Karl Popper (1902-1994) is regarded as one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century. He famously proposed that falsifiability is the genuine virtue of science and the criterion of the scientific status of a theory. Based on this, he developed a systematic account of scientific method and scientific development, namely, falsificationism. In addition, Popper played an important role in promoting the historical turn in twentieth century philosophy of science. The debate over the nature and development of science between him and Thomas Kuhn dominated and sparked many discussions in the late 1960s philosophy of science. Moreover, Popper wrote on a variety of topics, including evolutionary biology, methodological individualism, and probability. However, Popper’s legacy on contemporary philosophy of science is surprisingly thin. Although his writings are still a must-read in any introductory philosophy of science course, there is no lively Popperian philosophy of science. His falsificationism is not viewed as a plausible account of scientific development. Nor is his solution to the problem of induction regarded as a successful or promising move. This conference aims to revisit and explore Popper’s legacy for twenty-first century philosophy of science​.

The topics to be discussed include but are not limited to:

• Popper and induction
• Popper and evolutionary biology
• Popper and evolutionary epistemology
• Popper and objectivity
• Popper and probability
• Popper and scientific change
• Popper and the demarcation problem
• Popper and the methodological holism/individualism debate
• Popper and verisimilitude

​Programme

For more information please visit the conference webpage https://www.shanyafeng.com/karl-popper-and-21st-century-philosophy-of-science-conference-hk-2024.html 

‘In reformulating her programme about how to best understand or elucidate mathematical axioms in her book, Defending the Axioms, Penelope Maddy articulates a view called „neutralism”, similar in purport to views held by Rudolf Carnap and Arthur Fine, and which seems to best fit with her second philosophy and naturalism in the foundations of mathematics. As I construe it, neutralism is a programmatic deflationism about the relevance to the foundations of mathematics of metaphysical statements. One objection to neutralism might be that the foundational crisis in the 1900’s and the ensuing axiomatizations of set theory are rife with metaphysical concern, both with whether sets exist and with what the nature of sets might be. Consider, for example, Skolem’s discussion of the Axiom of Choice, and his distinction between real sets and objects we may choose to call „sets” in light of a theory of them. I argue that neutralism survives this objection. Granted, genuine, first-philosophical, metaphysical concern with what sets are clearly cannot be dismissed in some historical episodes. But that concession falls short of showing a principled basis for always turning first-philosophical. How some foundational problems are framed (e.g. in the foundational crisis of the 1900’s) might at first be metaphysically perplexing. As time goes by, orthodoxy (ZFC) sets in practice and alternative set theories begin to be explored in an experimental and tolerant spirit. New reasons for endorsing orthodoxy emerge (e.g. the iterative hierarchy as an intuitive picture), and practice begins once more to unfold in agreement with more pragmatic, and less ontologically inflated, descriptions. If metaphysical concerns come and go, neutralist views are on firm footing: they can just wait it out. To say this particular objection falls short is, by my lights, no final defense of neutralism as true. Indeed, I see deflationism about truth as consonant with neutralism about sets.’