So if a true statement can never be falsified then according to you it can still be falsifiable?
If your way of defining it is true then it's just a bad formal definition of falsifiability because you can make a sentence that sounds nonsensical like the one I made above. It means falsify and falsifiability are two different words with different definitions. When you look at the words they appear to be the same word with just different suffixes.
Let's examine the implications of your definition more carefully. If I falsify something. I either failed or succeeded at falsifying it. If there exists a thing that where all possible attempts at falsification will fail then it is still "falsifiable" because the attempt to falsify was possible??
If you are impossible to kill then you are still killable? If numbers cannot be divided by zero but it is still "divisible" by zero because I can make a fool hardy attempt at it?
From this I will say that my colloquial use of the term is actually better than your claim about the formal definition of falsifiability.
Better to use the word "observability". One cannot gather observable evidence to conduct an experiment. That's the key differentiator here.
No, falsifiability is referring to the nature of the test, not the end result. Falsifiability means you can conduct a test that, if it gave a negative result, would mean the claim has to be false. The claim that the sun will rise tomorrow is falsifiable; the claim the sun will rise eventually is not falsifiable. Both claims are true, both will be observed, but only for the first would a negative result contradict the claim.
My point if you followed carefully is that "falsifiability" is inconsistent with the term "falsify" because "falsify" refers to the result of the test. Think carefully: a statement that is falsified means the result of the test is false.
So falsify refers to the result but falsifiability does not?
Reread my post, I don't think you read it fully. If falsifiability is defined as your claim then such a statement can be true:
"The Pythagorean theorem cannot be falsified but it is falsifiable"
Which sounds obviously nonsensical.
This is inconsistent with how we use the -able suffix in other words:
"The code cannot be extended but it is extendable"
I'm not referring to any official definition here, just pointing out the language problem that arises if we assume what you say is true. But here is the official definition anyway:
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/falsifiability
Which basically is pretty solid evidence for you being wrong. But at the same time I think you all are pulling some formalized definition from philosophy or something which probably has a different meaning defined for it. My argument is that the formalized definition is worse than the colloquial one in the English dictionary because the English definition is more logically consistent with the rest of the English language.
It's debatable which definition is more appropriate for this context. But assuming not everyone is a philosophy major I would say the definition in the English dictionary is more relevant.
> So falsify refers to the result but falsifiability does not?
falsifiability - the ability to be proven false. That's what it says in the dictionary.com link as well. It is not necessary for something to be false for the ability to prove it false to exist. That's "The chance of it happening was 100% because it actually happened" levels of word-twisting. I think it's a variety of begging the question, where you assume the outcome in your premises. If the coin flip lands on tails, the chance of it landing on heads was not 0%.
EDIT: Try this - substitute 'testable' for 'falsifiable' and see if that helps ease the dissonance.
>falsifiability - the ability to be proven false. That's what it says in the dictionary.com link as well.
No if something is true, it does not have the ability to be proven false. That's the obvious meaning at face value. Your definition is the one that's twisting things up here.
A person with no legs does not have the ability to walk. The implication of your logic is that a person with no legs can walk. Just like how a true statement can be proven false.
The statement also doesn't deal with probabilities. So your probabilistic analogy isn't relevant. When you say something can be falsified that is entirely different from saying that there's a probability something can be falsified.
>EDIT: Try this - substitute 'testable' for 'falsifiable' and see if that helps ease the dissonance.
Why?
Of course it helps. Because you chose a word with a different definition. I already know what you mean. You can leave the word as is, I still know what you mean and it's still logically consistent with your point.
I'm just pointing out the inconsistency with the linguistic aspect of your word choice that leaves it amenable for other people to interpret it differently. The original point is moot. We're talking about a linguistic problem here. Replacing the word is side stepping the original linguistic issue.
Let's look at this a little differently. Did you win the lottery yesterday? I presume not. Did that mean the lottery yesterday was not winnable? No. Winnable means that you could have won, even if you didn't. Falsifiable doesn't mean proven false, it means able to be proven false, even if it isn't. True statements happen not to be false, but that doesn't mean they couldn't be shown to be false if they were. If I say "there are no dogs in my house" you can determine that this is a falsifiable claim despite not knowing whether the statement is true or false, because it doesn't depend on that.
The pythagorean theorem is not an example of a falsifiable claim. It is a provable claim, the opposite of falsifiable. Though again, this has nothing to do with it being true or false. Bigfoot married Elvis is likewise a provable claim, a claim where evidence could be presented that would prove it true if it were true. The inverse, Bigfoot did not marry Elvis, is falsifiable, because evidence could be presented that would prove it false if it were false.
There's nothing nonsensical about it. Lots of things are extendable even when they're not extended, foldable when not folded, recyclable when not recycled, and falsifiable when not falsified. The colloquial definition is the same as the formal, you're the only one using it your way.
>Let's look at this a little differently. Did you win the lottery yesterday? I presume not. Did that mean the lottery yesterday was not winnable?
The lottery yesterday is not winnable by me because it was already won by someone else and because I already lost. That is a fact. That's a valid statement taken at face value. It's not nonsensical at all. There's no subtle word twisting here.
Do you actually go around saying the lottery was winnable after it was already won by someone else? Your example is the one that at face value seems more twisted.
You are also dealing with probabilities. Falsification by the word itself "false" deals with boolean logic. True or false. There is no probability here which you introduced with your "lottery" analogy. It's not really applicable because something can't be false if it has a probability of being true or false.
> Falsifiable doesn't mean proven false, it means able to be proven false, even if it isn't.
Again you're not addressing my point. I know what your definition IS. And I stated before, and I will state again that if we assume your definition is TRUE there is an inconsistency between the word "FALSIFIED" and "FALSIFIABILITY". This is a linguistic problem with your word choice.
But read your own statement carefully. Even your definition doesn't make sense. How can something have the ability to be proven false if it isn't false? That doesn't even make sense. What you mean is that a statement can be tested in attempt to be proved false. I'd be pedantic to hold you to that but I'm not. But I will hold on to the fact that the error you made in your language is a linguistic issue and not one with your logic. The linguistic issue is what I'm referring to here. That's the inconsistency I originally pointed out.
If something is falsified it is false. But by your definition it can be both falsifiable and not falsified and not false. I didn't say that YOUR definition made the statement nonsensical. I said it sounds nonsensical because the face-value definition makes it nonsensical. Which is equivalent to saying any average person will find it to not make sense because they defined the word traditionally while you defined the word differently.
>There's nothing nonsensical about it. Lots of things are extendable even when they're not extended, foldable when not folded, recyclable when not recycled, and falsifiable when not falsified. The colloquial definition is the same as the formal, you're the only one using it your way.
You're not getting it. It's not my way. It's you. You're extremely far away from understanding logic. We can tell from this statement here:
>Though again, this has nothing to do with it being true or false. Bigfoot married Elvis is likewise a provable claim, a claim where evidence could be presented that would prove it true if it were true.
In science and therefore reality as we know it there is no such thing as a provable claim. Nothing in reality can be proven. Falsification is the only methodology available to us. Read the first section here: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Falsifiability I'll quote it:
"Popper contrasted falsifiability to the intuitively similar concept of verifiability that was then current in logical positivism. He argues that the only way to verify a claim such as "All swans are white" would be if one could theoretically observe all swans, which is not possible."
Which means you can't prove all swans are white. It's impossible. But you can falsify it by finding one black swan.
You'll also note on the same wikiwand page it says this as the second sentence: "A theory or hypothesis is falsifiable (or refutable) if it can be logically contradicted by an empirical test."
By definition a true statement can't be contradicted by an empirical test. So even the formal definition is inconsistent with your claim.
I entirely get how the word is used in the scientific community and what you are referring to but the formal definition here is just a poor choice made by Karl Popper or whoever it was who coined it and it doesn't mesh with the rest of English. It allows for wikipedia to mistakenly have a definition that by logic cannot be applied to true statements. If we just replace some words and apply that definition you get this:
"A true statement that is falsifiable by definition can be logically contradicted in a empirical test"
It can't man, let's be real here, don't twist it.
>Lots of things are extendable even when they're not extended, foldable when not folded, recyclable when not recycled, and falsifiable when not falsified.
Ok this. This is word twisting. It's almost deliberate. Nobody made any statements like this, you twisted the analogies slightly to fit your agenda. Let's make things more accurate here:
If something is can't be folded it is foldable. If something can't be recycled it is recyclable. If something can't be falsified it is falsifiable. These sound contradictory at face value. Ask anyone.
The ORIGINAL claim was this: "All true claims are unfalsifiable by definition."
A true claim is equivalent to a claim that can't be falsified. So I essentially said, "All claims that can't be falsified are unfalsifiable by definition" and you're saying that claim is wrong. Let's be real.
We're getting pedantic here, but ultimately the logic spells out that I'm right.