Fallibilism

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The fallibilism (from medieval Latin fallibilis "fallible") is an epistemological position after which there is no absolute certainty can give and can not exclude mistakes. A strategy of justification or justification with the ultimate goal of giving an ultimate justification can never lead to success. Therefore, all that remains is to check convictions , opinions or hypotheses again and again for errors and , if possible, to replace them with better ones (see falsificationism ).

In ancient times, Arkesilaos and Karneades are known to represent fallibilistic positions . In modern philosophy, Fries and Peirce should be mentioned. A significant modern fallibilist position is Popper's critical rationalism . Another position is Robert Audi's fallibilistic fundamentalism .

The fallibilistic position presupposes that there is an absolute truth in relation to which the error can take place. Fallibilists are therefore not relativists who deny the existence of an absolute truth. Nor are they nihilists who argue that humans are always wrong. They claim only that he is always wrong can . In this respect, they do not necessarily have to appear as skeptics of truth and assume that there is always and fundamentally reason to doubt all beliefs.

Fallibilism also does not mean that there are no justified beliefs; so he does not yet deny the possibility of a justification. It just says that even the best justification can never rule out possible error. Fallibilistic positions do not claim that beliefs can never be knowledge in the classical sense (well-founded, true belief), but only that there is never any certainty as to whether they are knowledge. The fact that there are no justified convictions and thus no knowledge in the classical sense is only shown by the skepticism of knowledge , which some representatives of critical rationalism (Popper, Miller, Bartley), but not all, represent in addition to fallibilism.

Popper related fallibilism primarily to the statements of empirical science and, in this context, opposed the claim that one could achieve certainty through logical induction (i.e. the conclusion from a single statement to a general statement ). But there are other classes of statements for which the question can be asked whether the fallibilism is valid. These include, for example, the performativa ("I hereby baptize you 'Hans'"), certain psychological self-reports ("Something is hurting me now"), statements of logic ("p ↔ not p") and mathematics ("Root 2 is an irrational number ”), as well as tautologies or analytical statements (“ The sentence: snow is white is true if and only if snow is white ”). Many philosophers are of the opinion that in one or more of these cases absolute certainty can very well be achieved. Some also believe that certain statements are neither true nor false, which is why one cannot speak of error here .

In what he calls the Münchhausen Trilemma , Hans Albert advocates the thesis that fallibilism is universally applicable, regardless of the chosen form of knowledge and the chosen way of reducing it to a firm foundation. There are also different approaches to applying fallibilism to the field of the fundamentals of mathematics . Since one can even question the basics of logic and mathematics, one arrives at the question of a core logic , i. H. a minimum of rules that are required to be able to argue with one another at all.

Hans Albert related fallibilism, understood as a method of critical examination, renouncing the search for ultimate justifications and striving for exact pre-calculation of all consequences of socio-technical interventions, also in the field of rational practice , i.e. in the fields of methodology , ethics , politics , economics Etc.

Remarks

  1. ↑ “Later I called this idea of ​​the uncertainty or fallibility of all human theories, including the best-proven ones, 'fallibilism'. (As far as I know, this expression occurs first in Charles Sanders Peirce.) But of course fallibilism is hardly anything other than Socratic ignorance. ”(Karl R. Popper: The two basic problems of epistemology. Based on manuscripts from the years 1930–1933 , 2nd improved edition Tübingen 1994, p. XXI)
  2. ↑ Hans Albert: Critical Reason and Human Practice , Reclam Stuttgart 1977, p. 36
  3. ^ Imre Lakatos : Infinite Regress and Foundations of Mathematics . In: The Aristotelian Society. Suppl. Vol. XXXVI, 1962; Alexander Israel Wittenberg: On thinking in terms. Mathematics as an experiment in pure thinking. Basel Stuttgart 1957

Web links

Wiktionary: Fallibilism  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations