Joseph Agassi

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.

1. The Real Claim of the Chicago School If anything dramatic has happened in economic theory over the last one hundred years – namely, since the advent of marginalism – then, everyone agrees, it was not the rise of the Chicago neo -classical school which, after all, only synthesized the various versions of marginalism, but the Keynesian Revolution. Assessments of this revolution were repeatedly invited, particularly by opponent, chiefly from Chicago. F. A. von Hayek has explicitly and bitterly blames Keynes for all our economic troubles; Harry Johnson has repeatedly declared the most revolutionary work of Keynes, his General Theory of 1936, so poor that but for its author's name on its title page it would have totally flopped. Can such a flop cause so much damage? Are these two assessments – of Hayek and of Johnson – in conflict or no t? Don Patinkin has raised a different question: how different is Keynes from his Chicago opponents, say, Milton Friedman? How many heads need roll, to use his metaphor, before a revolution may be declared? Patinkin sees Keynes as slightly deviant but stil l a member of the mainstream – the mainstream of the mainstream being Friedman and his Chicago followers, of course. Now, can a minor deviant be a flop? Can minor deviations from the true blue doctrine be to blame for all of our economic woes? I do not kno w. Joan Robinson sees in Keynes a minor deviation from classical theory because he said once his correction of classical theory is implemented, that theory takes over once again. Moreover, Samuelson and Friedman have endorsed a (poor) version of Keynes' theory of shortterm relative price and ignored his general theory of price and money.

The context of a scientific theory can be epistemological and methodological. Or it car be metaphysical, relating to the intellectual framework within which we cast it. Or it can be intertheoretical, both synchronically and diachronically. My concern here will be mainly diachronical -- the historical context of quantum theory, what is required of it vis -a-vis that context and how well it fulfills this requirement. But I shall come to this only at the later part of this essay. I shall have to clear the 3round by discussing the epistemic and metaphysical contexts first.

This book collects 13 papers that explore Wittgenstein's philosophy throughout the different stages of his career. The author writes from the viewpoint of critical rationalism. The tone of his analysis is friendly and appreciative yet critical. Of these papers, seven are on the background to the philosophy of Wittgenstein. Five papers examine different aspects of it: one on the philosophy of young Wittgenstein, one on his transitional period, and the final three on the philosophy of mature Wittgenstein, chiefly his Philosophical Investigations. The last of these papers, which serves as the concluding chapter, concerns the analytical school of philosophy that grew chiefly under its influence. Wittgenstein’s posthumous Philosophical Investigations ignores formal languages while retaining the view of metaphysics as meaningless -- declaring that all languages are metaphysics-free. It was very popular in the middle of the twentieth century. Now it is passé. Wittgenstein had hoped to dissolve all philosophical disputes, yet he generated a new kind of dispute. His claim to have improved the philosophy of life is awkward just because he prevented philosophical discussion from the ability to achieve that: he cut the branch on which he was sitting. This, according to the author, is the most serious critique of Wittgenstein.

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.

The vision of Horace, combining the sweet and the useful, is an expression of a sense of abundance. It came first and was than supported by Bacon's vision of a science-based technology. Later this was further backed by classical liberalism and by metaphysical progressivism. That technology may impede and even destroy science is obvious. Yet the danger is overlooked--with the aid of the vision of Horace and of neo-conservative (Popperian) politics and of neo-reactionary (Kuhnian) politics of science. The science of science policy needs boosting in order to study means of democratic control of technology.

SummaryAccording to classical rationalism prejudiced people cannot conduct proper research. This is refuted by cases of prejudiced and even Nazi scientists. According to classical rationalism all error is prejudice. This was refuted when crucial experiment between Newton and Einstein favored Einstein. Contemporary popular irrationalists claim crucial experiments are impossible. Their ability to convince rests on the cowardice of the leadership of science which fails to admit openly the present need for a new theory of rationality.RésuméSelon la rationalisme classique, seuls des individus sans préjuges peuvem faire de la bonne recherche. Ce qui est réfuté par des exemples de savants partisans et en particulier nazis. Selon le rationalisme classique, toute erreur est préjugé. Ce qui a été réfuté lorsqu'une expérience cruciale entre Newton et Einstein a tranché en faveur ?on;Einstein. Des irrationalistes contemporains populates prétendent qu'aucune expérience cruciale n'est possible. Leur force de persuasion ne tient Quà la couardise des ténors de la science qui refusent de reconnaître ouvertement le besoin ?on;une nouvelle théorie de la rationalité.ZusammenfassungDem klassischen Rationalismus gemass können voreingenommene Personen nicht wirkliche Forschung betreiben. Diese Ansicht wird widerlegt durch Fälle von voreingenommenen Wissen‐schaftlern – sogar unter der Herrschaft des Nazionalsozialismus. Dem klassischen Rationalismus gemass beruht jeder Irrtum auf Vorurteil. Dies wurde durch die Tatsache widerlegt, dass ein experimentum crucis zugunsten von Einstein gegen Newton entschied. Zeitgenössige populäre Irrationalisten behaupten, dass kein experimentum crucis möglich sei. Ihr Erfolg lasst sich nur durch die Feigheit der für die Wissenschaft Verantwortlichen erklären, die sich weigern, die Not‐wendigkeit einer neuen Theorie der Rationalität einzugestehen

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THIS MESSAGE IS FOR YOU. MAYBE. by Joseph Agassi There is a mood often enough conjured in science fiction literature to be familiar to every fan, the mood of seemingly intentional yet probably remdom contact between two individuals across immense space-time expanses. The hero of a complicated chase story has lost contact with the mother planet, has long ago leuided on a strange pleuiet, emd there, right now, just walking across the plaza he sees a huge poster, with a piece of commercial advertisement or some similar message of purely local import printed on it. The poster is decorated with an arabesque which puzzles him, quickens his pulse, intrigues him, fascinates him — until it hits him insteinteuneously in full force: the arabesque is a message, written in his own native language, telling him how to reestablish contact. The story, as I say, has many veurietnts. And it has, it seems, a very widespread appeal. It is couched in terms of adventure stories, but its mood is not diat of adventure. The mood is more of die one associated with the idea of the eterned return, die idea of timelessness or of time standing still (and space vanishing), the idea the western philosophies usually associate with the ideas of Nicholas, the Renaissance mystic bishop ofCusa, though it is a recurrent idea in many cultures, of the identity of the vanishingly smedl and the infinitely large. Indeed, the meeting of the message and the recipient is symbolized by the meeting of the infinite line and the point of vanishing length. Whence this universality? I suppose it is a fact of biological nature. Think of the scent a living thing, be it a fish or em emtelope, leaves behind to contact a possible mate. It is a few complex molecules in a sea of molecules of astronomical numbers: just this room contains more molecules than you can imagine. And the animal follows a long tortuous path to find its mate. According to Willietm Craig and Konrad Lorenz, an animal does not have the slightest clue what it is after. Even while building a nest it has no complete 95 96Philosophy and Literature picture of its task. In each of its stages it goes after diverse kinds of things, yet it knows not which things, let alone their inborn rigidly fixed sequence. Yet the animal in charge of a tetsk, whether of finding a mate or of finding a twig for a nest, will be resdess — say Craig and Lorenz — and move about, and try to read the message in any piece of arabesque, until one day one piece of arabesque will med«: sense and enable its finder to complete die next step in the mysterious complex task and open up die search for the next message, the next step further along die unfolding series of preordained ordeals that life is strewn widi. Consider writing proper, like my writing this message for you right now. We do not know the background to literacy, much less its actual origins, except that these were far from unique: though many cultures eire illiterate or have acquired literacy from more evolved neighbors, mere eire many places on earth where literacy evolved independently. Yet even here we see a sequence: many independent ideographic scripts, some ofthem evolving into syllabic scripts and one or two of these evolving into an alphabet proper. How and why, we do not know. There is room for speculation, though. It is hard to imagine how the very first writer conceived of the very first message he wrote without consulting his recipient first. There are a few possible explemations here. First, that writer and recipient are one: writing was a form ofmemorizing, or ofconsigning matters to memory more stable than that of the human brain — the granite rock, for instance. The ancient Egyptian god of literacy was the god of memory. Primitive shepherds use knots in their rope and cuts on their sticks as aides memoire, as bookkeeping of sorts, and scholars consider these the origins of writings. This is evidenced by the runic writings of the Norse, whose letters are images of sticks with cuts on them. Yet runic writing is alphabetic and...

Fuller describes the place of intellectuals in the modern world—as researchers, teachers, academics, and citizens. Their job is that of developing and promoting ideas. He explains their failure to perform well and offers advice: say what you think you should say, not necessarily what you think. The advice is unsuitable; it is aimed at advisers and expert witnesses, not at intellectuals. Also, his analysis invites proposals for social reforms aimed at lowering traditional expectations of intellectuals and toward presenting them with clearer and fairer job descriptions instead.