Tony Lloyd

Why is Critical Rationalism not widely accepted? The perceived need for "good reasons" sourced in inductive verification has always mired Rationalism in a seemingly insoluble infinite regress. Critical Rationalism, on the other hand, cuts the Gordian knot by simply dispensing with any kind of verficatory support. David Miller attributes the "Mainstream's" stubborn resistance to Critical Rationalism to an addiction to so-called "good reasons". This paper suggests causes of this addiction: the craving for propositions that are in some way "forced" on us, our need to prioritise the criticism of propositions and the need to regulate interpersonal actions. The paper goes on to contend that Popperian corroboration is able to remove all and any need for verification.

'Everything you know is wrong' is, for the most part, held to be a contradiction. If a proposition is false then you do not know it, if you know it then it isn't wrong. I disagree. The statements 'I know P', 'he knows P' or 'it is known that P', to the extent that they imply truth imply a different kind of truth from the conventional correspondence-truth. The 'truth' implied is broadly in line with the Pragmatist view of truth. I contend that a (modified) Pragmatist view of truth is necessary, explore its nature, its effect in avoiding certain contemporary paradoxes of knowledge and explore how we can reconcile the Pragmatist view of truth with the correspondence theory of truth.