27 August 2008
Quote of the Day
Barry Arrington
“The beliefs which we have the most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.”
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (New York: Burt, n.d.), pp. 38-39.
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1
bFast
08/27/2008
9:01 pm
I think that the single belief that the scientific community places the most warrant on is the belief in methodological naturalism. However, I contend that methodological naturalism itself is absolutely unfalsifiable. As such, it doesn’t even have the protection of a genuine invitation to the world that it be proved wrong.
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russ
08/28/2008
2:34 pm
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bFast
08/28/2008
6:06 pm
russ, I would contend that ID is also not falsifiable, and for the very same reasons. Both methodological naturalism and ID should, in my opinion, be relegated to the philosophy department.
That said, however, the ID paradyme produces very falsifiable theories, such as IC, CSI, etc. These theories should be pursued by the scientific community with all of the gusto that the theory of natural selection is pursued — especially as these theories seriously challenge (falsify) the theory of natural selection.
However, these theories, falsifiable though they are, are rejected as “non-science” because the unfalsifiable philosophy of methodological naturalism requires their expulsion.
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Antwerpenaar
08/31/2008
1:00 pm
bFast: you wrote: “I contend that methodological naturalism itself is absolutely unfalsifiable”.
However I thought to understand that the expression “(un)falsifiable” applied solely to theories and hypotheses.
Methodological Naturalism is, as I understand it, a methodology. In what way could a methodology (of whatever kind) be falsifiable?