Sunday, April 29, 2007

Karl Popper is the original solver of the problem of induction.

Well, I certainly don't believe that. Popper certainly did a lot for Philosophy of Science, but he didn't solve the Problem of Induction.

The problem of induction isn't a practical problem. It isn't me saying "I shouldn't act as if the sun is going to rise tomorrow," it's me saying "I have no logical justification for assuming the sun will rise tomorrow." Popper never justifies induction, he justifies the scientific method, which is different than induction.

I feel like it is quite unlikely that *anyone* will figure out a justification for induction, it may be that induction is justifiable, but we will simply never be able to do it. This is a bit of an odd argument, I know, but lets just say that I find humankind in general, and philosophers more specifically, to be incredibly naive, or perhaps arrogant, when they have ideas on the ability of humans to make achievements towards better, more complete knowledge. Truth, as far as I'm concerned, is a social construct, and so we are terribly limited in regards of our ability to understand the world.

1 comment:

Trey said...

Popper barely justifies the scientific method. The scientific method assumes that a positive outcome of an experiment can give some (possibly very small) amount of evidence for your hypothesis. Popper believed that an experiment could only disprove a hypothesis. I think this is a notable distinction. Evidence holding towards a hypothesis is an important part of the scientific method as it is used by actual scientists.

However, Popper did create a nice groundwork for the scientific method to be justified. I would say Kuhn was probably the first one who actually justified the scientific method, although one could argue that he didn't justify it as much as document its use.