An hypothesis is falsifiable if some observation might show it to be false.
An hypothesis is falsifiable if some observation might show it to be false.
This is the opening sentence on the Wiki Article Falsifiability.
Is it right? How else would you summarise falsifiability in ten words or less?
Asking for a friend.
Comments (126)
What if it's one study that shows a hypothesis could be wrong? Does that make it falsified, or does the study need to be replicated first, and any correlations vs causations worked out?
But, uh, otherwise, seems right.
This is not a proper rendition. Because of the subjective nature of "observation", there are limitations to what can be observed. There are things which are beyond the capacity of human beings to observe. We might still say that there is truth or falsity relating to these things, despite the fact that they cannot be observed.
The op speaks of the "falsifiability" of a hypothesis, not whether the hypothesis is true or false. And, like "observation", "falsifiable" refers to a human capacity. So it avoids the issue of hypotheses which might be true or false which cannot be observed as such, by speaking not of whether the theory is false, but whether the theory is falsifiable, and this is limited to the capacities of human beings to falsify.
All of that sounds like just someone has reading comprehension problems, to me, so I think maybe explicitly adding the "if it is false" part could clear things up for them.
Are hypotheses falsifiable in the first place?
or...
...contradicts with, or stands in direct opposition to some other bit of knowledge(statement) that has been previously verified?
:brow:
H’ represents a consonant sound, so we would expect ‘a hypothesis’, and that is what many say and write. However, where the stress in a word beginning with a sounded /h/ is on the second or subsequent syllable, some native speakers precede the word with ‘an’ rather than ‘a’, so you will also see and hear ‘an hypothesis’. But if you say and write ‘a hypothesis’, you will not be wrong.
It works until it doesn't anymore. ;-)
14 words, sigh.
I grew up with a friend who's mother would pronounce "white" as "h-wite". Suffice it to say that I'm a strong believer in the use of "a" preceding a word beginning with a silent "h".
Think of this as what appears if you were reading an article and came across "...falsifiability..." in an article, and you selected it and clicked on "Look up"... a short text to remind some folk and inform others, with more information available as needed...
Indeed, that is what happens if your browser is accessing Wikipedia.
So if you want more detail, and the answer to your questions, you read the rest of the article.
Fair enough.
Oh, I say that 'h', I breathe it, man.
Quoting Banno
If it's wrong, I might notice.
6 words
"an" it is.
Perhaps a better approach for concision is via the negative. If a non-falsifiable hypothesis is false, no one will ever know.
It is 11 words, but I think the word 'might' opens all sorts of doors.
If a theory/proposition is necessarily true then it is necessarily unfalsifiable. On the other hand a theory/proposition that is contingently true, it is necessarily falsifiable.
Since we're after necessary truths we need to identify contingent truths and the only method available is to falsify theories/propositions under consideration because that's the only available method to discriminate the two.
A contingent truth would be one that is true by virtue of the pecularities of the circumstances that surround it e.g. moving objects eventually come to rest (on earth). However, the necessary truth is that moving objects will continue to move without an opposing force. The method to identify which is which is to falsify one of them, as was done by scientists.
Is there another way to tell apart necessary truths and contingent truths? Since both can be confirmed, there's only one avenue open to us viz. falsify.
Hypothesis is falsifiable if predicts observation that will either prove it true or false.
There has to be explicit prediction, if not even suggestion of viable experimental setup. I assumed possibility of 'proving false' is the same as 'proving true', so I guess I'm saying falsifiability is the same thing as testability.
Presumably, it would mean that you don't use 'an' with one-syllable words, like 'house'.
A gentleman in London, England, walks to work a boisterous day. He encounters a young woman. A sudden whiff of air lifts her skirt. The gentleman, such as he is, attempts to diffuse the potential of the otherwise embarrassing situation. He says, "A bit airy, isn't it?" The young woman answers, "Well, what did you expect, feathers?"
Needless to say, the two spake British English.
So when we declare HHHearrrrts to be the trump suit, we say now, in that group, something that "oughts" would sound if pronounced phonetically. (??)
The immigrant does not take this as an insult, as it is not meant to be one at all.
I don't get it.
Think it's hairy->airy which sounds like aerie which is a place where birds are kept. Presumably a joke about how British people are terrible at speaking English, or that standards for proper English aren't actually adhered to by some (many) British native speakers.
Where I grew up in Scotland, we'd mostly use one tense of the verb "to go", we'd say "gan". Gan could mean "I am going", "I went" or "I will go". Also "meet with", "date" and "have sex with". We have thoroughly ridiculous accents.
The man said "it's airy", meaning, a bit windy.
The woman, who probably was of lower classes, had been wont of pronouncing "hairy" as "airy".
So the rest you have to fill in with your power of directed imagination, I'm afraid, as it is not fit for printed words in a PG13 website.
In the end, so far as there is one on Wikipedia, hypothesis was changed to claim - which will end that part of the debate, at th expense of erudition.
It works, but I don't think it would last the test of time.
Best propper answer so far, though.
Which is to say, she was Catholic...
SO
U(x)f(x) - all swans are white - falsifiable
?(x)f(x) - this is a white swan - verifiable
But the bold bit is wrong.
Your alternative?
According to what?
I only now see you are not talking about my bold, but yours. In any case, can you articulate some explanation for your assertion?
You test a hypothesis, and you either measure what is predicted or not, therefore you either prove it true or you prove it is false.
Don't be offended. You are not alone.
You're right. I did not realize what I was saying. Then this:
A hypothesis is falsifiable if it predicts observation that can prove it false. Without explicit and viable experimental proposal I’d say it is at most ‘potentially falsifiable’.
I would limit it to what is testable right now, otherwise you could argue something like many worlds QM hypothesis is potentially testable in the future. That is why I insist falsifiable hypothesis should come together with actual experimental setup proposal using available technology.
You're right.
:razz:
Falsifiable hypotheses are about observable entities.
(1) Any way to formulate falsifiability will need to include some kind of modal word - can, should, might, ought, must, etc. This referring to the '-ability' part of falsifi-abiliy. There must be a capacity of some kind involved.
(2) I would include a reference to falsifiability being a matter of principle (de jure) and not fact (de facto); As in, that which is falsifiable is so in principle regardless of whether one does in fact have some evidence that would make it false.
---
I still don't like "an" hypothesis because I breathe out the "h" and it sounds awful! Team "a" ftw.
U(x)f(x) : [math](\forall x \in D)f(x)[/math] or even U(x,D)f(x)
?(x)f(x) : [math](\exists x \in D)f(x)[/math] or even ?(x,D)f(x)
Explicitly mentioning domain D is important, because it must be effectively enumerable, i.e. in one way or another, be traversable. Therefore, the set must be in one way or another, indexed, i.e. well-ordered.
Since the entire set of swans is in practical terms not enumerable, the use of universal quantifiers is not supported for swans.
It is safe to use universal quantifiers only with some carefully chosen Platonic collections of abstract objects, even of infinite size. In the physical universe, it may occasionally work for finite, relatively small-size collections, but in the general case, it actually doesn't.
If I have the time and inclination I might comment on the talk page myself.
In the mean time, here's a uselessly tautological definition:
Falsifiability is the ability to be shown to be false.
:up: That's true.
I might try drawing attention to the page on the philosophy project... I'm the only one editing the article at present, so the objections amount to nothing.
But that discussion of the logic of falsification has been removed from the article is one of the things I plan to correct.
You might have a look.
No.
[edit: quote corrected]
Is any of the theories of consciousness falsifiable? And shouldn't article provide sufficiently precise definition so we can make that distinction?
I don't understand the question.
Mistake, I was quoting Banno.
I love conciseness and find your expression artfull. However, words “renders” and “verifiable” are very complex and thus too vague and ambiguous to be used in this definition. It’s kind of like talking about points and lines in terms of cubes and dodecahedrons.
The primary purpose of any definition is to draw strict boundaries around the concept being defined, so it can be differentiated from all the other concepts. And the question is - what are the essential properties or boundaries that definition of ‘falsifiability’ must address?
a.) hypothesis implies or explicitly states at least one empirical prediction
b.) this empirical prediction must satisfy:
1. if test measurement differs from the prediction, hypothesis is deemed false
2. proposed empirical prediction must be realizable with current technology
Maybe I’m forgetting something, but surely without that last clause b.2.), definition of falsifiability will be useless and pointless since any hypothesis can potentially argue one day it will be testable.
True statements cannot be falsified.
Nobody claimed otherwise.
Right. Just seems rather relevant.
Go on.
You lost me.
I don't see why not, if it is the kind of statement that would make its counter-examples, if it had any, verifiable.
Better?
Do you have an example that demonstrates your proposed scenario/situation?
How could it be when it ignores my formula and the clarification?
Quoting creativesoul
I dunno... any universal claim that currently looks like it could be true.
F = (within some tolerance) ma?
Any pair of particles produced by sub-atomic decay are entangled?
They are the kind of statement so conducive to experimental testing as to convince us that some of their counter-examples, if they had any at all, would be observable.
So... I'm a bit confused. Where is the true statement that is able to be shown as false?
Because in 'hypothesis' the accent is on the second syllable, but in 'hyphen' the accent is on the first. At least the way I pronounce them.
Is this meant to represent an example of a true statement that is falsifiable?
:brow:
Yes, but not to qualify it as falsifiable. It takes heat to melt a piece of butter, but not to qualify it as "melts at less than 100°C", even though I ate it cold.
To be falsifiable is to be able to be shown as false.
Agree?
My interpretation of what you are saying is that since true hypotheses cannot be falsified, since the evidence will end up supporting them, then they don't pass Popper's criterion. But this is confusing some kind of final knowledge with what we experience.
We put forward an hypothesis. We don't know if it is true or false from our limited perspective. But we can judge, at least to some degree,whether
if
it were false, it would be falsifiable.
True ones will not end up getting falsified. But the criterion still makes sense since we are in a limited knowledge in situ, in time perspective.
If someone says there is a universe beside ours that cannot in any way be observed or experienced and no effects from it arise in our universe and we can never go there.
It might be true. It might be false. But it doesn't pass falsifialibity. We can say that. It's truth, should it happen to be true, does not stop us from saying that it isn't possibly falsifiable.
The can in can be falsified.
Is not the same kind of 'can' involved in whether true things can be disproved. It's a category confusion.
I am saying that true statements cannot be shown to be false. If a statement cannot be shown as false, then it is unfalsifiable. I'm not making any assessments regarding Popper's criterion... at least not intentionally. If what I say pertains to Popper's criterion, then it is purely coincidental.
I guess it makes sense then.
So...an heuristic?
Well yeah, vaguely, but that's exactly where the thread started. My formula (with modal inflection if required, but it's implied, so 6 words, and I think I win) is just a straight guess at a gloss that would (to me) explain and justify the widespread acceptance of the notion.
Quoting creativesoul
But the question is whether there is any problem with saying that a particular piece of butter (a particular statement) satisfies "melts at some temperature less than 100°C" (satisfies "renders counter-examples verifiable") even though it never got the chance to melt (to render a counter-example verifiable), because I ate it cold (because it had no counter-examples).
Those are two different claims. First one is wrong.
Possible, not able. Almost synonyms, which is why jump to error is not obvious...
A claim is falsifiable if some observation might show it to be false, says Wikipedia. So, proving a statement to be true does not invalidate the status of that statement as being falsifiable.
Additionally, instead of ‘claim’ or ‘statement’, better fit is ‘prediction’, which is a special kind of statement, a claim that invites verification. The word ‘prediction’ is meant to be used in exactly this context of testability, verifiability and falsifiability, it carries additional useful information. Therefore, to sum it up:
Falsifiability is testability.
A prediction is falsifiable if it is testable.
Nice.
If we lose "statements" and stick with predictions, things change rather remarkably. There are no true predictions(when uttered). We may agree on more than not regarding predictions.
I find no issue with that, so it's something to keep in mind. If we arrive at something which contradicts it, we aught pause and reconsider.
Also confirmed/falsified instead of proved true/false brings more sense into sentences like this: first experiment confirmed prediction, but hypothesis remained falsifiable and it was tested again, however negative result falsified prediction this time, so at the end conclusion is inconclusive and the hypothesis remains falsifiable, forever, regardless of how many times it will be confirmed or falsified in the future.
There is a lot to reconsider. We have definitions of two concepts for verification, testability and falsifiability, both useless, less and more.
Wikipedia says testability is falsifiability with added concern that “there is some real hope of deciding whether it is true or false”, one day. Could it be any more vague? Of course, just take that whole part out and we get falsifiability, completely open to interpretation, or worse, without any interpretation.
Testability implies falsifiability, making it redundant, but scientific theories are defined by both testability and falsifiability, so there must be some real difference between the two or something doesn’t add up.
Wikipedia on testability has a bit of information that is completely missing from the falsifiability article itself -- falsifiability means counterexamples to the hypothesis are logically possible -- whatever is that supposed to mean and however it is supposed to apply in practice, or not.
Obviously now, definition of falsifiability needs to be far more specific, and if testability has additional concern of practical viability for experimental verification, then falsifiability must deal with the additional concept of ‘counterexample’ and narrow it down, or it remains pointless. Let me illustrate...
a.) I hypothesise life after death and predict all kinds of phenomena like near-death experience, ghosts, communication with the dead. Are those falsifiable predictions? Are they testable?
b.) I hypothesise many worlds, infinite number of universes and predict we will be able to see some kind of overlap when we discover super-strings or build a telescope three times the size of the Moon. Are those predictions falsifiable? Are they testable?
c.) I hypothesise consciousness is ‘integrated information’, it’s just how integrated information feels inside, and I can accurately predict levels of consciousness in awake, sleeping, anesthetized and comatose people. I also accurately predict already known observation that cerebellum is not relevant for consciousness. My hypothesis has been independently confirmed many times with strong evidence, it’s a theory, but are my predictions falsifiable?
d.) I hypothesise photons are made of unicorn tears, and I explain everything with a story that makes sense as much as quantum mechanics, but my equations are the same as QM, so I make all the same predictions and my theory is already validated as much, but can my predictions really be considered falsifiable? And even if they can, does that necessarily mean my hypothesis is falsifiable?
I'm refraining from objecting.
Predictions are ordinary statements about what will happen.
Pardon me. Multiple conversations with multiple participants. Are you referring to the claim about butter?
What would it take for it to be true?
Butter would need to melt at any temperature below one hundred.
So...
It's true.
No?
:brow:
Butter would not melt at any temperature below one hundred.
Butter does.
So...
It's not false.
Missing the point of the thread, which I take to be: what clarification of that vague and ambiguous assertion (the one you are pleased that I find vaguely agreeable) would convey the scope and central tendency of the un-packings that Popper and his followers would likely give it, so that the wiki article might (with this clarification) better help the reader avoid common mis-readings and (from the falsificationist point of view) spurious objections, such as yours.
I might worry that my formula had failed its task in your case, if you didn't already admit to being uninterested in likely falsificationist unpackings of the assertion.
In case you missed, I mentioned a piece of information missing from the article.
[i]The Solution of Falsifiability
In Popper's later work... statement being falsifiable "if and only if it logically contradicts some (empirical) sentence that describes a logically possible event that it would be logically possible to observe." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem[/i]
Thus, this should work better:
A prediction is falsifiable if it logically implies counterexample.
A prediction is testable if it is falsifiable and empirically feasible.
It doesn’t make sense a prediction could be falsifiable but not testable, so some things need to switch places, but nevertheless let us test these definitions and see if can falsify, or confirm temporarily, the definition of falsifiability itself...
These contradict scientific consensus, so it is not obvious what the predictions are in terms of empirical observations. Without explicit experimental proposal we only have empty assertions, we do not know what the prediction actually is and thus no way of knowing what possible counterexamples it may imply.
So the first step for a hypothesis to become a scientific theory is to describe exactly where, what, how and when at least one prediction is to be observed.
Telescope prediction is falsifiable, we either observe that overlap or we don’t. But I would not classify it as testable nor scientific. What’s the hurry? If we ever manage to build such a huge telescope, then your hypothesis will become testable and falsifiable, just wait.
Superstrings prediction, being out of realm for observations with current technology, must also be extra precise in defining experimental setup, otherwise it can not be classified as testable or falsifiable.
Predicting already known cerebellum observation sounds suspicious, for some reason. In any case, I do not see how this can be falsifiable, it would be a biological paradox.
But predictions of the levels of consciousness are independently confirmed as quite accurate and currently it is the basis of the only method for such analysis in coma patients. Predictions fail, say 10% of the time, and this is considered confirmation, so to what percentage prediction failure has to rise in order to be deemed as falsification?
And here we also have infamous ‘explanatory gap’ and mind-body problem. I’m afraid any hypothesis trying to explain what _is consciousness, as opposed to _how it works, can not, in principle it seems, produce any prediction based on empirical observation.
Most such theory may propose to define consciousness inevitably falls among the lines of “that’s how quantum collapse feels inside”, “that’s how information feels inside”, or “that’s how universe feels inside”.
We must therefore conclude that all of those so called theories of consciousness are ultimately untestable and unfalsifiable, definitely not scientific, but more like a crackpot fringe.
QM. The whole theory is based on statistical simplification of measurement tables and predictions thus follow “naturally”, kind of like my prediction that the sun will be bright when you look at it.
In QM you first measure, then you hypothesise by abstracting description of that experimental setup and explaining it with whatever nonsense, so then you just simply predict what you already measured.
We must therefore conclude that quantum mechanics is a fraud, I mean it is not falsifiable and thus not scientific, more like a crackpot fringe.
All butter melts at some temperature less than one hundred degrees. So, I suppose I'm not seeing this problem that you're referring to.
SO, go fix the article.
Be Bold - all you gotta do is click Edit.
I am?
Quoting bongo fury
Just to be clear, the question was meant to be rhetorical, and the answer no.
And secondly?
Can you show that idea with practical example?
Dark Energy hypotheses in physics are currently the most fashionable example as to why falsification isn't used in practice. Rather than considering the Hubble data of the speed of receding galaxies as refuting General Relativity, Physicists instead 'fix' GR as being true by proposing new and (individually) untestable auxiliary hypotheses so that GR still 'works in combination. In fact, to my understanding Dark energy isn't even at the stage of being a well-defined 'hypothesis'.
Auxiliary information also includes the trivial and taken-for-granted assumptions that your instrumentation is in 'full working order', that the laws of physics haven't changed since you began the experiment, that you aren't hallucinating, etc. etc. In short, no hypothesis is ever tested in isolation, and the auxiliary assumptions upon which the credibility of experiments rests aren't even exhaustively stateable, let alone formally stateable. Hence the reason why falsification isn't a good model of science or epistemic judgements in general. It's rooted in the archaic notion of logical Atomism - the idea that language has legible denotational semantics where the truth of a proposition stands or falls in isolation of the truth of every other proposition. But this is only true in toy-world scenarios described in an artificial language.
Yes, if the thread is about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability#Criticisms
Alternative? Common auxiliary “side-effect information” inherent in empirical observation is a general problem we have to accept and ignore, what else?
I’d say dark energy example does not show failure of falsifiability, but astronomy. Also, theories of consciousness, like panpsychism, how is it any more scientific than religion? And what is it that separates hypothesis like religion from scientific ones if not falsifiability?