– How does falsificationism differ from logical empiricism’s criterion of demarcation?
The logical empiricism’s criterion of demarcation found its bases on verifiability or deducibility from observation statements. All those observations should be inferred by natural science and the verified knowledge coincide with the meaningfulness. Popper’s falsification does not deal with meaning. The problem of meaning was a verbal problem, according to him. He was intended to draw a line between the scientific statements and pseudo-scientific/metaphysics characters. Also, relying just on observations encloses science in a narrow area, such that today’s quantum physics cannot find a place for itself, although astrology can be interpreted as science due to its observational basis, which is not even wrong.
– According to Laudan, which were the consequences of assuming a fallibilistic perspective in epistemology for the demarcation criterion?
The problem is starting here with the differentiation of knowledge from opinion. Aristotle described the demarcation criterion based on the idea of infallible science and fallible opinion. This view suggested that scientific knowledge should be derived from ‘first causes/principles’, which I don’t have any clue for which first principle is. (I have tendency to accept Carnap’s explanation on how the word ‘principle’ is meaningless without a context.) However, by the work of Galileo and Newton, they had limited or no knowledge of the causes of their observation, although they can put a valid set of theories, such as gravitational force. Laudan is asserting we can even put Newton in a non-scientific category because his claims are not fallible but lack of causes. However, I think it is a scaling problem (to apply a theory of macro to nano) and we don’t know, even today, the causes of gravitation, which is thought to be carried by a quantum particle, graviton -never observed-. The searching of first cause sounds much more metaphysics, to be honest. What first cause? God? Aliens? A force?
