[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

> Would you please explain "at length" once more in the form of a syllogism that ends with the conclusion "Therefore all non-testable claims are unreliable"?

Because they are indistinguishable from stuff someone just made up. Do you agree that making shit up is not a reliable way to determine facts about reality?

> It's becoming more clear that we seem to have different criterion for what we consider testable.

I suspect that's a central problem, yes. The scientific notion of testability is something people with a religious background often seem to have difficulty wrapping their head around.

> Would you consider all claims that are provable or disprovable testable? Would you consider all claims that if true, and not provable or disprovable, are not testable?

First of all, just to make sure we aren't getting confused: This is all about "real truths", not about "formal truths", as "proof" is generally the term used by mathematics to describe derivation of formal truths, not so much by scientists, who would rather use terms like "evidence" or "demonstration" to describe, well, evidence for a hypothesis ... though people often colloquially use "proof" for either, even scientists, but it should be understood that it is being used in a meaning distinct from the mathematical use.

Also, I suspect that you are probably completely on the wrong track with "provability", even if I assume that you mean some sort of evidence-driven thing, because testability is not about whether some claim has been shown to be true or false, but about whether the claim could be shown to be false.

Testability is not a question of showing that something is true, because that isn't really a thing with inductive reasoning: For any model where you have not actually tested every prediction that you could derive from it (and those tend to be infinitely many for any non-trivial claims), you can not possibly be sure that there are no circumstances under which it would make a wrong prediction. So, testability is only concerned with showing that a claim is false, by demonstrating a contradiction, because you can indeed be sure that a model that makes predictions contradicted by a single test is incorrect (assuming you did not screw up the test, of course).

Now, of course, for a claim to be considered testable, it is not required that you demonstrate that it is false, that would be kinda pointless. The requirement is that you could potentially demonstrate it to be false if it were false.

So, for example, "water boils at 100 °C at atmospheric pressure" is testable, because there is an experiment that you could do that would contradict the claim if it weren't true. For example, if water actually only boiled at 200 °C, you could put together a demonstration where you heated water to 150 °C, showing that it didn't boil, thus contradicting the claim, thus demonstrating that it is false.

On the other hand, "invisible unicorns exist" is not testable, because there is no experiment that you could possibly do that would show it to be false. No matter what you observe about the world, there is no possible observation that could contradict the claim. That is simply because the claim does not make any predictions about observable reality--and if there is no prediction, there is no way to make an observation that would contradict any prediction.

Another common form of untestable claims, especially from religious people, is of the form "God listens to prayer and sends you help when you need it. When you pray, but you don't receive the help you think you need, god knew better that you actually didn't need the help you thought you needed." So, you pray, and either you get what you prayed for, then that is counted as evidence that god listened to the prayer, or you don't get what you prayed for, then that is counted as evidence that god knows better than you. The important point is: No matter what happens, it is counted as evidence for god. But an experiment where the result is counted as evidence for a particular hypothesis, no matter what the result of the experiment is, doesn't actually provide any evidence for anything, because the conclusion from the experiment does not actually depend on the result of the experiment. If you count every possible outcome as evidence for your hypothesis, there is no point in even doing the experiment, the result is the same as if you were to simply come to the conclusion without an experiment. Or in other words: Such a claim is indistinguishable from something that someone just made up.

> What are some claims of science and religion (regarding religion, particularly fundamental ones) that are contradictory, as in they claim opposing things (X and ~X)?

Religion: "It is warranted to believe that a god exists."

Science: "It is not warranted to believe that a god exists."

> A definition you have assumed? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying anything is wrong with that assumption, it is a self-evident one, but call it like it is.

WTF? Yes, I am assuming a shared definition of every single word that I am using. Are you expecting me to spell that out, as if it could possibly be any different? Yes, I am assuming that you share the definition of "to be", and the definition of "different", and the definition of "yes", and the definition of "definition", and the definition of "to assume", ... seriously?

> 1 ) If X can't be explained, then X is unintelligible. [...]

Did you change anything? This is again treating the explainability as a property of X, which is incoherent nonsense. What we are talking about is that some particular subject/class of subjects possibly won't ever gain certain knowledge. So, a sensible way to express that is something along the lines of "If X will never be understood by humans, then ...". Maybe you could rewrite your argument in those terms?

> To exist and be non-physical is to exist and be incapable of changing state, to exist and be incapable of changing state is to exist and be non-physical.

So, how does that distinguish the physical from the non-physical, when the physical isn't even mentioned?

> Wow have I done a terrible job of separating the conscience act from the external act. To be abundantly clear, it is immoral to violate your conscience. There can be two actions that occur when you perform an action: Choosing an action is itself an action, and performing the chosen action is separate from the choosing of that action. So if I where to correct my comments along these lines I would properly state: "It is immoral to [choose to] do what you think is immoral even if [what you choose to do] is moral, so you'll be better off doing [an action] you think is moral even if [that action] is immoral [because choosing to do otherwise would be immoral].

So, how exactly are you adding anything of substance here? All of those additional words don't do anything about the brokenness of the argument, unless you are saying that it is possible to act in a way that is not in accordance with how you choose to act ... which is just gibberish. The subjective idea of what is moral still fully determines the choice, and unless you can choose to act differently that you choose to act (WTF?), any independent claims about the morality of the action still are as vacuous as they were before.

> You are better off this way because you are not as/(at all) culpable for your actions if you didn't know they were wrong. That being said we are obligated to correct our neighbors' incorrect moral beliefs and to be open to being corrected."

What does that have to do with anything? I thought we were talking about morality, not culpability, nor obligations to neighbors?!

> Do you expect all true claims to sound rational before you've heard their justification? What did you expect given that I haven't been taking any steps to establish them?

No, but I expect that anyone who is serious about a discussion doesn't just suddenly dump on me some outlandish claims with the expectation that I will accept them for the purposes of building arguments on them. It should hardly be a surprise to you that I don't share the assumption that those claims that you were making are true, so it is obviously completely pointless to even mention them if you don't intend to justify them. You might as well just be saying "I am right" ... might be true, but it's obviously guaranteed to be unconvincing.

> "Ad Hominem"

Nope. That simply wasn't an argument at all, just an observation.

> That might be what you'd expect, but if you claim that's the kind of person I am then you'll need to substantiate that claim.

Correct. Which is why I am not making that claim. I am simply telling you that you maybe should check extra carefully whether that is what you are doing. Because I, ultimately, can't.

[sonusario]

> 1)... 2)... 3)...

How do you determine that a claim is not falsifiable? How do you determine that a claim is unreliable?

When you say "Science says", do you mean "Science is defined as such ..." or "Science has arrived at the conclusion ..."? When you say "Religion says", do you mean "All religions assert ..."?

> Because they are indistinguishable from stuff someone just made up. Do you agree that making shit up is not a reliable way to determine facts about reality?

While I agree that making shit up is not reliable, some claims that are "indistinguishable from stuff someone just made up" aren't necessarily untrue. Given that claims "indistinguishable from stuff someone just made up" could be true, one might think that there may be claims which, though are non-testable, are reliable for use. If that is not the case, then you have to establish the claim "non-testable claims are unreliable" in order to support what you're saying sciences asserts ("that untestable claims about reality are unreliable").

Also, when you say a claim is reliable, what is it reliable for?

===

s> Is it possible that a testable claim could be true and imply another claim that is not testable?

z> No.

s> Why?

?

===

> ... testability ... is about whether the claim could be shown to be false. ... The requirement is that you could potentially demonstrate it to be false if it were false.

You may need to elaborate for me, because true claims can't potentially be shown to be false in principle. So, are we calling claims falsifiable because we don't know beyond inductive reasoning that they are true and can out of ignorance come up with test that potentially demonstrates they are false?

===

z> Doing science is to use whatever methods that deliver demonstrably reliable results and reject whatever methods that don't. There is no fixed method, because that in itself would be unreliable.

s> Is "use whatever methods that deliver demonstrably reliable results and reject whatever methods that don't" a fixed method?

?

===

> Religion: "It is warranted to believe that a god exists."

> Science: "It is not warranted to believe that a god exists."

Assuming your saying "It is not warranted" because the claim "God exists" is not falsifiable, how has it been shown that the claim "God exists" is not a falsifiable claim?

===

> WTF? Yes... ... seriously?

Oh, so you agree that science relies upon the reliability of the senses and that the claim "our senses are reliable" is not falsifiable in principle?

===

z> More precisely, because a statement about math is not a statement about reality, other than that math is part of (human) reality.

s> When you apply the name "John" to one person and the name "Jack" to another, there are physical criterion to distinguish between John and Jack allowing us to verify via testing that a claim only about John is not a claim about Jack. Unless there are physical criterion that allows us to distinguish between math and reality, you've made a false analogy.

??

===

z> The answer is simply: They didn't.

s> The conclusion I'm looking for is "They couldn't" and in particular "They couldn't intelligibly mean 'claims only about math are claims about reality'" and I want to know why. Only saying "they didn't" leaves the door open for someone else who could.

??

===

s> Under this axiomatic context: Do distances, spaces, cardinalities, and sets symbolically or conceptually exist absent of any physical representation?

z> I don't know. I certainly don't see any reason to believe so.

s>Then you can't see any reason to believe '1 < 2' could make reference to anything other than the physical representations of distances of space, cardinalities of sets, and any other needed mathematical structures?

?

===

> Did you change anything?

Did you read it? The first argument contains 18 points and said "X has". The second argument contains 16 points and does not say "X has".

> This is again treating the explainability as a property of X, which is incoherent nonsense.

Could you quote something from the second argument that treated "explainability as a property of X"?

===

> So, how does that distinguish the physical from the non-physical, when the physical isn't even mentioned?

I guess the implication wasn't obvious enough. To exist and be physical is to exist and be capable of changing state, to exist and be capable of changing state is to exist and be physical.

===

> ... unless you are saying that it is possible to act in a way that is not in accordance with how you choose to act ... which is just gibberish.

"Intend" is probably a better word than "choose".

===

> No, but I expect that anyone who is serious about a discussion doesn't just suddenly dump on me some outlandish claims with the expectation that I will accept them for the purposes of building arguments on them.

Like 'claims only about math are not claims about reality'?

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

> While I agree that making shit up is not reliable, some claims that are "indistinguishable from stuff someone just made up" aren't necessarily untrue.

Correct. Which is why I am not saying that claims that are indistinguishable from stuff that someone just made up are false. Really, even stuff that someone in fact just made up is not necessarily untrue. It is possible to make shit up and end up with the truth. But most claims that you could make up are false (for any claim A that you could make up, you could also make up at the very least the claim that not A, and at most one of those two can be true), which is why just making things up is not a reliable way to determine truth.

> Given that claims "indistinguishable from stuff someone just made up" could be true, one might think that there may be claims which, though are non-testable, are reliable for use.

"reliability of a claim" means the probability that the claim is true, based on what you know. The fact that some of the claims might be true does not mean that the probability of any particular claim being true is high.

> Also, when you say a claim is reliable, what is it reliable for?

It's not reliable _for_ anything, it is simply likely to be a correct description of reality.

> You may need to elaborate for me, because true claims can't potentially be shown to be false in principle.

Yes, they can, and that is the most important part of it that you have to wrap your head around.

The claim "water boils at 100 °C (at standard pressure ...)" is probably true, I suppose you would agree?

Here is an observation that could potentially be made that would count as falsification of the claim: Water in liquid form at 200 °C (at standard pressure ...).

Testability is not about actual demonstration, it is about potential demonstration. There has to be some demonstration that, if it were done, would be accepted as demonstrating that the claim is false.

The whole point is that for actually true claims, those demonstrations will never be actualized. But for actually false claims, they might, and often are. And that is how we weed out false claims, thus increasing the concentration of actually true claims in what we consider "state of the art human knowledge".

It is important to remember that "water boils at 100 °C" is not something we know for absolutely certain to be true. All attempts to falsify it so far have failed, that is all: All experiments so far have not produced any result that contradicts that claim. But for all we know, someone could demonstrate liquid water at 200 °C tomorrow (or water steam at 50 °C, or whatever--there are tons of demonstrations that would be accepted as falsification of that claim), and that would establish that this claim is false, after all.

> Assuming your saying "It is not warranted" because the claim "God exists" is not falsifiable, how has it been shown that the claim "God exists" is not a falsifiable claim?

What would you accept as falsification of the claim of the existence of the god that you believe in?

> Oh, so you agree that science relies upon the reliability of the senses and that the claim "our senses are reliable" is not falsifiable in principle?

All you are really saying here is "What if reality isn't real?" That is just a pointless objection. Whatever "ultimate reality" looks like, we still have to deal with the reality that we experience, and we most certainly experience what we experience, and the possibility that we might not be experiencing "ultimate reality" does not change that we are experiencing a reality, and that it is meaningful to make statements about that reality.

> Did you read it?

Yes, but it didn't seem like you changed anything of substance, in particular with regards to my criticism.

> Could you quote something from the second argument that treated "explainability as a property of X"?

The problem is that you are writing so massively ambiguous statements that it is very hard to nail down what you actually mean, and thus where exactly you treat explainability as a property of X. Even the first half of a sentence, "If X can't be explained", certainly sounds like "can't be explained" is a property of X. To avoid some of that ambiguity, I would very much prefer if you were to explicitly write down your argument completely avoiding "can be explained" or "has an explanation", instead using only "is known to humans" or "will be known to humans", and show that way that humans will at some point in time know everything.

And yes, I am aware that I am skipping a lot of stuff. I am getting the impression that we aren't getting anywhere with those due to way more fundamental misunderstanding, and I suspect a lot of it boils down to testability one way or another, so I think we are better off concentrating on that for now, instead of wasting a lot of time with going in circles.

[sonusario]

> ... which is why just making things up is not a reliable way to determine truth.

Your argument states "Science says that untestable claims about reality are unreliable" and not "Science says that making things up is not a reliable way to determine truth". Your argument also states "Religion says that certain untestable claims about reality are reliable" and not "Religion says that making things up is a reliable way to determine truth". There is a difference between the reliability of finding the truth by making up a claim and the reliability of the claim itself.

Your argument (from what I can tell as it is written) is not about the reliability of making up a claim but about the reliability of a claim itself. Even if your argument were referring to the reliability of making up a claim, I don't know of any religion that says or concludes that making up claims is reliable. Even if one did, that wouldn't lend itself to making the blanket statement "Religion says ...".

> "reliability of a claim" means the probability that the claim is true, based on what you know. The fact that some of the claims might be true does not mean that the probability of any particular claim being true is high.

Defining, conversely, the "unreliability of a claim" as the probability that the claim is false, your argument becomes the following:

> 1) Science says that untestable claims about reality have a probability of being false.

> 2) Religion says that certain untestable claims about reality have a probability of being true.

> 3) Therefore, religion's claims as to the probability of being true of some claims about reality contradicts science's claims as to the probability of being true of those claims.

Given that your argument makes no reference to what is more or less probable, no contradiction has been established (pending whether you mean unreliable to mean less likely and reliable to mean more likely (but then you'd need to establish how those probabilities were derived)). I don't want to put words in your mouth, so you may want to rephrase your argument because I doubt this is what you meant given that it does not establish your point.

> It's not reliable _for_ anything, it is simply likely to be a correct description of reality.

You can't/don't rely on scientific claims "_for_" anything? As in, the claims of science are not reliable for things like putting satellites into orbit or pursuing further truths, they are just likely a correct description of reality?

>> Assuming your saying "It is not warranted" because the claim "God exists" is not falsifiable, how has it been shown that the claim "God exists" is not a falsifiable claim?

> What would you accept as falsification of the claim of the existence of the god that you believe in?

You're shifting the burden of proof. I have at least five independent criterion, but you don't need to know them. Not having something to accept as falsification for the claim "water only boils at 100°C or greater (under 1 atm)" doesn't mean that there can't be one. So unless you have some solid demonstration of your claim, because lack of evidence doesn't seal the deal, then you have no convincing basis for claiming "'God exists' is not a falsifiable claim".

> All you are really saying here is "What if reality isn't real?" ...

Hahaha, what?? Not at all! I'm saying that, given what seems to be your want of disregarding all non-falsifiable claims as "indistinguishable from stuff someone just made up", you'd also be disregarding the claim "our senses our reliable" as "indistinguishable from stuff someone just made up" because that claim is not falsifiable in principle (it being non-falsifiable something we seem to agree on since we think it is self-evident).

If you think the claim "our senses are reliable" is falsifiable, then YOU would be the one likely to assert the question "What if reality isn't real?".

> And yes, I am aware that I am skipping a lot of stuff. ...

Thank you for mentioning it. I couldn't tell if stuff was being missed or ignored. It can be easy to miss things in walls of text.

> ... so I think we are better off concentrating on that for now ...

Sure, I've done more skimming myself.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

> There is a difference between the reliability of finding the truth by making up a claim and the reliability of the claim itself.

What is "the reliability of the claim itself", if it is not the reliability of the method that is used to estalish that claim?

> Given that your argument makes no reference to what is more or less probable

Yes, it does. Reliability (of a claim) is a scale expressing a probability of being true. "reliable" is the high probability end of that scale, "unreliable" is the low probability end of that scale.

> (but then you'd need to establish how those probabilities were derived)

Yes, I have, over, and over, and over, even in my last post.

> You can't/don't rely on scientific claims "_for_" anything?

That wasn't the question. Obviously, the more likely a claim is true, the more you are justified to rely on it as the basis for making decisions about the future. But the phrase "claim A is reliable" makes perfect sense without a "for X", simply as an expression of how likely the claim is to be true.

> As in, the claims of science are not reliable for things like putting satellites into orbit or pursuing further truths, they are just likely a correct description of reality?

Being a correct description of reality is what makes a claim useful for making predictions about the future behavior of that reality, and thus for influencing reality in such a way that a satellite does behave as intended/predicted.

> You're shifting the burden of proof.

No, I am not, I am simply performing the empirical observation that is required to establish whether the claim is testable.

> Not having something to accept as falsification for the claim "water only boils at 100°C or greater (under 1 atm)" doesn't mean that there can't be one.

Actually, that is all that testability is about: Whether there is something that would convince you that you are wrong if it were demonstrated to you. For "water only boils at 100°C or greater (under 1 atm)" that should be the case, because that statement under standard English language rules has semantics that imply a contradiction with certain potential observations. But ultimately, what counts is whether whoever is making the claim would accept those demonstrations as contradicting their claim.

> (it being non-falsifiable something we seem to agree on since we think it is self-evident).

No, not at all.

The problem is that that whole question is massively ambiguous, and the answer is completely different depending on the interpretation, or possibly some interpretations are just nonsensical questions.

If you mean whether our senses correctly reflect "ultimate reality": That would indeed be unfalsifiable, and for that exact reason it is indistinguishable from shit someone made up, and thus a highly unreliable claim.

If you mean whether our senses generally produce a coherent picture of an outside world: That is falsifiable, in that we can cross-correlate different senses, between perceptions of the same sense over time, as well as between our own and others' perceptions. I am guessing that that is maybe why you say that this is self-evident, but really, it's way more than just self-evident. Actually, that is exactly how we do know in how many ways our senses indeed are not reliable. There is a lot of redundancy in our senses (and indirect methods of perceiving the world) that allows us to test the reliability of each sense, with no sense in particular being one that we just have to trust blindly.

But mind you that all those tests of our senses do not in any way demonstrate that we can sense "ultimate reality". Possibly, we can't, but that is not a problem for our ability to navigate the (perceptual) reality we find outselves in, or for the testability of that fact.

[sonusario]

> What is "the reliability of the claim itself", if it is not the reliability of the method that is used to estalish that claim?

Wut?? If you can't see that "the reliability of the claim itself" =/= "the reliability of the method that is used to establish that claim", then I think we are done here because this would make for an insuperable disagreement. In the first phrase 'reliability' refers to the claim, and in the second it refers to the method. The claim and the method that is used to establish that claim are two different things.

> Yes, I have, over, and over, and over, even in my last post.

No you haven't. The method 'making-things-up' we already agree is unreliable, but you have not established that non-testable claims have a greater probability of being untrue rather than true. If I missed it, perhaps you could quote what you think has been so obviously stated that you needn't bother repeating it? I'll ask you to include an inequality proof and/or the percentages that have been calculated to reach/assert this conclusion.

> But the phrase "claim A is reliable" makes perfect sense without a "for X", simply as an expression of how likely the claim is to be true.

So you think these phrases are equal?: "claim A is reliable" = "it is likely claim A is true" = "the method that is used to establish claim A is reliable"

> Being a correct description of reality is what makes a claim useful for making predictions about the future behavior of that reality, and thus for influencing reality in such a way that a satellite does behave as intended/predicted.

And claims that are correct descriptions of reality are not reliable "_for_" such use?

> No, I am not, I am simply performing the empirical observation that is required to establish whether the claim is testable.

If you are performing said observation now to form a basis for your claim, did your claim not have a basis before?

> But ultimately, what counts is whether whoever is making the claim would accept those demonstrations as contradicting their claim.

So, whether a claim is falsifiable is subjective?

Also, are claims of the form "X is not falsifiable" falsifiable? If so, how might they be falsified?

> If you mean whether our senses generally produce a coherent picture of an outside world: That is falsifiable, in that we can cross-correlate different senses, between perceptions of the same sense over time, as well as between our own and others' perceptions.

Is the claim "our senses have at least one way in which they are reliable" falsifiable?

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

> The claim and the method that is used to establish that claim are two different things.

Yes, of course they are! But there simply is no such thing as "the reliability of the claim" that is distinct from "the reliability of the method used to arrive at the claim", because reliability as an attribute of the claim itself is a category error. The way "the reliability of the claim" is commonly used is simply as a short-hand to refer to what more precisely would be called "the reliability of the method used to arrive at the claim".

If you take the claim "this bridge can bear 1632 tons", then what determines the "reliability of that claim" is how it was derived, there is no inherent reliability to just the claim itself. If someone rolled some dice to create that number, then that is a completely unreliable claim. If someone put 1632 tons of steel blocks on the bridge and it didn't fail, then that is at the very least a lot more reliable than rolling some dice. The fact that the exact same claim has completely different reliability, depending on how it was arrived at, should tell you that the reliability is actually a property of the process used to derive it, and not of the claim itself, even if that is how it is commonly phrased.

> The method 'making-things-up' we already agree is unreliable, but you have not established that non-testable claims have a greater probability of being untrue rather than true.

Do you agree that made-up claims have a greater probability of being untrue rather than true?

Do you agree that non-testable claims are indistinguishable from claims arrived at by making them up?

> So you think these phrases are equal?: "claim A is reliable" = "it is likely claim A is true" = "the method that is used to establish claim A is reliable"

Seems sensible to me!

> And claims that are correct descriptions of reality are not reliable "_for_" such use?

Oh, sure, of course they are! I had understood your question to mean that you thought that the specification of a particular application was missing, or something along those lines. But yes, that they are reliable for such use is the implication, of course.

> If you are performing said observation now to form a basis for your claim, did your claim not have a basis before?

Really, I have implicitly switched the claim, simply to enable a productive discussion.

The problem is that "god" is a word that is used to refer to so many different and mutually contradictory concepts that demonstrating any claim for all of those concepts can be a lot of work, and often is even impossible because someone will come along and claim that god is the sun or something (and under that definition, obviously, god does exist, but probably isn't Jesus, say). So, before, I made a claim that is generally true for the vast majority of the god concepts that people have, just for a wide variety of reasons, depending on the specific concept.

But explaining how the claim is true for most/all god concepts is a lot of work--and also probably not the most useful thing to do, when you, presumably, have a specific god concept in mind, so focusing on that seems more productive than getting lost in ideas that you may not agree with anyway. Which is why I switched from the general claim to a more specific claim that's presumably more relevant to you.

> So, whether a claim is falsifiable is subjective?

No, it's not that the falsifiability is subjective, but rather that what ultimately matters is the falsifiability of what you actually think, not of what someone else interprets your statements to mean. If someone says "water boils at 100 °C", you would presumably agree that that is a statement that implies certain possibilities to falsify it, and as such the statement would qualify as a falsifiable claim, based on how the English language is generally understood to work. But if you were to demonstrate liquid water at 200 °C to whoever is uttering that sentence and they would still keep making the same statement, then their internal model that they try to express as "water boils at 100 °C" is still untestable, and that is still a problem.

> Also, are claims of the form "X is not falsifiable" falsifiable? If so, how might they be falsified?

By showing that whoever is holding the supposedly unfalsifiable position would actually accept some demonstrations as reasons to reject the claim?

> Is the claim "our senses have at least one way in which they are reliable" falsifiable?

Are we talking about "reliable for detecting ultimate reality" or "reliable for detecting the reality that they are detecting"?