Author Archives: Rafe

For many years Popper delivered a series of 15 lectures as an introduction to the philosophy of science. They were designed for undergraduates but many other people attended. While Popper was alive Mark Notturno started work on a reconstruction of … Continue reading →

Karl Popper and Barry Smith on the Metaphysical Research Program of Austrian Realism and Carl Menger’s Economics. An unpublished paper delivered at a conference on Austrian thought at the University of Texas (Arlington) in 2013. I don’t expect everyone or indeed … Continue reading →

Joe Agassi, intellectual irritant This is a short form of a tribute to Joe Agassi, written for a collection to honour his 90th birthday in 2017. Authors were advised to go beyond Joe’s own contribution to pursue any avenues and … Continue reading →

One of the themes which I developed some years ago concerned the way ideas take hold and exert an influence on our thoughts and our research projects which is very hard to identify, to subject to critical appraisal and to … Continue reading →

  A long thread on the Critical Rationalist facebook page began by drawing on  von Mises’s criticism of Popper in The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science “he [von Mises] addressed the claim of Karl Popper that scientific propositions must be falsifiable. Although … Continue reading →

When the linguistic philosophers inspired by  Ryle, Wittgenstein and Austin ruled the roost in some universities, notably Oxford, critics sometimes referred to “distinctions that don’t make a difference”. What about the distinction between justificationism and non-justificationism? A critic of Popperism in the … Continue reading →

I am preparing to publish Misreading Popper and some other of my ebooks as print-on-demand paperbacks. This facility is available through a publishing associate of Amazon called CreateSpace. There are still people out there who want books to hold in their … Continue reading →

A copy of Karl Popper and the Two New Secrets of Life has arrived, courtesy of the author. This books is a fine addition to Popperian exegesis,  just when you thought the  cottage industry on the intellectual development of KRP … Continue reading →

Can philosophy progress, or is there an eternal  dialogue on fundamentals that just keeps the issues in play without resolving any of them and moving on, like the successful natural sciences?  Unlike the progress of science,  there are signs of decline in philosophy judging … Continue reading →

Planning a paper version of  Reason and Imagination  I have made some minor improvements and Bruce made a major suggestion, to have a new Introduction to spell out the six themes that I have used to introduce the guides and Misreading Popper. This reminds me of … Continue reading →