Abstract
Popper’s non-justificationism or falsificationism is justified on the grounds that it not only solves, theoretically, the problem of the bounds of reason in the form of comprehensively critical rationalism, but also influences, practically, the research work of scientists from diverse fields over a long span of time. The implementation of Popper’s falsificationist epistemology means exposing to criticism various philosophical presuppositions that work against criticism, including the doctrine that truth is manifest, the demand for precision in concepts as a prerequisite for criticism, essentialism, instrumentalism, and conventionalism; it also means combating the confirmation bias through such educational means as helping teachers and students to acquire an awareness of its pervasiveness and various guises, teaching them to think of several alternative hypotheses simultaneously in seeking explanation of phenomena, and encouraging them to assess evidence objectively in the formation and evaluation of hypotheses. With regard to the feasibility of teaching students to falsify, it appears high if teachers adopt relatively simple inference tasks, while creating an opportunity for students to collaborate with each other and lowering the normativity of the learning environment. As for the utility of doing so, although disconfirmation might be an effective heuristic when students cannot appeal to an outside authority to test their hypotheses, it appears not to be a universally effective strategy for solving reasoning problems. In contrast, confirmation seems not to be completely counterproductive and might be a useful heuristic, especially in the early stages of solving by hypothesis a complex inference problem.
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Notes
- 1.
This empiricist view of geometry is not without its difficulties, a grave one of which is that it is impossible to find geometric objects, like points and lines, in experience exactly as geometry conceives them (Torretti, 1984).
- 2.
The liar paradox is generated by a sentence that, directly or indirectly, asserts its own falsity. A typical example is: (L) This sentence is false. In this case, the argument runs as follows: if (L) is true, then what it asserts is so; but what it asserts is that (L) is false, hence (L) is false. Yet, if (L) is false, then what it asserts is not so; but what it asserts is that (L) is false, hence (L) is true. In other words, the paradox arises because it seems possible to prove that (L) is true if and only if it is false, and vice versa.
- 3.
Grelling’s paradox is concerned with the fact that some words are self-describing, or autological (e.g. “short” is a short word, “English” is an English word) while other words are non-self-describing, or heterological (e.g. “long” is not a long word, “Chinese” is not a Chinese word). It arises when we consider whether the word “heterological” is heterological: on one hand, if “heterological” is a heterological word, then it is clearly autological (by definition), yet heterological (by assumption); on the other hand, if “heterological” is not a heterological word, then it is clearly heterological (by definition), yet autological (by assumption). In either case, a contradiction results.
- 4.
Apart from Russell’s and Tarski’s approaches to such semantical paradox, various strategies, like Kripke’s concept of grounding, Van Fraassen’s device of supervaluations, and Gupta’s theory of revision rule, have been developed in recent decades to resolve it (Martin, 1984).
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Lam, CM. (2013). Theoretical and Practical Justifications for Popper’s Non-justificationism. In: Childhood, Philosophy and Open Society. Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects, vol 22. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4451-06-2_2
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