Abstract
I should perhaps begin by noting my fundamental agreement with the general thrust of the position paper, although I would have some bones to chew with various details. As I see it, critical rationalism exhibits three basic characteristics which are intimately connected with one another: a consistent fallibilism, a methodical rationalism and a critical realism. Each of these components plays a role in the solution of the problems we are concerned with. I should also like to emphasize that this philosophical conception has consequences that are of importance for problems of all kinds, not merely for problems pertaining to knowledge.
I am very grateful to Claude Evans for his help with the translation.
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Notes
Cf. the position paper, p. 3ff above. This fusion is at work in Aristotle: cf. von Fritz, Kurt, ‘Die ARXAI in der griechischen Mathematik’, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte I, 21ff. (1955), for a discussion of the Aristotelian definition of knowledge. The fusion is accentuated by Descartes, and is still at work in various strands of twentieth century philosophy, e.g. the work of Hugo Dingier.
For a detailed discussion, see my Traktat über kritische Vernunft, third edition, Mohr, Tübingen, 1975.
Following Popper, it has been above all William Warren Bartley who has done great service in demonstrating in detail the possibility of separating the idea of rational criticism from the idea of absolute justification. See Bartley, W. W., The Retreat to Commitment, Augustus Kelley, New York, 1962, p. 134ff.
Cf. Lakatos, I., ‘Infinite Regress and Foundations of Mathematics’, Suppl. Vol. Aristotelian Society XXXVI, 155ff. (1962).
Cf. Barth, E. M., Evaluaties, Vam Gorcum, Assen, 1972, pp. 5–18.
Cf. e.g. Külpe, O., Einleitung in die Philosophie, 10th edition, S. Hirzel, Leipzig, 1921, p. 183ff. and passim; for a comparative analysis and criticism of other views cf. Külpe, O., Die Realisierung. Ein Beitrag zur Grundlegung der Realwissenschaften, 1st vol., S. Hirzel, Leipzig, 1912, 2nd vol., 1920, 3rd vol. 1923. Külpe elaborated a critical realism in the Kantian tradition, taking up the transcendental question in a realistic interpretation. In a similar manner, Popper began with a criticism and revision of Kantianism. cf. his book written in the early thirties. Popper, K., Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie, Mohr, Tübingen, 1976. Popper’s first criticism of Kant and his interpretation of the transcendental viewpoint is to be found in this work. This reference may be of particular interest to those who believe that critical rationalism has no connection to this kind of problem, e.g. Wellmer and other members of the Frankfurt School.
For a defence of the realism of common sense and of science, cf. Popper, K., Objective Knowledge. An Evolutionary Approach, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1972, p. 32 and passim, cf. also Agassi, J., ‘Sensationalism’, in J. Agassi, Science in Flux, D. Reidel Publ. Co., Dordrecht, Holland, 1975, p. 92ff.
Cf. Külpe, O., Einleitung in die Philosophie, 10th ed., S. Hirzel, Leipzig, 1921, p. 191f., where critical realism is presented as the dominating philosophical view from the Presocratics to the 18th century.
During a walk during the Kronberg Conference, the proceedings of which are presumably in this volume, Wolfgang Stegmüller, whose work on the problem of testing scientific propositions is well known, tried to convince me that the idea of truth has its proper place in theology rather than the philosophy of science, and this in spite of his interest in problems of this kind prior to his conversion to a sneedified Kuhnian view, cf. note 13 below.
Bühler, K., Sprachtheorie. Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache, 1934, 2nd ed., Gustav Fischer, Stuttgart, 1965; and even before: Bühler, K., Die Krise der Psychologie, 1927, 3rd ed., Gustav Fischer, Stuttgart, 1965, where Bühler analyses — among other things — problems pertaining to meaning and understanding. As far as I know, these important investigations have not been taken into account by German hermeneutic philosophy at all. Philosophers of this stripe tend to prefer the pretentious and foggy tales of Martin Heidegger, which now seems to be finding an eager audience even in the United States, in spite of the warnings of competent scholars such as Walter Kaufmann. cf. Kaufmann, W., ‘Heidegger’s Castle’ and ‘German Thought After World War II’, in W. Kaufmann, From Shakespeare to Existentialism, Doubleday, Garden City, 1960, Anchor Book.
Cf. Bühler, K., Die Krise der Psychologie, op. cit., p. 49: “Der Begriff und die Kriterien der Wahrheit oder Richtigkeit sind wesensgesetzlich aus der Darstellungsfunktion zu entnehmen, und umgekehrt bestimmt das Ideal der zutreffenden und richtigen Darstellung weitgehend die Produktion sprachlicher Gebilde bis in die Wortwahl und Struktur der Sätze hinein”.
Cf. above all Kraft, V., Erkenntnislehre, Springer, Wien, 1960, p. 181f., where the difference between these two questions is clearly laid out. This book also contains a clear analysis of other aspects of the problem of knowledge and truth.
Tarski is correct when he claims that the concept of truth doesn’t differ from some other concepts in logic, mathematics, theoretical physics and other disciplines in this respect. Cf. Tarski, A., ‘The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics’, Philosophy and Phenomenalogical Research 4, (1944). It is interesting to note that many modern critics of the idea of truth act just like operationalists when it comes to epistemological and semantical concepts, even if they have long since understood that this conception is no longer defensible with regard to science. This remark refers to certain views expressed during the Kronberg Conference. I do not know if they will be defended in the pages of this volume.
The views of Hugo Dingier might be characterized in this manner. cf. Dingler, H., Die Ergreifung des Wirklichen, 1955, Chapter I till IV, with an introduction of K. Lorenz and J. Mittelstraß, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1969. Cf. also my criticism in the book mentioned in note 2 above. Karl Popper dealt with Dingier’s views as early as 1935 in his Logik der Forschung, comparing them to his own strongly opposed views. Cf. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Hutchinson, London, 1959, p. 78ff. Something like Dingler’s ‘method of exhaustion’ has been resuscitated in Kuhn’s ‘normal science’. On the contemporary scene in Germany, the school of Paul Lorenzen explicitly goes back to Dingler’s views, although some of its members have recently moved away from the priority which Dingier assigned to the idea of certainty. Cf. Janich, P., Kambartel, F., and Mittelstraß, J., Wissenschaftstheorie als Wissenschaftskritik, Aspekte Verlag, Frankfurt, 1974. For a reply to their criticisms of critical rationalism — which are maintained in spite of their recent movement — cf. my postscript to the book mentioned in note 2, p. 190ff.
Cf. Bertrand Russell’s criticism of Dewey’s conception of ‘warranted assertability’ in B. Russell, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, Allen and Unwin, London, 1940, p. 318ff. Cf. also Kraft, V., Erkenntnislehre, op. cit. p. 175f.
This doctrine has been elaborated by Jürgen Habermas and Karl Otto Apel, cf. Habermas, J., ‘Erkenntnis und Interesse’ 1965, in J. Habermas, Technik und Wissenschaft als ‘Ideologie’, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1968, and Apel, K. O., ‘Szientistik, Hermeneutik, Ideologiekritik. Entwurf einer Wissenschaftslehre in erkenntnisanthropologischer Absicht’, in K. O. Apel, Transformation der Philosophie, Vol. II, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1973, p. 96ff. and other articles in this and the first volume of this work; for a criticism cf. Albert, H., Transzendentale Träumereien, Hoffmann und Campe, Hamburg, 1975.
But see Tarski, op. cit., who prefers this answer. At any rate, the fact that one may have to put up with contradictions for the time being does not make them any less undesirable, but I cannot go into this question here.
Külpe correctly remarks that this fact is essential for the development from naive to critical realism; cf. his above metioned book: Einleitung in die Philosophie, op. cit., p. 192f.
Cf. Elkana, Y., ‘Boltzmann’s Scientific Research Programme and its Alternatives’, in Y. Elkana (ed.), The Interaction between Science and Philosophy, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, 1974, p. 243ff., where he points at the role of different ‘images of science’.
Cf. Popper, K., Objective Knowledge, op. cit., p. 191ff.
In the tradition of critical realism, the reinterpretation of Kant’s transcendental philosophy mentioned above hints at this direction. Cf. Külpe, O., ‘Festrede zur Kantfeier der Würzburger Universität 1904’, in Kopper/Malter (eds.), Immanuel Kant zu ehren, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1974, p. 185f.: “Es verhält sich demnach die Erkenntnistheorie zu dem wirklichen Forschen und Arbeiten in den Wissenschaften ähnlich wie die Theorie des Mikroskops zur Anwendung desselben. Unser Erkenntnisvermögen gleicht einem Instrument, desser Leistungsfähigkeit und Tragweite, dessen Grenzen und Fehler main einigermaßen muß beurteilen können, wenn man sich nicht der Gefahr einer Täuschung aussetzen will…. Wenn wir die Theorie eines Instruments entwickeln wollen, so geschieht das an Hand seines Baus und seiner Leistungen. Seine Elemente und deren Zusammensetzung werden betrachtet und auf ihre Gesetze zurückgeführt. Genau so verfährt Kant bei der Ausbildung seiner Erkenntnistheorie…”. There is, of course, no question but that Kant’s own transcendental approach is still a part of the tradition of classical rationalism in that he attempted to provide a solution of the problem of justification in the classical sense of finding a foundation. But if one dispenses with the claim to justification, then there is the possibility of viewing the approach as an attempt to explain scientific knowledge by means of a hypothetical recourse to the structure of our cognitive faculty.
The critical remarks of Paul Feyerabend usually flow into comments about such questions. But also in the work of Max Weber we find analyses of this kind in the context of philosophy of science, cf. especially: Weber, M., Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, 2nd ed., Mohr, Tübingen, 1951, p. 566ff.
Cf. my article: ‘Hermeneutik und Realwissenschaft’, in H. Albert, Plädoyer für kritischen Rationalismus, 4th ed., Piper, München, 1975.
This gives me the welcome opportunity to make a short remark about one aspect of Imre Lakatos’ methodology. I agree with Alan Musgrave (cf. his ‘Falsification and its Critics’, in P Suppes et al. (eds.), Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science IV, North Holland Publ. Co., Amsterdam, 1973, p. 393ff.) that Lakatos’ concessions to the Kuhnian critique go a bit too far. I see absolutely no reason to immunize the core of a research program against criticism, and I see even less reason for turning this immunization into a triviality by means of the ‘non-statement view’. The problem of anomalies can be dealt with without recourse to such a strategy. Should someone like ‘hard cores’ for one reason or apother, he can certainly produce them, but he will have great difficulty in persuading other people that it is unreasonable for them to use their power of imagination for the purpose of improving upon this arbitrary hard core.
Cf. notes 6 and 23.
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Albert, H. (1978). Science and the Search for Truth. In: Radnitzky, G., Andersson, G. (eds) Progress and Rationality in Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 58. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9866-7_9
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