David Miller (philosopher)
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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 }}
Books by David Miller
- Croquet and How to Play It with Rupert Thorp, 1966
- Popper Selections, 1985
- Critical Rationalism: A Restatement and Defence, 1994
- Out of Error: Further Essays on Critical Rationalism, 2006
See also
References
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External links
- [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/#ProbKnowVeri Probability, Knowledge and Verisimilitude] section of Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Karl Popper
- [https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/people/miller David Miller's Homepage at University of Warwick]
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Category:20th-century English philosophers
Category:20th-century British essayists
Category:21st-century British philosophers
Category:21st-century British essayists
Category:Academics of the University of Warwick
Category:Alumni of the London School of Economics
Category:British male essayists
Category:Critical rationalists
Category:Philosophers of logic
Category:Philosophers of science
Category:People educated at Woodbridge School
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