Justificationism and Critical Rationalism

[Rami Rustom]

[I have questions for you in brackets.]

Here's my understanding of Justificationism and Critical Rationalism
(also known to non-Critical Rationalists as Popperism).


_Justificationism_:

Justificationism says that positive arguments can make a theory true.

Some justificationists are also Bayesians. Bayesianism says that
better (or more probable) knowledge can be calculated using
arbitrarily-assigned values for the weight of a positive argument.



_Critical Rationalism (aka Popperism)_:

Critical Rationalism says that all knowledge is created by (1) guesses
and (2) criticism:

(1) Positive arguments are another name for guesses. A guess is the
creation of a new theory.

(2) Negative arguments are another name for criticism. A criticism is
a falsification of a theory.

In other words, a theory is fallibly true, as long as there is no
negative argument acting against it.

A consequence of this is that Justificationism is wrong, since
positive arguments cannot make a theory true. All positive arguments
can do is propose theories. And those theories are true only as long
as no negative argument is acting against it.

[I don't know how to transition to below, which makes me think that
its unrelated and should be moved to another post. What do you think?]

Truth is objective. This means that truth exists independent of what
people think about what the truth is. We call this Objective
Knowledge.

People are fallible. This means that people cannot know which of their
ideas are objectively true -- any one of them could be wrong. What we
do have is fallible knowledge. A consequence of this is that people do
not have access to infallible sources of knowledge, like intuition,
emotion, justification, [what else should go here?], etc.


[What flaws do you see? I'd appreciate criticism.]

[I want to put this on my blog.]

-- Rami Rustom
http://ramirustom.blogspot.com

[Rami Rustom]

I forgot to include the idea that spawned the thought train that lead
to this post:

Ideas are either true or false, i.e. 1 or 0.

A guess creates an idea -- and we set its truth value to 1.

A criticism falsifies an idea -- and we set the falsified idea's truth
value to 0, and we set the criticism's truth value to 1

[Rami Rustom]

On Jan 15, 2013 4:22 AM, "jon_o...@trendmicro.com"
<jon_o...@trendmicro.com> wrote:
>
> Rami, I would like to thank you for writing out these emails on BOI group.

>
> On Saturday, 12 January 2013 11:15 AM, Rami Rustom <rom...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Ideas are either true or false, i.e. 1 or 0.
>

> This idea is not correct.
> I will falsify it.
>
> Let Idea(1) be the idea
> "If this idea is true then it is false, else if this idea is false then it is true."
> Idea(1) is neither true nor false.

No, an idea cannot be true and false at the same time.

I said that *an idea is either true OR false*, which means that it
can't be true AND false.

-- Rami

[Elliot Temple]

On Jan 11, 2013, at 7:03 PM, Rami Rustom <rom...@gmail.com> wrote:

> [I have questions for you in brackets.]
>
> Here's my understanding of Justificationism and Critical Rationalism
> (also known to non-Critical Rationalists as Popperism).
>
>
> _Justificationism_:
>
> Justificationism says that positive arguments can make a theory true.

no. it says more like that positive arguments tell us a theory is true.

>
> Some justificationists are also Bayesians. Bayesianism says that
> better (or more probable) knowledge can be calculated using
> arbitrarily-assigned values for the weight of a positive argument.

no.

> _Critical Rationalism (aka Popperism)_:
>
> Critical Rationalism says that all knowledge is created by (1) guesses
> and (2) criticism:

ok

> (1) Positive arguments are another name for guesses.

wtf? where are you getting this?

you're making up your own (bad) ideas and attributing them to other people.

> A guess is the
> creation of a new theory.
>
> (2) Negative arguments are another name for criticism. A criticism is
> a falsification of a theory.

no

> In other words, a theory is fallibly true, as long as there is no
> negative argument acting against it.

sorta

> A consequence of this is that Justificationism is wrong, since
> positive arguments cannot make a theory true. All positive arguments
> can do is propose theories.

no

> And those theories are true only as long
> as no negative argument is acting against it.

no. this is why i said "sorta" above. whether a particular idea is true doesn't change as we learn more about whether it's true.

> [I don't know how to transition to below, which makes me think that
> its unrelated and should be moved to another post. What do you think?]

i think you should have been asking questions way earlier. you need to better recognize your ignorance.

> Truth is objective. This means that truth exists independent of what
> people think about what the truth is. We call this Objective
> Knowledge.

you say that but you don't understand it. you contradicted it above.

> People are fallible. This means that people cannot know which of their
> ideas are objectively true -- any one of them could be wrong. What we
> do have is fallible knowledge. A consequence of this is that people do
> not have access to infallible sources of knowledge, like intuition,
> emotion, justification, [what else should go here?], etc.

no that isn't a consequence of that.

>
>
> [What flaws do you see? I'd appreciate criticism.]
>
> [I want to put this on my blog.]

it's wrong. like a lot. you should read and discuss more relevant writing by others like books.

-- Elliot Temple
http://elliottemple.com/