David Miller (philosopher)

{{other people|David Miller}}

{{distinguish|David Miller (political theorist)}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2025}}

{{Use British English|date=March 2018}}

David William Miller (19 August 1942 in Watford – 20 November 2024https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/news/?newsItem=8ac672c49367eb1601936d1988290e22) was an English philosopher and prominent exponent of critical rationalism.{{cite book |author=Miller, David W. |title=Critical rationalism: a restatement and defence |publisher=Open Court |location=La Salle, Ill |year=1994 |isbn=0-8126-9198-9 |url= https://archive.org/details/criticalrational0000mill/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater |url-access=registration |via= Internet Archive}} He taught in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick in Coventry, UK,{{cite web |url=https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/people/miller |title=University of Warwick | Philosophy | Associates | David Miller |access-date=2017-11-06 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171107013511/https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/people/miller |archive-date=2017-11-07 }} where he was a Reader in Philosophy. He had been an Honorary Treasurer of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science.

He was educated at Woodbridge School and Peterhouse, Cambridge. In 1964 he began to study Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics. Soon afterwards he became one of Karl Popper's research assistants.{{Cite journal | last1 = Miller | first1 = D. | author-link = David Miller (philosopher)| doi = 10.1098/rsbm.1997.0021 | title = Sir Karl Raimund Popper, C. H., F. B. A. 28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994.: Elected F.R.S. 1976 | journal = Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society | volume = 43 | pages = 369–409| year = 1997 | doi-access = free }}{{cite book |author=Miller, David W. |title=Out of error: further essays on critical rationalism |publisher=Ashgate |location=Aldershot, Hants, England |year=2006 |isbn=0-7546-5068-5 }} In a series of papers in the 1970s, Miller and others uncovered defects in Popper's formal definition of verisimilitude, previously a mostly ignored aspect of Popper's theory. A substantial literature developed in the two decades following, including papers by Miller, to assess the remediability of Popper's approach.

Miller's Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defence is an attempt to expound, defend, and extend an approach to scientific knowledge identified with Popper. A central, "not quite original", thesis is that rationality does not depend on good reasons. Rather, it is better off without them, especially as they are unobtainable and unusable.{{Cite journal | last1 = Miller | first1 = D. | title = Being an Absolute Skeptic | doi = 10.1126/science.284.5420.1625 | journal = Science | volume = 284 | issue = 5420 | pages = 1625–1626 | year = 1999 | bibcode = 1999Sci...284.1625M | s2cid = 170982916 }}