In today's NYT, Nikita Stewart must have been reading Popper. The note
reads:
"Group home workers are charged with falsifying records."
The initial paragraph reads:
"One current and two former employees of a nonprofit that ran group homes
in Brooklyn were arraigned on Wednesday on charges of falsifying records."
Now, it may be granted that Stewart is writing English, and Popper was
speaking Austrian.
So it may do to explore what the Austrian for 'falsify' is.
It is very tempting to understand Popper yielding to a temptation.
Everybody (almost: Ayer, Schlick, etc.) were using (or misusing) 'verify'. So
he
came up, when translating or co-translating his stuff, with 'falsify'. Yet,
how many 'usages' of 'falsify' are there?
One.
"Do not multiply senses of 'falsify' beyond necessity."
There is one basic core sense that allows for multiple usages.
Ditto with 'verify', which was the wrong choice of verb anyway?
Who verifies what?
The influence must have been Tarski. British empiricists seldom use 'true',
'alethic', or related terms. But for Tarski (and later Donaldson) it's all
about _truth_-conditional semantics.
To verify 'snow is white', you are taken to Alaska, and unless Palin
refudiates you by showing some burnt snow that is black, you'll conclude that
'snow is white' has been verified by looking at the Alaskan landscape -- or
Russian one, since one can see Russia from Alaska, Palin testifies.
Cheers,
Speranza
