When I speak of reason or rationalism, all I mean is the conviction that we can learn through criticism of our mistakes and errors, especially through criticism by others, and eventually also through self-criticism.
A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right

someone who is willing to learn from others — not by simply taking over another's opinions, but by gladly allowing others to criticize his ideas and by gladly criticizing the ideas of others. The emphasis here is on the idea of criticism or, to be more precise, critical discussion. The genuine rationalist does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth; nor does he think that mere criticism as such helps us achieve new ideas. However, he does think that, in the sphere of ideas, only critical discussion can help us sort the wheat from the chaff. He is well aware that acceptance or rejection of an idea is never a purely rational matter. But he thinks that only critical discussion can give us the maturity to see an idea from more and more sides and to make a correct judgement of it.

on freedom -  all life is problem solving  - 1999

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As far as the future is concerned, we should not seek to prophesy but simply try to act in a way that is morally right and responsible.

This means we have a duty to learn to see the present correctly, not through the tinted spectacles of an ideology.

We can learn from reality what it is possible to achieve

But if we see reality through the lens of one of those three ideological conceptions of history, we violate our duty to learn.  The future is open, and we have a responsibility to do our best to make the future still better than the present.   But this responsibility presupposes freedom. In a despotic system we are slaves  and slaves are not fully responsible for what they do. This brings me to my final main thesis.   Political freedom – freedom from despotism – is the most important of all political values.    And we must always be prepared to struggle for political freedom.

It can always be lost. We should never sit back and assume that our freedom is secure
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The tendency of instrumentalism is anti-rationalistic
It implies that human reason cannot discover any secret of our world. Thus we do not know more about the world today than we did four hundred years ago. Our knowledge of facts has not increased: only our skill in handling them, and our knowledge of how to construct gadgets. There is no scientific revolution, according to instrumentalism: there is only an industrial revolution.
There is no truth in science: there is only utility. Science is unable to enlighten our minds: it can only fill our bellies.
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I do not believe in fashions, trends, tendencies, or schools, either in science or in philosophy.    In fact, I think that the history of mankind could well be described as a history of outbreaks of fashionable philosophical and religious maladies.   These fashions can have only one serious function - that of evoking criticism. Nonetheless I do believe in the rationalist tradition of a commonwealth of learning, and in the urgent need to preserve this tradition.
realism and the aim of science - all life is problem solving

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Any attempt to take a step towards a better world, a better future, must be guided by the basic value of freedom.

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I wish to end with this advice : However happy you may be with a solution, never think of it as final

There are great solutions, but a final solution does not exist. All our solutions are fallible.   This principle has often been mistaken for a form of relativism, but it is the very opposite of relativism.    We seek for truth, and truth is absolute and objective, and so is falsity.    But every solution to a problem opens the way to a still deeper problem.
how i became a philosopher without trying  -  all life is problem solving

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I do admit that at any moment we are prisoners caught in the framework of our theories

our expectations; our past experiences; our language.   But we are prisoners in the Pickwickian sense: if we try, we can break out of our framework at any time.    Admittedly, we shall find ourselves again in a framework, but it will be a better and a roomier one   and we can at any moment break out of it again.      The central point is that a critical discussion and a comparison of the various frameworks is always possible.      It is just a dogma – a dangerous dogma – that the different frameworks are like mutually untranslatable languages.

The fact is that even totally different languages (like English and Hopi, or Chinese) are not untranslatable    and that there are many Hopis or Chinese who have learnt to master English very well.     The Myth of the Framework is, in our time, the central bulwark of irrationalism.     My counter-thesis is that it simply exaggerates a difficulty into an impossibility.     The difficulty of discussion between people brought up in different frameworks is to be admitted.     But nothing is more fruitful than such a discussion    than the culture clash which has stimulated some of the greatest intellectual revolutions.
normal science and its dangers - criticism and the growth of knowledge - 1970

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ON DISAGREEMENT

he growth of knowledge depends entirely upon disagreement  .
1994

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ricorda

che è impossibile parlare in modo tale che tu non possa essere frainteso

ci sarà sempre qualcuno che ti fraintenderà

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Sotto l'aspetto quantitativo, come pure sotto quello qualitativo, la fonte di gran lunga più importante della nostra conoscenza - a parte la conoscenza innata - è la tradizione. La maggior parte delle cose che conosciamo le abbiamo imparate da esempi, o perché ci sono state dette, o perché le abbiamo lette nei libri, o imparando come criticare, come accogliere e accettare le critiche, come rispettare la verità.

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L'intuizione e l'immaginazione intellettuali sono estremamente importanti, ma non possiamo fare affidamento su di esse: può darsi che ci mostrino le cose molto chiaramente, ma può anche darsi che ci portino fuori strada. Sono indispensabili in quanto fonti principali delle nostre teorie, ma la maggior parte delle nostre teorie sono, in ogni caso, false. La funzione più importante dell'osservazione e del ragionamento, come pure dell'intuizione e dell'immaginazione, è quella di aiutarci ad esaminare criticamente quelle congetture ardite che sono i mezzi con cui sondiamo l'ignoto.
congetture e confutazioni -  1963

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Observations or experiments
can be accepted as supporting a theory (or a hypothesis, or a scientific assertion) only if these observations or experiments are severe tests of the theory – or, in other words, only if they result from serious attempts to refute the theory, and especially from trying to find faults where these may be expected in the light of all our knowledge, including our knowledge of competing theories .
I believe that this, in principle, solves Bacon's problem .
The solution amounts to this. Agreement between theory and observations should count for nothing unless the theory is testable, and unless the agreement is found as the result of serious attempts to test it. But testing a theory means trying to find its weak spots. It means trying to refute it. And a theory is testable only if it is (in principle) refutable .
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One of the main tasks for human reason is to make the universe we live in understandable to ourselves. This is the task of science. There are two different components of about equal importance in this enterprise. The first is poetic inventiveness ...
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The future depends upon ourselves. It is we who bear all the responsibility .
For this reason, an important principle holds: It is our duty to remain optimists .   Perhaps I should explain this in a few words before ending these notes  .
The future is open  .     It is not predetermined and thus cannot be predicted – except by accident. The possibilities that lie in the future are infinite. When I say 'It is our duty to remain optimists’, this includes not only the openness of the future but also that which all of us contribute to it by everything we do: we are all responsible for what the future holds in store  .
Thus it is our duty, not to prophesy evil, but, rather, to fight for a better world  .

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Every scientist who claims that his theory is supported by experiment or observation should be prepared to ask himself the following question: Can I describe any possible result of observation or experiment which, if actually reached, would refute my theory  ?
If not, then my theory is clearly not an empirical theory. For if all conceivable observations agree with my theory, then I cannot be entitled to claim of any particular observation that it gives empirical support to my theory  .
Or in short, only if I can say how my theory might be refuted, or falsified, can I claim that my theory has the character of an empirical theory  .
This criterion of demarcation between empirical and non-empirical theories I have also called the criterion of falsifiability or the criterion of refutability. It does not imply that the irrefutable theories are false. Nor does it imply that they are meaningless. But it does imply that, as long as we cannot describe what a possible refutation of a certain theory would be like, that theory may be regarded as lying outside of the field of empirical science  .

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To sum up, the question of the acceptance of theories should, I propose, be demoted to the status of a minor problem. For science may be regarded as a growing system of problems, rather than as a system of beliefs. And for a system of problems, the tentative acceptance of a theory or a conjecture means hardly more than that it is considered worthy of further criticism .
the myth of the framework

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I think that we are all philosophers;  that we all accept certain philosophical theories, if only unconsciously. Many of the theories we accept are very poor, and we are often not aware that we have accepted them.  In my view, the main task of philosophy is to examine critically the philosophical theories which people - and I include myself - are liable to accept uncritically ...
tv-discussion - reflexive water_the basic concerns of mankind - fb/kp

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on the pre-scientific level, we are often ourselves destroyed, eliminated, with our false theories - we perish with our false theories .   on the scientific level, we systematically try to eliminate our false theories - we try to let our false theories die in our stead .   when man no longer shared the death of his theories he was emboldened to venture .
modern british philosophy - bryan magee bbc radio interview - fb/popperphilosopher

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I have in lectures often described this interesting situation by saying: we never know what we are talking about .   For when we propose a theory, or try to understand a theory, we also propose, or try to understand, its logical implications; that is, all those statements which follow from it .  But this, as we have just seen, is a hopeless task : there is an infinity of unforeseeable nontrivial statements belonging to the informative content of any theory, and an exactly corresponding infinity of statements belonging to its logical content .    We can therefore never know or understand all the implications of any theory, or its full significance .
unended quest  cap 7 - fb/kp

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Scientific method in politics means the great art of convincing ourselves that we have not made any mistakes, of ignoring them, of hiding them, of blaming others for them, is replaced by the greater art of accepting responsibility for them, of trying to learn from them and of applying this knowledge  .

the poverty of historicism

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possiamo dire che nella nostra ricerca della verità, abbiamo sostituito la certezza scientifica con il progresso scientifico
we can say that in our search for truth we have replaced scientific certainty by scientific progress
fb/kp - the open society and its enemies

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90 anni - 1992
It seems to me that I may be living too long .    Indeed : my nearest relations have all died, and so have some of my best friends, and even some of my best pupils .    However, I do not have a reason to complain .  I am grateful and happy to be alive, and still be able to continue with my work, if only just .    My work seems to me more important than ever   - KP
tkpw.net - intellectus 1992

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La storia dell’evoluzione insegna che l’universo

non ha mai smesso di essere creativo o inventivo

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