Confuting Popper on the Rationality Principle

Abstract

Many methodologists are firmly convinced that Popper's arguments concerning the status of the rationality principle (RP) are incoherent or incompatible with the essentials of falsificationism. The present essay first shows that the accusation of incompatibility of situational logic with falsificationism does not hold up to scrutiny but then shows that Popper's arguments are nonetheless flimsy if not indefensible. For it seems that one can distinguish between two different versions of the RP in Popper's writings. If the first version is plainly "objectivist" and can be characterized with Popper as empirically false, the second one is rather "subjectivist" and is not falsifiable as such. The essay shows that this second reading of the RP is the one that Popper finally adopts but that, unfortunately enough, this formulation of the RP looks more like a metaphysical statement than like an empirical law. It could then be held to be a priori valid as such, by analogy with Popper's line of argument concerning the principle of causality. If this is correct, then Popper's thesis on the empirical status of the RP is confuted.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Hands, D. Wade. 1985. Karl Popper and economic methodology: A new look. Economics and Philosophy 1: 83-99.

—. 1991. Popper, the rationality principle and economic explanation . In Economics, culture and education: Essays in honour of Mark Blaug, edited by G. K. Shaw , 108-19. Aldershot and Brookfield, VT: Edward Elgar.

Jarvie, Ian C. 1964. The revolution in anthropology. London : Routledge & Kegan Paul. 3rd ed. (with corrections and additions) 1970.

Kirzner, Israel , ed. 1982. Method, process, and Austrian economics: Essays in honour of Ludwig von Mises. Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath.

Kirzner, Israel , ed. 1986. Subjectivism, intelligibility and economic understanding: Essays in honour of Ludwig M. Lachmann on his eightieth birthday. New York: Macmillan.

Koertge, Noretta. 1974. On Popper's philosophy of social sciences. In PSA 1972, edited by K. F. Schaffner and R. S. Cohen , 195-207. Dordrecht: Reidel. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science vol. 20.

—. 1975. Popper's metaphysical research program for the human sciences . Inquiry 18:437-62.

—. 1979. The methodological status of Popper's rationality principle . Theory and Decision 10:83-95.

Latsis, Spiro J. 1972. Situational determinism in economics. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 23:207-45.

10.

—. 1983. The role and status of the rationality principle in the social sciences. In Epistemology, methodology, and the social sciences, edited by R. S. Cohen and M. W. Wartofsky , 123-51. Dordrecht: Reidel.

11.

Lavoie, Donald C. 1986. Euclideanism versus hermeneutics: A reinterpretation of Misesian a priorism. In Subjectivism, intelligibility and economic understanding, edited by Israel Kirzner , 192-210. New York: Macmillan.

12.

—. 1991. Economics and hermeneutics. London : Routledge.

13.

Popper, Karl R. 1945. The open society and its enemies. 2 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 5th ed., revised, 1966.

14.

—. 1985. The rationality principle. In Popper selections , edited by David Miller. 357-65. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. English edition, reprint of 1967 French article.

15.

—. 1976. Unended quest: An intellectual autobiography. La Salle: Open Court.

16.

Schmid, Michael. 1988. The idea of rationality and its relationship to social science: Comments on Popper's philosophy of the social sciences. Inquiry. 31:451-69.

17.

Simon, Herbert A. 1976. From substantive to procedural rationality. In Method and appraisal in economics, edited by Spiro J. Latsis , 129-48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

18.

Watkins, John. 1970. Imperfect rationality. In Explanation in the Behavioural sciences, edited by R. Borger and F. Cioffi , 167-217. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.