Criticism of Critical Rationalism.

Critical rationalism is the idea that all our conjectures (guesses, theories, explanations) about the world are fallible, radically so. It is the idea that there is no such thing as justification. This is because justification itself leads to what is seen as an infinite regress of justifications of our justifications.

Recently I have been discussing the merits of CR with a facebook user, one who has kindly offered many  criticism on the what he calls the methods and foundations of CR. Criticisms that might appear at first to be reasonable, but later turn out to be trivial points that lead to no problematic conclusions. The first one he terms the "recursive falsificatory loop" later he say he means spiral rather than loop, but for our purposes this is irrelevant (His view can be found here). The recursive loop/spiral is this:

"If the Critical Rationalist’s falsification attempts are themselves fallible, shouldn’t he subject his falsification attempts to criticism as well? And shouldn’t he then further criticise the criticisms of his criticisms?"

A critical rationalist in a sense is not obligated to do anything other than accept that his explanation is fallible and keep it open to criticism from others. This is exactly inline with a critical rationalist point-of-view.

The reason that a person does not indefinitely criticize his own theory is because he is trying to solve a particular problem and at some point we need to apply  our explanation to the problem in order to solve it.

The other idea is that if there are two solutions to a problem which of the solutions should we use? We can use whichever one we want, this might be based on many factors in  a person or groups environment and preferences, but does not necessarily have anything to do with the merits of the theories in question.

The fact that we have two solutions leads to further problems-situations, if we have two explanations where we can further elaborate on the problem and create hypothetical situations in which each one would fail we can do so, but this creates a problem situation we can put aside in order to solve the problem at hand.

 The recursion here is just the idea that one problem-situation might lead to discovery of more problem situations, in which we have to criticize our current theories and the deeper theories they are embedded in. Whether a  theory "needs" to be criticized is determined by the people involved in a problem-situation.

The reason a person is not obligated to criticise his own theories or his own refutations indefinitely is because this would lead to him to not apply a solution to the problem he is ostensibly trying to solve, and therefore, if he has a theory, not putting his theory to the severest possible test ie the empirical test.  If there are refutations that we have of a particular theory, there will be a little dogmatism from people who hold the theory, So therefore if a person does not involve himself in criticizing his own refutation this role will be filled by others who wish to show that the refutation was not actually a refutation. This is because a person engaged in a problem-situation is not trying to get information necessarily beyond his own problem-situation, but knowledge itself has a way of encroaching on other people's problem situations, and in this way all a critical rationalist expects is that his solution will come under severe criticism from other people in different problem situations, and maybe at a later date a new problem situation he is in that has lead to him reconsidering attributes of his earlier solution that are based on faulty assumptions. This is the idea that although our theories are fallible, there is no point in assuming they are false, until we have a situation in which the explanation itself seems inadequate, even if there are two solutions (it is true that at least one of them is false, but we don't know which or if in fact both are false). This is why each theory that falsifies another theory explains why the early theory predicted the way it did and also explains its failure to solve the current problem at hand.

The reason this situation is different from the justificationist stance, is simply because the recursive function of justification does not lead to any new problem-situations, it leads to one problem: a regressive justification of justifications. Which is a non-problem, because justification is false.

The irrationality of Atheist (among others) 'Science'. part1.

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I often comment on Youtube. A subset of these comments often get replies that lead to longer exchanges with people about certain subjects. The issue that crops up the most, because I am some kind of damned persistent anti-justificationist (so much so that most of my comments have now become some sort of paen to the works of Karl Popper) is the issue of justification.

The one persistent thought among Youtube atheists, is that religious people often accept things without evidence, and that evidence is all in their favour when it comes to their pet theories about the origin of species or about some other facet of the new atheist enterprise. I say pet theory not to disparage the theory, but in regards to the irrational reasons for which they are held to be true; they think that somehow the force of Agrippa's trilemma has been dispelled by some waving of the wand of a false positivistic theory of  science.

The fact that religious people often hold their beliefs without evidence is quite true, but irrelevant, because all the theories we hold to be true we do so without evidence to justify them, because this leads to one of the prongs of Agrippa’s trilemma. What is relevant is that they hold their beliefs despite criticism of their arguments for God, and despite the fact that the God hypothesis explains nothing in any invariable way necessary for a good explanation, or formulates any predictions about anything that makes it susceptible to refutation. 

That evidence does not confirm a theory, as proposed by Popper (and not yet successfully criticized), should be enough to show that holding onto a theory without evidence is not itself a legitimate reason to call somebody out as irrational, because the demand to only accept something that has been justified by evidence is itself irrational. These people hold onto science despite the fact that there is no evidence for science itself, that does not make their choice to pursue scientific explanations irrational; but if they think they need evidence for something to believe it, they have an irrational view of not just science, but of philosophy as well. 
 

Instrumental Objectivity.

In 'Physics and Philosophy' Jeans makes a radical claim without backing it up; he asserts that “The modern physicist can trust his instruments to give him absolutely unbiased information”. The context is that the ancients (such as Plato) had the problem of how to trust the senses and how to get unbiased information, and the fruitless attempts to solve it through philosophy.

Don't get me wrong, but how do instruments bypass human interpretation? The instrument itself is built on the basis of interpretation, so the instrument has a structure that is imbued with human interpretation; we have a theory for how the world works, and we build the instrument on that basis; just because the instrument is more precise, in a sense that is based on theories that we have about or physical attributes and about how the world works, does not mean it is less bias  or more objective. I am not talking about Subjectivism, I am talking about a simple humility in regard to our instruments. They cannot bypass our senses, they can only make them more precise from theoretical assumptions of what accounts for being more precise. If the assertion can be demonstrated, then I will gladly concede that through our instruments we have some kind of unbiased source of information.

If it is argued that we are talking about the information before it gets interpreted by humans, then we could just as easily say that the eyes give absolutely unbiased information, before that information is passed to the brain and interpreted.

If then it is  argued that the eye is shaped in a certain way and wired into the brain in a certain way, this will not help your case, because that claim holds for any instrument; because the instrument itself is shaped in a certain way (in accordance with our best theories at the time) and was the product of the human brain, and so can be said to “wired” to the brain in a certain way (because we have to interpret the information).

University.

I finally arrived in Leeds on Sunday. It has been a strange couple of days getting settled into University residences and being 28 makes it that little more difficult to get socialized with the people here - I think I am the oldest here!!

I hope to be resuming my other Blog (Modus Tollens) in the next few weeks when I finally get settled and don't have to worry quite so much about getting started and planning. Along with resuming this blog, I will be starting to post in the existent but inactive and empty blog of mine called Lhuv-Kerapht. The Lhuv-Kerapht Blogspot is going to be an attempt at an in-depth  exploration of the I-ching/Qabbalah symbolism in Illuminatus! trilogy.

Inherent Vice Information.

In lieu of the release of PT Anderson's adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's 'Inherent Vice', I wish to point out two very good resources. The first is the blog known as Cigarettes and Vines, which has followed PT Anderson's Projects for the last few years, and is a good resource for interviews, articles, photos and behind the scenes information for all of Anderson's films. The second is the Thomas Pynchon Wiki, which is pretty much the equivalent of Cigarettes and Vines, but for Thomas Pynchon's works, accept that it has a communal wikipedia, which allows people to get involved with interpretations of Pynchon's works, and to disseminate information about his works.

Their respective web addresses are:

cigsandredvines.blogspot.co.uk

and

http://pynchonwiki.com/

After listening to Inherent Vice on audiobook, I am looking forward to Anderson's film even more. The projects seem to be undertaken in the same spirit; as more accessible projects than previous ones, but still with the intent of finessing and keeping true to their craft. I think that Pynchon succeeded with this, and can only imagine that PT Anderson, after Punch Drunk Love (with my initial bad reaction and subsequent surprise after watching it), will manage the same.