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    The law of free fall cannot be refuted by experiment alon... — Carmelics
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    The law of free fall cannot be refuted by experiment alone because it functions as a definition of 'free fall'.

    Philosophy of LanguageTruth & Knowledge
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    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

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    Reason for
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    • 1.The law of free fall defines what 'free fall' means rather than making an empirical claim subject to test.
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    • 2.Definitions are not empirically falsifiable.
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    Reasons Against

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    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Quine's holism shows that no statement functions as a pure definition immune to revision; all statements face the tribunal of experience collectively.
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    • 2.If 'free fall' is redefined whenever anomalies arise, this constitutes an ad hoc maneuver that Lakatos would identify as degenerative within a research program.
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    • 3.The empirical success of Newtonian mechanics in predicting trajectories demonstrates that free-fall laws carry genuine predictive content beyond mere stipulation.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Poincaré's own conventionalism acknowledged that conventions are chosen for empirical convenience, making systematic predictive failure a legitimate ground for revision.
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    • 2.If the law of free fall were purely definitional, it could not explain why bodies deviate from predicted paths near massive rotating objects, yet general relativity does explain this.
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    Philosophy of LanguageTruth & Knowledge

    Connections

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    Skepticism1 linked

    Related

    Definitions are not empirically falsifiable.If 'free fall' is redefined whenever anomalies arise, this constitutes an ad hoc...If the law of free fall were purely definitional, it could not explain why bodie...Poincaré's own conventionalism acknowledged that conventions are chosen for empi...
    +3 moreShow less
    Quine's holism shows that no statement functions as a pure definition immune to ...The empirical success of Newtonian mechanics in predicting trajectories demonstr...The law of free fall defines what 'free fall' means rather than making an empiri...

    Similar

    The law of free fall defines what 'free fall' means rather than making...93%The law of free fall is part of a larger theoretical whole that has em...88%Ehlers, Pirani and Schild do not provide an independent, non-circular ...78%Newton's laws of motion are inductively derived empirical propositions...71%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: einstein-philscience
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    Much the same point could be made, and was made by Duhem himself (see Duhem 1906, part 2, ch. 6, sects. 8 and 9), against those who would insulate certain statements against empirical refutation by claiming for them the status of conventional definitions. Edouard Le Roy (1901) had argued thus about the law of free fall. It could not be refuted by experiment because it functioned as a definition of “free fall.” And Henri Poincaré (1901) said much the same about the principles of mechanics more ge
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

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    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit