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"One of the main tasks for human reason is to make the universe we live in understandable to ourselves. This is the task of science. There are two different components of about equal importance in this enterprise. The first is poetic inventiveness ..."
– Karl Popper
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Author Archives: Alan Forrester
Knowledge and Biology
Many people I have discussed Popper with seem confused by Popper tying together evolution and epistemology in his book Objective Knowledge and other places. Evolution, they say, is all about biology and epistemology is about what people think. I’m going to try to clear up this confusion. Continue reading
Posted in biology, epistemology, evolution, science
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On Obviousness
One criticism that I often read of Popper is that some ideas are just obvious, and so there is no need to take all this fallibilist stuff too seriously. As an example, people often say 1+1 = 2 is obvious … Continue reading
Posted in epistemology
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Essentialism
Anti-essentialism is a Popperian idea that many people are either unaware of or do not understand. Many people are essentialists, particularly people who think they understand philosophy, but essentialism is a bad mistake. There are two separate ideas that Popper … Continue reading
Posted in epistemology, essentialism, science
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Review: Popper, Otto Selz and the Rise of Evolutionary Epistemology by Michel ter Hark
“Popper, Otto Selz and the Rise of Evolutionary Epistemology” by Michel ter Hark is historically interesting and philosophically provocative. Continue reading
Posted in biology, epistemology, evolution, logic, science
61 Comments
You Tube 1
Posted in epistemology, logic
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Popper on epistemological naturalism
This is a quote from Popper in Logic of Scientific Discovery, Section 10: This view, according to which methodology is an empirical science in its turn—a study of the actual behaviour of scientists, or of the actual procedure of ‘science’—may be described … Continue reading
Posted in epistemology, logic, quote, science
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Essentialism vs freedom
Michael Sandel gives an interesting TED Talk on democracy, saying that we should talk more about the deep moral convictions people have to raise the level of debate in democracy. This may be a good idea, but unfortunately his argument … Continue reading
Posted in essentialism, ethics, open society
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Proportional Representation and the Open Society
In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper criticised the idea that political philosophy should be about the question of who should rule. Any person or group is fallible, so the question “Who should rule?” begs for a false … Continue reading
Posted in open society
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Review: Beyond Wittgenstein’s Poker by Peter Munz
I think it can safely be said that Popper and Wittgenstein didn’t like each other much and that their dedicated followers have not shown much interest in overcoming this dislike. Peter Munz makes an attempt to heal this breach in … Continue reading
Posted in epistemology, essentialism
2 Comments
Criticism of Salmon on Popper
Wesley Salmon wrote a critique of critical rationalism in which he claimed this it could not explain why it is rational to use the predictions of scientific theories to help us make decisions. First, note that Salmon does not and … Continue reading
Posted in epistemology, logic, science
68 Comments