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//********* Falsificationism and Prediction - September 12th, 2019 **********//
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- The name-reading involving names being read has begun - HUZZAH!
    - ...and, shockingly, there isn't a quiz!
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- Today is an exciting day - both because it is September 12th (my guess), and because we're going to be moving on
    - "We're going to be talking about falsificationism, which is a VERY famous theory that many scientists adopt who aren't familiar with modern philosophy"

- So, who the heck is Mr. Popper (as opposed to his penguins)?
    - Karl Popper (1902-1994) was an Austro-British philosopher who had to flee the Holocaust (being partly Jewish), and who did work in both political philosophy and the philosophy of science at the London School of Economics
        - He's VERY well known for his theory of falsificationism, as well the work he did in how we tell the difference between pseudo-science and real science (e.g. how do we prove astrology isn't a scientific study?)
    - So, what was his argument with this whole "falsificationism" thing?
        - In the reading we had, Popper said his goal was to try and study the procedures of science in an effort to improve it
            - More specifically - but still as a really big issue - he was trying to find a way of "doing science" without relying on induction
                - Specifically referencing Hume, Popper claims that inductive inferences are NOT justified, since making inductive arguments depends on us assuming that nature is regular - which we can only prove via induction, which leads to a circle!
                    - So, since we seemingly can't prove induction works without induction, Popper accepts Hume's critique
        - So, with Popper's view that induction can't be justified, he turns around and says we have to do science via DEDUCTION!
            - Essentially, his view of science boils down to a guess-and-check procedure, where scientists make hypotheses and then the best they can do is try to test them and prove them false
                - It's essentially the scientific version of "innocent until proven guilty:" we make a theory, keep testing it, and keep it around until we find a counterexample - and then we throw it out!
            - In Popper's view, the best we can get are CORROBORATED theories - theories that have held up until the present and haven't yet been disproven
                - So, on his vew, we CANNOT prove a hypothesis, because that would look like an invalid deduction:

                        1. Hypothesis => Observation
                        2. Observation
                        3. Therefore, Hypothesis
                            X

                - However, he says we CAN make a valid "modus tollens" argument to disprove a hypothesis:

                        1. Hypothesis => Observation
                        2. Not observation
                        3. Therefore, not hypothesis

        - This total view of science is FALSIFICATIONISM: the idea that the "best we can do" in science is to make hypotheses and try to disprove them

- So, the second reading we had was from Wesley Salmon, who has a beef to pick with Popper's falsificationism
    - In the paper, he argues that Popper is trying to have his cake and eat it too: Popper is trying to claim that science is purely deductive, but that we can still decide what theories are "most true"
        - Salmon, though, points out that we can come up with an INFINITE number of theories that haven't been disproven yet, and we have no way of choosing which one is best!
            - Say we had a theory that gravity behaved just like Newton predicted, EXCEPT in the year 3000 the gravitational constant is going to change - how can we disprove that? It's just as well corroborated as the regular thing!
        - So, to prove which theory is best, we CAN'T just use deduction to disprove hypotheses and choose among them; we need to use induction from the data and first principles to decide which ones best match the data

- So, to write out Salmon's argument against Popper, we might say something like this:

    1. We can make rational predictions in a purely deductive science
    2. In a purely deductive science, we can only use corroboration to distinguish which theories are most rationally predictive
    3. However, there are an infinite number of equally-well corroborated theories that all make different predictions
    4. Therefore, we can't use corroboration to choose a single predictive theory/prediction
    5. Therefore, we can't make a rational prediction using a purely deductive science

- Alright; on Tuesday, we'll read a short book by Robert Hempel, and we'll finish up our discussion about Salmon's argument. Have a good weekend!