Joseph Agassi

Within ontology new theories are extremely rare. Hacking bravely claims to have one: "historical ontology" or "dynamic nominalism." Regrettably, he uses "nominalism" idiosyncratically, without explaining it or its qualifier. He does say what historical ontology is: it is "the presentation of the history of ontology in context." This idea is laudable, as it invites presenting idealism as once attractive but no longer so (due to changes in perception theory, for example). But this idea is a proposal, not a theory, muchless an ontological theory, as it does not say what things are made of. Also, Hacking's details are often misleading. Thus, he falsely hints that he respects Wittgenstein and that he agrees with him. Considered as a study of ontology sans its (often amusing) incidental material, it appears surprisingly thin and repetitious. The study is either excessively opaque or quite clear but stale: the choice between these options is open. Key Words: Ian Hacking • Michel Foucault • ontology • contextualism.

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. 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.

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.

Both a Popper biography and an autobiography, Agassi's "A Philosopher's Apprentice" tells the riveting story of his intellectual formation in 1950s London, a young brilliant philosopher struggling with an intellectual giant - father, mentor, and rival, all at the same time. His subsequent rebellion and declaration of independence leads to a painful break, never to be completely healed. No other writer has Agassi's psychological insight into Popper, and no other book captures like this one the intellectual excitement around the Popper circle in the 1950s and the struggles of the 1960s and 1970s - personal, academic, political, all important philosophically. Agassi's Popper - whether one agrees with it or not - is an enormous contribution to scholarship. This second revised edition includes also Popper's and Agassi's last correspondence and, in a postscript it shows Agassi leafing through Popper's archives, reaching a sort of reconciliation, an appropriate ending to the drama. A must read. Malachi Hacohen, Duke University.

A good theory of rationality should accommodate debates over first principles, such as those of rationality. The modest challenge made in this article is that relativists try to explain the (intellectual) value of some debates about first principles (absolute presuppositions, basic assumptions, intellectual frameworks, intellectual commitments, and paradigms). Relativists claim to justify moving with relative ease from one framework to another, translating chunks of one into the other; this technique is essential for historians, anthropologists and others. Thus ideas concerning false prophecy are transferable to contemporary discussions. Ancient false prophets offered illusions of overcoming difficult problems cheaply; relativists do that too. The problem that relativism purports to solve cheaply is that of legitimizing pluralism. As the absolutist theory of truth is intuitively problematic, relativism seems intuitively more acceptable, but this intuitive advantage vanishes when it manifests as false prophecy.

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.).

Self- Deception in General "A Liberal Decalogue" suggests (Russell, 1967, pp. 60-61) not to envy people who live in a fool's paradise: It is a place only for fools. This saying invites detailed commentary. A fool's paradise is not a place, but a state o f mind; it is a system of opinions, of assessments of situations, that calms one down, that reassures one into the opinion that all is well, even when all is far from well. Fools may be ignorant of the severity of their situations, perhaps because being well informed tends to get them into a panic. This happens regularly, and there is little that can be done about it, except that the wise would still prefer to be well informed so as to try to cope with the panic more constructively. They would not easily fa ll for the reassuring hypothesis, preferring to examine any reasonable alternative hypothesis about any risk that might invite action - - so that if the hypothesis is corroborated they can try to mobilize some appropriate action.

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.

Summary and conclusions 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 claim s 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.

This book is a first attempt to cover the whole area of aesthetics from the point of view of critical rationalism. It takes up and expands upon the more narrowly focused work of E. H. Gombrich, Sheldon Richmond, and Raphael Sassower and Louis Ciccotello. The authors integrate the arts into the scientific world view and acknowledge that there is an aesthetic aspect to anything whatsoever. They pay close attention to the social situatedness of the arts. Their aesthetics treats art as emerging from craft in the form of luxurious and playful challenge to the audience. In developing it they place emphasis on the number of questions and claims that can be settled by appeal to empirical facts; on the historical character of aesthetic judgements; and on the connection of aesthetic truth to true love and true friendship, i.e. fidelity and integrity, not to informative truth.