Karl Raimund Popper is an Austrian neopositivist philosopher who belonged

to the Vienna Circle.

He defended that science operated by falsification, and not by induction.
maintaining that the basis of empirical control of science is the possibility of
falsifying hypotheses, in an open process that would tend to lead to scientific
truth.
At the beginning he developed the logic of scientific research (1934), where
POPPER

he also established a criterion to clearly separate science from other

discourses. For a hypothesis to be scientific, it is necessary that observable
and, therefore, falsifiable statements emerge from it. so that if these are not
verified, the hypothesis can be refuted.

Later he developed the philosophy of social sciences, which was

incomplete, disjointed and incosistent.

His philosophy has predominated among economists and social scientists during the second
half of the 20th century, however it seems to have had much more influence on economics,
thus several economists influenced Popper's philosophy and his attempt to develop a tool of

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social engineering for the betterment of society has gone virtually unnoticed.

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 POPPER'S PHILOSOPHY OF NATURAL SCIENCES

Popper's philosophy of science is linked to building a purely deductive approach .

Which consists of inventing a hypothesis and deducing its consequences.
Popper fought against the totalitarianism and cultural relativism of the wartime,” and
considered that the critical method can make violence obsolete.
His most radical aspect of the philosophy of science is the total rejection of induction ,
his philosophy is purely deductive , and rests on the belief that the prior probability of
any law must be equal to zero. And his argument is:

The universal statement “all swans are white” can never be definitively verified through
experience, because despite the accumulation of countless experiences of “this swan
is white,” there is always the possibility of a future experience of the type , “this swan is
not white” .

In other words, infinite singular experiences that “this or that swan is white” do not take
away its hypothetical and conjectural character from the generalization, of saying that
all swans are white, since a single observation present or in the future of a black swan
or another color to invalidate it .

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For Popper, the critical method consists of trial and error , that is, proposing
bold hypotheses (falsifiable hypotheses) and subjecting them to more severe
criticism to detect where the error lies.
A Hypothesis is falsifiable when it is stated in the most general way possible,
in a very clear and precise way. That is to say, they are more likely to be
proven false . Therefore, it can be stated that the greater the falsifiability, the
greater the corroboration, and the greater the corroboration, the closer the
truth will be.
falsifiable hypothesis
❖ The planet Mercury rotates in an orbit. (Falseable)
❖ All planets rotate in an orbit. (Even more falsifiable than the previous
proposition)
❖ All planets rotate in an elliptical orbit. (More falsifiable than the previous
ones and more precise)
❖ All metals expand when heated. (Falseable)
Non-falsifiable hypothesis
❖ Tomorrow it might rain. Not falsifiable, because it cannot be false.
❖ You may get lucky in the lottery. (Not falsifiable, because it can never be false)
❖ All human actions are determined by the unconscious. Not falsifiable because it
does not conceive the possibility of it being false

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 FALSATIONISM

falsificationis It is a method that

Inductivism
faces the
m
Defi ende

The
falsification

consisting of
Yo
Approach •and new Proposition of
Initial problem For It is To solve it
problems a new
criticized and
work it out one of a kind answer are found conjecture
| guess

Which implies that

> Learn from mistakes

scientific > Always open to new solutions
knowledge > Continuously seek the truth

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 Main reasons for the failure of falsificationism

1. A theory can never be conclusively falsified.

2. Not being able to develop a completely non-inductive
scheme, because induction inevitably reappears.
3. Lack of historical foundation or argument
4. Overestimation, the willingness of scientists to attack
their own theories (inadequate defense)

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 POPPER AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Unlike other philosophers who only dealt with physics, Popper sought to influence the
social sciences.

Popper's social science philosophy is hidden behind confusing and conflicting currents of
thought. Because he never wrote a systematic treatise on the methodology of social
science.
Popper's main assertions regarding social philosophy
> He considered that social science could only be understood within the framework of his
philosophy of natural science.
> He considered social science as less successful because he believes that they have
not found their Galileo.
> He considered that the confusion between law and tendency inspired the false doctrine
of historicism.
> Consider that situational logic adheres to rational behavior
> Consider that the social world is less complex than the natural world.
Conclusion:
Popper's social philosophy is incomplete, inconsistent, and somewhat disjointed.

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 Econometrics had a disappointment in the eighties
whose cause was the growing weakness of its bases
statistics.
This movement began with an article by Hendry
when I try to explain inflation in the UK
where he found a good fit using the quantity
accumulated rainfall in the United Kingdom as a variable
explanatory, it is then that in his article he concludes
stating: “It makes no sense to talk about
confirmation of theories when it is so easy to obtain
spurious results.”

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• Philosopher of science Clark Glymour noted
that the article was objectionable but important
and that the essence is that statistical tests do
not tell us whether a model is approximately
true or not. Or it allows us to compare false
models to determine which one is closer to the
truth.
• In other words, these tests do not play a
definitive role in evaluating theories.

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• In the formative years of econometrics it was
struggling to gain acceptance, Trygve's approach
makes it clear that once the hypotheses were
tested against the data, the true theories would
be accepted and the false ones would be rejected
most of the time, something that It is close to
Popper's falsification.
• This vision was very compatible with that of
philosophers of science such as Popper, who
influenced initial econometrics training.

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 Once econometrics was conceived as a system of equations
that could be altered to guide endogenous variables along the
desired path, the central idea about economics became
second nature.
That is why the political environment favored this
development, because, towards the end of the forties, many
Western governments were determined to intervene in the
economy to prevent high unemployment or instability, bringing
with it the high demand for econometricians.

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• The idea that a theory is validated when
confronted with data (which passes from the
logical positivists to Popper), was completely
integrated into the econometric program.
• This is why the pioneers of econometrics wanted
to find a method that would allow them to
differentiate between theories that were consistent
with the data and those that were not.

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• It was a young movement, it was enthusiastic but
humble, the first macroeconomic models were
called statistical alchemy by Tinbergen. In different
seminars they referred to the problem of multiple
hypotheses, today known as the model selection
problem.
• The problem recognized by the Cowles
commission was that the data supported too many
equally plausible a priori structures. In other words,
the false models were getting some support from
the data or, perhaps more disturbing, all the models
were true.

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• Friedman never tired of suggesting that hypothesis
selection can satisfy the psychological needs of
individual researchers.
• It is not surprising that this method did not meet
long-term expectations since it never solved the
problem of discerning between alternative
hypotheses. Indeed, “the problem of model
selection is as pressing today as it was two
generations ago, although there has been a
tendency to suppress it from published empirical
research reports.”

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• The early postwar years in the United States
saw the development of econometrics, the
advancement of computer technology under a
Democratic-led government, and Klein's first
econometric model in the tradition of the
Cowles commission were important catalysts.
in the era

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 Falsificationism
Popperian: a
inductive attempt to
evade induction
Milagros Barroso

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 Logica
l

Solution to
the
Induction
problem
Methodologic
al

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 Methodological Falsification
• It is the procedure by which the man of
science must exercise his scientific
practice, through the testing of bold and
risky theories or hypotheses, which are
submitted, both by him and by the
scientific community, to crucial
experiments to refutation. •A and

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 Logical Falsifiability
• That determine not only the character
empirical theories or hypotheses
scientific, by requiring counterexamples or
empirical reasons that falsify or refute it,
but also the only possible attribution of a
truth value from a logical point of view;
their falsity.

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 What happens when there are two or more
rival theories competing with each other?
1. The degree of corroboration
It is a non-quantitative evaluative report of the past
performance of theories in the face of the refutation
attempts to which they have been subjected.
2. The methodological rules
Regulates the management of auxiliary hypotheses (they
contribute to increasing the degree of falsifiability)
Guarantee scientific objectivity through the exi of the
discussion of theories.

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 Criticism of POPPER
• All theories can be false
• If a result contradicts the theory, denying it the
category of scientific rank
• The historical reality and context is not taken into
account.
Lakatos believes that scientific theories do not
They can be rejected using falsification and are
not so significantly affected by the experiments
to which they are subjected.

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 I FINALLY CONSIDER
THAT:
• SCIENCE IS NEITHER TOTALLY
INDUCTIVE NOR TOTALLY DECUTIVE,
BUT IT MAKES USE OF A
COMBINATION OF BOTH METHODS

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