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Modus Tollens / Popperian Syllogism for the Black Swan
It seems like Popper is not asking so much people to build syllogisms, but rather DEPENDING on Modus Tollens as an engine for falsification.
So that, if I propose -
If it is a swan, then it will always be white.
And then go ahead and execute my testing model by traveling to Australia.
Now I have:
If it is a swan, then it will always be white.
I just saw a black swan.
But, here is my confusion: it seems like my hypothesis has some structural issue for Modus Tollens to take effect.
Using the Conditional I proposed I get:
The "it" here suffers dually - from being ambiguous, as you need to stop for a second and figure out that the "it" here refers to the Antecedent "it" in the Conditional statement.
But, WORSE! - if I were truly going to go with Not A, saying
"It is not a swan." [Not A]
makes no sense.
What I'm trying to figure out is a is a way to rewrite the Conditional so that I can arrive at a 3-part syllogism - 1[If A, Then B], 2 [Not B], 3 [Therefore, Not A] - that ends in something like "Therefore, not all swans are white."
So that, if I propose -
If it is a swan, then it will always be white.
And then go ahead and execute my testing model by traveling to Australia.
Now I have:
If it is a swan, then it will always be white.
I just saw a black swan.
- If A then B
- Not B
- Therefore, Not A
But, here is my confusion: it seems like my hypothesis has some structural issue for Modus Tollens to take effect.
Using the Conditional I proposed I get:
- If it is a swan, then it will always be white.
- I just saw a black swan. [Not B]
- It is not a swan. [Not A]
The "it" here suffers dually - from being ambiguous, as you need to stop for a second and figure out that the "it" here refers to the Antecedent "it" in the Conditional statement.
But, WORSE! - if I were truly going to go with Not A, saying
"It is not a swan." [Not A]
makes no sense.
What I'm trying to figure out is a is a way to rewrite the Conditional so that I can arrive at a 3-part syllogism - 1[If A, Then B], 2 [Not B], 3 [Therefore, Not A] - that ends in something like "Therefore, not all swans are white."
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You start by defining a swan as white. Hence anything that is not white cannot be a swan. After all, black swans (Cygnus atratus) are a different species from white ones (Cygnus cygnus). And, of course, that in turn depends on your definition of "species". Biologists have many definitions for the term "species".