ABSTRACT
A standard criticism of Popper’s philosophy, summed up neatly by Curd and Cover (1998, p. 508), is: ‘it is hard to see how [he] can justifi ably assert that science is rational and objectively progressive when it ultimately depends on purely conventional and arbitrary decisions’. Typically, critics have focused on his discussion of ‘The Empirical Basis’, in which he writes (Popper 1959, pp. 108-109):
From a logical point of view, the testing of a theory depends upon basic statements whose acceptance and rejection, in its turn, depends upon our decisions. Thus it is decisions which settle the fate of theories. To this extent my answer to the question, ‘how do we select a theory?’ resembles that given by the conventionalist . . .
