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دیوید میلر (1942-2024) : مدافع بی باک حقیقت
David William Miller, who passed away on Wednesday, 20 November 2024, at the age of 82, was a great epistemologist, philosopher of science and philosopher of logic. He was also one of Karl Popper’s closest assistants, disciples, and colleagues, and, as his webpage on Wikipedia informs us, a ‘prominent exponent of critical rationalism’.
David Miller became acquainted with Popper in 1964 when he enrolled at the Department of Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics and Political Science. While completing his Master’s degree, Popper invited him to become his assistant. This relationship soon turned into a long-life close friendship in which critical dialogues between the teacher and the young student exemplified Popper’s most favourite motto, namely, “I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth”. Popper used to discuss his ideas with his assistant, who later became his colleague, as fellow philosopher of science, and benefit from his penetrating observations. As just one example among many other, more or less similar cases, Miller played a particularly important role in assisting Popper with his ‘Replies to my Critics’ in P. A. Schilpp (ed.) The Philosophy of Karl Popper (1974).
Upon graduating from LSE, Miller moved to the University of Warwick and joined the Department of Philosophy there, initially as an instructor, soon to become a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the philosophy of logic and later a Reader (Associate Professor). While at Warwick, he produced scores of highly informative and insightful papers, book chapters, reviews, two influential books (Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defence 1994, and Out of Error 2006), and edited an important anthology of Popper’s published works (Popper’s Selections 1985). Among his latest papers was “Logical Content and Its Malcontents” which was published in this Journal (Volume 17, Issue 42 , June 2023, Pages 281-297, https://doi.org/10.22034/jpiut.2023.16588).
One of the key aims of this impressive array of scholarly publications was to explain and elucidate the finer details of critical rationalism, and further develop this system of thought and way of life that had been introduced by Popper through his various works. Another important objective of Miller’s papers and books was to correct Popper’s mistakes and incomplete arguments.
One of the most famous cases of correcting Popper’s mistakes concerns Popper’s effort to introduce characterising the relative verisimilitude (nearness to the truth) of rival theories. But as soon as Popper published his proposed criterion in 1974, Miller published a paper in the same journal (The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science) and argued that it would not be possible to characterise their nearness to the truth by logical means as Popper had suggested. Miller’s argument was eloquent and succinct: he argued that to show a theory T2 is closer to the truth than a theory T1, one should show either the falsity content of T1 is larger than the falsity content of T2, assuming that the truth contents are equal, or the truth content of T2 is larger than the truth content of T1 assuming that their falsity content is equal. In either case, by making use of two simple logical apparatuses, he demonstrated that since the true or false consequences that can be derived from each theory are infinite, their content cannot be compared.
Popper acknowledged his mistake but suggested that despite the failure of his technical effort, the basic heuristic notion of his proposal was on the right track.
Another case, from among a good number of cases, where Miller corrected Popper’s somewhat inaccurate formulation of his own thought was when Popper, despite his uncompromising anti-inductivist position, perhaps as a concession to his critics, stated that there may have been “a whiff of inductivism” in his reasoning concerning a famous argument about the progress in science known as ‘The Miracle Argument’. This argument simply states that if a theory T2 (say Einstein's theory of relativity) fares better than a theory T1 (say Newton’s theory of gravity) with respect to the empirical data, then the more successful theory should contain some truth about reality; otherwise its success would be a miracle. Popper wrote: “… [T]here may be a 'whiff’ of inductivism here; It enters with the vague realist assumption that reality, though unknown, is in some respects similar to what science tells us or, in other words, with the assumption that science can progress towards greater verisimilitude”. Miller, in his clarification of Popper’s point, after taking his reader through some mildly technical points, stated that “even if the empirical success of a theory did raise the probability that that theory was near the truth, we would not have an inductive effect on our hands. It would be a probabilistic effect; but, … there is really nothing inductive about probabilistic support” (Miller, Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defence, 1994, 47).
Miller’s prose was insightful but always succinct and to the point, distilled of all extra, not absolutely necessary, information, with an undercurrent of sardonic wit. Unfortunately, it seems the succinctness of his arguments cost him dearly: many of his critics who tried to counter his arguments, perhaps unbeknown to themselves, demonstrated that they did not understand the subtle points he had tried to put across.
At a personal level, Miller was deeply moral, unfailingly kind towards his friends and students, and generous with his time with regard to responding to the questions his readers would put to him from all over the world. He was an engaging teacher, though outside of the classroom, he was a private individual who would readily admit that he was not a public speaker.
After his retirement, Miller made several visits to South America, and was energetic in his intellectual support of people there interested in critical rationalism.
His intellectual legacy, part of which he had made available to scholars through his webpage at Warwick University (https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/people/miller) and part of which has remained unpublished and is hoped that it will see the light of the day in due course, is, just like the legacy of his teacher, Karl Popper, full of interesting and insightful ideas which can be developed by those who care to study them.
Miller is survived by his two sons, Alexander and James, and two grandsons, Oscar and Tommy.
By Prof. Ali Paya
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