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I challenge you:cite ONE paper that discerns Science from Pseudoscience wth CERTAINTY

JoeMorgue said:
*Yawn* Someone else who wants to use "Label the epistemologies" to try and turn "Reality exists" into a conspiracy theory and "Doesn't pretend reality doesn't exist" into a slur.

Be gone figment of my imagination or stop arguing with me if I'm a figment of yours, either way.
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*yawn*
 
Mojo said:
The O/P’s implication seems to be that because we cannot categorise some grey things as black or white, nothing can be categorised as black or white.
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Exactly as I have been saying. If you cannot say if a person halfway through a doorway is inside or outside then you can never be sure if anyone is inside or outside.

At the start he kept saying he understood the point but kept going back to the same fallacy.
 
Robin said:
Exactly as I have been saying. If you cannot say if a person halfway through a doorway is inside or outside then you can never be sure if anyone is inside or outside.

At the start he kept saying he understood the point but kept going back to the same fallacy.
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To paraphrase Upton Sinclair, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his argument depends on not understanding it.
 
Robin said:
Exactly as I have been saying. If you cannot say if a person halfway through a doorway is inside or outside then you can never be sure if anyone is inside or outside.
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It may not be known whether a person is on exactly one side of a border or the other, but that does not mean that borders do not exist. They allow us to know which side the others are on. There is nothing strange about this, it happens with any delimitation between fields of knowledge. There are even more difficult cases: where is the boundary between chemistry and physics? Does that mean that chemistry and physics are not different fields?
Exactly the same with the boundaries between science and pseudoscience. Even more precisely, perhaps.

)
 
Here is an interesting proposal for a definition of pseudoscience from Hansson:

1. It pertains to an issue within the domains of science (in the wide sense).
2. It is not epistemically warranted.
3. It is part of a doctrine whose major proponents try to create the impression that it is epistemically warranted.
​
And it's completed by Boudry. A theory has no scientific guarantee when:

(i) minimized risk of refutation, (ii) phony appearance of empirical boldness, or (iii) opportunities for “confirmations” without actual threat of refutation.
Strategies for pulling off such sleights of mind recur across the pseudoscientific domain.​

Both quotations from: Maarten Boudry: “Loki’s Wager and Laudan’s Error On Genuine and Territorial Demarcation”, In Massimo Pigliucci & Maarten Boudry (eds.), Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem. University of Chicago Press. pp. 79--98 (2013)

Does anyone want to comment on this? I thing it is an interesting proposal.
 
David Mo said:
There are even more difficult cases: where is the boundary between chemistry and physics?
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Ah, I know that one: It's exactly at the divide between school and university. At school it's chemistry, but as soon as you get to university you think "wait, this is all physics".

(See also biology and chemistry)
(See also physics and maths)
 
Jack by the hedge said:
Ah, I know that one: It's exactly at the divide between school and university. At school it's chemistry, but as soon as you get to university you think "wait, this is all physics".

(See also biology and chemistry)
(See also physics and maths)
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But also ( attributed to Richard Feynman), “Physics is to math what sex is to masturbation.”
 
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David Mo said:
Here is an interesting proposal for a definition of pseudoscience from Hansson:

1. It pertains to an issue within the domains of science (in the wide sense).
2. It is not epistemically warranted.
3. It is part of a doctrine whose major proponents try to create the impression that it is epistemically warranted.
​
And it's completed by Boudry. A theory has no scientific guarantee when:

(i) minimized risk of refutation, (ii) phony appearance of empirical boldness, or (iii) opportunities for “confirmations” without actual threat of refutation.
Strategies for pulling off such sleights of mind recur across the pseudoscientific domain.​

Both quotations from: Maarten Boudry: “Loki’s Wager and Laudan’s Error On Genuine and Territorial Demarcation”, In Massimo Pigliucci & Maarten Boudry (eds.), Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem. University of Chicago Press. pp. 79--98 (2013)

Does anyone want to comment on this? I thing it is an interesting proposal.
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Yes, I want to comment, thanks.

Let's take the multiverse hypothesis, where there are a hypothetical group of multiple universes.

Together, these universes comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information, and the physical laws and constants that describe them and the different universes within the multiverse are called "parallel universes", "other universes", or "alternate universes".

Millions of dollars are granted by governments worldwide to fund hypothesis such as the multiverse.

Is that hypothesis falsifiable? If so, how?

According to Hansson & Boudry, is the multiverse hypothesis...

...Science or Pseudoscience?

tenor.gif


:rolleyes:
 
devhdb said:
Yes, I want to comment, thanks.

Let's take the multiverse hypothesis, where there are a hypothetical group of multiple universes.

Together, these universes comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information, and the physical laws and constants that describe them and the different universes within the multiverse are called "parallel universes", "other universes", or "alternate universes".

Millions of dollars are granted by governments worldwide to fund hypothesis such as the multiverse.

Is that hypothesis falsifiable? If so, how?

According to Hansson & Boudry, is the multiverse hypothesis...

...Science or Pseudoscience?
Click to expand...


Seems to me this thread is much ado about nothing but perhaps I can help devhdb out of the morass of nothing he seems to find himself in.

From y dictionary:

pseudoscience | ˈsjuːdəʊˌsʌɪəns |
noun
a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method:

Now a hypothesis is just an idea someone comes up with to explain a particular phenomena. The hypothesiser may have made some observations that point to the hypothesis as a possible explanation for that phenomena. Making those observations is using the scientific method.

The hypothesiser now has to gather more observed information and perhaps explain a mechanism behind the hypothesis. If the collected information becomes overwhelmingly positive, the hypothesis may progress to becoming a scientific theory. If the evidence is not forthcoming the hypothesis is discarded, but that doesn't mean it was pseudoscience if the method was true.

That is the way science works and why you want to draw the multiverse into the picture is beyond my understanding.

Pseudoscience is where you start off with something you want to be true, and try to prove its truth with very dodgy evidence - usually dismissing anything that contracts what you want to believe. Religious doctrine about the Hebrews crossing the Red Sea used as proof of the event, and some mysticism saying the wind is caused by some god farting, are two examples.
 
devhdb said:
Yes, I want to comment, thanks.

Let's take the multiverse hypothesis, where there are a hypothetical group of multiple universes.

Together, these universes comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information, and the physical laws and constants that describe them and the different universes within the multiverse are called "parallel universes", "other universes", or "alternate universes".

Millions of dollars are granted by governments worldwide to fund hypothesis such as the multiverse.

Is that hypothesis falsifiable? If so, how?

According to Hansson & Boudry, is the multiverse hypothesis...

...Science or Pseudoscience?

[qimg]https://media1.tenor.com/images/89f8c1e3d2fa4d0081e6af67ff5a78d4/tenor.gif[/qimg]

:rolleyes:
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From my lay understanding, these ideas follow from the consequences of mathematical models that have demonstrated explanatory power in things we can observe and test. Call it grounded speculation, hypothesising or even philosophy but it isn’t pseudoscience.

I am not a philosophical pragmatist (Putnam’s no miracle argument) but it is a fine haven from radical skepticism. Scientific models/paradigms work in that they provide predictive power that delivers technology and discovery.

Contrast this with astrology, creationism or homeopathy, none of which have explanatory power and predictive models that work. None have ideas that inform corporate enterprises, where competitive advantage is hungered for. Each have extensive narratives that make predictions that are ignored or the subject of ad hoc hypothesis*. These ideas have no practical value. The businesses that grow around these ideas only have one product to sell and that is the very narratives themselves.

Bleeding edge physics extends from a project with this kind of success. We want lots of different irons on the fire. We want all kinds of ideas on the table in the hope that one may start paying off.

* I have a few examples of this happening in science and love history of science so by all means bring more but this is a constant in pseudoscience. Pseudoscience seems to be in a constant Kuhnian crisis mode. It never has a normal science problem solving mode.
 
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Thor 2 said:
Seems to me this thread is much ado about nothing but perhaps I can help devhdb out of the morass of nothing he seems to find himself in.

From y dictionary:

pseudoscience | ˈsjuːdəʊˌsʌɪəns |
noun
a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method:

Now a hypothesis is just an idea someone comes up with to explain a particular phenomena. The hypothesiser may have made some observations that point to the hypothesis as a possible explanation for that phenomena. Making those observations is using the scientific method.

The hypothesiser now has to gather more observed information and perhaps explain a mechanism behind the hypothesis. If the collected information becomes overwhelmingly positive, the hypothesis may progress to becoming a scientific theory. If the evidence is not forthcoming the hypothesis is discarded, but that doesn't mean it was pseudoscience if the method was true.

That is the way science works and why you want to draw the multiverse into the picture is beyond my understanding.

Pseudoscience is where you start off with something you want to be true, and try to prove its truth with very dodgy evidence - usually dismissing anything that contracts what you want to believe. Religious doctrine about the Hebrews crossing the Red Sea used as proof of the event, and some mysticism saying the wind is caused by some god farting, are two examples.
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Its not the origin of an idea that matters, only the honest rigour in which it is examined. Consider Kekulé's dream.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Kekulé
 
The word games don't seem to end. To me it has been well explained, far beyond my earlier knowledge.
 
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