If you would like to make a guest post to this blog criticizing critical rationalism or something related (e.g. Popper’s criteria for a demarcation between science and non-science) please contact the blog administrator.
I would very much like to post your criticism directly into a blog entry.
The blog administrator is Matt Dioguardi, his email address is:
matt at anarchyjapan dot com
here are 2 criticisms!
1. platos argument for rationalism was with his slave and he gave him some triangle problems. this is criticised that the slave didnt have any education
so he got his knowledge from his senses.
2. the cogito doesn’t tell us much about the real world and the cogito doesn’t really prove that you exist just because you can catch yourself thinking.
Those aren’t criticisms of critical rationalism. CR does not advocate the cogito. The statement about Plato is ambiguous what conclusion we’re supposed to draw from it.
Popper’s falsifibility criterion is only a necessary condiotion for scientific status. If by demarcation criterion we mean a frontier with scientific statements on one side of the line and non-science on the other then falsifibility does not work. For any old prophesy such as the world will end tomorrow or I will win a gold medal at Rio will be scientific. What falsifiability does is distinguish the empirical from the non-empirical. And that is well worth doing. Popper did use term “demarcation” but he was not as clear as he might have been, and I am not sure of quite where he stood. Did he perhaps confuse himself, or was he thinking of less strict meaning of the term “demarcation”?
Michael,
There’s probably a lot that can be said about this. I’ll post your criticism as a blog post and hopefully someone will comment.
Hi Matt –
I have a suggested clarification of the mission of CR and of this blog, e.g., about the statement you make in the “What is CR?” page — which notes, compares, and judges between the relative social merit of three epistemological “big three traditions”, where you said: “One, dogmatism. Decide that you are privy to ultimate truth and then just follow that truth no matter what. Does such an attitude contribute to fanaticism? Perhaps. Two, pessimism. Decide that truth is impossible, relative, random, meaningless. Just do whatever you want because nothing matters anyway. Does such an attitude contribute to random violence? Perhaps. Three, critical rationalism, the truth is out there, but no one has a monopoly on it, so let’s work together to try and get a little closer to it. Does such an attitude contribute to progress and mutual respect? More than likely.”
My suggestion is that any implication that these 3 traditions are mutually exclusive ones — wherein different people have chosen to embrace only one tradition within every aspect of their life — is untrue, and should be avoided. In fact, most of us embrace each tradition in one or another aspect of our thought or behavior.
For example, even a dogmatic theocratic exerts sufficient critical rationalism to live — he accepts reality to the point that he won’t blithely step in front of a moving bus; he denies falsifiable assumptions to the point that he won’t wait for the bus to stop for him elsewhere than at the bus stop; and he masters his emotions to the point that he won’t insist on riding the bus for free no matter how much he desires it. So even the “dogmatist” still accepts that in some spheres of his existence, “What is, is; what is not, is not; and what is or is not, is paramount.”
Conversely, even skeptics or atheists will sometimes (or even often, if we look at the “red meat” of the most popular New Atheist writers) broach their criticisms of religious ideas or faith using not just factual, but scathing, emotive language (i.e., ad hominem invective) to win their argument, even when the use of such invective means their “win” isn’t achieved fully rationally, but by evoking emotional irrationality — a sadly pyrrhic victory. Also, many “rational” environmentalists will buy a new Chevy Volt or Tesla — ignoring the reality that buying any “new” (recently manufactured) automobile is much worse for the environment than buying any used car. And Ayn Rand, the self-proclaimed paragon of critical rationality, died from denying the existence of tobacco addiction and the predictive validity of statistical epidemiology.
My contention is that few of us consistently behave guided by only one particular epistemological tradition. We are rationalists that thunder; we are irrationalists who come in out of the rain. I think such human inconsistency in our driving motivations is one of Bartley’s own motivations in seeking to see Popper’s CR applied to all spheres of human thought and behavior, not just to the sciences.
Hence, in my view, Critical Rationalism isn’t a paradisal, “Undiscovered Country” that some of us should for the first time visit. Its the warm, “Home Sweet Home” where all of us already live — but must communally commit to consistently do so. And Irrationalism isn’t a foreboding, “No Man’s Land” into which only the foolhardy journey. Its our own dark, “cellar door” that we’ve all failed to consistently keep locked shut.
Thus, the fight against an irrational world will depend not only on familiarity with the importance of CR, but also on the importance of familiarity with CR.
My 2 cents worth.
Thx,
Frank H. Burton
Exec. Director, The Circle of Reason
For me one of the salient points of Popper’s thought that he did not use meaning as a criterion of demarcation of science and metaphysics.
Play is a vital life function – Carl Jung spoke of active imagination, taking play seriously.
I can find any product of my imaginative life meaningful but if I wish to introduce it to society as a knowledge object then I better be prepared for challenge as to its truthlikeness.
Critical rationalism is not claiming much more than keeping the bastards honest, as one Australian politician was so fond of stating.
Rather than making one cynical, I believe critical rationalism is potentially liberating. One should remain playful with all sorts of aspects of one’s life, critical rationalism can act as a balance against being a know-it-all while still giving the imagination (conjecture) due weight.
Conjecture and refutation are each vital. At various moments of our lives we put more focus on one or the other.
Not criticism.
I came across this online encyclopedia article http://www.iep.utm.edu/cr-ratio/, about critical rationalism and Karl Popper, was wondering if it was a useful resource?
Andrew,
It probably has good and bad points. I know that Joseph Agassi’s paper on Karl Popper which that encyclopedia had requested he write was rejected by the editors. That’s very strange given Joseph Agassi’s background. His paper on Popper is here:
http://www.tau.ac.il/~agass/joseph-papers/Popperiep.pdf
I’m not sure about the paper you link to … I need to go back and reread it, it’s been a while since I looked at it.