Author Archives: Lee Kelly

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, … 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 … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

I’ve been having an ongoing exchange with Ryan Murphy and Gene Callahan about Popper, the problem of induction, and falsifiability. What follows is brief summary of our inconsequential little argument to provide context. If you don’t care about all that … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

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.