Falsifiability

How does the brain generate consciousness? Baroness Susan Greenfield: ANU

I was listening to this presentation by Susan Greenfield about some scientific work in neuroscience. Several ideas captured my full attention. One was this expression of a key scientific concept:

«…I don’t care if this is right, at all. That is not important. What does matter is that it is testable; and that’s why it is important that we can at last use science to develop falsifiable hypotheses.»

The concept of falsifiability is essential because it helps us to ponder how much of “science” there is in any given idea or system of related ideas —a scientific theory. By concepts like this of falsifiability we can now know that phrenology is a pseudoscience.

Falsifiability is a very important concept that must be understood in order to identify a scientific endeavor. I would go so far as to suggest that it is a very useful intellectual pattern to follow when building opinion on other matters. I wonder if scholars in non-natural sciences fields, like political science, adhere to this intellectual standard of falsifiability when they are doing research.

Is it the case? It sounds like falsifiability should be the basis for demarcation in any kind of science, but it is too early for me to accept that; that is, before doing some research among what social scholars have to say on the matter.

Science and theology

If there are false dilemmas between theology and science it is because there are superficial views of both fields. There is a lot of thinking to do and hard work on self-education in order to build informed and justified opinions not just about supernatural deities but about the world we all live in.

I am not an atheist; but I do not hold the naïve faith of my younger years anymore. Now I despise pretentious absolute truth claims from both, theists and atheists. For example, the theistic claim that there is an anthropomorphic deity ruling the natural world from a supernatural realm; or the atheistic claim that the religious instinct is a trait of stupidity. I despise the arrogance in any position that present itself as if there is nothing more to learn.

There is a lot to learn, unlearn, and relearn about philosophy, theology and science. In the realm of theology, I look for ways to think about —as R.C. Sproul put it— «God» as that-than-which-no-greater-can-be-thought, so I study a variety of perspectives from different forms of both, theism and atheism. I study individual works from theist theologians, atheist theologians, and also from philosophers, theist scientists, and atheist scientists. I also listen to their discussions and debates.

A problem with many debates between science and theology is that, often, both sides defend a position based on mutual ignorance; that is, both sides forget what John Stuart Mill wrote time ago about the value in refuting, ourselves, our own arguments from an opposite perspective.

An outcome of such mutual ignorance is a “debate” on which each side argues from two different levels of abstraction, and they pretend to ignore the various synthesis proposed by thinkers who actually took the time to learn and understand both fields, science and theology.

So far, I have studied the works of philosophers and theologians like Charles Finney, William Lane Craig, Hans Küng, and others, and I have not found any ground for the uninformed faith of my younger years. Yet, I also see around me many religious institutions doing very little, if any, to help kids and adults to leave behind the different kinds of uninformed faith. For example, the answers from William Lane Craig in the following video imply a particular conceptual and philosophical level in order to properly understand them, but it is very unlikely such intellectual level is actually present at churches. I wonder why this situation has remained since long time ago.

A Conversation About Faith and Reason (William Lane Craig)