Category Archives: epistemology

In part one, I defended Popper and his criterion of falsifiability from the Duhem-Quine thesis. I examined Popper’s position and revealed that not only was Popper aware of the Duhem-Quine problem before most of his critics, but that he also … Continue reading →

Something I thought of today. Suppose three logically possible worlds. Each world is identical except for the colour and shape of your gem. World 1: The gem is blue and oval World 2: The gem is not-blue and oval World … Continue reading →

Curently working on second editions of the guides, taking on board feedback and comments. People who have purchased copies of the guides will be able to obtain the new versions without extra charge. A significant change in presentation is to … Continue reading →

This is some additional material on  Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery for the Popper’s Progress appendix in a revised edition of the Popular Popper series of Guides. While Logic der Forschung was being translated during the 1950s to … Continue reading →

“A World of Propensities”, a slender 51 pages, was published in 1990. It contains two lectures that Popper delivered in his 87th and 88 years, A World of Propensities: Two New Views of Causality and Towards an Evolutionary Theory of Knowledge. … Continue reading →

Do we have an attack on fanaticism? The argument in a nutshell:  (1) fanaticism feeds on “justificationism”,  that is the assumption  that everything depends on “justified true beliefs” that are revealed or supported by the correct authority; (2) The CR … Continue reading →

Some reasons for talking about Popper’s “turns”. First, for more effective teaching and criticism of Popper’s ideas. Popper has reformulated some of the traditional questions and people who come to his books after they have started in the mainstream will … Continue reading →

Misreading Popper is the next book on the production line. Table of contents Preface or Introduction The turns and the standard errors introduced very briefly Popper’s Progress   Appendix I of Readers (improved) More on the turns Appendix II  of Readers … Continue reading →

An explanandum is an experience we seek to explain, such as the changing seasons. An explanans is a set of claims which explain the experience, such as that the earth orbits of the sun once every 365 days, that the earth is … Continue reading →

Writing on Darwin’s achievement in his 2003 book In Mendel’s Mirror: Philosophical Reflections on Biology, Philip Kitcher advanced the concept of a scientific practice. This consists of: a language a set of statements that are accepted by the specific community … Continue reading →