7. Critical Rationalism

Question 1

Popper’s confirmation theory

Answer 1

Critique to logical positivism’s verification method, as it disregard as non scientific theories that turned out to be false, althought they contain valuable information *eg. Newton.

According to Popper, all that we can do is confrim that the statement is not false, increasing the probability that it is true. For insance if we say that ‘all cookies taste good’, we could then proceed to tase cookies increasing the chances of truth, but we couldn;t confirm it until we ate every single cookie in the world.
PROBLEM : this could however include as science also metaphysics.

Question 2

Confirmation to Falsification

Answer 2

Something can be classified as science when it is possible to test whether it is false. E.g saying that there are a certain amount of chairs in this room is sceintific because we know we can count them and see if our statement is true or false.

Question 3

Corroboration

Answer 3

when a hypothesis survives a certain test it is not verified, but instead corroborated, meaning it has not yet been probem wrong and will be accepted for the time being.

Question 4

‘it might rain tomorrow’ is it a valuable statement for Popper?

Answer 4

Yes,although it is not falsifiable and therefore not scientific it doesn;t make it meaningless.

Question 5

Popper: Induction or Deduction?

Answer 5

Deduction = theory first, then we test it