A nice piece! Seven Habits.
1. Judge judiciously
2. Question the questionable
3. Chase challenges
4. Ascertain alternatives
6. Take various viewpoints
7. Sideline the self
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"One of the main tasks for human reason is to make the universe we live in understandable to ourselves. This is the task of science. There are two different components of about equal importance in this enterprise. The first is poetic inventiveness ..."
– Karl Popper
books
(non-commercial links)
From the link:
> … abstain altogether from making any judgement, where there are insufficient grounds to decide one way or another
But we never have “sufficient grounds”. That’s justificationism.
> Third, when they do make a judgement, they will treat it as a matter of degree, or assign a level of confidence to it, avoiding treating any non-trivial issue as totally certain.
I think this is completely wrong. If you disagree with my position on the matter, please criticize it. See also BoI.
> they treat their judgements as provisional, i.e., made on the basis of the evidence and arguments available at the time
This is standard non-Popperian epistemology. In Popperian epistemology we do not make judgments on the basis of anything.
I think this is a lot of mistakes in just the first habit. (I also don’t think these things, even if they were correct, should be thought of as habits.) I don’t see how this piece is very CR or very good.
“I think this is completely wrong. If you disagree with my position on the matter, please criticize it. See also BoI.”
You have not stated your position in a form that is conducive to criticism. Furthermore, what page of BoI?
“This is standard non-Popperian epistemology. In Popperian epistemology we do not make judgments on the basis of anything.”
We obviously do make judgements: judgements on whether something has been criticised succesfully or not, these judgements are not conclusive or unquestionable, but they are judgements nonetheless.
I think your conception of the word “judgment” here is an unfair reading of what the blogger is trying to say.
I re-read what you said here: ““This is standard non-Popperian epistemology. In Popperian epistemology we do not make judgments on the basis of anything.”
And I guess what you might be trying to say is not that we don’t make judgements, but that we don’t make it on the basis of anything, but I am not sure what you mean by this, because we do have some kind bases, like logic, or (what amounts to the same) reason or insight etc.
> You have not stated your position in a form that is conducive to criticism.
Yes I have. http://curi.us/1595-rationally-resolving-conflicts-of-ideas
And specifically on this blog I stated a position very carefully and did my best to expose it to criticism: http://curi.us/1585-critical-preferences (and the follow up: http://curi.us/1489-critical-preferences-and-strong-arguments )
Regarding “basis”: what do you want? You’ve said what most people think without relating it to Popperian stuff. You haven’t used a question mark. What do you hope will happen now?
“”Regarding “basis”: what do you want?”
Can you be more explicit?
“You’ve said what most people think without relating it to Popperian stuff. ”
Okay.
“You haven’t used a question mark. What do you hope will happen now?”
I am not sure what your point is.