Science requires the uniformity of nature

AveDebate SummaryIn my last round, I provided an overview of Hume’s problem of induction and its relationship with scientific epistemology. The consensus in academic philosophy is that Hume refuted any scientific epistemology based on inductive logic. Pro didn’t comment on this overview, so I will assume that he agrees with this. I outlined Karl Popper’s theory of falsificationism, which is a scientific epistemology based on deductive reasoning. The steps in falsificationism go like this: 1) Form a hypothesis.1A) Check for internal consistency.1B) Find what logical relations exist between your conclusions.2) Form an axiomatized system.2A) The axioms must not contradict themselves or each other, they must not contain any axiom deducible from the remaining axioms, they must be sufficient for the deduction of all statements belonging to the theory that is being axiomatized, and must not contain any unnecessary assumptions.3) Experiment on testable consequences of your hypothesis.3A) If empirical evidence contradicts your predictions, the hypothesis has been falsified.3B) If empirical evidence supports your predictions, it has not been falsified.3C) Confidence in a hypothesis increases as it always confirmed but never falsified.3D) A hypothesis is never proven with certainty, as a future experiment can always falsify it. Pro agrees that science need not be inductive. This entails that P2 of his R1 argument is false. Pro has created a new argument to replace his now refuted first argument. I’ll spend the rest of my round criticizing the new argument.A Critique of Pro’s Argument I think it's false to say that predictions require the uniformity of nature. I will explain, using the theory of falsificationism which I have outlined, why this is so. 1: A prediction does not depend on the uniformity of nature to say that things won't be drastically different in the future. It depends on the principle of falsifiability. 2: The nature of a hypothesis is that a future experiment can falsify it. This means that it's inherent in any hypothesis that the future could be different, the opposite of the uniformity of nature.Do predictions rely on the uniformity of nature to say that things won't be different in the future?Consider the principle of uniformitarianism. This is the geological principle which states that geological processes happening now also happened for the Earth's entire history. If nature is not uniform, then how can this principle be true? It's possible that the half-life of carbon isotopes was different in the past! The principle is not true because the uniformity of nature is true. We have high confidence in the principle because of Popper's principle of falsifiability. Remember, Popper said that a good hypothesis has to be falsifiable. There has to be some experiment that can be done to demonstrate the hypothesis as true. The hypothesis which says 'Geological processes might have been different in the past' is unfalsifiable. I can't go two billion years into the past and see if Potassium-Argon dating still works like it does today. Geologists shouldn't reject the idea that geological processes were different in the past because nature is uniform, but because the hypothesis is fundamentally bad, as it cannot be falsified. I think the same line of reasoning applies to concerns Pro brought up like 'maybe rabbits will be tulips tomorrow' and 'maybe our brains will be different'. Scientists don't ignore these concerns because nature is uniform. Like our geologists, they ignore it because it violates the principle of falsifiability. Predictions don't rely on the uniformity of nature to make them coherent. They rely on the fact that wild concerns are unfalsifiable by their very nature.We could always find a brown rabbit!In fact, it's inherent with any hypothesis that a future experiment can always falsify it. Let’s take the hypothesis which states that all rabbits are white. Suppose that experimenters find that, out of one thousand rabbits observed, all of them are white. No non-white rabbits have been found yet. This gives us high confidence, but not certainty, that the hypothesis is true. One of the central tenets of falsificationism that is that a hypothesis is never proved with certainty. As Stephen Hawking notes when discussing falsificationism, ‘’No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory’’[1]. On falsificationism, the future can always be different and falsify a hypothesis. Far from assuming that nature will be uniform into the future, falsificationism actually says the future could be different from the present. (This doesn't mean we have to pay attention to wild concerns about the future being drastically different, because as I talked about in the first paragraph, these concerns are unfalsifiable.)ConclusionGiven the truth of the two statements, I think it's clear that P1 of Pro's new argument is false. Perhaps it's logically valid, but since the first premise is wrong, it's not a sound argument.ValeReferencesA Brief History of Time, pg 10