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| 15
May (Wednesday)
5:00 PM Room
226 |
| Zoltán
Sóstai
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Department
of Logic, Institute of
Philosophy
Eötvös University Budapest
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The
problem of
Comprehensively
Critical Rationalism
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Karl Popper's philosophy
correctly understood is a set of
interrelating ideas centered
around a core epistemological view
called Critical Rationalism. There
are many features of Popper's
philosophy, such as fallibilism,
realism, anti-positivism,
anti-instrumentalism,
anti-relativism,
anti-essentialism, but its most
distinguished feature is its
stance against dogmatism and
against irrationalism. This last
feature proved to be especially
important, since it meant that
Popper had to face the question if
the choice between rationality and
irrationality could be rationally
argued for. In the Open
Society and Its Enemies ch.24
p.III. Popper argued that
the solution to the resulting
problem of infinite regress
inherent in any uncritical
rationalism was a limited,
critical form of rationalism which
admits its limitations.
William Warren Bartley thought it
was possible, however, to reform
and to generalize Popper's
critical rationalism into a
non-limited, comprehensive theory
of rationality called
Comprehensively Critical
Rationalism. While Popper's
criterion of falsifiability
demarcates between empirical and
non-empirical statements,
Bartley's criterion of
criticizability aimes to demarcate
between rational and non-rational
statements. According to Bartley,
a comprehensively critical
rationalist is someone
"who is willing to entertain
any position and 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."
(Bartley, W. W. 1984: The
Retreat to Commitment. p
118)
Comprehensively Critical
Rationalism, however, leads to a
"Gödelian paradox" put forward by
John Watkins and John F. Post. In
the talk, I'll shortly reconstruct
the history of the problem, I'll
present the paradox and I'll try
to demonstrate the importance of a
possible solution.
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| 22
May (Wednesday)
5:00 PM Room
226 |
| Márton
Gömöri
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Institute
of Philosophy, Research
Centre for the Humanities
Hungarian Academy of
Sciences, Budapest
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Probability,
causality and the
approach to
equilibrium
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The paper is a
reflection on an earlier talk by
Sunil Kumar Sekar and László E.
Szabó titled "On the origin of
irreversibility." We will
reexamine the problem of approach
to equilibrium in statistical
mechanics in light of a new causal
account of probability outlined in
Gömöri 2018.
Reference: M. Gömöri:
“Valószínűség, véletlen és a
közösok-elv” (“Probability,
randomness and the Common Cause
Principe”), Magyar Filozófiai
Szemle (Hungarian Philosophical
Review) 62:2 (2018), pp. 63–82.
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