I think your point about falsification is a good one. I in fact believe in falisifiability in some powerful sense of the word believe. I suspect a positive belief in falsifiability is at least weakly falsifiable. With time and resources one could look for correlations between belief in falsifiability and various forms of creativity and understanding. I would expect to find it highly correlated with engineering, scientific, and mathematical understanding and progress.
Of course “proving” falisifiabilty by using falisifiability is circular. In my own mind I fall back on instrumentalism: I claim I’m interested in learning falisifiable things about the world and don’t care whether we call them “true” or not and don’t care whether you call other non-falsifiable statements true or not, I’m interested in falsifiable ones. Behind or above that belief is my belief that I really want power, I want to be able to do things, and that it is the falsifiable statements only that allow me to manipulate the environment effectively: since non-falsifiable statements almost by definition don’t help me in manipulating the world in which I would be trying to falsify them.
Is a statement like “Slavery is wrong” falsifiable? Or even “Enslaving this particular child in this particular circumstance”? I think they are not “nakedly” falsifiable and in fact have zero problem imagining a world in which at least some people do not think they are wrong (we live in that world). I think the statement “Slavery is wrong because it reduces average happiness” is falsifiable. “Slavery is wrong because it misallocates human resources” is falsifiable. These reflect instrumentalist THEORIES of morality, theories which it does not seem to be could be falsifiable.
So I have an assumption of falsifiability. You may have an assumption of what is moral. I admit the symmetry.
I can tell you the “I can’t imagine it” test fails in epic fashion in science. One of the great thrills of special relativity and quantum mechanics is that they are so wildly non-intuitive for humans, and yet they are so powerfully instrumentally true in understanding absolute reams of phenomenon allowing us to correctly design communications satellites and transistors to name just two useful instrumentalities. So I suppose my belief against ” I can’t imagine it” as a useful way to learn the truth is a not-necessarily-logical extension of a powerful truth from one domain that I respect powerfully in to other domains.
Further, I CAN imagine a world in which slavery is moral. I can go two ways to imagine this: 1) mostly we don’t mind enslaving those who are not “people.” Are herds of cattle for food immoral? Is it unimaginable that they are moral? Well if you can’t imagine that is moral, what about cultivated fields of wheat? Human life in human bodies ends if we stop exploiting other life forms for nutritition. Sure, you can “draw the line” at chordates for whether cultivating a crop is “slavery” or not. Other people have drawn the line at clan members, family members, nation members, skin-color members. I’m sure there were many white slave holders in the southern U.S. who could not imagine a world in which enslaving white people was moral. Or enslaving British people. Or enslaving British aristocracy. So how far do you go to be sure you are not enslaving anything that shouldn’t be enslaved? Or do you trust your imagination that it is only people (or only chordates), even as you realize how powerfully other people’s imaginations have failed in the past?
I also reject all religious truth based on passed down stories of direct revelations from god. Again, this kind of belief fails epically in doing science, and I extend its failure there in to domains where perhaps it is not so easy to show it fails. And in my instrumentalist soul, I ultimately don’t care whether I am “right” or “wrong,” I would just rather use my limited time, energy, and brain-FLOPs pursuing falsifiable truths, and hope fort he best.
I think your point about falsification is a good one. I in fact believe in falisifiability in some powerful sense of the word believe. I suspect a positive belief in falsifiability is at least weakly falsifiable. With time and resources one could look for correlations between belief in falsifiability and various forms of creativity and understanding. I would expect to find it highly correlated with engineering, scientific, and mathematical understanding and progress.
Of course “proving” falisifiabilty by using falisifiability is circular. In my own mind I fall back on instrumentalism: I claim I’m interested in learning falisifiable things about the world and don’t care whether we call them “true” or not and don’t care whether you call other non-falsifiable statements true or not, I’m interested in falsifiable ones. Behind or above that belief is my belief that I really want power, I want to be able to do things, and that it is the falsifiable statements only that allow me to manipulate the environment effectively: since non-falsifiable statements almost by definition don’t help me in manipulating the world in which I would be trying to falsify them.
Is a statement like “Slavery is wrong” falsifiable? Or even “Enslaving this particular child in this particular circumstance”? I think they are not “nakedly” falsifiable and in fact have zero problem imagining a world in which at least some people do not think they are wrong (we live in that world). I think the statement “Slavery is wrong because it reduces average happiness” is falsifiable. “Slavery is wrong because it misallocates human resources” is falsifiable. These reflect instrumentalist THEORIES of morality, theories which it does not seem to be could be falsifiable.
So I have an assumption of falsifiability. You may have an assumption of what is moral. I admit the symmetry.
I can tell you the “I can’t imagine it” test fails in epic fashion in science. One of the great thrills of special relativity and quantum mechanics is that they are so wildly non-intuitive for humans, and yet they are so powerfully instrumentally true in understanding absolute reams of phenomenon allowing us to correctly design communications satellites and transistors to name just two useful instrumentalities. So I suppose my belief against ” I can’t imagine it” as a useful way to learn the truth is a not-necessarily-logical extension of a powerful truth from one domain that I respect powerfully in to other domains.
Further, I CAN imagine a world in which slavery is moral. I can go two ways to imagine this: 1) mostly we don’t mind enslaving those who are not “people.” Are herds of cattle for food immoral? Is it unimaginable that they are moral? Well if you can’t imagine that is moral, what about cultivated fields of wheat? Human life in human bodies ends if we stop exploiting other life forms for nutritition. Sure, you can “draw the line” at chordates for whether cultivating a crop is “slavery” or not. Other people have drawn the line at clan members, family members, nation members, skin-color members. I’m sure there were many white slave holders in the southern U.S. who could not imagine a world in which enslaving white people was moral. Or enslaving British people. Or enslaving British aristocracy. So how far do you go to be sure you are not enslaving anything that shouldn’t be enslaved? Or do you trust your imagination that it is only people (or only chordates), even as you realize how powerfully other people’s imaginations have failed in the past?
I also reject all religious truth based on passed down stories of direct revelations from god. Again, this kind of belief fails epically in doing science, and I extend its failure there in to domains where perhaps it is not so easy to show it fails. And in my instrumentalist soul, I ultimately don’t care whether I am “right” or “wrong,” I would just rather use my limited time, energy, and brain-FLOPs pursuing falsifiable truths, and hope fort he best.