Abstract
As a Popperian, Ian C. Jarvie takes falsifiability to be a defining characteristic of rationality. This suggests that any disagreement about the truth or falsity of a particular belief that can be settled by further evidence should be rationally resolvable, at least in the following sense. Niceties about probabilities aside, one should be able to specify under what conditions, that is, given what evidence, one would surrender that belief. Put another way, if a belief will not be given up no matter what evidence one might ever confront, then this establishes that belief as mere dogma.
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Notes
- 1.
The ellipsis in this quote marks my omission of the words “note his contradiction” that Jarvie has a parenthetical aside in the original. The presumed contradiction, alluded to but not explicitly developed, concerns Kuhn’s own presumed commitment to democratic values—including, presumably, valuing the sort of critical exchange that Popper appropriates from Mill—and his characterization of what makes for scientific success. Again, Jarvie reads into Kuhn’s descriptive account a normative recommendation. But no one ever accused Popperians of being charitable interpreters.
- 2.
The choice of Gillispie as a reviewer proves interesting inasmuch as Kuhn cites him by name as authoring a history of science shaped to fit the “Procrustean bed” of progressive development from which Kuhn looks to free this subject (Kuhn 2012, p. 108, fn. 11).
- 3.
Given Jarvie’s line of argument in this chapter, it comes as no surprise that he pens an extremely positive, almost gleeful, review of Steve Fuller’s attempted deconstruction of Kuhn almost a decade and a half later. Fuller largely retails in greater detail the charges that Jarvie rehearses in his 1988 paper. See Jarvie (2003, pp. 275–83). For a counterpoint of how Fuller tells this tale, see Roth (2003).
- 4.
This paragraph and several that follow have been adapted from Roth (2013).
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Roth, P.A. (2019). Jarvie’s Rationalitätstreit. In: Sassower, R., Laor, N. (eds) The Impact of Critical Rationalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90826-7_19
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