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NaimKabir OP t1_j3cmvma wrote

Reply to comment by HamiltonBrae in Occam’s Deepest Cut: Occam's Razor isn't a guide towards the truth—it *defines* the truth by NaimKabir

Not quite, since it doesn't need to generalize, one counter example is enough. You need to be confident in just one counterexample.

In the verification scheme, you can't ever be confident because you could never test all examples ever.

In one case (falsification) confidence is at least possible, and in the other, it isn't—which makes one of them strictly better

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HamiltonBrae t1_j3ctdx5 wrote

It does need to generalize because if this single counter example was flawed then it completely invalidates the whole thing. You need to be sure that this single counter example is actually valid and that if you repeated it ad infinitum you would get the same result again and again and again which you can't be sure of. There maybe an irrelevant reason why thos counter example occurred. I think there is a very well known example that I can't remember specifically which is how the orbit of some planet in the solar system actually "falsified" Newtonian mechanics, however what was not taken into account was another body affecting the orbit of that planet which skewed the result, so it appeared to falsify it when it didn't. Now surely for every event of falsification, to be one hundred percent sure you are falsifying what you think you are, you need to rule out every single one of these alternative explanations.

i think ultimately, you have to verify that your falsification is valid.

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NaimKabir OP t1_j3d3znk wrote

Falsification is just when some other statement incompatible with a theory is "accepted". If you choose not to accept it again then the falsification doesn't occur. A falsification is also a single instance you are confident in. One experiment! If you do another experiment it's not a re-litigation of the previous falsification at time 1, it's actually just another falsification at time 2. You might choose not to accept Experiment 1s results for some reason, but Experiment 2 could still stand. You just need one instance you accept to falsify a theory.

To verify a theory you need to prove infinite cases

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HamiltonBrae t1_j3egndi wrote

>If you choose not to accept it again then the falsification doesn't occur.

Yes, which is the same problem that induction and verification has. You can infer and verify something then later find out that you can no longer accept it. It applies just as much to falsification as verification.

>One experiment! If you do another experiment it's not a re-litigation of the previous falsification at time 1, it's actually just another falsification at time 2

Well if you are talking about the same type of phenomenon explored several times, I don't see how it is different from the classic example in induction about the sun not rising the next day. In the induction example, sun rises on day 1 but not day 2, in the falsification example instance 1 might be the orbit of some planet and instance 2 might be the discovery that the orbit is affected by some other body. in neither example do verification or falsification are capable of permanently cementing the status of the theories. the finding of the sun not rising on day 2 might even be reversed if it rises on all the days after that and you find some good explanation of why it did not rise on that particular day. my example with the planet orbits depicts a single incidence of newtownan mechanics being falsified which can conceivably be reversed, or was actually reversed depending on how correct my example was.

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