Facebook Comments

FACEBOOK COMMENTS

by Anton Antonio

July 7, 2015

Sir Karl Raimund Popper was an Austrian-British philosopher and professor who is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20^th century.  Popper is known for his rejection of the classical inductivist (meaning: inductivism is an approach to logic whereby scientific laws are inferred from particular facts or observational evidence.  This approach can also be applied to theory-building in social sciences, with theory being inferred by reasoning from particular facts to general principles.)  This view on the scientific method, in favour of empirical falsification (meaning: based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic).  A theory in the empirical sciences can never be proven, but it can be falsified (meaning: that it can and should be scrutinised by decisive experiments).

It is commonly said that the only thing constant in life is change.  Knowledge, like most things, also changes.  In fact, Popper, in 1965, described the growth of scientific knowledge as simply “the interplay of conjectures (meaning: an opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information) and refutation (meaning: to prove wrong by argument or evidence).  The growth of scientific knowledge is a result of someone coming up with a guess or hypothesis that is later refuted by another with a new conjecture which is again questioned, debunked and reformulated by someone else which leads to another conjecture… and this cycle goes on and on.

Facebook commentaries or social media interactions (in general) could be likened to this system of argumentation and debate that produces new conjectures and refutation.  These exchanges are often friendly and productive.  Sometimes, however, they sadly result to a never-ending war of words which are counter-productive.  Situations like this are the normal result of: (1) People making comments that attack the messenger not the message; (2) People don’t read the article in their entirety and make assumptions based on portions of the article; often, the real message is missed; (3) People often fail to determine the “context” by which a certain topic is written; this is critical in understanding what urged the writer to write what he wrote;  and, (4) People sometimes read with a “closed” mind and prefer to use their own intellectual standard and values system… remember, writers are also human and, therefore, exercise their own personal ethical standards in their articles.

To put more meaning to Facebook commentaries, they should be self-regulated and guided by the basic norms of ethics.  Belief and values systems, that people hold dearly and are passionate about (especially religious choices and socio-political beliefs), must be respected.

Another guiding principle in exchanging views in public that must be maintained is making certain that our commentaries and narratives should contribute new knowledge to the already existing body of knowledge out there.  If this cannot be possibly done, it might be ideal to simply keep “things” to ourselves… “things” in this context are our social media and Facebook comments.

Just my little thoughts…

(Please visit, like and share Pro EARTH Crusaders on Facebook or follow me at http://antonantonio.blogspot.com/ and http://twitter.com/EarthCrusader)