If you ring up Swinsons and say to the girl-‘the car in my imagination has broken down but I would like to make a claim because I am certain I insured it with you in my dreams’ she might possibly reply ‘but that’s an unfalsifiable claim’.
Or you ring up a house insurance company ‘I want to make a claim I have a house but I haven’t a clue whereabouts in the universe it is but I feel (I don’t know how) some slates have fallen off the roof and I am certain that I insured it with you on the borderland of my imagination’ quite possibly she would again say-‘but that’s an unfalsifiable claim’..
When used within the remit of science as a philosophical point it sounds perfectly ok. Just another way of saying you have to go out and find empirical evidence to prove a theory is true. But the phrase it seems to me is never used like that.
The problem is the word ‘claim’. If I say ‘I believe in God’ I’m not making a claim. I am just stating my belief. If I simply say ‘God exists’ that is of course an unfalsifiable claim. But you don’t hear religious people talk like that. We say The Creed every week at mass. ‘I believe…’ it starts.
There is tons of evidence I BELIEVE for the existence of God, the harmony of the universe, human love, heroic self -sacrifice but this evidence (in this context) can’t be used because harmony, love, sekf-sacrifice are abstract, intangible concepts.
But in that case you cannot say anything about anything at all. ‘Patience is a virtue’.
Patience is an abstract noun so is virtue. You cannot generalise about either of them with this carry on. You could maybe sit with a person for days and days to ascertain their patientness and then ask friends and relatives if they think he or she is virtuous. But that would be very laborious for every truism or proverb.
You know for a bit of fun I might simply post ‘God exists’ on here and the first person to reply with ‘that’s an unfalsifiable claim’ I will immediately reply-‘and I claim my £5:,00’.
Nominated by: Miles Plastic



