R.I.P. Philip Benesch

Sent to members of the late Mark Nottorno's The Future of Science and Open Society online discussion group:

I find this news [of Philip Benesch's death] particularly distressing, as Philip was one of the least dogmatic "critical rationalists." As one of the few in this group who was respectful of me and my views, I periodically communicated with him about ideas he might find interesting.

Philip believed he had detected a change in Popper's view of the social sciences around 1964—a view Mark disputed—for which I suggested Hayek's "The Theory of Complex Phenomena," a paper that was included in The Critical Approach to Science and Philosophy: In Honor of Karl R. Popper, as the source. I even suggested we might co-author a paper on that, but Philip suggested he was a poor co-author, and it never came to anything.

More recently, based on my rereading of Popper's Medawar Lecture and examining Barry Smith's criticism of the action axiom, I had suggested that Philip read my article on mises.org [Mises and Popper on Action] about the apparent agreement between Popper and Mises on the action axiom—Popper's expression of it being more generalized—and received a positive response. Finally, I suggested on my blog that Popper, in the Medawar Lecture, had in fact expressed views that could only be seen as aprioristic [Karl Popper, Self-Evident Truth, and Certain Knowledge], and Philip responded, "I think you are right."

I was thinking of asking Philip to work with me on a response to Reinhard Neck's session on Jeremy's last online conference, a session that Professor Neck had already given in Vienna at the "Adverse Allies" workshop; but that is clearly not going to happen.

R.I.P. Philip—I'll miss you!