the falsification principle

hey all, I have been having some problems understanding this part of empiricism.

I get all of the logical positivist arguments for verification and all on that, but i dont see the point in the falsification principle, thus i dont understand its meaningfulness, which makes it really hard for me to get what its on about

if anyone could lay out the falsification principles argument, that owuld be great

mark

Reply 1

coldplasma

The falsification principle asserts that if something cannot be proved wrong, then it is meaningless. For instance, if I give arguments to a religious person that god does not exist, it does not matter how many arguments I give, the person will always come up with another reason why God exists.

VP and FP are very similar, but they do have subtle differences.

Reply 2

Demoskratos7

The Falsification Principle was sort of a reaction to the Verificationists. The Verificationists were proponents of discarding any statement which is not:
a) tautologically verifiable or
b) verifiable through sense experience (e.g. the sciences).
However, this theory has many implications, notably that any sentence which is not scientifically/mathematically verifiable should be discarded, including historical sentences, literary expression and so on.
The falsification principle, posited by A.J. Ayer and Karl Popper amongst others, tried to basically refine the theory of verification (particularly hard verification). It's ultimately a reliable "gate-keeping" test which distinguishes real science from pseudo-scientific statements (e.g. religious statements &c)

Reply 3

Grosseteste

The Falsification Principle is the heart of Karl Popper's philosophy of science. Essentially it states that a claim is scientific only to the extent that it can be falsified. It makes no claim about non-scientific claims (if it made a blanket claim of the sort mentioned by another respondent here, it would fall into the same trap as crude verificationism -- for it is not itself falsifiable).

Popper was responding to the problem of induction, not to positivists or verificationism; his point is that, whereas no amount of evidence in favour of a universal claim can prove that claim to be true, just one counterexample can prove it to be false. Science, therefore, should proceed by making bold (that is, falsifiable) conjectures which it then sets out to refute.

The theory was immensely influential among scientists for some time.

Problems with the theory include the fact that Popper fails completely to avoid induction, that he makes the notion of scientific progress difficult to justify, that his claim that this is what science actually does is easily falsified (indeed, if science had adopted this approach, it would never have got anywhere, as theories have to be allowed to survive early appafrentfalsification if they're to have a chance to develop into something useful).

Although the main response to Popper's brand of rationalism was a move towards the non-rationalism of philosophers like Kuhn, his own views were developed and some of their problems solved by Imre Lakatos.

Reply 4

dreamqueen

The significance of the falsification principle in religious terms (i.e. the way it is used by Anthony Flew and not Popper) is that religious belief is rendered meaningless because it is based on nothing. This can be illustrated using John Wisdom's Parable of the Gardener - two people go to a garden and one believes there is a gardener, the other points to evidence such as weeds, etc and suggests that there is not. They watch for a gardener but none comes. The one who believes in the gardener suggests that he/she only comes at night, when that can not be proved, that he/she is invisible. they attempt to perform various tests, e.g. testing for any changes in the garden or the atmosphere but there are none. The one who believes in the gardener keeps qualifying his/her existence, e.g. that he/she cannot be sense in any way. Eventually the gardener dies the "death of a thousand qualifications" - no essence of them can be identified so their existence is meaningless. When a religious believer keeps qualifying God' existence - "God loves me but..." they will not let anything count against this belief, like the gardener, so God is rendered meaningless

Reply 5

mark_t

ah great thanks!

basically its the foundations of the VP, but instead of proving if something is verifiable or not, you should instead try to falsify a statement, thus making it meaningful.

A person must first accept a statement is possible of being falsified, and then if this statement cannot be falsified it shows meaningful attributes?

flew believing that thiests who cannot accept defeat, or the falsifiability of God, will render all statements meaningless as there can be no falsification, or verification for that matter? hence "death of a thousand qualifications"...
:smile: