Talk:Falsificationism

Tentative title: Naive Falsificationism

The title needs to be specific enough so that it's clear that the article does not cover all meanings of falsificationism. I would have used falsificationism, but it would have been an invitation to cover all meanings of the term in the literature and it's better to have a clear focus. Yet, the title should not present a too narrow scope such as only one specific work of Lakatos. The concept that I wish to cover is the notion of falsificationism that is often criticized and, unfortunately, also often inadequately attributed to Popper. This naive notion is not referred to by Lakatos only. Even Lakatos says that Kuhn refers to it. The title "Naive Falsificationism" is not perfect, because Lakatos used this term in a very narrow manner as different from dogmatic falsificationism. On the other hand, it's only Lakatos that used it in this very narrow manner. For many authors, naive falsificationism includes Dogmatic falsificationism. In fact, for some authors, naive falsificationism means what Lakatos calls dogmatic falsificationism and they do not discuss what Lakatos calls naive falsificationism. For example, I do not believe that Kuhn used the distinctions that Lakatos created. "Naive falsificationism" as a title should be taken in its broadest sense. It would still be narrow enough. I created a draft in Draft: Naive Falsificationism. Currently, it only contains a cut and paste of the section that exists in Falsifiability. It has to be adapted and extended to make it less specific to one work of Lakatos. I might even use the historical approach that Biogeographist suggested, but addding the Duhemian problem as the primary context that precedes every thing. The only difference is that the objective is to clarify the notion of Naive falsificationism in its context, certainly including Popper's philosophy. Dominic Mayers (talk) 16:09, 21 January 2022 (UTC)