Joseph Agassi

This volume examines Popper's philosophy by analyzing the criticism of his most popular critics: Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend and Imre Lakatos. They all followed his rejection of the traditional view of science as inductive. Starting from the assumption that Hume's criticism of induction is valid, the book explores the central criticism and objections that these three critics have raised. Their objections have met with great success, are significant and deserve paraphrase. One also may consider them reasonable protests against Popper's high standards rather than fundamental criticisms of his philosophy. The book starts out with a preliminary discussion of some central background material and essentials of Popper's philosophy. It ends with nutshell representations of the philosophies of Popper. Kuhn, Feyerabend and Lakatos. The middle section of the book presents the connection between these philosophers and explains what their central ideas consists of, what the critical arguments are, how they presented them, and how valid they are. In the process, the author claims that Popper's popular critics used against him arguments that he had invented (and answered) without saying so. They differ from him mainly in that they demanded of all criticism that it should be constructive: do not stop believing a refuted theory unless there is a better alternative to it. Popper hardly ever discussed belief, delegating its study to psychology proper; he usually discussed only objective knowledge, knowledge that is public and thus open to public scrutiny.

Popper’s popular critics – Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Lakatos – replace his older, Wittgenstein-style critics, now defunct. His new critics played with the idea of criticism as beneficial, in vain search of variants of these that could better appeal to the public. Some of their criticism of Popper is valid but marginal for the dispute about rationality. He was Fallibilist; they hedged about it. He viewed learning from experience as learning from error; they were unclear about it. His view resembles Freud’s reality principle; they hedged about this too, as they defended the stupid idea of constructive criticism (namely, hold on to your faith in a refuted theory until you can replace it). He stressed his criticism of the view of science as inductive; they endorsed it. They differed from him significantly regarding their intended readers: he had addressed those who readily admit criticism and his popular critics addressed those who find it hard to admit openly that criticism upsets them somewhat. Current popular criticism of Popper’s ideas shows yet again the logical relation between the critical attitude and liberalism: liberalism without critically mindedness is permissible, scarcely the other way around. Hence, we better read the objection that Popper’s popular critics have launched against him not as criticism proper, but as somewhat reasonable protest against his use of the highest standards in his relentless advocacy of liberalism and of criticism in his valuation of science and of democracy as joint.

Joseph Agassi is known primarily among fellow academics as an exemplary historian and philosopher of science; an ardent critic and disciple of Karl Popper; a critical admirer of the work of Michael Polanyi; and a Socratic fly with the “sting of a bee” for all those who wear the intellectual fashions of the day. To most of Agassi’s students he is known primarily as an exemplary model of the Socratic teacher. The question of most urgency for educators today who care about the intellectual development of students is: How do we make ready our educational institutions for more Socratic teachers? The philosophical or theoretical question is: Why do we want Socratic teachers? In outline, of the many of Agassi’s educational essays selected for this book, Agassi answers those questions: authoritarianism (or anti-democracy) blocks the democratic reform of educational institutions where Socratic teachers and students could find a safe haven; and, Socratic teaching is the main anti-dote to authoritarianism. The removal of authoritarianism from education also removes the hazard that education has become to students; to their happiness, creativity, and dignity as autonomous individuals. See Less Copyright Year: 2014 E-Book (PDF) Availability: Published ISBN: 978-94-6209-626-4 Publication date: 01 Jan 2014 Hardback Availability: Published ISBN: 978-94-6209-624-0 Publication date: 01 Jan 2014 Paperback Availability: Published ISBN: 978-94-6209-623-3 Publication date: 01 Jan 2014 Login via Institution Prices from (excl. shipping): $56.00 ​ Available formats Add to Cart View PDF Flyer Get Permissions.

Der Kunsthistoriker Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich hat einen „wissenschaftlichen“ oder kognitiven Ansatz zur Erforschung der Geschichte und Psychologie der Künste entwickelt, der sehr maßgeblich von der Wissenschaftstheorie seines engen Freundes Karl Popper beeinflusst worden ist. Die geistige Nähe zwischen beiden wird in Gombrichs zentraler Arbeit zur Wiederentdeckung der Repräsentation in der Renaissance und zur Historiografie der Kunst deutlich. Ihre Differenzen verdienen allerdings ebenfalls Beachtung. Gombrichs Ansicht zufolge verändern sich Geschmack und Stil entsprechend der von ihm so genannten „Logik der Mode“. Gombrich hat dargelegt, auf welch vielfältige Weise Veränderungen in der Kunst sich vollziehen. Während sich die Moden in der Kunst auf unvorhersehbare, launenhafte Weise wandeln, tauchen technische Veränderungen als Lösungen für technische Probleme auf und werden im Modus von Versuch und Irrtum ermittelt. Auf diese Weise stieß Gombrich auf eine Antinomie in der Kunsttheorie: Handwerkliche Fähigkeiten und Können wandeln sich durch rationalen Fortschritt, während sich Stile durch den irrationalen Mitläufereffekt verändern. In der Kunst ist der relativistische Pluralismus zur Mode geworden, und diese Mode hat seine Antinomie ignoriert – und zwar, sofern er richtig liegt, recht willkürlich.

ABSTRACT Concern with global responsibility for survival as such invites the creation of a specific international organization. The new body should adjudicate as to which disputes are open (such as, for example, concerning the advisability of building nuclear plants) and which are not (for example, white supremacy); most significantly, the new body should carefully guard its credibility by sticking to veracity, by avoiding deceit even in extreme situations. In particular it behoves us all to confess that we have no solution to our most urgent problems.

As a new field, cognitivism began with the total rejection of the old, traditional views of language acquisition and of learning ─ individual and collective alike. Chomsky was one of the pioneers in this respect, yet he clouds issues by excessive claims for his originality and by not allowing the beginner in the art of the acquisition of language the use of learning by making hypotheses and testing them, though he acknowledges that researchers, himself included, do use this method. The most important novelty of Chomsky's work is his idealization of the field by postulating the existence of the ideal speaker-hearer and his suggestion that the hidden structure of sentences is revealed by studying together all sentences that are logically equivalent to each other. This is progress, but his tests of equivalence are insufficient, as they all are within classical logic. This limitation rests on the greatest shortcoming of Chomsky's view, his idea that every sentence has one subject or subject-part, contrary to the claim of Frege and Russell that assertions involving relations (with two-place predicates) are structurally different from those involving properties (with one-place predicates). (See the Appendix below.).

The traditional hermeneutic ruling not to use reports and legends for questioning edicts and rules signifies the tacit recognition, contrary to explicit statement, of the part of the Rabbinical leadership, of the inevitability of change in diverse aspects if Jewish life. This may invite criticism of the conduct of the ancient leadership, which, as always, is questionable and useless. Rather, an open discussion should be instituted on the proposal to make future changes openly, not surreptitiously; particularly the change from surreptitious changes to open changes is better done openly.

To what extent did mature Wittgenstein disagree with young Wittgenstein? Some of the continuity between them was unavoidable. They shared the therapy that anti-philosophy is supposed to provide. Young Wittgenstein criticized Russell to the point of making him abandon his major research project that included the search for certainty. This search followed two major ideas, logicism and logical atomism (Bar-Elli G: Analysis without elimination: on the philosophical significance of Russell’s ‘On denoting’. Matar and Biletzki (eds), pp 167–81, 2002, 170). Both failed. Young Wittgenstein persisted. His system was version of neutral monism cast in the language of modern logic.

SummaryIt is getting increasingly difficult to comprehend the history of ideas of the Vienna Circle and only a clear and critical exposition of it will save it from total oblivion; an apologetic presentation will not be understood. Now that the positivist theory of meaning is no longer accepted, only an honest presentation of this fact will enable us to comprehend it and its transformations. An analysis of a paper by Otto Neurath illustrates this: Neurath's inability to present fairly his critics' ideas and to do them justice then, makes him incomprehensible to us now.

John O. Wisdom (1947) says, [new-style] analytic philosophy has resulted from a radical change in our theory of definition, and the resulting devaluation of the place of essential definitions in science and philosophy. Most traditional and most current metaphysics are deeply involved with essential definitions. This invites the support of the proposal of Stuart Hampshire to salvage as much of metaphysics as possible. It is the proposal to correct Wittgenstein’s erroneous demand to oust all metaphysics by limiting it to the demand to oust metaphysical systems that rest on essential definitions, and to rectify logic accordingly. This is tantamount to the suggestion to oust the pretense to know what scientific theories will win assent and keep it to the end of days. It is possible to restrict further: whenever possible, we should reinterpret essential definitions to read them as conjectures. Perhaps surprisingly this proposal tallies with comments made by even the most ardent and significant members of the analytic school, such as Neurath and Carnap, not to mention Hintikka: insofar as metaphysics was ancillary to science, they all agreed, they did not object to it. This concession fully reverses their radicalism. It was a great loss that they ignored Wisdom. The limitation of anti-metaphysics to anti-essentialism is a modification that tallies with the current pervasive dissent from Wittgenstein in the analytic school, namely, the rejection of any grammatical criterion of demarcation of metaphysics Wittgenstein-style. This allows for the possible recognition of the value of some metaphysics.

Hopefully, critical rationalism will improve. The best way to improve is to be open to criticism and respond to it with no defensiveness. Future criticism is unpredictable, but one can seek weak spots that invite criticism. It is not easy to view Popper’s institutionalism as minimal; it should be minimal in different ways, relative to diverse ends, theoretical and practical, just as critical rationalism is minimalist and as the minimum is relative to ends. Popper’s third world is a meta-institution of sorts, and efforts to apply it to diverse problems are welcome in a minimal manner. Finally, Popper declared optimism obligatory; this is open to interpretation the way Jarvie viewed utopianism as useful for diverse ends, thus criticizing Popper’s anti-utopianism.

Wittgenstein’s discussions of language games and of forms of life are parts of his theory of meaning. They led him to a fragmented view of language and so he proposed a search for the rules that each of the different fragments follows. The mention of forms of life was only a hint in that direction, and the better commentators overlook mere hints. Whereas young Wittgenstein centered his discussion on “sentences of the natural sciences”, mature Wittgenstein centered on everyday language. He always claimed that metaphysics is meaningless, but as judged by different rules of grammar.

In the first place, Hans Albert is famous as the spokesperson of Karl Popper’s critical rationalism in the German-speaking world. This is chronologically a bit odd, given that Popper’s first vintage, his Logik der Forschung, appeared in German in 1935 and that his The Open Society and Its Enemies of 1945 appeared in German in 1958. Yet Albert did much to earn this fame: his decades-long indefatigable response to criticisms of Popper’s views in the post-war German philosophical literature and his constant contrast between Popper’s critical rationalism and competing views that were popular in Germany at the time.