Deconstructing Popper's Falsification and Vienna Circle Verification

My question regards the formal debunking of what science is often taken to be, where science is taken to be testable in the negative (i.e., falsifiable) and/or the positive (verifiable). Does the excerpt below logically prove the invalidity of the most common (Popperian) notion of what science is?:

... The logical positivists did not view their criterion of meaning as an arbitrary proposal, to be dismissed by anyone not sharing the Circle's affinities. On the contrary, they claimed that their position was well supported. Are they correct?

I do not think so. In point of fact, the criterion is worthless, since every statement comes out verifiable under it. Suppose that "p" is a non-controversially verifiable statement, e.g., "there is a chair in this room." Let us take "q" to be a statement logical positivists reject as meaningless. A good example is one that Rudolf Carnap held up to ridicule when he called for an end to metaphysics. He cited the following from Martin Heidegger's Being and Time (1927): "The not nothings itself." I shall not attempt to explain this: one can see why Carnap presented it as a paradigm instance of a meaningless statement.

Does the verification principle eliminate it? Surprisingly, it does not. From p, we deduce p or q. (This step is non-controversial.) Assuming that a logical consequence of a verifiable proposition is itself verifiable, (p or q) is verifiable. Further, if p is verifiable, then the negation of p is verifiable; this principle seems difficult to question. Now, consider this argument:

p or q not-p
q

This argument is valid, and each of its premises is verifiable. Then, q is a logical consequence of verifiable propositions, and it, too, is verifiable. Clearly, if the verification criterion cannot eliminate "the not nothings itself," it is not worth very much.

A falsification criterion fairs no better. If p is falsifiable, then (p and q) is falsifiable. Once more, not-p should be falsifiable if p is, though Karl Popper has implausibly denied this. ...

--http://mises.org/philorig/main.asp

Thanks for any help that you can give me while I try to wrap my mind around what was said above.

:-)

Ed

Post 1

Friday, January 21, 2011 - 1:32am

Ed,

I see what he's saying. Assume that p is a statement that's verifiable (e.g., "There is a chair in the room). Assume that q is a statement that's meaningless (e.g., "The not nothings itself"). Now, if we apply the laws of symbolic logic, then from p, we can deduce p or q. In other words, if p, then it follows that p or q. Now since "p or q" is a logical consequence of p, and p is verifiable, it follows that "p or q" is verifiable.

Further, if p is verifiable, then the negation of p is verifiable. If the proposition "There is a chair in the room" is verifiable, then "It is not the case that there is a chair in the room" is verifiable. So if p is verifiable, then not-p is also verifiable. Now if all this is true, then so is the following argument:

Premise 1: p or q
Premise 2: not-p
Conclusion: Therefore, q

So, we see from this argument that q ("The not nothings itself") -- an obviously meaningless statement -- is nevertheless verifiable. So the author's conclusion is that any statement, no matter how nonsensical it is, is verifiable. But the Logical Positivist verification criterion says that if a statement is verifiable, then it's meaningful. Well, here he's presented what appears to be a counter-example to that, namely a meaningless statement that's nonetheless verifiable.

This, I believe, is his argument. The problem I see with it is that a meaningless statement like Heidegger's "The not nothings itself" doesn't say anything, so how could it be verified as true? Symbolic logic is fine as far as it goes, but it's just a tool whose symbols stand for propositions, and a proposition is, by definition, a meaningful assertion. Since Heidegger's "The not nothings itself" is not a meaningful assertion, it is not a proposition. Therefore, symbolizing it in the language of symbolic notation is illegitimate to begin with.

Nice try, but no cigar. If the verification criterion of meaning is to be refuted, a different approach is clearly needed. This one doesn't do it! Brand Blanshard's book Reason and Analysis presents what I believe to be an effective critique of the verification principle in all of its various incarnations. Blanshard is a philosophical rationalist, but his book is well worth reading.

It might help to present a couple of examples to show just how indefensible the verification principle is. The principle says that a statement is meaningful only if it can be verified empirically. Very well, take the statement, "When you and I look at a blue sky, you experience the same color sensation as I do." Can either of us verify this statement? No. Does that imply that the statement is meaningless? I don't see how. We clearly know what it means, even though we can't verify it empirically. What about the statement, "The soul survives the death of the body." Can that be verified empirically? No. Is it, therefore, meaningless? Of course not. It is perfectly meaningful, even if false.

(Edited by William Dwyer on 1/21, 10:20am)

Post 2

Friday, January 21, 2011 - 3:27pm

Thanks, Bill.

You make things clear.

Ed

Post 3

Saturday, May 14, 2011 - 8:42am

Bill,

"When you and I look at a blue sky, you experience the same color sensation as I do." Can either of us verify this statement? No.

Actually, in principle, that statement is ultimately verifiable.

What about the statement, "The soul survives the death of the body." Can that be verified empirically? No.

Right. That statement, even in principle, is ultimately non-verifiable.

Ed

Post 4

Saturday, May 14, 2011 - 3:14pm

Hi Ed,

I wrote, "Take the statement, 'When you and I look at a blue sky, you experience the same color sensation as I do.' Can either of us verify this statement? No."

You replied, "Actually, in principle, that statement is ultimately verifiable."

How so? Remember, we're talking about the same color sensation, i.e., the same experience. The fact that you and I can both recognize a blue sky and distinguish it from (say) a gray sky does not mean that our experience or our sensation of the color blue (or gray) is the same.

I also wrote, "What about the statement, 'The soul survives the death of the body.' Can that be verified empirically? No."

You replied, "Right. That statement, even in principle, is ultimately non-verifiable."

I guess the next question would be, is it falsifiable? I'm inclined to say "yes," in the sense that evidence of a soul or consciousness is no longer present at the time of death. Just as we can falsify by observation that the human body continues to live on after its organs have ceased to function, so we can falsify by observation that the body's consciousness or soul continues after the brain has ceased to function.

Post 5

Saturday, May 14, 2011 - 3:18pm

Ed:

"When you and I look at a blue sky, you experience the same color sensation as I do." Can either of us verify this statement? No.

Actually, in principle, that statement is ultimately verifiable.

Would you please elaborate on why you think it is verifiable? Surely, this is purely "subjective." Merely measuring frequencies or the response of brains to stimuli can't guarantee that the sensations are identical. I can't experience what goes on in your brain.

Sam

Post 6

Saturday, May 14, 2011 - 7:23pm

Bill and Sam,

First off, I said it was verifiable with two qualifications:

1) in principle (rather than in practice)
2) ultimately (rather than proximally, immediately, or easily)

Let's take a much easier example first: an equilateral triangle with one-inch sides. With substitution, Bill's words become:

"When you and I look at [an equilateral triangle], you experience the same [shape] sensation as I do." Can either of us verify this statement?

Now, my answer to the question above is "yes" -- i.e., that we can verify not only that we are perceiving the very same thing (at the very same time), complete with all of it's perceptible characteristics, but also that we are perceiving it in the same way as each other.

Now let's say reality was different. Let's say that when you looked at an equilateral triangle, you "see" or "experience" a circle. The verification process, because it is conceptual, will uncover that perceptual discrepancy. I'll start talking about a thing with 3 corners and sides and you'll cut me off and say: "Wait a minute! That is not the sensation I am experiencing! I am experiencing the sensation of a round object without any definitive corners or sides!"

Or how about if reality was different again. I'll start talking about a thing with continuous lines, 3 corners, and 3 sides and you'll cut me off and say: "Wait a minute! That is not the sensation I am experiencing! I am experiencing the sensation of a triangular object with dashed lines, not continuous ones! It looks like this to me [and you begin to draw it out as you "see" it]:"

    ^
/    \
/        \
-------

In the above case, you may have cataracts or something, and they form little, tiny blind-spots when you look at solid lines and shapes. And we would, by simply talking to each other (and drawing figures and shapes), completely verify whether or not we experience exactly the same sensation. It's because of the objectivity of concepts that we can verify the subjectivity/objectivity of perceptions. This is kind of like a Turing Test, but instead of discovering -- with intelligent questions -- whether an interlocuter is human or not; you'd be discovering if an experience is shared or not.

Is that a good enough explanation?

Ed

Post 7

Saturday, May 14, 2011 - 9:43pm

Ed:

Is that a good enough explanation?

Nowhere near, and you're stretching too hard.

Back to the color analogy. How do you prove that the same color perceived by two brains is decoded in the same manner, i.e. a kind of color blindness, not based on a deficiency of pigment in the retina, but, say, a reversal of the spectrum in one of the brains? Which one would be regarded as "normal"? There's no right answer.

Also take the case where two people perceive a fleeting glimpse of the same thing. Depending on their past experiences and psychology one person may interpret it as friendly and the other as frightening.

Sam

Post 8

Saturday, May 14, 2011 - 10:51pm

Sam,

How do you prove that the same color perceived by two brains is decoded in the same manner, i.e. a kind of color blindness, not based on a deficiency of pigment in the retina, but, say, a reversal of the spectrum in one of the brains? Which one would be regarded as "normal"?

And now I'd say that you are the one who is "stretching."

:-)

Like the spurious and potentially-confounding issue of cataracts above (which I believe I dealt with adequately), I was prepared to deal with simple color-blindness. Color-blindness, which involves seeing at least some colors (if not all of them) in certain shades of gray -- is something that is ultimately and in principle verifiable. It is a subjective, internal, mental experience which is verifiable from the outside (with the proper conceptual investigation).

But, instead of bringing up simple color-blindness, which is not uncommon to man, you have gone all the way to the postulation of the arbitrary (an unheard-of-before scenario wherein an entire sensory system is postulated to operate in reverse of an alternate or "normal" one). What does this arbitrary postulation lead to? Well, it would lead to the requirement of an explanation for a whole slew of conceptual discrepancies (actually, the nonexistence thereof).

For instance, the colors orange and red may be described as "warm" by both "kinds" of people. Indeed, nearly all people would already agree on this, and perhaps all of them would agree on why you might describe orange and red as hot or warm. The colors pink and light blue may be described as "calming" to both "kinds" of people. And nearly all people would agree on this, and perhaps all of them would agree on why you might describe pink and light blue as calming.

But you would be left to explain why. I wouldn't have to go through all of these explanations, but you would. You would have to explain why it is that these differently-experienced colors evoke the same objective responses in the different "kinds" of perceivers. Note that this is not true of the truly color-blind, but only of this arbitrary postulation of "reversed spectrum" perceivers.

We may now be at an impasse. I will maintain that sense experience is ultimately and in principle verifiable. You may maintain that, while there is no good evidence or reasoning behind the idea that color spectrums would be reversed in people, that we should still have to account for that sort of a "possible" thing.

If I continue to press the argument, then you can increase the scope of this arbitrary postulation, further digging-in your heels. For instance, if I said that we could verify experiences by talking about them to each other, then you could counter with another arbitrary notion that words mean 'ever-so-slightly' different things to different people -- so that even our talking and using concepts will not help us to verify our personal and internal experiences to each other.

Do you think I have 'overstated' your position (use of a straw man fallacy)?

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 5/14, 10:56pm)

Post 9

Saturday, May 14, 2011 - 11:04pm

Ed,

Your example of the equilateral triangle is not the same, because with shapes and sizes, one can identify them with more than one sense organ -- by feel and by touch. So it is difficult to see how two people would experience the same shapes and sizes in radically different ways.

However, with colors, it is easy to imagine that one person would experience the same colors differently from someone else, but in an entirely consistent manner, so that they would always agree on what they call "red,"blue,"green," etc. There is no way to disprove that without getting into the other person's head and sharing his experience.

Different viewers would also learn to associate what they called "blue" with cool experiences like exposure to ice and water, and what they called "red" with warm experiences like exposure to fire, even if what some viewers call "blue" is what they experience as red and what they call "red" is what they experience as blue.

(Edited by William Dwyer on 5/14, 11:15pm)

Post 10

Sunday, May 15, 2011 - 9:32am

Ed:

It's also a matter of precision. Take the case of two people being stuck by a pin. They will both suffer an unpleasant reaction that they will describe as a sharp pain. But beyond that, the stimulus had to travel slightly farther to the brain in one case than the other, the nerves in one will be more sensitive than the other, etc. So, it cannot be experienced in precisely the same way.

I harp on the matter of precision as a matter that isn't appreciated enough in this forum.

Sam

Post 11

Sunday, May 15, 2011 - 10:45pm

Bill & Sam,

So, do you guys both want to maintain, as apparently Bill does, that the difference between sensory experience of a triangle and sensory experience of a color is a difference in kind, not merely a difference in degree -- even though I showed how you can get sensory subjectivity (e.g., the "cataracts" example) even from sensing an otherwise-objective object (equilateral triangle)?

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 5/15, 10:48pm)

Post 12

Monday, May 16, 2011 - 9:13am

Ed:

There's a difference between experiencing and interpreting. In your example of the triangle the viewer is interpreting what he sees as a triangle or a circle, not in the lexical sense, but as an object. My example of the fleeting glimpse is also an interpretation as to whether it is a friendly or fearsome vision. The pin prick is different in that it is a pure stimulus. There is no way to simultaneously get into two people's heads with instruments for measurements in order to compare them, as the act of observation changes the phenomenon that is being observed.

Sam

Post 13

Monday, May 16, 2011 - 11:42am

Well, sure, Ed, you can get sensory subjectivity from viewing a triangle if you have cataracts.� You can recognize that the triangle is now fuzzy or distorted, whereas before you got the cataracts, it was sharp and clear, but you can verify this through experience. You can also verify that the color blue takes on a greenish hue due to the yellowing of the lens that occurs with a cataract. But that's not the kind of thing I'm talking about. I'm referring to a situation in which the people don't have cataracts or any discernible difference in their lenses, yet their subjective experiences of color are different. How do you falsify this?

You might be able to argue that since subjective experience depends on the objective properties of one's sensory faculties, if the objective properties are the same, the subjective experiences must be the same, since the same causes must produce the same effects. And now that I think about it, that's a pretty good argument. The argument depends on recognizing that perceptual awareness is a direct function of the objective properties of the brain and central nervous system -- that consciousness has no intrinsic properties apart from these physical organs. When the organs of awareness cease to function, consciousness ceases as well.

Post 14

Monday, May 16, 2011 - 4:49pm

Sam,

There's a difference between experiencing and interpreting. In your example of the triangle the viewer is interpreting what he sees as a triangle or a circle, not in the lexical sense, but as an object.

Okay, but you can interpret colors, too. Scientific validation of this is found in something called the Manchester Color Wheel. It's a wheel with 38 colors and if individuals rate the colors into "positive", "neutral", and "negative" groups, then researchers can tell things about you -- without asking you any more questions. Now, for this kind of validation to even be possible, we have got to start with the assumption that the individual sensory experience of color is shared (i.e., objective).

This is what I was talking about when I said that if you and Bill want to arbitrarily posit that folks experience colors differently, then you have got a lot of explaining to do -- for the same reason that someone arbitrarily positing that gravity doesn't exist, or that gravity doesn't exist for everybody or for everything, would then have to explain why all people and all things fall to the earth under the same acceleration.

Ed
Reference:
The Manchester Color Wheel: development of a novel way of identifying color choice and its validation in healthy, anxious and depressed individuals.

Mood color choice helps to predict response to hypnotherapy in patients with irritable bowel syndrome.

Post 15

Monday, May 16, 2011 - 5:03pm

Bill,

... the subjective experiences must be the same, since the same causes must produce the same effects. And now that I think about it, that's a pretty good argument. The argument depends on recognizing that perceptual awareness is a direct function of the objective properties of the brain and central nervous system -- that consciousness has no intrinsic properties apart from these physical organs. When the organs of awareness cease to function, consciousness ceases as well.

Well, I don't know where that puts you (over to my side of the debate?), but I should continue to argue my point for clarification at least. I agree that same causes produce same effects, but I'm focusing on a different level of sameness than you are.

Let's go back to the Turing Test. I am someone who is convinced he could beat a Turing Machine (even one with 900 terabytes of RAM, and with a 900 gigahertz processor). I won't beat it right away, and I might not beat it without help from others, or from some other technology, but I'd beat the damn thing ... eventually. You could say then, that I could beat a Turing Machine ulimately (rather than proximately) and in principle (rather than under simple, easy, day-to-day, or normal conditions).

The reason that I could beat a Turing Machine is because of the objectivity associated with being a human. To be fair, there is much subjectivity associated with being a human, but there is also an untapped wellspring of common human nature. It is this shared or common human nature that I would tap into in order to "ultimately and in-principle" ascertain whether 2 people were experiencing the same sensations/sensory experience from viewing a single color.

Ed

Post 16

Monday, May 16, 2011 - 6:18pm

Ed:

Scientific validation of this is found in something called the Manchester Color Wheel. It's a wheel with 38 colors and if individuals rate the colors into "positive", "neutral", and "negative" groups, then researchers can tell things about you -- without asking you any more questions.

I think Bill refuted this quite successful with:

Different viewers would also learn to associate what they called "blue" with cool experiences like exposure to ice and water, and what they called "red" with warm experiences like exposure to fire, even if what some viewers call "blue" is what they experience as red and what they call "red" is what they experience as blue.

Sam

Post 17

Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - 6:09am

First, I believe that it is perfectly acceptable and important in science to state what would falisfy your theories, if not your empirical report. When you report on an experiment, that is a primary and given that you identify the limits of your knowledge, falsification is not necessary. However, for a theory - which abstracts from empirical evidence to make predictions - falsifiability is a criterion. In mathematics, we have disproof by counterexample. Karl Popper generalized that.

Last year, I had a graduate class in remote sensing. What we call "yellow" may be a certain radiated wavelength of light, a primary color. It might be a reflection from pigment which is absorbing all other colors and only reflecting a narrow band. It might come from overlapping colors of blue and red. It might come from subtracting the blue and red by filtering. As a direct perception, you have no way to know. That is why remote sensing uses digital processing methods to reveal what the eye conceals.

Case in point is a lab I wrote for other students. A certain image of the U of M football field includes the nearby golf course, a residential neighborhood, and also a high school lawn. In all cases, the grass looks green. In fact, under a different mapping of colors, it is revealed that the "grass" in the football stadium is the same "color" as the stands because neither is alive: it is artificial turf; plastic. Similarly, under another mapping, the golf course is a different "green" because its grasses are chemically pumped up far beyond the more or less "fallow" lawn of the high school. To the naked eye, they are the same.

Even more to the point here, however, you are all arguing in modern English as if it were God's Own Language. You need more examples from other languages to test your theories.

It is asserted by linguists that no language develops words for "brown" and "purple" until after "green" is differentiated from "blue." You might think that with blue skies and green trees all over the planet that cavemen would have known the difference. It seems not to be the case. When I read that, I thought of Japanese, for which ao (aoi) is both green and blue, though modern Japanese now has midori for green. The article I read cited Indo-European languages such as Welsh to show that at root, green and blue were called the same until just a couple thousand years ago. We can only assume that they were perceived the same even though objectively, they are different wavelengths.

Somehow we gain finer perceptions and differentiate them with new words. Alternately, some one person does this first, and they teach the perception to others who acquire it and it spreads by diffusion.

There's a science fiction story - hall of famer, as I recall - where the explorers have crashed on Venus and their ship is almost reparable. A Venusian comes along and they establish contact. Earth control comes into the conversations. They figure out some things about the creature's modes and at the critical moment, it has to press the right button. Press "red" and the safeties engage and the ship takes off; press "green" and the wrong gates are open and it blows up. Earth control says to the Venerian, "Press the cooler button." And they're all yelling No! No! but it presses the red one and leaves before the ship takes off for home. Sensing wavelengths directly, for it red was cooler than green.

I grew up in Cleveland. My wife grew up in Sutton's Bay. One night we're camping and I keep hearing animals outside and I can't get to sleep. "What's wrong?" Laurel asked. "I think there's an animal in the woods," I whispered. "There's lots of animals in the woods," she replied. "Go to sleep." Just to say, you guys have to get past your own experiences if you want to make progress with this.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 5/17, 6:21am)

Post 18

Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - 8:02am

Michael:

We have been talking about verifying experiences. This has nothing whatsoever to do with linguistics.

Sam

Post 19

Tuesday, May 17, 2011 - 8:29pm