|
|
|
|
|
|
by LeonB
1552 days ago
|
|
|
Disproven ideas are a subset of the unproven ideas. Trying to distinguish whether or not a specific idea from astrology is or is not “disproven” means you waste time arguing about topics many of which are too vague to be falsifiable. So I chose the word “unproven” on purpose and I stand by it, because it’s the correct word. |
|
|
Of course the problem with using the word "disproven" like I did, and like you correctly pointed out, is that we're referring to a very loosely defined and nebulous set of ideas. To disprove something requires a precise definition of the thing in the first place.
I would argue that this difficulty is not necessarily fatal to the argument. It is an inevitable difficulty (and please pardon me as I get into a semantic argument), because the word "astrology" cannot be made to map to real mechanisms, phenomena, or "real life things". The set of ideas we refer to under any reasonable definition of "astrology" are incoherent with reality as a whole.
One could reduce the set of ideas behind astrology to be "merely unfalsifiable" and/or "merely unfalsified" by eliminating all demonstrably incorrect ideas, but then I am not sure that we would be left with enough ideas to still call it "astrology": the thing would have lost its essence and most of its usual meaning.
The approach I just described is reductionist, or deconstructive. Consider the inverse (or "constructive") approach: start with an obviously-wrong idea, and attach to it many other subordinate or secondary ideas, some of which might be right, some of which might be unprovable. Give this set of ideas a new name. As a whole, the set of ideas is still wrong if it is essentially wrong, or predicated on wrong ideas. The addition of extra ideas to the collection only serves to confuse people, but doesn't make it "less wrong" as a whole.