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PS. Reply to David Miller’s Reply
Where is the Place for
Insufficient (Tentative) Reasons in a Non-Justificationist Philosophy?
“Critical thinkers … question and test the beliefs that others take for granted. In so doing, they
oftentimes clarify how some of their beliefs are based upon others. But this
basing of beliefs one upon another must ultimately end. And if you are a
critical thinker, then you will, somewhere in the course of your tests,
inevitably come upon statements that you believe for no other reason than that
they seem true – to you. In such a
case, it would be more accurate to say not that such statements are justified,
but that they seem, in your judgment,
to be true.”
Mark Notturno (Notturno 1999, 147)
D.Miller has sent me e-mail
with a reply to the first part of my criticisms (about reasons).
To begin with, Miller
assures that he makes no claim to be an ‘authority on critical rationalism’;
that his paper was not intended to be a mere exposition of Popper’s philosophy
of critical rationalism, but was an attempt to develop and to refine
critical rationalism; that Popper’s agreement with everything that he said was
not his immediate concern.
All this is probably so;
I am not doubting Miller’s good intentions, but think that it is proper to
remark the following. "Critical rationalism" is a name that is usually identified
with Popper's philosophy; so Miller’s book titled "Critical Rationalism:
Restatement and Defence" (not 'revision', not 'personal view', not
'attempt of development', but 'restatement') and in which there is no explicit
distinction between Popper's views and Miller’s own purported
developments, given Miller’s reputation as a friend and close collaborator of
Popper, suggest that these are Popper's views, while in fact it
is not so in many important respects.
As for the substantial
part of Miller’s reply, I think its core may be epitomized in three points.
1. The discussion about
good reasons is in the chapter where Miller fights justificationism, so the
word-combination ‘good reasons’ is to be understood as ‘reasons that provide
justification’.
2. Miller discusses
‘good reasons’, while what I write concerns with ‘reasons’ generally; so my
criticisms are mostly irrelevant.
3. Miller writes: “To my
mind we never need any reason, good or bad, for classifying a statement as
true.” (This is preceded by another statement: “It is undeniable that many
people, in the belief that they can thereby justify the judgements that they
make, offer what they call reasons for these
judgements. But, I claim, they are wrong. Their reasons are never good reasons,
and provide no justification.” I can agree with this statement, if it is
taken literally and if ‘justification’ is understood in the sense presupposed
by Popper’s-Bartley’s non-justificationism. About this meaning – see below. But
this statement suggests the wrong idea that the only purpose of people’s
offering reasons is justification. This I disagree with. For me, it is as well
undeniable that many people offer reasons for other purposes, which are
inalienable from rationality.)
I think that in this
reply 1 and 2 poorly stick together with 3, as well as with quite a many
similar formulations it the book itself.
Really, if there was no
point 3 (similar formulations it the book itself) my criticisms could be
dismissed as irrelevant. In particulars, Millers argumentation that all valid
arguments ‘beg the question’ could be interpreted not as purported to show otioseness
of all reasons (which, if it was successful, would mean otioseness of all
arguments as well, though this was not aimed at), but as the argument that no
reasons provide justification in the sense of Popper’s-Bartley’s
non-justificationist philosophy. (Hence, if ‘good reasons’ are defined as
‘reasons that provide justification’, no good reasons in this sense are
possible).
But point 3 (similar
formulations it the book itself) spoils this line of defense of Miller’s case.
Also, in his book Miller doesn’t distinguish 1 and 3, but mixes them together,
often omitting adjective ‘good’. Some examples:
“In a sentence my thesis
is this: rationality is concerned with reason, with argument, but not with
reasons.” (Miller 1994,
51)
“Reason has a job to do in every
sphere; reasons, poor things, have not.” (Miller 1994, 52)
“…critical rationalism
need have no more truck with negative reasons than it does with positive
reasons. There are no negative reasons either: nor do we need them for rational
thought and action. We don’t need reasons against a hypothesis in order to
classify it as false (nor against a course of conduct in order to classify it
as foolish).” (Miller 1994, 70)
This suggests that
Miller interprets the point 1 as identical with the point 3, i.e. understands
‘justification’ too widely, as any reason for classifying a statement as true (‘positive reasons’) or
false (‘negative reasons’). This is far more wide meaning of ‘justification’
then the meaning in which Popper and Bartley used the term and argued for
impossibility and dispensability of justification.
Popper’s and Bartley’s
arguments concern with justification as either conclusive proof or
demonstration of high probability that is not itself based on some
‘unjustified’ premises (we can define ‘justification’ it the sense to which
Popper’s and Bartley’s arguments apply as follows: “A statement is justified if
and only if it can be based on a valid argument that has no unjustified
premises.”) This, surely, doesn’t mean that no arguments (reasons) are possible
and needed for both acceptance (classifying as true) and rejection (classifying
as false) of a large variety of important statements (theories). In fact,
Popper and Bartley toiled very much to provide persuasive (‘weighty’, ‘good
critical’) reasons-arguments both in favour of their theories and against
alternative theories. And Popper listed among three “principles that form the basis of every
rational discussion, that is, of every discussion undertaken in the search for
truth… 2. The principle of rational discussion: we want to try, as impersonally
as possible, to weigh up our reasons for and against a theory…” (Popper 1992,
199) So, I am afraid that on Miller’s interpretation of ‘justification’ both
Popper and Bartley are to be qualified as justificationists.
In the
letter Miller complains that my explanation about good reasons (what they are
good for?) − that they are, as far as we can judge, good (weighty) for the purpose at
hand −
"says nothing about what makes a reason a good reason, though it does
suggest that … some reason is required” and that I seem myself to deny this in
the section ‘Alan Musgrave on Logomania’.
My reply to
this is that proposing a general theory of "what makes a reason a good
reason" was (and is) not my intention. I think that no general theory of
good reasons is possible (on my Internet page I argue for this thesis in the
article "Critical
Rationalism and the Problem of Reasonable Beliefs", though we can say
something about what has to be counted as good reasons for some specific
classes of statements (such, for example, as scientific empirical
theories).
What I
deny when I discuss ‘Alan Musgrave on Logomania’ is that we are required
to provide reasons for all positions we accept. Such requirement would
be impossible to satisfy, and that is why Popper’s-Bartley’s
non-justificationism is needed.
But this is
a far cry from the view that we never
need any reason for classifying a
statement as true. On my view, some positions don't require reasons for their
acceptance (though are open to criticism, i.e., may be attacked by some
critical arguments-reasons), while some others do.
For example,
to classify a scientific empirical theory as true, we need such reasons as (on
our judgement) its ability to solve some scientific problems better then its
known alternatives and its not being refuted. In science, if you will propose
some theory and instead of explaining how it solves some scientific problems
will say that you accept this theory for no reasons at all and propose others
to do the same, no one will take you seriously. And rightly so. Again, to
classify a scientific empirical theory as false (= to classify its negation as
true), we need such a reason as its being refuted.
Surely, this
doesn't apply to all kinds of statements. With some statements (this include
observational 'basic statements' or their mental correspondents, as well as
some methodological ideas) the only person's 'reason' to accept them
as true is that they seem to be true to that person.
In the letter
Miller answer to my puzzled question how he ‘divorces’ reasons with arguments,
by stating that he "did not intend to divorce arguments from reason",
that he merely meant by ‘good reasons’ ‘reasons that provide justification’,
while by ‘good arguments’, ‘nothing more nor less than deductively valid
arguments.’ So, his point is that we shouldn’t be interested in providing ‘good
reasons’, but “should be interested in providing valid critical arguments”.
To this, I
think proper to remark that there is no sense at all to be interested in
providing merely valid critical arguments. I can always very easily to
provide valid critical argument for any statement. The simplest example: for
any statement S, the argument not-S->(S is false) is valid critical
argument. What we must be interesting in is not merely valid
arguments, but arguments that, as far as we can judge, are sound.
To
summarize: I strongly disagree with the view that “we never need any reason …
for classifying a statement as true”, and that we “need have no more truck with negative reasons
than … with positive reasons”. (If reasons aren’t ‘divorced’ from arguments, this
would mean that we never need any arguments.) I think that this is not critical
rationalism, but a sheer irrationalism.
Now,
to specify the place of insufficient (‘weighty’, ‘good critical’) reasons in a
non-justificationist philosophy, I will refer to Miller’s identification of
possible sources of insufficiency:
“there appear to be two places at which
insufficiency could enter: ‘in the premises, which would be probable, or
plausible, or something along the lines, but not certain; or in the inference,
which would be plausible or probable, or something along those lines, but not valid’.” (Miller
1994, 59)
On my account,
insufficient (tentative) reasons that we need for the sake of critical
discussion and that constitute the content of all efficient arguments are those
with premises that are merely plausible (i.e. seem true) to us, −
neither certain nor probable in the sense of probability calculus. Besides, the
argument can be of two different varieties.
The first is when the
truth/falsity of the statement argued for/against logically follows from the
truth of premises. For example, the falsity of scientific empirical theory may
logically follow from some observational statements and statements about
initial conditions (which we tentatively judge to be true). Or the truth of
some prediction may follow from some scientific theory and statements about
initial conditions (which we tentatively judge to be true).
The second is when we 1)
hold (without ‘justification’) some ideas-beliefs about the kind of reasons proper
(‘good’, ‘weighty’) in some context for some purpose and 2) judge that reasons
of this kind are really present in the case we are interested in. The same may
be presented in the form of deductive argument (for a long time defended by
A.Musgrave) where one of the premises has a form “It is reasonable to accept
the statement (theory) of the kind X if conditions C1, C2,
… CN are satisfied”, and other premises are judgements about
satisfaction of conditions C1, C2, … CN. In this case, the inference that
deductively follows from the premises is not that the statement (theory) is
true, but that we have good reasons (it is reasonable) to accept it tentatively
as true. For example, on Popper’s account proper (‘good critical’) reasons for
accepting an empirical scientific theory is its solving scientific problems for
which it was designed better than its known alternatives and its not being falsified.
If we judge that empirical scientific theory X solves scientific problems for
which it was designed better than its known alternatives and that it is not
falsified, then (it logically, deductively follows that) we have good critical reasons to tentatively accept X as true
(although it doesn’t follow that X is true).
Bibliography
Bartley, W. 1984. The Retreat to Commitment.
Miller, D. 1994. Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defense.
Musgrave A., 2000. Common Sense, Science and Scepticism.
Notturno, M. 1999. Science and the Open Society.
Popper, K.
2005. Realism and the Aim of Science.