Critical Rationalism

This paper examines the liberal society that Popper lauds, that aims to be truly open, and discusses why another, more communitarian kind of society, particularly societies in Africa, may also reflect the quest for intellectual openness that is Popper’s ideal. Moreover, this paper avers reasons why Popper should be comfortable with such a liberal-communitarian mix. The inter-subjectivity in his critical rationalism is a balance of an explicit individualism, and an implicit social element (Afisi, 2016a). Popper is indeed an author of such a balance. For a society to be truly open requires the careful recognition and protection of individual freedom. However, the extent to which individuals are free to perform actions that they desire without external constraints, and the level of their individuality in relation to others when performing such actions, remain a contentious issue between liberals and more communitarian thinkers. Popper’s critical rationalism provides the necessary impetus to this contention through his view of freedom that I contend can best be viewed as carefully balanced, a view which combines individuality with a social element that upholds community values necessary for openness of society. With this combination, Popper’s politics of liberalism provides an effective model of how a truly open society can be achieved. The values inherent to Popper’s liberalism including those concerning intellectual openness, individual freedom, mutual respect, measured self-respect, welfarism, humanitarianism, accountability, critical debates and feedback from the citizens, together concern the conditions for a society to be truly open. There are many competing thoughts as to what openness might be in Popper’s philosophy. The present study of Popper does not presume to address them all. The focus here is specifically on using Popper’s idea of critical rationalism to balance relations between liberal politics of individual rights and freedom, and communitarian politics of the common good, as it relates to situations about how socio-economic and political conditions in Africa societies should be structured. While I contend that Popper’s works in political philosophy focused centrally on Western political tradition, and not about Africa in its strict sense, significant lessons can be distilled from Popper that can offer suggestions on social reforms in Africa. This paper explores Popper’s project of the open society across the plurality and differences of societies, so that his liberal ideas of individual freedom are not undermined, and the progress of the communitarian idea of the common good, that Africa societies are built upon, is also well enhanced. Liberal individualism and community values inherent to communitarianism are both well accommodated within Popper’s critical rationalism.

Notwithstanding Karl Popper’s deep admiration for ancient Greece and his affection for modern Greece, his work has been mostly viewed with caution by Greek scholars who, until relatively recently, often chose to either ignore or downplay it. This stance can be partially attributed to the novel approach of Popper’s critique to Plato which did not fare well with the foundational biases of modern Greek academic tradition and the prevailing intellectual inclinations of Greek scholars in the fields of the methodology of science and political theory. Although this bias has begun to recede during the last decades, there remains a lot to be done to fully integrate Popper’s work into the Greek intellectual and social discourse. Nevertheless, the establishment of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Athens University, along with the efforts of academics and public intellectuals, particularly during the Greek financial crisis of the last decade, have played a pivotal role in generating a broader interest in critical rationalism and popularizing Popper’s ideas among a wider audience. This paper examines the evolution of the reception of Popper’s ideas in Greece, both in scholarly circles and in public life, from the time of publication of his seminal work “The Open Society and its Enemies” until today, highlighting the efforts to foster a more comprehensive understanding of his important contributions

Fostering critical thinking among senior high school students in Colombia has been an unfulfilled goal. This undesirable situation has multiple causes: “critical thinking” has become a mere slogan and its meaning and scope have not been clearly specified despite being widely used in the different levels of the education system. Furthermore, the strategies designed to teach critical thinking lack creativity, reinforce rote learning and the sheer repetition of logic rules besides misallocating the goal of reasoning and argumentation by focusing only on rhetorical persuasion. Textbooks and core literature in critical thinking suggest that a critical thinker is someone who always has plenty of arguments to defend her beliefs besides being ready to address even destructive criticism. By contrast, critical rationalism emphasizes the importance of a humble approach, acknowledges error, and portrays a critical thinker as someone who is ready to test her most beloved theories against experience and to reject them in the light of the facts that contradict her beliefs and certainties. We consider that a pedagogical approach enriched with fallibilism might be central for a better education and endorse these views with the results of a case study conducted in Manizales, Colombia, which shows that teaching the basics of logic and argumentation by using the central tenets of critical rationalism fosters critical thinking among senior high school students

The aim of this paper is to consider whether critical rationalism has any ideas which could usefully be applied to the internet.  Today we tend to take the internet for granted and it is easy to forget that it was only about two decades ago that it began to be used to any significant extent. Accordingly in section 1 of the paper, there is a brief consideration of the history of the internet.  At first sight this makes it looks implausible that any of Popper’s ideas could be applicable to the internet, since Popper died before the internet came into general use.  However, section 2 argues that Popper’s theory of World 3 does apply very well to the internet.  This application is significant because, as shown in section 3, it leads to the problem of misinformation, which is one of the most significant problems generated by the internet.  In section 4 there is an attempt to solve this problem using ideas taken from Popper’s epistemology. It is argued that there should be changes in education designed to prepare students for the internet age. Teaching in the internet age should focus on presenting to the students not just the accepted theories but also the evidence on which they are based. An illustration of how this might be done is given by considering an example from science teaching, namely the teaching of Newtonian mechanics in the last years of school or first years of university.

'Post-truth' has become a buzzword for numerous current crises: the fragmentation of the media landscape, the ongoing debate about 'fake news', the loss of trust in science, etc. Although these crises take place in society, it is claimed that the roots of post-truth can be traced back to the history of philosophy. Occasionally, it is asserted that Karl Popper's critical rationalism gave rise to post-truth: His rejection of verificationism has limited truth claims in the realm of science. Given the absence of infallible evidence and certainty, critical rationalism calls for challenging scientific authority. I argue that post-truth is compatible with critical rationalism from an epistemological point of view, considering that both positions are critical of certainty. However, in critical rationalism, fallibilism, responsibility, and the idea of criticism are combined, and in this respect, it offers a possible way to overcome the problems that are associated with post-truth. This treatment of the problems of post-truth results from the recognition of moral responsibility to take action on the basis of a hypothesis that remains open to revision.

Artifacts are ubiquitous and influential in our world, but their nature and existence are controversial. Several theories have been proposed to explain the ontology of artifacts. Drawing on Popper's theory of three worlds, this paper suggests a metaphysics for artifacts along the line of a critical rationalist (CR) approach. This theory distinguishes between three realms of reality: the physical world (World 1), the mental world (World 2), and the world of objective knowledge (World 3). The paper argues that artifacts have different ontological components that correspond to these three realms, and that each component is real and causal. The paper shows how this perspective can account for the intentional and functional aspects of artifacts, as well as their dependence on plans that influence different realms of reality. The paper explains how this pluralistic ontology, compared to the rival theories, enables one to explain the relevant ontological problems of artifacts. The paper also explores how this proposal can lead to a research program encompassing a broader range of technologies, such as social artifacts. In sum, the paper suggests that Popper's three worlds theory provides a rich and comprehensive framework for understanding the metaphysics of artifacts.

Since Critical Rationalism is considered by some more of an attitude or mindset and by others a methodological approach to philosophical thinking and practical problem-solving, its application, or more accurately, its epistemological testing grounds, should be expected to be much more wide-ranging than they have been so far. With the exception of some published anthologies on Critical Rationalism and occasional nods to the legacy of Karl Popper’s falsificationist methodology, relatively few applicaions of a critical rational approach to contemporary theoretical debates in the social sciences have been published. I wish here to critically challenge the (optimistic) Hegelian and by extension the neoliberal view of the progress of American capitalism by reframing it with the Marxian notion of expropriation as applied to enslavement on plantations. The logic of enslavement as a process by which brutal exploitation has been practiced for centuries offers a falsifying test case of the rationality of capitalism and its promise of individual freedom of choice. This essay is an explicit exercise in the potential power of a version of Popperian critical rationalism being applied to the intersection of modern liberalism and capitalism, exploring the imbrication of a critical and rational analysis.

One may say that The Open Society and Its Enemies (OS) offered in 1945 the first complete elaboration of the general approach proposed by Karl Popper, namely his ‘critical rationalism’, a bold generalization of the fallibilist falsificationism in the domain of the empirical sciences masterly proposed in Logik der Forschung (1934). The political content of The OS has been critically discussed. Nevertheless, not all people insist on the equally important moral dimension of the book, giving it its unity, I submit. Without morality, no critical discussion, no reason, no open society, let us say in a nutshell. I would argue that according to Popper, a strictly Christian morality of love would not be the appropriate emotional companion of critical rationalism, but that the less demanding moral emotion of sympathy or compassion is perhaps necessary to give it its force against violence. I give some support to this line of argument. In my view, Popper proposed a somewhat unarticulated critical rationalist ‘emotivism’ of sorts. The emotion of compassion is necessary for triggering our moral decisions and values, which are the ultimate basis of the choice for a reason against violence.

Since the emergence of modernity, and in response to its myriad aspects and potentials, which are constantly unfolding, countless reactions have kept emerging in almost all quarters of the globe. A large variety of anti-modern reactions, the common core of which is perhaps the idea that modernity, in one way or another, is illegitimate, stand out among these responses. According to some of these anti-modern responses, modernity has usurped the characteristics and features of religion, which has been the soul as well as the main shaping force of the pre-modern era and has reproduced it in a corrupted form. Two German-speaking philosophers, Karl Popper and Hans Blumenberg, are among the intellectuals who have defended modernity against the onslaught of anti-modern tendencies. In this paper, I briefly, though critically, compare and contrast the approaches as well as some of the arguments of these two thinkers in defence of modernity.

This paper argues that it is not reasonable for a critical rationalist to be a religious believer in the Abrahamic tradition. The argument is distinctive, in that it takes seriously the critical rationalist view that we should abandon ‘justificationist’ argument. What this means, is that the structure of argument then becomes a matter of offering theories as resolutions of problems, and then judging how they fare in the face of ongoing critical appraisal. The paper surveys issues in several areas, including God and what is good; homosexuality; mysticism; and messianic ideas. It argues that, unless the believer engages in intellectual retreat (something that is unacceptable for the critical rationalist), the problem-situation facing the believer appears to be so daunting that it would be unreasonable for them to hope that they can overcome it.

In modern times many militant atheist thinkers and activists have tried to promote the idea that religions, as well as religious ways of life, are one of the main, if not the main source of evil in the social arena. Some other non-believer scholars, while taking a respectful approach towards religions and religious people, maintaining that it is more rational for people and communities to adopt a non-religious outlook on life and become members of the community of non-believers. In this paper, I do not take issue with the militant non-believers. The reason is that their approach to religion is so ideologically driven that it leaves not much room for proper rational discussions; it only invites some polemical replies. My aim here is, instead, to enter into a dialogue with those non-believer scholars who view religion in a measured and rational way. My intention is to critically assess the claims of this latter group of scholars and explain why, contrary to what they suggest, certain interpretations of religion, and in particular, the Islamic faith, can provide them with better alternatives than their atheist outlooks. The arguments of this paper are mostly in reply to the views expressed by Professor Shearmur in his paper on critical rationalism and religion.

The influential physicist Richard Feynman became interested in the relationship between religion and science during a mid-career phase. He proposed that their interface was embroiled in unresolvable difficulties. He felt that science demanded an attitude of uncertainty for its claims, while religion contrarily required certain belief in its core doctrines. Though possessing several non-contradictory dimensions, Feynman felt that the nature of the truth claims of science and religion suffered from insurmountable elemental conflicts. This was by contrast to Karl Popper, the leading critical rationalist of the 20th century, who argued that there could be no tension between science and religion. This paper will argue that the ‘Feynman Problem’ is not as insoluble as it appears. Rather, several solutions exist within critical rationalism. Two will be presented-the first revolves around the conjectural basis of knowledge and is already a well characterised critical rationalist notion. The second is a novel solution based on the separate categorisation of psychological, pragmatic, and epistemological attitudes to religion and science. Karl Popper’s view of religion-science dissimilarity was a minimalist point of departure for critical rationalists, who have developed increasingly sophisticated frameworks for investigating the relationship between faith and reason. Critical rationalism represents an equally inspirational methodology for the pursuit of scientific and religious truth. Though both Feynman and Popper’s views on religion were underdeveloped, they foreshadowed the religion-science frameworks advocated by many late 20th century scientists, especially in the form of New Atheism and Gould’s NOMA theory.