TY - JOUR
AU - Mayo, Deborah G.
AB - DEBORAH G. MAYO CRITICAL RATIONALISM AND ITS FAILURE TO WITHSTAND CRITICAL SCRUTINY PART I: THE SEVERE TESTING PRINCIPLE IN THE CRITICAL RATIONALIST PHILOSOPHY 1. INTRODUCTION Observations or experiments can be accepted as supporting a theory (or a hypothesis, or a scientific assertion) only if these observations or experiments are severe tests of the theory—or in other words, only if they result from serious attempts to refute the theory, and especially from trying to find faults where these might be expected in the light of all our knowledge. (Popper, 1994, p. 89) The lack of progress in the neo-Popperian philosophy known as ‘critical rationalism’ may be traced to its inability to show the acceptability of the fundamental principle underlying the above quote: Severity Principle (SP) Data x count as evidence in support of a hypothesis or claim H, only if x constitute severe tests of H—only if data x (which are in accord with H) result from serious attempts to refute H. This failure seems deeply puzzling, given the intuitive plausibility of SP, as in Popper’s exhortation above. The problem is hardly limited to critical rationalists. Something like SP is endorsed far more generally in philosophy as well as in 
TI - Rationality and Reality: Critical Rationalism and its Failure to Withstand Critical Scrutiny
DA - 2006-01-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/springer-journals/rationality-and-reality-critical-rationalism-and-its-failure-to-B4CIFLiISC
DP - DeepDyve
ER -