Doppler and his white swans......

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onekeano

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One of my kids is studying in college and was telling me they are having a hrd time getting to grips with this theory of "falsification" mainly in the form of Doppler and his white swan / black swan theory.


I've tried reading up on it but am just as confused eg.

"The Infamous Philosophical Swans

Knowledge is not advanced by the negation of falsely certain propositions. Take for example, the now famous philosophical example of the false assertion of certainty that "all swans are white". This descriptive proposition cannot of itself be an advancement of knowledge. Whereas the description that some are black is a contribution to knowledge since it distinguishes black swans from white and other possibilities such as pink or green. The finding of black swans is of value in itself. (Indeed science distinguishes itself from the unproductive ruminations of modern philosophers on classical texts by constantly producing novel and increasingly elaborate descriptions of the world and new explanatory theories.) In addition the finding of black swans says nothing about the previous existence of extinct pink, flamingo-like swans or the future evolution of finch-like green swans. The value of the description of black swans as a falsification of the unreasonably certain hypothesis that 'all swans are presently white' is almost, if not totally, nil.

Consider also the possibility that all black swans might have recently died. The constancy of falsely certain beliefs can therefore be another reason for their rejection. Certainty of either verification or falsification of hypotheses in the absence of complete and definitive evidence should be rejected. Even then, what appears to be 'definitive' evidence should always be regarded as provisional.

By contrast the formulation of non-constant less than certain propositions concerning non-constant complex systems such as living things can have value. Some swans might presently be a colour other than white, or might have been so in the past or might be in the future under different conditions. The verification of that hypothesis comes by finding swans of a different colour. "

It might be a long shot but if someone out there could throw some light on this for me that would be much appreciated as I am trying to understand what it means in laymans language.

Roy
 
Well, broadly, since one of the basic tenets of philosophy is open-mindedness, just because the presence or absence of something, in terms of human experience, can be repeatedly demonstrated it doesn't mean it's true.

An extreme example - just because the sun rose this morning doesn't mean it will tomorrow.

This is probably all part of a bigger epistomology module or something. Great fun.
 
It'd be Popper's work on Falsifiability that they're referencing. Not sure I agree with the text you quote as it seems to get the wrong end of the stick with the principle and the swans.

In general Popper stated that for something to be "scientific" it had to be falsifiable, i.e. there is a means and way to prove it wrong. You may never prove it wrong, but there is a way to do so and that would be the feature of experimentation.

So if a theory is proposed, it should also be identified how it can be falsified. For example, "global warming" whether it be the general principle of the earth warming or that it is caused by man-made activities can be falsified. We can either show a) there is no warming or b) there is, but due to natural causes. Therefore, global warming theory is scientific because there is a means to falsify the theory.

Not to be controversial, but in general "God exists" cannot be scientific because you cannot falsify that statement. There is no means of proving that something doesn't exist, you can't prove a negative.

Without getting too much into the philosophical aspects, the swan analogy demonstrates a couple of aspects to science.

First, you observe a white swan and you state "that swan is white". We know that of all swans in existence, at least one swan is white. However, Popper's view is that this is pretty much all we can state. It comes back to a classic mistake made with some issues where a correlation is deemed to be a cause. So we observe an effect (say cancer in a population) and also identify that all the people who have cancer have at some point consumed white bread. That's a correlation, we cannot conclude that whiet bread causes cancer.

However, making the statement from seeing one white swan that all swans are white is weak science, but it is falsifiable. Simply observing one black swan at some point would disprove the statement. So to confuse, it's a weak conjecture, but it is in theory still falsifiable, i.e. not great but we can work with it and study it. However, the means of falsifying it would involve observing every single swan on the planet which is so impracticable as to make it unfalsifiable.

Therefore Popper's main argument was that he really didn't like the above "conjecture" means of developing scientific theory. He wanted more practical experiment based means of flasifying. The "Swan Philosophy" is really exploited in the world of conspiracy theories as while on ther surface there is a means of falsifying, it isn't practical.

So someone may say all swans are white and I find a black swan on the canal. They then change their statement to "all swans are white except those on the canal". Using that kind of conjecture, you can always modify your original theory to remain valid despite of evidence, largely because it is impracticable or impossible to fully falsify the original theory.

In summary the swan philosophy demonstrates both the good observation and theorising aspects of science, but also the potential for weak conjecture. It demonstrates the limits of falsification and that in order to meet a criteria as a scientific theory, those proposing the theory must also demonstrate or at least identify how their theory could be falsified.
 
It's kinda like Fianna Fail saying all last week that 1. We were not negotiating with the IMF and 2. We did not need a bail out.

Dermot Aherne can only see white swans.
 
Purple said:
Interesting thread.

Really great post Latrade.
Click to expand...

Yep, I'm just waiting for someone to turn it into a Public Sector versus Private Sector argument.

White swans have permanent, pensionable jobs...................

Anyone?
 
Slash said:
Yep, I'm just waiting for someone to turn it into a Public Sector versus Private Sector argument.

White swans have permanent, pensionable jobs...................

Anyone?
Click to expand...

Have the Black swans been Benchmarked against the White ones?
 
Latrade said:
It'd be Popper's work on Falsifiability that they're referencing. Not sure I agree with the text you quote as it seems to get the wrong end of the stick with the principle and the swans.
Click to expand...

I'll retract the statement on the quoted text getting the wrong end of the stick, it's just a bit badly written.

It's basically saying that the observation of one white swan is not enough to put forward a hypothesis on the current, historical or future colour of swans. Which is primarily Popper's argument (though even he put it much better).

Not sure of the context of the original quote, but in essence the finding of a white swan is an advancement of knowledge in that there is one or many white swans and nothing more. We cannot state it has given us any more information than that, as an absence of evidence for different coloured swans doesn't mean there aren't any black swans until we've surveyed every single swan. Even then we can't state there will never be a black swan born or that there never was a black swan prior to our survey. If we surveyed all swans and they were all white our advancement of knowledge is that as of today all swans are white.

Although Popper's work is largely applied to the development of scientific knowledge, it is also used in philosophy as a cautionary tale. Care needs to be taken in what statements are made on the basis of current knowledge and the conclusions drawn from that statement.
 
Latrade said:
it's just a bit badly written.
Click to expand...

The problem with a lot of philosophers TBH. It's just so bleedin' mealy mouthed and circumlocutory - although generally mainly because they are paranoid at their logic being torn apart by their rivals, so they attempt to sew up every loophole with titanium needles of verbosity.

Still though, in contrast, my barstool summation was a bit flippant (and not even fully accurate) in fairness

Good posts Latrade.
 
If you are looking for the Black Swan, it used to be on the canal in ,I think, Drimnagh. I'm told that they served a great pint of the black stuff

Apart from that information , its much ado about nothing ( or how can you ado or worse still much ado about nothing
 
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