Ecrasez L'infame

I notice a couple of posts that use Ben's 0-3 scoring system have judged that most of Toto's hypotheticals are 0 (= will not damage HJ at all even if true). But doesn't that mean that for those posters HJ is effectively unfalsifiable - that no matter what evidence is produced to the contrary, there's always a way for HJ to accommodate it?

By contrast, there's a hundred ways MJ might be falsified, any of which might turn up in some cave or archaeological dig tomorrow. IIUC, a "falsifiable" theory means one "able to be falsified by some likely discovery" - and the more likely, the more risks the theory takes in its predictions, the more respect it earns (this is why Creationism isn't falsifiable, since just about the only way it could be disproved is for God to appear and announce it's a loads of cobblers - which isn't really all that likely to happen).

The first six posts of this thread were split off from What would damage the historical Jesus theory the most?

Peter Kirby

No it doesn't; it just means that Toto's proposals are, on average, more irrelevant than Ben Smith's.

I mean, any fool can make a list.

(1) Paul overpaid for hummus while in Damascus.

(2) Kephas farted in the spa at Corinth.

(3) James took justice in to his own hands in a bar in downtown Jerusalem.

...doesn't mean jack squat.

On the other hand, if the list were more relevant to the question, we might have some bigger numbers. (e.g., James did not claim to be the brother of Jesus...why wasn't that item on Toto's list? It would have merited a positive number.)

Besides, Popperian theory on falsification is all but part of the wastebasket of philosophy anyway.

And, just to reiterate the obvious: if there is one way for a hypothesis to be falsified, that one way is sufficient to make it falsifiable in the Popperian sense. So the presence of one method is sufficient; two is already more than is needed. You will note that I marked two of Toto's items positively.

Ecrasez L'infame

I don't think HJ has an onus to show it's falsifiable - after all it's the dominant theory - but if it doesn't, it looks bad for it (as Ben's thread has shown, MJ is more than willing and able to do so). Perhaps if you don't like Toto's list you could provide half a dozen specific and/or likely discoveries of your own that would destroy HJ? You don't have to, but if you don't it may harm your defence (as the police in Britain say as often as they can).

Let me put it this way. If MJ were the dominant theory instead of HJ, would a maverick believer in HJ be able to present a list to match Ben's in his thread and so get the attention of the (open-minded) scientific community? Would there even BE such a forum as IIDB in a world like that? Not on the arguments presented so far in this thread...

I think this is misunderstanding the idea of falsifiability. Any possible test of a theory must be likely to go against the theory. Under your definition, I could say that Creationism is falsifiable, since it is indeed possible that God will suddenly appear and disown it (even then there's wiggle-room for the Creationists: God could be lying to test us, it could be the devil in disguise, etc). In contrast, an apocalyptic who gives specific dates and times for the end of the world IS making a good falsifiable and scientific prediction. In between these two is a whole spectrum of scientific prediction. IMO the two items on Toto's list you give a positive to are at the unlikely end of this spectrum (I don't mean they are unlikely to be true, tho' they may be; only that they are unlikely to be proven by future discoveries.)

Properly understood... not that I'd heard. Many scientists still first judge a theory on the risks it takes; if it makes specific and likely-to-be-wrong predictions, it is then looked at more carefully. If not, then there's no point. This is why string theory is currently in trouble.

Well, because what type of document would have to be dug up to prove that? A death-bed confession of religious fraud? A late letter in James' own hand asking who this Jesus is that everyone is talking about because he, James, had never heard of him? See, we're not talking about how true these things are here, but how likely it is that we discover evidence proving them.

Peter Kirby

I pick out one part in the hope of achieving greater clarity on this one point, without rising to the challenge you put forward to come up with more than the two or three points I have already mentioned that could count against HJ, so that you might be able to reply on this point before we get further tangled.

This is part of why falsification theory is in trouble, particularly as a whole understanding of human knowledge, including realms such as history.

Most of our evidence of Christian origins is not changing, just as most of our evidence of Abraham Lincoln's death is not changing. Most of the evidence that was valid or invalid in 1910, is still valid or invalid in 1960, and will still be valid or invalid in 2010.

I could try to sit and think of six ways I would falsify the idea that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, but I assure you that has nothing to do with the reasons that I may think that he was. I don't really think that there is any possibility of a new diary popping up or photograph being uncovered that solves new mysteries in the case of Lincoln.

Likewise for the case of Jesus. It's a cold case, and only greater ingenuity--as opposed to fresh evidence--is ever capable of bringing us closer to closing it. But then, if it were closed, what would people create bestsellers about? And so it goes.

gurugeorge

As an aside, and at risk of thread derailment (my speciality ) AFAIK (from my amateur gleanings in philosophy) this isn't quite true, Popper's ideas are an acknowledged ancestor of evolutionary epistemology and some aspects of them have been absorbed into naturalistic epistemology in philosophy (via Kuhn), and both of these are fairly healthy sub-strands of modern epistemology.

And in the long view, the modern understanding of how "blind" systems can "learn" by elimination of "unfit tries", examples of which abound in the natural world, from evolution in general, through the immune system, to the very brain itself, is basically Popperian, and the way we consciously seek knowledge partly builds on that foundation. As another general point, the Popperian way of looking at knowledge accumulation and Darwinian ways of looking at the evolution of the complex from the simple go comfortably together. And as Ecrasez pointed out (and to my knowledge this is a fair saying) working scientists tend to be quite comfortable seeing what they do in a Popperian light.

Falsification may not be very important in history, but then, after all, is history really a science? *ducks*

Peter Kirby

Fortunately, Popper is strictly wrong about what science is, and thus history may still be as much a science as it is an art. As to what scientists see themselves as doing, recall that they once were perfectly content (before Popper emerged on the scene) of seeing their work in light of classical inductivism, to the extent that working scientists think about the basic working of science at all.

To wit, and relavant to my previous post:

"Several important episodes in the growth of knowledge suggest, therefore, that although knew and unexpected facts may support a theory, not all empirical results which support a theory are necessarily novel. The temporal order of theory and evidence cannot therefore constitute in its own right the discriminating factor on which to base the distinction between genuine and spurious confirmations. To paraphrase Lakatos, 'if the rationality of science is Popperian, actual science is not rational; if it is rational, it is not Popperian.'" (For and Against Method, ed. Matteo Motterlini, pp. 110-111)

I am at present inclined to tinker at an essay in method, research programmes, and Jesus in the balance of history as a science...but that would take some effort, and so may have to wait a bit.

Ecrasez L'infame

I guess not. But tho' history isn't a science, I think it is possible to do history scientifically, by which I mean in the hypothesis-prediction-test cycle; and I think that's what Toto's thread was about. Ben originally raised the question (indirectly) of whether MJ was falsifiable, and he and the others on that thread showed that it was in bucket-loads. It doesn't seem unreasonable to ask HJ to do the same.

BTW - where's the ducks?:huh:

Peter. Your ingenious analogy of Lincoln doesn't quite work. Overwhelmingly dominant theories are under no obligation to show falsifiability, and not even in the farthest backside of googlespace is there a conspiracy theory that Lincoln was NOT shot (I stand to be corrected here). Furthermore, if there were such a conspiracy theory, it would be hard-pressed to show itself falsifiable, and therefore, unlike MJ, it would fail the first test that most working scientists apply to a new theory. Further furthermore, HJ isn't as dominant as all that, especially here on IIDB - so, it's exactly as I said to start off with: you don't HAVE to provide ways HJ can be falsified, but if you don't people are entitled to assume there aren't any. They might even imagine that, if in some parallel universe MJ were the dominant theory, HJ wouldn't even pass the first stage of scientific scrutiny.

Also: I'm puzzled by your attitude to science:

You seem to be admitting that most working scientists regard risky falsification as important, but that they're somehow out of date or don't understand their own subject in doing so. Is that an unfair summary?

The Lord give me the brains to understand this.

Peter Kirby

...which is not exactly what is done in science (see Imre Lakatos and his comments with regards to the history of science)...
But Doherty claims that all of the statements from Ben C. Smith are either false or, at least, not demonstrated or demonstrable. Given that Doherty has the same data that I do, how does this lend falsifiability to the MJ hypothesis? What "risky predictions" has the MJ hypothesis made?
Once I understand what is meant by all this "prediction" business, I can more comfortably rise to the bait. In the meantime, you continue to ignore that the same scale by which I scored items on Smith's list 1 or 2, I also scored two items on Toto's list 1 and 2...which two items you somehow think to be less legitimate than my scorings of Smith, which are apparently all on the up and up?
It is, of course, not an "analogy," in the stupid but popular sense of an analogy, where an analogy "works" so long as all parts correspond. It is simply an illustration of the fact that (a) new evidence is not coming in for most individuals of history before 1900--the database is relatively nonvolatile and the most important data known, with of course noteworthy and exceptional discoveries in the desert sands (or old libraries) and inferences from archaeology, and (b) history plods on in its statements despite that there is usually no new data coming in that would controvert or "falsify" the statements of history. This means that a theory of knowledge that requires "risky predictions," predictions about data not yet collected, cannot incorporate history into that theory.

(I didn't always understand this. When a test question in elementary school asked to identify those statements that are likely to be controverted by new evidence, I included the assassination of Lincoln as one of them. I figured that new data could be uncovered in this case, just as new data were being uncovered all the time for the scientific cosmology I was reading.)

I can see why you may be puzzled, and you may be even more puzzled by the truth! Scientists do not receive an extensive education in the philosophy of science, the history of science, or even scientific method for the most part...those courses are likely to be electives and part of the upper division of study at the university. It is not surprising at all to find that scientists may be walking around with less than perfect--and certainly foggy--notions of what science's method of discovery and refutation is. The easiest proof of this is that scientists do not themselves agree on what exactly this method would look like if spelled out philosophically, despite the impression that you would get from the two or three day run down on scientific method that students get in the first few days of a 100 level course. Certainly physicists understand physics better than I do...but it is not surprising if they misunderstand how the equations and theories of physics came to be regarded as the ones to be favored in the texts. Expecting a scientist to have a clear notion of science's development is like expecting a priest to have a clear notion of theology's development: some do, and it's a damn fine rarity when it happens.

My best suggestion is, again, to read the essays, lectures, and books of philosopher and historian of science (and no slouch in understanding science itself) Imre Lakatos. If I've misrepresented the thrust of his argument, to the extent that I have please forgive me, but I am led to understand quite distinctly that Popper is only one of many different theories of how we acquire scientific knowledge, and yes indeed passe.

This is a decent introduction to the philosophy of science online.

I think it's sad that this one thought, somewhat insightful but fatally flawed, of falsificationism, has come to dominate the discussion of the glory and wonder of the scientific method as it is. Why this one man is enthroned as the philosopher of science par excellence after some 60 years is a mystery. Probably, like Q in New Testament studies, falsification has some pedagogical value that makes its retention most likely.

Febble

Delurking for a moment....

I don't think this is quite right. Falsification is still the bread-and-butter of experimental science. That's why we have null hypotheses - we attempt to falsify the null. The problem with the MJ hypothesis is that it works better as a null hypothesis than as a model hypothesis. One might retain the null, but retaining the null doesn't tell you much. Whereas rejecting the null tells you a lot. To make the MJ hypothesis stronger, you would have to formulate it in such a way that the HJ hypothesis worked as a null. I have no idea how you'd do that.

Peter Kirby

This goes back to my pedagogy musing. Probably the concept of falsification has helped students understand most readily what scientists are doing when they conduct experiments, and has even worked some degree of good in getting scientists to set up their experiments along the lines of a hypothesize-predict-test model, even though that does not really encompass all of what goes on in science's deliberations and cannot be taken seriously as the whole of the scientific method.

And, if I understand the contention of Ecrasez L'infame, it is that he believes (or he has it on his understanding that significant other people believe) that whereas accepting HJ implies nothing in particular about the extent evidence--it is unfalsifiable thus--accepting MJ implies a lot about the extent evidence--it is falsifiable. By my understanding of what a null hypothesis is, that would make MJ the null hypothesis (you accept the null hypothesis until it is falsified, at which point you accept something else, according to theory).

If I understand what "retaining the null" means (considering the null hypothesis true?) and what "rejecting the null" means (considering the null hypothesis false?), I think I would have to attribute your statements above to fatigue, and reverse them to, "One might [reject] the null, but [rejecting] the null doesn't tell you much. Whereas [retaining] the null tells you a lot." That is, assuming "telling you a lot" means having falsifiable predictions, assuming MJ is the null, and assuming that MJ is the one with the falsifiable predictions...that would mean MJ is telling you a lot, which would mean that retaining MJ is telling you a lot, while the rejection of MJ (HJ) is not, is not making falsifiable predictions.

If the analysis of MJ as a null hypothesis is sound--if it is falsifiable, and its opposite completely unfalsifiable--then MJ proponents are in the unenviable position of being required under one standard of method to show their opponents to be wrong (in order to overturn a consensus opinion), and being told under another standard of method that their opponents cannot be shown wrong (in order to preserve the status of MJ as null hypothesis). This is effectively a stalemate position in the eyes of the JM proponent, because he feels that logically and to rights he has the better position and more material in support, but cannot close the gap to victory.

The only ways out are either to reject the former standard, and hold that those who would overturn a consensus have no burden to show the consensus deficient but may be content with a meta-level epistemic analysis of the affair in order to overturn the consensus, or to reject the latter standard, and hold that the meta-level epistemic analysis is false and that there are ways of discrediting the HJ hypothesis or of positively and remarkably confirming the MJ hypothesis. However, one cannot have their cake and eat it too (as the mischievous index maker of Popper's book indicated, noting under Marxism both "made Irrefutable" and "refuted" in the index). One must first decide whether this meta-level epistemic analysis of the affair is accurate.

I hold for one that it is not, and that this affords great hope for the MJ hypothesis, as it seems far more likely that the stodgy guild that historians are will be impressed more by real evidence than by philosophical papers (inevitably found to be flawed) on the nature of existence claims and the necessity of an MJ null hypothesis in light of the falsifiabilty criterion.