History and Context of Journalism - Lecture/Seminar Two;

Karl Popper;

Poppers ideas are outline in his three books; ‘Logic of Scientific Discovery,’ ‘Open Society’ and ‘The Poverty of Historicism.’ He used each book to attack many philosophies and ideas he didn’t agree with, such as empiricism, logical positivism, tribalism, Plato and utopians.

Logical positivists;

The Vienna circle formed because of the way those involved viewed the state of philosophy, disagreeing with romanticism and metaphysics. For them the ideal was combining the laws of science with philosophy because science was the only way we can understand the truth. Things need to be proven - logical positivists think that metaphysical statements cannot be verified so they have no meaning. “Of that which we cannot speak, we must remain silent.”

The ideas of Descartes are also rejected by the logical positivists. “I think therefore I am” is something that cannot be tested and is then considered nonsense. To a logical positivist, there are only ideas which are verified by modern technology. Popper didn’t consider himself to be a logical positivist.

Solipsism was a danger to empiricism – if the ideas it put forward were true then nothing could really be verified – experienced or not. 

Induction and Deduction;

• Popper believed that theories couldn’t be proven because induction was flawed, identified by Hume.  And believed that falsifying means that we have absolute knowledge – science has the potential to be falsified.
• David Hume believed that induction was unreliable – we are physiologically constructed to make predictions through induction and we cannot predict history.
• Induction is not scientific, but science uses induction.
• Popper solved the problem with induction with the idea that everything we believe can be falsified – journalists have to assume that what were are told isn’t necessarily true and can be falsified.  It’s wrong to assume that things are true, even if they have been tested over and over. We have to believe that they just haven’t been proven false yet.  
• He believed that we can never tell what needs to be corrected – our knowledge is fallible
• For Popper science doesn’t really work with induction – science begins with an idea/theory then our observations kick in.  
• Observations are selective – we inherit the past and cannot escape it. We achieve objectivity by exposing our ideas to criticism.