Posts Tagged With: Imre Lakatos

(See Part 1)

5. Duhemian Problems of Falsification

Any interesting case of hypothesis falsification, or even a severe attempt to falsify, rests on both empirical and inductive hypotheses or claims. Consider the most simplistic form of deductive falsification (an instance of the valid form of modus tollens): “If H entails O, and not-O, then not-H.”  (To infer “not-H” is to infer H is false, or, more often, it involves inferring there is some discrepancy in what H claims regarding the phenomenon in question). Continue reading →