Verifying the Falsifiability Criterion

The 20th century philosopher of science, Karl Popper, through his falsifiability criterion, proposed a novel approach to scientific discovery. Though his criterion was eventually shown to be flawed, it nonetheless at least bequeathed us with knowledge of how not to practice science. Popper’s falsifiability criterion was, at its core, rooted in the Humean problem of induction. His essential argument was that empirical statements were no more verifiable than metaphysical ones since they were inductively derived from true premises. The inherent, obvious error in Popper’s conclusion aside, ironically enough, Popper never considered that the judgments necessitated through his own proposed criterion were ultimately not free of verification. 

The verifiability criterion is a long-standing central tenet of science according to which scientific claims must necessarily be observable in the world or induced from experience. Rejecters of inductivism, on the other hand, would assert that inferential conclusions, irrespective of inductive strength, are invalid and therefore illegitimate criteria for the formulation of any knowledge-based conclusions. Karl Popper belonged to this camp of inductivism rejecters and sought other criteria by which apodictic conclusions could be drawn. In this vein, he eventually proposed his falsifiability criterion. According to Popper, in order for statements to be scientifically valid, they must conflict with observations. In other words, if a proposed positively-stated hypothesis cannot be empirically verified, if it is contradictory to an observable, factual outcome, then it is scientifically apodictic. At this point, if you will be so kind as to excuse my doing so, I am going to remove nuance from the equation and provide an over-the-top example to highlight the problematic conclusions that the falsifiability criterion may bear. Nonetheless, I believe it will allow for a crystal illustration into its shortcomings. Consider the following.

Hypothesis: If a man weighing 220 lbs. jumps off the top of the Empire State Building at 2:00PM U.S. ET in the afternoon, the laws of gravity will cease to apply to the man.

Observation: The man weighing 220 lbs. hits the pavement approximately 9.8 seconds after 2:00PM U.S. ET on a New York City afternoon and is, to put it innocuously, immediately liquefied.

Conclusion: The claim that the laws of gravity cease to apply to a man weighing 220 lbs. if he jumps off the top of the Empire State Building at 2:00PM U.S. ET in the afternoon is scientific in nature.

As you can see, applying the falsifiability criterion to this hypothetical factual pattern renders the statement a scientific one. Such is the absurdity of the falsifiability criterion, at least in its most basic manifestation. Lest you think I am being overly harsh, prominent philosophers have criticized Popper’s falsifiability criterion, including the likes of Larry Laudan according to whom the falsifiability criterion “has the untoward consequence of countenancing as scientific every crank claim which makes ascertainably false assertions.” This leads me to what truly puzzles me about Popper’s inductivist rejection. Accepting, for the sake of argument, that the hypothesis in the foregoing example is a scientific one (it is not), would it not have to be verified that the claim is factually significant? In other words, wouldn't the claim that the laws of gravity cease to apply to a man weighing 220 lbs. if he jumps off the top of the Empire State Building at 2:00PM U.S. ET in the afternoon need to be observable in the world before the conclusion could proceed from the application of the falsifiability criterion? Is it not upon observing that the laws of gravity do not cease to apply that we reach the (erroneous) conclusion that the claim is scientific?

It appears to me that the substitution of positively-stated claims in a hypothesis with negatively-stated ones does not obviate the necessity of verifying that the negatively-stated claim contradicts observation. If we are to consider falsifiability as the factually significant criterion, then the empirical claim regarding falsifiability also requires verification in a manner similar to how empirical claims affirming something would.

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