If I correctly understand the distinction you’re making between “untestable” and “meaningless”, then the hypothesis “God rewards Christians with Heaven and everyone else goes to Hell” is untestable but not meaningless, correct?
I don’t bother to work Bayes’ Theorem on untestable hypotheses, simply because there are an infinite number of untestable hypotheses and I don’t have time to formally do math on them all. This is more or less equivalent to assigning them zero probability.
I stand by my claim that it’s improper to say that an untestable hypothesis is “more likely” or “less likely” than a testable hypothesis, or another untestable one. Just because people are known to assign arbitrary probabilities to untestable hypotheses, doesn’t make it a good or useful thing to do.
If I correctly understand the distinction you’re making between “untestable” and “meaningless”, then the hypothesis “God rewards Christians with Heaven and everyone else goes to Hell” is untestable but not meaningless, correct?
Yes, that’s right. But in the evpsych context almost all hypotheses are at least meaningful, so we’re drifting off the issue.
If you were unsure of evpsych story X, and you found a way to test it, would your probability for X go up? It shouldn’t, and that’s all I’m saying. The possibility of future evidence is not evidence.
If I correctly understand the distinction you’re making between “untestable” and “meaningless”, then the hypothesis “God rewards Christians with Heaven and everyone else goes to Hell” is untestable but not meaningless, correct?
I don’t bother to work Bayes’ Theorem on untestable hypotheses, simply because there are an infinite number of untestable hypotheses and I don’t have time to formally do math on them all. This is more or less equivalent to assigning them zero probability.
I stand by my claim that it’s improper to say that an untestable hypothesis is “more likely” or “less likely” than a testable hypothesis, or another untestable one. Just because people are known to assign arbitrary probabilities to untestable hypotheses, doesn’t make it a good or useful thing to do.
Yes, that’s right. But in the evpsych context almost all hypotheses are at least meaningful, so we’re drifting off the issue.
If you were unsure of evpsych story X, and you found a way to test it, would your probability for X go up? It shouldn’t, and that’s all I’m saying. The possibility of future evidence is not evidence.