critical rationalism blog

1. The falsifiability criterion is about meaning.

2. Failure to draw the distinction between falsifiability (a matter of logic and the form of statements) and falsification (a practical matter).

3. Scientists don’t practice falsification.

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Giddens on the postpositivistic philosophy of science in Bottomore and Nisbet (eds) A History of Sociological Analysis, Basic Books, 1978. In the Questia library.

After a lengthy account of the progress of positivism in the philosophy of science from theVienna Circleof logical positivists to logical empiricism Giddens moved to the “postpositivistic” attack on the “orthodox model”. He named several authors involved in this attack (Toulmin, Feyerabend, Hesse, Kuhn) and then noted that Popper had preceded them. Some of the positivists confused the issues by insisting that Popper was really one of them, due to the interest in science that they shared, so his differences were internal to the movement. Consequently Giddens found  “The points at issue are not easy to disentangle…one should mention…his complete rejection of induction and his concomitant rejection of “sensory certainty”…his substitution of falsification for verification…his defence of tradition which, in conjunction with the critical spirit, is integral to science; and is replacement of the logical positivist ambition of putting an end to metaphysics by revealing it is nonsense  with the aim of securing criteria of demarcation between science and pseudoscience”.

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When Popper’s longtime NZ friend Colin Simkin became seriously ill in the late 1990s a man flew into Sydney to interview him for a Popper biography. Brian Boyd came too late because Simkin was too ill to see him. A few years later at the Popper conference in Vienna there was talk of Boyd’s biography but without any news on progress. Boyd’s major achievement was a massive and highly acclaimed biography of Vladamir Nabakov.

And now it is all happening, after a decade in cold storage the project will be funded by three-year grant of $600,000.

In the late 1990s Professor Boyd travelled to 16 countries to investigate archives and locations and interview over 90 Popper associates from politicians (like Helmut Schmidt) to philosophers (like Isaiah Berlin).

“I find Popper’s thought marvellously exciting and fertile, and the best defence I know against what John Searle calls ‘the attacks on . . . objectivity, rationality, truth and intelligence in contemporary intellectual life’.”

Professor Boyd has previously penned biographies on the great Russian novelist Nabokov, which were credited with contributing to the Nabokov revival. Boyd seeks to ensure the Popper biography has a similar impact.

More on Boyd.

Thanks to Dave Lull for the links!

This year the Review of Austrian Economics did a retrospective on  Don Lavoie and the “hermeneutic” or “interpretive” turn that he initiated in the mid 1980s. Peter Boettke and David Prychitko explained why this was important and why 1985 could have been a turning point in modern economics. The bottom line is that it was not a turning point because the profession at large stuck with positivism and formalism.

I am thinking about a piece with the working title “Third time lucky?” to suggest that the first  opportunity for a turning point was just after WW2 if only Talcott Parsons, Ludwig von Mises and their followers could have formed a united front to push the views that they shared (or the views that Parsons held in 1937 anyway).

The “second time” was when Lavoie and his colleagues  were on the case, if only they had taken not been diverted by Gadamer and Bernstein but promoted the  common approach of the early Parsons plus von Mises and Popper, beefed  up with input from the Critical Rationalists in the Popper school like Agassi, Albert, Boland, Birner and Jarvie, plus Popper’s later work on objective knowledge and metaphysical research programs.

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For some time I remained staunchly agnostic on the science of climate change, fortified by the fact that nothing that Australia does will make a difference, either directly to the climate or in leading the world. In some ways we are leading the world, driven by a coalition of two parties who can be best described as the Trade Union Party and the New Communists. 

A leading scientist in Australia has written a book that gives a good handle on the science, the history and the pressures acting on scientists that have led to what he calls The Climate Caper. That is the name of his book, which I have summarised on line.

It provides some more dots to add to the pattern sketched by a previous book that could have been called The Anti-Nuclear Power Caper.

This is a summary of the policies of the New Communist Party in Australia.

We do not have direct experience of physical things: evidence is theory-laden. That is well-understood and generally regarded as true. Much less appreciated is that we do not have direct experience of abstract things either: self-evidence is theory-laden too.

The empiricist intuition is that as we approach the things of which we have “direct experience,” our beliefs become more certain, obvious, and less prone to error. It is ironic, then, that at the very end of this chain are qualia, perhaps the only things we could be said to “experience directly,” and they are among the least understood phenomena of all.

Critical rationalism is sometimes mistaken to be little more than a call to be critical. Some object that advocacy of the critical attitude is hardly unique to critical rationalism; every first year philosophy student is instructed to be critical of themselves and others. However, critical rationalism is about a lot more than just an attitude.

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Thanks for the feed from Daniel Barnes who said to read a great article here. It  is the site of our new contributor ‘d’. Welcome to the party d! Keep an eye on this site!!

Good to have the disgusting exchange between Strauss and Vogelin on line.

I wrote this as a quick comment on d’s blog, but then the post disappeared for some reason. Anyway, I thought I’d share here.

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