| popper_the_nature_of_philosophical_problems_and_their_roots_in_science.pdf |
| bretts_commentary_upon_poppers_paper.docx |
Introduction to the commentary
What’s the point of philosophy? Almost every person, unfamiliar with the subject beyond its mere existence, seems to hold in their mind some version of the idea that philosophy makes no progress. The claim is that philosophers still debate the very same things the ancient Greeks – Socrates, Plato and Aristotle - did. There have even been philosophers themselves who have argued this position. Indeed this was the position of the most famous philosopher of the 20th century – Ludwid Wittgenstein – who argued that philosophy makes no progress and this is because philosophy essentially is reducible to little more than language games. There’s nothing that philosophy deals with in reality – no actual problems. Because actual problems are problems of science (or of history or mathematics, say). But philosophy is a domain where the same questions are encountered over and again simply because we fail to understand the limitations of language. It is language that makes certain things appears to be problems but in fact…they are not problems.
Now this position of Wittgenstein’s is one of the most popular views in academic philosophy even today. And a plausible story can be told that this theory of philosophy – the linguistic school of philosophy which is philosophy as nothing but language puzzles – gave rise to an inordinate focus upon language in philosophy broadly. It spawned postmodernism and deconstructionism: the idea that nothing much can be said in philosophy to illuminate truth. And so: why bother even striving for clarity. If Wittgenstein had essentially proved the uselessness of philosophy as an academic enterprise, is it any wonder then that so many migrated away from tackling the big questions in the tradition of the ancient Greeks and instead turned to linguistic naval gazing or even linguistic obfuscation. If it’s all a fool’s errand, why really try?
Happily Wittgenstein and those who followed won only some battles. They have no won the war. There is another perspective. There are philosophers who follow in the grand tradition of philosophy – of tackling philosophical problems and making philosophical progress. So to that end, I want to summarise a defence of philosophy by Karl Popper. Popper is rightly credited with determining the line of demarcation between science and non-science. He is sometimes remembered as creating a political philosophy and defence against tyranny. He, or “his philosophy” is often maligned (utterly wrongly) as a proponent of the idea that claims that are unscientific are meaningless – that is that he was a proponent of something like scientism. Mostly, for those of us who value his contribution, we see him as a much too forgotten philosopher of the first rate – the best of the 20th century – who solved many problems in philosophy and wrote far more clearly than almost anyone before or since on these matters.
Popper had much to say in his writings and lectures over the years about Wittgenstein’s position. Popper went to great lengths to explain the flaws of Wittgenstein in various places in various books. He rightly understood that Wittgenstein had given birth to an entirely new school of philosophy: linguistic philosophy – and it was ascendant. And Popper saw great danger in that approach to philosophy. Of all the work he produced on these matters, none come to bear quite so directly on the matter nor in so concentrated a form as his lecture, later turned into a paper titled “The Nature of Philosophical Problems and their roots in Science”.
The paper is short but remarkable because it demonstrates Popper at his best. Firstly, it demonstrates what it means to take an argument one disagrees with, even from a disagreeable person, and present it as powerfully as it can be. To take your opponents point of view and refine it and express it so clearly there would be nothing whatsoever that one’s opponent would object to. Indeed they might even say “Wow, what an articulate and powerful way to put it. I wish I wish I’d thought of that”. This last point is sometimes called “steel manning” these days. I cannot say Popper pioneered it, but I doubt anyone has ever been more expert and dispassionate in doing it. For here in this paper he is responding to his great rival Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein I must emphasized is revered by somewhere between many to almost all philosophers as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. Few others can lay claim to spawning an entire school of philosophy – linguistic philosophy. One of those few others was of course Popper himself with critical rationalism.
Popper and Wittgenstein met only once. That encounter is the subject of an entire book and much folklore in philosophy circles. The book, by Edmonds and Eidnow, is called “Wittgenstein’s Poker” and is easily found on Amazon. It is about a discussion over the very question in Popper’s paper (which wouldn’t be published until years later): are there philosophical problems? It was a brief exchange between these two great men in October of 1946 in Cambridge in the presence of many others including their teacher and mentor Bertrand Russell. Wittgenstein held that all problems thought to be philosophical were really just pseudo problems – they reduced to problems of language use. The only real problems were mathematical or scientific ones. Popper put the case that there were real scientific problems. The reason the book is called “Wittgenstein’s Poker” is because at one point, and the accounts of witnesses here differ, Wittgenstein lifted a poker to either move coals in the fire or emphasize a point, or perhaps even to threaten Popper – the extremes here differ depending on the witness telling the tale.
But that debate – and the book recounts it well – is the central concern of that philosophical paper that Popper wrote in 1952 and published in the British Philosophical Journal. So some 6 years after the encounter with Wittgenstein at Cambridge and after Wittgenstein’s death which happened in 1951. One might even see it as Popper’s tribute to Wittgenstein because, as I say, he has steel manned Wittgenstein’s position, as we shall see.
Popper writes exceedingly clearly, but even exceedingly clear professional philosophy can indeed be obscure to the novice. Moreoever, mere decades can cause changes to the English language such that what once was clear is now perhaps somewhat archane. So I want to explain Popper’s paper in my own words. Why? Why bother which such an obscure paper about an obscure question debated by philosphers from last millennium? Why now? What’s the point and what’s the importance of this paper to today some 70 years later?
The last few decades has seen postmodern and relativist movements go from strength to strength and in the last 5 years alone we have seen a surge in nihilistic or pessimistic politics and rejection of truth in favor of a strange alliance of relativism and dogma (which might normally be thought at odds with one another). And we have, in lock step with the increase of the so-called “Woke” movements, a recent increase in the number of academics and what we might call “allied-experts” (journalists, authors, public intellectuals and so on) who have been more and more vocal about postmodernism. This is a good thing and it has lead to something of an upsurge in interest by bloggers and others online in the culture on university campuses. This pushback against postmodernism, and the rejection of “finding the truth” or even recognizing that there is a truth out there worth seeking and understanding, questioning and debating and taking seriously, can in many ways be seen to find its roots in the Popper/Wittgenstein divide. Another landmark that came later was the first so-called “Sokal Hoax”. And recently Pluckrose, Lindsay, and Boghossian repeated the basics of that study demonstrating the lack of content or critical analysis of some academic journals. We have had Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Douglas Murray and Nicolas Christakos to name just a few of the bright lights of our time writing or speaking about the problem as it manifests in tertiary education. It has perhaps reached a crescendo of sorts among some students, following the indoctrination of their lecturers, who reject mainstream science or as they might called it western science or Eurocentric or male science and so on. Peterson, Boghossian et al are concerned about what is (quite perversely) called “Studies in Critical Theory” (I would say critical only in the very narrow sense of being critical – often unfairly and dishonestly - of Western culture specifically – Modern so-called Critical Theory is not critical of its own content – unlike, let’s give a plug here for Popperian Epistemology or Critical Rationalism which is criticism applied to everything – including itself). More commonly this new “Critical Theory” is more accurately labeled and maligned as “Grievance Studies”
In my own field, there has even been a push to remove references in physics to dead white men. I consider that issue here.
But my purpose now is not to look at the present concerns about this rejection of truth and embrace of relativism. Douglas Murray’s book “The Madness of Crowds” articulates some of the most egregious events and serious effects that culture, downstream of academia, can suffer when postmodern doctrines are taught, then taken seriously. Instead, I offer here Popper’s defence of philosophy and rejection of what might be called the first seeds of contemporary relativism. It was planted, it would seem, by Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein, it must be emphasized, was no relativist. He was a realist of a kind and certainly embraced science as a route to truth. But he did plant seeds of relativism, ignorant about what they would go on to spawn in philosophy and wider academia. This happened because he argued that philosophy was but a language game. He argued there are no philosophical problems and in doing so pushed open a door to so much nonsense in philosophy and misconception about the purpose of philosophy.
As we have already seen, this led to the invention of a whole field of philosophy: so-called linguistic philosophy. And that led to postmodern deconstruction – a way of undoing meaning. Taking sense and turning it to nonsense. And that led to some of the situations in which we find ourselves now with race studies, third wave feminism, Marxist retellings and reimagining’s, and more besides. Understanding these moves and some of the philosophical background, can help to understand where we are today. Understanding where some of this went wrong might help to correct our course.
So here, find Popper’s paper – a defence against the dark arts of postmodernism. And my commentary upon that paper. It is meant as an articulation of a realist position in philosophy. Philosophical problems exist and thus so too do their solutions. Throughout my discussion, which I will take one page at a time (thus turning what is a quite dense 33 page journal article into something somewhat more concise and simple to read) I will also refer the reader/listener to “Wittgenstein’s Poker” to provide a little more of the surrounding background to this debate. And, of course, it wouldn’t be me unless I also referred you to “The Beginning of Infinity” which touches on these matters. Chapter 12: A physicists history of Bad Philosophy has some concise and humourous remarks about the philosophical dead end that Wittgenstein led large parts of the field down into. Together these sources paint a vision of the seeds of Popper’s world view and what might be said to be some of the fertile ground David Deutsch has used to cultivate and refine this optimistic vision of reality. The original paper can be downloaded at the link either above or below...as with my commentary.
What’s the point of philosophy? Almost every person, unfamiliar with the subject beyond its mere existence, seems to hold in their mind some version of the idea that philosophy makes no progress. The claim is that philosophers still debate the very same things the ancient Greeks – Socrates, Plato and Aristotle - did. There have even been philosophers themselves who have argued this position. Indeed this was the position of the most famous philosopher of the 20th century – Ludwid Wittgenstein – who argued that philosophy makes no progress and this is because philosophy essentially is reducible to little more than language games. There’s nothing that philosophy deals with in reality – no actual problems. Because actual problems are problems of science (or of history or mathematics, say). But philosophy is a domain where the same questions are encountered over and again simply because we fail to understand the limitations of language. It is language that makes certain things appears to be problems but in fact…they are not problems.
Now this position of Wittgenstein’s is one of the most popular views in academic philosophy even today. And a plausible story can be told that this theory of philosophy – the linguistic school of philosophy which is philosophy as nothing but language puzzles – gave rise to an inordinate focus upon language in philosophy broadly. It spawned postmodernism and deconstructionism: the idea that nothing much can be said in philosophy to illuminate truth. And so: why bother even striving for clarity. If Wittgenstein had essentially proved the uselessness of philosophy as an academic enterprise, is it any wonder then that so many migrated away from tackling the big questions in the tradition of the ancient Greeks and instead turned to linguistic naval gazing or even linguistic obfuscation. If it’s all a fool’s errand, why really try?
Happily Wittgenstein and those who followed won only some battles. They have no won the war. There is another perspective. There are philosophers who follow in the grand tradition of philosophy – of tackling philosophical problems and making philosophical progress. So to that end, I want to summarise a defence of philosophy by Karl Popper. Popper is rightly credited with determining the line of demarcation between science and non-science. He is sometimes remembered as creating a political philosophy and defence against tyranny. He, or “his philosophy” is often maligned (utterly wrongly) as a proponent of the idea that claims that are unscientific are meaningless – that is that he was a proponent of something like scientism. Mostly, for those of us who value his contribution, we see him as a much too forgotten philosopher of the first rate – the best of the 20th century – who solved many problems in philosophy and wrote far more clearly than almost anyone before or since on these matters.
Popper had much to say in his writings and lectures over the years about Wittgenstein’s position. Popper went to great lengths to explain the flaws of Wittgenstein in various places in various books. He rightly understood that Wittgenstein had given birth to an entirely new school of philosophy: linguistic philosophy – and it was ascendant. And Popper saw great danger in that approach to philosophy. Of all the work he produced on these matters, none come to bear quite so directly on the matter nor in so concentrated a form as his lecture, later turned into a paper titled “The Nature of Philosophical Problems and their roots in Science”.
The paper is short but remarkable because it demonstrates Popper at his best. Firstly, it demonstrates what it means to take an argument one disagrees with, even from a disagreeable person, and present it as powerfully as it can be. To take your opponents point of view and refine it and express it so clearly there would be nothing whatsoever that one’s opponent would object to. Indeed they might even say “Wow, what an articulate and powerful way to put it. I wish I wish I’d thought of that”. This last point is sometimes called “steel manning” these days. I cannot say Popper pioneered it, but I doubt anyone has ever been more expert and dispassionate in doing it. For here in this paper he is responding to his great rival Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein I must emphasized is revered by somewhere between many to almost all philosophers as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. Few others can lay claim to spawning an entire school of philosophy – linguistic philosophy. One of those few others was of course Popper himself with critical rationalism.
Popper and Wittgenstein met only once. That encounter is the subject of an entire book and much folklore in philosophy circles. The book, by Edmonds and Eidnow, is called “Wittgenstein’s Poker” and is easily found on Amazon. It is about a discussion over the very question in Popper’s paper (which wouldn’t be published until years later): are there philosophical problems? It was a brief exchange between these two great men in October of 1946 in Cambridge in the presence of many others including their teacher and mentor Bertrand Russell. Wittgenstein held that all problems thought to be philosophical were really just pseudo problems – they reduced to problems of language use. The only real problems were mathematical or scientific ones. Popper put the case that there were real scientific problems. The reason the book is called “Wittgenstein’s Poker” is because at one point, and the accounts of witnesses here differ, Wittgenstein lifted a poker to either move coals in the fire or emphasize a point, or perhaps even to threaten Popper – the extremes here differ depending on the witness telling the tale.
But that debate – and the book recounts it well – is the central concern of that philosophical paper that Popper wrote in 1952 and published in the British Philosophical Journal. So some 6 years after the encounter with Wittgenstein at Cambridge and after Wittgenstein’s death which happened in 1951. One might even see it as Popper’s tribute to Wittgenstein because, as I say, he has steel manned Wittgenstein’s position, as we shall see.
Popper writes exceedingly clearly, but even exceedingly clear professional philosophy can indeed be obscure to the novice. Moreoever, mere decades can cause changes to the English language such that what once was clear is now perhaps somewhat archane. So I want to explain Popper’s paper in my own words. Why? Why bother which such an obscure paper about an obscure question debated by philosphers from last millennium? Why now? What’s the point and what’s the importance of this paper to today some 70 years later?
The last few decades has seen postmodern and relativist movements go from strength to strength and in the last 5 years alone we have seen a surge in nihilistic or pessimistic politics and rejection of truth in favor of a strange alliance of relativism and dogma (which might normally be thought at odds with one another). And we have, in lock step with the increase of the so-called “Woke” movements, a recent increase in the number of academics and what we might call “allied-experts” (journalists, authors, public intellectuals and so on) who have been more and more vocal about postmodernism. This is a good thing and it has lead to something of an upsurge in interest by bloggers and others online in the culture on university campuses. This pushback against postmodernism, and the rejection of “finding the truth” or even recognizing that there is a truth out there worth seeking and understanding, questioning and debating and taking seriously, can in many ways be seen to find its roots in the Popper/Wittgenstein divide. Another landmark that came later was the first so-called “Sokal Hoax”. And recently Pluckrose, Lindsay, and Boghossian repeated the basics of that study demonstrating the lack of content or critical analysis of some academic journals. We have had Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, Douglas Murray and Nicolas Christakos to name just a few of the bright lights of our time writing or speaking about the problem as it manifests in tertiary education. It has perhaps reached a crescendo of sorts among some students, following the indoctrination of their lecturers, who reject mainstream science or as they might called it western science or Eurocentric or male science and so on. Peterson, Boghossian et al are concerned about what is (quite perversely) called “Studies in Critical Theory” (I would say critical only in the very narrow sense of being critical – often unfairly and dishonestly - of Western culture specifically – Modern so-called Critical Theory is not critical of its own content – unlike, let’s give a plug here for Popperian Epistemology or Critical Rationalism which is criticism applied to everything – including itself). More commonly this new “Critical Theory” is more accurately labeled and maligned as “Grievance Studies”
In my own field, there has even been a push to remove references in physics to dead white men. I consider that issue here.
But my purpose now is not to look at the present concerns about this rejection of truth and embrace of relativism. Douglas Murray’s book “The Madness of Crowds” articulates some of the most egregious events and serious effects that culture, downstream of academia, can suffer when postmodern doctrines are taught, then taken seriously. Instead, I offer here Popper’s defence of philosophy and rejection of what might be called the first seeds of contemporary relativism. It was planted, it would seem, by Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein, it must be emphasized, was no relativist. He was a realist of a kind and certainly embraced science as a route to truth. But he did plant seeds of relativism, ignorant about what they would go on to spawn in philosophy and wider academia. This happened because he argued that philosophy was but a language game. He argued there are no philosophical problems and in doing so pushed open a door to so much nonsense in philosophy and misconception about the purpose of philosophy.
As we have already seen, this led to the invention of a whole field of philosophy: so-called linguistic philosophy. And that led to postmodern deconstruction – a way of undoing meaning. Taking sense and turning it to nonsense. And that led to some of the situations in which we find ourselves now with race studies, third wave feminism, Marxist retellings and reimagining’s, and more besides. Understanding these moves and some of the philosophical background, can help to understand where we are today. Understanding where some of this went wrong might help to correct our course.
So here, find Popper’s paper – a defence against the dark arts of postmodernism. And my commentary upon that paper. It is meant as an articulation of a realist position in philosophy. Philosophical problems exist and thus so too do their solutions. Throughout my discussion, which I will take one page at a time (thus turning what is a quite dense 33 page journal article into something somewhat more concise and simple to read) I will also refer the reader/listener to “Wittgenstein’s Poker” to provide a little more of the surrounding background to this debate. And, of course, it wouldn’t be me unless I also referred you to “The Beginning of Infinity” which touches on these matters. Chapter 12: A physicists history of Bad Philosophy has some concise and humourous remarks about the philosophical dead end that Wittgenstein led large parts of the field down into. Together these sources paint a vision of the seeds of Popper’s world view and what might be said to be some of the fertile ground David Deutsch has used to cultivate and refine this optimistic vision of reality. The original paper can be downloaded at the link either above or below...as with my commentary.
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| karl_popper_the_nature_of_philosophical_problems_and_their_roots_in_science.pdf |