Critical Rationalism

1994 book by David Miller

For the philosophy, see Critical rationalism.

Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defence

Cover of the first edition

Author| David Miller
Language| English
Subject| Philosophy of science
Published| 1994
Publication place| United States
Pages| viii, 264 pp.
OCLC| 94-11205
LC Class| Q175.M629 1994

Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defence (1994) is a book on the philosophy of science by the philosopher David Miller.[1] Book reviews include those of John Watkins in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science and Michael Redhead in Analytic Philosophy.[2] The book seeks to restate and extend the epistemology of Karl Popper, whose general philosophy has been termed 'critical rationalism'.

The book criticizes the use of "good reasons" in general (including evidence supposed to support the excess content of a hypothesis). He argues that good reasons are neither attainable, nor even desirable. Basically, the case, which Miller calls "tediously familiar", is that all arguments purporting to give valid support for a claim are either circular or question-begging. That is, if one provides a valid deductive argument (an inference from premises to a conclusion) for a given claim, then the content of the claim must already be contained within the premises of the argument (if it is not, then the argument is ampliative and so is invalid). Therefore, the claim is already presupposed by the premises, and is no more "supported" than are the assumptions upon which the claim rests, i.e. begging the question.[3]

## References

[edit]

1. ^ David Miller (1994). Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defence. Description and contents. Open Court, Chicago and LaSalle, Illinois] ISBN 0-8126-9197-0 ISBN 0-8126-9198-9]
2. ^ • John Watkins (1995). "Review: "Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defence by David Miller," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 46(4), p p. 610-616.
• Michael Redhead (1997). "Miller, D., Critical Rationalism: From Physics to Metaphysics," Analytic Philosophy, 38(1), pp. 73–76. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0149.00054/abstract.
3. ^ David Miller (1994). Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defence, Chapter 3, "A Critique of Good Reasons."

This article about a non-fiction book on philosophy of science is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

|

* v
* t
* e

*[OCLC]: Online Computer Library Center number
*[LC Class]: Library of Congress Classification
*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template