Overcoming the Justificationist Addiction

Abstract

It is a simple, though ancient, mistake in the theory of knowledge to think that justification, in any degree, is central to rationality, or even important to it. We must cut forever the intellectual apron strings that continue to offer us spurious and unneeded security, and replace the insoluble problem of what our theories are based on by the soluble problem of how to expose their shortcomings. The paper will outline not for the first time the critical rationalism of Karl Popper, taking account of some recent criticism. A brief discussion of the status of the laws of logic provides an illustration of the power of the critical approach.