For a critique of Popper on dialectics see _Open Philosophy of an Open Society_ by Maurice Cornforth.
Don't worry about falsifiability so much Georgie. Live a little.
Charles Brown
>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 02/07 3:12 PM >>>
George Soros writes:
"What reflexivity and self-reference have in common is the element of indeterminacy. Logical positivism outlawed self-referent statements as meaningless, but by introducing the concept of reflexivity I am setting logical positivism on its head. Far from being meaningless, I claim that statements whose truth value is indeterminate are even more significant than statements whose truth value is known. The latter constitute knowledge: They help us understand the world as it is. But the former, expressions of our inherently imperfect understanding, help to shape the world in which we live.
At the time I reached this conclusion, I considered it a great insight. Now that natural science no longer insists on a deterministic interpretation of all phenomena and logical positivism has faded into the background, I feel as if I were beating a dead horse. Indeed, intellectual fashion has turned to the opposite extreme: The deconstruction of reality into the subjective views and prejudices of the participants has become all the rage. The very basis on which differing views can be judged, namely the truth, is being questioned. I consider this other extreme equally misguided. Reflexivity should lead to a reassessment, not a total rejection, of our concept of truth."
Doug