by The other day yours truly had a post up on the Heckscher-Ohlin theorem, arguing that since the assumptions on which the theorem build are empirically false, one might, from a methodological point of view, wonder how we are supposed to evaluate tests of a theorem building on known to be false assumptions. What is the point of such tests? What can those tests possibly teach us? From falsehoods anything logically follows. Some people have had troubles with the last sentence — from falsehoods anything whatsoever follows. But that’s really nothing very deep or controversial. What I’m referring to — without going into the intricacies of distinguishing between ‘false,’ ‘inconsistent’ and self-contradictory’ statements –is the well-known “principle of explosion,” according to which if both a statement and its negation are considered true, any statement whatsoever can be inferred. Whilst tautologies, purely existential statements and other nonfalsi- fiable statements assert, as it were, too little about the class of possible basic statements, self-contradictory statements assert too much. From a self-contradictory statement, any statement whatsoever can be validly deduced. Consequently, the class of its potential falsifiers is identical with that of all possible basic statements: it is falsified by any statement whatsoever.
Topics:
Lars Pålsson Syll considers the following as important: Theory of Science & Methodology
This could be interesting, too:
Lars Pålsson Syll writes Randomization and causal claims
Lars Pålsson Syll writes Race and sex as causes
Lars Pålsson Syll writes Randomization — a philosophical device gone astray
Lars Pålsson Syll writes Keynes on the importance of ‘causal spread’
The other day yours truly had a post up on the Heckscher-Ohlin theorem, arguing that since the assumptions on which the theorem build are empirically false, one might, from a methodological point of view, wonder
how we are supposed to evaluate tests of a theorem building on known to be false assumptions. What is the point of such tests? What can those tests possibly teach us? From falsehoods anything logically follows.
Some people have had troubles with the last sentence — from falsehoods anything whatsoever follows.
But that’s really nothing very deep or controversial. What I’m referring to — without going into the intricacies of distinguishing between ‘false,’ ‘inconsistent’ and self-contradictory’ statements –is the well-known “principle of explosion,” according to which if both a statement and its negation are considered true, any statement whatsoever can be inferred.
Whilst tautologies, purely existential statements and other nonfalsi- fiable statements assert, as it were, too little about the class of possible basic statements, self-contradictory statements assert too much. From a self-contradictory statement, any statement whatsoever can be validly deduced. Consequently, the class of its potential falsifiers is identical with that of all possible basic statements: it is falsified by any statement whatsoever.