A ridiculous non refutation of Popper. What if' little green fairies came down from space an temporarily turned the freezer off ' 'what if the frog was really a toad ' . Is this clown serious.
Lots of comments on this video, including some critical ones. Can't respond to everyone individually -- and sometimes the criticism is a bit amorphous -- but let me give an overall response and provide a link to a more in-depth engagement with Popper at the end. Now, first of all, this is a short introductory lecture. I'm in complete agreement with anyone making the point that much more could be said about this issue; that we could delve into Popper's overall story about induction, his notion of corroboration, his ideas about observation, and so on. But -- and this is crucial from the perspective of education -- none of that would change the basic point made by the video. In philosophy of science, it is not at all controversial to state that Popper's attempt to do without induction is, in the end, a failure. It is a failure for multiple reasons, but in part because of the reliance on inductively established beliefs in the performance and interpretation of any experiment. So, yes, Popper would have a lot to say about my video. But, no, it would not substantially change the outcome. And this is not a private opinion of mine, but a widely held judgement among philosophers. Now some of the people who left comments on this video suggest that philosophers in general have misunderstood Popper. This is a myth, a myth that has been created and popularised by Popper himself. I'll just quote from his text Science: Conjectures and Refutations: "Criticism of my alleged views was widespread and highly successful. I have yet to meet a criticism of my views." Or again, from the first page of Objective Knowledge: "[...] those works which take notice of my ideas usually ascribe views to me which I never held, or criticize me on the basis of straightforward misunderstandings or misreadings, or with invalid arguments." However, Popper's views on induction have been criticised by some of the best philosophers of science of the 20th century, and if you read them side-by-side with Popper, it's clear that they have perfectly understood him. I especially recommend Wesley Salmon's "Rational Prediction" and Hilary Putnam's "The 'Corroboration' of Theories" if you want a taste of this literature. Unfortunately, Popper often writes in a way that hides the more problematic aspects of his views under ambiguities and ambivalences, while at the same time positing straw man positions as his enemy. If you want to learn more about Popper and see an in-depth analysis of one of his most famous and hugely problematic texts, I recommend that you check out the series I did on my own channel about Science: Conjectures and Refutations. ua-cam.com/play/PL8Nxd4OXpzqlbV-ZBu4VfKHRtThzEL7Pf.html
I have a question about the example that you gave in the video. You said that the next assumption is false: if the next proposition is true [all frogs die after being in a freezer for a week] then, it should follow that after letting a frog for a week inside the freezer, it is dead. The proposition [all frogs die after being in the freezer for a week] can be rewritten as follows: If [a set of frogs X was put into the freezer for a week] is true, in every case in which this is true, in spite of other things happening (that are being ignored because they were NOT included in the logical proposition as requirements) it will follow that [every member of the set X of frogs IS dead]. This won’t be proven false in those cases in which neither the requirements nor the logical conclusion were met, so your examples are not valid if you have the purpose of falsifying the proposition. Also, in those cases in which other things that were not specified in the requirements nor in the logical conclusion of this proposition happen or do not happen, this proposition affirms that, in spite of these “anomalies”, if the requeriments are met, then the logical conclusion should be true. This is because it applies to ALL CASES IN WHICH THE REQUIREMENTS ARE MET, it doesn’t say that it applies in all of those cases in which ONLY the requirements are met, and every other predicate is false. So, why should your examples falsify Popper’s statements?
The complications critique misses a more relaxed requirement that a hypothesis be at least falsifiable in theory to satisfy Popper. Obviously complications can confound a given instance of an observation. But these are two different thresholds. So Popper holds.
I agree, to allow tautological claims to be a part of science would result in different approaches, different ideologies, and in turn dogmas. I realize that scientists may have dogmas but they should play no role in the practice of science itself. For instance different interpretations of quantum mechanics give us the same predictions so far. However if one day a different prediction emerges from an interpretation it should be experimented with and if it is falsified the main effort should be put into the other interpretations.
Absolutely. I think this is the hard part to explain Methodological Falsificationism NOT simple/naive falsification. Deduction only works assuming a correct premise. Induction only gives unverifiable mutable statistics. Abduction gives "best guesses". Methodological falsification is a) attempt b) a chain of experimentation that is unending, i.e. an infinite regression to a limit but tells us something new. c) agreeing that falsification can only apply to particular situations and context of the test within the whole. /Fallible/ falsification. d) still defines what is UNfalsifiable because we can't test UNfalsifiable things to learn anything from experiment! E)Popper is embracing uncertainty, not trying to retain the absolutism of positivism, its just we can make some statements still. F) falsifiability is not the ONLY mark of pseudo-science. Some pseudoscience is falsifiable. No science is unfalsifiable. Its just the other demarcation criteria are more subjective. Science most often used the two latter, but the former is where it is truly revolutionary imo. A more accurate statement is that its interplay between all three and that they don't exist in isolation. Its predictive behaviour only exists under certain conditions anyway, conditions which can be satisfactorily driven out of it's Duhem-Quine case, by virtue of its use! Unless...you claim a theory of everything or absolutism (lowercase, i mean essentially an omnipotent theory, rather than The TOE of unified forces/gravity). If you did have that, then you /would/ get falsification from hollistic statements. Just a note: scientific realism is dying, i don't think we can retain much more than intrumentalism- at least, post-quantum-physics science is instrumentalist in nature, for now. Deduction in the mathematical nature and formulation of equations is so important that i wonder why people ask 'then where is the deduction?'...um everywhere...
The speaker has misunderstood Popper. Popper was not speaking about practice, he was speaking about epistemology. He recognised that in many cases individuals in practice were not performing science as he described it, but that he was making clear how knowledge was being acquired. Freud for instance did not conduct science as Popper described it, but he also did not acquire much knowledge via his attempts to only affirm his theories that were highly variable. Popper also recognised that there were many underlying theories regarding measurement involved in every attempt to falsify. I suggest that those who want to understand Karl Popper not turn to this video (which is confused), but rather read Oxford Physicist David Deutsch, who has clearly expressed Popperian science in his book: The Beginning of Infinity.
Freud did acquire knowledge. What the problem that Popper had with freudianism is that it's formulation made it impossible for us to learn anything from it and to prompt us to create new knowledge in the event that an error was found. We don't use science to aquire knowledge, we use science to deselect prior created knowledge from candidacy for the truth. Deutsch agrees with the video that theories are never accepted as true in science. How he can believe this is beyond me, since how then does he critically evaluate them? Nonsense. There is no difference between acceptance and acceptance as true, it's just a mistake, again born of the idea that we need something firmer to claim that a theory is true. Crypto-inductivist much? Furthemore he would say that the practices that inductivism describes don't actually happen, what happens is that scientists waste their time going through rituals that don't do anything which is coupled with practices that he identified that do do something. Inductivism locates portions of the rituals and portions of the actual practices that work and interprets that as induction. There are practices, but among those practices there isn't induction.
@@drewjohn6721 "We don't use science to aquire knowledge, we use science to deselect prior created knowledge from candidacy for the truth." How do you acquire knowledge if you only remove prior knowledge?
Hello, I’m just wondering does anybody have a good example of falsification in action. For example I don’t like the black swan analogy or frogs in the freezer example I would like an example to show how real science works. For example water boils at 100 degrees Celsius (dependent on atmospheric pressure) and is scientific fact because? How would falsification be used in this simple case? Help please?
@sawtoothekg Thanks for the reply but I was looking for an example that I could use to explain to a layman. Somebody provided me with the answer I was looking for by saying "water boiling at 100'c (standard pressure) is falsifiable because if we observe water boiling at another temperature we'd be proven it false. It is scientific fact because you can prove it to be false with an observation & not because it is true." This was the answer I was looking for because most people are not familiar with Einstein and Newton lol
Respectfully, I believe that you have a mistaken conception of falsification. Induction is not inherently antithetical to falsification. The only requirement is that premises with an inductive structure are tested deductively. That test is the search for observational data that either establishes modus tolens or discovers a counter-example(s). Take for instance an inductive premise like [all swans are white.] It has an inductive structure because we are incapable of observing all swans, but in all of those cases we have observed swans - they have been white. This inductive conclusion could be starting place in the process of falsification. How do we proceed deductively? Look for cases in which we have a swan, but not white. We find a counter-example in Australia: black swan. Hence, the inductive conclusion has been proven false. However, let's say we take the inductive conclusion that all swans are either black or white. So then we decide to search the earth far and wide for five years looking for a counter-example, which could be a pink swan - for example. Alas, we turn up we nothing. What Popper says is that there is reason to believe, now, that the conclusion all swans are either black or white has truth value. Only premises/conclusions/theories which can be proven false, and have stood rigorous attempts at being proven false, are worthy of being considered as truthful. We have now not only all of the positive evidence that supports the conclusion that swans are either black or white, i.e. all the black and white swans we observed. But in addition to that, in the negative sense, we also have all the experiences in which swans that are neither black nor white were not found, which is also evidence. That's falsification. As for the semantics, honesty and precision is key. And honesty goes both ways, both in describing and not purposely misinterpreting the meaning of a theory.
This is the best answer by far, falsification is applied to theories not data observed. There is also a lot of statistics involved in science, sometime scientists claim to 'know' because with current evidence the opposite is extremely unlikely, but it doesn't mean that that 'truth' can't be proven false in face of new evidence.
Thank you Ryan! I was also upto to get confused.... The purpose of severely testing theory isn't to reject theories but knowledge and knowledge is the product...
Falsifiability is necessary for a HYPOTHESIS. Falsification is if one of the predictions a Hypothesis makes turns out to be observed false. At that point that Hypothesis is falsified, and should be discarded. A Theory is the collection of all known information on a subject. This includes facts, observations, and non-falsified hypotheses. Theories cannot be falsified - they are merely containers - how do you falsify a file cabinet? And so, we see that the lecturer doesn't know what science even is. I have noticed that Philosophers spend lots of time debating irrelevant points while missing the forest. The vast majority of Scientists' time is spent observing things in attempts to disprove established hypotheses. (This includes reading other scientists papers in order to find flaws due to biases or bad methodology) This is because, in order to advance in Science, you need to add new knowledge to the pool. If a hypothesis is falsified, there is suddenly a gap where a lot of new publishing can take place. If you expose the flaws in a paper or hypothesis (even your own), you have increased the knowledge in the field.
“The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the root of all the evil that is in the world” ― Max Born (1882-1970)
You are missing the entire idea of iterative scientific process. All those supposed hidden assumptions are in fact included in the theory or in the rest of Popper philosophy you failed to explain. If the language of the theory is too vague to falsify, then the theory is unfalsifiable and need to be replaced with more precise formulation and falsification is attempted again. This process never ends. What is falsifiable and what is not depends on current state of the theory. If you are an amateur who don't know how freezers work then this naive theory can be considered falsifiable and Popper's prescribed methodology will in fact lead you to discover that freezers need electricity and other valuable information. If you are a professional scientist then you are somewhere else and need to use more precise language to squeeze out something new, but in that case these supposed hidden assumptions you are taking about are included in this more precise theory. They are not coming from induction but from previous iterations of scientific process. Theory converges towards something, which approximates truth, but we can never say we know the truth.
Not just prior iterations, because there is novelty in the corrections we make, that were not part of any previous knowledge. These novelties that add content are contributed by guesswork. There is a problem, but they fail to bring it out deftly. Which is yes, okay, induction is not used to confirm theories, but then they say you can't deny induction, because we do have all of these theories and background knowledge that we have accepted, that contribute to our understanding of the theory. And so, People who don't understand Popper, then go on to accuse him of saying we don't have background knowledge, since we need induction to get it, or, if not to create, then we need induction to accept whatever theories we create. But those conclusions are false. Since theories only come from guesswork, not induction, and their acceptance is conjectural. So the inference from no induction to no original theories or no background knowledge or no acceptance is invalid and the conclusions false. Induction plays no role either in theory creation or theory testing or theory acceptance. it does not exist and cannot, because it is contradictory. It literally says that evidence has more information than the evidence contains. The observation of a thing, says nothing about anything beyond it, unless there is already a theory about how that thing is linked to other things and we can't get that theory through induction, so we must get it through other means. Inductivism is a logical contradiction and therefore is a bad explanation. A theory is conjectured, not induced. So people should stop telling us anti-inductivists that we need to meet inductivists standards, which are contradictory, because the inductivist criticism holds no water at all. To accuse popper of saying we don't creat knowledge or have knowledge is a mind-melting error of the most obnoxious kind. You just have to read the first page in conjectures and refutations and it will correct that persistent and erroneous view. (Sorry this is not directed at the person I am replying to, I just thing it bears saying)
You are making a comment that nothing contributes to the outstanding work of the lecturer. Rather than displaying knowledge about the topic, you are just displaying a lack of empathy towards literacy and a valuable and honest attempt to educate people. After all, the lecturer never acquires a superlative tone, quite the opposite. Science can only improve if Philosophers and Scientists find a way to contribute towards humankind and its universality. Why not pointing out what a great lecture is, and then sharing your opinion? You will win nothing with your prepotent tone. And this goes for most of the harsh comments on this video towards this noble work.
honor and respect are the money of science. Achieving something special is one way to get to the top of the podium. To dishonor others is a way that all too often gives a second place.
It is amazing how many simply fail to comprehend simple point of Karl Popper. This presenter is no exception. Oh, well, at least he is trying and those more curious will read Popper in the original (multiple times).
HitomiAyumu and then people go around saying that all Popper did was say he was misunderstood and therefore we think he protests too much. They even go so far as to say that Popper is just saying what they are saying in a different langauge. So why then do they vehemently disagree with his theory? Like mIller said, justificationism is a sleevless errand of unparalleled misery. How long have they been at it? And not goddamn thing to show for it. Popper saved epistemology and it was about time too.
6:22 “All observations are theory-laden”, means you need a theory before any kind of observation is performed. And a single test of theory T is only relevant in the context of rival theory R predicting a different outcome, but to get to this crucial test, the new theory T must be a better explanation than its rival R, or else theory T is discarded. In other words, the new theory T must be able to explain the successes of its predecessor R and why, arguably, it is expected to fail in explaining the phenomena in question. Your frog example, although realist, seems to me lacking any explanatory power or for that matter, it also lacks a problem to be solved. I mean, if the problem is merely a nonsensical curiosity, than the example is unproductive for the purpose of thinking about epistemology. Popper’s broader conception of knowledge creation starts off in the light of a problem that seems interesting to solve. The next step is conjecturing a solution followed by its criticism. Popper is right, as a scientist I wouldn’t attempt publication of any scientific result before refuting every criticism I could think of. For the purpose of understanding Popper’s epistemology via thought experiments, remember that scientific theories are only approximated by propositions (such as “all frogs die…”), but they are precisely explanations. In your example, there is only prediction, and prediction without explanation is prophecy. I criticise Popper’s lack of explanation of how creativity works in formulating interesting problems and how it works in coming up with a conjecture. I guess that’s why he said “…there is no such thing as a scientific method.” And by the way, “induction is physically impossible” is a pre-socratic result, neither Hume’s or Popper’s. Newton and Darwin made a mistake when they wrote they used induction. They lived when the tradition of rational criticism was a novelty and they were afraid of being ridiculed if they just told the truth about guesswork. And rightly so, critics would surly have associated them to the tradition of authoritative knowledge they were rebelling against.
On the pont that popper is wrong because there are scientists claiming to know stuff. My interpretation of Popper is that he was not interested in describing how the average or how the worst scientist does science. But rather how science works at its best and how we should do science.
In minute 7:32 you started to talk out of your rear, if you INCLUDE more parameters then you destroy the original P1, you included more parameters then, you have destroyed P1.
I'm no philosopher, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but it seems to me the speaker is incorrect in his idea that the frog theory makes assumptions. In the three examples he gave, each of them ended up changing the meaning of the words and over all language. First, to say "all frogs die after a week in the freezer" means that the total continuous time the frogs were in the freezer is one week. It does not at all mean that someone took them out during that one week and put them back before the week was over so that they are still there when you go to remove them at the end of the week and that you assume they had always been there for the whole week. It's not an assumption, its the basic meaning of the words. Secondly, the whole idea that "the freezer is working and it didn't die" is assuming is ridiculous. This is a hypothetical situation. Its not actually being tested in the real world. If it was you would make sure the freezer is working the entire time. If for any reason it breaks down, you would stop the experiment, fix or replace the freezer, then restart your experiment. Lastly, assuming the frog is a frog and not a toad is the same problem as in my first point. Its a case of changing the meaning of the word. A frog is not a toad. Granted, a lay person might misuse it to mean any four legged amphibian that similarly resembles a frog which might include toads, but regardless when someone says frog, most everyone who knows English thinks of the same creature. So I would say the speaker is just nitpicking to try and support his argument. I'm a nobody and have never even heard of this Popper guy until just now but even I'm pretty sure he knew what he was talking about and the speaker in this video does not.
The problem is of course lack of specificity. To prove a theory is false, you don't need to prove it's false, you just need to prove that it's not completely true. Nobody said what temperature that freezer needs to be. Actually the theory should specify the temperature and interval (and perhaps the exact type of frog), this would make it much harder to falsify, and thus, much closer to being correct.
that was also what i noticed, that the speaker changed the meaning of the words and was not intellectually honest. at the beginning of the video he seemed logic, but after a while, logical fallacies could be observed in his reasoning. it s kind of strange, as he claims he is giving a lecture on logic related stuff.
The point being made by the video, whether falsification is induction or deduction might be interesting to some but it's not what is important. Popper's method of honing theory through falsification and his idea that theories that can't be falsified aren't precise is also important. Philosophers sometimes miss the point.
@@ebk273 The "simulation hypothesis", that we a simulated beings that do and think what the simulation wants. Any evidence against the theory can be dismissed by attributing it to the simulation.
@@ebk273 NO theory can be falsified. Theories are containers of knowledge, and hold facts, observations, and Hypotheses. Hypotheses are what can be falsified.
@@myothersoul1953 the "simulation hypothesis" makes no predictions and is therefore not a Hypothesis. It is a Conjecture, and is not Science. Likewise, "String Theory" (more accurately, the String Conjectures) cannot be falsified, and is thus not a Theory, and not even a Hypothesis. It is not Science.
But isn't falsificationism still useful, given main variables known and estable? E.g. If all the frogs have the same -or, at least, main- characteristics, then the falsification may be correctly applied with an equal frog. And, therefore, inductionism and falsificationism would be mutually complementary (and Popper got wrong only for considering them mutually exclusionary).
Anyone who listen to this, please know that this video misrepresents Popper. No one denies that experiments contribute to our knowledge of the world. It increases our confidence in assumptions that are needed in tests and in the tested laws themselves. This experimental process that leads to an increased confidence in laws is what Charles Sanders Peirce called induction. Popper did not deny the existence of this process, but he called it quasi-induction. He understood, as Peirce did, Hume's point that our confidence in our currently accepted laws cannot be explained by deductive logic and observations alone. Something else is needed. This is much related to the debate between the rationalists and empiricists in the 17e and 18e centuries. In this debate, "rationalism" does not mean the use of deductive logic alone. On the contrary, the sufficiency of deductive logic and observations is the claim of empiricism. Rationalists consider that knowledge beyond deductive logic that does not come from observations can nevertheless be valid and is needed to explain science. Hume tried to defend empiricism, but saw the serious problem of induction. With Kant, rationalism came to the rescue in the form of a priori knowledge. However, with the advent of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, it became clear that Kant has been misguided by his wrong belief in the certainty of Newton's theory of gravitation. People in the Vienna Circle tried to restore empiricism, but Hume's problem of induction was still there and there was also the Duhem thesis. It did not work. Popper's solution was to accept a form of rationalism. Kant's notion of a priori was fine for Popper, as long as it did not come with certainty. It had to be fallible. In fact, it could come in the form of biological expectations and predispositions. Because the conjectures can be wrong, confrontation with experiments is crucial in Popper's view. What's very wrong in the video is that Popper is depicted as someone who thought that empirical falsifications could be conclusive and sufficient, which is absurd. Popper was, of course, very much aware of the problematic. The rational side, for Popper, includes the use of deductive logic to propose new empirical tests from existing conjectures, but it also include the making of new conjectures inspired by the outcomes of these tests. Because of Hume's problem, the making of conjecture is not rigorous in a logical sense: it is fallible. Popper, of course, knew that. The empirical part is the execution of the empirical tests and their analysis. Because of the Duhem thesis, this part is also fallible. Again, of course, Popper knew that. This video is so wrong. It's a straw man argument.
With induction you don’t get absolute certainty; the quality of the idea or model or theory depends on the quality of the observations and analysis. which in many ways depends upon what the observer thinks is true. It can often be regressive. Models need adjustments or fine tuning.
There is actually a type of frog that can survive being frozen for a while as they need it to get through the winter where they live. They just thaw again when it's getting warmer and live on their happy frog life.
I have to say, as a student of philosophy it’s a bit strange for me to see the way scientists use formal logic. I don’t see why I couldn’t just observe the freezer for a week, and if everything is honest, then we see our result unfold without any bias. I can’t stay awake for more than 15 hours or so a day, but I can hire someone, who if is honest, can observe while I sleep. If he’s dishonest then nothing about the experiment matters. It’s wasted. What’s wrong with that? _____ I also want to point out that the premise of this argument itself contains an if then statement, which is fine, but if we’re going to be checking every detail then you’d also have to make sure the premise’s antecedent was true, and its conclusion true, before going on to check the rest of the argument. It seems as though this is the same as the ‘more complicated background theory.’ Though Zi can’t believe that’s what science calls a theory. To me that’s just checking your premises! But there’s a problem. On its own an argument of this form *begs the question* since it assumes its desired conclusion in its premise. If it weren’t for external evidence such reasoning would be doomed to failure prematurely. No philosopher would dare to construct such an argument, regardless of evidence or not, and perhaps this is touching on some of the problems with the reasoning in science to begin with. You can’t just make an argument of the form (P->A)->P and expect it to not be problematic.
im loving this stuff, i thought he was going to do in the direction of saying if scientists are only interested in falsification then he would have to spend his entire life acquiring every frog in existence and putting them all in the freezer for a week until he either dies or there are no more living frogs on earth, but his way was much better
The original theory was "all frogs die in a freezer after a week". So you don't need to go for the universal to falsify it, all you need is one single existential, one case, that contradicts the theory. The problem is that even if you do find that existential, it still takes a lot of assumptions to use it as a falsifier.
That is still extremely loose conditioning. At what lower temperature do frog hearts stop beating? And within a given period, do they beat again when the temperature is raised? How many frogs would you need? You wouldn't need to wait a week, and the precision precludes the weak generality. @@ekathe85
8:00 all those "ifs" are addressed by the Systematic nature of Science, so that is more of a philosophical game than an actual problem in how we do science. Yes, we do rely on theories for every observation , but some philosophers make it sound like it is a bad "thing" or induction is not the best way to acquire knowledge ! Well induction is the best way to acquire knowledge since the method of deduction is nothing more than identifying tautologies. Theories are narratives based on more than one observation which inform our new observations. There is an epistemic connectedness throughout all the levels of our observations and that renders scientific conclusions far more vulnerable to our evaluations thus far more credible than any other non-deductive way.
Well... induction is why we are alive. Survival is actually all about induction. But I think the main point is that scientists accept theories as facts, when those theories themselves are made from inductive reasoning. Although it's also inductive to put theories as facts, i guess it's just a good way to solidify things for the sake of knowledge...
Isn't this a rather inflexible version of falsification? I see what you're getting at, and it's important to be aware of inductive reasoning, but one must imagine that Popper is aware that at a certain level, you will rely on inductive reasoning. Otherwise you're just being unproductive and wasting time. I'm fairly new to this, but I find it difficult to believe that he meant his ideology to be used in such a broad and unspecific manner. As with most things, there's obviously a balance if you seek to do reliable science, and this video feels as if it's ignoring that.
7:14 Put another way... *suppose* for instance, that you happened to include in your collection --- unbeknownst to you --- several frogs in that population that have evolved chemical antifreeze properties in their bodies to withstand the last couple decades' more extreme winters.... then your supposition that freezing environments are lethal to frogs may not hold! (How'd I do?)
is he spewing freshmen's epistemology chapter on Popper (right after Vienna Circle Positivism, right before Kuhn) tier summary, or does he really believe the narrative being told: i.e. what popper held, the bias towards only looking at his 30s work vs. taking some of all his subsequent work on epistemology, mostly concerned with responding to criticism and clarifying misunderstandings of his propositions.
I don´t know whether this is the typical way the people outside science do science. Yes, there are many assumptions, but these assumptions are so self-evident that you don´t need to bother. For instance, the freezer must be working, none has taken out the frog and only put it back just prior your re-opening the freezer, etc.
To clarify confusion present in the comments, caused in part by this very confusing lecture, here is an Example of Popperianism. Thesis: Water boils at 100 degrees. Experiment: You actually boil water and measure the temperature at the boiling point with result that water boiling say at 99 degrees. Conclusion: The assertion (“theory”) that water boils at 100 degrees was contradicted by your experiment. You propose a new theory: water boils at 99 degrees which will stand till someone else performs another experiment and contradicts your conclusion with another result. Your result (water boils at 99 degrees) is a negative deductive conclusion - negative because it negates previous theory (water boils at 100 degrees), and deductive because you obtained an ultimate results: those dictated by the reality itself confirmed with your senses. However, as a scientist you still leave open a possibility that the result of your experiment could have been biased by some factors which you were not aware of. So in spite of your best efforts, you conclude that your results amount to a new theory, not certainty. Your new theory is epistemologically an inductive (uncertain) statement standing for as long as there is no new (“certain”) contradiction provided by someone else’s experimental results. This illustrates the endless process of experimentally based chain of conclusions provided new scientific discoveries. It is the opposite of dogmatic approach which relies on performing experiments to confirm theories (which is not smart at all!).
In this video of logic i saw no truth tables being used v no refutation trees to show your work? So if we assume your premises to be true and conclusion to be false will we find your argument valid?
They only use Deductivism and therefore they don't need any background theories? Give me a break. Why then does he posit that the severity of a test is measured relative to background theories? Furthermore, what are we deducing from? Nothing?
8:45 - you assume the only way anything can be known (in this example the premises) by using induction and then, surprise surprise, you conclude induction is the way science produces theories. The whole point of Popper's philosophy is that induction is wrong, root and branch. That's not how people make theories. It was beautifully put by David Deutsch: "[people ask]: 'How and why can induction nevertheless somehow be done, yielding justified true beliefs after all, despite being impossible and invalid respectively?' ". As for the rest of the video, Popper explains solutions to all your objections in the rest of his philosophy.
"If theory is true, we should observe O" Naive falsification. Cf. Creationists who claim "since we observe no dogs evolving into cats, evolution is false"
But that does not mean he is wrong, but simply that he has restricted how much he presents. You have made the illogical assumption that because he speaks of Popper, that he should describe every part of Popper’s philosophy, which is a bad assumption. Perhaps you should first listen to some vids on common sense and then come back!
“(According to Popper), the only conclusion that scientists draw is that certain theory is wrong” = That’s too vague, even misleading. Popper holds that the only conclusions that scientists are entitled to draw is that some previous views are CONTRADICTORY as demonstrated by a relevant experiment. Scientists do that in order to propose another, replacement theory which doesn’t suffer from the same contradictions, at least not yet. Popper is an epistemologist, “wrong” is not an epistemological term. Contradictions are negative DEDUCTIVE (epistemo)LOGICAL structures. That’s what Popper was primarily concerned with. Leave “wrong” for the moralists to play with.
OK, it's a clear presentation about Fasification & Science in general. But how to make a bridge between this and what are being doing nowadays with Unsupervised Learning? Is not UL a kind of inductive "knowledge"? And how about not testing 20 or 200 frogs, but all the frogs in the world? How to council this ideas with Big Data?
Great presentation - well done! Every theory, every hypothesis, every thesis… is, by definition, propositional, and therefore, is concerned with truth… And I suspect that every scientist who posits a theory/hypothesis/thesis… does so because he believes and possibly, hopes that it turns out to be true - otherwise, why would he even bother with it in the first place! Deductive reasoning, I submit, is just not possible - since that requires that we are in possession of a standard of Truth that is absolute, immutable, incorrigible… In other words… beyond our grasp! But Truth also has to be knowable, and for that, Truth needs to disclose itself to us - it’s called REVELATION…
The main host of this video comments: “Poppers attempt to do away with induction is a failure”. WOW! What a nonsense on steroids! I suggest you didn’t understand what Popper’s central views are at all. It also demonstrates that you don’t understand what induction is, AND THEREFORE you equally have no understanding what deduction is either. Maybe this will help: The distinction between deductive and inductive reasoning is both, complementary and mutually exclusive. It is complementary because it divides the whole reality into these two and nothing else - it’s so basic! It is mutually exclusive because if some thing is inductive then by definition it can’t be deductive and vice versa. It’s like you can’t have a cat dead AND alive at the same time. To say that Popper attempted to do away with induction translates directly into accusation that Popper was not aware what induction ( and therefore deduction) is, which is rather a steep and baseless gibberish. If he indeed wanted to “do away” with induction (?!?!)… then it necessarily implies that Popper spent all his life to conclude that only half of reality exists, the deductive “half”. Perhaps you need to stop smoking that green stuff and read a book by Popper - yes he was quite a good writer. Try reading it, please, then try making another video.
I am confused by this. He teaches at a university. I would assume he has been educated and knows how to not mangle an argument. Then he wheels out some idiot called Popper who believed in some very naive stuff. Where did this Popper come from? Can he please do another presentation with a less naive Popper? Students of Leiden, you have my profound sympathies.
Experience tell us that 24 frogs on a freezer will die in one week, because that has happens repeatedly on all our previous experimentes, what if one day this does not happen for unknown reason, will we be willing to investigate the new phenomenon? Or will we cover the new discovery to keep the status quo, I find this rather dangerous to silence of any kind, political science, natural science, etc. Karl popper idea was to keep an open mind for new discoveries, new ideas. Looking for the truth is expecting the unexpected, Confirming our dogma involves twisting reality. Truth burns where dogma dies.
Being has a tendency to 'return' to clusters ='the nature of solidarity' -a desire for empathy -(Wave)-(yin) and also, Being has a tendency to 'exist' as individuals ='the nature of self-expension' -a desire for breed-(Particle)-(Yang) Likewise, humans have two elements. We must realize that we all have both left and right elements -Solidarity and Self Reliance- No one has only one element. so 'Sum' derived from 'two poles' , (thesis, antithesis, synthesis) To develop intellect and ethics by harmonizing the two, It is good to realize it and balance it properly But A few people polarized the crowd(political partisanship) without balancing themselves. And They stole only the sum, only the synthesis from the triangle composition. Now We all have to get out of this deceptive situation. This is not the time for us to hate each other. We have to track down those who have been manipulating us.
"What if aliens surreptitiously replaced all our brains with cranial matter that makes dead frogs look like living frogs? We can see that Popper's wrong again." Sigh. Philosophy (and Phil of science) just took another gut punch from another sophist.
I’m more confused than ever, having first watched this video and then read the commentary. Various arguments appear logical but it’s difficult to know what is truly valid for a non-philosopher. It’s like quicksand! Can anyone please point to at least one expert in scientific epistemology that has at least consensus agreement amongst most contemporary scientists, that I can use as a starting point. I had read and basically accepted Popper until I listened to this guy, but the seeds of doubt have been sown.
Don't listen to this absolute nobody presenter who cites an anonymous mass of scientists who believe Popper is wrong about the use of induction in science. They probably take offense to Popper's definition of science because they themselves have been practicing science incorrectly (with confirmation in mind, not falsification). Stick to Popper, he's right. Furthermore, the presenter didn't cite any specific philosophers or arguments which refute Popper's conclusions, just a weak and terrible one-off example which failed to demonstrate anything tangibly infirm about Popper's philosophy.
@@MrMobieleauto I didn't expect that after listening him and disagreeing with everything he said. He's an authority on the subject so I would be inclined to reassess my position... still I disagree with him.
Not a single quote from Popper in this. Not one. I don't think it's accurate to say Popper says there is no induction in science. It's that falsifiability is a necessary requirement for science, not a sufficient condition proving science has occurred. So if something has no conceivable way of being falsified, it isn't science. The pushback against this seems to me to be based on straw-manning and motivated by people in quantum physics and social sciences whose work can't reach this standard.
This guy makes an inductive argument (appealing to the background theories needed by a premise) to "show" that Karl Popper's claims of deductive falsification are generally false 😂. And this after in a previous video hinting at deduction's agnosticism regarding the truth value of premise propositions! 🤦
So is this just a moral opposition to Popper? You’re not really addressing why his ideas don’t work. You’re just saying you don’t like it. Now here’s some unrelated stuff. I only got about 6 minutes in. Maybe you should front load with evidence not just calling him “problematic”.
“Suppose some animal lover took the from out of the freezer” So you would have to change the statement. Is this for real? Are you a flat earther??? Please tell me this is a bit.
This is quite unbelievably inaccurate. Popper was not interested in the logical reasoning behind theories, only in whether a theory was FALSIFIABLE, meaning whether FALSIFICATION WAS LOGICALLY POSSIBLE. Even is scientists used inductive reasoning to claim a theory to be true, Popper only insisted that there ought to be a method to prove it false; that it should be possible to prove it false. It should predict something that can be proven to be false. That is all. This is a grave misrepresentation of Karl Popper and his Falsifiability.
Thank you, Jesus.
LOL
wkwkkwkw anjing
A ridiculous non refutation of Popper. What if' little green fairies came down from space an temporarily turned the freezer off ' 'what if the frog was really a toad ' . Is this clown serious.
@@markhasleton6403 no blasphemy please!
@@matthiasmuller7677 its only blasphemy if he wasn't actually praising Jesus Christ our one and only true Lord!
Lots of comments on this video, including some critical ones. Can't respond to everyone individually -- and sometimes the criticism is a bit amorphous -- but let me give an overall response and provide a link to a more in-depth engagement with Popper at the end. Now, first of all, this is a short introductory lecture. I'm in complete agreement with anyone making the point that much more could be said about this issue; that we could delve into Popper's overall story about induction, his notion of corroboration, his ideas about observation, and so on. But -- and this is crucial from the perspective of education -- none of that would change the basic point made by the video. In philosophy of science, it is not at all controversial to state that Popper's attempt to do without induction is, in the end, a failure. It is a failure for multiple reasons, but in part because of the reliance on inductively established beliefs in the performance and interpretation of any experiment. So, yes, Popper would have a lot to say about my video. But, no, it would not substantially change the outcome. And this is not a private opinion of mine, but a widely held judgement among philosophers.
Now some of the people who left comments on this video suggest that philosophers in general have misunderstood Popper. This is a myth, a myth that has been created and popularised by Popper himself. I'll just quote from his text Science: Conjectures and Refutations: "Criticism of my alleged views was widespread and highly successful. I have yet to meet a criticism of my views." Or again, from the first page of Objective Knowledge: "[...] those works which take notice of my ideas usually ascribe views to me which I never held, or criticize me on the basis of straightforward misunderstandings or misreadings, or with invalid arguments." However, Popper's views on induction have been criticised by some of the best philosophers of science of the 20th century, and if you read them side-by-side with Popper, it's clear that they have perfectly understood him. I especially recommend Wesley Salmon's "Rational Prediction" and Hilary Putnam's "The 'Corroboration' of Theories" if you want a taste of this literature.
Unfortunately, Popper often writes in a way that hides the more problematic aspects of his views under ambiguities and ambivalences, while at the same time positing straw man positions as his enemy. If you want to learn more about Popper and see an in-depth analysis of one of his most famous and hugely problematic texts, I recommend that you check out the series I did on my own channel about Science: Conjectures and Refutations. ua-cam.com/play/PL8Nxd4OXpzqlbV-ZBu4VfKHRtThzEL7Pf.html
I recommend pinning this comment, as it's well argued.
I have a question about the example that you gave in the video. You said that the next assumption is false: if the next proposition is true [all frogs die after being in a freezer for a week] then, it should follow that after letting a frog for a week inside the freezer, it is dead.
The proposition [all frogs die after being in the freezer for a week] can be rewritten as follows: If [a set of frogs X was put into the freezer for a week] is true, in every case in which this is true, in spite of other things happening (that are being ignored because they were NOT included in the logical proposition as requirements) it will follow that [every member of the set X of frogs IS dead].
This won’t be proven false in those cases in which neither the requirements nor the logical conclusion were met, so your examples are not valid if you have the purpose of falsifying the proposition.
Also, in those cases in which other things that were not specified in the requirements nor in the logical conclusion of this proposition happen or do not happen, this proposition affirms that, in spite of these “anomalies”, if the requeriments are met, then the logical conclusion should be true. This is because it applies to ALL CASES IN WHICH THE REQUIREMENTS ARE MET, it doesn’t say that it applies in all of those cases in which ONLY the requirements are met, and every other predicate is false.
So, why should your examples falsify Popper’s statements?
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based
These videos are one of the reasons that I love the internet. Free college lectures to continue my education.
The complications critique misses a more relaxed requirement that a hypothesis be at least falsifiable in theory to satisfy Popper. Obviously complications can confound a given instance of an observation. But these are two different thresholds. So Popper holds.
Hear hear.
I agree, to allow tautological claims to be a part of science would result in different approaches, different ideologies, and in turn dogmas. I realize that scientists may have dogmas but they should play no role in the practice of science itself. For instance different interpretations of quantum mechanics give us the same predictions so far. However if one day a different prediction emerges from an interpretation it should be experimented with and if it is falsified the main effort should be put into the other interpretations.
Big brain
Are you stoned?
Absolutely. I think this is the hard part to explain Methodological Falsificationism NOT simple/naive falsification. Deduction only works assuming a correct premise.
Induction only gives unverifiable mutable statistics.
Abduction gives "best guesses".
Methodological falsification is a) attempt b) a chain of experimentation that is unending, i.e. an infinite regression to a limit but tells us something new. c) agreeing that falsification can only apply to particular situations and context of the test within the whole. /Fallible/ falsification. d) still defines what is UNfalsifiable because we can't test UNfalsifiable things to learn anything from experiment! E)Popper is embracing uncertainty, not trying to retain the absolutism of positivism, its just we can make some statements still. F) falsifiability is not the ONLY mark of pseudo-science. Some pseudoscience is falsifiable. No science is unfalsifiable. Its just the other demarcation criteria are more subjective.
Science most often used the two latter, but the former is where it is truly revolutionary imo. A more accurate statement is that its interplay between all three and that they don't exist in isolation.
Its predictive behaviour only exists under certain conditions anyway, conditions which can be satisfactorily driven out of it's Duhem-Quine case, by virtue of its use! Unless...you claim a theory of everything or absolutism (lowercase, i mean essentially an omnipotent theory, rather than The TOE of unified forces/gravity). If you did have that, then you /would/ get falsification from hollistic statements. Just a note: scientific realism is dying, i don't think we can retain much more than intrumentalism- at least, post-quantum-physics science is instrumentalist in nature, for now.
Deduction in the mathematical nature and formulation of equations is so important that i wonder why people ask 'then where is the deduction?'...um everywhere...
The speaker has misunderstood Popper. Popper was not speaking about practice, he was speaking about epistemology. He recognised that in many cases individuals in practice were not performing science as he described it, but that he was making clear how knowledge was being acquired. Freud for instance did not conduct science as Popper described it, but he also did not acquire much knowledge via his attempts to only affirm his theories that were highly variable.
Popper also recognised that there were many underlying theories regarding measurement involved in every attempt to falsify.
I suggest that those who want to understand Karl Popper not turn to this video (which is confused), but rather read Oxford Physicist David Deutsch, who has clearly expressed Popperian science in his book: The Beginning of Infinity.
The Fabric of Reality is also a wonderful read!
Freud did acquire knowledge. What the problem that Popper had with freudianism is that it's formulation made it impossible for us to learn anything from it and to prompt us to create new knowledge in the event that an error was found. We don't use science to aquire knowledge, we use science to deselect prior created knowledge from candidacy for the truth. Deutsch agrees with the video that theories are never accepted as true in science. How he can believe this is beyond me, since how then does he critically evaluate them? Nonsense. There is no difference between acceptance and acceptance as true, it's just a mistake, again born of the idea that we need something firmer to claim that a theory is true. Crypto-inductivist much?
Furthemore he would say that the practices that inductivism describes don't actually happen, what happens is that scientists waste their time going through rituals that don't do anything which is coupled with practices that he identified that do do something. Inductivism locates portions of the rituals and portions of the actual practices that work and interprets that as induction. There are practices, but among those practices there isn't induction.
@@drewjohn6721 "We don't use science to aquire knowledge, we use science to deselect prior created knowledge from candidacy for the truth."
How do you acquire knowledge if you only remove prior knowledge?
Hello, I’m just wondering does anybody have a good example of falsification in action. For example I don’t like the black swan analogy or frogs in the freezer example I would like an example to show how real science works. For example water boils at 100 degrees Celsius (dependent on atmospheric pressure) and is scientific fact because? How would falsification be used in this simple case? Help please?
@sawtoothekg Thanks for the reply but I was looking for an example that I could use to explain to a layman. Somebody provided me with the answer I was looking for by saying "water boiling at 100'c (standard pressure) is falsifiable because if we observe water boiling at another temperature we'd be proven it false. It is scientific fact because you can prove it to be false with an observation & not because it is true." This was the answer I was looking for because most people are not familiar with Einstein and Newton lol
Respectfully, I believe that you have a mistaken conception of falsification. Induction is not inherently antithetical to falsification. The only requirement is that premises with an inductive structure are tested deductively. That test is the search for observational data that either establishes modus tolens or discovers a counter-example(s). Take for instance an inductive premise like [all swans are white.] It has an inductive structure because we are incapable of observing all swans, but in all of those cases we have observed swans - they have been white. This inductive conclusion could be starting place in the process of falsification. How do we proceed deductively? Look for cases in which we have a swan, but not white. We find a counter-example in Australia: black swan. Hence, the inductive conclusion has been proven false. However, let's say we take the inductive conclusion that all swans are either black or white. So then we decide to search the earth far and wide for five years looking for a counter-example, which could be a pink swan - for example. Alas, we turn up we nothing. What Popper says is that there is reason to believe, now, that the conclusion all swans are either black or white has truth value. Only premises/conclusions/theories which can be proven false, and have stood rigorous attempts at being proven false, are worthy of being considered as truthful. We have now not only all of the positive evidence that supports the conclusion that swans are either black or white, i.e. all the black and white swans we observed. But in addition to that, in the negative sense, we also have all the experiences in which swans that are neither black nor white were not found, which is also evidence. That's falsification.
As for the semantics, honesty and precision is key. And honesty goes both ways, both in describing and not purposely misinterpreting the meaning of a theory.
This is the best answer by far, falsification is applied to theories not data observed. There is also a lot of statistics involved in science, sometime scientists claim to 'know' because with current evidence the opposite is extremely unlikely, but it doesn't mean that that 'truth' can't be proven false in face of new evidence.
Thanks for this. For a moment I was concerned that my understanding of Popper had been wrong all along. I think this video needs to be redone.
Thank you Ryan! I was also upto to get confused....
The purpose of severely testing theory isn't to reject theories but knowledge and knowledge is the product...
Isn't that falsifiability, and not falsification? I think you are confusing two of Popper's theories
Falsifiability is necessary for a HYPOTHESIS.
Falsification is if one of the predictions a Hypothesis makes turns out to be observed false. At that point that Hypothesis is falsified, and should be discarded.
A Theory is the collection of all known information on a subject. This includes facts, observations, and non-falsified hypotheses.
Theories cannot be falsified - they are merely containers - how do you falsify a file cabinet?
And so, we see that the lecturer doesn't know what science even is. I have noticed that Philosophers spend lots of time debating irrelevant points while missing the forest.
The vast majority of Scientists' time is spent observing things in attempts to disprove established hypotheses. (This includes reading other scientists papers in order to find flaws due to biases or bad methodology)
This is because, in order to advance in Science, you need to add new knowledge to the pool. If a hypothesis is falsified, there is suddenly a gap where a lot of new publishing can take place. If you expose the flaws in a paper or hypothesis (even your own), you have increased the knowledge in the field.
“The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the root of all the evil that is in the world”
― Max Born (1882-1970)
You are missing the entire idea of iterative scientific process. All those supposed hidden assumptions are in fact included in the theory or in the rest of Popper philosophy you failed to explain. If the language of the theory is too vague to falsify, then the theory is unfalsifiable and need to be replaced with more precise formulation and falsification is attempted again. This process never ends. What is falsifiable and what is not depends on current state of the theory. If you are an amateur who don't know how freezers work then this naive theory can be considered falsifiable and Popper's prescribed methodology will in fact lead you to discover that freezers need electricity and other valuable information. If you are a professional scientist then you are somewhere else and need to use more precise language to squeeze out something new, but in that case these supposed hidden assumptions you are taking about are included in this more precise theory. They are not coming from induction but from previous iterations of scientific process. Theory converges towards something, which approximates truth, but we can never say we know the truth.
Not just prior iterations, because there is novelty in the corrections we make, that were not part of any previous knowledge. These novelties that add content are contributed by guesswork. There is a problem, but they fail to bring it out deftly. Which is yes, okay, induction is not used to confirm theories, but then they say you can't deny induction, because we do have all of these theories and background knowledge that we have accepted, that contribute to our understanding of the theory. And so, People who don't understand Popper, then go on to accuse him of saying we don't have background knowledge, since we need induction to get it, or, if not to create, then we need induction to accept whatever theories we create. But those conclusions are false. Since theories only come from guesswork, not induction, and their acceptance is conjectural. So the inference from no induction to no original theories or no background knowledge or no acceptance is invalid and the conclusions false. Induction plays no role either in theory creation or theory testing or theory acceptance. it does not exist and cannot, because it is contradictory. It literally says that evidence has more information than the evidence contains. The observation of a thing, says nothing about anything beyond it, unless there is already a theory about how that thing is linked to other things and we can't get that theory through induction, so we must get it through other means. Inductivism is a logical contradiction and therefore is a bad explanation. A theory is conjectured, not induced. So people should stop telling us anti-inductivists that we need to meet inductivists standards, which are contradictory, because the inductivist criticism holds no water at all.
To accuse popper of saying we don't creat knowledge or have knowledge is a mind-melting error of the most obnoxious kind. You just have to read the first page in conjectures and refutations and it will correct that persistent and erroneous view. (Sorry this is not directed at the person I am replying to, I just thing it bears saying)
You are making a comment that nothing contributes to the outstanding work of the lecturer. Rather than displaying knowledge about the topic, you are just displaying a lack of empathy towards literacy and a valuable and honest attempt to educate people. After all, the lecturer never acquires a superlative tone, quite the opposite. Science can only improve if Philosophers and Scientists find a way to contribute towards humankind and its universality. Why not pointing out what a great lecture is, and then sharing your opinion? You will win nothing with your prepotent tone. And this goes for most of the harsh comments on this video towards this noble work.
you are assuming that its a great lecture. And no one cares about your feelings. I for one found his comment useful, and wasn't haughty as you say.
honor and respect are the money of science. Achieving something special is one way to get to the top of the podium. To dishonor others is a way that all too often gives a second place.
@@AereoDrones It wasn't a good lecture though. He completely failed to educating viewers on Karl Popper.
It is amazing how many simply fail to comprehend simple point of Karl Popper. This presenter is no exception. Oh, well, at least he is trying and those more curious will read Popper in the original (multiple times).
Nilesh Oak I know right? Its amazing just how misunderstood he is!
HitomiAyumu and then people go around saying that all Popper did was say he was misunderstood and therefore we think he protests too much. They even go so far as to say that Popper is just saying what they are saying in a different langauge. So why then do they vehemently disagree with his theory? Like mIller said, justificationism is a sleevless errand of unparalleled misery. How long have they been at it? And not goddamn thing to show for it. Popper saved epistemology and it was about time too.
I haven't watched the video, but why don't you point out the flaws instead of just saying it's wrong? Seems like you're making this in very bad faith
@@cfcee yeah, I was going to subscribe this channel, and now I'm confused. I would really like to know if I have a good reason to not do so.
@@andregustavo2086 you should subscribe. i am his student. he is a good lecturer, one of the best i had so far.
6:22 “All observations are theory-laden”, means you need a theory before any kind of observation is performed. And a single test of theory T is only relevant in the context of rival theory R predicting a different outcome, but to get to this crucial test, the new theory T must be a better explanation than its rival R, or else theory T is discarded. In other words, the new theory T must be able to explain the successes of its predecessor R and why, arguably, it is expected to fail in explaining the phenomena in question. Your frog example, although realist, seems to me lacking any explanatory power or for that matter, it also lacks a problem to be solved. I mean, if the problem is merely a nonsensical curiosity, than the example is unproductive for the purpose of thinking about epistemology. Popper’s broader conception of knowledge creation starts off in the light of a problem that seems interesting to solve. The next step is conjecturing a solution followed by its criticism. Popper is right, as a scientist I wouldn’t attempt publication of any scientific result before refuting every criticism I could think of. For the purpose of understanding Popper’s epistemology via thought experiments, remember that scientific theories are only approximated by propositions (such as “all frogs die…”), but they are precisely explanations. In your example, there is only prediction, and prediction without explanation is prophecy. I criticise Popper’s lack of explanation of how creativity works in formulating interesting problems and how it works in coming up with a conjecture. I guess that’s why he said “…there is no such thing as a scientific method.” And by the way, “induction is physically impossible” is a pre-socratic result, neither Hume’s or Popper’s. Newton and Darwin made a mistake when they wrote they used induction. They lived when the tradition of rational criticism was a novelty and they were afraid of being ridiculed if they just told the truth about guesswork. And rightly so, critics would surly have associated them to the tradition of authoritative knowledge they were rebelling against.
On the pont that popper is wrong because there are scientists claiming to know stuff. My interpretation of Popper is that he was not interested in describing how the average or how the worst scientist does science. But rather how science works at its best and how we should do science.
so clearly and simply presented, thanks! greetings from Poland ;) !
In minute 7:32 you started to talk out of your rear, if you INCLUDE more parameters then you destroy the original P1, you included more parameters then, you have destroyed P1.
Your videos helped me prepare for my exam! Thanks
This helped so so much. I have to write a philosophy essay on this topic and I just could not get a grasp on it. THANK YOU
I'm no philosopher, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but it seems to me the speaker is incorrect in his idea that the frog theory makes assumptions. In the three examples he gave, each of them ended up changing the meaning of the words and over all language. First, to say "all frogs die after a week in the freezer" means that the total continuous time the frogs were in the freezer is one week. It does not at all mean that someone took them out during that one week and put them back before the week was over so that they are still there when you go to remove them at the end of the week and that you assume they had always been there for the whole week. It's not an assumption, its the basic meaning of the words. Secondly, the whole idea that "the freezer is working and it didn't die" is assuming is ridiculous. This is a hypothetical situation. Its not actually being tested in the real world. If it was you would make sure the freezer is working the entire time. If for any reason it breaks down, you would stop the experiment, fix or replace the freezer, then restart your experiment. Lastly, assuming the frog is a frog and not a toad is the same problem as in my first point. Its a case of changing the meaning of the word. A frog is not a toad. Granted, a lay person might misuse it to mean any four legged amphibian that similarly resembles a frog which might include toads, but regardless when someone says frog, most everyone who knows English thinks of the same creature. So I would say the speaker is just nitpicking to try and support his argument. I'm a nobody and have never even heard of this Popper guy until just now but even I'm pretty sure he knew what he was talking about and the speaker in this video does not.
The problem is of course lack of specificity. To prove a theory is false, you don't need to prove it's false, you just need to prove that it's not completely true. Nobody said what temperature that freezer needs to be. Actually the theory should specify the temperature and interval (and perhaps the exact type of frog), this would make it much harder to falsify, and thus, much closer to being correct.
that was also what i noticed, that the speaker changed the meaning of the words and was not intellectually honest. at the beginning of the video he seemed logic, but after a while, logical fallacies could be observed in his reasoning. it s kind of strange, as he claims he is giving a lecture on logic related stuff.
The point being made by the video, whether falsification is induction or deduction might be interesting to some but it's not what is important. Popper's method of honing theory through falsification and his idea that theories that can't be falsified aren't precise is also important.
Philosophers sometimes miss the point.
What is a theory like which cannot be falsified? Could you explain?
@@ebk273 The "simulation hypothesis", that we a simulated beings that do and think what the simulation wants. Any evidence against the theory can be dismissed by attributing it to the simulation.
@@ebk273 NO theory can be falsified.
Theories are containers of knowledge, and hold facts, observations, and Hypotheses.
Hypotheses are what can be falsified.
@@myothersoul1953 the "simulation hypothesis" makes no predictions and is therefore not a Hypothesis. It is a Conjecture, and is not Science.
Likewise, "String Theory" (more accurately, the String Conjectures) cannot be falsified, and is thus not a Theory, and not even a Hypothesis. It is not Science.
But isn't falsificationism still useful, given main variables known and estable? E.g. If all the frogs have the same -or, at least, main- characteristics, then the falsification may be correctly applied with an equal frog. And, therefore, inductionism and falsificationism would be mutually complementary (and Popper got wrong only for considering them mutually exclusionary).
could you please provide us with the references of the information mentioned in this video?
Like a quote from Popper...
you described naive falsificationism which is not popper's theory
Anyone who listen to this, please know that this video misrepresents
Popper. No one denies that experiments contribute to our knowledge of
the world. It increases our confidence in assumptions that are needed
in tests and in the tested laws themselves. This experimental process
that leads to an increased confidence in laws is what Charles Sanders
Peirce called induction. Popper did not deny the existence of this
process, but he called it quasi-induction. He understood, as Peirce
did, Hume's point that our confidence in our currently accepted laws
cannot be explained by deductive logic and observations alone.
Something else is needed. This is much related to the debate between
the rationalists and empiricists in the 17e and 18e centuries. In this
debate, "rationalism" does not mean the use of deductive logic alone. On
the contrary, the sufficiency of deductive logic and observations is
the claim of empiricism. Rationalists consider that knowledge beyond
deductive logic that does not come from observations can nevertheless be
valid and is needed to explain science.
Hume tried to defend empiricism, but saw the serious problem of
induction. With Kant, rationalism came to the rescue in the form of a
priori knowledge. However, with the advent of General Relativity and
Quantum Mechanics, it became clear that Kant has been misguided by
his wrong belief in the certainty of Newton's theory of gravitation.
People in the Vienna Circle tried to restore empiricism, but Hume's
problem of induction was still there and there was also the Duhem
thesis. It did not work. Popper's solution was to accept a form of
rationalism. Kant's notion of a priori was fine for Popper, as long as
it did not come with certainty. It had to be fallible. In fact, it
could come in the form of biological expectations and predispositions.
Because the conjectures can be wrong, confrontation with experiments is
crucial in Popper's view.
What's very wrong in the video is that Popper is depicted as someone
who thought that empirical falsifications could be conclusive and
sufficient, which is absurd. Popper was, of course, very much aware of
the problematic. The rational side, for Popper, includes the use of
deductive logic to propose new empirical tests from existing
conjectures, but it also include the making of new conjectures
inspired by the outcomes of these tests. Because of Hume's problem, the
making of conjecture is not rigorous in a logical sense: it is
fallible. Popper, of course, knew that. The empirical part is the
execution of the empirical tests and their analysis. Because of the
Duhem thesis, this part is also fallible. Again, of course, Popper knew
that. This video is so wrong. It's a straw man argument.
Let's see if you can do a better video 😃
With induction you don’t get absolute certainty; the quality of the idea or model or theory depends on the quality of the observations and analysis. which in many ways depends upon what the observer thinks is true. It can often be regressive. Models need adjustments or fine tuning.
Popper certainly did not claim that scientists only use deduction
There is actually a type of frog that can survive being frozen for a while as they need it to get through the winter where they live. They just thaw again when it's getting warmer and live on their happy frog life.
says the biologist, not the philosopher
6:18 But as you falsify the theory of Karl popper you proved that karl popper is right
I have to say, as a student of philosophy it’s a bit strange for me to see the way scientists use formal logic.
I don’t see why I couldn’t just observe the freezer for a week, and if everything is honest, then we see our result unfold without any bias.
I can’t stay awake for more than 15 hours or so a day, but I can hire someone, who if is honest, can observe while I sleep.
If he’s dishonest then nothing about the experiment matters. It’s wasted.
What’s wrong with that?
_____
I also want to point out that the premise of this argument itself contains an if then statement, which is fine, but if we’re going to be checking every detail then you’d also have to make sure the premise’s antecedent was true, and its conclusion true, before going on to check the rest of the argument.
It seems as though this is the same as the ‘more complicated background theory.’ Though Zi can’t believe that’s what science calls a theory. To me that’s just checking your premises!
But there’s a problem. On its own an argument of this form *begs the question* since it assumes its desired conclusion in its premise. If it weren’t for external evidence such reasoning would be doomed to failure prematurely.
No philosopher would dare to construct such an argument, regardless of evidence or not, and perhaps this is touching on some of the problems with the reasoning in science to begin with.
You can’t just make an argument of the form (P->A)->P and expect it to not be problematic.
im loving this stuff, i thought he was going to do in the direction of saying if scientists are only interested in falsification then he would have to spend his entire life acquiring every frog in existence and putting them all in the freezer for a week until he either dies or there are no more living frogs on earth, but his way was much better
The original theory was "all frogs die in a freezer after a week". So you don't need to go for the universal to falsify it, all you need is one single existential, one case, that contradicts the theory. The problem is that even if you do find that existential, it still takes a lot of assumptions to use it as a falsifier.
That is still extremely loose conditioning. At what lower temperature do frog hearts stop beating? And within a given period, do they beat again when the temperature is raised? How many frogs would you need? You wouldn't need to wait a week, and the precision precludes the weak generality. @@ekathe85
8:00 all those "ifs" are addressed by the Systematic nature of Science, so that is more of a philosophical game than an actual problem in how we do science.
Yes, we do rely on theories for every observation , but some philosophers make it sound like it is a bad "thing" or induction is not the best way to acquire knowledge !
Well induction is the best way to acquire knowledge since the method of deduction is nothing more than identifying tautologies.
Theories are narratives based on more than one observation which inform our new observations. There is an epistemic connectedness throughout all the levels of our observations and that renders scientific conclusions far more vulnerable to our evaluations thus far more credible than any other non-deductive way.
great point
Well... induction is why we are alive. Survival is actually all about induction.
But I think the main point is that scientists accept theories as facts, when those theories themselves are made from inductive reasoning.
Although it's also inductive to put theories as facts, i guess it's just a good way to solidify things for the sake of knowledge...
Isn't this a rather inflexible version of falsification? I see what you're getting at, and it's important to be aware of inductive reasoning, but one must imagine that Popper is aware that at a certain level, you will rely on inductive reasoning. Otherwise you're just being unproductive and wasting time. I'm fairly new to this, but I find it difficult to believe that he meant his ideology to be used in such a broad and unspecific manner. As with most things, there's obviously a balance if you seek to do reliable science, and this video feels as if it's ignoring that.
A theory should predict the results of a reasonable experiment.
ISSUE.
Who defines REASONABLE?
I enjoyed this very much.
Can we use logic to prove or challenge God existence?
Do we even have to? God has been dead for a while
The statement that all scientists use deduction is not deductive...
Your syllogism is incorrect. It should be: if T is true, then we cannot observe O; we observe O, hence T is false.
Isn't that the same thing? Or is it not?
7:14 Put another way... *suppose* for instance, that you happened to include in your collection --- unbeknownst to you --- several frogs in that population that have evolved chemical antifreeze properties in their bodies to withstand the last couple decades' more extreme winters.... then your supposition that freezing environments are lethal to frogs may not hold!
(How'd I do?)
9:41 "should" observe and "must" observe are two different conditions. => theory T is not proven to be false.
Wow, I noticed most people left the video at a certain point. Now I see why. Really went off the rails about 2/3rds of the way through.
Did the frog have a sweater on?
what iss with this guy and freezing frogs in freezers?
Thankyou Buddha
Yes the blueprint of global. Glad I found this
is he spewing freshmen's epistemology chapter on Popper (right after Vienna Circle Positivism, right before Kuhn) tier summary, or does he really believe the narrative being told: i.e. what popper held, the bias towards only looking at his 30s work vs. taking some of all his subsequent work on epistemology, mostly concerned with responding to criticism and clarifying misunderstandings of his propositions.
Can someone just explain to me the disadvantage of karl popper's theory ??? My English isn't good enough..
I don´t know whether this is the typical way the people outside science do science. Yes, there are many assumptions, but these assumptions are so self-evident that you don´t need to bother. For instance, the freezer must be working, none has taken out the frog and only put it back just prior your re-opening the freezer, etc.
You need to read Popper.
Did you comment this because you get a sense that Victor is misrepresenting Popper's argument?
All he did was to misrepresent Popper.
Sometimes Popper is a pain in the area to read ,better read D. Deutsch on Popper if you ask me.
To clarify confusion present in the comments, caused in part by this very confusing lecture, here is an Example of Popperianism. Thesis: Water boils at 100 degrees. Experiment: You actually boil water and measure the temperature at the boiling point with result that water boiling say at 99 degrees. Conclusion: The assertion (“theory”) that water boils at 100 degrees was contradicted by your experiment. You propose a new theory: water boils at 99 degrees which will stand till someone else performs another experiment and contradicts your conclusion with another result.
Your result (water boils at 99 degrees) is a negative deductive conclusion - negative because it negates previous theory (water boils at 100 degrees), and deductive because you obtained an ultimate results: those dictated by the reality itself confirmed with your senses.
However, as a scientist you still leave open a possibility that the result of your experiment could have been biased by some factors which you were not aware of. So in spite of your best efforts, you conclude that your results amount to a new theory, not certainty. Your new theory is epistemologically an inductive (uncertain) statement standing for as long as there is no new (“certain”) contradiction provided by someone else’s experimental results. This illustrates the endless process of experimentally based chain of conclusions provided new scientific discoveries. It is the opposite of dogmatic approach which relies on performing experiments to confirm theories (which is not smart at all!).
In this video of logic i saw no truth tables being used v no refutation trees to show your work? So if we assume your premises to be true and conclusion to be false will we find your argument valid?
truth tables.. you're giving me flashbacks to first year philosophy courses at university..
Agree with @magpie - Truth Trees are only for the headc**ted
They only use Deductivism and therefore they don't need any background theories? Give me a break. Why then does he posit that the severity of a test is measured relative to background theories? Furthermore, what are we deducing from? Nothing?
This guy does not understand Popper at all. Go to the source.
8:45 - you assume the only way anything can be known (in this example the premises) by using induction and then, surprise surprise, you conclude induction is the way science produces theories. The whole point of Popper's philosophy is that induction is wrong, root and branch. That's not how people make theories. It was beautifully put by David Deutsch: "[people ask]: 'How and why can induction nevertheless somehow be done, yielding justified true beliefs after all, despite being impossible and invalid respectively?' ".
As for the rest of the video, Popper explains solutions to all your objections in the rest of his philosophy.
You should read popper again
You think he had actually read him?
So inconsistency implies incompleteness.
I was in Leiden last summer. Beautiful city!
Therefore, all cities in Russia are Anglo Saxon
"If theory is true, we should observe O"
Naive falsification.
Cf. Creationists who claim "since we observe no dogs evolving into cats, evolution is false"
0:58
How would it feel to have him in the classroom
HEY Abhinav here from INDIA.
But why do you use such gory examples?
Good work
thank you.
This guy has an extremely shallow understanding of Popper's theories.
But that does not mean he is wrong, but simply that he has restricted how much he presents. You have made the illogical assumption that because he speaks of Popper, that he should describe every part of Popper’s philosophy, which is a bad assumption. Perhaps you should first listen to some vids on common sense and then come back!
I think he is totally wrong on what Popper said about falsification,and that's what counts
ご参考まで
カール・ポパーのまとめ
sententiarum2.blogspot.com/2021/12/Karl-Popper-1902-1994_01583578557.html?m=0
Could you make a video on Paul Feyerabend, please?
“(According to Popper), the only conclusion that scientists draw is that certain theory is wrong” = That’s too vague, even misleading.
Popper holds that the only conclusions that scientists are entitled to draw is that some previous views are CONTRADICTORY as demonstrated by a relevant experiment. Scientists do that in order to propose another, replacement theory which doesn’t suffer from the same contradictions, at least not yet.
Popper is an epistemologist, “wrong” is not an epistemological term. Contradictions are negative DEDUCTIVE (epistemo)LOGICAL structures. That’s what Popper was primarily concerned with. Leave “wrong” for the moralists to play with.
Love his accent
OK, it's a clear presentation about Fasification & Science in general. But how to make a bridge between this and what are being doing nowadays with Unsupervised Learning? Is not UL a kind of inductive "knowledge"? And how about not testing 20 or 200 frogs, but all the frogs in the world? How to council this ideas with Big Data?
Great presentation - well done!
Every theory, every hypothesis, every thesis… is, by definition, propositional, and therefore, is concerned with truth… And I suspect that every scientist who posits a theory/hypothesis/thesis… does so because he believes and possibly, hopes that it turns out to be true - otherwise, why would he even bother with it in the first place!
Deductive reasoning, I submit, is just not possible - since that requires that we are in possession of a standard of Truth that is absolute, immutable, incorrigible… In other words… beyond our grasp! But Truth also has to be knowable, and for that, Truth needs to disclose itself to us - it’s called REVELATION…
The main host of this video comments: “Poppers attempt to do away with induction is a failure”.
WOW! What a nonsense on steroids! I suggest you didn’t understand what Popper’s central views are at all.
It also demonstrates that you don’t understand what induction is, AND THEREFORE you equally have no understanding what deduction is either.
Maybe this will help:
The distinction between deductive and inductive reasoning is both, complementary and mutually exclusive. It is complementary because it divides the whole reality into these two and nothing else - it’s so basic! It is mutually exclusive because if some thing is inductive then by definition it can’t be deductive and vice versa. It’s like you can’t have a cat dead AND alive at the same time.
To say that Popper attempted to do away with induction translates directly into accusation that Popper was not aware what induction ( and therefore deduction) is, which is rather a steep and baseless gibberish. If he indeed wanted to “do away” with induction (?!?!)… then it necessarily implies that Popper spent all his life to conclude that only half of reality exists, the deductive “half”.
Perhaps you need to stop smoking that green stuff and read a book by Popper - yes he was quite a good writer. Try reading it, please, then try making another video.
I am confused by this.
He teaches at a university. I would assume he has been educated and knows how to not mangle an argument.
Then he wheels out some idiot called Popper who believed in some very naive stuff. Where did this Popper come from? Can he please do another presentation with a less naive Popper?
Students of Leiden, you have my profound sympathies.
Dank je wel!!!!! Geweldig.
Experience tell us that 24 frogs on a freezer will die in one week, because that has happens repeatedly on all our previous experimentes, what if one day this does not happen for unknown reason, will we be willing to investigate the new phenomenon? Or will we cover the new discovery to keep the status quo, I find this rather dangerous to silence of any kind, political science, natural science, etc.
Karl popper idea was to keep an open mind for new discoveries, new ideas.
Looking for the truth is expecting the unexpected,
Confirming our dogma involves twisting reality.
Truth burns where dogma dies.
Being has a tendency to 'return' to clusters
='the nature of solidarity' -a desire for empathy -(Wave)-(yin)
and also,
Being has a tendency to 'exist' as individuals
='the nature of self-expension' -a desire for breed-(Particle)-(Yang)
Likewise, humans have two elements.
We must realize that we all have both left and right elements
-Solidarity and Self Reliance-
No one has only one element.
so 'Sum' derived from 'two poles' , (thesis, antithesis, synthesis)
To develop intellect and ethics by harmonizing the two,
It is good to realize it and balance it properly
But A few people polarized the crowd(political partisanship)
without balancing themselves.
And They stole only the sum, only the synthesis from the triangle composition.
Now We all have to get out of this deceptive situation.
This is not the time for us to hate each other.
We have to track down those who have been manipulating us.
"What if aliens surreptitiously replaced all our brains with cranial matter that makes dead frogs look like living frogs? We can see that Popper's wrong again."
Sigh. Philosophy (and Phil of science) just took another gut punch from another sophist.
What if aliens replaced your brains with cranial matter that makes you post worthless comments on UA-cam philosophy videos?
the example is horri ble like honestly ...is this the best you could come up with ? i mean Jesus.
Super! Dank u!
I love you Jesus😘🥰
I’m more confused than ever, having first watched this video and then read the commentary. Various arguments appear logical but it’s difficult to know what is truly valid for a non-philosopher. It’s like quicksand! Can anyone please point to at least one expert in scientific epistemology that has at least consensus agreement amongst most contemporary scientists, that I can use as a starting point. I had read and basically accepted Popper until I listened to this guy, but the seeds of doubt have been sown.
Don't listen to this absolute nobody presenter who cites an anonymous mass of scientists who believe Popper is wrong about the use of induction in science. They probably take offense to Popper's definition of science because they themselves have been practicing science incorrectly (with confirmation in mind, not falsification). Stick to Popper, he's right. Furthermore, the presenter didn't cite any specific philosophers or arguments which refute Popper's conclusions, just a weak and terrible one-off example which failed to demonstrate anything tangibly infirm about Popper's philosophy.
@@victorburnett6329 He is definitely not a nobody. He is a doctor of philosophy teaching at the University of Leiden.
Victor Burnett You fucking moron!
@@MrMobieleauto I didn't expect that after listening him and disagreeing with everything he said. He's an authority on the subject so I would be inclined to reassess my position... still I disagree with him.
@@victorburnett6329 And who the fuck are you?
Can't find 1:3 episode
Not a single quote from Popper in this. Not one. I don't think it's accurate to say Popper says there is no induction in science. It's that falsifiability is a necessary requirement for science, not a sufficient condition proving science has occurred. So if something has no conceivable way of being falsified, it isn't science.
The pushback against this seems to me to be based on straw-manning and motivated by people in quantum physics and social sciences whose work can't reach this standard.
Make a better video then smarty pants.
I would argue that the frogs in the freezer is an abstract absolute and you can't introduce random events like 'the freezer may have turned off.'
I love your shirt!
sepnu pues
Whoa the Uni got this wrong. Massimo Pigliucci has better info on Popper, demarcation and Pseudo Science.
6:10 yes they do
Hypothesis, not theory, Science Jesus.
Your lectures are absolutely excellent, thank you.
they are not
@@DaniloZabotto They are
@@DaniloZabotto Wow you convinced everyone.
Oh, dear. Perhaps it is time to pick another subject - it seems logical.
2:30
Which means Sigmund is a pseudo scientist!.
what are you talking about? you have not given me anything else. give me my precious 9.41.
Karl popper Science is the history of corrected mistakes.
Where do the premises for deduction come from? Deduction necessitates and presupposes induction.
5:54 well, popularity doesn't make his theory right or wrong, so no need to say this
My thoughts exactly. What constitutes science is not decided by popular vote.
My thoughts exactly. What constitutes science is not decided by popular vote.
This guy makes an inductive argument (appealing to the background theories needed by a premise) to "show" that Karl Popper's claims of deductive falsification are generally false 😂. And this after in a previous video hinting at deduction's agnosticism regarding the truth value of premise propositions! 🤦
I simply love this lecture... Thank you...
So is this just a moral opposition to Popper?
You’re not really addressing why his ideas don’t work. You’re just saying you don’t like it. Now here’s some unrelated stuff.
I only got about 6 minutes in.
Maybe you should front load with evidence not just calling him “problematic”.
Thanks a ton!
Isnt this a philosophical brain game?
“Suppose some animal lover took the from out of the freezer”
So you would have to change the statement.
Is this for real? Are you a flat earther???
Please tell me this is a bit.
This is quite unbelievably inaccurate. Popper was not interested in the logical reasoning behind theories, only in whether a theory was FALSIFIABLE, meaning whether FALSIFICATION WAS LOGICALLY POSSIBLE. Even is scientists used inductive reasoning to claim a theory to be true, Popper only insisted that there ought to be a method to prove it false; that it should be possible to prove it false. It should predict something that can be proven to be false. That is all.
This is a grave misrepresentation of Karl Popper and his Falsifiability.
Thank you I was triggered by this vid. Everyone in the comments section appears to agree this guy is way off base.
@@Magpie1701 and why should that matter?
I think you got it wrong somewhere else Mr.