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As far as I remember, that was the worst article about a philosopher that I've ever read. The author is resentful and pretentious from the start to the end and tries his best to portray Popper as a kind of silly person. If you haven't read the article yet, my advice is not to read it.
I never understood how falsificationism is supposed to workaround the shortcoming of inductivism. Say I have coin that I predict will always flip heads. The first flip is tails. Hypothesis falsified! But, that still tells me nothing about the future if the coin is fair. For falsification to work, we have to assume a priori there is not a uniform distribution over events. In which case, we can do something like Solmon…
Your cycle of scientific inquiry is complete in this case. The test demonstrated that the coin will not always flip heads, and therefore the hypothesis was disproved.
But, that still tells me nothing about the future if the coin is fair.
This is now a new, albeit related, inquiry that can build upon the results of the first test.
So your proposition is constructed in error unfortunately and falsification doesn't claim to address the problem of induction.
I never understood how falsificationism is supposed to workaround the shortcoming of inductivism. Say I have coin that I predict will always flip heads. The first flip is tails. Hypothesis falsified! But, that still tells me nothing about the future if the coin is fair. For falsification to work, we have to assume a priori there is not a uniform distribution over events. In which case, we can do something like Solmon…
Theoretically couldn't one obtain the exact result desired from a physical die or coin by rolling or flipping it with the proper degree of precision? Probability is nearly always heuristic technically due to lacking perfect knowledge. Quantum effects appear to involve some true randomness.
"Dynamical bias in the coin toss". https://statweb.stanford.edu/~susan/papers/headswithJ.pdf
* Or at least every time the experiment is performed.
I never understood how falsificationism is supposed to workaround the shortcoming of inductivism. Say I have coin that I predict will always flip heads. The first flip is tails. Hypothesis falsified! But, that still tells me nothing about the future if the coin is fair. For falsification to work, we have to assume a priori there is not a uniform distribution over events. In which case, we can do something like Solmon…
Falsification is only a small part of the story. The other part, the much more important part, is explanatory power. David Deutsch does an excellent job of explaining this in his book The Fabric of Reality, mainly in chapter 7. Highly recommended. Induction, BTW, is completely invalid as a mode of reasoning (speaking here of logical induction, not mathematical induction). You can flip a coin 10,000 times and have it…
Adding an explanation is proposing a model for the coin's behavior. Regardless of the model proposed, and whether it is confirmed or refuted, if the coin is fair you learn nothing.
On the other hand, if the coin is not fair, Solomonoff induction works.
I never understood how falsificationism is supposed to workaround the shortcoming of inductivism. Say I have coin that I predict will always flip heads. The first flip is tails. Hypothesis falsified! But, that still tells me nothing about the future if the coin is fair. For falsification to work, we have to assume a priori there is not a uniform distribution over events. In which case, we can do something like Solmon…
Say I have coin that I predict will always flip heads. The first flip is tails. Hypothesis falsified! Your cycle of scientific inquiry is complete in this case. The test demonstrated that the coin will not always flip heads, and therefore the hypothesis was disproved. But, that still tells me nothing about the future if the coin is fair. This is now a new, albeit related, inquiry that can build upon the results of th…
Karl Popper, a philosopher of science, sought to solve the problem of induction. He argued that science does not use induction, and induction is in fact a myth. Instead, knowledge is created by conjecture and criticism. The main role of observations and experiments in science, he argued, is in attempts to criticize and refute existing theories.
I never understood how falsificationism is supposed to workaround the shortcoming of inductivism. Say I have coin that I predict will always flip heads. The first flip is tails. Hypothesis falsified! But, that still tells me nothing about the future if the coin is fair. For falsification to work, we have to assume a priori there is not a uniform distribution over events. In which case, we can do something like Solmon…
It's not supposed to workaround induction's problems.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Falsification is only a small part of the story. The other part, the much more important part, is explanatory power. David Deutsch does an excellent job of explaining this in his book The Fabric of Reality, mainly in chapter 7. Highly recommended. Induction, BTW, is completely invalid as a mode of reasoning (speaking here of logical induction, not mathematical induction). You can flip a coin 10,000 times and have it…
That's just pushing the problem up a level. Adding an explanation is proposing a model for the coin's behavior. Regardless of the model proposed, and whether it is confirmed or refuted, if the coin is fair you learn nothing. On the other hand, if the coin is not fair, Solomonoff induction works.
But that is simply because the theory that a coin is fair cannot be falsified with one data point. (Well, that's actually not quite true. It can't be falsified with a single data point which is "heads" or "tails". It could be falsified if the coin lands and breaks into two pieces revealing some internal mechanism that makes it unfair.)
> if the coin is not fair, Solomonoff induction works.
No, it doesn't. It is possible (given sufficient technology) to produce a coin that generates a sequence of flips that is indistinguishable from fair for any finite number N of flips, but which then produces HEADS forever after the Nth flip. Moreover, it is possible to know that this will happen without even flipping the coin!
a) his main mission seemed to be to show people they didn't know as much as they thought
b) he was basically a huge troll, even if he was usually correct
c) he was such a huge troll that the Athenians actually put him to death for it via a public trial
If our culture didn't have certain moral qualms that the Athenians didn't have too much trouble brushing aside, I imagine Karl's career would have been cut a lot shorter, along with quite a few other philosophers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Falsification is only a small part of the story. The other part, the much more important part, is explanatory power. David Deutsch does an excellent job of explaining this in his book The Fabric of Reality, mainly in chapter 7. Highly recommended. Induction, BTW, is completely invalid as a mode of reasoning (speaking here of logical induction, not mathematical induction). You can flip a coin 10,000 times and have it…
That's just pushing the problem up a level. Adding an explanation is proposing a model for the coin's behavior. Regardless of the model proposed, and whether it is confirmed or refuted, if the coin is fair you learn nothing. On the other hand, if the coin is not fair, Solomonoff induction works.
No. That's inverting the order of the interaction. On the first case you are observing a phenomenon, and using it to construct a model; on the second case you are constructing a model, and then using your observation to check it.
Induction is a great way to create useful models, but only failures on falsification can give you confidence that the model actually works.
Popper sounds like a dude. We shouldn't confuse this apparent irascibility with dogmatism. He was passionate about his ideas: he published them and read criticism of them. He changed his mind about the testability of evolution, and other things. Intellectual humility is not the same quality as personal meekness and geniuses have always had difficult personalities. Philosophers doubly so. How could it be otherwise? Ho…
> The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-- George Bernard Shaw