The Limitations of Falsificationism

1B. Pseudoscientific beliefs violate the principles of scientific thinking in three ways. Pseudoscience does not use systematic empiricism because it only uses everyday observation and is not structured, so it does not provide enough information to allow for predictions. Secondly, pseudoscience does not allow for public verification. The pseudoscientific concepts typically do not advertise their research to the general public which makes it nearly impossible for the public to verify that the information is correct.

Brian Davies further argued that the verificationism principle itself is unverifiable; one cannot verify whether it is true or false and therefore by its own criteria, it is meaningless. Both Ward and Davies’s arguments significantly weaken verificationism. Hick argued that statements are eschatologically verifiable, so that after someone dies, they can verify all the statements they made when they were alive, however this is a weak argument against verificationism, and it does not weaken the verification principle as much as Hick and Davies.

However, although this suggests that human lie detection is fairly accurate, earlier research has found the opposite. According to Wallace (1999), psychological research on deception shows that most of us are poor judges of truthfulness. One may assume that this only applies to only ordinary people and not professionals. However further research shows that ‘this applies to professionals such as police and custom inspectors, whose jobs are supposed to include some expertise at lie detection’ (Wallace, 1999).

The least interesting part is the logical empiricism which state that the truth of a proposition rests on how well it is verified.

By proving the statement to be false, the evidence proves the myth is a misconception and

Every genuine test of a scientific theory, then, is logically an attempt to refute or to falsify it, and one genuine counter-instance falsifies the whole theory. In…theory of demarcation is based upon … perception of the logical asymmetry which holds between verification and falsification: it is logically impossible to conclusively verify a universal proposition by reference to experience …, but a single counter-instance conclusively falsifies the corresponding universal law. In a word, an exception, far from ‘proving’ a rule, conclusively refutes it (Thornton,

This can cause people to hear or see things that did not happen and thereby making their testimonies invalid. A news reporter from Dallas said, “I remember interviewing people that said they saw certain things; some did, some didn’t. Even then there were people making up things.” (Reitzes). The Grassy Knolls theory was not the only conspiracy to be called invalid. Theories that London B Johnson, the military industrial complex, and the mob have also been conspiracies that have been debunked, but there is still one theory out there that may never been proven or disproven (Patterson). The idea that the CIA was somehow involved in JFK’s assassination is an issue that may never be fully uncovered. The mismanagement of the investigation of the case left many holes that may never be filled.

For example, according to the “Why Bigfoot is Fake” article, "It isn't logical that a large, human-like creature would escape detection for so long, and avoid capture or at least clear documentation." This proves that Bigfoot isn’t logical because it isn’t possible that Bigfoot could have averted detection from humans for such an extensive period of time. Additionally, such an immense creature couldn’t possibly fit into the food chain, because it couldn’t eat enough to survive (Fox). We would have noticed the impact on the food chain as well, because it would be enormous. Also, according to the DNEWS article, Benjamin Radford, deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine says, "If Bigfoot is a zoological reality, there has to be a breeding population." For that population to be big enough, in North America alone there would need to be tens of thousands of creatures. “Think about that for a second. Tens of thousands of Bigfoot, living, breathing, doing what they do. Where are they? Why don't they get hit by a car?” asked Radford. “The numbers just simply don't add up." If Bigfoot was legitimate, and there was this many Bigfoot on the Earth, why don’t we witness them more often? This proves that Bigfoot just isn’t

Common experience and empirical evidence continually verify the causal principle, and falsification has not occurred. These considerations lead Dr. Craig to conclude, “It is somewhat unwise to argue in favor of it [the first premise], for any proof of the principle is likely to be less obvious than the principle itself, and, as Aristotle remarked, one ought not to try to prove the obvious via the less obvious.”

“A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is nonscientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.” Karl Popper said this in an excerpt from his book Conjectures and Refutations. What he means by this is that if a psychoanalyst is not able to come up with an experiment to challenge the plausibility of the theory, then it can’t be tested and therefore cannot be a scientific theory.

In the seventeenth century the philosopher David Hume posed the problem of induction. This problem addresses the difference between science and observations. This essay will discuss how several hundred years later Popper came in with a solution to Hume’s problem. However, many other philosophers will come a long and critique Popper’s solution. The biggest critique Popper’s solution does not follow the scientific method. With out proper scientific backing Popper’s theory is invalid.

Unlike inductivists, falsificationists believe that there is no way to conclusively prove that a theory is true. Consequently, they will resist stating that they’ve proved a theory to be true. Instead, falsificationists will consider a theory to be true so long as it has not been proven to be false. Unlike the strict five-step process held by the inductivist account of science, falsificationists hold that scientific progress comes about “by trial and error, by conjectures and refutations” (Chalmers 60). In the falsificationist picture, theory change happens constantly, and this process is what constitutes scientific progress. “It can never be said of a theory that it is true, however well it has withstood rigorous tests, but it can hopefully be said that a current theory is superior to its predecessors in the sense that it is able to withstand tests that falsified those predecessors” (Chalmers

According to Popper, when a theory is proven to be false, it should not be used. He describes the common practice of giving theories a "conventionalist twist" as re-interpreting a theory after it has been disproven so that the theory can survive the apparent challenge. Popper says that Marxism is not science because when the theory was refuted, it was altered to explain the apparent refutations within the frames of the Marxist theory. Kuhn argues against this point. He says that introducing "ad hoc" assumptions to save a theory is done all the time in science, and it helps make the theories accurate. Rarely is a theory perfect the first time it is put down on paper. Kuhn thinks that the refinement of theories is an important part of theory development.

Karl Popper is commonly regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science in the 20th Century. He is well known for his rejection of the inductivist viewpoint of the scientific method, in which one uses observation to propose a law to generalize an observed pattern, and later confirm that law through more observation. Popper states that “induction cannot be logically justified” (Popper 14). Inductivism relies on the process of inductive reasoning which is a logical process in which multiple premises, all thought to be true and found to be true most of the time, are combined to obtain a conclusion and in many cases formulate a law or theory. Popper rejected the inductivist viewpoint in favor of a theory called empirical falsification which holds that a theory can never be proven, but it can be falsified, and therefore it can and needs to be scrutinized through experimentation.

Popper and Kuhn held differing views on the nature of scientific progress. As seen in Popper’s falsification theory, he held that theories can never be proved only disproved or falsified. Once a theory is proved false we move on to the next. Kuhn, on the other, hand argued a new paradigm may solve puzzles better than the old one but you cannot describe the old science as false. Both seem to share the Kantian idea that the really real, independently existing world is completely unknowable. Kuhn further asserts that the empirical world, which is knowable, is partly constructed by our categories and concepts. The fundamental difference in their views are best stated in Kuhn’s own words, “A very different approach to this whole network of problems has been developed by Karl R. Popper who denies the existence of any verification procedures at all. Instead he emphasizes the importance of falsification, i.e., of the test that, because its outcome is negative, necessitates the rejection of an established theory. Clearly, the role thus attributed to falsification is much like the one this essay assigns to anomalous experiences, i.e., to experiences that, by evoking crisis, prepare the way for a new theory. Nevertheless, anomalous experiences may not be identified with falsifying ones.”(Kuhn, 145) As seen by this passage, the fundamental difference between Popper and Kuhn is that Popper disregards “verification” and Kuhn asserts that “falsification” only takes place once a