Is "evolution" itself divine?

[Europa Ascendent]

Shhh. You might cause us to work out a compromise instead of beating off around the bush for a few more weeks.

 

[Cythraul]

This last is significant because moving beyond epistemological inquiry to constructing an epistemology requires accounting for all of the above. Falsification touches on epistemological modes of inquiry, but it cannot be in and of itself an epistemology of science, nor does it pretend to be such.

I haven't claimed that falsification is in and of itself an epistemology of science. It's an inferential norm. I honestly don't recall indicating that I thought otherwise. The problem for me comes when you claim that 1) it's merely a distinction and 2) it's a useful distinction. Why is it useful? Surely it's not useful merely in virtue of the fact that it distinguishes science from other disciplines. It's not the job or method of scientists to peddle scat porn, but that's obvious and not even worth stating. Now suppose we have two empirically equivalent theories. One contains a bunch of ad-hoc propositions and is pseudo-scientific, the other is scientific. Bob McJesusFreak is proposing his ad-hoc theory and you tell him "No, that's not scientific." Bob says "So what? Neither is scat porn peddling. I mean, hey my theory accounts for all the data too."

Do you see what I mean?

The context is irrelevant. Newton's Principia emerged out of, among other things, alchemical investigation. Does that make Newtonian mechanics a branch of alchemy?

Bad choice of words on my part. In fact, forget the part about context. Ask yourself what falsificationism really achieves. It's quite a bit more than being a distinction and I already pointed out what that was. In fact, I think you said it in your first post: "science disproves". Not just in virtue of being a distinction is it useful, but also in virtue of shedding light on the (supposed) logical certainty of theory rejection. Look, I'm quite content with maintaining that 1) falsification came out of epistemological inquiry into scientific-epistemic norms 2) It distinguishes between science and non-science 3) It's useful on account of that 4) It's usefulness is not exhausted by its highlighting a distinction 5) it has a whole lot to do with epistemology, even if it has nothing to do with giving a comprehensive, prior epistemology of science.

What is wrong with any of that? Are we still in substantial disagreement?

It is important here to seperate what Popper hoped to achieve (a logical analysis for accepting or rejecting hypotheses) and what he actually achieved (a handy means for distinguishing between the practice of science as such and pseudoscientific theories that cannot be adequately addressed with the tools available to science as an institution).

Why do you think Popper merely hoped to achieve a logical analysis for accepting or rejecting hypotheses? Falsificationism is at least approximately true, in that the falsity of some prediction entails the falsity of a conjunction of antecedent statements. That's just logical.

I've already gone into what I think about falsificationism's usefulness merely as a distinction so I don't really know what else to say.

They're two entirely seperate concerns. As I already mentioned, falsification is a handy tool for drawing the distinction between scientific endeavors and common forms of pseudoscience (like ID 'theory'). It is an argumentative device, not, in my view an important, comprehensive distinction.

They're separate concerns but that doesn't mean that falsificationism isn't relevant when you're talking about two theories accounting for the same data. I already went into this above. I also already went into what import I think it has for the use and status of falsificationism (sorry if I seem very curt at this point but I tend to lose my enthusiasm pretty quickly in these sorts of internet debates).

More comprehensive investigations of the epistemology of science have been universally concerned either with defending science as an institution against attack, or in attacking science for (primarily) political purposes. My feeling is that from a practical perspective, success justifies success, so there is no real need to defend science, and any attack on science will collapse into a rhetorical exercise, regardless of the perfection of its internal logic.

I don't even disagree with that.

 

[Europa Ascendent]

Ok, clearly we're crossed up in terminology.

I agree with your basic premise regarding falsification. I just don't think it really matters. The utility of falsification is rhetorical - it makes Christers shut their fucking mouths, which is all I really care about.

Sorry for the run around, I really wasn't paying due attention.