Commenter Lee Kelly (and Rafe Champion as well, it looks like?) have a blog called Critical Rationalism that I'd like to share with readers. I've only recently discovered it, and it doesn't look that old anyway (posts start in January).
The blog describes "critical rationalism" as:
"A kind of evolving philosophical tradition concerning how we should approach knowledge. It is the Socratic method only with a little bit of modern awareness. While most philosophical traditions regard knowledge as something that has to be certain and justified, CR takes the view that we don’t have ultimate answers, but knowledge is nevertheless possible. Truth is an endless quest"
The blog describes "critical rationalism" as:
"A kind of evolving philosophical tradition concerning how we should approach knowledge. It is the Socratic method only with a little bit of modern awareness. While most philosophical traditions regard knowledge as something that has to be certain and justified, CR takes the view that we don’t have ultimate answers, but knowledge is nevertheless possible. Truth is an endless quest"
I'm not personally familiar with it, but it sounds interesting and I plan on keeping up with their posts. I am severely under-educated when it comes to philosophy. But I am educated enough to locate my general impressions and approach to knowledge within the broader landscape of philosophy. I am generally speaking an empiricist and have an innate skepticism of systems that strike me as being excessively reliant on deduction. I see that critical rationalism draws heavily on Karl Popper. What I know of Popper is his views on falsifiability and on determinism. I've always associated Popperian falsifiability with empiricism, and of course his critique of determinism and historicism as being especially damning for rationalists. So I'm not quite sure how Popper fits in with "critical rationalism". I suppose that's the whole point - that "critical rationalism" tempers the excesses of some other rationalisms? I just don't know - I'll have to read the blog on a regular basis, and probably read more Popper too!
Hi Daniel,
ReplyDeleteThe blog is ctually owned by Matthew Dioguadi. Rafe and me were just invited to be contributors. Although the blog is public, it has so far acted as a forum for a few like-minded individuals to share ideas. Some of the posts may be quite difficult to understand for an outsider, but you are free to comment like anyone else.
The name "critical rationalism" might be interpreted in two ways, and in neither case does "rationalism" mean Cartesian rationalism:
1) A self-critical rationalism that stresses human fallibility and holding everything open to criticism.
2) A rationalism with a focus on criticism as opposed to justification (two notions that have been fused in more traditional philosophy).
Usually, critical rationalists champion falsifiability in theories (i.e. empirical testability), but it is not an integral part of critical rationalism.
Yes - I've found the posts to be very dense :) I expect to read and learn, rather than comment.
ReplyDeleteYour point #1 is the most critical for me. The greatest risk for deduction-centric outlooks for me has been the problem of human fallibility. The Austrians present one of the primary examples of this, for me at least. Yes, in theory a worldview derived from deduction should be impenetrable, but that places quite a burden on the human mind. A more empirical approach may be distorted by historical context, imperfect sense perception, etc. - but it has a robustness and a caution that I don't think comes as naturally to rationalism.
*Comes as naturally to traditional rationalism, I should say. Critical rationalists seem quite aware of the issue I'm describing!
ReplyDeleteCritical rationalists view deduction as useful and induction as useless.
ReplyDeleteDeduction is good for testing theories for consistency and establishing their logical relations (i.e. their place in the ideational landscape) to other theories. Unless a the negation of a proposition is self-contradictory, deduction cannot prove it to be true.
(An interesting quirk of logic is that all self-contradictory theories actually have the same logical content, that is, all self-contradictory theories are different expressions of the same theory.)
Since critical rationalists don't care about the sources of knowledge, induction becomes superfluous. When one has no particular desire to derive theories from experience, the problem that drove philosophers to posit an inductive mode of inference never arises.
By the way, when I say "proved" I don't mean to imply that the conclusion of a proof (or the proof itself) is beyond criticism.
ReplyDeleteA proof is merely a sequence of valid inferences. A conclusion may be validly derived from a set of premises and yet be false. And a proof constructed by fallible humans may be mistaken (some invalid inference may be in the sequence)--a proof that a proof is valid merely shifts the possibility of error onto the new proof.
In any case, I have a saying: "a criticism that can be brought against everything ought not to be brought against anything."
In other words, the mere fact that we might err, at any stage, cannot help us choose among competing ideas, since all our conjectures must necessarily be in the same boat. A criticism must descriminate among ideas (i.e. not apply to all or none), otherwise it cannot function as a criticism.
This, for me, is the thrust of the critical rationalists critique of relativism (while accepting some of the relativist critiques of traditional philosophy).
(An interesting quirk of logic is that all self-contradictory theories actually have the same logical content, that is, all self-contradictory theories are different expressions of the same theory.)
ReplyDeleteOne man's quirk of logic is another man's Aufhebung.
Evan -
ReplyDeleteIt's a bad sign when I go to Wikipedia for clarification on a term like "Aufhebung", and I can't make heads or tails of what Wikipedia gives me. Hence, I suppose, my somewhat nebulous skepticism of the continental tradition.
I'm not so sure Popper would disagree with you, though. Didn't he once write: "We all try hard to avoid error... Yet to avoid error is a poor ideal: if we do not dare to tackle problems which are so difficult that error is almost unavoidable, then there will be no growth of knowledge. In fact, it is from our boldest theories, including those which are erroneous, that we learn most."
After a couple re-readings of Wikipedia's Aufhebung entry, I think I can safely say Popper is sympathetic to that :)
Lee Kelly - thanks for all your thoughts, btw. I've enjoyed reading through them. I will definitely keep up with the blog.
ReplyDeleteHi guy, great to see that you have found the Critical Rationalist blog!
ReplyDeleteYou might like to check out another related site with stuff on Popper, Hayek, and a number of other interesting people who are worthy of more notice - Jacques Barzun, Rene Wellek, Karl and Charlotte Buhler and others who in the Revivalist Series.
http://www.the-rathouse.com/Revivalist.html
Popper is generally regarded as the "falsification man" which is a very inadequate description that does not start to do justice to the breadth and depth of his work.
To get a scan on the bigger picture, try these pieces, the first for a brief summmary and the second for an overview of his career.
http://www.the-rathouse.com/poptheoryknow.html
http://www.the-rathouse.com/poppurpose.html
All the best!
Rafe Champion
rchamp@bigpond.net.au