An interesting argument

[Duckie]

I guess in my second post I overestimated the scientific literacy of interested parties? I kind of figured the knowledge of things like Quine, the flaws of Scientific Positivism, Verificationism in the 1930s, Spandrel-theories of religion, and whatnot are all just basic knowledge that needs to be re-iterated so that people could get the big picture on why human beings have so much trouble with the sort of thinking that would be inherent to a theoretical type of human being who is naturally irreligious. (When people say a child is born irreligious, I think they mean 'nondogmatic'. Children are as superstitious and confirmation-biased as others, they merely don't spontaneously begin belonging to a formal social movement with a unified creed. What they mean is that children are born 'atheistic' in the sense of atheist, but children aren't born secular scientists without training. Were it that they were, but...)

(My first post I figured the only part people would care about would be the 'here is how you fix religion based on long-term demographic and sociological trends in the western world and the seeds off of which to build it for the religions with which you are probably interested, go forth and forget the need to murder anybody', since talking about your religious beliefs circumspectly is pretty much slightly below 'Here are my thoughts on trade unionism' in terms of 'stuff you don't give a shit about unprovoked')

[Bakustra]

I doubt that somebody ideologically committed to the destruction of religion for irrationality is going to be assuaged by the point that there are unbigoted movements within the major religions, as his objections are not on the ground of tangible harm, though she (gender indeterminacy) may cover this up by pretending a massive harm simply caused by believing in religion. And most other religion-critical atheists, such as the Richard Dawkinses and Christopher Hitchenses of the world, focus their ire on the belief system, not the believers as a whole. So while valiant, I doubt that anybody who really should have read it understood it, and distributing it across the internet would be a difficult process.

But in any case, seeing as I am the last unconstructive Verificationist on the planet (meaningless though I consider that sentence) your first sentence, speaking of things with which I cannot have direct experience, is also meaningless, as are all statements about that which is not directly measurable, which I define to include everything in this thread thus far. I cannot be sure about why I produced so many meaningless statements, but I also would therefore be meaningless myself and.... oh hell, I reduced myself to a nihilist, didn't I?

[Duckie]

I doubt that somebody ideologically committed to the destruction of religion for irrationality is going to be assuaged by the point that there are unbigoted movements within the major religions, as his objections are not on the ground of tangible harm, though she (gender indeterminacy) may cover this up by pretending a massive harm simply caused by believing in religion. And most other religion-critical atheists, such as the Richard Dawkinses and Christopher Hitchenses of the world, focus their ire on the belief system, not the believers as a whole. So while valiant, I doubt that anybody who really should have read it understood it, and distributing it across the internet would be a difficult process.

I dunno, I have a belief that a properly formulated argument could sell the social compact to a sociopath and other things. (I haven't tried here because I think Simon Jester wouldn't appreciate being interrupted for me to shout "HEY LET ME TALK TO YOU ABOUT RAWLS' VEIL OF IGNORANCE AND GAME THEORY" into the conversation). So why not? Explaining the most rational way to behave in society is to not be an asshole, and the most rational and beneficial society gives broad rights to is citizens as long as they don't clash and does not oppress them and seeks to uplift the low should work to any thinking individual unless they purposefully reject the idea of the social compact.

Why shouldn't you be able to explain that the most rational way to destroy harmful religion or religion as a whole, if that is your goal, is to be reasonable and instead desire to civilise the planet so that it will fall away without backlash, like it's already doing in the west?

Granted if you are right and the goal is to destroy religious capacity/thinking rather than specific religious dogmas in human beings, I presented evidence that shooting people isn't going to fix it and that broad-scale cognitive rewrites of the human brain will be required, to again dissuade from the 'just shoot them' line of thinking.

But in any case, seeing as I am the last unconstructive Verificationist on the planet (meaningless though I consider that sentence) your first sentence, speaking of things with which I cannot have direct experience, is also meaningless, as are all statements about that which is not directly measurable, which I define to include everything in this thread thus far. I cannot be sure about why I produced so many meaningless statements, but I also would therefore be meaningless myself and.... oh hell, I reduced myself to a nihilist, didn't I?

(aww, it doesn't animate when crossloaded)

[Bakustra]

I think that that might work, but on the other hand I think that the greater problem is not the desire towards physical violence so much as the overall desire to eliminate period, and I'm perversely cynical and idealistic enough to think that most people are not inclined towards elimination except as a knee-jerk response they grow out of, and those that are inclined to do so beyond such responses are so entrenched in their beliefs that mere words will not persuade them. In other words, going back to Buddhism, enlightenment comes from within. That said, you're right in that discouraging people from violence is beneficial, and I have to acknowledge that the traditions promoting sudden enlightenment also present the idea that other people set up the conditions for enlightenment. In contrast to what I said earlier, I guess I don't really have a firm position on this, but I still can't be sure if I'm standing on quicksand or just regular type.

Imgur doesn't seem to have problems with animation and crossloading:

[Simon_Jester]

Further, linguistically it appears according to all the evidence we have amassed that it is cognitively impossible to treat 'false' as the default state of affairs*. It is never shorter to deny than to assert. Once you wrap your head around the fact that there is not a single language on earth where the negative is the base form of the verb, you'll understand why it took a hundred and fifty years for scientific falisificationism to trump logical positivism (do you as a supreme sciencemaster layman even know the difference? most scientists themselves still operate under positivist or verificationist methods by accident simply because it's the logical natural way to think). This happened even for scientists who are trained to think logically and look for problems in their methodlogy.

There are also practical considerations.

When we approach a problem in falsificationist terms, we must systematically examine every conceivable way we could be mistaken. Even the quite unlikely ones. This results in an exhausting burden of labor, especially for experimental procedures that take a very long time to do, or for apparatus that are complicated and contain many parts that could, in theory have been wrong.

Even if you do undertake this burden, you are at great risk of simply missing, due to a blind spot, some very important fault in your apparatus.

It's much easier and, I would argue, more practical, to use repeatability as a guide to "you didn't make a mistake" than to use exhaustive examination of every mistake you could have made.

Falsificationism is a very satisfying philosophical argument, but as a tool for making inductive discoveries it has its vices.

Well, I was interested, but I didn't have much to say. But I doubt that most people here really know the word positivism or why it's faulty or the distinction between the philosophical position and the scientific methodology, both of which are quite faulty. But on the other hand, it's just so much more satisfying to say "No, you literally are descended from bacteria through the process of evolution, it is not a convenient model!" and I think that most philosophy of science has focused more on theoretical physics and theories in general, which creates the sense that the whole of science is models.

With respect to this, unless we plan to remove the verb "to be" from the language entirely, there must come a point at which our lack of reasonable doubt justifies us in making positive statements about reality.

It's not just a question of satisfaction; it's that (as Duckie implies) it's a colossal waste to try and discuss all issues in a linguistic mode in which every statement contains some degree of hemming and hawing and "yes, I suppose that, as an alternative to this being true, we must consider the possibility that every educated person of the past X years was hallucinating and crazy."

Here too, we stand to lose much in our language by trying to make it perfect according to a philosophical scheme that is, to be quite honest, only one of many ways to think about the nature of Truth.

I dunno, I have a belief that a properly formulated argument could sell the social compact to a sociopath and other things. (I haven't tried here because I think Simon Jester wouldn't appreciate being interrupted for me to shout "HEY LET ME TALK TO YOU ABOUT RAWLS' VEIL OF IGNORANCE AND GAME THEORY" into the conversation).

Oh, I don't know. I'm pretty much bored and disgusted with him; if you want to try explaining and/or knocking some sense into him in a way I lack the patience to do, more power to you.

You may fire when ready, Gridley.

I think that that might work, but on the other hand I think that the greater problem is not the desire towards physical violence so much as the overall desire to eliminate period, and I'm perversely cynical and idealistic enough to think that most people are not inclined towards elimination except as a knee-jerk response they grow out of, and those that are inclined to do so beyond such responses are so entrenched in their beliefs that mere words will not persuade them.

Eliminationism is probably the biggest single human vice in terms of its political consequences, and it is deeply rooted- witness Purple's arguments in this very thread.

[Lusankya]

(My first post I figured the only part people would care about would be the 'here is how you fix religion based on long-term demographic and sociological trends in the western world and the seeds off of which to build it for the religions with which you are probably interested, go forth and forget the need to murder anybody', since talking about your religious beliefs circumspectly is pretty much slightly below 'Here are my thoughts on trade unionism' in terms of 'stuff you don't give a shit about unprovoked')

If you were to start randomly talking about your thoughts on trade unionism, I would find that most interesting, unprovoked or not.

[Akhlut]

I dunno, I have a belief that a properly formulated argument could sell the social compact to a sociopath and other things. (I haven't tried here because I think Simon Jester wouldn't appreciate being interrupted for me to shout "HEY LET ME TALK TO YOU ABOUT RAWLS' VEIL OF IGNORANCE AND GAME THEORY" into the conversation).

Oh, I don't know. I'm pretty much bored and disgusted with him; if you want to try explaining and/or knocking some sense into him in a way I lack the patience to do, more power to you.

You may fire when ready, Gridley.

I had to stop in the middle of his scree earlier because my reply would have otherwise just degenerated into ALLCAPS and bolded text to try and get a point across that his philosophy is fucked 9 ways from Friday or thereabouts.

But, seriously, I'd rather have 10 million die-hard, fanatical Sikhs then 1 million Objectivists around, for instance, despite the fact that Objectivists fit Purple's criteria for rational people who don't believe in magical mysteries miracles and only believe in the laws of physics or whatever the fuck he was gibbering about.

[Dalton]

Despite the sociopathic dumbass OP, this has turned into a good thread. I am rescuing it from the recesses of Testing.

[Phantasee]

Akhlut: in your opinion, what is it about Sikhs that make them so preferable to whatever alternative you care to name?

[Akhlut]

Akhlut: in your opinion, what is it about Sikhs that make them so preferable to whatever alternative you care to name?

I like the cut of their gib.

Ahem. In their most fanatical heydays, the Sikh state in Punjab was not the sort of hellish nightmare that fanatical Muslims or Christians can and did create, while also somehow steering away from the totalitarianism that the Tibetan lamas created. Further, I can get behind a lot of their moral code (except for the sex part, as they're a bit puritanical for my taste, but, eh, to each their own), especially as they are explicit about the equality of women in their creed, and the equality of races, as well as a passion against injustice everywhere. It essentially boils down to Sikhism being a religion with a strong philosophy of social justice and egalitarianism. There are a few other religions I wouldn't mind either, like Jainism, Zoroastrianism, and possibly Buddhism (some sects can be rather full of assholes, especially when they are fundamentalists).

I did like to reference them in this discussion, though, because they are a religion that, if followed to the letter, doesn't allow for nearly the sorts of actions that can be justified in Islam or Christianity, which I'm sure is what Purple was thinking of when he came up with his deranged idea there.

[Formless]

Falsificationism is a very satisfying philosophical argument, but as a tool for making inductive discoveries it has its vices.

Its close, but I would argue that at its logical core it contains invalid/unnessessary terms:

"For every theory X where there is an alternative hypothesis Y, theory X MUST be false UNLESS theory Y has also been proven wrong. Repeat process for every alternative hypothesis Z, W, A, B, etc.." *

"MUST" and "UNLESS" are the faulty operators. Note that several theories, when put into mathematical terms, turned out to be correct (where correctness is comparative to the True measurement or value) to within a certain margin of error; only when looking at the larger picture the observations made it obvious there was a mistake. Take the Flat Earth hypothesis (a perfect example, and yes I stole this all from Asimov's essay "The Relativity of Wrong" which I highly recommend): when calculating the curve of the earth, it is very close to 0-- close enough that we only need to correct for it on maps when the size of the map grows to ~ continental scale (give or take-- I'm no cartographer). The margin of error is significant, but small relative to many other everyday life measurements. As a practical fact, no one would even bother trying to disprove the website "Time Cube" which posits a cubic earth and spacetime distortions to explain away apparant timezone differences, but once upon a time we did seriously consider Flat Earth models. You can do the same analysis of Nutonian physics, Relativity, and (again) Time Cube. (Yes, that website is so bad it would make Cthulu cry in his sleep. That's the weakness of Falsificationism in a nutshell, folks! )

I don't think this is Posotivism exactly, since like Falsificationism it assumes that EVERY theory has a margin of error implying we may never know the True values, but I think its closer to how scientists in practice do their work. Its just not an absolutist theory of scientific Truth.

* I know, this isn't the way Popper himself would have stated his philosophy, but to my understanding its logically equivallent.






Ah, philosophy of science. Always a lark!

[Duckie]

Jains would probably be a good example too, given their strict, required nonviolence/pacifism against humans and animals (and yes, they recognize that microorganisms and small animals are killed by agriculture and even daily activities and try to minimize that). I admit I haven't poured over every aspect of Jain history, but I can't really ever remember Jains being a dick to anyone and it'd seem really out of character with their religion (then again, Christians argue that anyone being a dick is doing it against their religion too).

Buddhism it really really really depends upon sect and country and individuals even, though I'd personally like to think the core precepts aren't as dangerous as the Abrahamic religions even when taken poorly that's admittedly completely an unjudgeable opinion.

[Akhlut]

I did mention Jains earlier, but I'd prefer Sikhs so I could still get a meal with meat in it at a local restaurant.

However, the point still stands against Purple: religion isn't what makes people total assholes. There are religions that seem to reduce the incidence of assholery in them (Jainism especially, Sikhism to a lesser extent), though this might be selection bias (people who aren't fit to adhere to Jainist or Sikh lifestyles would drop out of the religion). As I've been saying the whole time, though, a lot of the problems Purple is talking about aren't due to religion, but simply how humans as a whole operate. We engage in magical thinking, each and everyone of us. We all have violent impulses, and so on. Taking away religion, especially based on the psychotic rubric of whether or not a religion accepts deities violating the laws of physics, is not going to make humans any better in an ethical or moral sense.

[Shroom Man 777]

Lack of religion certainly didn't stop Purple from becoming a douche.

Just sayin'.

[Kuroneko]

Further, linguistically it appears according to all the evidence we have amassed that it is cognitively impossible to treat 'false' as the default state of affairs*. It is never shorter to deny than to assert.

The second statement does not imply the first.

Once you wrap your head around the fact that there is not a single language on earth where the negative is the base form of the verb, you'll understand why it took a hundred and fifty years for scientific falisificationism to trump logical positivism (do you as a supreme sciencemaster layman even know the difference? most scientists themselves still operate under positivist or verificationist methods by accident simply because it's the logical natural way to think).

Not by accident, but by design. Falsificationism gives a nice necessary condition for science, widely recognizied by scientisits everywhere (pithily put, the unfalsifiable is "not even wrong"). After a small divergence from hardline Popperianism, it also gives a decent justification for holding a hypothesis or theory (roughly, "it works the best").

But as a method, it is simply not the way science works, has worked, or ever should work. Upholding a position simply because the alternatives failed is a waste of time. Scientists pay special attention when a hypothesis is both predictive and confirmed, not merely because the competitors are knocked out of the running. "Not yet falsified" is too loose of a guide.

Before I start repeating Simon Jester completely...

With respect to this, unless we plan to remove the verb "to be" from the language entirely, there must come a point at which our lack of reasonable doubt justifies us in making positive statements about reality. ... it's a colossal waste to try and discuss all issues in a linguistic mode in which every statement contains some degree of hemming and hawing and "yes, I suppose that, as an alternative to this being true, we must consider the possibility that every educated person of the past X years was hallucinating and crazy."

As a curiousity, there are natural languages with grammatical evidentiality, some with it expressed as a suffix on the verb at hand, and generally include direct observation, inference, and hearsay (some have more). The Pomo family, Kashaya, and Pirahã languages are examples. In the last one, you're pretty much always required to supply the nature of your evidence.

It isn't really that "to be" is removed entirely, but rather that there are several kinds of "to be" based on the kind of evidence behind that statement.

"MUST" and "UNLESS" are the faulty operators.

They're logical connectives. In fact, if you just weaken Y to be be a hypothesis (not sure why you erase the distinction) and require its presence, then you get the definition of being falsifiable.

Note that several theories, when put into mathematical terms, turned out to be correct (where correctness is comparative to the True measurement or value) to within a certain margin of error; only when looking at the larger picture the observations made it obvious there was a mistake.

It seems you're arguing against naive falsificationism instead. Both Galilean mechanics and Keplerian orbits were subsumed by Newtonian mechanics without actually contradicting them in any substantial way. But being more general theory means that it is more open to potential falsification than either of its predecessors, and hence unambiguously superior by Sir Carl's criterion. The adoption of Newtonian mechanics is therefore compatible with falsificationism.

In your case, this move corresponds to a theory that's approximately true in some contexts ('the Earth is flat' is fine locally) being removed in favor of a more general one (that includes 'the Earth is round'), because the applicability of the latter is more general and hence is more falsifiable, despite not disagreeing with it substantially in its original domain of applicability (local).

[K. A. Pital]

I think that attaining physical immortality through science would be a painless solution that will basically destroy most religions without requiring any radical measures. *shrugs* As for insanity, being perfectly rational and being insane are two poles, but being irrational is not the same as being insane.

You don't throw in the asylum people who believe black cat crossing the road in front of you means bad luck. Although science decidedly tells us that's idiocy. If you throw anyone believing anything stupid into a cage, you'd be left with very few people.

[Aldroud]

Starting Assumptions:
1. We know that modern science has proven things like the laws of physics, the geological creation of the earth and evolution.

You starting assumption is faulty. Science has proven no such thing. The very fundamentals of our science, mathematics, is merely the supposition of a priori beliefs in the structure of reality. (See Kant, Godel, or Tarski) A good example is 2+2=4. We all "know" this to be true, but can not, via mathematical derivate means, "prove" it. Addition is one of the baseline assumptions upon which all science is built. (A=A and if A=B and B=C then A=C are others).

Science, as expressed by the scientific method, seeks to explain the world and events we observe. Either dedictive or inductive reasoning examins an observation, a hypthesis is prepared, then tested. Once the hypothesis passes testing, it becomes a theory. No theory is ever beyond the possibility of revision or simply being overturned.

Sure, gravity is just a theory and anyone who wants to test it better have a parachute, but recent results from the Mariner spacecraft have given us pause with regards to gravity. What we thought we had pretty much worked out turns out to have a few astricks at the end of the theory. Perhaps a new theory of why things fall towards eachother will arise, perhaps it just takes a few decimal places moving around, either way what we think we know now is no guarantee for the future.

Long and rambling, but in sum - never say Science as PROVEN anything.

[Kuroneko]

You starting assumption is faulty. Science has proven no such thing. The very fundamentals of our science, mathematics, is merely the supposition of a priori beliefs in the structure of reality.

One of the lessons twentieth century science has taught us is that nature rejects our a priori beliefs and substitutes her own.

A good example is 2+2=4. We all "know" this to be true, but can not, via mathematical derivate means, "prove" it. ... Addition is one of the baseline assumptions upon which all science is built.

Addition is defined rather than assumed, and its properties are provable. For example, in Peano arithmetic, one can define addition recursively, so 0"+0"=0"", here ' denotes successor operation, is very trivial.

One can say that all mathematical truths are hypothetical (they are conditional on some axioms), but that's hardly the same thing as being unprovable.

Long and rambling, but in sum - never say Science as PROVEN anything.

That's a silly stance to take, and it's just one more variation of adopting an absolutist standard for X, noting the inability of everything whatsoever to fulfill it, and concluding that there is no such as X.

It's a consistent position, but also one that achieves nothing. Nothing practical. Nothing philosophical. It doesn't even illuminate the limits and pitfalls of the ordinary concept, because it's completely disconnected from actual usage. Why would you want to create a caricature concept just to tear it down?

[Formless]

Falsificationism gives a nice necessary condition for science, widely recognizied by scientisits everywhere (pithily put, the unfalsifiable is "not even wrong").

A theory can be "not even wrong" if it breaks parsimony by introducing a meaningless term into the equation. Falsificationism didn't add anything new here, IMO, just added a new way of identifying an old problem.

They're logical connectives. In fact, if you just weaken Y to be be a hypothesis (not sure why you erase the distinction) and require its presence, then you get the definition of being falsifiable.

I didn't erase that distinction. Well, okay, I did use the word "theory" the second time Y showed up in the axiom, but that was a matter of sloppiness on my part for which I apologize. I wasn't trying to strawman hard Popperian Falsificationism, after all, just put (a variation of) its central axiom up for scrutiny.

Also, thank you for correcting my terminology wrt "'MUST' and 'UNLESS'" being connectives rather than operators.

It seems you're arguing against naive falsificationism instead.

No, I'm arguing against hard Popperian Falsificationism, of the "a theory can only be accepted in its entirety or utterly discarded in its entirety" sort. Unless that's what you mean by "naive falsification". Like you said to Ducky, the philosophy works... with a slight divergence.

[Duckie]

The second statement does not imply the first.

Ah, true, good catch. I should rather state.

"It is cognitively unnatural to think of false as the default state of any proposition to the point where no known natural human language has ever done so, indicating there is a large chance that it is highly difficult for the human brain to think in that style similar to how there is no known language that has the distant future as the basic state actions take place in and grammar that dials it backwards through near future, present, near past, and distant past by placing a 'back1category' particle n times. While possible to do, it's never simpler morphologically because positive in human languages is, as far as we know, always the default state"

That kind of crazy. It's certainly possible as an exercise in your head to think in negatives (although your language, since you speak a human one, isn't well equipped to that- there's a morphological load of constantly using the negative particle that will get you tired of it pretty quickly). But it's not a natural human pattern and it would be highly unlikely to find such a pattern (granted, languages surprise- Pirahã, and I swear I remember hearing from someone that there's some language in Africa for some godawful reason has suffixes for a certain noun class that vary by language of origin- as in, like, /-ji/ is attached to arabic loans, /-bi/ to french, and /-di/ to native words, or something like that.)

The second statement is an evidence of that.

I'll note that it didn't occur to me that was an absolute statement. A rather sloppy habit Linguists inherited from Chomsky making a bunch of "universal" proclamations ex cathedra and then them being falsified later, so we now mention universals despite them being not universal, and sometimes the stupidness takes over when you forget 'universal' doesn't mean 'universal' when not paying attention. I swear, someday someone will convince people to stop using the word 'universal' to mean 'universal tendency of human beings'...

As a curiousity, there are natural languages with grammatical evidentiality, some with it expressed as a suffix on the verb at hand, and generally include direct observation, inference, and hearsay (some have more). The Pomo family, Kashaya, and Pirahã languages are examples. In the last one, you're pretty much always required to supply the nature of your evidence.

It isn't really that "to be" is removed entirely, but rather that there are several kinds of "to be" based on the kind of evidence behind that statement.

Yeah, if modern western languages were evidential honestly I think it'd solve a lot of problems we have critical thinking. Actually probably not- all languages are about the same in terms of utility, if people were significantly better at thinking in one it'd be noticeable. But still, we should replace 'gender' with that, because our gender system is utterly pointless and that sounds really useful. (I don't have a feminist problem with it, but you have to admit having 4 pronouns for '3rd person' (he, she, it, they) for fiddly distinctions between human beings and pets is really pointless. We'd do better to replace the three other than 'they' with a distal pseudo-fourth person like the algonquian languages, making it easier to sort sentences with multiple 3rd person entities while still using pronouns.

Granted turns out we can't just change language like that, which is unfortunate. I wonder if somewhere out there, a Pirahã speaker wishes he could explain how he knows something because he has a source of knowledge that he finds difficult to fit into his evidentiality system.

[Duckie]

Edit- Oh dear, that's a double post. Why did I reply rather than edit? Anyhow, this is the actual one. Some whining about ancient history was replaced with a better explanation of acutal things.

The second statement does not imply the first.

Ah, true, good catch. I should rather state.

"It is cognitively unnatural to think of false as the default state of any proposition to the point where no known natural human language has ever done so, indicating there is a large chance that it is highly difficult for the human brain to think in that style similar to how there is no known language that has the distant future as the basic state actions take place in and grammar that dials it backwards through near future, present, near past, and distant past by placing a 'back1category' particle n times. While possible to do, it's never simpler morphologically because positive in human languages is, as far as we know, always the default state"

That kind of crazy. It's certainly possible as an exercise in your head to think in negatives (although your language, since you speak a human one, isn't well equipped to that- there's a morphological load of constantly using the negative particle that will get you tired of it pretty quickly). But it's not a natural human pattern and it would be highly unlikely to find such a pattern (granted, languages surprise- Pirahã, and I swear I remember hearing from someone that there's some language in Africa for some godawful reason has suffixes for a certain noun class that vary by language of origin- as in, like, /-ji/ is attached to arabic loans, /-bi/ to french, and /-di/ to native words, or something like that.)

The second statement is an evidence of that, assuming we accept the theory that human languages we find today are at least somewhat exemplary of the way human languages can be (that's unlikely for things that are probabilistic, but I think in a few completely obvious and truly universal trends it can be supposed until falsified by some amazonian monstrosity later, and the tendency would still exist- just because final voicing is possible in human language doesn't mean it's a pattern the human brain likes, and there are certain grammatical features like a grammaticalised future tense that languages seem to repeatedly attempt to throw off. I suspect negative-default would be one of them).

I'll note that it didn't occur to me that was an absolute statement. A rather sloppy habit Linguists inherited from Chomsky making a bunch of "universal" proclamations ex cathedra and then them being falsified later, so we now mention universals despite them being not universal. Sometimes the sheer stupidness makes me forget that when my brain remembers 'It's universal' I shouldn't actually say anything absolute and universal. I swear, someday someone will convince people to stop using the word 'universal' to mean 'universal tendency of human beings'...

As a curiousity, there are natural languages with grammatical evidentiality, some with it expressed as a suffix on the verb at hand, and generally include direct observation, inference, and hearsay (some have more). The Pomo family, Kashaya, and Pirahã languages are examples. In the last one, you're pretty much always required to supply the nature of your evidence.

It isn't really that "to be" is removed entirely, but rather that there are several kinds of "to be" based on the kind of evidence behind that statement.

Yeah, if modern western languages were evidential honestly I think it'd solve a lot of problems we have critical thinking. Actually probably not- all languages are about the same in terms of utility, if people were significantly better at thinking in one it'd be noticeable. But still, we should replace 'gender' with that, because our gender system is utterly pointless and that sounds really useful. (I don't have a feminist problem with it, but you have to admit having 4 pronouns for '3rd person' (he, she, it, they) for fiddly distinctions between human beings and pets is really pointless. We'd do better to replace the three other than 'they' with a distal pseudo-fourth person like the algonquian languages, making it easier to sort sentences with multiple 3rd person entities while still using pronouns.

Granted turns out we can't just change language like that, which is unfortunate, and it'd come with its own limitations just like we have trouble saying "James and john had a fight and he killed him" and knowing who killed whom while the algonquians don't. I wonder if somewhere out there, a Pirahã speaker wishes he could explain how he knows something because he has a source of knowledge that he finds difficult to fit into his evidentiality system.

[Kuroneko]

A theory can be "not even wrong" if it breaks parsimony by introducing a meaningless term into the equation. Falsificationism didn't add anything new here, IMO, just added a new way of identifying an old problem.

The term by itself may be meaningless, but a nonpasimonious theory can still be meaningful, if inferior to a parsimonious one. You're making a categorization mistake.

Although I don't see why falsifiability being insufficient for science is a cause for dismissal or othewise an undermining of importance. Falsificationism claims it's necessary. That possibility that other conditions affect the quality of theory, or even it being science at all, is compatible.

I didn't erase that distinction. Well, okay, I did use the word "theory" the second time Y showed up in the axiom, but that was a matter of sloppiness on my part for which I apologize.

Alright, but since you single out the "theory" term as sloppy, I gather that you intended your statement to talk about hypotheses. This makes it not about Popperian falsificationism, but rather naive falsificationism, which is one of the first things Sir Carl tears down. In rejecting this kind of criterion, you are an in agreement with him.

For Popper, the subject of the his demarcation criterion are theories, and nothing else. Which also makes it unsurpising that it's a poor methodology for day to day science.

No, I'm arguing against hard Popperian Falsificationism, of the "a theory can only be accepted in its entirety or utterly discarded in its entirety" sort.

That's addressed even in hard-line Popperian falsificationism. Popper recognized that any theory can be protected from falsification by ad hoc modification. His position is that such immunization weaken the theory.

This is applied, for example, in his argument against Marxism, which was the one of the main motivations for his work (also, Freudian analysis). His position was that it was originally scientific, but the various ad hoc additions that its adherents tacked on to it made it pseudoscience.

So Sir Carl's position only makes sense if falsifiability is a matter of degree, and so is the quality of a theory. Rejecting a theory in its entirety would only ruin his goals, because then Marxism in his time would literally be a completely different theory than Marxism at its inception. It would make little sense to say that the behavior of Marxists degraded it from science to pseudoscience.

(To what extent this evaluation of Marxism is accurate is irrelevant here; what's important is what his mode of argument shows about his position on what constitutes science.)

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The second statement is an evidence of that...

Heh, I agree, to an extent. Though:

... assuming we accept the theory that human languages we find today are at least somewhat exemplary of the way human languages can be (that's unlikely for things that are probabilistic, but I think in a few completely obvious and truly universal trends it can be supposed until falsified by some amazonian monstrosity later, and the tendency would still exist-

That it's cognitively "unnatural" is one thing, but whether that's due to the structure of the languages we normally learn or due to some universal trends is another. At least, in so far as these human tendencies are inherently linguistic rather than cultural.

I'll note that it didn't occur to me that was an absolute statement. A rather sloppy habit Linguists inherited from Chomsky making a bunch of "universal" proclamations ex cathedra and then them being falsified later, so we now mention universals despite them being not universal, and sometimes the stupidness takes over when you forget 'universal' doesn't mean 'universal' when not paying attention.

You may be interested in the recent application of phylogenic methods of biology to language, which undermines the very existence of universal linguistic tendencies, or at least minimizes the importance of any supposed innate linguistic mental structure as compared to cultural forces in the evolution of languages.

I'm not competent enough in either linguistics or biology to adequately evaluate it as solid, but I have trouble putting ex cathedra suppositions ahead of even flawed evidence. It'd be interested in what either linguists or biologists think of it, however.

Yeah, if modern western languages were evidential honestly I think it'd solve a lot of problems we have critical thinking. Actually probably not- all languages are about the same in terms of utility, if people were significantly better at thinking in one it'd be noticeable.

I think it would. There's a tradeoff in that increased efficiency in expressing one area is at the detriment of another. But that's perfectly alright, if some types of expressive abilities are more important to you than others.

There does not seem to be an evidential language that both has a community that participates significantly in modern scientific discourse and does not have some other features that offset it. For example, Pirahã lack any exact counting system.

Though missionaries to Pirahã made not a single convert and even deconverted one missionary. So perhaps their critical thinking abilities are better. (I mostly kid, but evidentiality seemed to play a large role in that. They simply did not see any relevance in a man no one has seen nor talked to anyone that seen him, though another large contribution to that is the linguistic difficulty in expressing anything in Pirahã that's not directly related to the present. So the distant past and the future appear nebuluous irrelevancies to them. This would be crippling for critical thought in general or a functional modern society.)

[Aldroud]

That's a silly stance to take, and it's just one more variation of adopting an absolutist standard for X, noting the inability of everything whatsoever to fulfill it, and concluding that there is no such as X.

It's a consistent position, but also one that achieves nothing. Nothing practical. Nothing philosophical. It doesn't even illuminate the limits and pitfalls of the ordinary concept, because it's completely disconnected from actual usage. Why would you want to create a caricature concept just to tear it down?

I'm sorry, mabye I'm not making myself clear. I plead sleep deprevation.

For me, it's the flip side of the argument creationists use when they say 'Evolution is only a theory'. Gravity is a theory too, but I don't see many folks challenging it. Turning the argument on its head and saying there's a Theory for Everything and thus religion has no place seems (to me anyway) to miss the whole point just as much.

[Kuroneko]

For me, it's the flip side of the argument creationists use when they say 'Evolution is only a theory'. Gravity is a theory too, but I don't see many folks challenging it. Turning the argument on its head and saying there's a Theory for Everything and thus religion has no place seems (to me anyway) to miss the whole point just as much.

That's a fair point, though arguing this by destroying any notion of proof is excessive. One can say that science has proven some things without being wrong.