Quote:
Originally Posted by lagtight
That was unremittingly awful (in my opinion).
Really sad, because Hick was an outstanding philosopher before he apparently had half his brain removed so he could write the above drivel.
But, thanks for sharing.
Around fifty years ago, Professor Hick presented a simple counterexample to Popper's claim that
falsifiability was a necessary component of any scientific claim or theory.
His counterexample was something like this (I'm paraphrasing):
The decimal determination of pi contains at least one sequence of five consecutive sevens.
Note well that if five consecutive sevens were to found in the decimal determination of
pi, then the above claim would be proven true. That is, the above theory is in principle
confirmable.
Also note, however, that it would be
impossible to prove that the above claim is
false (since the decimal determination of
pi is infinite). That is, the above theory is
not falsifiable.
Therefore, the above theory would
not count as a scientific claim if one applied the Popper Falsification Criterion.
But, Hick thought that the above claim under scrutiny
should count as a scientific claim, since it is empirically verifiable.
Professor Hick was a brilliant Philosopher of Religion until he kinda went off the rails (in my opinion) later in his career. I believe he eventually came to believe in Universalism.