ABSTRACT
Joseph Agassi [1968, p. 317] Eastern thinking is … far removed from the metacontext of belief, identification, and commitment that one finds in most western philosophies. It is less distant, although still very different, from the fallibilism or critical rationalism of Xenophanes – or of Karl Popper… It is precisely language, he insists, that permits one to dissociate from, to detach from, one’s own positions and hypotheses: to make them into objects, not subjective states, not identified with ourselves, which may then be examined… Unlike most oriental philosophies, … Popper searches for a more adequate model or ‘vicarious representation’ of the world; like the oriental, Popper gives no importance to ‘right belief,’ and searches for a pervasive condition of non-attachment to models and representations generally. For one must detach from, must objectify, one’s theories in order to improve them. The very asking of the Popperian question – ‘Under what conditions would [your] theory be false?’ invites a psychological exercise in detachment and objectification, leading one to step outside the point of view shaped by that theory…
In a fallibilist metacontext, … How can our intellectual life and institutions be arranged so as to expose our beliefs, conjectures, policies, positions, source of ideas, traditions and the like – whether or not they are justifiable – to maximum criticism, in order to counteract and eliminate as much intellectual error as possible?
