Analytic Truth-Value

This isn’t about what RM:AO is. This is about what theories are. Insofar you insist that theories, fundamentally, are something other than a set of instructions on how to generate predictions given certain parameters, I insist that you are delusional.

Magnus, all a theory is, is a hypothesis that’s been falsified.

I agree with James, that you are defining hypothesis as theory …

I start with a concept then search for a word that best suits it.

Because there are many more concepts than there are words, I am forced to either invent new words or use one and the same word for different concepts. I choose the latter.

Theory as I define it is different from both scientific hypothesis and scientific theory.

My concept of theory is broad.
Scientific concept of theory is specific.
Scientific concept of hypothesis is also specific.

My concept of theory includes both scientific theories and scientific hypotheses. Both are considered theories.

Can’t you understand this?

The goal is to understand what these “things” – hypotheses, theories, etc – fundamentally are. What they have in common.

And each one of them is a procedure that can be used to generate predictions based on some input parameters.

Each one of them has a truth value that is expressed as a set of tested predictions.

Each one of them is universally applicable, meaning, each predicts an infinite number of predictions, meaning, each has a conditional, finite, limited, relative truth value.

None of these “things” are thus absolute unless their scope is limited to a finite number of predictions. (Which again proves that truth is relative, limited, finite, conditional.)

You can stretch hypothesis to theory by saying that the hypothesis is what we call anecdotal evidence, which is still falsified evidence.

But in language, even the concepts anecdotal and statistically significant are separated.

Given this, I don’t think your definition encompasses theory and hypothesis both

You make no sense.

What is falsified evidence? How can you falsify evidence?
What does hypothesis have to do with anecdotal evidence or any other kind of evidence?
What does theory have to do with evidence? not to mention falsified evidence?

Where am I?
What is this place?

Falsified evidence is what conforms an inference about causality between two conceptual observations. Evidence doesn’t have to be falsified to be evidence of something. For example, a blood sample is evidence, but may never be falsified for a crime .

A theory is an abstract principle, the metaphysics.

A theory might say that masses attract each other. A hypothesis (a subset of theory) would then be to state that if one was to hang a small mass very close to a very large mass, the small mass would measurably move closer to the large mass. The experiment would be the actual exercise of testing the hypothesis that was based upon the theory.

The theory is falsifiable when an experiment can be arranged that would prove the theory false if it was indeed false. Some theories are so ambiguous and vague that no experiment could disprove the theory whether it was false or not. The Big Bang theory, for example, is not falsifiable through experiment and thus isn’t real science. The BB is actually merely conjecture.

  • Theory
  • Hypothesis
  • Experiment
  • Analysis

And “falsifiable evidence” would be evidence that could be proven to be false evidence if it really was false, as opposed to proposed evidence that could not be verified in any way.

I disagree…

Hypothesis is effectively an observation of causality …

Always from anecdotal falsification (otherwise we couldn’t even conceptualize it) - the principle is then expanded to a theory, which is a universalization of the hypothesis. Then the universalization comes into question as people ponder how to falsify universalizations!!

My point, hypothesis comes before theory, not the other way around

There’s a shocker.

Do you formulate a theory based upon a thesis?
Or do you write a thesis concerning a theory?

A hypothesis is a “hypo-thesis”, an underlying thesis concerning a theory.

Are you trying to play etymology games with me??

Language evolves, and so should you.

Hypo means “without”

What on earth does “without thesis” have to do with how we use the term hypothesis?

Maybe someone screwed up, who knows…

This is becoming absurd now.

You didn’t even define hypothesis that way!!!

Fortunately, you haven’t (nor MA) the authority to dictate evolution of language.

And thus the evolution of language …

What about albinos (hypo pigmented )

No pigment

James is a dribbler. The most effective way to dribble is to bury your head in social and mental constructs (such as language.)

Theory is a set of instructions that when followed generate predictions.

That’s it. Nothing to do with evidence, falsified or not.

Theory → prediction → observation

Theories can neither be proven nor disproven. Rather, their truth value, expressed as a set of tested predictions, can change. When people describe them as true or false this is either a simplification of their truth value or a reflection of whether their potential users decided to accept/apply them or reject/discard them, a decision which is based on need and not on something external.

Well, we’ll let that be your lil secret.

Need is not based on something external?

I think you need a few days to clean your mind from the virus of this thread Magnus, and then come back to it.

The reason James came at you the way he did, is because if everything is exactly the same (no external) existence cannot exist, and that’s a contradiction, because, existence does exist.

When I say that an object is 10cm in length I am doing so because of my need and not because the object-in-itself is 10cm.

A different need would require, and thus yield, a different measurement. Say 10.064368cm.

There is external reality but there are no objects-in-themselves.

We arrest the flux.
We must stop the rolling of a dice in order to read its value.

If there’s so much flux, then why is a precise measurement 10.06438… Seems like it could be -7.21?? Right??

In science a testable hypothesis has to be potentially falsifiable. Non testable hypotheses are not valid because they cannot be potentially falsifiable. Even
if they are true. And whilst theory and hypothesis might be interchangeable terms in common vernacular they have very specific and different meanings in
science. A theory is the highest body of work in science incorporating laws and principles to formulate a single unification and so nothing is above a theory
Whereas a hypothesis is at the other end of the spectrum and so is essentially no more than a reasonable guess or estimate based upon existing knowledge