Responsible Futures Practices and Karl Popper

In the context of future-oriented thinking, the notion of “responsibility” is multivalent, and, with rare exception, ambiguously assigned in our academic research and foresight practices. The goal of this presentation is to identify component parts, developed by research and reflections by practitioners, which may form a basis for responsible futures (RFs) theory and practice. We explore the option for a component part of RF that is developed around research on the ethics of knowledge creation. This line of thinking is most conspicuously associated with the work of Karl Popper, in particular, the insight that knowledge grows through the moral principles associated with “good” conjecture and refutation. The latter, Popper’s famous philosophical observation about falsification, is well-known and widely discussed. The former is comparatively less well-known and rarely discussed in futures studies. Wendell Bell, for example, developed ideas around falsification for futures studies, but overlooked the significance of conjecture entirely. The significance of conjecture in the process of knowledge creation and for Responsible Futures Practice (RFP), however, go under explored, and are developed upon in this presentation.

Paper presented at European Forum for Studies of Policies for Research and Innovation (EU-SPRI) Conference, 5-7 June 2024 in Twente, Netherlands.

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Work Title Responsible Futures Practices and Karl Popper
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Open Access
Creators
  1. Matthew Spaniol
  2. Nicholas J. Rowland
Keyword
  1. Responsible Futures
  2. Conjecture
  3. Falsification
  4. Critical Rationalism
  5. Facilitation
  6. Ethics of Knowledge Production
  7. Karl Popper
  8. Responsible Futures Practice
License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives)
Work Type Research Paper
Publication Date June 2024
DOI doi:10.26207/qe1v-fx54
Deposited July 17, 2024

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    Description
    • In the context of future-oriented thinking, the notion of “responsibility” is multivalent, and, with rare exception, ambiguously assigned in our academic research and foresight practices. The goal of this presentation is to identify component parts, developed by research and reflections by practitioners, which may form a basis for responsible futures (RFs) theory and practice. We explore the option for a component part of RF that is developed around research on the ethics of knowledge creation. This line of thinking is most conspicuously associated with the work of Karl Popper, in particular, the insight that knowledge grows through the moral principles associated with “good” conjecture and refutation. The latter, Popper’s famous philosophical observation about falsification, is well-known and widely discussed. The former is comparatively less well-known and rarely discussed in futures studies. Wendell Bell, for example, developed ideas around falsification for futures studies, but overlooked the significance of conjecture entirely. The significance of conjecture in the process of knowledge creation and for Responsible Futures Practice (RFP), however, go under explored, and are developed upon in this presentation.
    Publication Date
    • 2024-06
  • Added Creator NICHOLAS JAMES ROWLAND
  • Added Creator Matthew Spaniol
  • Added Creator NICHOLAS JAMES ROWLAND
  • Added The Ethics of Knowledge Creation and Responsible Futures (RF).docx
  • Added The Ethics of Knowledge Creation and Responsible Futures (RF).pdf
  • Deleted The Ethics of Knowledge Creation and Responsible Futures (RF).docx
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    License
    • https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
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  • Updated Keyword, Description Show Changes
    Keyword
    • Responsible Futures, Conjecture, Falsification, Critical Rationalism, Facilitation, Ethics of Knowledge Production, Karl Popper, Responsible Futures Practice
    Description
    • In the context of future-oriented thinking, the notion of “responsibility” is multivalent, and, with rare exception, ambiguously assigned in our academic research and foresight practices. The goal of this presentation is to identify component parts, developed by research and reflections by practitioners, which may form a basis for responsible futures (RFs) theory and practice. We explore the option for a component part of RF that is developed around research on the ethics of knowledge creation. This line of thinking is most conspicuously associated with the work of Karl Popper, in particular, the insight that knowledge grows through the moral principles associated with “good” conjecture and refutation. The latter, Popper’s famous philosophical observation about falsification, is well-known and widely discussed. The former is comparatively less well-known and rarely discussed in futures studies. Wendell Bell, for example, developed ideas around falsification for futures studies, but overlooked the significance of conjecture entirely. The significance of conjecture in the process of knowledge creation and for Responsible Futures Practice (RFP), however, go under explored, and are developed upon in this presentation.
    • In the context of future-oriented thinking, the notion of “responsibility” is multivalent, and, with rare exception, ambiguously assigned in our academic research and foresight practices. The goal of this presentation is to identify component parts, developed by research and reflections by practitioners, which may form a basis for responsible futures (RFs) theory and practice. We explore the option for a component part of RF that is developed around research on the ethics of knowledge creation. This line of thinking is most conspicuously associated with the work of Karl Popper, in particular, the insight that knowledge grows through the moral principles associated with “good” conjecture and refutation. The latter, Popper’s famous philosophical observation about falsification, is well-known and widely discussed. The former is comparatively less well-known and rarely discussed in futures studies. Wendell Bell, for example, developed ideas around falsification for futures studies, but overlooked the significance of conjecture entirely. The significance of conjecture in the process of knowledge creation and for Responsible Futures Practice (RFP), however, go under explored, and are developed upon in this presentation.
    • Paper presented at European Forum for Studies of Policies for Research and Innovation (EU-SPRI) Conference, 5-7 June 2024 in Twente, Netherlands.
  • Deleted Creator NICHOLAS JAMES ROWLAND
  • Updated Creator Matthew Spaniol
  • Renamed Creator Nicholas J. Rowland Show Changes
    • NICHOLAS JAMES ROWLAND
    • Nicholas J. Rowland