Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defence

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Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defence
Cover of the first edition
Author David Miller
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Subject Philosophy of science
Published1994
Pagesviii, 264 pp.
OCLC 94-11205
LC Class Q175.M629 1994

Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defence (1994) is a book on the philosophy of science by David Miller. [1] Book reviews include those of John Watkins in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science and Michael Redhead in Analytic Philosophy. [2] The book seeks to restate and extend the epistemology of Karl Popper, whose general philosophy has been termed 'critical rationalism'.

Philosophy of science is a sub-field of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultimate purpose of science. This discipline overlaps with metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, for example, when it explores the relationship between science and truth.

David W. Miller is an English philosopher and prominent exponent of critical rationalism. He taught in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick in Coventry, UK. where he is Reader in Philosophy. He has been Honorary Treasurer of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science

A book review is a form of literary criticism in which a book is merely described or analyzed based on content, style, and merit. A book review may be a primary source, opinion piece, summary review or scholarly review. Books can be reviewed for printed periodicals, magazines and newspapers, as school work, or for book web sites on the Internet. A book review's length may vary from a single paragraph to a substantial essay. Such a review may evaluate the book on the basis of personal taste. Reviewers may use the occasion of a book review for an extended essay that can be closely or loosely related to the subject of the book, or to promulgate their own ideas on the topic of a fiction or non-fiction work.

The book attacks the use of "good reasons" in general (including evidence supposed to support the excess content of a hypothesis). He argues that good reasons are neither attainable, nor even desirable. Basically, the case, which Miller calls "tediously familiar", is that all arguments purporting to give valid support for a claim are either circular or question-begging. That is, if one provides a valid deductive argument (an inference from premises to a conclusion) for a given claim, then the content of the claim must already be contained within the premises of the argument (if it is not, then the argument is ampliative and so is invalid). Therefore, the claim is already presupposed by the premises, and is no more "supported" than are the assumptions upon which the claim rests, i.e. begging the question. [3]

Ampliative, a term used mainly in logic, meaning "extending" or "adding to that which is already known".

Begging the question type of fallacy, where a proposition is assumed as a premise, which itself needs a proof and directly entails the conclusion

Begging the question is an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument's premises assume the truth of the conclusion, instead of supporting it. It is a type of circular reasoning: an argument that requires that the desired conclusion be true. This often occurs in an indirect way such that the fallacy's presence is hidden, or at least not easily apparent.

Notes

  1. David Miller (1994). Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defence. Description and contents. Open Court, Chicago and LaSalle, Illinois] ISBN   0-8126-9197-0 ISBN   0-8126-9198-9]
  2. John Watkins (1995). "Review: "Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defence by David Miller," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 46(4), p p. 610-616.
    • Michael Redhead (1997). "Miller, D., Critical Rationalism: From Physics to Metaphysics," Analytic Philosophy, 38(1), pp. 73–76. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0149.00054/abstract.
  3. David Miller (1994). Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defence, Chapter 3, "A Critique of Good Reasons."

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Karl Popper Austrian-British philosopher of science

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Circular reasoning is a logical fallacy in which the reasoner begins with what they are trying to end with. The components of a circular argument are often logically valid because if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. Circular reasoning is not a formal logical fallacy but a pragmatic defect in an argument whereby the premises are just as much in need of proof or evidence as the conclusion, and as a consequence the argument fails to persuade. Other ways to express this are that there is no reason to accept the premises unless one already believes the conclusion, or that the premises provide no independent ground or evidence for the conclusion. Begging the question is closely related to circular reasoning, and in modern usage the two generally refer to the same thing.

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Critical rationalism is an epistemological philosophy advanced by Karl Popper. Popper wrote about critical rationalism in his works: The Logic of Scientific Discovery, The Open Society and its Enemies, Conjectures and Refutations, The Myth of the Framework, and Unended Quest. Ernest Gellner is another notable proponent of this approach.

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