Out of Error: Further Essays on Critical Rationalism

In his new book, Miller returns to his central philosophical interest — to critical rationalism. Readers who are familiar with his previous book Critical Rationalism. A Restatement and Defence (Open Court 1994) know that Miller there reaffirms and further develops Popper's falsificationism and considers it not just a methodological issue relevant to science but a philosophical issue of rationality. In what new directions does Out of Error take us, given the fact that Critical Rationalism presents a pretty comprehensive account of the most important problems of Popper's methodology, including a systematic enumeration of objections voiced by his critics over the years, followed by their elimination? In this review, I will argue that readers will not be disappointed; Miller both provides new insights to the problems he dealt with before and addresses new problems, especially problems concerning applied science, the demarcation criterion, the use of Popper's rationalism against the fashionable postmodern currents, and the employment of paraconsistent logic in falsificationism.

The book can be divided into three main parts: chapters 1, 14 were written in memoriam; in the second part (chapters 2–7) Miller carries out a philosophical investigation of critical rationalism; the third part (chapters 8–13) is more technical and deals with various logical aspects of critical rationalism. I will focus on and discuss mainly the problems of the first part of Out of Error.