CRITICAL RATIONALISM: CHARACTERISTICS, REPRESENTATIVES - PHILOSOPHY - 2025

The critical rationalism is a methodological philosophical system that tries to formulate the principles of rational explanation of knowledge, of human actions, their ideas and social institutions from its criticism and improvement.

It was created by the British philosopher and professor Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994), who has just given it the name "Critical rationalism", opposing it to uncritical and integral rationalism.

It only accepts everything that can be proven by reason and / or experience. It is to this that Popper objects that integral rationalism leads to inconsistencies. And this is because it cannot explain how the proof of reason or experience is possible.

In other words, Popper starts from a critique of the positivist epistemological model, which he calls the “revelation model”. From there he makes an original, global and alternative epistemological proposal.

Currently critical rationalism attempts to extend Popper's approach to all areas of action and thought. So your task is to substitute the methods that are supposed to be justifying for the critics.

characteristics

To understand the foundations on which critical rationalism is based, it is important to highlight the philosophical position of its author. Karl Popper in his "Logic Scientific Discovery" defines it clearly:

"The problem of understanding the world, including ourselves and our knowledge as part of the world." This is exactly what he will look for in his epistemological investigations, the notion of reality, and historicism.

Epistemology

Popper's contribution to the epistemology and methodology of science has been fundamental. This is because it proposes to update the links between logic and science. And above all in the rational critique of scientific development.

It is precisely this rational development, or also known as "verificationist", that the "falsificationist" current initiated by the British philosopher is opposed.

Therefore, in order to establish the limits between science, pseudoscience and metaphysics, the criterion of falsifiability or refutability of scientific propositions must be applied. With this principle he objects to the inductive criteria of verification and especially to the neopositivist of the significance of the statements.

Thus, for this philosopher a proposition will be scientific if and only if it can be corrected (falsified) based on the facts of reality that contradict it and that consequently force it to be revised.

In this way, any statement that is not refutable in principle should not be considered scientific. Therefore, he rejects the inductive method as a way of testing a hypothesis.

However, the Popperian methodology does not dismiss empiricism, on the contrary, it values ​​it by taking it as the basis from which the refutation emerges. But on the other hand, he recognizes that all observation is made from anticipation or conjecture.

The theory of reality

According to any epistemological presupposition, there is an implicit notion of reality. This notion, intuitively, is identified with the experienceable. This is what is presented to the senses.

For Popper, reality is divided into three worlds:

The first is the universe of physical entities. In it are found material bodies such as hydrogen, crystals, living organisms, etc.

In it the physical laws are in force for living things, because they are material.

The second is the one that corresponds to mental states and subjective experiences such as states of consciousness, psychological disposition, consciousness of the self, among others.

These states are considered to be real when they interact with world 1, such as pain. This is caused by an agent belonging to world 1, however it causes the man to react in a certain way.

The third which is the world of the contents of thought and of the products of the human mind. In this world you will find stories, explanatory myths, scientific theories, scientific problems, tools, social institutions, language, and works of art.

Of course there are objects that can share worlds at the same time. An example would be a sculpture (world 3), which can be imitated by leading a shaped stone that belongs to world 1 to go through experiences in world 2 and reach a new element similar to world 1.

From these worlds, critical rationalism considers that knowledge has two senses:

The objective that are the problems, theories and arguments. All of them independent of beliefs, of people's claims to knowledge and of their actions. It is an objective knowledge without a knowing subject.

The subjective which is a mental state, a disposition to react or behave.

Fragmentary Social Engineering

It is Popper's proposal against historicism. He defines this as a point of view of the social sciences that is based on a historical prediction as the main purpose of said sciences. And that also supposes that this end is achieved through discovering "laws", "models" or trends. They exist under the evolution of history.

That is why he considers in "The misery of historicism" that the historicist methodological doctrines are responsible for the unsatisfactory state of the theoretical social sciences. It also makes you responsible for a holistic totalizing character.

Faced with this question, Sir Karl Popper makes a proposal that favors the selective, fragmentary and particular of reality. In this way, Fragmentary Social Engineering aims to describe the practical applications of the results of fragmentary technology.

In this way, it includes social activities, both public and private, which use all available technological knowledge to obtain a purpose. Also this engineering recognizes that only a few social institutions are consciously projected. While most of them have been born as an unintended result of human action.

It is for all this that he considers that the holistic manifestations of historicism always acquire a totalitarian character in the political.

Faced with all this, it raises a kind of historical evolutionism. This is the transition from closed or tribal society subjected to magical forces to open society. In this the critical faculties of man are manifested, freely.

This open society is based on tolerance towards everyone, except those who practice intolerance. Hence, no government, or person, should try to achieve global solutions to all problems.

This is why a social technology is needed at the political and economic level whose results can be tested by gradual social engineering.

Representatives

Critical rationalism does not end only with Popper, but is projected onto other philosophers. Among them are:

Thomas Khun (1922-1996)

He maintains that the historical study of all science is indispensable for understanding the development of scientific theories. And also to understand why at some point the theory is accepted and therefore validated and justified.

Imre Lakatos (1922-1974)

His thesis on falsificationism states that a theory can never be falsified by any experiment or observation, but by another theory.

It further argues that no experimental report, observational statement, experiment, or low-level falsifying hypothesis that is well corroborated can in itself cause falsification.

Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994)

He is interested in the methodological rules that are used for scientific testing. He concludes that these rules are violated by the scientists who use them.

On the other hand, it ensures that there is nothing that can be identified as a scientific method. That is why it postulates and defends the free accessibility of the individual to every possible option to achieve knowledge.

References

1. Delio Machado, Luis María (2005). Karl Popper's Critical Rationalism. Journal of the Faculty of Law (8), pp. 121-146. Recovered from revista.fder.edu.uy.
2. Feyeraben Paul (1975). Against Method. New Left Books: London.
3. Galván, Maricruz (2016). Critical rationalism and interpretation. Autonomous University of Mexico. Ideas y Valores magazine vol.65 no.160, pp.239-251. Recovered from scielo.org.co.
4. Kuhn, Thomas (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press: Chicago IL.
5. Kuhn Thomas (1970). Reflections on my critics. In: Lakatos I and Musgrove A. (eds). Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, pp. 231-278.
6. Lakatos, Imre (1970). Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programs. In: Lakatos I and Musgrove A. (eds). Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, pp. 91-196.
7. Popper, Karl (1959). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Routledge Classics, London and New York. Ed. 2002. Recovered from strangebeautiful.com
8. Popper, Karl (1957). The Poverty of Historicism. 2nd edition. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1960.
9. Popper, Karl (1966). The Open Society and its Enemies. The Spell of Plato, vol 1. Routledge Classics, London.
10. Popper, Karl (1999). All Life is Problem Solving. Routledge Classics, New York (1999).