i have a few questions......tell me if i am right.?

Question

i have a question about the matrix idea and solipsism.

first off i know they can never be disproved in an emperical sense because its impossible to prove that reality exists with are senses rendered as "illusion" as posed by the ideas.

yet there are many good arguments out there that pretty much shows that the ideas are known to be self refuting in theory and in logic. they are also known to be irrational.

but when people say they the ideas are "disprovable" do they mean that the ideas are actualy POSSIBLE?? or just disprovable?

in other words they can be SHOWN false, but never PROVEN false due to an emperical technicality, correct?

also i apologize for any bad grammer/spelling. i am kind of in a rush right now.

Answer 1

As I understand it, your question refers to the definitions of "disprovable," "possible, " and "prove(n)," right?

"Disprovable" is roughly the logical equivalent to "falsifiable" (Karl Popper). "Can be falsified" means "we know what would make A (theory) false." So, "disprovable" means "we know what would disprove x." This adds credibility to A because we know that we know how to know if A is false.

But the term could be used more loosely. A person could be throwing it around a bit. It is possible that the author meant "A has been proven to not correspond with reality." Not knowing which was meant by your source, there goes the possibility of a definitive answer here.

But continuing, "possible" is a whole different ballgame. Possibilia talk is contemporary metaphysics.

We all know we are ferring to something in a meaningful fashion when we use any language denoting the idea of possibility. For example, "I might have," or "it is maybe the case that...." We agree that we are referring to something, but to what? By definition we are not using the talk to point to anything actual. Meaningful, but denoting nothing actual. How do we distinguish the actual from the possible, and what it the metaphysical status of the possible scenarios, and what happens when we introduce operators into formal logic that distinguish "possibly true" from "necessarily true?"

These are the questions surrounding possibility talk. It really has nothing to do provability, because something could be proven to not be the case in the actual world, but remain true in at least one possible world. Things could have gone so diiferently at any point in time that A would have been true in the actual world. An unqualified "disprovable" does not address this. So we again cannot rigorously interpret whether "disprovable" is intended also to denote impossibility.

Your use of the word shown leads me to believe that you mean the "disprovable" I defined as roughly equivalent to "falsifiable." So that's is enough said about "shown."

"Proven" needs a bit more attention. Especially "proven false," as you have it. Typically, instantiations of theory structures need only one occurence of being false to be considered disproven, but a perfect track record of evidence otherwise does not prove them true. This is particularly true with the structures of scientific theories. "Proven false" refers for example to a Theory A test result indicating that x always causes y, when Theory A actually has it that x always causes z. The theory does not support the relevant test results. BTW, knowing how to know when the theory has been shown to be false, is falsifiablility again.

So, proven false is possible. Proven false differs from falsifiable. For A to be proven false it must be falsifiable, we know that. And , all it takes is one instance of falsity to reject Theory A. Beyond these observations, given the information provided unfortunately we still do not know how the source author intends to associate these ideas with one another.

"Never proven false due to an empirical technicality," is ambiguous to me. I do not quite get the question. You asked specifically about solipsism and the matirx idea. I do not know much about the matrix idea.

There are various absurd positions proposed throughout time. A lot of them are paradoxes. Just because such can be articulated meaningfully, does not necessarily mean that they are the actual case. Solipsism is one of those positions. Roughly put, we call it an absurdity because it exists only in concept.

But whether we can never prove solipsism false due to an emperical technicality, I'm not sure what you mean by that. Which emperical technicality? That we can never test it? THAT ought to tell you something. Of what blasted relevance is an idea you cannot even test? That doesn't even rank up there with something you tested and proved false.

Or is the technicality that we cannot have intersubjective confirmation during a test of solipsism? If so, it seems to me that if one solipsist were to meet another, we'd have a serious problem to work out. We have intrersubjective confirmation of that all the time.

But this does not point me in the direction to accept that solipsism, or the matirx idea if it is anything like solipsism, might be the actual case. If something cannot be proven false and I also have no reliable evidence of its truth, it is rather meaningless to me.

Answer 2

Thank you for the question. Up front I doubt I can answer it. I hate to see people try to disprove something that is true by saying nothing can be know, for instance, but all too often the proved has a way of becoming untrue over time. And even if something is proven untrue, I can't see any other way we can live without some form of fantasy to get outside of 'reality' to see how it can be added to. I suppose someone could easily prove that we could go to the store without imagination, but I can help but think that if you can't imagine the steps and the result, you couldn't do anything. That makes the disproved as important as the proved, IMO. That's the value of the mind, as it considers all combinations it's capable of, before reaching a conclusion, as if everything were true. That seems to me to be nearly absolute objectivity. That also seems to be the way the greatest minds have made the greatest breakthroughs so I don't get too enamored of disaprovability. It's just another item that may or may not be true. That leaves me with a paradox. I don't like rigid beliefs and I love them too. Hm