PHIL 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Public Knowledge, Critical Rationalism, Deductive Reasoning
Document Summary
How does popper relate to rationalists in hume and descartes: he himself is a critical rationalist. What is the foundation of knowledge/how do we justify: the foundation seems to be the way that empiricists/rationalists think, but popper believes this to be wrong. We use reason to know what we can/can"t know. Induction example: all swans i"ve seen are white, so the next swan i see will be white. : popper"s problem: not certain because it"s just a probability. Scientific theories must go through tests with deductive reasoning. Logical (in that everything needs to be verifiable) positivists would say to use empirical knowledge to come to conclusions. Statements are only meaningful if verifiable through observation. This thinking leads to the belief that metaphysics/empirical observation are on the same level. Popper would argue that hume creates a dilemma. It all comes down to falsifiability than verifiability. If something isn"t falsified, then it doesn"t necessarily mean it"s true.
