Karl Popper, Two Faces of Common Sense (exerpt), in Objective Knowledge.

Plato, Apology (exerpt)

Popper was sort of like B. Russell, very familiar with positivism and linguistic philosophy, and used
“analytic” techniques.  But he always thought both of them were off-base because they didn’t deal
with important stuff.  Possibly helpful comments and questions:

1) Popper refers to some stuff you probably don’t know much about: Newton, Einstein, Kepler,
logical probability.  Don’t worry much about that - try to get the general drift of what he says
about things that might have some connection with the Rescher article: truth, falsehood,
generality, specificity, truth-content.

2) Verisimilitude.  This could be thought of as “truth-likeness” or “closeness to truth.”  The idea
is that of two false statements (or theories), one can be “more true” than the other.

DWA Questions

1) State in one sentence the main point of Rescher’s article.

2) State in one sentence the main point of the Popper selection.

3) State in one sentence whether or to what extent Socrates claims to know anything.

4) Write a good paragraph in which you compare/contrast the views of knowledge and ignorance
(or, truth and falsehood) of Rescher and Popper.

5) Speculate (short paragraph, based loosely on the Plato selection) about the extent to which
Socrates would approve/disapprove of Rescher’s and Popper’s approaches to knowledge and
ignorance.

Mark in the margins or scribble on scratch paper things in the readings that bug you!