critical rationalism blog

Gene Callahan has posted a very strange criticism of EE, inspired by the scholarly but eccentric contrarian John Gray.

“This [is] an objection to evolutionary epistemology in all of its forms—that there is no reason whatever for supposing that the web of belief which has emerged via natural and cultural evolution mirrors nature or tracks reality. It will do so, according to evolutionary theory itself, only in so far as such mirroring or tracking enhances survival chances. There is, in fact, nothing a priori to tell against the possibility that false belief systems may sometimes give their holders a competitive edge in survival stakes, if unreasonable optimism, or false religious or other hopes are useful in sustaining them in adversity.” – John Gray, Liberalisms, 248.

Gene wrote:

It seems to me that Gray’s point is indisputable: the mere fact that, say, our brains or our scientific enterprises evolved as “spontaneous orders” gives them, contra Hayek, no warrant of epistemological reliability whatsoever.

Continue reading →

About the different historical calenders. This calendar handles the change from Julian to Gregorian calendars in different countries.

How a flintlock pistol works. With slow motion animation.

The inventory of English royal ordinance in 1637.

The formula to explain underwater sound propagation.

OK so the person who put all that on a website is a military nutcase, but he didn’t know about this. The Australian Army Artillery Museum on North Head, Manly.

The work of David Stove was recently raised on an email list as a corrective to Popper’s philosophy of science. This has prompted me to revive a dormant idea, along the lines of the Bent Spoon Award handed out each year by the Australian Skeptics for the best/worst example of credulity in science reporting. The idea was to poke fun at the bent spoon trickery  of Uri Geller.

This prize could be awarded annually (if  nominations of sufficient quality are received) for the worst example of mangling and misrepresenting Popper’s ideas, preferably in refereed literature. Continue reading →

Pete Boettke meditating  on the Austrian response to the New Deal and the same thing all over again.

Re-reading these arguments one cannot help but think of the immediate application to the world today, and how the policies pursued so far have turned a market correction into an economy wide crisis, and continue to threaten our long term economic health of our civilization.  Mises, as quoted by Ebeling, summed up the situation for the economists as follows: “Occasionally, I entertained the hope that my writings would bear practical fruit and show the way for policy.  Constantly I have been looking for evidence of a change in ideology.  But I have never allowed myself to be deceived.  I have to come to realize that my theories explain the degeneration of a great civilization; they do not prevent it.  I set out to be a reformer, but only became the historian of decline.”

What can we do to follow in Mises’s footsteps but resist this conclusion? Continue reading →

Popper has a low profile among the Austrians, although Pete Boettke often uses the slogan “think like a Misean, write like a Popperian”.  The two Popperians with the best grip on economics are Larry Boland and Jack Birner but they do not get cited in the Austrian literature. Two of the younger Austrians wrote a long critique of scientism without a Popper cite. The attitude towards Popper among the strong Miseans like Gordon and Hoppe combines misrepresentation with something close to contempt.  On the other side, most of the Popperians tend to be social democrats and find little that is congenial among the “Austro libertarians”, though Hayek is a favorite it is not his economics that is admired. Continue reading →

Looks good. The abstract of this paper. 

I show how paradigm mentalities help justify rigid opposition to theoretical alternatives and limit critical insight. While paradigm mentalities may be fitting for disciplines that demonstrate Kuhn’s concrete scientific achievements, they constrain the study of political science and international relations in particular. I begin with a primer that compares Kuhn and Lakatos to Karl Popper. Next, I point to harmful consequences resulting from applying paradigm mentalities to the study of international relations. Among these is the tendency to act as if realism has earned the status of a paradigm and then invoke criteria of incommensurability and “subsumption” to deflect criticism. I conclude by discussing how Popper’s model of science provides a better platform for the study of politics by encouraging theoretical and methodological pluralism.

Colin Simkin became a close and lifelong friend of Karl Popper when they met in Christchurch (NZ) in 1937. Colin was a young economist, only in his 20s at the time and we met many year later,  in Sydney in the 1980s.  We were in touch almost weekly for more than a decade.

I was just getting interested in the Austrians, not an enthusiasm that Colin shared because he abominated the idea of apriori truths and he was not entirely happy with the radical free market anarchism of Rothbard and some of the other Austrians. Still we agreed on the fundamental importance of Popper’s ideas and we were concerned that there was no good book that provided a simple introduction to the basic ideas and also their application in economics. Continue reading →