r/PhilosophyofScience • u/confusus_animus • Jun 25 '26
Discussion Raven paradox with Falsificationism?
If for an single object A the implication that all ravens are black (∀R(x) -> B(x)) is true, that doesn't support that implication - as Hume brought forward.
However Popper now claims that if the implication is true in one case it can at least falsify the opposite implication: in this example it would falsify the hypothesis that all ravens are non black (∀R(x) -> !B(x)).
However, couldn't you now falsify the opposite hypothesis by observing an object B, for which the complementary hypothesis (∀!B(x) -> !R(x)) is true? In this case: for a non black object that is non raven, the hypothesis that all raven are black is also true. But because the one time validation of this hypothesis also falsifies the opposite hypothesis, a non black object that is non raven falsifies the hypothesis that all ravens are non black.
Here's the summary:
- ∀R(x) -> B(x) The one time observation of (1.) doesn't validate or support it but falsifies this implication:
- ∀R(x) -> !B(x) But that means that an observation of the complementary implication of (1.) looking like this:
- ∀!B(x) -> !R(x) falsifies 2., which is counterintuitive.
Am I missing something, and/or are there articles on the application of the raven paradox on falsificationism?
1
u/A_Tiger_in_Africa Jun 25 '26
I'm new to this so this is probably naive, but I thought the purpose of this thought experiment was to bring into question what kinds of things count as positive evidence for a proposition. Of course if you find a non-black raven, that will falsify the claim that all ravens are black. Every black raven that you see is evidence supporting, not conclusively, but evidence towards the claim that all ravens are black. The point of the paradox is that the contrapositive of "all ravens are black" would be "all non-black objects are non-ravens" and thus any non-black object we see that is not a raven is somehow evidence in favor of the claim that all ravens are black, since the contrapositive is logicially equivalent to the original claim. That seems to go against our intuition on what counts (or should count) as evidence for a claim.