The greatest Philosopher

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sorry, I can be a little trigger happy with familiarities (sp.?)

ah, the point being that the tower argument reasonably falsified Galileo and the tower argument had not been falsified itself at that point - had Galileo been working according to falsifiability he would have had to do the reasonable thing and reject his hypothesis; thus setting back the development of mankind and its knowledge by a great deal, perhaps by a matter of a century or more.



Ok, that's a straw man looking from here but, yeah, that would be what Popper would call ad hoc I think. However, in Galileo's day such an observation and subsequent change would have had little value beyond being able to see where Jupiter will be in the sky on day X. Geocentrism retained its strength as an idea not because of the modifications that could be/were made but because of how useful it was as the basis for celestial navigation across deserts or, more importantly, navigation to the Americas.

I know this is a damn lenghty quote (taken from an encyclopedia put together by Stanford university) but it's late here and i have to go to work tomorrow morning, i'll try and be more coherent later:

"Scientific laws are expressed by universal statements (i.e., they take the logical form ‘All As are X’, or some equivalent) which are therefore concealed conditionals—they have to be understood as hypothetical statements asserting what would be the case under certain ideal conditions. In themselves they are not existential in nature. Thus ‘All As are X’ means ‘If anything is an A, then it is X’. Since scientific laws are non-existential in nature, they logically cannot imply any basic statements, since the latter are explicitly existential. The question arises, then, as to how any basic statement can falsify a scientific law, given that basic statements are not deducible from scientific laws in themselves? Popper answers that scientific laws are always taken in conjunction with statements outlining the ‘initial conditions’ of the system under investigation; these latter, which are singular existential statements, do, when combined with the scientific law, yield hard and fast implications. Thus, the law ‘All As are X’, together with the initial condition statement ‘There is an A at Y’, yields the implication ‘The A at Y is X’, which, if false, falsifies the original law.

This reply is adequate only if it is true, as Popper assumes, that singular existential statements will always do the work of bridging the gap between a universal theory and a prediction. Hilary Putnam in particular has argued that this assumption is false, in that in some cases at least the statements required to bridge this gap (which he calls ‘auxiliary hypotheses’) are general rather than particular, and consequently that when the prediction turns out to be false we have no way of knowing whether this is due to the falsity of the scientific law or the falsity of the auxiliary hypotheses. The working scientist, Putnam argues, always initially assumes that it is the latter, which shows not only that scientific laws are, contra Popper, highly resistant to falsification, but also why they are so highly resistant to falsification.

Popper's final position is that he acknowledges that it is impossible to discriminate science from non-science on the basis of the falsifiability of the scientific statements alone; he recognizes that scientific theories are predictive, and consequently prohibitive, only when taken in conjunction with auxiliary hypotheses, and he also recognizes that readjustment or modification of the latter is an integral part of scientific practice. Hence his final concern is to outline conditions which indicate when such modification is genuinely scientific, and when it is merely ad hoc. This is itself clearly a major alteration in his position, and arguably represents a substantial retraction on his part: Marxism can no longer be dismissed as ‘unscientific’ simply because its advocates preserved the theory from falsification by modifying it (for in general terms, such a procedure, it now transpires, is perfectly respectable scientific practice). It is now condemned as unscientific by Popper because the only rationale for the modifications which were made to the original theory was to ensure that it evaded falsification, and so such modifications were ad hoc, rather than scientific. This contention—though not at all implausible—has, to hostile eyes, a somewhat contrived air about it, and is unlikely to worry the convinced Marxist. On the other hand, the shift in Popper's own basic position is taken by some critics as an indicator that falsificationism, for all its apparent merits, fares no better in the final analysis than verificationism."



I'm not sure I follow, that also seems self contradictory, surely any explanation that claims to be scientific should be applicable universally - (e.g. the laws of physics are constant at any point in the universe) - I'm not sure how it is possible to maintain both that 'Marxism does not explain the political history the world has had' and 'it explains any political history'.

No, no. It falsified either Galileo, or the idea that on a rotating earth balls do not fall
straight down. Either one, or the other.

Lets say that the current understanding is that when I point my telescope at the moon,
I will only see the moon and the objects on the moon. If I have a theory that there are
no giant moths on the moon, but one day I point my telescope on the moon and see an
enormous moth on it; that is not a falsification of my 'no giant moths on the moon'
theory. Instead it is either a falsification of the 'no giant moths on the moon' theory OR
it is a falsification of the older 'when I point my telescope at the moon, I will only see the
moon and the objects on the moon' theory.
Five weeks later I will find out it is a falsification of the latter when I find a dead moth on
the lens of my telescope.

Newton found Galileo's dead moth that proved that the tower experiment falsified the old
understanding of physics, instead of a spinning earth.



Whom am I strawmanning?
Certainly not your self as I didn't present any of your arguments in that paragraph. Are
you accusing me of strawmanning geocentrists?




A theory that can explain any new evidence is problematic, not least because it can not
possibly tell us anything about the world we live in.

For example, the theory of Red Hats:
"Everyone is either wearing a normal red hat, or they are wearing an undetectable red hat"
The theory of Red Hats explains any possible data. It is true even in a universe that where
no one wears hats. Although it appears to give us information about people's headware, it
in fact, tell us nothing about anyone's headware if it is true and it tells us nothing if it is false.
Furthermore, we have no way of telling if it is true or if it is false.

The theory of Blue Hats:
"Some people wear blue hats" does not explain any circumstance. If there where no blue hats
in the world it would be wrong; it would fail in explaining that particular circumstance.
This theory does give us information. If it is true it tell us that some people wear blue hats
and if it is false it tells us that some people wear red hats. It's also easy to tell if it is true or false.

ed:
Geocentrism became a "Theory of Red Hats" via the use of epicycles because in the form:
"The Earth is in the centre and the heavenly bodies circle it on paths containing any number of
epicycles" is true for any possible data (that could be collected from Earth based observations).
It appears to tell us something about the manner in which the heavenly bodies move, but in
fact, does not; it just tells us how anything moves. Even the flight of a seagull can be explained
using epicycles if you use enough of them.

Last edited by Letum on 20 Dec 2009, 8:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

2. I hunger

3. Run, coward!

Sorry - couldn't resist posting here. My answer is the Buddha. He said that everyone suffers and everyone wants to be happy. It's to the point and it's true. And even though the teachings were given more than 2500 years ago, he taught a way for us to find this happiness we all want - for those of us who choose to follow them. So, it's both an accurate and effective philosophy - and gets my vote!

I also appreciate ruveyn and his Groucho Marx lol! According to my studies no one owns a copyright on truth - whether it's Mickey Mouse or Buddha. Whatever, whoever helps us make sense of our world, helps alleviate the confusion of life - is good in my opinion.

I'm not too sure about the assertion of allowing for error in a philosophy - except if it's only to allow for an open, flexible mind. As for me, I'm looking for 100% accuracy. And I'm looking for a philosophy that will transport me from this suffering existence.

I would appreciate not being confused with ruveyn. We are both old atheistic Jews but ruveyn thinks he is smarter than anybody and I think Groucho was smarter than both of us.

I am not an atheist. I believe the G-D of the TNKH was a collective of extraterrestrials from another planet, not in our solar system. The strange thing that Ezikiel described looks like a lander from a mother ship, and the "angel" that visited Sampson's parents beamed up just like Scotty in Star Trek. It is described in the Book of Judges. The parting of the the Sea of Reads was accomplished by some kind of ray projector from a mother ship and the fire and ice that descended on Egypt (in the book of Exodus) was clearly the work of scientifically advanced beings. As to Moses on the mountain top, that was clearly an Encounter of the Third Kind.

ruveyn

I would appreciate the same thing. I do not think I am smarter than everybody. I do believe I am smarter than you. You believe in the goodness of man which is a grave error. I know better. I used to work for the Government, so I know the Heart of Darkness.

ruveyn

Good to know you believe aliens equivalent to God. I may have some peculiar ideas but I bow to your gullibility. I cannot even approach it. (Of course, I understand, you must be either kidding or totally senile. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt).

? I'm not certain I get what you're saying, it almost seems a little garbled to be honest. Didn't Galileo say that both the earth moved in an orbit and rotated and that the tower experiment falsified both? anyway.....

no, the hypothesis was that if the earth rotates and orbits the sun (as galileo claimed) then it clearly moves, if it moves then when an object is dropped from a height it will be 'left behind' so to speak, that is it won't land directly below the point form which it was dropped - if it does land directly below the point from which it was dropped then it is the earth which is stationary and the sun which moves (which could be observed on a daily basis). The geocentrist's position held as there was no additional information or testable hypotheses by Galileo that would allow for the heliocentrist position that was not also falsified (Galileo's being that the movement of the earth caused the tides - but this hypothesis allowed only for one tide per day whereas there were 2 on the Venetianb coast i think). Galileo did show that not everything orbited the earth (with Jupiter's moons) however, as one cardianl pointed out, this only demonstrated that the Galilean moons orbited Jupiter - not that all solar bodies orbit the sun. While Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo had shown that their hypothesis could be true they could offer no proof that the Ptolemaic system couldn't (this was apparently better than the Copernican system at the time of Kepler et al at predicting eclipses etc). It wasn't until FW Bessel, using technology not available to Kepler or Galileo, in the 1800's that it was proved that the Copernican system was correct and falsified Geocentrism - so by Popperian standards Kepler and Galileo made what amounts to a leap of faith, an act of fidelity and the church was a paragon of reason. Had we advanced on Poppers method of falsification we would not be where we are now.



That is also a strawman.



Unless you're going to tell me that Galileo's telescope was so accurate he could look into the future to a time when the Geocentrist model would be falsified then I have to assume that Galileo had no idea that his work would be justified. Again, the point is that had Galileo, or Kepler, been falsificationists they would have abandoned their ideas - it is only later that they were proven correct; that is Kepler and Galileo effectively acted on the faith, rather than reason, that they were correct and were only proven so retroactively by later findings using technology not available to them.

A broader question is what if they had dropped their ideas? would science still have advanced on the timeline that it did or would this abandonment have led to a different sequence of events - events wherein the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries either did not take place or was delayed until later? We may have had to wait for the heliocentric ideas to emerge again, then wait another period for the technological capacity to prove them before this takes place.



i was referring to this:
"even if Jupiter shot across the sky and did loops like some UFO, it could still be explained by adding more epicycles
to the path it was taking around the Earth. It became unfalsifiable; a theory that can explain
any and all data presented to it."
I bring it up mainly as it's pretty absurd and doesn't move the discussion forward, I did wonder if you were trying to strawman my position but then I'm not a geocentrist.



I'm told it was Fracastoro who used 70-80 epicycles not Ptolemy. And there is, according to Owen Gingerich, no evidence that epicycles were ever added to Ptolemy's work, only that this idea emerged around 1898-ish.

haha! I read ruveyn's post about Groucho before I read yours - so there really was no confusion. I think you're both funny though - so that's another thing in common that you share (in my subjective opinion)! lol