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kenkibbey@gmail.com

Unfalsifiable Statements

Do unfalsifiable questions violate the Law of Excluded Middle?  Is there a third option answer to an unfalsifiable question besides yes or no?

Example: God exists, yes or no?

asked on Saturday, Jun 11, 2022 09:18:19 PM by kenkibbey@gmail.com

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Answers

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Ed F
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We need to distinguish between whether a statement is true or false, and whether we can determine whether a statement is true or false.  

Saying that a statement is unfalsifiable is to say that there's no procedure to determine whether the statement is false  (or by putting it in the form of a question, to ask about something that can't be falsified.)

The Law of the Excluded Middle is the law in traditional logic systems that says that every statement is either true or false.   (Although this is unintuitive, Propositional Logic and similar systems could not function without this basic assumption).  

This is unrelated to whether a statement is falsifiable or not, which has to do with whether there is a test to determine whether a statement is false, not whether the statement is true or false (or in-between).

 

answered on Sunday, Jun 12, 2022 01:09:49 PM by Ed F

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kenkibbey@gmail.com
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Example: God exists, yes or no?

There is no other option other than Yes or No. 

You could *fudge* an excluded middle by saying "maybe", but since that is the default position, technically it's not really an excluded middle.

 

answered on Sunday, Jun 12, 2022 06:28:37 PM by kenkibbey@gmail.com

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kenkibbey@gmail.com writes:

But if you *fudge* an excluded middle option of "maybe" and you say that is the default then that third option would have existed prior to the question. Meaning someone can remain on their default answer and not choose yes or no.

posted on Sunday, Jun 12, 2022 08:46:33 PM
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TrappedPrior (RotE)
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They're untestable, so their truth or falsity can't be evaluated with empirical evidence. This means that you can't answer either 'yes' or 'no' to the question of "is it true?" when the statement is taken at face value.

Thus, I don't think there's a middle to exclude.

 

answered on Sunday, Jun 12, 2022 08:34:43 AM by TrappedPrior (RotE)

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