Dr. Philip Goff, Will Academia Get Beyond Materialism? |409|

For example, given some sort of Dualism, it might be possible to test the concept by looking for ways in which information could be stored outside of the physical universe, and then retrieved. In other words, there would suddenly become a respectable scientific reason to test Rupert Sheldrake's morphic field concept, instead of scoffing at it, as happens right now.

If there is a passion for truth, your suggestion has merit. But if the the passion is to prevent exposure to potentially catastrophic truths, it is not about to happen.

One thing that came through for me in my thesis was that humans are inherently 'animistic' - a fundamental attribute of our psyche. In a way it like saying that whether or not you believe in God is a matter of choice. It isn't. But what and how you believe is. There are a number of pretty decent scholars who talk about a 'secular religion' - observing that materialistic or atheistic POVs nevertheless formulate in the same essential structure as religious belief. So an atheist is just a kind of theist.

Let's take love as an example. The extreme psychopath maybe unloving, but that does not mean love does not exist for them. In the movie, Silence of the Lambs we still saw the raw mechanism of love - just not attached to any values and sentiments we normally recognise. Hatred is not the opposite to love in an absolute sense - just the extreme end of a spectrum on which we have what we call love at a 'positive' end and hatred at a 'negative' end.

I know I am going to get bunch of objections invoking Hitler and the likes. But consider domestic violence where so often a man and a woman profess love each other and yet will engage in violence to the point of serious injury and death. We can say there is no love here. Or we can see there is but it is profoundly screwed up and toxic.

The underpinning mechanisms of love are not what we want to see. They are in every one of us, but in some they are expressed in glorious ways, and in others as toxic and even lethal ways. We are disposed to idealise love, when what we actually mean is the positive extreme. The fundamental essence is about connection - belonging and inclusion. The pathological expression is owning and exclusion.

We need to stop thinking in separating dualities that can dispossess a person of attributes just because we find them offensive. We need to starting thinking continuities and spectrums.

So back to your point, David. What you say is reasonable - and that's the problem. When grown up educated people scoff at opinions they do not share, look for the pathology. We are dealing with existential anxiety that must be assuaged first. But, because we have our head up our collective asses most of the time, we neglect the emotional response to ideas. For the most part what we fondly call 'ideas' are mostly 90% emotion and 10% rational thought. That should tell us we need to attend more to our emotions, and get them in order. But instead we lie to ourselves and pretend intellect dominates and we will work out by being 'reasonable', and we need to be informed by knowledge. Rubbish!

So this is my long winded way of say that the only way Sheldrake will be then seriously is when there is an emotional evolution/revolution. The momentum is building. But we ain't there yet.
 
still cant shake the feeling that there are bodies outside bodies (cell,body,family,tribe, nation etc) like images on clear glass overlapping and forming a complete body but individual in themselves.In some way this explains the infatuation with the feeling of control by secret groups,
whereas a lot is just us in the different group body manifestations watching ourselves. Pretty vague I know but its an incomplete idea.

Blaise, I have to start off by saying I love your image. Usually I am not much taken by the various alias people post instead of their photos. But I know this image and the story behind it. So your motive to select it intrigues me.

Explore the idea of holography. There is a Hermetic saying 'As above, so below' - every fragment is an expression of the whole, the One. We see a hint of this in genetics. Also in mathematics and elsewhere, and I am sure that some of the more formally erudite forum members will direct you to useful thought.

The idea that reality is hierarchical, layered and yet still local was introduced to me ages ago in the Western Mystery Tradition's rendering of the Jewish Qabala - the model of reality was the same at every scale.

In relation to the "infatuation with the feeling of control by secret groups" there is an intellectual hubris that if you get the ideation right you can do magic. But that's BS. You can create the illusion of control, but never to good end. See how it has delivered us into a state of crisis? It is always collaborative and co-creative. That's what early religions were about - finding the existential balance between the human and the divine and expressing that as a code for human conduct (at the superficial level - the deeper stuff remained mysterious).

Its not a vague idea. Its a deep intuition. You just don't know how to honour your senses yet.
 
So back to your point, David. What you say is reasonable - and that's the problem. When grown up educated people scoff at opinions they do not share, look for the pathology. We are dealing with existential anxiety that must be assuaged first. But, because we have our head up our collective asses most of the time, we neglect the emotional response to ideas. For the most part what we fondly call 'ideas' are mostly 90% emotion and 10% rational thought. That should tell us we need to attend more to our emotions, and get them in order. But instead we lie to ourselves and pretend intellect dominates and we will work out by being 'reasonable', and we need to be informed by knowledge. Rubbish!

So this is my long winded way of say that the only way Sheldrake will be then seriously is when there is an emotional evolution/revolution. The momentum is building. But we ain't there yet.
I don't think I am as pessimistic, because I think science has become as bad as it is, because nobody insists on answers from scientists to the obvious questions. They are simply allowed on the media to spin whatever yarn they like.

The idea that people should attend more to their emotions is no doubt true, but it is a very long term solution, because nobody is listening. Politics nowadays seems to be almost wholly devoted to emotions - mainly hate.

David
 
Ta. Will, try that.
You can also look at and adjust the source code before you post your comment. You just click on the little wheel/gear button at the far right of the all the icons at the top of where you're typing (when you hover your mouse over it, it says Toggle BB Code). Every time you click the I button up top to apply italic formatting or the B button for bold, for example, the software automatically applies simple html tags, and you can see those tags and adjust them when you press the Toggle BB Code.

When you have italic text in a post you are writing, and you click that wheel/gear icon, you will see the html tag for italic is the letter "I" with brackets around it [ ] at the beginning of the italic text and the same thing at the end with a / before the "I" (kind of like the QUOTE and /QUOTE in brackets changes text into quoted text in a post). If you want to get rid of the italic text all together, just click the wheel/gear so you're looking at the source code and delete the tags entirely. You can also add italic that way if you want, just click into the source code view and add the "I" tags where you want them. Or you can move the tags, so the exact right text is italicized. It's just a way of manually applying formatting. It can be fun to play around with, although also kind of fussy. It may take some messing around with to get the hang of it. But you are a good writer, and it's nice to have some command of the html tags so you can use them as tools to enhance what you have to say .... instead of feeling like you're wrestling with them. Hope this helps, Michael! Good luck!
 
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Let me put it the other way round - I don't see how Bernardo's ideas could ever be falsified by observation - even in principle. If that is so, it means that strictly speaking Idealism isn't a scientific theory - even though it might represent ultimate reality! Tell me how anyone could test - and therefore potentially refute Bernardo's Idealism.

Science has always developed in stages, and I am far more interested in the minimal extension to normal science that would encompass a lot of the phenomena we discuss here, rather than the maximal possible extension. For example, given some sort of Dualism, it might be possible to test the concept by looking for ways in which information could be stored outside of the physical universe, and then retrieved. In other words, there would suddenly become a respectable scientific reason to test Rupert Sheldrake's morphic field concept, instead of scoffing at it, as happens right now. I'd guess it could be proven beyond all reasonable doubt if enough effort were put into the job.

Successive minimal theoretical extensions of that sort, might end up encompassing BK's Idealism.

David

I see you seem to buy into the idea that science concerns that which can be falsified, which was Popper's deceit proffered so that he could exclude from science ideas he didn't like -- particularly those in what we call the social sciences. The STEM fields adopted Popperianism enthusiastically because it meant that they could from the get-go exclude anything they didn't like and enhance the cachet of their own fields.

But the fact is, and I've posted on this before, hypotheses in STEM fields are often, effectively, no more falsifiable than elsewhere, at least in the short to mid-term. Scientists don't even try these days to falsify a lot of hypotheses. What they tend to do, more or less a priori, is choose a hypothesis in line with materialistic principles and then go looking for evidence to support it. Any evidence against such a hypothesis (particularly if it threatens the whole materialistic edifice) is often treated as an excuse to tweak it to accommodate such evidence rather than to reject the hypothesis.

Don't believe me? Then why is panpsychism becoming more popular? The evidence against materialism is becoming stronger and stronger, and panpsychism offers a way out of the dilemma because it can be cast in materialistic, bottom-up terms. This lessens the Hard Problem of consciousness, but creates the possibly-as-hard combination problem. As Sheldrake said in the excellent Rune Soup video that Wormwood posted, scientists are unwittingly creating many other problems for themselves.

IMO, materialism will likely be dropped not because it's categorically falsified, but because it will become more and more untenable. At some stage, I suspect idealism or something closely related to it will become the new paradigm, and scientists will begin to seriously entertain evidence in favour of it. And of course, idealism might itself turn out to be unfalsifiable (at least from a second-person perspective), but would that make it unscientific? The association between falsifiability and science has become a mantra, but they are in fact separable concepts. Already, people can do, and do do, science in areas that may well be unfalsifiable (unless at some future date the promissory notes materialise -- good luck with that).

I doubt it's possible at this stage of play for a minimal extension of the zeitgeist to accommodate all the emerging data. As Kuhn indicated, we may be reaching the end of a longish period of consensual science and a new paradigm could be about to emerge in a rather sudden scientific revolution.
 
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I don't think I am as pessimistic, because I think science has become as bad as it is, because nobody insists on answers from scientists to the obvious questions. They are simply allowed on the media to spin whatever yarn they like.

The trouble is that we have not formulated the questions to the 'obvious questions' in a way that has caught their attention. We had the same problem when Christians were allowed unfettered exposure on public broadcasting here in Australia. What put paid them was not a coherent and articulate expression of objection, but boredom. People stopped listening. Materialists are, I think, headed the same way. In fact I think that is already happening.

There are still some media steeped in the materialist mentality. For a long time our ABC (Aust. Broadcasting Corp.) was flagrantly materialistic and atheistic - and it probably still is. But in an age of global podcasting I no longer give a damn. When conservatives complain the ABC has left bias that is true - so it should - but the atheistic left is not the same as the socially progressive left - a fact lost on a lot of complainants.

The media finely judges its audience, but not accurately, so it lives or dies on its own biased assessment of what is a good business case for this or that POV. It mostly gets it wrong, which is why broadcast media hangs on perilously.

The ABC here recently agreed to take the CBC show 'Ideas', which is way more progressive than anything our boring old Marxists would agree to. That's a function of cost cutting, rather than liberalisation of thought - a bit like why marijuana laws have changed in the US. Fiscal pragmatism has unintended consequences.
 
But I think there were also folk pulling them off when they tried to get back on. Things were fine when a uni education was free, but when uni became hungry for money we discovered there was no profit in an arts degree.
I don't buy this excuse. for the most part, I just think they're just lazy thinkers. the biggest shift in our lifetime has been the democratization of education. want a close-to-being-there educational experience at one of the top universities in the world... No problem just click the link:
Audio/Video Lectures | MIT OpenCourseWare | Free Online Course ...

Bernardo Kastrup is a great representation of what I'm talkin about. a philosopher that can't be bullshitted by simple minded "scientific" nonsense.

The last time I interviewed Dr. Kripal he was quick to the retreat to the "I don't know anything about that... and since I don't talk about stuff I don't know about, I can't really say." I mean, that would be ok if we were about laser physics or some exotic technology, but he shouldn't be so easily thrown off the horse with questions pertaining to alt-religion, extended consciousness and basic neuroscience.
 
They could ask about the true significance of conditions on Venus.


right. The other big shift in our lifetime is how multidisciplinary academia has become. most peer review papers are quite readable. it's inexcusable for academics to remain willfully ignorant on on stuff they really should know about.

I think Dr. Phillip Goff is doing great work, but I can't quite wrap my head around the fact that a google search of "philip goff parapsychology" and "philip goff near death experience" comes up empty.

haha... I just rechecked... empty no more:
https://www.google.com/search?q="ph...e"&aqs=chrome..69i57&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
 
There are still some media steeped in the materialist mentality. For a long time our ABC (Aust. Broadcasting Corp.) was flagrantly materialistic and atheistic - and it probably still is. But in an age of global podcasting I no longer give a damn. When conservatives complain the ABC has left bias that is true - so it should - but the atheistic left is not the same as the socially progressive left - a fact lost on a lot of complainants.

I'm having trouble unpacking this para, Michael. Are you saying that conservatives complain about leftist bias on the ABC and so they should (a possible typo with "it" rather than "they"), or that the ABC should rightly have a leftist bias? If it's the latter, and I suspect it is, then it would appear that you also have a leftist bias; I'm not judging that, I just want to be sure I understand your meaning.

As to the difference between the atheistic and socially progressive left, it's not something I can claim to have noticed. Social progressives on the left tend in my experience to also be atheist. So I'm not quite sure I get your point.
 
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IMO, materialism will likely be dropped not because it's categorically falsified, but because it will become more and more untenable

Michael, I loved your whole post. Spot on mate!

This is what we need to understand - change is generational - but only because we are driving the need for change. Materialism is becoming untenable because it does not speak a generation raised on Harry Potter. The first HP book was published in 1997, so a 10 year old then is now 32. That's old enough to have a science PhD and then some. When you look at the childhood influences of children born in the late 1980s an early 1990s you will appreciate that kids have been conditioned to think in very different ways, relative to earlier generations. It does not matter what the belief system is in a family if the entertainment pumps out a message that is inconsistent with it.

In fact, back in 1998 I had a conversation with a couple of very smart 12 year olds.They were agog at my interest in UFOs and ET and desperate to talk. Not only had no other adult confessed an interest, they had been persecuted at school for their passion. I asked one why he was so hot on the subject and he said, "Because I want to know what they know." He said this with such a fire of passion.

But how does a 12 year old get to know about UFOs and ET? Because adults enabled that imagination. It is adult passion that is conveyed to kids via the medium of entertainment. Kids did not write the Harry Potter books - or market them or buy them. We talk about generational change as if new insights spring from the minds and imaginations of children, and there is no transmission. In fact there have always been adult transmitters in each generation, and children receptors.

Materialism is untenable in a quantum age. The culture is there already riding a horse into the future, and its a bunch of conceited intellectual dullards who are walking behind, scooping up the horse shit, and declaring they have discovered horse.
 
I'm having trouble unpacking this para, Michael. Are you saying that conservatives complain about leftist bias on the ABC and so they should (a possible typo with "it" rather than "they"), or that the ABC should rightly have a leftist bias? If it's the latter, and I suspect it is, then it would appear that you also have a leftist bias; I'm not judging that, I just want to be sure I understand your meaning.

As to the difference between the atheistic and socially progressive left, it's not something I can claim to have noticed. Social progressives on the left tend in my experience to also be atheist. So I'm not quite sure I get your point.

Okay. I say public broadcasting should have a leftist bias because it urges change and evolution. I don't have to agree with it in detail. Most left biases are atheistic, which is unfortunate because a lot of progressives are religious. But you do get right wing atheism and left wing theism.

My preference for leftist thought include leftist theistic thought - not because of its content so much as its passion for change. On then other hand, conservatism in inherently resistant to change, and has been traditionally described as right wing.

I favour the momentum for change for the better, but that does not mean inherent support for the left. In the past near 30 years, although I have favoured the left in federal politics, I have preferred the right at a state level. This is because federal politicians tend to be dogmatic idiots, and I prefer leftist dogmatists at that level. But at a state level I prefer rightist pragmatists.

When it comes to the ABC I find its inherent atheism and materialism a betrayal of the public trust. The right says the ABC has a left bias, which the ABC denies, but I think this is dishonest and misleading. A public broadcaster should always lean left, but be balanced in its coverage. That's not difficult.

The CBC does a better job than the ABC. Because it is not controlled by unconscious biases to the same degree, it is more effective in supporting the progressive outlook.

I see conservartism as a valid political philosophy who's function it is to be a brake on change, and a balance to precipitous change. But it cannot be the governing mentality.
 
I see you seem to buy into the idea that science concerns that which can be falsified, which was Popper's deceit proffered so that he could exclude from science ideas he didn't like -- particularly those in what we call the social sciences. The STEM fields adopted Popperianism enthusiastically because it meant that they could from the get-go exclude anything they didn't like and enhance the cachet of their own fields.

But the fact is, and I've posted on this before, hypotheses in STEM fields are often, effectively, no more falsifiable than elsewhere, at least in the short to mid-term. Scientists don't even try these days to falsify a lot of hypotheses. What they tend to do, more or less a priori, is choose a hypothesis in line with materialistic principles and then go looking for evidence to support it. Any evidence against such a hypothesis (particularly if it threatens the whole materialistic edifice) is often treated as an excuse to tweak it to accommodate such evidence rather than to reject the hypothesis.
The fact that many people also get away with un-falsifiable theories doesn't really doesn't justify introducing another, particularly blatant one. I mean, if the whole of reality is created by consciousness (or is a reflection of consciousness) then if (say) everybody could levitate for one day, then things returned to normal, all that could be said about this event would be that MAL was probably feeling a bit whimsical!
Don't believe me? Then why is panpsychism becoming more popular? The evidence against materialism is becoming stronger and stronger, and panpsychism offers a way out of the dilemma because it can be cast in materialistic, bottom-up terms. This lessens the Hard Problem of consciousness, but creates the possibly-as-hard combination problem. As Sheldrake said in the excellent Rune Soup video that Wormwood posted, scientists are unwittingly creating many other problems for themselves.

As I suggested above, I think when scientists postulate panpsychism, they are really just dipping their toes into non-materialist waters. I don't think they have a thought out position.

David
 
Blaise, I have to start off by saying I love your image. Usually I am not much taken by the various alias people post instead of their photos. But I know this image and the story behind it. So your motive to select it intrigues me.

Explore the idea of holography. There is a Hermetic saying 'As above, so below' - every fragment is an expression of the whole, the One. We see a hint of this in genetics. Also in mathematics and elsewhere, and I am sure that some of the more formally erudite forum members will direct you to useful thought.

The idea that reality is hierarchical, layered and yet still local was introduced to me ages ago in the Western Mystery Tradition's rendering of the Jewish Qabala - the model of reality was the same at every scale.

In relation to the "infatuation with the feeling of control by secret groups" there is an intellectual hubris that if you get the ideation right you can do magic. But that's BS. You can create the illusion of control, but never to good end. See how it has delivered us into a state of crisis? It is always collaborative and co-creative. That's what early religions were about - finding the existential balance between the human and the divine and expressing that as a code for human conduct (at the superficial level - the deeper stuff remained mysterious).

Its not a vague idea. Its a deep intuition. You just don't know how to honour your senses yet.

Hi Michael
Thanks so much, I chose the image because the story brings joy to my heart, I used to take the picture away with me and put it up on the Bridge
and when things got too serious I would look at it, it also looks a lot like I feel when confused.
You are right about honoring your senses.I was watching a fog bank early the other morning as it was forming over a small stream, suddenly
the whole area was in thick fog, then it all dissipated, then instantly reformed much higher up as a cloud, no wind perfectly still, no inversion layer.
It behaved in a way not at all like it should have as I was taught in Uni, but I saw what I saw, if I hadn't been observing closely I would have easily have convinced myself it was behaving as per textbook.
 
I think feelings of meaninglessness (pointlessness of life) are due to brain chemistry rather than any logical assessment.
And yet Rupert Sheldrake says (in Wormwood's link) that depression (perhaps brought about by feelings of meaninglessness) has been alleviated by practicing meditation,singing and dancing. Do you think this is the result of chemical changes caused by these activities? Could it not be by discovering a sense of connection, humility and meaning in the face of something greater than ourselves?
 
It's broadly agreed in academic philosophy that what neuroscience contributes to the science of consciousness is correlations. They may also provide explanations of other mental phenomena, so long as those phenomena are defined functionally.
Hi Philip

Given the many previous examples where prevailing academic science has denied discoveries that have since become proven and generally accepted, for e.g. tectonic plate movement (often sadly too late for the advocate to be justly credited, except perhaps from the other side!) wouldn't it be more honest, mature and reasonable to state that as (the dominant) science does not know, other hypotheses might? And not add 'but we're sure to find it where we're looking for it' i.e. within its preferred materialist paradigm.

Isn't there a correlation between the many examples of brain death or incapacity and the evidence of consciousness, for e.g. in out-of-body experiences? How are OBE and NDEs not functional?

Sticking to a dissolving, barely existent promise of proof is surely more likely to lose such pragmatists general approval and trust. And where is the accountability for holding up the progress of understanding with this long-term denial?

Thanks for your very considerate interview
Alice
 
And yet Rupert Sheldrake says (in Wormwood's link) that depression (perhaps brought about by feelings of meaninglessness) has been alleviated by practicing meditation,singing and dancing. Do you think this is the result of chemical changes caused by these activities? Could it not be by discovering a sense of connection, humility and meaning in the face of something greater than ourselves?

What does alleviated mean? In the papers I've seen, it means patients needed lower doses of medication, it didn't mean they were cured. When depression is caused by cognitive factors meditation might help a lot. When depression is caused by biochemical factors meditation can help patients cope, but cannot always cure underlying biological problems.

If singing and dancing could cure depression, people would have figured that out a long time ago. Various behavioral and mental techniques can influence brain chemistry to some extent. In healthy people brain chemistry is constantly changing due to changes in conditions, people feel happy and sad, angry and peaceful. You can control that by controlling your environment and behavior. But when the brain is not working right because of a biological problem ... it doesn't work right, it doesn't respond to environment and behavior the way a normal brain does.

I think it's true that your beliefs including spiritual beliefs can influence your mood, attitude, and behavior (brain chemistry).

But I think spiritual experiences occur when your brain chemistry is altered.
 
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I see you seem to buy into the idea that science concerns that which can be falsified, which was Popper's deceit proffered so that he could exclude from science ideas he didn't like -- particularly those in what we call the social sciences.
Just to try to clarify your views - what alternative is there to falsifiability? I mean if an hypothesis can't be falsified in any way at all, it can simply sit there indefinitely, and there can be infinitely many such theories!

David
 
Just to try to clarify your views - what alternative is there to falsifiability? I mean if an hypothesis can't be falsified in any way at all, it can simply sit there indefinitely, and there can be infinitely many such theories!

David

Agreed. I tend to agree with Popper on this - we have

1. Ideas which masquerade as hypothesis, when they are not, and
2. Hypotheses which do not place anything at risk. And finally
3. Hypotheses which are appointed status as the null hypothesis, when they have passed zero rigor of any form of science.

And these persist as 'knowledge' - so Popper had a great point. Falsifiability dispels all the smoke around such pseudo-theory.

This is why, for me, I chose the definition of religion to be: the compulsory adherence to an idea around which testing for falsification is prohibited.
 
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To me "the meaning of life" does not really make sense. I don't know what that phrase means. Symbols, words, numbers have meaning. How can life have meaning? Life is not a symbol it is an experience. I assume what the phrase refers to is purpose. Life can have a purpose, chosen by the individual or a higher spiritual being. I do think/feel that life has purpose.
Well I suppose that real materialists don't just think life has no meaning, but that everything contained in that life has no meaning. The philosophy drains life of all meaning.
I think feelings of meaninglessness (pointlessness of life) are due to brain chemistry rather than any logical assessment. This is based on my own experience of consciousness. Sometimes I feel happy, sometimes sad. My mood changes. When my mood changes my "logic" changes. When you are angry you might say or do things you otherwise wouldn't. When you are in love you might say or do things you otherwise wouldn't. Logic, truth, right and wrong, are dependent on a person's emotional state (brain chemistry).
I don't know - the last I heard SSRI antidepressants such as Prozac are now rated no better than placebo. However, I seem to remember that there is some drug that can be given experimentally that makes people suicidal within a few minutes, and lasts for a short time.

You really have to be wary of junk science, and conscious really is non-physical, it isn't at all clear why meditation or dancing can't do the trick.

David
 
https://kenrahn.com/JFK/Critical_thinking/Science_pseudo_falsifiability.html
Science, Pseudo-Science, and Falsifiability
Karl Popper, 1962

The problem which troubled me at the time was neither, "When is a theory true?" nor, "When is a theory acceptable?" My problem was different. I wished to distinguish between science and pseudo-science; knowing very well that science often errs, and that pseudo-science may happen to stumble on the truth.
I knew, of course, the most widely accepted answer to my problem: that science is distinguished from pseudo-science—or from "metaphysics"—by its empirical method, which is essentially inductive, proceeding from observation or experiment. But this did not satisfy me. On the contrary, I often formulated my problem as one of distinguishing between a genuinely empirical method and a non-empirical or even a pseudo-empirical method—that is to say, a method which, although it appeals to observation and experiment, nevertheless does not come up to scientific standards. The latter method may be exemplified by astrology, with its stupendous mass of empirical evidence based on observation—on horoscopes and on biographies.
But as it was not the example of astrology which led me to my problem I should perhaps briefly describe the atmosphere in which my problem arose and the examples by which it was stimulated. After the collapse of the Austrian Empire there had been a revolution in Austria: the air was full of revolutionary slogans and ideas, and new and often wild theories. Among the theories which interested me Einstein’s theory of relativity was no doubt the most important. Three others were Marx’s theory of history, Freud’s psycho-analysis, and Alfred Adler’s so-called "individual psychology."
There was a lot of popular nonsense talked about these theories, and especially about relativity (as still happens even today), but I was fortunate in those who introduced me to the study of this theory. We all—the small circle of students to which I belonged—were thrilled with the result of Eddington’s eclipse observations which in 1919 brought the first important confirmation of Einstein’s theory of gravitation. It was a great experience for us, and one which had a lasting influence on my intellectual development.
The three other theories I have mentioned were also widely discussed among students at that time. I myself happened to come into personal contact with Alfred Adler, and even to cooperate with him in his social work among the children and young people in the working-class districts of Vienna where he had established social guidance clinics.
It was during the summer of 1919 that I began to feel more and more dissatisfied with these three theories—the Marxist theory of history, psycho-analysis, and individual psychology; and I began to feel dubious about their claims to scientific status. My problem perhaps first took the simple form, "What is wrong with Marxism, psycho-analysis, and individual psychology? Why are they so different from physical theories, from Newton’s theory, and especially from the theory of relativity?"
To make this contrast clear I should explain that few of us at the time would have said that we believed in the truth of Einstein’s theory of gravitation. This shows that it was not my doubting the truth of these other three theories which bothered me, but something else. Yet neither was it that I merely felt mathematical physics to be more exact than the sociological or psychological type of theory. Thus what worried me was neither the problem of truth, at that stage at least, nor the problem of exactness or measurability. It was rather that I felt that these other three theories, though posing as sciences, had in fact more in common with primitive myths than with science; that they resembled astrology rather than astronomy.
I found that those of my friends who were admirers of Marx, Freud, and Adler, were impressed by a number of points common to these theories, and especially by their apparent explanatory power. These theories appeared to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, opening your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated. Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirming instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. This its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refused to see it, either because it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions which were still "un-analysed" and crying aloud for treatment.
The most characteristic element in this situation seemed to me the incessant stream of confirmation, of observations which "verified" the theories in question; and this point was constantly emphasized by their adherents. A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history; not only in the news, but also in its presentation—which revealed the class bias of the paper—and especially of course in what the paper did not say. The Freudian analysts emphasized that their theories were constantly verified by their "clinical observations." As for Adler, I was much impressed by a personal experience. Once, in 1919, I reported to him a case which to me did not seem particularly Adlerian, but which he found no difficulty in analysing in terms of his theory of inferiority feelings, although he had not even seen the child. Slightly shocked, I asked him how he could be so sure. "Because of my thousandfold experience," he replied; whereupon I could not help saying: "And with this new case, I suppose, your experience has become thousand-and-one-fold."
What I had in mind was that his previous observations may not have been much sounder than this new one; that each in its turn had been interpreted in the light of "previous experience," and at the same time counted as additional confirmation. What, I asked myself, did it confirm? No more than that a case could be interpreted in the light of the theory. But this means very little, I reflected, since every conceivable case could be interpreted in the light of Adler’s theory, or equally of Freud’s. I may illustrate this by two very different examples of human behaviour: that of a man who pushes a child into the water with the intention of drowning him; and that of a man who sacrifices his life in an attempt to save the child. Each of these two cases can be explained with equal ease in Freudian and Adlerian terms. According to Freud the first man suffered from repression (say, of some component of his Oedipus complex), while the second man had achieved sublimation. According to Adler the first man suffered from feelings of inferiority (producing perhaps the need to prove to himself that he dared to commit some crime), and so did the second man (whose need was to prove to himself that he dared to rescue the child). I could not think of any human behaviour which could not be interpreted in terms of either theory. It was precisely this fact—that they always fitted, that they were always confirmed—which in the eyes of their admirers constituted the strongest argument in favour of these theories. It began to dawn on me that this apparent strength was in fact their weakness.
With Einstein’s theory the situation was strikingly different. Take one typical instance—Einstein’s prediction, just then confirmed by the findings of Eddington’s expedition. Einstein’s gravitational theory had led to the result that light must be attracted by heavy bodies (such as the sun), precisely as material bodies were attracted. As a consequence it could be calculated that light from a distant fixed star whose apparent position was close to the sun would reach the earth from such a direction that the star would seem to be slightly shifted away from the sun; or, in other words, that stars close to the sun would look as if they had moved a little away from the sun, and from one another. This is a thing which cannot normally be observed since such stars are rendered invisible in daytime by the sun’s overwhelming brightness; but during an eclipse it is possible to take pictures of them. If the same constellation is photographed at night one can measure the distances on the two photographs, and check the predicted effect.
Now the impressive thing about this case is the risk involved in a prediction of this kind. If observation shows that the predicted effect is definitely absent, then the theory is simply refuted. The theory is incompatible with certain possible results of observation—in fact with results which everybody before Einstein would have expected. This is quite different from the situation I have previously described, when it turned out that the theories in question were compatible with the most divergent human behaviour, so that it was practically impossible to describe any human behaviour that might not be claimed to be a verification of these theories.
These considerations led me in the winter of 1919–20 to conclusions which I may now reformulate as follows.

It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory—if we look for confirmations.
Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory—an event which would have refuted the theory.
Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.
A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.
Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability; some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.
Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of "corroborating evidence.")
Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers—for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by re-interpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status. (I later described such a rescuing operation as a "conventionalist twist" or a "conventionalist stratagem.")
I may perhaps exemplify this with the help of the various theories so far mentioned. Einstein’s theory of gravitation clearly satisfied the criterion of falsifiability. Even if our measuring instruments at the time did not allow us to pronounce on the results of the tests with complete assurance, there was clearly a possibility of refuting the theory.
Astrology did not pass the test. Astrologers were greatly impressed, and misled, by what they believed to be confirming evidence—so much so that they were quite unimpressed by any unfavourable evidence. Moreover, by making their interpretations and prophesies sufficiently vague they were able to explain away anything that might have been a refutation of the theory had the theory and the prophesies been more precise. In order to escape falsification they destroyed the testability of their theory. It is a typical soothsayer’s trick to predict things so vaguely that the predictions can hardly fail: that they become irrefutable.
The Marxist theory of history, in spite of the serious efforts of some of its founders and followers, ultimately adopted this soothsaying practice. In some of its earlier formulations (for example in Marx’s analysis of the character of the "coming social revolution") their predictions were testable, and in fact falsified. Yet instead of accepting the refutations the followers of Marx re-interpreted both the theory and the evidence in order to make them agree. In this way they rescued the theory from refutation; but they did so at the price of adopting a device which made it irrefutable. They thus gave a "conventionalist twist" to the theory; and by this stratagem they destroyed its much advertised claim to scientific status.
The two psycho-analytic theories were in a different class. They were simply non-testable, irrefutable. There was no conceivable human behaviour which could contradict them. This does not mean that Freud and Adler were not seeing certain things correctly; I personally do not doubt that much of what they say is of considerable importance, and may well play its part one day in a psychological science which is testable. But it does mean that those "clinical observations" which analysts naïvely believe confirm their theory cannot do this any more than the daily confirmations which astrologers find in their practice. And as for Freud’s epic of the Ego, the Super-ego, and the Id, no substantially stronger claim to scientific status can be made for it than for Homer’s collected stories from Olympus. These theories describe some facts, but in the manner of myths. They contain most interesting psychological suggestions, but not in a testable form.
At the same time I realized that such myths may be developed, and become testable; that historically speaking all—or very nearly all—scientific theories originate from myths, and that a myth may contain important anticipations of scientific theories. Examples are Empedocles’ theory of evolution by trial and error, or Parmenides’ myth of the unchanging block universe in which nothing ever happens and which, if we add another dimension, becomes Einstein’s block universe (in which, too, nothing ever happens, since everything is, four-dimensionally speaking, determined and laid down from the beginning). I thus felt that if a theory is found to be non-scientific, or "metaphysical" (as we might say), it is not thereby found to be unimportant, or insignificant, or "meaningless," or "nonsensical." But it cannot claim to be backed by empirical evidence in the scientific sense—although it may easily be, in some genetic sense, the "result of observation."
(There were a great many other theories of this pre-scientific or pseudo-scientific character, some of them, unfortunately, as influential as the Marxist interpretation of history; for example, the racialist interpretation of history—another of those impressive and all-explanatory theories which act upon weak minds like revelations.)
Thus the problem which I tried to solve by proposing the criterion of falsifiability was neither a problem of meaningfulness or significance, nor a problem of truth or acceptability. It was the problem of drawing a line (as well as this can be done) between the statements, or systems of statements, of the empirical sciences, and all other statements—whether they are of a religious or of a metaphysical character, or simply pseudo-scientific. Years later—it must have been in 1928 or 1929—I called this first problem of mine the "problem of demarcation." The criterion of falsifiability is a solution to this problem of demarcation, for it says that statements or systems of statements, in order to be ranked as scientific, must be capable of conflicting with possible, or conceivable, observations.
 
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