The Demarcation Problem - Karl Popper's Falsificationism 

There's a slight misunderstanding here: Popper never believed that the more number of tests and the more severe a test a theory passes, the more it is "confirmed", in the sense that it is validated or justified as true, just that it's more "corroborated" or, as he's said it himself, the more it has passed the tests. Corroboration is a measure of how far a theory has passed tests, not how far it's been confirmed. Obviously, no matter how "confirmed" a theory is, if it's false then it's false. Furthermore, you're conflating corroboration (or "confirmation" with a big " ") that is the measure of how well a theory has passed tests with verisimilitude, or how close it is to the truth. Popper has said it himself that corroboration can be seen as an *indicator* of verisimilitude, but is not verisimilitude itself. This is obvious because how true a theory is is independent of our tests. If a theory has never been tested, if it's closer to the truth than a tested theory than it's closer to the truth. We test theories because we don't actually know if they are true, hence we use corroboration as an indicator. The whole thing with Popper being a controversial philosopher is how radical his ideas actually are that we haven't fully inculcated yet. The idea that what Popper is saying isn't what we commonly think to be the case with science just goes to illustrate the radicality of the ideas. We still think of scientific theories as "highly confirmed" for example with quantum mechanics, but Popper's still right that this degree of confirmation doesn't really mean anything unless the confirmation itself will likely to reveal what's wrong with our theories empirically speaking. If quantum mechanics is wrong, then it's just wrong no matter how "highly confirmed" it is. And some people seem to think that we rely on our "inductive materials" or the "empirical evidence" of scientific experiments for the truth of our theories, but that's not correct. We make predictions *using the theories, not the tests of the theories*. You don't use Newton's laws of motion by saying "but the ball does roll down like how he predicted it", we do "given the initial conditions of mass, velocity, acceleration, direction,... we predict that the ball will land given the laws of motion". A theory always assumes its own truth and we use their assumptions to derive predictions. Because our assumptions might just be false (we don't know this just by thinking about them, unless they are logically inconsistent or inconsistent with our background knowledge of other corroborated theories), we have to test them. Even if we continue to rely on our highly confirmed theories into the future, there's no saying that there won't be a situation where it breaks down (we in fact know that most of our current theories do breakdown, any answer to any question that turns up with a "singularity" or an "infinity" is in itself a problem and a breakdown of the theory, like inside our blackholes or at the extreme conditions of the big bang).

Damn, I was excitedly looking for the Kuhn video and saw that this was the last one uploaded in several years :( What a bummer. This was a wonderful explanation and a great way for me to better understand Popper's arguments, I'm glad I found it :)

I’m glad to have found your channel. Hopping to see more in feasible future, as long as it also enjoys it.

Please more of Popper Please especially the book Logic of Scientific Discovery.

Can "reality" be falsified?... if not does that mean reality is independent of science?

I love your channel! I hope it would have new videos. From France

As more of visual learner with bad audio processing I'm so glad you added the text to the video with the coloring! Kudos

Thanks. I enjoyed it. one question: what about mathematics and logic? it seems that many parts of these sciences are irrefutable. Does Popper exclude them from genue science?

Where's the Kuhn video, yo!? Thank you, please!

Welcome back girl! :-)

Thank you for this series 🙏🏼. This is awesome. 👌

Just now getting to this video. Great Job! 👍

Popper didnt think that a theory somehow becomes "more confirmed" the more it is not falsified.

Hello you, where are you from?

Awsome! plz make video on kant's philosophy...i can't wrap head around his theory...plz plz plz thank u

Remarkably explained.

Welcome back :)

thanks it helped for exam from india

Excelent content. You are awsome. Thanks! :)

This was great I love this topic!

What about Feyerabend?

Thanks for this video.

Great exposition

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Turns out, it was Popper who was correct. Kuhn pointed out problems, but they weren't nessecerily problems with Popper's method, nor did his solutions actually solve anything. They made things much worse.

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أسطورة الإطار (كارل بوبر )(العقل و الثورة ). لا عقل هيجل الجدلي و لا عقل ماركس الثوري استطاعا ان يتقدما نحو عالم أجمل و أفضل ، اصطدم العقل الجدلي بفرعيه بخواء الروح ،فدمر أوربا و رد الإنسان آلة تعمل جيدا لا روح فيها و لا جمال ، عندما أمات نيتشة الله أمات معه الجمال و معه مات الأمل ، لن تصلح الثقافات العالم و علم الثورة الذي اكتشفه الغرب لا يعمل و لا يوجد خلاص حتى لو حصلت الثورة فالروح ليست فكرة و الروح ليست رفاهية ،هي لا هذا و لا ذاك ، هي هناك منسية مخبأة في عبارات التاريخ و قصصه البعيدة لن يوجد خلاص لأن العلم يمشي باستمرار و لا يصل إلى نهايتة ، هو لن يصل إلى النهاية و العقل غير متسامح و مغرور ، الروح اختفت لا هي عائدة و لا هي قادمة ،من يصوغ العالم من جديد ؟ الجواب لا أحد ! كما فشل العقل الجدلي فشل العقل النقدي و كذلك العقل الوضعي ،كل هذه العقول تلاشت و كما قال راسل ينتظرها الفناء في حبات التراب و بين زوايا الذرات ،لا الإنتظار يحمل معه الهدايا و لا في الأفق راية تقترب ، تساوت كل الأشياء أصبح المكان بلا زمان ، كان للتاريخ في الماضي عقلا لكن روحه كانت عقله ، عقل التفاؤل وهم ، لكن ما هي الروح ؟ صوت خفي يقول انا موجود دائمآ... 10/05/21

Does this mean that "science" can only be objective?... How would that impact a subjective field like psychology?

Nice video! Since induction is the logic of confirmation, and Popper argues that science does not rely on induction (he agrees with Hume that induction cannot be rationally justified), Popper cannot claim that a theory is more confirmed the more instances there are of the theory being tested and not being falsified. Popper talks about "corroboration" rather than "confirmation," but he is walking a tenuous conceptual line here, because if a theory can never be confirmed to any degree, then if a theory has been corroborated (to any degree) the most we can say is that the theory has not yet been falsified. But of course that is not the way we typically talk or think about our currently accepted scientific theories (we do talk about theories like general relativity, or quantum mechanics, or evolution by natural selection as being very highly confirmed, for example), so as a description of actual scientific practice Popper's claim that science does not rely on induction seems rather dubious.

Oh and wow! 12000 views on this. Real cool!

Hiii .... that's Great

Falsify ‘Existence’ (I’m serious …. Can you?) ….. and if it isn’t falsifiable…. Do we exist? And if we don’t ….. wtf do we need ‘science’ for? 😆😜🤣😂😄😘😘😘😘

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i just wanne say that... science is based on the physical world...and since all our assumptions we first create and then attempt to proof are made with our conciousness to solve science... its always going to be a problem...because there is no proof of what conciousness is (yet) but we all have assumptions what it is....inductive method is always linked and based with the physical realm....not the spiritual realm...and we are all spiritual... we are spiritual beings trying to explain the physical world...without understanding the spiritual world based on proof (because we are still devided spiritualy after 1000's of years) lets hope quantum physics can change that and provide us with proof.

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I know where the line of demarcation is. All of you will know my name.