critical rationalism blog

A tacit assumption common in arguments concerning the scientific method, criteria of demarcation, experimental procedures, and so forth, is that scientific methods should be like effective methods for empirical problems.

In logic, an effective method is a procedure for computing the answer to a class of problems. It requires no understanding of the problem, but just symbolic transformations according to mechanical rules. An effective method always give some answer, always gives the right answer, can always be completed in a finite number of steps, and works for all instances of its problem-class (cribbed from Wikipedia). When the truth of a statement can be determined by application of an effective method, it is said to be decidable.

Many people seem to implicitly hold science to similar standards. In this view, each step in the scientific method–from discovering theories to experimental testing–can be specified by a mechanical rule. Scientists might as well be mindless automatons obeying a procedure much like computers apply an effective method to calculate solutions to mathematical queries. Continue reading →

The debate concerning so-called ‘theories of truth’ has always stumped me, because it seems prima facie absurd. When I use the predicate ‘is true’, what I’m referring to is correspondence to the facts. The purpose of all my investigations is, first and foremost, to discover how the universe actually is. When I first encountered someone arguing for the pragmatic theory of truth, for example, I was rather surprised and confused. What were they trying to achieve exactly? Continue reading →

The Gordian Knot is a legend of Phrygian Gordium associated with Alexander the Great. It is often used as a metaphor for an intractable problem solved easily by cheating or ‘thinking outside the box.’

In Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach, Karl Popper wrote, ‘I may be mistaken; but I think that I have solved a major philosophical problem: the problem of induction.’ Popper’s solution was quite novel; he proposed that induction is superfluous to the scientific method and the growth of knowledge.

In Popper’s view, scientific hypotheses are unjustifiable conjectures discovered through bold and creative speculation. While the discovery of a hypothesis might be inspired by empirical observation, it might also be inspired by analogy, confusion, cranial trauma, or whatever else. In any case, no satisfactory logic of induction can be formulated to derive scientific hypotheses from empirical observations.

What role, then, do empirical observations serve? Popper’s answer was that although empirical observations cannot, in principle, discover or verify scientific hypotheses, they might falsify them. Observations, particularly experiments, serve to challenge hypotheses by exposing them to potential refutation. These falsifying inferences are exemplified by the deductive rule of modus tollens.

Popper’s solution to the problem of induction delivers a double whammy: not only is an inductive logic impossible to formulate satisfactorily, but it would be redundant anyway. Induction is neither necessary for the discovery of new hypotheses nor useful in their critical evaluation. Popper proposed we replace the so-called inductive methods of science with an evolutionary method of conjecture and refutation.

If a solution to the problem of induction is expected to explain how induction is both possible and justified, Popper was wrong: he did not solve the problem of induction. Indeed, he the denied induction root and branch. Popper’s problem, then, was to explain the growth of knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, in a way that did not depend on induction at all.

If Popper succeeded, then he left us with a competing vision of the growth of knowledge in which the problem of induction never arises.

Popper cut the Gordian knot. Implicit assumptions and expectations that defined the game of philosophy were violated–his solution  to the problem of induction was, in short, a cheat. Initial excitement and bewilderment later turned to scorn and ostracism as philosophers realised they had been duped. Popper was not playing by the rules!

Critics began retying the knot in haste. The implicit assumptions and expectations that Popper had sought to overthrow–psychologism, inductivism, and justificationism–were reaffirmed.

Popper’s evolutionary method was shoehorned into the existing paradigm and, unsurprisingly, found wanting. Superficial resemblance between corroboration and induction was exaggerated; accusations of implicit inductive inferences came think and fast; Popper’s own fallibilism was held against him to “demonstrate” the impossibility of falsification. No misrepresentation nor strawman was too flagrant to be accepted and echoed at even the highest levels of academia.

Popper seemingly misunderstood his role as philosopher. After all, the implicit assumptions that he fought against were also the fertile soil from which the perennial problems of philosophy grow–problems that are to be cherished and protected. They are the source of much employment and scholarly publication; and perhaps too many egos are now at stake to let anyone find a solution. Popper broke the rules of his community and paid the price.

Popper is often given lip-service as one of the great philosophers of the twentieth century, but he is now only a myth relegated a pedagogic convenience–a cautionary tale that adult philosophers tell children philosophers to scare them into good thinking.

/rant

Prompted by Ken’s post on CR and the Austrians, here is the abstract of a paper being prepared for publication or perhaps delivery at a conference in Texas  in November on the theme “Austrian Thought and its Legacy”.

This paper advances three theses. The first is that the Austrians are on the mainline of economics (as distinct from the mainstream) due to Menger’s  situational analysis and a distinctive philosophical or metaphysical framework that was identified by Barry Smith. Many of the basic tenets of the Austrians, but not the framework, were taken up by the mainstream. Significant differences emerged between the Austrians and others in the 1930s with the socialist calculation debate, the rise of Keynes and the advance of mathematical formalism. The differences have been intractable because the rise of positivism created difficulties in considering the all-important framework presuppositions that make the difference between the Austrians and other research programs.  Popper’s theory of metaphysical research programs can be used to address this situation and the contents of his program match Menger’s framework almost  point for point.

The second thesis is that Smith’s “fallibilistic apriorism” and Popper’s theory of conjectural knowledge provide a robust alternative to the strong form of apriorism that is a major obstacle for acceptance of Austrian economics in the mainstream.

The third thesis is that Austrian economics will be easier to teach and the mainstream of economics will move more easily towards the mainline when students approach economics with a good understanding of Popper’s ideas.

These theses are presented with the help of five concepts (1) Situational Analysis,(2) Popper’s theory of metaphysical research programs, (3) the Aristotelian or “Austrian realism” framework of ideas, (4) fallibilistic apriorism which is Smith’s term for a robust form of aprioirsm contra the ‘foundationalist apriorism” of Rothbard and Hoppe and (5) the four “turns” that Popper introduced in addition to his signature idea of falsificationism.

Despite denying the existence of justification and stressing our pervasive fallibility, critical rationalists are actually epistemological optimists. That is, we believe that progress is not only possible but actually the norm. While error is ubiquitous, most of our attempts to correct error are real improvements. While we may often just replace one mistaken hypothesis with another, successor hypotheses are generally better explanations, closer to the truth, and more useful than their predecessors. We can even learn to get better at identifying and correcting errors, and that is what critical rationalism is all about.

However, there is an argument that if our best efforts to correct error may themselves be erroneous, then it must be futile to even try. Criticism, in this view, is powerless unless it comes from an incorrigible source, a window on reality unsullied by subjective judgement. About this manifest truth, there can be no question or disagreement among sane men. To experience it is to be compelled. We cannot doubt or resist, and those who deny are either liars or lunatics. To say that all criticism is itself open to criticism is tantamount to saying that criticism is impossible.

Genuine progress, in this view, cannot be achieved by fallible methods. How, then, can critical rationalists embrace both fallibilism and epistemological progress at once?

For critical rationalists, progress is not measured by subjective confirmation or assurance. That kind of progress is indeed illusory. Though we may feel more or less confident in light of new evidence or arguments, it is always possible that we are most wrong about that which we believe most strongly. For critical rationalists, rather, progress takes a decidedly objective turn. The growth of knowledge is understood as a gradual process of trial and error, conjecture and refutation, or mutation and selection. Progress occurs when old problems are, in actual fact, solved and new problems discovered, when better explanations are found, or the truth better approximated. Whether people feel doubtful or confident, dogmatic or sceptical, is neither here nor there.

In this view, epistemological progress began even before there were subjective experiences and beliefs. There is a continuum between the parochial knowledge embodied in organic structures and the universal abstract products of human minds (science, philosophy, mathematics, etc.). In a sense, our genomes must first “know” how to create beings capable of having experiences and beliefs. This gradual evolution–this growth of knowledge–that made us possible required nothing like subjective assurance or confirmation to be successful.

Objectively, the enterprise of science and human rationality, critical discussion, conjecture and refutation can and, we conjecture, do work. If that is the standard of progress, then progress is indeed possible without the subjective assurance of a “manifest truth”. This is, in a nutshell, how critical rationalists can be both fallibilists and epistemological optimists.

This is a long paper that Gombrich contributed to the Schilpp volume for Popper.

The paper on Bartley’s contribution to Hayek’s last book has been revised and has gone off to join a collection of papers about Hayek. The aim of this paper is to introduce the idea of the authoritarian framework of western thought, to consider some problems with critical thinking about our traditional moral framework, and to note some of the problems created by the justificationist framework of thinking (which Bartley called a “metacontext”) and the “justified true belief” mindset.

The paper contains a passing reference to the roles of academic philosophy and the true belief religions in supporting and propagating the justificationist, “true belief” framework and the mindset that goes with it.

What is to be done? It is easy to specify what can be done in academic philosphy: simply put CR on the syllabus with the appropriate reading from Popper, Bartley and others. But what about the religions and the churches that preach obedience to various authorities? They are the major conduits for the moral frameworks that we have at present and we should be grateful for the Judeo-Christian heritage that we enjoy. Indeed all the great religions have what amounts to a common core of moral values, with awkward variations in some cases. So how can the framework of religious throught be reformed without losing anything of value? This is something that Bartley was groping towards in the revised edition of The Retreat to Commitment when he hinted that the Christian faith could have inherited a very different framework  for its teachings if a different sect among the early Christians had won out at some crucial period in the evolution of the official doctrines.

The crib or reading guide for The Logic of Scientific Discovery is now on line after some coaching from Joe Agassi with the chapters on Probability and Physics.

Critical comments will help to improve the product. Compliments (corroborations) will cheer me up but will not advance the discussion:)