Scientific Reasoning

Overview

In lecture five, we analyze two key challenges in philosophy of science. First, the demarcation problem: distinguishing genuine science from pseudoscience through Popper's falsification principle - scientific claims must be testable and potentially disprovable, unlike theories like psychoanalysis. Second, Hume's problem of induction questions how we justify using past experience to predict the future. We examine contemporary responses including Bayesian probability and the concept of abduction as alternative approaches to scientific reasoning, while acknowledging that the skeptical challenge remains largely unresolved in contemporary philosophy of science.