Karl Popper's critical empiricism

Abstract

The present essay inserts itself in a more ambitious project, wich aim is to elucidate the empiricist commitments of the more influential twentieth century philosophers of science, including those, like Popper, who presented themselves as critics of empiricism. Such an elucidation might contribute to make sense of Popper's claim that his conception could be called a critical empiricism, a key claim, in my view, insofar as such a description reflects more accurately the epistemic commitments of his methodological proposal. Hence, I will focus on the pres uppositions of the falsifiability model which more clearly indicate the kind of empiricist commitment assumed by Popper and will then describe as much as possible the features of his "critical empiricism".