Journal of Philosophical Investigations

نوع مقاله : مقاله علمی- پژوهشی

نویسنده

Emeritus Professor at University College London – England

چکیده

The aim of this paper is to consider whether critical rationalism has any ideas which could usefully be applied to the internet.  Today we tend to take the internet for granted and it is easy to forget that it was only about two decades ago that it began to be used to any significant extent. Accordingly in section 1 of the paper, there is a brief consideration of the history of the internet.  At first sight this makes it looks implausible that any of Popper’s ideas could be applicable to the internet, since Popper died before the internet came into general use.  However, section 2 argues that Popper’s theory of World 3 does apply very well to the internet.  This application is significant because, as shown in section 3, it leads to the problem of misinformation, which is one of the most significant problems generated by the internet.  In section 4 there is an attempt to solve this problem using ideas taken from Popper’s epistemology. It is argued that there should be changes in education designed to prepare students for the internet age. Teaching in the internet age should focus on presenting to the students not just the accepted theories but also the evidence on which they are based. An illustration of how this might be done is given by considering an example from science teaching, namely the teaching of Newtonian mechanics in the last years of school or first years of university.

کلیدواژه‌ها

عنوان مقاله [English]

Critical Rationalism and the Internet

نویسنده [English]

  • Donald Gillies

Emeritus Professor at University College London – England

چکیده [English]

The aim of this paper is to consider whether critical rationalism has any ideas which could usefully be applied to the internet.  Today we tend to take the internet for granted and it is easy to forget that it was only about two decades ago that it began to be used to any significant extent. Accordingly in section 1 of the paper, there is a brief consideration of the history of the internet.  At first sight this makes it looks implausible that any of Popper’s ideas could be applicable to the internet, since Popper died before the internet came into general use.  However, section 2 argues that Popper’s theory of World 3 does apply very well to the internet.  This application is significant because, as shown in section 3, it leads to the problem of misinformation, which is one of the most significant problems generated by the internet.  In section 4 there is an attempt to solve this problem using ideas taken from Popper’s epistemology. It is argued that there should be changes in education designed to prepare students for the internet age. Teaching in the internet age should focus on presenting to the students not just the accepted theories but also the evidence on which they are based. An illustration of how this might be done is given by considering an example from science teaching, namely the teaching of Newtonian mechanics in the last years of school or first years of university.

کلیدواژه‌ها [English]

  • Critical rationalism
  • The Internet
  • World 3
  • Misinformation
  • Popper’s epistemology
fatburningman.com (consulted 25 November 2022)
Floridi, L. (2010). Information: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.
Frege, G. (1918/19). Logical Investigations. Part I Thoughts. In Brian McGuinness (Ed.), Gottlob Frege, Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy, Basil Blackwell, [1984], pp. 351-372.
Gillies, D. (2009). Problem-Solving and the Problem of Induction. In Zuzana Parusniková and Robert S. Cohen (Eds.) Rethinking Popper, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Springer, pp. 103-115. (Available on ResearchGate)
Gillies, D. (2010). Informational Realism and World 3, Knowledge, Technology & Policy, 23(1), 7-24.
nhs.uk (consulted 25 November 2022)
Parusniková, Z. (2016). The Devaluation of the Subject in Popper's Theory of World 3, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 46(3), 304-318.
Popper, K. (1972). Objective Knowledge. Oxford University Press
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