A dimensão política do critério de falseabilidade enquanto fundamento para a sociedade aberta em Karl Raimund Popper

Abstract

This monograph is entitled: The political dimension of the falsifiability criterion as a basis for an open society in Karl Popper. The work analyzes the indeterministic perspective of Popper's epistemology, based on the understanding of falsifiability and critical rationalism in order to show its functionality in politics and especially in an open society. The work begins with a brief presentation of the flourishing of modern science and its search for the scientific method. In this search, the inductive method was developed by Bacon, a method widely disseminated by logical positivism and the Vienna Circle. By using the inductive method and formulating verificationism as a criterion for demarcating science from pseudoscience, the Circle intended to discredit that which did not correspond to the empirical world, thus eliminating metaphysics from scientific theoretical consideration. Now, Popper, not sharing the same ideas as the positivists and the Vienna Circle, begins by attacking the fundamental methodological bases such as induction and verificationism in order to then defend his scientific method. Popper affirms the criterion of falsifiability as a demarcation between what is scientific and what is not, by opening theories to the possibility of being falsified. The thesis of falsifiability is a great tool in political philosophy for affirming an open society, since it essentially defends openness to criticism, the incorporation of various opinions around a theory and social plan, which must be subjected to a critical and rational examination with a view to their refutation. Falsifiability is shown to be far-reaching in the defense of democracy and opposes totalitarianism, through continuous reforms carried out by social institutions that defend social changes through the freedom of critical interventions.