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The Evolution of the Extended Order
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11183 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1986 |
10,382 Words |
| Author
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Gerard Radnitzky
Gerard Radnitzky is professor of philosophy of science at the
University of Trier, Trier, West Germany. |
At all levels practical problems include knowledge problems. A theory of action can succeed in analyzing social organization only if it is embedded in an adequate epistemological framework, i.e., a theory about the generation, improvement, and transmission of knowledge. At the same time, epistemology and the methodology of research can profit from applying the "economic" approach, since solving knowledge problems involves action. Unlimited competition--i.e., criticism--in the world of ideas, in scientific research as well as in critical thinking in general, is the intellectual counterpart to the market order (W. W. Bartley, III). Dogmatizing, i.e., the protection of certain ideas from critical examination, is the intellectual counterpart of economic protectionism, which is an attempt to impair or even to eliminate the selection mechanisms. In an important sense internal criticism is relatively unproblematic. There is a good reason for it whenever one discovers a particular inconsistency in a norm-system. It may be a "practical" inconsistency, e.g., when attempting to apply the rules of the system to a particular case, one discovers that the consequences are "unacceptable." Moral and legal systems evolve through endeavors to eliminate such inconsistence. Hence, as Hayek emphasizes, the model for morals is common law, case law, and not the other way around. The problem of criticism becomes more delicate when the issue is one of external criticism, when the critic has to reply to the question whether his criticism is more than simply an objection from a different point of view. In such cases genuine value issues may have to be faced. For a critical rational discussion of the value that has been accorded priority, it is necessary that the value and the value judgments expressing it as well as the argument supposed to support them be made
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