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Comprehensively Critical Rationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

J. W. N. Watkins
J. W. N. Watkins
Affiliation:
The London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London
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Extract

In his book The Retreat to Commitment Professor Bartley raised an important problem: can rationalism (meaning by this something that contrasts, not with empiricism, but with irrationalism) can rationalism be held in a rational way, that is, in a way that complies with its own requirements? Or is there bound to be something irrational in the rationalist's position?

Briefly, Hartley's answer was that an element of irrationalism is involved in extant versions of rationalism; however, Bartley proposed a new version of rationalism that can, he claimed, be held in a way that is rational according to its own account of rationality. Bartley called this ‘Comprehensively Critical Rationalism’. (Being a bit of a mouthful, this is often abbreviated to ‘CCR’, a practice I will follow.)

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy , Volume 44 , Issue 167 , January 1969 , pp. 57 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1969

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References

1 Bartley, W. W. III, The Retreat to Commitment, New York, 1962, ch. v.Google Scholar

2 Giedymin, J., ‘A Generalization of the Refutability Postulate’, Studio Logica, 10, 1960.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Problems in the Philosophy of Science (ed. I Lakatos, A. Musgrave, 1968), p. 46 n.Google Scholar

4 See Popper, K. R., Conjectures and Refutations, p. 327.Google Scholar

5 The Retreat to Commitment, p. 91.Google Scholar This objection was, of course, already well known. ‘So rationalism is necessarily far from comprehensive or self-contained. This has frequently been overlooked by rationalists who thus exposed themselves to a beating in their own field and by their own favourite weapon whenever an irrationalist took the trouble to turn it against them’ (Popper, K. R., The Open Society, 4th ed., 1962, p. 231).Google Scholar

6 This is not a quotation; see Bartley, , op. cit., ch. iv, § 1.Google Scholar

7 This is my precis of the following passage:

‘The new framework permits a rationalist to be characterized as one who holds all beliefs, including his most fundamental standards and his basic philosophical position itself, open to criticism; who never cuts off an argument by resorting to faith or irrational commitment to justify some belief that has been under severe critical fire. I shall call this conception comprehensively critical rationalism’ (Hartley, , op. cit., p. 146, italics his).Google Scholar

8 Op. cit., p. 122.

9 Op. cit., p. 133.

10 ‘… the practice of critical argument can be criticized without paradox, contradiction, or any other logical difficulty’ (op. cit., p. 149).

11 Op. cit., p. 148, italics in the original.

12 Op. cit., ch. v, § 4.

13 See his discussion of what he calls ‘the check of the problem’ (op. cit., pp. 159–161); here, the critic raises such methodological questions about a proposed theory as: ‘Does it solve the problems it was intended to solve? Or does it merely shift the problem? Does it solve the problem better than competing views? Or does it create still worse difficulties?’ (p. 160).

14 Why ‘irrationalist’? Is anyone who ventures to criticise CCR an irrationalist?

15 Op. cit., p. 149.

16 Bartley, W. W. III, ‘Rationality versus the Theory of Rationality’, The Critical Approach to Science and Philosophy, ed. Mario Bunge, 1964, pp. 27f.Google Scholar; and Philosophical Studies xii, 1–2, 01–02 1961, pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

17 The Retreat to Commitment, p. 89.Google Scholar

18 This is essentially Popper's position in ch. 24 of The Open Society.