Joseph Agassi is known primarily among fellow academics as an exemplary historian and philosopher of science; an ardent critic and disciple of Karl Popper; a critical admirer of the work of Michael Polanyi; and a Socratic fly with the “sting of a bee” for all those who wear the intellectual fashions of the day. To most of Agassi’s students he is known primarily as an exemplary model of the Socratic teacher. The question of most urgency for educators (...) today who care about the intellectual development of students is: How do we make ready our educational institutions for more Socratic teachers? The philosophical or theoretical question is: Why do we want Socratic teachers? In outline, of the many of Agassi’s educational essays selected for this book, Agassi answers those questions: authoritarianism (or anti-democracy) blocks the democratic reform of educational institutions where Socratic teachers and students could find a safe haven; and, Socratic teaching is the main anti-dote to authoritarianism. The removal of authoritarianism from education also removes the hazard that education has become to students; to their happiness, creativity, and dignity as autonomous individuals. See Less Copyright Year: 2014 E-Book (PDF) Availability: Published ISBN: 978-94-6209-626-4 Publication date: 01 Jan 2014 Hardback Availability: Published ISBN: 978-94-6209-624-0 Publication date: 01 Jan 2014 Paperback Availability: Published ISBN: 978-94-6209-623-3 Publication date: 01 Jan 2014 Login via Institution Prices from (excl. shipping): -/- $56.00 -/- ​ Available formats Add to Cart View PDF Flyer Get Permissions. (shrink)

Joseph Agassi One Palestine, Two Nations Many are the problems that beset the tragically war-torn and forlorn Palestine. The extant proposed solutions to them all are few. They all relate to the framework of the establishment or the re-establishment of one, two, or three states. Let me list them first regardless of their value.

This chapter takes the form of a discussion between the editors of this volume and Joseph Agassi, regarding the relationship between methodological individualism and institutional individualism. The focus is on Agassi’s interpretation of traditional methodological individualism in terms of psychologism; the role of institutions and structural factors in social explanation; Popper’s theory of World 3; the application of Weber’s interpretative approach—Verstehen—to typical ways of thinking and acting; and the Austrian School of economics.

JOSEPH AGASSI 1. Sir Karl Popper has offered two different theories of scientific progress, his theory of conjectures and refutations and corroboration, as well as his theory of verisimilitude increase. The former was attacked by some old-fashioned inductivists, yet is triumphant; the latter has been refuted by Tichy and by Miller to Popper’s own satisfaction. Oddly, however, the theory of verisimilitude was developed because of some deficiency in the theory of corroboration, and though in its present precise formulation (...) it was refuted, Popper still holds it in general terms, and I think he still hopes to find a better precise formulation of it. My aims in the present note are to pin-point the deficiency of Popper’s theory of corroboration and to use this for a precise formulation of verisimilitude increase acceptable to him. For my part, however, I see the situation in a different way, as will be indicated at the end of this note. (shrink)

to read this you need Chinese characters.

Summary and conclusions As a new field, cognitivism began with the total rejection of the old, traditional views of language acquisition and of learning -- individual and collective alike. Chomsky was one of the pioneers in this respect, yet he clouds issues by excessive claim s for his originality and by not allowing the beginner in the art of the acquisition of language the use of learning by making hypotheses and testing them, though he acknowledges that researchers, himself included, do (...) use this method. (shrink)

The thesis of the present volume is critical and dual. (1) Present day philosophy of man and sciences of man suffer from the Greek mis taken polarization of everything human into nature and convention which is (allegedly) good and evil, which is (allegedly) truth and fal sity, which is (allegedly) rationality and irrationality, to wit, the polar ization of all fields of inquiry, the natural and social sciences, as well as ethics and all technology, whether natural or social, into the (...) totally positive and the totally negative. (2) Almost all philosophy and sci ences of man share the erroneous work ethic which is the myth of man's evil nature - the myth of the beast in man, the doctrine of original sin. To mediate or to compromise between the first view of human nature as good with the second view of it as evil, sociologists have devised a modified utilitarianism with deferred gratification so called, and the theory of the evil of artificial competition (capitalist and socialist alike) and of keeping up with the Joneses. Now, the mediation is not necessary. For, the polarization makes for abstract errors which are simplistic views of rationality, such as reductionism and positivism of all sorts, as well as for concrete errors, such as the disposition to condemn repeatedly those human weaknesses which are inevitable, namely man's inability to be perfectly rational, avoid all error, etc. , thus setting man against himself as all too wicked. (shrink)

In our papers on the rationality of magic, we distinghuished, for purposes of analysis, three levels of rationality. First and lowest (rationalitYl) the goal directed action of an agent with given aims and circumstances, where among his circumstances we included his knowledge and opinions. On this level the magician's treatment of illness by incantation is as rational as any traditional doctor's blood-letting or any modern one's use of anti-biotics. At the second level (rationalitY2) we add the element of rational thinking (...) or thinking which obeys some set of explicit rules, a level which is not found in magic in general, though it is sometimes given to specific details of magical thinking within the magical thought-system. It was the late Sir Edward E. Evans-Pritchard who observed that when considering magic in detail the magician may be as consistent or critical as anyone else; but when considering magic in general, or any system of thought in general, the magician could not be critical or even comprehend the criticism. Evans-Pritchard went even further: he was sceptical as to whether it could be done in a truly consistent manner: one cannot be critical of one's own system, he thought. On this level (rationalitY2) of discussion we have explained (earlier) why we prefer to wed Evans Pritchard's view of the magician's capacity for piece-meal rationality to Sir James Frazer's view that magic in general is pseudo-rational because it lacks standards of rational thinking. (shrink)

Lakatos claimed that Popper wrote of beliefs; thus ascribing subjectivism to him Popper flatly denied this, treating it a willful distortion.1 Ironically, it is the theory of Lakatos that is subjec...

ספר ויקרא, או תורת כוהנים, נראה היום פחות מעניין מאשר ספרי-קודש אחרים, כי הוא ספר מצוות - הוא כולל כארבעים אחוז מכל תרי"ג המצוות - ואף במידה רבה מצוות שאינן בתוקף מאז חורבן בית-המקדש. אך יש בו עניין, שכן הוא מוכר כספר השלם ביותר מבחינת סגנונו ותכנו, ואולי אף בכך שעריכתו כנראה עתיקה ביותר - לא לדעת דון יצחק אברבנאל, שכן הוא לא הטיל בספק כי תורה נתנה למשה מפי הגבורה - אמנם לא בסיני אך בכל-זאת למשה מפי הגבורה. החוקרים (...) המתעלמים מדעה זו.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:92 A NOTE ON SMITH'S TERM "NATURALISM" The reader of contemporary Hume literature may feel exasperated when reading recent authors. A conspicuous example is A.J. Ayer (Hume, 1982; see index, Art, Natural beliefs), who declares they endorse Kemp Smith's view of Hume's "naturalism" without sufficiently clarifying what they — or Smith — might exactly mean by this term. Charles W. Hendel, in the 1963 edition of his 1924 Studies (...) in the Philosophy of David Hume, adds eight pages of a new preface and thirty-one pages of a review of Hume scholarship between 1925 and 1962, and he speaks at great length there of his life-long friendship and cooperation with Norman Kemp Smith and appreciation of his work. He says (p. xlviii), "There is a disposition today to assimilate Hume's thought to naturalism as understood in the contemporary sense." He does not say what this "contemporary sense" is, and the statement just quoted seems to have served as the seal of approval and the legitimation of this questionable practice. Hendel's new, 1963, material mentions Smith's discussion of Hume's "naturalism" — but refers only to Smith's early work, "The Naturalism of Hume," Mind, 14, 1905, 149-173 and 335-347, not to Smith's famous The Philosophy of David Hume of 1941, even though he deems that work "of great consequence for Hume scholarship" (p. xxxviii) and a "masterwork" (p. xxxix). The early work (1905) of Smith is already mentioned by Hendel in the body of the 1924 work (p. 361), although there, clearly, the word "naturalism," whatever its meaning is, and however contemporary then, is not necessarily the "contemporary sense" of 1962. The work which clearly (if implicitly) distinguishes between the traditional sense and Smith's 1905 sense of "naturalism" is John Laird's Hume's 93 Philosophy of Human Nature, 1932, 1967. We find there a discussion of Hume's naturalism (beginning of Chapter II), as well as of Hume's "Naturalism" (Chapter VI, fifth and fourth paragraphs from the end), with reference to Smith's 1905 work. Now, the traditional sense of "naturalism" is straightforward and seems to have been instituted by Pierre Bayle to designate the view of the world as devoid of all supernatural intervention, the view of the world as "disenchanted," to use the equivalent term accredited to Max Weber. Clearly, all Epicureans and neoEpicureans, Hume included, were naturalists in this sense. This is not the sense in which Smith uses it in his 1905 essay, "The Naturalism of Hume." The first part of this essay opposes T. H. Green's traditional reading of Hume as a philosopher who streamlined the ideas of Locke and Berkeley and proposes to replace it with the view of Hume's view as "naturalism." "Hume's... naturalistic view of reason," we are told (p. 158), "is a new theory of belief": Humean belief, on Smith's new reading, "is not caused by knowledge but precedes it, and as it is not caused by knowledge it is not destroyed by doubt" (p. 165). Smith declared his reading quite revolutionary, yet it may be endorsed without rejecting Green's reading. Smith does not even attempt to re-interpret in detail the passages which prima facie conform to Green's reading. The second part of his essay is the application of his revolutionary reading to psychology and to ethics. Smith devotes the preface of his The Philosophy of David Hume (1941) to a revision of his 1905 study. It seems he did not alter his attitude towards the first part but only to the second: he thought the starting point of Hume's study was his concern not for "naturalism" but for "moral philosophy, or the science of human nature" (opening words of Hume's Inquiry, cf. Hendel, op. cit., p. xlvi). This statement has to do 94 with emphasis, not with the meanings of terms or with ascriptions of views (and it is erroneous, or at least limited; but this is another matter). This is not to deny that Hume was a naturalist in Bayle's sense, as everyone today agrees. Most philosophers today share this naturalism with Hume. "His attitude and way of... (shrink)

1. The Real Claim of the Chicago School If anything dramatic has happened in economic theory over the last one hundred years – namely, since the advent of marginalism – then, everyone agrees, it was not the rise of the Chicago neo -classical school which, after all, only synthesized the various versions of marginalism, but the Keynesian Revolution. Assessments of this revolution were repeatedly invited, particularly by opponent, chiefly from Chicago. F. A. von Hayek has explicitly and bitterly blames Keynes (...) for all our economic troubles; Harry Johnson has repeatedly declared the most revolutionary work of Keynes, his General Theory of 1936, so poor that but for its author's name on its title page it would have totally flopped. Can such a flop cause so much damage? Are these two assessments – of Hayek and of Johnson – in conflict or no t? Don Patinkin has raised a different question: how different is Keynes from his Chicago opponents, say, Milton Friedman? How many heads need roll, to use his metaphor, before a revolution may be declared? Patinkin sees Keynes as slightly deviant but stil l a member of the mainstream – the mainstream of the mainstream being Friedman and his Chicago followers, of course. Now, can a minor deviant be a flop? Can minor deviations from the true blue doctrine be to blame for all of our economic woes? I do not kno w. Joan Robinson sees in Keynes a minor deviation from classical theory because he said once his correction of classical theory is implemented, that theory takes over once again. Moreover, Samuelson and Friedman have endorsed a (poor) version of Keynes' theory of shortterm relative price and ignored his general theory of price and money. (shrink)

Joseph Agassi is a critic, a gadfly, a debunker and deflater; he is also a constructor, a speculator and an imaginative scholaro In the history and philosophy of science, he has been Peck's bad boy, delighting in sharp and pungent criticism, relishing directness and simplicity, and enjoying it all enormously. As one of that small group of Popper's students (ineluding Bartley, Feyerabend and Lakatos) who took Popper seriously enough to criticize him, Agassi remained his own man, holding (...) Popper's work itself to the criteria of critical refutation. Agassi's range is wide and his publications proliik. He has published serious studies in the historiography of science, applied sociology (on Hong Kong with LC. Jarvie), foundations of anthropology, interpretive scientific biography (Faraday), Judaic studies, philosophy of technology (which Agassi pioneered, particulady in distinguishing it from the philosophy of science), as weIl as the many works on the Iogic, methodoI­ ogy, and history of science. Even as we go to press, Agassi's works are appearing; we append an imperfect and selected bibliography. For Agassi, the test of relevance is whether something is interesting. (shrink)

The idea of verisimilitude is implicit in the writings of Albert Einstein ever since 1905, when he declared the distribution of field energy according to Maxwell's theory an approximation to that according to quantum-radiation theory, and Newtonian kinetic energy an approximation to his relativistic mass-energy. All his life Einstein presented new ideas as yielding older established ones as special cases and first approximations. The news has reached the philosophical community via the writings of Sir Karl Popper half-a-century after Einstein's trailblazing (...) conception — first in his epoch-making "Note on Berkeley as a Precursor to Mach" and then in his classic "Three Views Concerning Human Knowledge". (shrink)

Bacon's inductivist philosophy of science divides thinkers into the scientific and the prejudiced, using as a standard the up-to-date science textbook. Inductivists regard the history of science as progressing smoothly, from facts rather than from problems, to increasingly general theories, undisturbed by contending scientific schools. Conventionalists regard theories as pigeonholes for classifying facts; history of science is the development of increasingly simple theories, neither true nor false. Conventionalism is useless for reconstructing and weighing conflicts between schools, and overemphasizes science's internal (...) organic growth. For Popper, not for inductivists or conventionalists, the successful criticism of theories is the heart of science. Popper's view admits the existence of valuable errors and enables us to avoid being wise after the event, thereby improving our understanding of the history of science through reconstructions of the actual interplay of theories and facts. (shrink)

Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Volume 51, Issue 6, Page 600-603, December 2021.

The thesis or theses I wish to present here may, and hopefully should, sound rather trivial. The public role which concerned philosophers should take these days, I suppose, is somewhat similar to the role of preachers in earlier days, namely to state what should be obvious and treated as obvious but is nonetheless systematically overlooked.

1. Lies, Error and Confusion 2. Lies 3. The Demarcation of Science: Historical 4. The Demarcation of Science: Recent 5. Observed Regularities and Laws of Nature.

Philosophers wanted commonsense to fight skepticism. They hypostasized and destroyed it. Commonsense is skeptical--Bound by a sense of proportion and of limitation. A scarce commodity, At times supported, At times transcended by science, Commonsense has to be taken account of by the critical-Realistic theory of science. James clerk maxwell's view of today's science as tomorrow's commonsense is the point of departure. It is wonderful but overlooks the value of the sense of proportion.

Summary There is a traditional reluctance among methodologists to study the ever increasingly important phenomenon of research-projects, research-project evaluations, etc. The reason for this is that projects are embedded in programs and programs in intellectual frameworks, or conceptual frameworks, or metaphysical systems. It sounds dogmatic to judge the product of research by a reference to a metaphysical system. Yet, first of all, it is not so dogmatic if judgment can go both ways, if we have competing systems at work, and (...) if what we assess is not the outcome of a project but the existing assessments of projects prior to their implementation. Indeed, one of the most obvious things to do is to compare our assessments of projects before and after their implementations. To this end some further theorizing is required. (shrink)

Science uses its firmest conclusions to arrive at new ones which may well completely destroy these, previously firmest, conclusions. The perceptive may notice that when the previously firmest conclusions are demolished we may remain in the dark with no conclusion worth replacing it with. But only when we replace it with a firmer conclusion can we speak of a bootstrap operation rather than of a refutations. Often, to conclude, the ad hoc nature of a fact-like statement is rooted in the (...) theoretical background against which it is couched; given a different theoretical background and it fully falls into place, as the expression goes. If an observation report is at once a corollary of our scientific theory, then it is unproblematic. If it conflicts with our scientific theory, either we reject the theory or try to find an excuse for not rejecting it. When, however, a small theory which well integrates in our theoretical background is attacked by a well corroborated fact-like theory and all its defences are refuted, then a revolution may be under way. Such events may be rare, but they are the more interesting ones. At times we alter our whole theoretical outlook around a rather fact-like theory which then gets refuted. We then look silly from any viewpoint except that which takes the process to be a bootstrap operation! (shrink)

The tu quoque argument is the argument that since in the end rationalism rests on an irrational choice of and commitment to rationality, rationalism is as irrational as any other commitment. Popper's and Polanyi's philosophies of science both accept the argument, and have on that account many similarities; yet Popper manages to remain a rationalist whereas Polanyi decided for an irrationalist version of rationalism. This is more marked in works of their respective followers, W. W. Bartley III and Thomas S. (...) Kuhn. Bartley declares the rationalist's very openness to criticism open to criticism, in the hope of rendering Popper's critical rationalism quite comprehensive. Kuhn makes rationality depend on the existence of an accepted model for scientific research (paradigm), thus rendering Polanyi's view of the authority of scientific leadership a sine qua non for scientific progress. The question raised here is, in what sense is a rationalist committed to his rationality, or an irrationalist to his specific axiom ? The tradition views only the life?long commitment as real. Viewing rationality as experimental open?mindedness, we may consider a rationalist unable to retreat into any life?long commitment ? even commitment to science. In this way the logic of the tu quoque argument is made irrelevant: anyone able to face the choice between rationality and commitment is already beyond such a choice; it is one thing to be still naïve and another ? and paradoxical ? thing to return to one's naïveté. (shrink)

Dainton and Robinson’s Companion traces lines of descent of analytic philosophy from ancestors. They characterize analytic philosophy as a movement, a tradition, a style, and a commitment to the va...

The variety of languages in the world is considered a curse by some, who view the phenomenon as a Tower of Babel. Others consider it the most characteristic quality of human language as opposed to animal languages, which are supposedly species specific. The variety is viewed as a symptom of human caprice, arbitrariness, or dependence on mere historical accident by some; and as a symptom of human freedom and of the creative aspect of language by others. And, of course, the (...) human limitation caused by the variety of languages and the peculiarities of traditions within languages, as instanced by Sir Winston Churchill's The History of the English Speaking People, are again viewed by different thinkers from different philosophical viewpoints. (shrink)