Tag Archives: Karl Popper

On the practical side of philosophy of science. Adding nuance to Karl Popper on falsification. Further argument for the view that theories are useful but not "true." This may seem to contradict the realist view that theories are general descriptions of causal relationships. But I don't think that this is what is is implied. Rather, useful theories can be viewed as fitting the data because they reveal underlying structures that are not observed directly but only indirectly.  There is a...

From Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies: “The so-called paradox of freedom is the well-known idea that freedom in the sense of absence of any restraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. This idea is, in a slightly different form, and with a very different tendency, clearly expressed by Plato.Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend...