Abstract
Bartley’s pancritical rationalism is seen by some as being a refinement of Popper’s critical rationalism. I contest this view and argue that pancritical rationalism is obtained from critical rationalism by removing some of its most important and useful features. The remainder consists of a restatement of some of Popper’s key ideas and an interpretation of others that I attempt to show is not entirely faithful to what Popper says.
Keywords
1. Introduction
In this article I consider the problem “What is the connection between Popper’s critical rationalism and Bartley’s pancritical rationalism?” Pancritical rationalism was originally known as “comprehensively critical rationalism” (Bartley 1964, 146). The expression “critical rationalism” is used in several ways. Mautner (1996, 87) and others, for example, use it to refer to the whole of Popper’s philosophical outlook. In this article, I am primarily interested in critical rationalism as the “attitude of readiness to listen to critical arguments and to learn from experience. It is fundamentally an attitude of admitting that ‘I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth’” (Popper 1966b, 225). Popper elaborates this attitude of reasonableness in great detail in chapter 24 of The Open Society and strongly recommends it. This attitude is one of the key components of Popper’s philosophy. In other writings, Popper supplements it with a critical methodology to enable us to weed out false and unsatisfactory hypotheses. The details of this are not directly relevant to my concerns in this article. In general terms, however, this methodology is governed by the principle that we should always be willing to listen to any proposed criticism of our assumptions and be prepared to abandon any of them if the criticism merits it.
The opinion of supporters of pancritical rationalism is that it is a refinement and development of critical rationalism and, therefore, a superior alternative to it. Thus, Weimer (1979, xi) regards Bartley’s ideas as being “light years ahead of the other Popperians” and considers pancritical rationalism “the most defensible Popperian philosophy available.” Mahoney (1976, 142) simply says that it “goes well beyond Popperian falsificationism in several respects.” It is thought of as being an improvement because it is seen as being free from any taint of justificationism or fideism. It recognizes no limits to criticism, uses only nonjustificatory methods to criticize theories, and justifies nothing by means of an irrational decision. As Bartley (1984, 118) puts it, the pancritical rationalist is someone who
holds all his positions, including his most fundamental standards, goals, and decisions, and his basic philosophical position itself, open to criticism; one who protects nothing from criticism by justifying it irrationally; one who never cuts off an argument by resorting to faith or irrational commitment to justify some belief that has been under severe critical fire; one who is committed, attached, addicted, to no position.
In this article I argue that pancritical rationalism is not a better version of rationalism than critical rationalism. Popper does indeed say that the attitude of reasonableness is accepted by means of an irrational decision. This, however, is not fideism, as the attitude accepted is not a theory; at its core are several moral principles. The decision to treat arguments seriously is irrational because it is a moral decision. Rational discourse, for Popper, is guided by the regulative idea of truth. Moral principles, unlike theories, are capable neither of being true nor of being false. Using an expression that has only recently been introduced into philosophy, we can say that norms, proposals, decisions, and imperatives are not truth-apt: the concepts of truth and falsity simply do not apply to them. Concerning criticism and its limits, I attempt to show that not only are all the nonjustificatory methods of criticism that Bartley mentions already to be found in Popper, but passages can be found in Popper that state that there are no limits to the criticism of truth-apt statements. For example, already in the first edition of The Open Society, Popper (1945, 209) wrote, “Any assumption can, in principle, be criticized.”
Another reason why pancritical rationalism is not as effective as critical rationalism is that Bartley does not emphasize as strongly as does Popper the moral imperative to treat arguments, criticisms, and theories seriously. The proposal to take arguments and theories at face value is of fundamental importance in Popper’s critical rationalism. It forms the core of his faith in reason. In Bartley’s approach, however, this attitude does not have the same prominence; it is not emphasized as strongly. It only appears on the final page of the body of the text of The Retreat to Commitment (Bartley 1984, 165).
Popper (1966b, 231) accepts the rationalist attitude by means of an irrational decision. Bartley (1982, 146) interprets this as meaning that the decision is fideistic. (I discuss this interpretation at length below.) For Bartley, this is a serious liability, as it means that “no one can be criticized rationally for” making a different choice “no matter how idiosyncratic” (135). My interpretation of Popper’s irrational decision is different from the one proposed by Bartley. I see Popper’s irrational decision as being a “moral decision” (Popper 1966b, 232). In my opinion, the fact that the acceptance of critical rationalism involves making a moral decision is one of its most valuable assets, setting it apart from other conceptions and instilling it with a moral dimension that they lack. Having an impressive battery of nonjustificatory methods of criticism at your disposal does not make you a rationalist; neither does the use of those methods. An irrationalist can choose to employ nonjustificatory arguments as playfully or as maliciously as he or she employs justificatory ones; he or she might find it amusing to annoy rationalists in this way. Only someone who has adopted a moral principle to use a critical methodology seriously in the search for truth is a critical rationalist.
To present pancritical rationalism as an advance on critical rationalism, Bartley has to interpret Popper’s statement that he accepts rationalism by means of an irrational decision in a way that, I attempt to show, is alien to the thrust of Popper’s discussion of the matter. Bartley interprets this as meaning that Popper adopts the core assumptions of rationalism by an act of faith. (I try to show that Popper’s acceptance of the attitude of reasonableness is a moral decision.) Bartley then goes on to say that pancritical rationalism is free of any fideistic elements. (In reality, so is critical rationalism.) In what follows I also argue against Bartley’s claim that critical rationalism is justificationist, and I attempt to show that there are still some remnants of justificationism in pancritical rationalism. In these ways I hope to show that pancritical rationalism is not a better version of rationalism than Popper’s critical rationalism.
2. Critical Dualism
In chapter 5 of The Open Society, “Nature and Convention,” Popper expounds and endorses critical dualism. To begin with, he distinguishes between natural and normative laws. This is a distinction between two sorts of linguistic expression. Boyle’s law is an example of a natural law: “The volume of a given mass of gas is inversely proportional to its pressure at constant temperature.” The golden rule is an example of a normative law: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
The most important difference between these two kinds of law is that whereas natural laws can be true or false, normative laws are not truth-apt. They are not the kind of sentences that are capable of being either true or false. Boyle’s law, for example, is false, as it does not hold either for very low pressures or for very high ones. Thus, it does not describe an actual regularity of nature. The golden rule, however, is neither true nor false, neither valid nor invalid. There is no independently existing moral reality against which it can be compared to see whether or not it is correct. We can, however, decide to adopt the golden rule and strive to live in accordance with it. We are, of course, free to reject it. Nothing can compel us either to accept or ignore the golden rule as a guide to our behavior. Norms and ethical standards are created by human beings to regulate their behavior; they do not exist prior to their formulation.
Natural laws are also formulated by human beings in the sense that the production of a scientific theory, like Boyle’s law, is always a creative act (Popper [1959] 1975, 32). The truth or falsity of a natural law, however, depends on whether or not it corresponds to a genuine regularity in nature. Natural laws are compared against an independently existing reality to determine their adequacy. The production of a normative law is also a creative act, but in this case there is no independently existing reality against which the law can be compared to determine its legitimacy.
In note 5 to chapter 5, Popper considers the possibility of introducing a concept of validity, into the normative realm, which is the analogue of truth in the nonnormative realm. In the nonnormative realm, the statement “‘Grass is green’ is true” is equivalent to “Grass is green.” The idea behind the introduction of a concept of validity is to make the norm “Thou shalt not steal” equivalent to the expression “‘Thou shalt not steal’ is valid.” Prior (1949, chap. 7) shows that this suggestion fails because although we can unpack truth as correspondence to the facts, there is nothing to which a norm could correspond to make it valid. There are nonnormative facts, but there is nothing in the normative realm analogous to a fact.
As already mentioned, Popper begins his account of critical dualism by distinguishing between natural and normative laws. (He also uses the terms “norm” and “commandment” as synonyms for “normative law.” Norms such as “Thou shalt not steal” he also calls “prohibitions.”) Later on, however, he includes decisions, imperatives, standards, proposals, and policies in the normative realm. Thus, he comes to express critical dualism as a dualism of facts and decisions and stresses that “it is impossible to derive a sentence stating a norm or a decision or, say, a proposal for a policy from a sentence stating a fact; this is only another way of saying that it is impossible to derive norms or decisions or proposals from facts” (Popper 1966a, 64). It should be noted that Popper claims that proposals cannot be derived from factual statements. Popper (1966b, 294n47) distinguishes between proofs or demonstrations and derivations (taking over the latter term from Carnap). A demonstration is a valid deductive argument with true premises, whereas a derivation is simply a valid argument. The premises of a derivation do not have to be true.
There is a huge difference between truth-apt statements and ethical standards, but it is not helpful to say that norms cannot be derived from statements for the simple reason that this is not true. For us to be able to talk about the derivability or nonderivability of norms from statements, we must have at our disposal a logic in which norms and statements can figure. Presumably, such a logic would contain connectives such as not, and, or, and if-then. These are used to combine norms and statements; it is this possibility that creates difficulties for the claim that norms cannot be derived from statements. To begin with, we would have to express moral judgments in the form of, say, “Murder is wrong” rather than “Thou shalt not kill,” as it is debatable whether the expression “Grass is green or thou shalt not kill” is grammatical, whereas “Grass is green or murder is wrong” is grammatically acceptable (though it is difficult to imagine a use outside philosophy for such an expression). In a logic handling norms and statements, we have to decide whether a disjunction of a norm and a statement is either a norm or a statement. Either choice allows us to construct a valid argument all of whose premises are truth-apt statements and whose conclusion is a norm. Let p be truth-apt and q normative. If p∨q is normative, then p ergo, p∨q has a truth-apt premise and a normative conclusion, namely the disjunctive norm p∨q. If p∨q is truth-apt, then ¬p, p∨q ergo, q has two truth-apt premises and a normative conclusion. Thus, norms can be derived from truth-apt statements. This whole argument is due to T. H. Mott as reported by Prior (1976, 90–91). I have looked at it in more detail elsewhere (Diller 2003).
That norms can be derived from truth-apt statements is a consequence of the way logical inference works. Nothing significant follows from this result concerning norms or, indeed, what particular standards we should accept. One of the key assumptions of the above argument is that every sentence formed from a norm and a truth-apt statement is either a norm or a statement. (It would not help to say that such compounds are neither normative nor truth-apt, because then a similar argument could be constructed to show that norms can be derived from collections of entirely nonnormative premises.) To construct a logic dealing with norms and statements, we have to see sentences like “Grass is green or murder is wrong” as either normative or truth-apt (or, possibly, just as nonnormative). Neither alternative, however, seems to make much intuitive sense.
I think it is a real pity that some people have seen the acceptance of the claim that moral principles cannot be derived from truth-apt statements as forming the heart of critical dualism. I think, rather, that the key insight underlying critical dualism is the realization that there is a fundamental and unbridgeable gap between truth-apt statements and moral principles. Statements are true or false because of how things are in the world, whereas we are free to choose our moral principles. Our choice is not determined by factual considerations. Statements can be criticized by showing that they do not correspond to reality, but moral principles cannot be criticized in this way. The moral principles we adopt influence the way in which we live our lives; they shape our treatment of other people, and they inform and infuse our attempts to improve the societies in which we live. The same cannot be said of any truth-apt statements.
That norms can be derived from truth-apt statements is a peculiarity of how logic works. This result does not detract from the fact that there is a fundamental difference between the normative and nonnormative realms. Popper talks of a dualism of facts and decisions or proposals, but I prefer to talk of the nonnormative realm and the normative realm. This way of talking allows us to bring together more than just linguistic expressions. The normative realm definitely includes normative laws and proposals, but it may be useful to include other sorts of thing as well. The nonnormative realm clearly contains natural laws, empirical theories, and factual statements of all sorts, but related things will also be placed there. The most important inhabitant of the nonnormative realm is the regulative idea of truth. It is true that Popper (1966b, 385) acknowledges the existence of a regulative idea of rightness or goodness, which I would place in the normative realm, but he stresses that this “differs in its logical status from that of absolute truth.” Truth can be unpacked as “the idea of correspondence between a statement or a proposition and a fact”; to say a proposal is right or good could mean that it corresponds to certain standards. However, the key difference is that we decide what our standards are; we cannot decide what is or is not a matter of fact.
Popper (1966a, chap. 5) contrasts critical dualism with various forms of monism, such as naive naturalism, naive conventionalism, biological naturalism, ethical positivism, and psychological naturalism. The exact differences between these variants of monism are not relevant to my concerns here. What is germane is that none of them see any distinction between norms and natural laws of some kind of another. (Thus, psychological naturalism sees no difference between norms and the laws of psychology. Ethical principles, on this view, just are psychological laws.)
Popper summarizes his own fundamental moral principles in note 6 to chapter 5 of The Open Society. He adopts the norms to tolerate everyone except the intolerant and those who propagate intolerance, to alleviate pain and suffering as much as possible and to fight tyranny and bureaucracy. The principle to tolerate other people and their views thoroughly informs and infuses Popper’s critical rationalism. In his paper “On Toleration,” for example, Popper (2008, 321, 323) splits the attitude of reasonableness into three principles, namely “I may be wrong and you may be right,” “By talking things over rationally we may be able to correct some of our mistakes,” and “If we talk things over rationally, we may both get nearer to the truth.” The first principle, he says, is a statement of human fallibility that supports toleration and the second and third principles presuppose toleration.
In epistemology, fideism is the position that a truth-apt statement is accepted by means of an act of faith. This means that the statement in question is held dogmatically, come what may. Possible objections or criticisms are not taken seriously but are deflected in one way or another. The statement accepted is not subject to falsification or revision. Moral principles, for Popper, are accepted by means of a decision, and this may incline some people to think that he is advocating an ethical version of fideism, but the way in which moral principles are held is different from the way in which a fideist holds a statement to be true. There is no reason to think that a moral principle is held come what may. Shown that two of his moral principles are inconsistent a critical dualist will get rid of at least one of them, even though it was initially adopted by means of a decision. Moral principles accepted by means of a decision are thus revisable in a way that statements accepted by an act of faith by the fideist are not.
3. Critical Rationalism
The expression “critical rationalism” is used in several ways. (I consider how Bartley uses it when I come to discuss his interpretation of Popper.) In its narrowest meaning, it is simply the attitude of reasonableness, and this is how I mainly use the phrase in this article. Popper (1994b, xii) himself states that this attitude summarizes critical rationalism. In its broadest meaning, it is the whole of Popper’s philosophy. It is also used in a way intermediate between these two extremes. In this sense it refers to a collection of principles, or a critical methodology, governing our acceptance and rejection of conjectures. Thus, in Realism and the Aim of Science, Popper (1983, 32) formulates the following principle of critical rationalism: “We demand that our adoption and our rejection of scientific theories should depend upon our critical reasoning (combined with the results of observation and experiment, as demanded by [the principle of empiricism]).” The principle of empiricism he states thus: “We demand that our adoption and our rejection of scientific theories should depend upon the results of observation and experiment, and thus upon singular observation statements.” Many books and papers containing the expression “critical rationalism” in their titles, such as Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defence by Miller (1994) and “Critical Rationalism” by Musgrave (2007), are contributions to the debate about the exact nature of this critical methodology.
In chapter 24 of The Open Society, “Oracular Philosophy and the Revolt against Reason,” Popper expounds and endorses critical rationalism. He begins by contrasting rationalism and irrationalism, both understood broadly. Rationalism, for Popper (1966b, 224), is characterized by “an attitude that seeks to solve as many problems as possible by an appeal to reason, i.e. to clear thought and experience, rather than by an appeal to emotions and passions.” He acknowledges that this characterization is somewhat vague, but it is sufficient to distinguish rationalism from irrationalism.
Irrationalism comes in many varieties, and Popper does not try to give an exhaustive characterization of all the many and varied forms that it has taken. He rather focuses on what he takes to be its key element. Irrationalists do not treat other people’s opinions and arguments seriously. They see thought as being “merely a somewhat superficial manifestation” of what exists in “the ‘deeper’ layers of human nature” (Popper 1966b, 235), and they look for the hidden motives from which they believe theories and arguments spring.
Popper (1966b, 215–16) mentions several methods that irrationalists use to “unveil the hidden motives behind our actions.” A psychoanalyst, for example, presented with an objection to one of Freud’s theories may well say that that objection is due to the critic’s repressions. A Marxist may dismiss an opponent’s disagreement by saying that it is due to his or her class bias and a sociologist of knowledge, by saying that it is due to his or her total ideology. (This method, when used by a sociologist of knowledge, is dubbed “socio-analysis.”) The techniques used by an Hegelian and a philosopher of meaning are slightly different. An Hegelian faced with an argument that shows his or her position to be inconsistent may well proclaim that contradictions are admissible and fertile. A philosopher of meaning presented with objections to his or her ideas may dismiss the views of opponents as being meaningless. This is a very powerful way of dealing with criticism as it is always possible to use such a narrow conception of meaning that makes any inconvenient question senseless (Popper [1959] 1975, 51). Popper (51n*1) was on the receiving end of this latter type of treatment. Before the publication of Logik der Forschung in 1934, the standard response to his methodological ideas by logical positivists was that they were neither part of philosophy nor part of science because they were “sheer nonsense.” It is not difficult to see why they should have thought this. Popper articulates his views in the form of a number of methodological rules that are very similar in form to the normative laws found in ethics, and the positivists regarded ethics as meaningless. In fact, Popper (50) explicitly calls the methodological rules he formulates in The Logic of Scientific Discovery “norms,” and in The Open Society he says that the reason why positivists regard norms as meaningless is that they define “meaning” in an arbitrary way (Popper 1966a, 234n5). It would be far too much of a digression for me to engage here in a detailed discussion of the various methodological rules that Popper devises; my point is that these are norms and not truth-apt sentences. Thorough accounts of Popper’s rules are to be found in books by Johansson (1975) and Jarvie (2001); the essay by Gadenne (2006) looks at how they are currently viewed by critical rationalists.
Although the positivists dismissed ethics and methodology as nonsense, Popper is reluctant to brand them as irrationalists and, to the best of my knowledge, does not do so. He does, however, level this charge against Wittgenstein, comparing his philosophical method to that of psychoanalysis (in note 6 to chapter 23 of The Open Society) and stressing his mysticism (in note 32 to chapter 24 of The Open Society). The young Wittgenstein eschewed argumentation entirely, as Russell acknowledges in a letter, quoted by Monk (1996, 264), written to Lady Ottoline Morrell on 27 May 1912:
I told him [that is, Wittgenstein] he ought not simply to state what he thinks true, but to give arguments for it, but he said arguments spoil its beauty, and that he would feel as if he was dirtying a flower with muddy hands. He does appeal to me—the artist in intellect is so very rare. I told him I hadn’t the heart to say anything against that, and that he had better acquire a slave to state the arguments. I am seriously afraid that no one will see the point of anything he writes, because he won’t recommend it by arguments addressed to a different point of view.
Although Popper does not do so, I think that it is useful to distinguish between moderate and extreme irrationalists. Moderate irrationalists make a show of using arguments, though they do so playfully and not seriously, whereas extreme irrationalists, such as the Wittgenstein Russell met before the First World War, do not even make a pretence of joining in the activity of argumentation. They simply propound their views without any attempt to present arguments that may have a bearing on the truth or falsity of those views. Wittgenstein’s take-it-or-leave-it attitude is characteristic of extreme irrationalism. Popper (1966b, 299n52) says that such an attitude of propounding “aphorisms and dogmatic statements” is likely to lead to the formation of “an esoteric circle of the initiated” who understand and accept these pronouncements. In what follows, I am concerned with the moderate irrationalist.
The custom or practice of arguing logically exists in present-day societies and has existed for thousands of years. The difference between the rationalist and the moderate irrationalist is not that the former engages in this practice and the latter does not but rather in how they participate. (Refusing to take part is an extreme reaction bordering on the pathological. The Wittgenstein Russell knew may well not have produced arguments in support of his views, but the Tractatus does at least contain the criticism-deflecting strategy of labeling opposing views as senseless, and to this extent, even he took account of the custom of arguing.) To be a genuine participant in the practice of argumentation and to engage in this activity honestly and not to abuse it requires the adoption of a moral attitude to take arguments seriously. Popper is right to stress this, and it is one of the distinctive features of his critical rationalism. Living in accordance with this ethical principle is not always an easy thing to do. It involves an almost daily struggle not to dismiss, in one way or another, inconvenient truths and irritating arguments that do more than merely suggest that our carefully worked-out opinions are not as perfect as we would wish. Such an attitude needs to be contrasted with an existential commitment, such as the religious conversion experienced by some Protestants and described by them as being “born again,” which is a one-off phenomenon resulting in a permanent transformation whose character is not altered or negated by any future behavior. In the case of rationalists, it is indeed true that they are known by their fruits. Popper (1998, 154) explicitly states that his faith in reason is not a commitment and that he can imagine giving it up in certain circumstances. People have indeed ceased to be critical rationalists. One noteworthy example is Watkins (1963), who became a pancritical rationalist for a number of years. He then reverted to critical rationalism and turned into one of the fiercest critics of pancritical rationalism (Watkins 1969).
It should be noted that for Popper (1966b, 240), someone is an irrationalist if he or she does not feel himself or herself to be under an obligation to take arguments seriously. An irrationalist may well treat certain arguments at face value. Thus, Popper (251) considers Toynbee to be an irrationalist even though he uses “a fundamentally rational method of argument” when discussing different historical interpretations of the same series of events. He is an irrationalist for Popper because, when discussing Marx, he does not reply to his opinions and arguments rationally but rather explains them away as being the product of Marx’s social habitat rather in the manner of the sociologists of knowledge using their irrational methods, including that of socioanalysis. However, it is not just the use of these methods that makes someone an irrationalist, for Popper (216) himself uses them. What makes a person an irrationalist is the sincere use of those methods. What stops Popper being an irrationalist is that he uses them only after he has attacked the views of his opponents rationally. Thus, for example, he criticizes the opinions held by the sociologists of knowledge rationally, and then he applies their own method of socioanalysis to them. He says that doing this has its dangers, but he does not see why he “should entirely forgo the fun of handling these methods.” Thus, a rationalist can only use rational methods seriously but is allowed to use irrational methods playfully, whereas an irrationalist uses rational methods selectively but always employs irrational ones in earnest.
To highlight the characteristics of his version of rationalism, Popper (1966b, 230) contrasts critical and uncritical rationalism. The latter he also calls “comprehensive rationalism.” He presents this in two ways. It is the attitude of the person who states, “I am not prepared to accept anything that cannot be defended by means of argument or experience.” It can also be formulated as “the principle that any assumption which cannot be supported either by argument or by experience is to be discarded.” Popper’s account of uncritical rationalism is very concise, but it contains a great deal of information. Many commentators, influenced by Bartley, treat “comprehensive rationalism” as if it were a generic term covering a family of versions of rationalism, all of which share a common structure. Miller (1994, 78), for example, states, “In some form or another it is to be found explicitly in Descartes, in Berkeley, in Hume, and elsewhere; implicitly almost everywhere [in Western philosophy].” I do not deny that there are similarities among many thinkers in the Western tradition, but the prevalence of comprehensive rationalism in the Western tradition is not my concern here; its character is. What Popper calls “comprehensive rationalism” is a definite, specific, and concrete version of rationalism. Descartes, for example, would not be a comprehensive rationalist for Popper. Descartes, as Bartley (1984, 88) acknowledges, “argued that a rationalist should base all his opinions on ‘clear and distinct’ ideas presented to the intellect.” This is very different from basing your opinions on experience.
The uncritical rationalist does indeed make use of arguments, but he or she demands that these take a particular form. To be accepted an assumption has to be either supported or defended. This approach has come to be called “justificationism.” A position is adopted only if it can be justified. The justification may well consist of a long and convoluted argument, but its ultimate premises must be based on experience.
As an attitude, Popper (1966b, 230) expresses uncritical rationalism thus: “I am not prepared to accept anything that cannot be defended by means of argument or experience.” One of the ways in which this attitude works in practice is illustrated by means of an anecdote that Feyerabend relates in his autobiography. Before he became an anarchist, Feyerabend was, in turn, a positivist and one of Popper’s most ardent disciples. In his positivist phase, he lived by this attitude. The following passage relates events that took place around 1947:
Every Tuesday at seven in the morning I appeared at a theological seminar behind Saint Peter’s to convince Father Otto Mauer of the futility of his efforts. Believing in God was one thing, I said. But trying to prove his existence was bound to end in failure—the idea of a divine Being simply had no scientific foundation. This, incidentally, was my line in all interventions: science is the basis of knowledge; science is empirical; nonempirical enterprises are either logic or nonsense. Along with a small group of science students I invaded philosophy lectures and seminars. (Feyerabend 1995, 68)
This passage well brings out the intolerance and dogmatism inherent in uncritical rationalism. The comprehensive rationalist is fully convinced of the correctness of his conception of rationalism. Years later, Feyerabend (1995, 69) realized that, had he listened to the people he attacked, they could have taught him a great deal, especially Monsignor Mauer: “I could have learned a lot from him had I been a little less self-centered.”
Uncritical rationalism is comprehensive in the sense that it is applicable to every assumption and principle. It is thus self-contained and self-applicable. Unfortunately, it is also inconsistent. Expressed as a principle, uncritical rationalism states that “any assumption which cannot be supported either by argument or by experience is to be discarded” (Popper 1966b, 230). Popper states that this principle itself cannot be supported either by argument or by experience, and so the uncritical rationalist should discard it.
Someone attracted by comprehensive rationalism but convinced by Popper’s criticism of it may try to salvage as much as possible of this conception of rationality by adopting the principle: “Any assumption, except this one, which cannot be supported either by argument or by experience is to be discarded.” I will call this possibility “restricted rationalism.” This is not the same as what Bartley (1990, 232) calls “limited rationalism” as that is a generic term for several versions of rationalism that share a common structure, as explained below. It seems to me that Popper (1966b, 230) implicitly criticizes this version of rationalism after he has dealt with uncritical rationalism, for he says that his criticism of that “may be generalized,” and he attacks philosophers who demand that “we should start with no assumptions” or who demand that we should start “with a very small set of assumptions”:
[Both of these demands are inconsistent for] they themselves rest upon the truly colossal assumption that it is possible to start without, or with only a few assumptions, and still to [sic] obtain results that are worth while.
Applying this point to restricted rationalism results in the claim that even this form of rationalism is radically flawed because it assumes that you can build something valuable and useful on the basis of experience by means of argument. From Logik der Forschung on, Popper has insisted that empirical theories always go beyond experience and that scientific hypotheses can never be supported, defended, or justified by observation statements recording the results of sense experience, though they can be falsified by these.
Whereas uncritical rationalism is justificationist, dogmatic, and comprehensive and either denies the existence of the normative realm or simply ignores it, critical rationalism is neither justificationist nor dogmatic and, accepting critical dualism, places the decision to accept rationalism firmly in the normative realm, thus acknowledging that it is irrational. Specifically, critical rationalism involves a willingness to take critical arguments seriously (Popper 1966b, 225, 240), where criticism consists in showing that a contradiction exists either within the theory being criticized or between that theory and some facts of experience (215). Furthermore, every assumption is taken to be criticizable in principle (221). My references here are to the fifth edition of The Open Society, but the passages indicated all occur in the first edition, including the claim “Any assumption can, in principle, be criticized” (Popper 1945, 209).
Although Popper (1966b, 232) says that adopting critical rationalism involves making a “minimum concession to irrationalism,” it should not be thought that he would accept comprehensive rationalism if it were, per impossibile, logically consistent. He could not adopt it as it is justificationist; it insists on acceptable theories being supported either by experience or by argument. Popper has always emphasized that scientific theories can only be falsified and not verified.
Popper’s assumption that every assumption is criticizable in principle is itself criticizable, as Popper himself acknowledges. For example, in the 1961 addendum “Facts, Standards, and Truth,” added to the fourth and subsequent editions of The Open Society, Popper (1966b, 378) says that the “principle that everything is open to criticism” is not itself exempt from criticism. Post (1972) and others have claimed that the self-applicability of this principle leads to inconsistency. This claim has given rise to much discussion (Radnitzky and Bartley 1987, part II). Unfortunately, as my concern in this article is in the relationship between critical and pancritical rationalism, it would be too much of a digression for me to discuss this claim here. Suffice it to say that I agree with those who do not think the self-applicability of Popper’s principle leads to inconsistency. The principle of comprehensive rationalism leads to inconsistency because it entails that it itself should be discarded; the criteria under which an assumption is to be discarded are clearly stated. What counts as criticism is not so easily circumscribed (Diller 2006, 124–26). Furthermore, any proposed criticism can itself be criticized without generating a vicious infinite regress (Bartley 1984, 123). These considerations, in my opinion, save critical rationalism from the charge of being inconsistent.
Popper (1975, 10, 97) has, on occasion, criticized views that were generally accepted as being obviously true and supposedly fully justified. Three examples of such established laws that he refutes are the theories “that the sun will rise and set once in 24 hours,” that “every living creature must decay,” and “that bread nourishes.” In the case of the third theory mentioned, Popper (11) refers to the outbreak of poisoning due to rye ergot that took place in Pont St. Esprit in France in 1951. In this case, the bread baked by Roch Briand did not nourish his customers but killed some of them and made others ill.
4. Pancritical Rationalism
4.1. Bartley’s Interpretation of Popper
Bartley’s interpretation of what Popper says in chapter 24 of The Open Society is significantly different from mine. To begin with, Bartley hardly mentions the irrationalism that Popper is combating. Furthermore, the question of what moral attitude we should adopt toward arguments, whether we should take them at face value or look for the hidden motives from which they supposedly spring, is not at the forefront of Bartley’s account of rationalism, whereas it is paramount to Popper.
Bartley’s discussion of rationalism starts with an analysis of uncritical rationalism that he looks at in a great deal more detail than does Popper. Bartley (1984, 87) sees comprehensive rationalism as consisting of two requirements: “(1) A rationalist accepts any position that can be justified or established by appeal to the rational criteria or authorities; and (2) he accepts only those positions that can be so justified.” We already see a departure from Popper here in that comprehensive rationalism is understood as a general phenomenon comprising several systems of thought that differ only in what rational criteria they adopt. An intellectualist such as Descartes, for example, “justifies his beliefs by appealing to intellectual intuition or the faculty of Reason” (87), whereas an empiricist appeals to sense experience.
Bartley (1984, 93–95) shows that the two requirements are jointly incompatible. The second requires the comprehensive rationalist to justify the first, but this is impossible as no rational authority ever proposed enables him to do this. The second requirement thus forces the comprehensive rationalist to reject the first requirement, and his or her rationalism is in tatters. The comprehensive rationalist cannot therefore accept both requirements.
For Bartley (1984, 86), critical rationalism and comprehensive rationalism share the same “structural defect.” They are both varieties of justificationism. This holds that knowledge is organized like a logical system with every held opinion following from or being justified by the axioms or fundamental assumptions that are accepted because they have been legitimized by some rational authority or other. Thus, knowledge is thought of as being like a building with everything resting on the foundations. The critical rationalist, according to Bartley (94–95), keeps the first requirement of comprehensive rationalism and rejects the second. He makes an irrational commitment to accept some rational authority that legitimizes the foundations of knowledge. An empiricist, for example, would choose sense experience as his or her rational authority. Observation statements are legitimized by appeal to the senses. Everything else in the body of knowledge is justified by reference to these fundamental assumptions.
Bartley (1984, 97–105) sees Popper, Ayer, White, and Putnam as critical rationalists. Popper does indeed accept critical rationalism, but his understanding of this, as I have attempted to show above, is not the same as Bartley’s. To not confuse these two accounts of what critical rationalism is, I use the term “limited rationalism” for the justificationist version, as Bartley (1990, 232) himself came to do. Bartley appears to attribute to Popper, Ayer, White, and Putnam the view that they, as limited rationalists, accept by means of an irrational decision the principle that every assumption, except this one, which cannot be supported by argument or by experience, is to be discarded. Concerning Popper, I argue above that, far from accepting this principle, he criticizes it in The Open Society just after he has criticized uncritical rationalism. Although Ayer, White, and Putnam do not explicitly use the terminology of making an irrational decision to accept this principle, what they all say, in varying ways, amounts to this. All three of them are empiricists and justificationists.
In support of his interpretation of Popper as a limited rationalist, Bartley (1984, 104) quotes two passages from the third edition of The Open Society. In the first of these, Popper (1957, 231) states,
[Whoever] adopts the rationalist attitude does so because he has adopted, without reasoning, some proposal or decision, or belief, or habit, or behaviour, which therefore in its turn must be called irrational. Whatever it may be, we can describe it as an irrational faith in reason.
In the second, Popper (231) writes,
[The] fundamental rationalist attitude is based upon an irrational decision, or upon faith in reason. Accordingly, our choice is open. We are free to choose some form of irrationalism, even some radical or comprehensive form. But we are also free to choose a critical form of rationalism, one which frankly admits its limitations, and its basis in an irrational decision (and to that extent, a certain priority of irrationalism).
To begin with, we need to clarify what Popper is deciding to accept. In “Utopia and Violence,” Popper ([1963] 1974, 357) is perfectly clear that his irrational faith is in the attitude of reasonableness, which he there expresses in the form: “I think I am right, but I may be wrong and you may be right, and in any case let us discuss it, for in this way we are likely to get nearer to a true understanding than if we each merely insist that we are right” (356). This attitude is completely different from any sort of justificationist version of rationalism. As we have seen, it involves a readiness to take critical arguments seriously.
Popper (1957, 232) states that his decision to accept the attitude of reasonableness is a moral one. Because of this, it is irrational. Bartley, however, interprets Popper’s decision as being fideistic. Bartley (1982, 146) says that “Popper’s own explicit first attempt to solve the problem [of the limits of rationality] is nonetheless as inadequate, and as fideistic, as Ayer’s and Putnam’s, and seems to operate within a justificationist meta-context foreign to the dominant themes of his own thought.” He goes on to say that “Popper’s fideism is explicit and flamboyantly displayed” in The Open Society. Fideism is the acceptance, by an act of faith, of some truth-apt position. As what Popper is deciding to accept is not truth-apt, his decision cannot be fideistic. His is a moral decision to treat other human beings as partners in the search for truth and to take their rational arguments seriously and at face value.
Bartley (1984, 76) says that the choice to accept rationalism is “arbitrarily irrational” and calls it an “irrational arbitrary decision” (94n34). Popper’s irrational decision to accept rationalism may be described as being arbitrary but only because, for Popper (1966b, 65), there is a “certain element of arbitrariness involved” in all moral decisions as “norms are conventional or artificial.” Popper’s decision to accept the attitude of reasonableness is very different from a random method of choosing anything because it is so very carefully considered. Popper (232–40) spends many pages analyzing the consequences of rationalism and irrationalism to make clear why he accepts rationalism. This detailed analysis is not presented as a rational argument, because “arguments cannot determine such a fundamental moral decision” (232). However, it makes clear what is involved in choosing either rationalism or irrationalism, so any person accepting Popper’s analysis can make a decision with his or her eyes wide open. There are, however, people who do decide to become irrationalists. Such people make a decision different from that made by critical rationalists, and neither decision can be rationally criticized.
Popper’s decision is not fideistic, because what Popper is deciding to accept is not some truth-apt statement but rather a moral principle and also because he is not justifying that principle by means of his decision. He is instead binding himself to act in accordance with its recommendations. Thus, I would argue that Bartley’s interpretation does not adequately represent either the content of what Popper is deciding to accept or the character of that decision.
Popper’s statement of his own position is not as clear as might be wished because he works with two different conceptions of irrationality. The irrationalism that he is combating does not take arguments seriously but rather looks for the hidden motives from which they spring. However, when he talks about his irrational decision to accept the rationalist attitude, he means that the decision is moral and belongs to the normative realm. (We could almost rechristen the nonnormative/normative distinction as the rational/irrational one.) That Popper sometimes uses the concept of irrationality in this sense is supported by some comments he added to note 6 of chapter 24 in the second and subsequent editions of The Open Society. He says that the views of Duns Scotus and Kant can be seen as approaching critical rationalism, in particular, their ideas about the primacy of the will.
That Popper makes use of two notions of irrationality means, however, that in the second passage from page 231 of the third edition of The Open Society quoted above, he uses the word “irrationalism” in different ways in two adjacent sentences. When he says that we can choose a “form of irrationalism,” he means that we can decide not to take arguments seriously. However, when he says that irrationalism has a certain priority over rationalism, he is talking about the primacy of the will, that is, the primacy of the normative realm. I must admit that I am not happy about having to interpret Popper thus. It is a reasonable hermeneutical principle to assume that people do not use the same word in two different ways in a single passage without signaling the fact in some way. To assume, however, that Popper uses the term “irrationalism” in a single sense in this passage leads to incoherence. In Popper’s defense, it can be said that, unlike some other philosophers, he was not obsessed with the precise meanings of words. He was, rather, interested in solving genuine problems and thought that words were relatively unimportant (Popper 1992b, 19).
My account of Popper’s decision tallies with some things that he said toward the end of his life. On 12 November 1992, when he was 90, Popper received the Kyoto Prize. Several eminent thinkers gave lectures on aspects of Popper’s philosophy, and in the subsequent discussion, he was asked about Bartley. His comments were recorded and later published in a book by Artigas (1999, 30–31). This is part of what he said concerning critical rationalism, which he called “an answer to fideism”:
An attitude cannot be formulated in form of a sentence, a thesis, a definition or anything like that, but one can believe that this attitude, for example, makes friends of people rather than enemies. Very important here is what critical discussion means. Critical discussion means discussing not attitude or such things, but problems, and solutions of these problems, therefore theories, propositions and so on. What is being discussed are theories, propositions and so on. Critical Rationalism is only the open-mindedness to discuss these things. That is the situation. Fideism doesn’t come in. Only my belief that it is a good attitude to try out, or perhaps to adopt, but fideism is the thesis that all our theories, all our opinions must be ultimately based on faith. I hope you see that these two things are totally different.
It should be remembered that this is from a transcript of an off-the-cuff reply that Popper gave to a question he was asked. Because of Popper’s age when he made these remarks and because they were not prepared beforehand, I would not use them as primary evidence for my interpretation of Popper. There is enough of that in Popper’s published writings. Nevertheless, they accord very well with my account of critical rationalism.
Bartley (1984, 72) was much troubled by the tu quoque (you too) or boomerang argument favored by some midtwentieth-century existentialist theologians:
It argues that (1) for certain logical reasons, rationality is so limited that everyone must make a dogmatic irrational commitment; (2) therefore, the Christian has a right to make whatever commitment he pleases; and (3) therefore, no one has a right to criticize him (or anyone else) for making such a commitment.
Bartley thought that a theologian like Tillich could use this argument against Popper’s critical rationalism. The tu quoque argument, however, cannot be applied to critical rationalism because that argument presupposes a justificationist conception of rationality and Popper’s is antijustificationist and because it only applies to people who “make a dogmatic irrational commitment” whereas Popper’s decision to adopt the moral imperative to treat arguments seriously, although irrational, is not dogmatic (Popper [1963] 1974, 357). (It is irrational because it is moral.) Bartley thought that it applied to critical rationalism because he interpreted the character of Popper’s irrational decision in a way that, in my opinion, is not wholly faithful to what Popper says. Critical and pancritical rationalism both avoid the challenge posed by the tu quoque. (It should be noted that although critical rationalism avoids the challenge posed by the tu quoque, Popper, unlike Bartley, was never troubled by it.) Thus, it cannot be said that one of the advantages of pancritical rationalism over critical rationalism is that it alone is not troubled by the challenge of the tu quoque. Both these varieties of rationalism avoid the tu quoque, and this distinguishes them from justificationist accounts of rationality.
4.2. Bartley’s Restatement of Some Popperian Ideas
In this section, I attempt to show that at least two characteristic components of pancritical rationalism have their origins in Popper’s writings.
Bartley (1984, 127) specifies four methods of criticizing positions. He allows for the possibility that there might be further ways of eliminating error, but he lists just four explicitly, which he calls “checks”:
The check of logic: Is the theory in question consistent?
The check of sense observation: Is the theory empirically refutable by sense observation? And if it is, do we know of any refutation of it?
The check of scientific theory: Is the theory, whether or not it is in conflict with sense observation, in conflict with any scientific hypotheses?
The check of the problem: What problem is the theory intended to solve? Does it do so successfully?
Far from being unique to pancritical rationalism, all of these checks are already to be found in Popper. The first three are explicitly mentioned by Popper ([1963] 1974, 327) in his paper “What Is Dialectic?” first published in 1940. He writes that “criticism invariably consists in pointing out some contradiction; either a contradiction within the theory criticized [Bartley’s first check], or a contradiction between the theory and another theory which we have some reason to accept [Bartley’s third check], or a contradiction between the theory and certain facts—or more precisely, between the theory and certain statements of fact [Bartley’s second check].”
In The Open Society, Popper (1966b, 299n52) criticized people for not tackling genuine problems. For example, he says, concerning some of the writings produced by Wittgenstein’s followers, “Some of these esoteric publications seem to be without a serious problem.” In Realism and the Aim of Science, written in the mid-1950s and known to Bartley at that time, Popper (1983, 29) distinguishes between immanent and transcendent criticism. Showing that a theory is inconsistent would be an example of immanent criticism, as it does not involve any assumptions extraneous to the theory being criticized. Transcendent criticism, by contrast, makes use of assumptions taken from some other theory. One very important form of immanent criticism involves seeing the theory being criticized as a solution to a problem. The theory can then be criticized “as, for example, failing to solve its problem, or as succeeding no better than its competitors, or as merely shifting the problem to be solved” (30). Popper was especially critical of philosophers who did not tackle real and important problems. He said that much of what was produced by them was “hardly better than gibberish” because it was “philosophizing without genuine problems.”
In the course of his detailed analysis of justificationism, Bartley makes a distinction between justification and description. Justificationists accept that not every claim can be justified. There has to be a collection of justification-terminating assumptions that are accepted for some other reason than that they follow from justified positions. Justificationists may disagree about the precise makeup of this set of assumptions, but there has to be some such class. According to Bartley (1990, 236), within a justificationist framework, the job of the philosopher is to describe justification-terminating assumptions as these cannot be justified: “The task of the philosopher is the subject-neutral description of all standards and frameworks—a description in terms of which no particular set of them is given authority or precedence or superiority over any other.”
This distinction between justification and description is already present in Popper (1966b, 9–11), although he uses it only in connection with Aristotle’s thought. For Aristotle, demonstrative knowledge consists of all statements that can be proved, but as every proof has to start with some premises, not every statement can be proved. The basic premises or unprovable assumptions are real definitions that describe the essence of something or other. The task of the philosopher is to provide descriptions of essences and, on the basis of these, to prove everything that can be proved.
4.3. Further Weaknesses in Bartley’s Position
In this section I look at several weaknesses in Bartley’s philosophy that are relevant to his presentation and elaboration of pancritical rationalism. To begin with, Bartley’s use of the infinite regress argument appears to me to be, on occasion, confusing. Consider the following passage:
No matter what belief is advanced, someone can always challenge it with: “How do you know?”, “Give me a reason?”, or “Prove it!” When such challenges are accepted by citing further reasons which entail those under challenge, these may be questioned in turn. And so on forever. If the burden of proof or rational justification is perpetually shifted to a higher-order premise or reason, the contention originally questioned is never effectively defended. One may as well never have begun the defence: an infinite regress is created. To justify the original contention, one would eventually have to stop at something not open to question for which one does not and need not provide justificatory reasons. These would be the halting points for rational discussion. These “standards”, “criteria”, “ultimate presuppositions”, “ends”, or “goals” are simply accepted. (Bartley 1984, 73)
The way in which Bartley explains how an infinite regress is generated is unproblematic. What appears to me to be unclear is how he concludes that the justification-terminating assumptions or justifiers must be either standards or criteria or ultimate presuppositions or ends or goals.
The idea of ultimate presuppositions is usually associated with a view that such foundational assumptions are neither true nor false since there is no way of ascertaining their truth-value. Collingwood (1940) and Wittgenstein (1969) have elaborated such conceptions. Such an interpretation makes sense here as Bartley places ultimate presuppositions alongside such things as standards and criteria. However, making the class of justification-terminating assumptions consist of things that are not truth-apt is unhelpful to the justificationist as he wants the truth of the justifiers to be propagated throughout the entire justificatory structure founded on those assumptions.
Be that as it may, to see what I feel to be the main weakness in Bartley’s use of the infinite regress argument, consider empiricism. Here, the collection of justifiers is the class of all true observation statements, and these are neither standards nor criteria nor ultimate presuppositions nor ends nor goals. For the empiricist, something counts as knowledge if it can be justified in such a way that all its justification-terminating assumptions are true observation statements. Observation statements are justified noninferentially. They are legitimized by sense experience that the empiricist must accept as being able to do this. I agree with Bartley that the acceptance of sense experience as a source of indubitable knowledge is something that cannot be rationally proved, but the reasons for this have nothing to do with infinite regress arguments. It would seem, however, that Bartley wishes the infinite regress argument to do something that it cannot do. All it shows is that it is impossible for justifications to go on forever; it says nothing about the character of the justification-terminating assumptions, and this is how Popper ([1963] 1974, 19), for example, uses this sort of argument. Bartley appears to want the infinite regress argument to prove that every justificationist has to make an irrational commitment to some sort of ultimate standard or principle, and this it cannot do.
Another weakness in Bartley’s philosophy is that there appear to be remnants of justificationist ways of thinking in it. Bartley criticizes, for example, certain theologians for not giving up their beliefs in circumstances in which, from an antijustificationist perspective, they are right to continue believing those things. He begins by saying,
When a person sees no reason to abandon a position when an argument put forward to support it is refuted, that indicates that his position, far from depending on the argument, was held independently of it. (Bartley 1984, 71)
He then goes on to say that this technique, which he calls the “heads I win, tails you lose” method, is not difficult to detect:
One need only determine whether the advocate of a particular position would abandon it if his argument was shown to be false [sic]. If he would not, then his position does not depend on that argument; in so far as a serious defence of the position is concerned, the argument is therefore superfluous. (71)
We are to imagine a person with some collection of beliefs. He is presented with an argument, call it A, whose conclusion is absent from his belief set but whose premises are members of that belief set. He accepts the argument as being valid and adds its conclusion, call it p, to his collection of beliefs. At some later time, he looks again at argument A and this time realizes that it is invalid. Bartley argues that this person should stop believing p. Unfortunately, only a justificationist should stop believing p. The justificationist conception of belief-revision is well explained by Harman (1986, 30), who calls it the “foundations theory.” In this account, you need to keep track of the reasons why you believe something, and your beliefs form a justificatory structure, something like a building with foundations. If some of the foundations are rotten, then part of the building will collapse. Similarly, parts will collapse if the method of construction used was faulty. Realizing that a previously accepted argument is actually invalid corresponds to realizing that an extension you had built was shoddily put up and needs to be demolished. As Harman (38) points out, people generally do not keep track of their reasons for believing something. He thinks that that is the main reason why people continue to believe something even if they become aware that their original reasons for having that belief have been falsified (or the argument they used was really invalid). He does not see any problem with justificationism as such. That people do not generally keep track of how they acquired the beliefs they have makes sense to the antijustificationist as the origins of beliefs are relatively unimportant. What really matters is that your beliefs are exposed to as much criticism as possible.
In the scenario described above, the antijustificationist should continue believing p because he has not been presented with any criticism of p whatsoever. That one of your beliefs does not follow from some collection of premises is not a good reason to give it up. An antijustificationist accepts that we acquire beliefs by many different means. These include testimony, tradition, our own experience, and so on, but no method is ruled out. There are many sources of knowledge, but none is infallible. We cannot stop ourselves from acquiring false beliefs, as I have shown elsewhere (Diller 2008). The antijustificationist tries to weed out his false beliefs, but this requires a critical argument. He needs a critical reason to get rid of a belief, not to keep on believing it. No one needs a reason to carry on believing something. Unfortunately, once you have acquired a belief, you are saddled with it until you come across or devise for yourself a valid criticism of it. Usually, such a criticism involves showing that the belief has false consequences. Thus, I would argue that Bartley should not criticize those theologians who carry on believing something when the reasons that initially led them to acquire those beliefs have been shown to be faulty. That Bartley does criticize such theologians shows that he has not managed to completely free himself from justificationist ways of thinking.
Another remnant of justificationism in The Retreat to Commitment, in my opinion, influences the entire structure and organization of the book. In its preface, Bartley (1984, xxvi) says, “I do not pretend to give an exhaustive critique of the thinkers or systems of thought which I discuss and criticize.” One reason that he gives for this is that the writings of some of the people he criticizes are extremely voluminous. He continues, “I have tried to aim my criticisms at only the most basic assumptions of these systems of thought, their feet as it were, without which they cannot stand.” The metaphor should alert us to the fact that this is a justificationist method of criticism. This method of criticism can be called “the strategy of attacking foundations,” and it usually proceeds through four stages:
Find a theory you do not like.
Locate its foundations.
Criticize those foundations and show that they are false.
Conclude that the entire theory is incorrect or false or radically flawed or intellectually bankrupt.
The use of this strategy is very widespread. Here is an example from Searle (1992, 197):
[Cognitive] science suffers from the fact that several of its most cherished foundational assumptions are mistaken. It is possible to do good work on the basis of false assumptions, but it is more difficult than need be; and in this chapter I want to expose and refute some of those false assumptions.
The problem with this is that, even if you do successfully criticize the foundational assumptions of some theory or other and show that they are false, the edifice built on those assumptions (except for statements that are logically equivalent to the foundational assumptions or some combination of them) might consist entirely of true statements, because a valid argument with false premises can have either a true or a false conclusion. It should be noted that I am not objecting to people criticizing the foundations of some theory or other. What I am saying is that such people cannot claim that they have thereby refuted that entire theory. All they have shown is that the foundations are faulty. Thus, in Searle’s case, it is entirely possible that the results of cognitive science are all true even if his criticism of its foundations is correct.
A version of this strategy is recommended in many books on informal logic. They say that one way in which a claim can be criticized is by attacking the premises of an argument used to support it. I have looked at this strategy elsewhere (Diller 2007).
Far from advocating anything resembling the strategy of attacking foundations, Popper (1994b, 60) stresses the fact that we should criticize the consequences of any theory we find unacceptable: “[The] correct method of critical discussion starts from the question: What are the consequences of our thesis or our theory? Are they all acceptable to us?” Elsewhere he is even more emphatic:
[All] rational criticism takes the form of an attempt to show that unacceptable conclusions can be derived from the assertion we are trying to criticize. If we are successful in deriving, logically, unacceptable conclusions from an assertion, then the assertion may well be taken to be refuted. (Popper 1992a, 75)
Rather than direct his criticism at the feet of those systems of thought he found objectionable, I would argue that it would have been preferable for Bartley to attack directly the specific theories they contained that he thought were wrong.
4.4. Bartley’s Achievement
This part of my paper is not meant ironically. Although I say many critical things about Bartley, I genuinely believe that he has made significant contributions to philosophy. I would not have spent several years of my life studying his work if I did not believe this. In my opinion, his most important contribution is his clear identification of justificationism as a coherent system of thought. He came to call it a meta-context, a general framework of assumptions dealing with issues related to rationality. He thought that there were only three meta-contexts, namely, justificationism, fallibilism, and nonattachment (Bartley 1984, 170–72). The Oriental meta-context of nonattachment need not concern us here. What Bartley called “fallibilism” has come to be known as “antijustificationism.” Contexts such as empiricism and intellectualism share the fundamental assumptions of their parent meta-context, which in these two instances is justificationism. The acceptance and rejection of positions such as scientific theories take place within contexts. Western thought has been dominated by the justificationist meta-context. Popper criticized many components of justificationism but only in a piecemeal fashion. Seeing his philosophy as an alternative to justificationism highlights its distinctive and revolutionary character. Increasingly, since Bartley’s clear articulation of justificationism, Popperians see this as the enemy. For them, the history of Western thought is now seen as a struggle between justificationism and antijustificationism. (Antijustificationism, however, should not be identified with either critical or pancritical rationalism, although both aim at being antijustificationist.)
For Bartley (1984, 173), the heart of justificationism is its analysis of knowledge as justified true belief. Many key assumptions follow from this. A justification involves three components, namely, the foundational statements that form the ultimate premises of any justification, the collection of acceptable logical procedures that allow the statement being justified to be inferred from the foundational statements, and a nonlogical and nonlinguistic rational authority that establishes the truth of the foundational statements. A specific justificationist philosophy is obtained by choosing a particular rational authority that validates foundational statements and by choosing the collection of allowable logical procedures. The currently most popular version of justificationism is empiricism. Its rational authority is sense experience, and the class of foundational statements consists of those that can be validated by sense experience. Concerning the collection of acceptable inference rules, in addition to classical logic, empiricists accept some form of induction as a legitimate way of inferring conclusions from premises in justifications. One consequence of the justificationist conception of knowledge is that the way in which a claim to knowledge is criticized is by showing that it does not follow from the preferred set of foundational statements. Thus, using Bartley’s terminology, criticism is fused with justification. In his later writings, Bartley (1982, 149) came to see the separation of criticism from justification as his key contribution to philosophy. It is indeed an extremely important and valuable insight.
It is hard to avoid justificationism because it forms part of the conceptual framework of Western thought. It is in the air we breathe. Its terminology is all around us, especially its vocabulary of criticism. Popper (1983, 19) testifies to the pervasiveness of justificationist assumptions when he catches himself just about to use the word “baseless”:
[We] cannot give any positive reasons for holding our theories to be true. Moreover, I assert that the belief that we can give such reasons, and should seek for them is itself neither a rational nor a true belief, but one that can be shown to be without merit. (I was just about to write the word “baseless” where I have written “without merit.” This provides a good example of just how much our language is influenced by the unconscious assumptions that are attacked within my own approach. It is assumed, without criticism, that only a view that lacks merit must be baseless—without basis, in the sense of being unfounded, or unjustified, or unsupported. Whereas, on my view, all views—good and bad—are in this important sense baseless, unfounded, unsupported.)
It took Bartley’s clear articulation of justificationism as a coherent system of thought to attune Popper’s ears to the pervasiveness of justificationist terminology. Being aware of the existence and character of justificationism as an interconnected structure of assumptions makes it easier to criticize and Bartley ably exposed many of its weakest elements.
5. Conclusion
Bartley was much exercised by the tu quoque argument. He wanted to find a version of rationalism that managed to evade it. Popper’s critical rationalism actually fitted the bill. It neither made use of justificatory methods of criticism, nor did it require to be adopted by means of an act of faith. All that was required to become a critical rationalist was to adopt the moral imperative to treat critical arguments seriously. This moral aspect is the glory of critical rationalism. Unfortunately, in my opinion, Bartley’s preoccupations affected his interpretation of Popper. Interpreting Popper’s moral decision as being fideistic he thought it unnecessary. He also argued that pancritical rationalism was an advance over critical rationalism as he saw that as containing remnants of justificationism that had to be purged. In reality, critical rationalism was remarkably free from any taint of justificationism, whereas in my opinion, pancritical rationalism contains several justificationist elements. For these reasons, pancritical rationalism, in my opinion, is not a better version of rationalism than critical rationalism.
Bartley’s real achievement was to clearly identify justificationism and to articulate its main components. Popper had criticized several of these in a piecemeal fashion, but seeing justificationism as a coherent body of interconnected parts enabled the radical nature of Popper’s philosophy to be better appreciated. It also threw much light on the history of philosophy. Unfortunately, for much of his life, Bartley thought that his real achievement was the creation of a nonfideistic version of rationalism, and it was left to Lakatos to reap the benefits of seeing philosophy as a struggle between justificationism and antijustificationism. That, however, is a story for another time.
Footnotes
Author’s Note
This is a revised and much shortened version of the paper that won the 2008 Sir Karl Popper Essay Prize; I am very grateful to the judges for awarding it to me and to Laurence B. Briskman for providing for its establishment. I would also like to thank Debra Barton and Darrell Rowbottom for reading an earlier version; some of their many constructive suggestions about how it could be improved have found their way into this version. They should not, however, be assumed to share my views.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.