Karl Popper introduced the idea of verisimilitude to explicate the intuitive idea that a theory T2, even though it is strictly speaking false, may be closer to the truth than a competitor T1. However, as is now well known, the results of Pavel Tichý, John Harris and David Miller establish that on Popper’s qualitative theory of verisimilitude, a theory T2 could be closer to the truth than another theory T1 only if T2 contains no false sentences. This result has been (...) taken universally to show the inadequacy of Popper’s original account of verisimilitude, since the Miller-Tichý-Harris Theorem conflicts with the very basic intuition which first led Popper to formulate his theory.In this paper I shall first review the Miller-Tichý-Harris Theorem and examine a number of attempts to salvage the concept of verisimilitude. It will be argued that none of these attempts is successful. Finally an alternative, simple and intuitively satisfactory account of verisimilitude will be offered. This account will be along the lines first suggested by Popper, but it is not subject to any known limitation theorem. Further, the account is capable of giving verisimilitude orderings between not only scientific theories, but philosophical theories as well. This will be achieved without the use of the excessive formalism which dominates the contemporary verisimilitude research programs. (shrink)

Frankel has argued that the theory of causality developed by Rom Harré and his colleague Edward Madden is incoherent, since the proposal that causal claims are naturally necessary leads to a vicious infinite regression“which ends by requiring that for any causal claim to be accorded the status of natural necessity an infinite number of causal claims must be accorded the status of natural necessities.”.

Karl Popper introduced the idea of verisimilitude to explicate the intuitive idea that a theory T2, even though it is strictly speaking false, may be closer to the truth than a competitor T1. However, as is now well known, the results of Pavel Tichý, John Harris and David Miller establish that on Popper’s qualitative theory of verisimilitude, a theory T2 could be closer to the truth than another theory T1 only if T2 contains no false sentences. This result has been (...) taken universally to show the inadequacy of Popper’s original account of verisimilitude, since the Miller-Tichý-Harris Theorem conflicts with the very basic intuition which first led Popper to formulate his theory.In this paper I shall first review the Miller-Tichý-Harris Theorem and examine a number of attempts to salvage the concept of verisimilitude. It will be argued that none of these attempts is successful. Finally an alternative, simple and intuitively satisfactory account of verisimilitude will be offered. This account will be along the lines first suggested by Popper, but it is not subject to any known limitation theorem. Further, the account is capable of giving verisimilitude orderings between not only scientific theories, but philosophical theories as well. This will be achieved without the use of the excessive formalism which dominates the contemporary verisimilitude research programs. (shrink)

Thirteen (largely) thematically unconnected essays dealing with some ultimate, but not esoteric, questions in modern metaphysical epistemology.

(1983). RATIONALISM AND THE STRONG PROGRAMME OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEKE: RECONCILIATION WITHOUT TEARS. Philosophical Papers: Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 1-31.

This work summarizes an already comprehensive field of criticisms of received economics and advanced new ones, particularly with respect to free trade and the industrialisation of economic systems. If global economic and ecological catastrophe is to be avoided, nations and communities must move towards greater self-reliance within the framework of a much less resource-wasteful existence. But to do this will require not merely a cosmetic change in the present socio-economic system, but a change of such magnitude that it dwarfs previous (...) social transformations in human history. This great transformation must occur by conscious human activity and it must occur quickly if human civilizations, and indeed human life itself, is to continue. (shrink)

This book provides a postmodernist critique of philosophy through ecological limitationism and common-sense realism. The authors demonstrate the reality of life, the world and the primacy of practice in relation to the failings of Anglo-American analytic philosophy to meet the challenges of the age.

This book attempts to give a comprehensive examination of the principal philosophical issues associated with the AIDS pandemic and in particular with the radical challenges that global diseases raise for modern society and political systems. The thesis of the book is that AIDS is but a part of a wider environmental and social crisis that not only challenges received opinion about the relationships between humantiy, technology and the environment, but challenges the ecological adaptability of modern social and political system. The (...) challenge posed by AIDS, and other diseases likely to appear in the next century, are explored in detail. (shrink)

Malcolm Acock attempts to show that three widely accepted “solutions” to the philosophical problem of theory choice between the ordinary account of the age of the universe, and “Russell's hypothesis” that the world sprang into existence five minutes ago, are unsatisfactory. In the following paper we shall attempt to show why “Russell's hypothesis” is defective as a cosmological explanation of the age of the universe.

The claim that nature is self-consistent has recently been contested by a number of paraconsistent logicians. In this paper I will survey the arguments which paraconsistent logicians have presented for the thesis that nature is actually inconsistent. My conclusion is that these arguments all fail.The paraconsistency programme has to date been concerned primarily with outlining the philosophical inadequacy of classical logic, and detailed discussions of issues bearing upon the philosophical adequacy of the paraconsistency position itself are not to be found (...) as yet in the literature. This inadequacy will be illustrated here with respect to the question of the self-consistency of nature. (shrink)

In this paper I shall attempt to perform two tasks; first, to defend James Jordan's recent self-referential arguments for the inconsistency of Protagorean relativism from the criticisms of Jack Meiland, and second, to contribute towards the cause of undermining Protagorean and conceptual relativism by criticizing Meiland's own explication of the notion of relative truth.