5 ms·
> You have to appeal to some principle to sort out such theories from good descriptions of how the world works. Yes: testable predictions followed by experimen
by CarelessExpert 6y ago
> You have to appeal to some principle to sort out such theories from good descriptions of how the world works.
Yes: testable predictions followed by experimental evidence.
Beyond that I don't see how what you're talking about is anything other than an appeal to aesthetics.
- whimsicalism 6y ago> Yes: testable predictions followed by experimental evidence. But there are an infinite number of theories matching the current evidence. Some predictions of the theories might not be testable, what do you do then?
- willis936 6y agoSimple: you label them as fiction rather than science. The scientific method has experimental feedback built into the loop.
- Vitorystar 6y agoWell then you have to label everything as fiction rather than science because if you don't single out the simplest theory you can't say that general relativity is science and general relativity plus sun turns into cake tomorrow isn't science. And if someone tells you the sun will turn into cake tomorrow and claims that your theory where the sun doesn't turn into a cake tomorrow is fiction and unscientific cause it doesn't make predictions to distinguish it from their theory, you don't have any principled philosophical ground to disagree whith them . And that's not so clearly bad there because they are obiously wrong, but then you get to complicated topics where everyone has hard to resolve disagreements about which theory should be the default from a big pool of theories that seem to agree whith the evidence.
- willis936 6y agoDoing something clearly outside of empiricism then saying “why doesn’t empiricism cover this” is complete nonsense. What is the ontological explanation for your hypothesis that the sun will turn into cake? Misunderstanding the scientific method is not an issue with the scientific method.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]