Episode 107: Was Popper a Fideist?
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Hello out there. This week on the Theory of Anything podcast, we discuss fideism, or at least I think how Bruce is defining it, the idea that faith has some central role related to moving towards truth through rationality.

Our starting point is a paper written by prominent Popperian Joseph Agassi about how William Bartley, another critical rationalist philosopher closely associated with Popper, had a falling out with Popper after he accused him of being a fideist, which Popper apparently did not consider a compliment.

It's actually kind of crazy how this ties in directly to our last episode, where we discussed an obscure interview with Popper, where he talks about faith and religion. During that discussion, Bruce declared himself to be a kind of fideist, which was a new term to me, but I swear we had no plan to discuss Agassi's paper on Karl Popper and fideism next.

So this was a happy accident, and I'm so pleased with how this turned out. And I hope someone out there gets something out of this too. Welcome to the Theory of Anything podcast. Hey, Peter. Hello, Bruce. How are you today? Good. This is a fun episode that we're going to do today. And in typical Bruce fashion, it started off as reading a paper and wanting to discuss it. And then I ended up with like,

Pages and pages and pages of notes of what I wanted to talk about. Okay. I think my notes are longer than the original paper at this point. Oh, sure. Yeah, that's typical. That is typical Bruce. All right. Well, this is an awesome subject. So it's about a paper from Joseph Agassi. I got to get that name right. Agassi.

And I've always in the past called Joseph Agassi the Gilderoy Lockhart of critical rationalism. However, there's one really big difference between him and Gilderoy Lockhart. Agassi is actually every bit as talented as he believed himself to be.

So, I mean, this is a really smart, talented guy. And the reason why I call him the Gilderoy Lockhart of critical rationalism is when he's in an interview, he'll just sort of throw out in the middle of the interview, well, I've invented, you know, two different branches of

you know, a philosophy that then got stolen from, by, from somebody else. And now somebody else has credit, you know, like he says these funny things, which are probably true by the way. Like I'm not actually saying he's lying or something like that. Right. But just, it comes across really funny because you're just not used to people talking that way. You're thinking of those interviews and on the Parperian podcast. Yeah. Yeah.

So his paper is called critical rationalism, comprehensive or qualified the Popper Bartley dispute. And he gives his take on what happened to cause a fallout between Popper and Bartley. Note that Agassi actually knew both men and was present for some of what happened. So according to Agassi, um,

He himself had fallouts with Popper. So we're talking about someone who understood that Popper was a difficult person, if that makes any sense. Okay. Well, I mean, I think just about everyone had a falling out with him, didn't they? David Miller didn't. That's why I consider David Miller kind of Popper's torch. He just passed away recently, but before he passed away, that's why I always referred to him as the greatest living Popperian. Okay. So what did you think of this paper?

Oh, geez. Well, there was a lot of interesting things about it. Like I said, you know, it was quite confusing. Yes, it's totally confusing. You know, but maybe I can kind of summarize what I...

got from it, which might be just a small part of what he was getting at. Okay, go for it. So this Bartley, who's a pretty prominent critical rationalist himself, accused Hopper of being a fideist. Yes, which in the last episode I recorded, I claimed I was a fideist. So that's a coincidence. That's a really interesting thing that came up in this paper. Which is someone who prioritizes

faith over reason, right? As a fundamental... I mean, it seems like it's one of these things where there's about five different definitions of it. I totally agree. There's like a bunch of definitions, yeah. Yeah. In this context, I guess he's accusing Popper of believing that something like... That in order to really believe...

or to subscribe, or however you want to put it, to critical rationalism, you have to have something like a faith in some fundamental precept that reason is valuable. So it's based on a foundation of faith, which Popper was very offended by and didn't think was

fair at all. Just to clarify, what you said was correct, but it was a little bit confusing. Okay. Popper did say that, but he did not consider himself a fideist. Okay. Okay. Called a fideist offended Popper. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I got it. But it sounded like a gossy in this article, at least how I interpreted him is kind of like owning that in a way and saying that in order to, uh, that critical rationalism actually is, uh,

based on a faith in reason, and he defends it both from skeptics and pragmatists and others who think that this is some kind of like criticism, checkmate kind of criticism of critical rationalism. He seems to be saying that it's not so bad.

Is that on the right track, at least? So it's interesting that that's what you got out of it, because I actually got the opposite out of it. Oh, well, I'm probably wrong then. Well, no, no, no. I don't think you necessarily are. Okay. So I actually took away from it that he's claiming Popper was wrong, that you needed to start with Faith to be a critical rationalist. Okay. The problem is that he kind of says both.

Agassi has this style that's very, some of his other papers are exactly like this, right? Where it's very roundabout. He doesn't just state what he's saying. And so it's really hard to tell if he was claiming Popper was right or Popper was wrong.

And I think I can totally see why you came away thinking that he was saying Popper was sort of right, because he kind of says that. But I can also see why I came away thinking he was saying Popper was wrong, because he kind of says that. And it's a little unclear which he intended. And I think that might be by design, right? That it's not just that he's an unclear writer. He's trying to make you think, but he's not necessarily...

coming up with a definitive answer, right? Okay. So you have to read between the lines and come up with what you think he intended. And I guess I can see how there's more than one way you could read between the lines and come up with a different

point of view. So I'm actually going to offer some quotes from him that will support your view and some that support my view. Okay. So that's why I think it's actually probably good that you read it one way and I read it another way so that we've got two opinions on this subject. And that's probably exactly how it should be. So I looked up on Wikipedia. So I looked up on Wikipedia, the, the, their account of the Popper Bartley blow up. And here's what it says.

At the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science at Bedford College, University of London, July 11th to 17th, 1965, they came into conflict with each other. Bartley had presented a paper, Theories of Demarcation Between Science and Metaphysics, in which he accused Popper of displaying a positivist attitude in his early works and proposed that Popper's demarcation criterion was not as important as Popper thought it was. Popper took this as a personal attack

and Bartley took his reply as indicating that Popper was ignoring his criticism. Their friendship was not restored until 1974 after the publication of The Philosophy of Karl Popper. Bartley changed the tone of his remarks about Popper's criterion of demarcation, making it less aggressive. However, despite the restored friendship, Bartley's view was never accepted by Popper, who criticized it even after Bartley's death. So let me say that from talking with

CritRats about this. It seems like CritRats are pretty much entirely in the Bartley camp here. I've seen CritRats say something like, well, Popper wanted to claim an uncriticizable foundation for rationalism and Bartley rightly didn't accept that. But it should be noted that this is basically just Bartley's view in a nutshell. And I would personally consider it a straw man, at least to a degree of Popper's actual view.

I think Augustine's paper can be quite helpful in trying to understand what the dispute was actually about. There may have been more than one thing it was about. Okay. So before I go too much further, let me actually just read in full what Popper actually said that led to all this. Okay. So this is from page 436 of Open Society and Its Enemies. This would be the one volume edition.

I think that page number might be the PDF page number, by the way. I don't think I checked the book page number. So here is a quote from Popper. Whoever adopts the rationalist attitude does so because he has adopted consciously or unconsciously some proposal or decision or belief or behavior, an adoption which may be called irrational. Whether this adoption is tentative or leads to a settled habit or

we may describe it as an irrational faith in reason. So rationalism is necessarily far from comprehensive or self-contained. This has frequently been overlooked by rationalists, who thus expose themselves to a beating in their own field and by their own favorite weapon whenever an irrationalist took the trouble to turn it against them. So that's one quote. Let me give you another one. This is from Conjecture and Refutation.

I don't have a page number, but it's the chapter entitled, uh, chapter 18 utopia and violence. He says, if I don't have a page number, it probably means I got it from AI, Carl Popper, and that the program didn't have a page number. Wasn't able to find a page number. So, um,

He says, I think I have said enough to make clear what I intend to convey by calling myself a rationalist. My rationalism is not dogmatic. I fully admit that I cannot rationally prove it. I frankly confess that I choose rationalism because I hate violence, and I do not deceive myself into believing that this hatred has any rational grounds. Or to put it another way, my rationalism is not self-contained, but

but rests on an irrational faith in the attitude of reasonableness. I do not see that we can go beyond this. One could say, perhaps, that my irrational faith in equal and reciprocal rights to convince others and be convinced by them is a faith in human reason, or simply that I believe in man.

So he talks about how many have turned to irrationalism when they realize that rationalism can't be self-contained. And then he says, but such panic is entirely uncalled for. Although an uncritical and comprehensive rationalism is logically untenable, and although a comprehensive irrationalism is logically tenable, there is no reason why we should adopt the later. For there are other tenable attitudes, notably that of critical rationalism,

which recognizes the fact that the fundamental rationalist attitude results from, at least tentatively, an act of faith, from faith in reason. Accordingly, our choice is open. We may choose some form of irrationalism, even some radical or comprehensive form.

But we are also free to choose a critical form of rationalism, one that frankly, which frankly admits its origin in an irrational decision and which to an extent admits a certain priority of irrationalism. That's from page 437 of open society and its enemies. Sorry, go ahead. Why don't you make your comment? Well, I guess I, one of the things related to your, these quotes, I think, um,

that I would like to get out of this conversation that I've, it's a straight in my own mind, is this idea that people will bring up of applying critical rationalism to itself, I guess. I think that maybe that's the one of the, maybe at the core of what we're trying to wrestle with. It's something I've been kind of confused about. And I guess I can think of two ways to answer that.

One is something like, well, you just have to have faith in it, kind of like you're saying. It's just the basic idea that there's some faith involved in the power of reason. And then the other way I can think of it is sort of the interwoven web of guesses thing. Well, you can't like...

prove one assertion without other sorts of... Thinking of it more as a web of ideas, that kind of makes some sense to me.

as well. But here's one quote that I had to look up from Popper, which is from that John Horgan article that we discussed before on the dogmatism episode. I think it was our first one where he asks him, "Is falsification falsifiable?" And I guess you could say the same thing is fallibilism fallible? Is critical rationalism

does critical rationalism apply to itself? And he says, do you remember this, Bruce? Yes, I do. He says, I don't want to hurt you. He says gently, but it is a silly question. Yes. And then he says, and then he says, I'll just read the whole thing. You're peering searchingly into my eyes. He asks if one of his critics urged me to pose the question. Yes, I

I lie. And he says, exactly. He says, looking pleased. The first thing you do in a philosophy seminar when somebody proposes an idea is to say it doesn't satisfy its own criteria. It is one of the most idiotic criticisms one can imagine. But then I'm still not exactly sure why it's so idiotic. Well, keep reading.

Okay, and then he says his falsification concept, he says, helps distinguish between empirical and non-empirical modes of knowledge. Falsification itself is unempirical. It belongs not to science, but to philosophy or meta-science. Popper asks if I understand his response. I nod. He squeezes my hand, murmuring, yes, very good. So that response is definitely how Popper looked at it.

Okay. I have criticized that response on this podcast. Let me, the episodes in question that I have in mind are episode 92, Popper on philosophical theories. Yes. And then episode 93, philosophical theories versus bad explanations. Yeah. So I honestly think that's the wrong answer, but it's not like this answer doesn't have some merit. So let me try to explain his answer first.

But just understand that I don't necessarily agree with it, if that makes any sense. So what he has in mind here is that you use falsification on empirical theories. And so empirical theories can be falsified and...

non-empirical theories, which he would say are metaphysical theories, can't be falsified. So you use a different mode. You just use criticism at that point. And then in chapter eight, which I criticize, he talks about, you can ask questions like, does it solve the problem as well as its competitors? And he goes through a set of what I called squishy criticisms that you use instead. Okay. But that was the way Popper saw it. So he would have thought

that critical rationalism being philosophy isn't trying to be falsifiable and that you have to criticize it without using experiments, basically. Okay. So therefore, in his mind, you can't falsify it. He doesn't see that as a contradiction because he's never claimed it was a falsifiable empirical scientific theory to begin with.

So, there is no actual contradiction in his mind between these. So, it doesn't make sense to ask the question, can critical rationalism itself be false? Can falsification itself be falsified? Right? Instead, he's going to say, no, it's a conjecture. I'm conjecturing it. And is it fruitful or is it not? And then I criticized that in the podcast. I said, well, if we're going to do that, induction might be one of the most fruitful theories that there's ever been, right, in philosophy. So,

So I it's, I I've got some concerns with the way poppers going about this, but I would agree that there's no actual contradiction here because there's no actual claim on poppers part that critical rationalism is falsifiable. By the way, I disagree with that. I think critical rationalism is very much falsifiable, but that's just me. Um, and maybe we can do a future podcast where I actually talk through the ways in which I think critical rationalism is falsifiable. Hmm.

So one of the big differences here for me is that I put forward the idea of testability versus checkability in episode 93 or whichever was the one on philosophical theories versus bad explanations. And what I was trying to show was that

So falsification doesn't just apply to empirical theories. Popper often acts as if that's the case, but even Popper gave a counterexample that I read with like mathematical theories. Well, mathematical theories can be falsified because they're logic, right? And you can have falsification in a logical theory because a theory can have logical content as well as empirical content and falsification can apply to logical content.

The thing I pointed out, though, is that theories like critical rationalism have all sorts of logical content. Therefore, they can also be falsified, just like a mathematical theory. Now, because of that, I think that means that Popper's demarcation criteria, the idea of a demarcation criteria, I think is correct.

And I think Popper is even really close to having the right demarcation criteria. But it's not actually empirical versus non-empirical. It should have been having content that can be falsified, which might be logical content, not empirical content, versus not having such content. And that a true metaphysical theory would be one that can't be falsified at all, has neither falsifiable content logically or empirically.

Once you realize that, you realize that Popper really did sort of have the wrong demarcation line because his theory belongs in the set of theories that can be falsified via logical content. I'm saying logical content, but it's actually a bigger bucket than that. It could be falsified by being at odds with another best theory. There's quite a number of things that I would consider to be objective criticisms that move you into the better camp, right?

And so I will admit that critical rationalism is not an empirical theory. I've got no problem with that. And if you want to make a demarcation between empirical and non-empirical, that's fine. I just don't think that's the important demarcation line. I think that what we really want is we want a comparison between critical rationalism, which can be falsified logically, and something like, say, Miesian...

um, Austrian economics, which he very proudly claimed was completely unfalsifiable. And like, those are just two entirely different camps. That's where the demarcation line really should be because we're really talking about good explanations versus bad explanations. And a theory that's not empirical can be very good explanation and a theory that, um, and we need some way to differentiate between bad explanations and, um,

philosophical explanations that are good explanations. And so I'm suggesting that falsifiability, which I then called checkability to not confuse it with Popper's use of falsifiability where it's always empirical,

I suggested that as really just being the right criteria. So I'm still using Popper's own criteria, but I'm suggesting that he drew it in the wrong spot, if that makes any sense. Okay. So metaphysical theories can be checkable, but not falsifiable. It can. Some are, right? And I question whether we should even call them metaphysical theories, because that's just not what the term normally means. Like Popper's

epistemology, I don't know most people would ever call it a metaphysical theory. I think only Popperians would call it a metaphysical theory, right? Typically, metaphysical theories are theories that you just can't check at all, right? They're assumptions that are built into your philosophy that

That in no way can be checked or challenged and they don't say anything about the world that constrains it all data will always fit it That's really what I think a true metaphysical theory is in for everyone but popper, right? So anyhow, that's that's how I differ from popper. I don't know how much like in a way. This is a big Descent from popper on my part, but in a way it's not because i'm literally using his own criteria To create a better line

So in some ways, I'm more true to his epistemology than he was, rather than less true to his epistemology, if that makes any sense. Okay. So let me say these statements that I just read from Popper. When I first came across them, I got really excited. Being a fideist myself, and we'll talk about whether I'm really a fideist or not, because that term actually has multiple meanings.

I was really glad to at last see someone willing to admit what to me had seemed obvious for a long time, that rationality and reason is rooted, at least for now, in faith. But having said that, I'm weird. I'm different. I have a religious background. So I wouldn't expect myself to be the typical rationalist. I could...

easily see why most rationalists would not like these statements from Popper, would really dislike these statements from Popper. And I really don't blame them. These are bold and uncomfortable statements that he is making. Okay. And I think we should just be honest that that's the case. Okay. Now let's maybe talk about, given how uncomfortable these statements were,

It's understandable that Bartley, they just did not set well with Bartley. Now I'm not that familiar with Bartley's views. Let me admit that up front. I haven't really had a chance to read Bartley. I think I would want to read Bartley. I think I would really like Bartley.

So I'm going to explain Bartley's views, but understand that this is according to Agassi, right? So it may not be entirely accurate. Just as maybe we could challenge if Agassi has correctly understood Popper, we could challenge if Agassi really correctly understood Bartley, right?

So I'm going to act as if this is just Bartley's views, but upfront, I'm telling you, I'm only getting this from Agassi's paper and I'm just sort of blanking, assuming Agassi is correct, which may not even be true. Okay. But we're trying to assess Agassi's paper. So it makes sense to at least on the face of it, assume he's right so that we can discuss his point of view.

So I can understand why Bartley found Popper's view disconcerting and set out to prove it was mistaken. So Agassi says from the paper, page one, later on Popper's disciple, William W. Bartley, dissented from him and even called him a fideist, much to his Popper's annoyance. All this caused bad blood between the two, which is most regrettable. It is understandable though that

As the matter is very complicated. Let me show this now. So the paper is going to be trying to show that this is a complicated matter. And so it's understandable that there was a bit of a blow up between them. Okay. He says that by trying to solve this, he's hoping to settle the ghosts of Bartley and Popper, which I thought was kind of cute.

So Agassi then sets out to explain both men's viewpoints, what each of them got right and what he thinks each of them got wrong. Agassi ultimately descends from both of them. Okay. And what he feels the correct answer is. Note that Agassi did not see the blow up as being about the demarcation criteria as Wikipedia claimed, but over Bartley's implicitly calling Popper a fideist, fideist.

So apparently, if we accept Agassi's view here, and I guess I do accept Agassi's view here, Popper apparently did not see himself as a fideist like I do and reacted badly to having that label applied to him. Having said that, there may have been more than one thing that they blew up over. So I'm not necessarily saying Wikipedia is wrong, but Agassi was there. So I do maybe give some priority over Agassi's view here that he probably does know what he's talking about.

Um, now in the previous episode, or at least the previous episode that we recorded, I don't know if we'll release them in the same order or not. I called myself a fideist. What is a fideist? So Google gives the following. If you Google it, fideism is a view of religious belief that holds that faith must be held without the use of reason or even against reason. Faith does not need reason. Faith creates its own justification.

I can at least somewhat relate to that definition, and that's why I consider myself a fideist. Well, from that definition, practically all religious people would be fideists, right? So, not necessarily. Some religious people think that they've arrived at their beliefs through rationalism. Fair enough. Okay. And I don't know if religious people would in general think highly of fideists, and I

One of the things that I should probably just admit up front here, Fides aren't really well thought of. So me coming out as a Fides is not an easy thing for me to do. It's got these epistemological implications, which is what Agassi is going to discuss in his paper, that aren't considered very good by most rationalists, that most rationalists really buck against.

So being a fideist is not going to be popular amongst rationalists. I don't think it's going to be popular amongst religious people either, because I think it maybe feels a little bit too much like an agnostic, right? And so I think that it's not necessarily a popular view with anybody. And I'm not even sure my form of fideism would be particularly popular with other fideists, because as we'll see, a lot of them believe some kind of crazy things that I just couldn't relate to.

And my version of fideism, as we'll see as we go through Agassi's paper, would probably be a little offensive to many fideists. Now, with that having been said, let me just say this. When I decided to label myself a fideist, you have to see me as the guy who hates philosophy, right? Other than philosophy of science, I've got little interest or use for philosophy.

So I'm not approaching this having read a bunch of feediest and then said, yeah, that's my theory, right? I'm a guy who read a definition on Google and said, yeah, approximately, and I'll go ahead and allow that label. And there's not a much more deeper going on here with me. And this is important to realize because I'm sure actual real life feediests

held all sorts of views that go well beyond that simple definition. And in fact, they were making, as we will see from Agassi's paper, they were making some fairly deep epistemological claims, which maybe are somewhat questionable. So because of this, I don't know if I would, I'm a certain kind of fideist, but I'm not necessarily claiming the overall philosophy at all.

or any of their writings or anything to do with any other fideist, if that makes any sense. Nevertheless, I am comfortable with it as an approximate label for me. So using this backdrop of the blow up between Popper and Bartley, one of the things I'm going to discuss is, was Popper a fideist as Bartley accused him? And why am I a fideist? Why do I relate to that label, if you will?

So Agassi then explains fideism. He says, page one, fideism is a minimal retreat from classical rationalism. Now, classical rationalism, he's going to use that term all throughout the paper. It's summarized as rationality equals proof. Okay, so it's justificationist version of rationalism that predates Popper. So how could such rationalism ever first prove itself correct? Now, the answer is it couldn't. Okay.

So if it can't, then why should you accept rationalism in the first place? So then on page one, Agassi says, to that end, adherence to fideism advocate some axioms taken on faith as the minimum necessary concession to irrationalism. Okay, so, so far, this sounds suspiciously close to what we just read from Popper. So why would Popper reject being a fideist when, so far at least, this sounds like exactly what

precisely what we just read Popper say. Okay. It almost sounds like he just doesn't like the word or something. It just has implications. He finds offensive where, where we're going to find that's kind of what it is. It's a little more than that. It's because the word might mean some things that really are just wrong in a lot of cases. Okay. So Agassi explains why Popper may not have seen himself as a Fideist. It's because apparently Fideists are,

took the stance that any set of starting axioms was equally good. And this was certainly not Popper's view. Okay. It's not my view either, by the way. So if that's what fideism means, then I'm not a fideist either. Moreover, Popper wasn't a classical rationalist anyhow. He was a critical rationalist, which is rooted in rationality equating to a critical attitude rather than to proofs.

Does this tweak on rationalism somehow undo the need for fideism? So Agassi admits that this is a more difficult question than it first appears. So, spoiler, at least my interpretation of Agassi is that he ultimately comes down on the side of, yes, we don't need faith and reason if we understand reason as a critical attitude. Or at least that's my interpretation. Like, he really kind of says both, and so it's a little hard to tell what he intended.

But trying to explain why this is the case, he takes 26 pages in a frankly difficult to follow argument. Moreover, Agassi is convinced that Bartley's approach to getting to this answer is just wrong. But first, before we get into that, let's try to understand Bartley's argument, or at least Agassi's interpretation of Bartley's argument. So...

Bartley's argument, at a minimum, critical rationalism seems to not have the fatal flaw that classical rationalism has. Since classical rationalism demands proof, therefore demands proof of itself, critical rationalism does not demand proof of anything. So it does not demand proof of itself.

This is the key insight that Bartley tried to utilize to show Popper was wrong and that critical rationalism is in fact comprehensive and in that it lived up to its own standards. So Bartley in Theories of Rationality, page 205 from the collection Evolutionary Epistemology, Rationality, and the Sociology of Knowledge. By the way, that is the same collection of Donald Campbell's papers that I've referred to a number of times.

He says, my theory attempts to build on, to interpret, to correct, and to generalize Popper's theory of falsifiability. I have at different times named my account comprehensively critical rationalism and pan-critical rationalism. And the abbreviations CCR and PCR are often used in the literature to refer to it. That was page 205. Bartley's view was to attack the claim that there could be

anything not open to criticism, including the claim that everything is open to criticism. Now, by doing this, he wanted to make critical rationalism, quote, comprehensive in that it was self-justified on its own standards.

So, oh wait, of course you can't justify anything in critical rationalism, right? Ah, but you can. Recall that critical rationalism simply shifts what we justify. Instead of justifying a theory as correct, we justify a preference for a theory as better than the current alternatives.

So under critical rationalism, Bartley had a much lower standard than classical rationalism. Classical rationalism had to prove itself true. Critical rationalism merely needs to show there is no current better alternative than the theory that you're suggesting.

If Bartley could just show that, then, so Bartley argued, critical rationalism would self-justify on its own standards and would thus be comprehensive. Contrary to Popper's claim that it was not comprehensive. Recall from the quotes, he explicitly says critical rationalism is not, rationalism is not comprehensive. And he doesn't see how it ever could be.

I think the main mistake that Bartley seems to have made was that he seems to have believed that he just needed to show what's possible to criticize the view that everything is open to criticism. If you see this from Bartley's perspective, I do think this makes a perverse sort of sense. If the problem is that a fideist like Popper

in Bartley's mind, is claiming that there is a set of rational principles that must be adopted uncritically, then showing that you can criticize those principles would have necessity disprove the Fidesz position. However, given that we

just barely read Popper's quotes, do you recall anywhere at all where he claimed there was a set of specific rational principles that you must adopt uncritically? Like, it just isn't there, okay? So herein lies the problem. Bartley was, in fact, strawmanning Popper's position, at least to a degree. Moreover, at least according to Agassi, Bartley's solution simply didn't really address the true underlying problem.

So let's go over Agassi's view of both men's positions. So not surprisingly, Agassi sees both men as an error. He thinks Popper is wrong that we need to have faith and reason under the lower standards of critical rationalism. Although he's going to spend 26 pages explaining why that is because it's not an easy thing to explain.

Bart, this is a quote from Agassi, Bartley acutely observed that when Popper said that his proposal to take the faith in reason is a deviation from rationalism, he, Popper, was in error. Or at the very least, the deviation is from classical, not from critical rationalism. That's from page four. On page three, he says, Popper has proposed two brilliant minimizing moves of the standard of rationality.

of the standard of rationality and of the concession to irrationalism. Bartley has shown that there is no need for the two moves one will do. And what Agassi is getting at here is that you don't need the faith, you just need the lower standards of critical rationalism. This is why I read Agassi's paper as ultimately disagreeing with Popper, okay?

Here, Agassi means that Popper argued for, essentially, from a Fidesz point of view, two starting axioms, accept reason on faith, and accept reason is a critical attitude, not proof. But Agassi is, if I'm reading him correctly, I just gave you the quote, so decide for yourself, he is saying that Bartley was correct that actually you only need one starting axiom, accept reason is a critical attitude.

So far, Agassi seems to be agreeing with Bartley against Popper. But Agassi also thinks Bartley's proposal for how to solve the problem doesn't work. So page three, it's a shame that Popper had not admitted that we don't need faith and reason to justify critical rationalism. That's me inserting something so it makes more sense, the quote in context.

Suggesting instead that Bartley just improved the wording of what he, Popper, had intended to advocate all along. He, Popper, denied that he made the mistake that Bartley had attributed to him. It is likewise a shame that Bartley conflated his valid criticism of Popper with his, Bartley's, own alternative to it. Only the criticism, not the alternative theory to the criticized theory, is uncontestable.

The errors on both sides led to an impasse. In desperation, Bartley called Popper a fideist and Popper took offense. My aim here is to rectify these two errors and thus restore the peace between their ghosts. So what is Agassi's solution? Now we spend 26 pages. I'm going to try my best to explain what I think Agassi's solution is. There's one aspect to it that I'm honestly not sure what he intended.

And because of that, there may be other places where I'm misinterpreting him. So this is one of those cases where I'm going to give my best analysis as a layman, interested layman, doing my best to make sense of this. I highly recommend you go read the paper for yourself and form your own opinion. Okay. I will give the quotes and I will try to show why I think this is the right way to understand Agassi's argument.

So what is Agassi's third way solution between these two warring giants? Unfortunately, Agassi's argument, as I just said, is a bit difficult to make sense of. I'm going to do my best here. Agassi's a clever writer, but he writes in a roundabout way rather than coming out and explaining himself directly. But here is a summary of Agassi's view in his own words.

He says on page 4, "My alternative to the framework is the idea that rationalism is a working hypothesis. Thus, it is neither a basis for rational thought nor an object of faith, but simply an assumption that facilitates rational deliberations." Now, this may sound perfectly clear. In fact, when I read that paragraph, I thought for sure I now understood what Agassiz's view was.

Um, then I finished reading the paper and I was a lot less clear. I understood what this statement actually meant. And I will, I will discuss the problem being the term working hypothesis. I will get into why that's a problem as we go along. So let me explain what I thought he originally meant. I thought Agassi was arguing that the theory that we should use reason and be rational was a critical rationalist best theory of sorts.

It is perfectly open to criticism, and it isn't assumed to be a correct, but there isn't a good competing alternative available, so we adopt it for now. If this was true, then Bartley is correct that critical rationalism self-justifies as the preference for reason rationality without needing an uncritical axiom such as faith as a starting point. But a careful read of Agassi suggests that isn't quite what he is arguing.

Which is good because I'm going to argue that that would have been an incorrect point of view. So reason can't qualify as a best theory under critical rationalism is what I'm going to argue. And therefore, I'm going to argue that Bartley was actually wrong about that. Is this then what Agassi was arguing? The first part comes very close to being how I read his paper.

He first points out that classical rationalism, rationality is proof, was hopeless on its own terms. You can't prove anything, really. So, of course, you can't prove classical rationalism either, thereby making it, on its own terms, irrational. But Agassi argues Popper changed that to critical rationalism, that is, rationality is disproof.

and argues that this adjusts the standard to something more reasonable. So, page 18, he says, Agassi says, Popper offers a solution to the problem of rationality, not a logical truth, but a conjecture. The novel theory that disproof suffices for the advancement of knowledge in general, and of science in particular. How does he know this disproof suffices? He does not. It is his conjecture.

This is important, since critical rationalism doesn't believe in justification via proofs, there is no need for it to prove that disproofs are sufficient to be rational. Indeed, it merely needs to conjecture that they are. Still, Agassi claims, though, that this is actually a difficult question, and as we'll see, this is correct. It is a difficult question.

Agassi then shows that it isn't really possible to take a full irrational stance, that even the fideists do not take a full rational stance. So page eight, the advantage of unreason, however, is that it is licensed for the use of poor arguments. I thought that was funny the way he put that. But Agassi points out that rationalists

um do advocate for using their intellect and even rationalism in many cases they merely don't see it as authoritative so this is an important point and i'm really glad agassi gets it because it's really common for rationalists to say something like well if irrationalism works go try to live your life irrationally let's see how well it goes for you but that's a misunderstanding because

A fideist isn't claiming that they're going to live their life irrationally. They're claiming it's not authoritative to live your life rationally. It's a totally different claim, okay? So given a fideist view, there's nothing inconsistent about this. So I can appreciate that Agassi brings this point up. And as I said, I've often seen people try to argue this and it's the wrong argument, right?

But irrationalism is not a claim that we should never use reason. It's just that it isn't authoritative, or at least a fideism is, depending on whether you see fideism as a form of rationalism or not. So it's strange. It isn't strange at all that an irrationalist, if they're a fideist, may choose to be rational when doing, say, logic or math.

But then why bother claiming irrationality at all? So page eight, he says, the irrationalist literature has many answers to this questions that serve as mere working hypotheses. Notice that he refers to it as a working hypothesis, which is what he sees critical rationalism as. So he's making a circle here. More on working hypotheses later, but this choice of words is no accident because Agassi is claiming rationality is a working hypothesis too.

So on page nine, he says, indeed, they may add, they may add, one may endorse quite arbitrarily any presupposition as the initial basic axiom for rationality. So Agassi points out that this seems to suggest that a fideist would be open to the utter arbitrariness of

absent of logic, of the choice of initial basic axioms. That's an actual quote from him. But in reality, there's only a small set of alternative options that tend to be available. Typically, either, he says, induction or traditions of our fathers are often proposed.

So Agassi argues that apparently even fideists don't accept that extreme idea that the starting axioms are utterly arbitrary. Or put another way, even if fideists are right that rationalism can't self-justify and thus must be accepted on faith, it wouldn't save the most extreme and arguably the most true forms of fideism where the initial starting axioms are entirely arbitrary. It is even arguably, Agassi argues,

a bit self-undermining, page 14, especially since finding any rationale to the fideist's initial basic axiom deprives it of its arbitrariness and so of its very fideism. So it's self-undermining. Moreover, fideists would technically be open to changing their starting axioms if the current ones don't work as well as some others.

So, Agassi says, page 13, even if fideism is true and an arbitrary choice of some initial axiom is required, it need not be final. But if this is true, then you can't really say the fideist leap of faith was total or complete or not subject to criticism or revision on rational grounds.

So based on these arguments, Agassi has shown a giant problem with fideism, or at least how it is often interpreted. Maybe we should say a giant problem with the purest forms of fideism. We'll see later that Agassi admits this doesn't necessarily entirely refute fideism, which is good because it doesn't. But it does refute many popular interpretations of fideism.

The next step in Agassi's argument is to ask if critical rationalism is really open to self-criticism. So on page 19, he says, "'Assume that we must choose some initial basic axiom. How can the choice be rational? Given Popper's theory of rationality as openness to criticism, the answer to this question is obvious. To the extent that it is criticizable and open to criticism, it is.'"

Does this apply to Popper's own choice? Should a critical rationalist be open-minded about being open-minded? This is hard to say, he says. So Agassi admits that he's not sure. This is hard to say, he says. However, consider the case of logic. This is where Agassi kind of goes from here. Everyone, both past and present philosophers, ultimately took adherence to logic for granted.

even if they asked if logic was really binding or not. Now, this may seem circular question-begging at first, but Agassi points out that actually the first philosophers had no idea what logic really even was. Like in Plato's day, formal logic just didn't really exist yet, right? Or put another way, even while all philosophers adhered to logic, through all history, adhered to logic without question,

Well, I mean, they did question it, but they still adhered to it. Even if they asked the question, should we adhere to it? They always did. They actually were at the same time criticizing and improving what they even meant by logic in the first place. So you can't really claim they were taking formal logic as their starting axiom and then not allowing it to be criticized. Does that make sense? I mean, this is like a really interesting insight that Agassi's come up with here. Okay.

So, page 20, he says, so logic was open to criticism. Is it still? If yes, can its authority be revoked? In other words, can there be a critical debate on the rationality of logic? And if it is found defective, can it be taken for granted? This depends on what we mean by the demand to reject a refuted version of it.

If it is the demand to improve logic, then yes, we can reject it. If it is the demand to jettison it, then no.

Hence, in the broad sense logic is not given to rational deliberations, and so it is an initial axiom of rationality. Yet in the narrow sense logic is very much given to rational deliberations, and thus is expressed in the perennial effort to improve it. And this is expressed in the perennial effort to improve it. That's page 20.

Then he says, also page 20, this holds for all possible versions of the theory of rationality, since discussion of it, rationality, was always conducted with logic. And then, Popper's claim that rationality is not comprehensive can be seen not as a concession to fideism,

But as making explicit a point that was traditionally taken for granted and that the modern history of logic makes its explicit statement desirable, the broad commitment to logic invites efforts to add its improvement in details. Okay, let's take an aside on fideism here for a moment, now that we've kind of got the broad brushstrokes of Agassiz's arguments.

So now we see Popper's claim that faith is based on reason can possibly be recast only as a broad commitment to reason, not as a set of axioms that we aren't allowed to criticize. If this is what Popper meant, and I would argue that is what Popper meant, is Popper then a fideist? It seems that the answer is, it depends on what you mean by fideist, apparently. So page three from Agassi's paper,

Now, the Fideism that Bartley has saddled Popper with is at the very least not the traditional version, but an improvement on it. It says, welcome critical scrutiny as a progressive. If this is a version of Fideism, then it is an admirable version of it. But Popper and Bartley have confused this idea, be it a version of Fideism or not, with a slightly greater demand.

Do not advocate a theory unless it has passed critical scrutiny. This version of rationalism, be it fideist or not, both Popper and Bartley rejected, and rightly so, despite its superiority over the more traditional versions of fideism. Tell me if you think I'm wrong, but it seems to me this whole thing plays right into my idea that critical rationalism is more of an attitude towards life than anything else.

Than anything else. It's an attitude that says I might be wrong and you might be right. But together by effort, we get closer to truth. Right. I mean, that's an attitude. That's I think that's exactly what Popper's saying. Right. The fact that he's saying it's it's faith based. He's saying, I think you should adopt that attitude.

And I have no proof that you should, and maybe you shouldn't, but I'm advocating for you doing it based on faith that this is worth trying. This is worth doing and that it's going to be positive. Well, faith is such a loaded term though, too. I mean, how do you prove any attitude? Yeah. All right. If we understand fideism as meaning there is an uncritical commitment to certain precise starting axioms, I agree that neither Popper nor I are fideists.

But if we understand it as more of a broad commitment to reason that can't itself be shown to be a best theory, i.e. a theory with no unrefuted competitors, then I think I am a fideist, and I think so is Popper. For what it is worth, apparently Agassi doesn't count this as a real fideist and declares Popper therefore not a real fideist and would probably declare me not a real fideist.

However, Agassi argues this may possibly save a form of fideism, the kind I'm advocating for. On page 20, he says, once this is noted, the discussion of comprehensiveness has to be recast in a more precise manner. For example, the advocates of fideism's commitment to their tradition is less irrational if it's only a broad commitment, while being open-minded about any detail of it.

This is no small difference as it replaces the refusal to engage in intellectual traffic between different traditions with a proposal to have it at least up to a point, but the point is movable. Now, I think that's really great what he just said. I think that this actually explains exactly what I have in mind when I'm thinking of myself as a fideist or what I'm thinking of myself as a religionist.

Okay. I think there just really isn't a problem with a broad commitment to religion, as long as you're open to criticizing the specific details of it and being willing to move the point as to what is allowed, have the point be movable as to how far you will go in the discussion with traffic with other ideas. So this actually is a really good explanation of my complete lack of

seeing a problem with being a religionist and being a rationalist at the same time. Which I think, I know most people do have a problem with that, right? But I think Agassi's quote here really explains why I just don't see it as a problem. So now let's talk about Agassi's view on faith, okay? If we are accepting a broad commitment to reason, though not any specific understanding of reason, does this show Popper's claim that reason is based on faith is wrong?

So here's what Agassi argues. He says, page 21, "'Suppose that the thesis that criticism suffices for progress is refuted. What will this suggest to critical rationalists? Again, it seems it will invite an improvement, not a total overthrow.'"

So Agassi does not see a broad commitment to reason as the same as accepting reason on faith irrationally as Popper claimed, or at least that's how I read that passage. Maybe, Peter, you read it differently than me. Again, I'm tempted here to reason that Agassi is claiming best theory status for a broad commitment to reason, and therefore no faith is required because it self-justifies on its own standards.

And if so, I feel like he's going about justifying it, quote unquote, justifying it in a way inconsistent with critical rationalism. However, Agassi makes it fairly clear that this isn't what he's claiming. And let me read the actual quotes. In fact, Agassi never once in this paper claims a broad commitment to reason is in fact a best theory without competitors. Instead, he calls it a working hypothesis. Now, here's the thing.

The term working hypothesis might just be a synonym for best current theory. I mean, isn't that the way we would talk about, say, general relativity? We would say, well, you know, general relativity, it's false. We know it's false, but it's our current best working hypothesis. And here we're using the word working hypothesis to really mean best current theory, and it has no good alternative competitors.

So if it's tempting to read Agassi as meaning by working hypothesis, best current theory. Granted, the term best current theory probably is more Deutschian critical rationalism, and we wouldn't expect Agassi to use those specific words. But I don't even see the concept in his paper, right? At least not stated clearly. There's some places where he maybe hints at it, but he never states it clearly. And as we've seen at times, he does talk at times as if

Working hypothesis means best current theory, but he makes a particularly clear statement that this isn't his intent. So page five, he says, what characterizes a working hypothesis most is its fluidity. There is no commitment and hardly any reason to it. Its adoption is for a lark. One may even take it on a whim, though on occasion it is common sense.

It was noticing this paragraph that made me realize that Agassi never actually comes out and claims best theory status for critical rationalism. He is only claiming it as a working hypothesis that we're exploring. Now, to be sure, he then goes on to use the example of Jews during World War II refusing to save Jews in Europe because, quote, nothing they would do would make a difference.

And he points out that this theory seems inherently inferior to the theory we can in fact sometimes make a difference. And again, it seems to me when he uses arguments like this that he's tacitly claiming that his working hypothesis is actually a best theory that has no current better competitors. So honestly, this is why I'm a bit unclear what which he intends here. And I'm even tempted to claim he wants to have it both ways.

So let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Agassi is not claiming best theory status for critical rationalism. But doesn't that then mean that Popper was right after all? We did choose reason and rationality as our working hypothesis based on a whim, or hardly any reason to it, to quote Agassi here. Or as Popper put it, we chose reason on faith. So if reason and rationality really are just a working hypothesis, but not a claim to best

current theory status, then I admit I do not see the difference between Popper's claim that reason is based on faith and Agassi's claim that it is a working hypothesis. Those two seem the same to me. But what if we assume Agassi is claiming his working hypothesis is, in fact, a best theory, meaning it has no real competitors that haven't been refuted or at least strongly criticized?

Okay, that is what i'm going to consider next Okay, this is going to take a bit more to kind of walk through and this is my biggest side where i'm going to try to explain my Opinion on this subject. Okay

However, before I do that, go on to criticize this view, let me admit that Agassi has made some real progress here. I found the way he put this as a broad commitment to reason, but not to any specific axioms. That's a really helpful, clarifying thing that he has brought up in this paper. And I think that's marvelous, okay? I certainly hadn't thought of it that way before reading his paper. I'm now working that idea into my own thought processes, okay?

So Popper surely didn't make it clear he's only talking about a broad commitment to reason, not any specific set of axioms. This does make the faith and reason seem, if this is what Popper actually means, and I do think it is what he means, it does make the faith and reason seem a heck of a lot more reasonable as it were.

And maybe this is Agassi's point. If we've chosen to follow a broad commitment to reason as our working hypothesis, even if it was based on what Popper calls faith, it is a benign form of faith compared to what Bartley was claiming Popper was advocating for. That's at least a possible way you could read Agassi. In fact, Agassi, somewhat surprisingly, points out a form of fideism itself can be saved in this way. And

Recall, I already used this quote. Recall, he said, the broad commitment to logic invites efforts at its improvement in detail. But this is how the passage continued. Once this is noted, the discussion of comprehensiveness has to be recast in a more precise manner. For example, the advocates of fideism's commitment to their tradition is less irrational if it is only a broad commitment, while being open-minded about any detail of it. Okay, so...

So let's summarize, best we can, Agassi's argument briefly. Barley was correct that Popper was wrong to argue that we need to start with faith and reason as an irrational starting point. Or maybe that's not quite right. Maybe Agassi is instead saying, yes, Popper was correct that faith and reason is a necessary starting point, but only as a broad commitment, not as a specific set of axioms. I'm still unclear which of those he actually says. He kind of says both.

But Bartley's proposal for how to solve this problem, Agassi claims, was itself incorrect. Instead, we should, according to Agassi, understand rationalism as a hyper-stable working hypothesis. Agassi also argues that rationality is somewhat similar to logic, where you can talk about

all you want about how maybe logic isn't a correct hypothesis, but ultimately there's really isn't an alternative available other than, other than formal logic. Therefore, I mean, there are other forms of logic that have been suggested, but I think it's probably safe to say that they really haven't been competitive with, uh, regular deductive logic that propositional logic or, um, first order logic that, uh,

is the more common versions of logic. Therefore, Agassi admits that at a broad level, yes, we are not open to jettisoning rationality. It is unclear if Agassi is saying this because there are no alternatives or if we are simply committed to it on faith. But on any specific view of rationality, it is open to revision and improvement. So now let me go into my view and my

criticism of trying to read Agassi as claiming that critical rationalism has best theory status. So I think Agassi's argument is better than Bartley's for sure. I think it is very insightful to point out that logic has no real alternatives, and we continually improved it for centuries, and may yet improve it again. He is also correct that logic is hooked at the hip with rationality.

So on page 20, he says, this holds for all possible versions of the theory of rationality, since, to repeat, discussion of it was always conducted with logic. And I think I agree with him that if Popper was a fideist, he's my kind of benign fideist that has only a faith-based broad commitment to reason rather than a specific set of unchallengeable axioms. But I feel like Agassi failed to answer the real question. Do we accept...

at least as of today, reason on faith. Indeed, it's unclear if his working hypothesis was a claim to Beth's theory status or not. He sometimes seems to me to say yes, and he sometimes seems to me to say no. So here's my answer. Yes, all rationalists, at least as of today, accept a broad commitment to rationalism based on faith. That is my conjecture,

I have now stated it far more clearly than Agassi did, and thus it will be easier to criticize. This is how it should be. The choice to state what you mean clearly to make criticism easy is what critical rationalism is all about. So why do I believe a commitment to rationalism is ultimately based on faith? Let me make my argument to you before you judge my conjecture. To see why this is, let me use a thought experiment inspired by my real life,

that I once offered to a crit rat friend to help him understand why I felt Popper's argument that reason is based on faith was actually correct. He wasn't sure he agreed. Now, many of you know, because I've said it on this podcast, that my sister is dying of cancer. When I first heard this, it threw me into a very deep depression that lasted for maybe a year. I've lost loved ones before, my grandparents, but I've never lost someone younger than me before.

So the situation was a shock to me and I had troubles learning to deal with it. I had a thought cross my mind during this period. This is maybe not the best thought, but it did come to my mind. Would it ever make sense to say, try to talk my Christian dying sister into believing there is no afterlife? Now to be sure, let me be clear. I'm not an atheist. I'm a religious myself and I'm quite open to the possibility of an afterlife. Although

I'm also quite open to the possibility that it'll be a Tiplerian, Deutchian-style, Omega Point-style afterlife. So I personally would never be someone who would argue to that, to her anyhow, because that's not what I believe.

But the thought occurred to me, what if I was an atheist rationalist? What if I sincerely thought that part of the rational worldview is that there is no afterlife and that is a rational principle that a rational person will come to accept? In other words, what if I was a hardcore dyed-in-the-wool atheist rationalist and I didn't believe in an afterlife? As most atheist rationalists

do not believe in afterlife. So this isn't so weird, right? I mean, the weird thing would be an atheist rationalist that does believe in an afterlife. They do exist, but they're pretty rare. It seems to me that it would be stupid and immoral for me to try to convince a dying loved one on their deathbed that death is the end and there is no afterlife if they currently believed in an afterlife. So talking with this crit rat friend, we were discussing

whether or not critical rationalism was ultimately based on faith or not. Do we agree with Popper or do we not agree with Popper? And I was trying to explain why I felt Popper was correct that faith was required as a starting point for reason. So I told him I wanted to offer him a thought experiment based on what was happening with me with my sister.

I asked him if it would ever make sense for me to try to talk to my dying Christian sister, talk my dying Christian sister into believing in a lack of afterlife given her circumstance, even if that were true. And he said to me, you are clearly asking the wrong question. The correct rational question is how should you relate to your dying sister? And who knows, maybe there will come a situation where you can talk to her about the lack of an afterlife.

Now this response is interesting for a few reasons. First, this guy knew I wasn't an atheist. So he should have been obvious this was just a hypothetical question. And I thought I had made it clear that this was just a hypothetical question that I was using as a way to try to explain to him my viewpoint.

that I was not actually asking him for advice on how to interact with my sister. I was trying to simply use a thought experiment to help explain my answer to why I felt Popper was correct that reason is based on faith. It just didn't make sense for him to pretend that I was instead asking him for advice on how to interact with my dying sister. So I thought, well, maybe I wasn't clear. Maybe he actually thinks I am asking him for advice on how to interact with my dying sister.

So I clarified and I wrote back to him and I made it very, very clear that I was not asking for advice on how to interact with my dying sister. I was using a real life personal scenario that was on my mind because it's impacting me today to help him understand through a thought experiment why I thought Popper was probably correct.

And if he was willing to actually give the thought experiment a thoughtful answer to my question, instead of just changing the subject and talking about how I should interact with my sister, that he would see that it would help him see where I was coming from and that it was maybe even a valid criticism of what he was suggesting. So at this point, the crit rat friend wrote back to me and he repeated to me again that I was asking the wrong question and that instead the real question was how to interact with my sister.

So I realized at this point that he was not going to give me an answer to this question. And not even as a hypothetical to allow me to help explain my viewpoint and to tacitly allow a criticism of his view. So I let the subject drop. So please note that my sister listens to this podcast. So technically, I just had this conversation with her. And she's probably going to bring it up to me and talk with me about it. Maybe I'm not completely getting...

Your issue with his response. This is a good response, right? I mean, if I guess my thought when you pose this was kind of similar in that if your sister or in any similar situation, if someone is opening is open and wants to know about your views and is open to talking about your ideas with you, you should do that.

But you shouldn't just go around trying to convince people of things, whether it's an afterlife or not, or particularly if it's going to be potentially emotionally damaging to them. So I think you just said – so you're right. That's exactly the right answer, Peter. So let me note –

That if I had been asking for advice how to interact with my sister, his answer was entirely spot on in every conceivable way. Fair enough. This isn't a small point, okay? And you just explained exactly why. For the simple truth is that the relationship matters more than trying to convince people of the truth. At some level, we all know this, even if we sometimes forget it in practice. This very fact...

Seems like a tacit answer to the question I was actually posing. Okay. That it really does not make sense to try to rip away somebody's false belief. Here we're assuming it is even is a false belief. I'm not convinced of that, but rip away somebody's false belief. That's actually comforting to them.

As they're dying. Okay, and we may not maybe we're not even talking about when you're dying I'm intentionally picking a circumstance that makes this as as bold lines around it as we possibly can to make a point. Okay We all kind of get this we get That the world is a complicated place and that it really would be an immoral act to say well

Rationally, you'd be better off if you didn't believe in an afterlife here. We're assuming that there is no afterlife for the sake of the hypothetical. It just doesn't even make sense, right? Like it literally is just a bad thing to do. It's an immoral thing to do. Okay. Yeah. And we all kind of just know that. So instead, the right thing is to ask the question, how best should I interact with this person?

Let me say, I found it interesting that he intentionally turned a checkable theory into

Built on a universal law into a purely metaphysical theory that couldn't be tested or checked and what I have in mind here Is where he says, you know, who knows maybe it would come up in conversation Well, of course, that's not even the question i'm asking i'm asking really would it make sense to try to talk her out of it? It's got nothing to do with whether you should or shouldn't talk about your personal beliefs with this person It might make perfect sense to talk to a christian about how you don't if you're an atheist You don't believe in an afterlife

That isn't the subject that was under discussion, or at least it wasn't what I was offering in the thought experiment. Okay. So why did he throw that on there? Let's, let me put this in a way that I think will make it very clear. I was in essence criticizing the following universal law. I was trying to show a problem with the following universal law. And here it is. It is always the case that it is better to know the truth than to be deceived by a delusion.

I'm offering a proposed counter-example to that law. I'm refuting that law as universal. The fact is, is that it is rarely, if ever, a good idea to rip away from a dying person a belief in heaven and replace it with a belief that death is just the end. When phrased in this way, it seems pretty obvious that the proposed universal law does not survive counter-examples. So instead, what he tried to replace it with was, well, who knows? Maybe it will come up in conversation.

So this is no longer a theory that is a universal law. It's an existential theory. So there is no possible way to disprove it by counterexample. It's a theory intentionally designed to be resistant to refutation. Many will understand why I'm saying this. I'm invoking Popper's asymmetry of falsification versus verification. A theory that is a universal law can only be falsified and never verified. But a theory that is an existential statement can only be verified and can't be falsified.

So the theory, who knows, maybe it will come up in conversation, can only be verified and can't be falsified, thereby making it a less criticizable to its counterpart. Let me make this even a little bit more clear. And I'm sorry I'm dwelling on this. This is not really the happiest subject. And it's something that's very personal for me because I'm going through this right now. And it is something that is on my mind because I am a rationalist. And it's something that crosses my mind all the time.

you know, my commitment to religion versus my commitment to rationalism. There is a story. This is, I came across on Quora. You know, on Quora, you ask questions. Somebody asked, how would an atheist ever possibly comfort a dying person, you know, with their beliefs? You know, a dying Christian or a dying person who believed in the afterlife. So the question was clearly meant as an attack on atheists.

But one very clever atheist figured out a way to turn it into an attack on the religious person asking the question. So here's the story that the atheist told on Quora. The atheist was working with a dying child. The child was scared. The child admitted to this atheist that her apparently Christian parents had told her about heaven and it sounded dry and scary. And so she was scared of dying because of this. So what did the atheist do?

The atheist lied to the child and told, she said, used the word lie, by the way, and told the child that there was an afterlife, but it was full of clowns and princesses and things that a child would find appealing. So she told the child exactly what the child wanted to hear to comfort the child as much as possible because the child is dying. That was just the right thing to do.

The atheist writing on quora then spared no expense using the story to show why it's actually religious people That are wrong to insist on their belief in heaven in a situation like this because that was just scary for the child and it wasn't helpful um

By comparison, the atheist was pointing out that she was free to lie about whatever afterlife was necessary to comfort the child. So touche, you know, she actually did a fairly good job of turning that question, which I think really was kind of question stated in malice towards atheists into a response that was malice back to the person who had made the question. It's interesting though, that this answer is more than a bit self-undermining. If my friend had been willing to take the thought experiment,

What it really does is it exposes a potential problem with rationality that is difficult, but I'm going to say not impossible to solve. It is a problem that, at least on the surface, seems like the true and the good do not always align.

This is an idea that dates back at least as far back as Plato. So it's not like some idea I'm coming up with. This is the trolley problem, right? Conflict between utilitarianism and deontological morality, right? So that might be a subset of this problem. Okay. So the idea of the true and the good. So...

Let me try to find an example that isn't... I mean, the one example I'm using with a dying person, that's a good example here. Assuming, do we lie to the dying child to make them feel better? Yeah. Or do we tell them the truth? That's right. That seems like what the heart of the matter is. I mean, I don't have an easy answer, but for myself, I guess for myself, though, if I was...

I would probably want people around me to at least tell me their idea of what's true. I will say that. But you'd be open to either way, right? Whatever their belief was? Well, sure. Yeah. But I would want to be surrounded by...

by truth but you know i'm not truth about their belief about what they believe sure as opposed to what i'm not did with lying to the child i'm i'm not a i'm not a child though and and you know it's it's just complicated yes so you know i'm going to give a few more examples here what i mean by the true and the good do not always align or it seems that the true and the good do not always align i'm not making the claim that they don't always align i'm

saying that it may seem like they do not. And that's a problem that has to be addressed. So we intuitively know that you do not rip away from a dying child, their belief in an afterlife, that this would be an immoral act. And it seems to be the case, even if you sincerely believe it is rational to not believe in an afterlife.

So I say seems because honestly, I'm not sold on this idea personally. But my purpose wasn't to argue that it was true. It was to help my crit rat friend understand the problem Popper was struggling with when he said reason was based on faith. Or at least the problem I think Popper was struggling with. So even my crit rat friend shows signs of clearly understanding this problem, even though he wouldn't discuss it. The very fact that he would change the subject...

and not address the subject head on is a sort of tacit understanding that this is an issue. Okay. Um, the answer really is uncomfortable and I don't blame him for wanting to change the subject and instead talk about, well, how should you relate to an individual? Um, I have a term for this supposed, for this idea that supposed idea that falsehoods can be better than truth. I call them high utility falsehoods.

This is a philosophical idea that is worthy of understanding and making sense of and trying to solve the problem of their possible existence. I don't know that I believe high utility falsehoods do exist, but one could definitely argue for their existence. So I say possible existence because, in fact, it may be that high utility falsehoods simply do not exist at all. It's actually, strangely as this may sound, a matter of cosmology.

So we can imagine realities where high utility falsehoods do exist, that they're logically consistent worlds. All the major world religions have some sort of cosmology that gets rid of high utility falsehoods. In fact, I would even dare say that's one of the main purposes of religion is to create a mythology that gets rid of high utility falsehoods. Um...

But we can just as easily imagine realities where they do exist, and that that's part of just how reality actually is. So what do high utility falsehoods have to do with belief in reason and rationality? So I suspect the connection is mostly obvious, but if not, reason and rationality are proposed methods of finding the truth. Religion or tradition is also often a proposed method of finding the truth. So if high utility falsehoods do exist,

not claiming they do, in a cosmology where reason and rationality are in fact the best way to find the truth, then this leads to a potential problem in that it is no longer clear if we should want to find the truth all the time. So this is the basis for the Lovecraftian view of reality. So Lovecraft, he took this idea that the true and the good do not align,

and that the truth can actually be bad, and that a delusion could be better. And he built his entire horror mythos from this intriguing idea, okay? Is this just your interpretation of Lovecraft, or is this a common thing? No, he's written about it. This is common? Okay, okay, okay. It's just curious. So yeah, understand Lovecraft was someone who was mentally ill, right?

I mean, like that's what we would say today. I'm not sure they had an understanding of that back then. He was depressed. Yeah. And he just sort of found a lot of life kind of horrifying. And he talked about how his writings about the horrors of life through the symbology of elder gods and things like that was very comforting to him. I'd have to go find the actual quote.

Someone who might be even a better example is Thomas Ligotti, who's thought of as the modern Lovecraft. His stories are really straightforwardly about the horrors of life, where he'll write about a horror story about what it's like to have to go to work every day. And this symbolism, the horror elements and the real life elements overlap in such a way that you do not, it's impossible to miss, he's actually talking about real life.

And by the way, again, Thomas Ligotti is mentally ill and his life is horrifying. And so he's writing about what his life is actually like. So this idea of high utility falsehoods is not really an uncommon idea. I mean, you've probably never heard the term high utility falsehoods. I invented the term. The concept itself is a well-known idea dating way back, probably before Plato. Okay. And it's the idea that the true and the good diverge at times, right?

Now, it seems like half of all movies and TV shows, they make some sort of moral dilemma into the story where the main character can't decide if they need to tell the truth or if the truth is just too hurtful to be worth telling. So, you know, Superman lying about a secret identity to protect his loved ones. I mean, this is super common in Hollywood, right? And often the hero comes to realize that the truth is just too hurtful and they lie about

And often we're led to believe, by the way the story is told, that this was the moral answer. Now, of course, Hollywood likes to also flip that. And they maybe just as often instead show how the lie caused the house of cards to fall down. And this little tiny, seemingly harmless lie that was meant to protect people instead destroyed everybody's lives or whatever. Hollywood tells both stories. They like to have it both ways.

And honestly, fiction is a fantastic but safe way to explore the problem of high utility falsehoods from the safety of your home. So I really kind of approve of the fact that Hollywood will explore this going both directions and that they don't always do it just one way or the other. So what does any of this have to do with pauper, Agassi, and fideism? So I'm glad you asked. Agassi tacitly, or maybe not so tacitly, tries to connect rationality to logic.

And to a degree, he makes sense. Sure, logic is how we cash out all rational arguments. So there seems to be a tacit argument here, maybe, that Agassi isn't merely offering a working hypothesis, but a best current theory hypothesis. Though he never actually claims this. But when I read his paper, I just can't help but feel that he's intending for you to get that feeling.

The problem being that a working hypothesis, as I said, might be an initial conjecture that you're attached to enough to take the risk of exploring it further, or it might be a hypothesis that you adopted because there was no better alternative available. And I can't help but feel that Agassi is hoping for an argument by analogy. And here's what I think the analogy he's arguing is. And again, it depends on how you interpret Agassi. Maybe I'm wrong about this.

I think the argument is this: logic is a current best theory and a current working hypothesis, and it's similar with reason. So why... similar to reason. So why can't reason also be a best working theory, a working hypothesis, and a best current theory? So let's assume, just for the sake of argument, this is his intent, and let's analyze this argument. So I find Agassi's approach here unsatisfying in that I can't tell if he's actually arguing for this or not.

But let's use logic as an example here. So let's take the rule, if A, then B. Given A, therefore we know B. Now, I do not attempt to prove that correct or justify it. I simply propose it as a working hypothesis that you're welcome to try to refute. But I'm proposing that it universally holds as part of my conjecture. So if you can give me a counterexample to that, I'm clearly refuted.

I suspect you won't be able to give me a counter example to that. You're welcome to offer an alternative theory of logic, so long as I get to criticize it too. But I think this is basically an impossible task. This is why logic isn't merely a working hypothesis, it is a best current theory, okay? There are no known counter examples to logic. That's why it's a best current theory.

But the possible existence of high-utility falsehoods calls into question if reason and rationality have an equivalent best theory status, as logic does. To use what I think is a better analogy here, it's like we discovered that in real life, sometimes if A implies B, and we know A, B occasionally just isn't true anyhow. Not very often, but occasionally. That doesn't actually happen in real life, but what if it did?

Because of this, I'm going to boldly declare that adopting reason does not have a best theory status because there are competing theories of how to live one's life that seem to have not yet been refuted as inferior life choices, even though they may be less rational at times. To prove that, let's start with the assumption that there is a universal law that rationality and reason are always the better choice.

It seems to be trivially easy to come up with counter-examples to this supposed universal law, thus refuting it, such as the ones we've been discussing, plus the hundreds of thousands of Hollywood movies that are about this. You might convince me that it is usually the best policy for individuals to be rational, maybe even overwhelmingly so. But if this is true, then clearly it must be rational to only accept reason if it is of positive utility for us.

which seems undermining to the idea of reason. So as Agassi points out, fideism simply does not see rationality as authoritative. That doesn't mean we're not claiming you should always be irrational. So there's a well-known term for terms that are used for this problem. It's the idea of epistemic rationality versus instrumental rationality. Those are not terms I invented.

Epistemic rationality is how you would normally think of rationality. It's about how to best go about being rational so that you come to the truth. And instrumental rationality is more like what we mean when

in economics, when we claim everyone's a rational actor. We simply mean that we expect them to know what they want and value the most, and that really nobody else gets to decide that for them. But we're not necessarily claiming that it's rational and what their actions are rational in an epistemic sense. So Hollywood's obsession with the true and the good diverging is

is really an obsession with the potential storytelling possibilities that come out of the interesting apparent fact that there are two kinds of rationality that can diverge.

Does this mean that rationality is, in fact, not always a best policy? Well, I'm not convinced of that, nor am I claiming it. But I am claiming that Popper was right that the choice to adopt a rational view is, in fact, a leap of faith. Or to put it another way, the choice to be rational in the epistemic sense is not currently a best theory about how to live your life. In other words, instrumental rationality.

If you choose to live your life that way, you did not do so by reasoning into that position for that is currently impossible.

And here I'm also assuming that you're not just fooling yourself because of course everybody claims that they're rational. You know, literally everybody, no matter how irrational, claims that they're rational. So the choice to be rational, I'm kind of assuming that it's like you're really actually taking a critical attitude and you're not simply fooling yourself into thinking you're taking a critical attitude. So Popper was correct in my view that there is an act of faith

to choose to be reasonable, or to choose rationality and reason as a way to live your life. That at least currently, that that is necessary to do that as an act of faith. Now, I admire Popper that he both recognized this truth and was bold enough to put it into writing, even though it's practically guaranteed that he was going to take flack from his own students and nearly everyone else that considered themselves to be rationalists. So now, based on all this, was Popper a fideist?

So let's go back to the original question. Was Popper a fideist? Well, it depends on what you mean by fideist. Surely he isn't the kind that claims that starting axioms are arbitrary, nor am I, for that matter. Agassi essentially argued that if Popper is a fideist, that he's an improved kind. But I feel it goes too far to assume the word fideist must have a single essential meaning. Popper was advocating for there being no way for rationality to be comprehensive, and he was right about that.

if we're talking about instrumentalist rationality. Bartley and arguably Agassi were therefore wrong in this regard. Or were they? See, here's the problem. I think the simple truth is that Bartley and Agassi were arguing for, yes, critical rationalism is comprehensive, but they really only meant epistemic rationality. And I think maybe they're actually correct about that, if you actually just mean epistemic rationality.

But if you actually mean also instrumental rationality, which is now the question of how to live your life, then I think it actually is not comprehensive for the reasons I've just explained.

and that in fact there is a leap of faith. Now, which was Popper talking about? Well, he was talking about the choice to accept rationality as a critical attitude as a form of how to live your life. Therefore, he was talking about instrumental rationality, not epistemic rationality. So my opinion is both parties are actually correct, but over different kinds of rationality. But...

Popper was more correct in that Bartley and Agassi don't seem to quite understand that Popper was talking about instrumentalist rationality, and they're only talking about epistemic rationality, and they don't even really seem to consider instrumentalist rationality.

but you really need to, it's kind of a really important question because we are talking about the subject of, should you adapt rationality as a basis for your life? Okay. That is an instrumental question, not an epistemic question. But shouldn't we strive to make those align? I mean, don't you think that's a, that's a worthy pursuit to live based on good philosophy? Yeah.

So that's a really good question. And I honestly think that's a question of cosmology.

I think if we live in the right kind of cosmology, the answer to your question is yes. Okay. It all comes back to heat death, right? Yes. So I think if we, I think if we live in a Lovecraftian, if we live in a Lovecraftian cosmology, so that would be elder gods that want to breed us or something. Yeah. You know, then the answer is no, we should not try to make them align. That would actually be a mistake. Okay. Okay. Well, that's a really good answer, actually. Yeah. Yeah.

So there's kind of a leap of faith that we live in the right kind of cosmology where we should try to make them align. And I do think that is what it means to be a rationalist. Well, this ties into our last episode about the inherently meaningful universe versus one ruled by entropy. So if we live in an inherently meaningful universe, we want to...

our instrumentalist rationality and epistemic rationality to align, whereas if we live in something else, a Lovecraftian universe,

Then there's no point in that. Is that what you're saying? It's exactly what I'm saying. Honestly, I don't see how it could be anything but that. If somebody sincerely thinks they could make an argument that if you live in a universe full of elder gods that want to breed you, that you should still be out there seeking the truth using rationality. Like, honestly, that just isn't the case, right? Like, it's not.

So it would be a stupid argument to make because you're wrong. And it's really easy to refute you using reason. So it really does come back down to our cosmology, right? You are making cosmological assumptions when you try to make this choice. And those cosmological assumptions, they probably are based on faith at this point. I don't think they have to be. Like I could imagine a universe, I could even imagine in our future,

where we reach a point where we understand our cosmology well enough

that it becomes obvious that we do live in an inherently meaningful universe, and therefore it makes perfect sense to align instrumental and epistemic rationality. But I don't think we're there. The puzzle like the Omega Point is an attempt to get those aligned, and it was refuted. It's not a best theory status at this point. So I do think at this point we are making a faith leap.

I think that's the way it is, right? I do think that's not the end of the world. I think that rationalists who buck against this, I think they're being irrational when they do that, by the way. I think they're being religionists when they do that. But I think that coming to accept like Popper did, yeah, there's a faith leap here going on. I think that's something you can do. Popper did it, so can you, right? It's not really the end of the world. So let me say this then.

Was Popper a fideist? I think Bartley was accusing him of being a kind of fideist that he wasn't. And therefore Bartley was wrong. And I don't blame Popper for being angry that he was being accused of this false view that he didn't hold. But I do think he is a fideist. Like if you are willing to accept that there is such a thing as this benign form of fideism that Agassi admits exists,

then I do think Popper fits that definition well. Therefore, I would say that at least this benign form of fideism, that is what Popper is, okay? So is critical rationalism comprehensive? Popper argued no, Bartley argued yes, Agassi seems to have argued yes, sort of,

And again, I think it does depend on what you mean by rationality. If you mean epistemic rationality, I think probably Bartley's correct that epistemic rationality is comprehensive. Critical rationalism can, if you're only looking at epistemic examples, can count as a best theory status, not a mere working hypothesis, because I don't know of a better alternative to it, and I can give you several reasons why all the alternatives are worse.

And so if you're only looking at epistemic rationality, I think you can make a really good case that Bartley and Agassi are correct. But the moment you allow for instrumental rationality, and I cannot overemphasize this, it is the more important rationality, okay? The moment you allow for it, I think Popper's entirely right, and they were mistaken.

Okay. I think probably the most, the most generous thing I can do here, charitable read is to say they're both right. But they, one was talking about epistemic rationality and one was talking about instrumental rationality. So I'm going to go with that. That's probably the, the most generous charitable answer I can give to both Bartley and Popper here. Why am I a fetus? It's because I honestly think it's the best,

the current best theory, right? Like, I don't think there's a better theory to feed aism, but I do think you have to take the benign version that Gossie's talking about. And that's the one I'm advocating for. Okay. And I want to want to say again, I wouldn't blame anyone for not being a feed aist because you know what? We do kind of suck. We're saying things nobody wants to hear. We're unpopular with all sides. It just happens to be true, or at least by true, I of course mean the best current theory. So, um,

That's why I am one. As a side note, the fact that Popper did view rationality as a type of religion is what allowed Popper to say things like this. So these are some really great quotes that I took from him that I think go really well with our last podcast where we talked about Popper's views of God, right? So this is from the Open Society and Its Enemies, section 24, which is Ocular Philosophy and the Revolt Against Reason, subsection V or V.

He says,

That's a great quote. Let me give you another one. So he did see rationalism, though he saw it as a kind of faith. He did see it as being very competitive with other kinds of religions or meaning memes. So he went on to say, and this is section, same chapter, but section four now, he says, the 19th century conflict between science and religion appears to me to be superseded.

Since an uncritical rationalism is inconsistent, the problem cannot be the choice between knowledge and faith, but only between two kinds of faith. The new problem is, which is the right faith and which is the wrong faith? What I have tried to show is that the choice with which you are confronted is between a faith in reason and in human individuals and a faith in the mystical faculties of man by which he is united to be a collective faith.

And that this choice is the same as the choice between an attitude that recognizes the unity of mankind and an attitude that divides men into friends and foes, into masters and slaves.

In addition, Popper felt comfortable with the idea that the claim of, so this is on mysticism and religion, but the claim of traditionalists that you do not always, traditionalists always argue that you don't want to do away with tradition or harm it because it may cause society to collapse. Okay. This is like a really common claim. Agassi talks about this in his, in his paper.

Popper took this criticism as being worthy of respect, which may surprise a lot of people. But here's the actual quote. Conjecture refutation, this is chapter 19, the history of our time and optimist view. I may confess that in the issue of faith in man and distrust of man, my feelings are all on the side of the naive liberal optimist, even though my reason tells me that

their epistemology was all wrong and that truth is in fact hard to come by. I'm repelled by the idea of keeping men under tutelage and authority, but I must admit on the other hand that the pessimists who fear the decline of authority and tradition were wise men. The terrible experience of the great religious wars and of the French and Russian revolutions prove their wisdom and foresight.

So I think it was the fact that Popper did see critical rationalism as ultimately being an article of faith is what allowed him to be able to see things like this, to see the complex nuances that actually exist in real life and

Over the struggle of tradition versus criticism, over the struggle of religion versus science, things like this, right? And to come up with, you know, you can't say Popper was necessarily friendly to religion. He was super critical of it if he felt it did something wrong, right? But he was able to take a really complex, nuanced view of it.

And I find it very admirable the way he came up with this, why he did it, his reasoning for it. And I even find the view he ultimately settled into to be a very good view. I don't know if I'm prepared to say it's the best view. I suspect there's multiple views that could vie for that title, but I find it to be one that's of very strong merit, if that makes any sense. And that's it. Okay. Well, thank you, Bruce. That was, uh,

Extremely interesting analysis of that paper. And how did you find that paper anyway? Did someone send it to you? Or is this something you've known about for a while? So probably a couple months ago, I was talking with a crit rat about whether Bartley was correct about

on his criticism of Popper. And he was very staunchly that Bartley was correct. He said, Popper advocated for uncritically accepting certain axioms. That's obviously false. I mean, he was explaining this to me. And I said, you know what? I'm not actually sure that Popper ever actually said any of that or that Bartley correctly understood

what Popper was saying. And then like, like the next day, somebody mentioned that Agassi wrote a paper about the dispute. I'm like, give me that paper. So I got, got the paper. I downloaded it. I didn't read it. I do that a lot. I'll download a paper. I'm going to read later that I'm planning to do a podcast on, but I haven't read it yet. And I, I decided I talked with you and I said, oh, let's do a podcast on this paper.

But I didn't know what the content was when I decided to do that. And then I started to read the paper and I suddenly realized, whoa, by strange coincidence, this is totally a sequel to our last podcast. Yeah. Well, good find with the Fideism link and the Meaningful versus Lovecraftian Universe link. So yes, well done, Bruce. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Hello again.

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