs can’t fly” is falsifiable. Why? Because I can define in advance the conditions that, if they were to occur, would make the claim false. More precisely: “Pigs can’t fly” is falsifiable because I can define in advance that, if there wasa flying pig, the claim would be false.A crucial point of Popper’s view is that, although you can show some claims to be false, you cannot show claims to be true. So, unless we find observational evidence of an object travelling faster than light, we should remain agnostic as to whether “Nothing travels faster than the speed of light” is true. For Popper, if the claim is actually true, we will never know, so we will have to remain agnostic forever because if it is in fact true, we will never see evidence that falsifies it. Nevertheless, the claim would still be falsifiable because I can conceive such falsifying evidence. Now, Popper is not clear whether being falsifiable (being open to refutation) is a feature of the theories themselves, or of those who endorse those theories. As we will see, this is also a big problem of his view. §4. Laudan’s piecemeal approach or the rejection of the demarcation problem. In 1981, Arkansas Act 590 required that teachers in schools give equal time to both ‘creation science’ and evolutionary theory in the classrooms. The requirement was dismissed by judge William Overton, who argued that creation science was religion disguised as science, and the US constitution prohibited the teaching of religion in public schools. Overton based his decision on the claim that creation science wasn’t science because it didn’t make falsifiable claims. In this, he was advised by some philosophers of science who were inspired by Popper.
But philosopher of science Larry Laudan disagreed with this reasoning. He agreed that creation science had no place in the classrooms, but didn’t think that Overton’s Popperian justification was correct, precisely because of all the problems with falsifiability we have already seen. After criticizing judge Overton’s naive approach to demarcation (for reasons that we will see below), Laudan made the following remarks:Rather than taking on the creationist obliquely and in wholesale fashion by suggesting that what they are doing is “unscientific” tout court (which is doubly silly because few authors can even agree on what makes an activity scientific), we should confront their claims directly and in piecemeal fashion by asking what evidence and arguments can be marshalled for and against each of them. The core issue is not whether Creationism satisfies some undemanding and highly controversial definitions of what is scientific; the real question is whether the existing evidence provides stronger arguments for evolutionary theory than for Creationism. Once that question is settled, we will know what belongs in the classroom and what does not (50-51). Laudan’s point is that worrying about the demarcation problem, understood as the problem of finding general conditions for a discipline to qualify as pseudoscientific, is futile. There’s not even an agreement on what science is! It doesn’t matter if Creationism qualifies under the label of pseudoscience. What matters is that most of its claims can be proven false. The same with other disciplines that are supposed to qualify as pseudoscientific. I see three problems with this view. First, it ignores many of the problems highlighted by Popper, related to the vagueness of pseudoscientific claims, which makes them invulnerable to refutation. And even when they are open to refutation, practitioners won’t concede defeat. This view is problematic also because public debates do require abstracting away from particular cases and focusing on general features. (Recall my examples of public agencies deciding where to allocate funding).Finally, many scientific theories are now proven to be false, like for example Newtonian physics (the failure being more noticeable when the theory is applied to the microscopic and macroscopic worlds). If Creationism, astrology, homeopathy, etc. are also theories that have proven to be false, does it mean that these three should be on a pair with Newtonian physics? It seems that there’s something regarding the methodology and the practitioner’s attitudes that is missing from Laudan’s picture.