Towards A Self Consistent Epistemology
- From: "John Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 14:54:30 -0500 (EST)
Anthony Campbell ac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx quoted
Book review: God and design, edited by Neil A.Manson
[moderator's note: This treads VERY close to the line, in my
view, of what is acceptable in this newsgroup. Because it is
simply a book review, I've elected to allow it. I am not going
to allow further discussion of "Design" here. - JAH]
JE:-
I will approach this as I always have done: from an entirely self consistent
epistemological perspective: I argue that a valid theory of ANYTHING must be
able to be:
1) Verified.
2) Non verified.
3) Refuted.
Popper (who discovered refutation) not surprisingly argued that only this
process was important:-
Popper, 1985, p.214:
"Some twenty five years ago I proposed to distinguish empirical or
scientific theories from non-empirical or non-scientific ones precisely by
defining the empirical theories as the refutable ones and the non-empirical
theories as the irrefutable ones. My reasons for this proposal were as
follows. Every serious test of a theory is an attempt to refute it.
Testability is therefore the same as refutability, or falsifiability. And
since we should call 'empirical' or 'scientific' only such theories as can
be empirically tested, we may conclude that it is the possibility of an
empirical refutation which distinguishes empirical or scientific theories.
If this 'criterion of refutability' is accepted, then we see at once that
philosophical theories, or metaphysical theories, will be irrefutable by
definition"
I propose that any theory which can only satisfy ANY TWO of the THREE
(above) is NOT a valid theory of anything, it just a
simplified/oversimplified model of such a theory. This means: a theory HAS
to exist from which such a model was derived via the process of
simplification/oversimplification. This is defined as the "parent theory".
The parent theory can only be put-back-together-again after each
simplification/oversimplification has been corrected within any model
derived from it. For this to make sense I am required to define a
simplification and an over simplification:
i) Simplification: a change in the empirical value of any defined
variable term or deletion of that variable.
ii) Oversimplification: a change in the empirical value of any
defined constant term or deletion of that constant.
If should be clear that only defined constants can possibly act as a valid
Galilean frame of reference simply because variables do exactly that: they
vary.
http://physics.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node47.html
What Popper meant by "falsifiability" was simply, any REFUTABLE Galilean
frame of reference, i.e. an assumed constant term which could be empirically
tested to refutation. This can be expressed in another and perhaps more
interesting way using set theory.
http://math.usask.ca/emr/sett.html
If A is entirely an intersecting subset of B and B is entirely an
intersecting subset of A then it remains impossible to distinguish between
all of A is B OR all of B is A. However it does become possible to
distinguish between these propositions, if and only if, A is defined as a
NESTED sub set of B OR the reverse. This is because a reverse nested set is
always a refutation to the set nesting originally assumed. A nested within B
must contradict and therefore exclude entirely, B nested within A. However,
what any oversimplification allows is a reverse set nesting resulting in a
reversal of cause and effect relative to the parent theory under test. An
oversimplification can be completed in two quite different ways:
a) Reverse the set nesting proposed by the parent theory via a
critical redefinition. This allows a model to contradict the theory it was
oversimplified from. IOW any oversimplification constitutes an OPPOSING
THEORY to the parent theory and NOT just a simplified form of that parent
theory.
b) Dissolve away all set nesting only allowing a fully reversible
set intersection via a redefintion. This reduces the parent theory to just a
logical tautology.
It is ALWAYS the theory which remains under test and never any model derived
from it. If such a model is allowed to substitute for its parent theory then
a GROSS epistemological error has taken place.
The difference between a non verification and a refutation remains critical.
Refutation: Any contradiction to the proposed theory which HAS been
empirically verified. A theory must always remain falsifiable i.e. always
describe a contradiction to itself that is testable in an empirical way.
Quite obviously, no tautology can ever do this.
Non Verification: Any NON contradiction to the proposed theory which HAS
NOT been empirically verified OR any contradiction to the proposed theory
which HAS NOT been empirically verified. Please note the inherent ambiguity
of any non verification. This means, unlike a refutation it can never be
definitive.
Verification: Any NON contradiction to the proposed theory which HAS been
empirically verified. Note that only unique verifications are definitive.
Critical Test of Self Consistency: what any epistemology argues must also
apply to itself, 100%. In this case this means that the epistemology that
Popper proposed must be able to be refuted where this a specification is NOT
tautologous. A test must always exist which can refute the epistemology. I
ague that the refutation of Popperian refutation consists of a UNIQUE
verification (note this always means an EMPIRICAL verification). This means:
any empirical verification that remains unique to just ONE refutable theory
that is on the table will act the same way as refutation: refute all the
theories which cannot deduce that proposed verification AFTER that
verification is made. If the same verification remains deducible by more
than just one theory then it is not unique to any one theory. By "on the
table" I mean all theories that have been proposed and NOT all that can be
proposed simply because we can only know the former and not the latter.
What I find disturbing is most people cannot be bothered with epistemology
because most epistemologies appear self _inconsistent_. What separates any
theory of anything is simply, its frame of reference. Whenever this remains
the same then supposed "different" theories ARE the same, i.e. they were
only ever semantically different. What separates theories of science from
theories that are not scientific is the refutability of their defined
Galilean frame of reference, or if you like, their ability to describe at
least one empirical verification which remains unique to just the one
theory.
As far as evolutionary theory is concerned it should be SCIENTIFICALLY clear
that not a single NON evolutionary theory actually exists. Also, JUST THE
ONE evolutionary theory does: evolution by the Darwinian processes of
natural selection. It should be more than just noted that all of gene
centric Neo Darwinism was and remains only a simplified or oversimplified
model of fertile organism centric Darwinism. Most if not all of these models
have been misused by being allowed to replace their parent theories. Despite
all the advances to genetics (both analytic and synthetic) nothing has
changed.
Regards,
John Edser
Independent Researcher
edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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