Universal statements

Using various forms of empathic or reflecting responses, universal statements, and probing questions, pharmacists can learn to identify the specific causes of noncompliance. For example, questions such as It sounds like you are unsure about how to take this medication (reflecting response), Tell me more about how this medication makes you feel dizzy (probing question), and Many patients will feel sleepy after taking this medication (universal statement) can be useful in determining the nature of the patient s problem. 

We need now to go on and address the issue of peak width. As was pointed out earlier, the longer an analyte is retained in a chromatographic column, the larger is the peak width. This is almost a universal statement with respect to chromatographic separations. 

The reason that our expectation of a logically subordinated hierarchy cannot fail in the application of parsimony analysis lies in the fact that it is not subject to the fundamental asymmetry of falsification versus verification relative to universal statements that Popper discovered in his solution to the logical problem of induction. This conclusion evidently requires some explanation. 

Because the potential instantiations of a strictly universal statement are infinite, the statement is never verifiable. (Some will restrict that conclusion to intensionally defined universal [e.g., defined on the basis of some descriptive criteria], but Popper showed [1976 14] that universals can also be pointed at [i.e., ostensively defined] if a particular [individual] is pointed at in a statement that adds and other similar things or and so However, if a singnlar statement reporting on an observable state of affairs that... 

Popper defined universal statements as those that do not contain a proper name, and cannot be reduced to a proper name. Conversely, singular statements do contain a proper name or they are reducible to a proper name, that is, to a particular or individual that is denoted by a proper name (the notion of a proper name itself must remain undefined [Popper, 1979 234]). 

Ultimately, therefore, all singular statements must be reducible to the birth of Christ (the anchor in time) and to Greenwich, or to the individual pope who declared Greenwich as the anchor of the prime meridian (the anchor in space) (Popper 1976 14). In contrast to a universal statement, the singular statement is thus revealed to relate to a spatio-temporally restricted state of affairs, but not just in a general sense. In order to be unequiv-... 

Systematics is formulated in singular statements. A lot of misunderstanding has surrounded, and continnes to surround, the issne of whether or not Popper claimed testability and potential falsifiability for strictly universal statements only or for strictly singular statements... 

If Kluge s (2001a, 2001b) notion of descent, with modification (Darwin s two principles) is being used as a universal of some kind in connection with which singular statements could be tested, the universal descent, with modification would have to be applicable to the world of experience. The problem here is that descent, with modification is not a full sentence, but rather a conjunction of two concepts. Because it is not a full sentence, it cannot be applied unequivocally to the world of experience. In order to do justice to the meaning of descent, with modification, and in order to render it a potential universal statement, we must reformulate it. For example, All new species originate by a process of descent, with modification (see also Appendix I). 

Logical probability has nothing to do with probability calculus, as is most easily shown relative to predictability. Logical probability is related to the capacity of a universal statement to predict a particular event (i.e., an observable state of affairs), or rather the nonoccurrence thereof, specifically restricted in time and space. Probability calculus cannot make such predictions — it can only make a prediction that covers a series of events (Popper, 1979 141). The probability of obtaining a six throwing a fair die is one in six. This mathematical probability is maintained whether or not I do, indeed, obtain a six with my next throw. It is also maintained if I say, Hie et nunc, here and now, I will throw the die and obtain a six, yet I get a five. 

This, in turn, implies that anyone who advocates the empirical-scientific character of a theory must be able to specify under what conditions [s]he would be prepared to regard it as falsified i.e., [s]he should be able to describe at least some potential falsifiers, and these must, in turn, be falsifiable (Popper, 1989 xxi, xxiii). Hence, if an empiricist uses a universal statement as a basis for the deduction of a singular statement, she must stick to the original meaning (the originally intended use) of the terms used in the singular statement that describes a potential falsifier (Popper, 1979 366-367). 

Blackwelder s commitment to, 43 Committee on Zoological Nomenclature, 26 Mayr s complaint about, 33 Universal laws, problem of induction and, 61 Universal statements, 62, 64 Unrooted topologies, 106 USNM, see United States National Museum... 

---