Karl Popper theories

This book sketches the history of higher education, in parallel with the development of science. Its goal is to draw attention to the historical tensions between the aims of higher education and those of science, in the hope of contributing to improving the contemporary university. A helpful tool in analyzing these intellectual and social tensions is Karl Popper’s philosophy of science demarcating science and its social context. Popper defines a society that encourages criticism as open, and argues convincingly that an open society is the most appropriate one for the growth of science. A closed society, on the other hand, is a tribal and dogmatic society. Despite being the universal home of science today, the university, as an institution that is thousands of years old, carries traces of different past cultural, social, and educational traditions. The book argues that, by and large, the university was, and still is, a closed society and does not serve the best interests of the development of science and of students' education.

Criticisms of Karl Popper’s critical rationalist epistemology are often confused and misleading. In part that is due to Popper’s somewhat lax use of language, in which technical terms are used in more than one sense. I attempt to clarify Popper’s views by regimenting his terminology. The result is offered as a clear and concise exposition of the main points of Popper’s epistemology.

Michael Segre analizza la storia della formazione superiore a partire dall'era classica rilevando quanto l'università, ormai quasi millenaria, sia cresciuta attraverso molteplici tradizioni sociali, culturali e formative, delle quali porta le tracce. Nonostante monopolizzi oggi la scienza, l'università è ancora, per certi aspetti, rimasta un'istituzione che Karl Popper definirebbe "chiusa", ossia tribale, dogmatica e inadatta alle sfide del terzo millennio. Se si è consci di ciò, si potrebbe meglio riformarla.

Karl Popper lamented the prevalence of dogmatic argument in philosophy and commended the kind of critical argument that is found in the sciences. David Miller criticises the uncritical nature of so-called critical thinking because of its attachment to dogmatic arguments. I expound and clarify Popper’s distinction between critical and dogmatic arguments and the background to it. I criticise some errors in Miller’s discussion. I reaffirm the need for philosophers to eschew dogmatic arguments in favour of critical ones.

Susan Haack, “Six Signs of Scientism.”

Abstract: As the English word “scientism” is currently used, it is a trivial verbal truth that scientism—an inappropriately deferential attitude to science—should be avoided. But it is a substantial question when, and why, deference to the sciences is inappropriate or exaggerated. This paper tries to answer that question by articulating “six signs of scientism”: the honorific use of “science,” etc.; using scientific trappings purely decoratively; preoccupation with demarcation; preoccupation with “scientific method”; looking to the sciences for answers beyond their scope; denying the legitimacy or worth of non-scientific (e.g., legal or literary) inquiry, or of writing poetry or making art.

Translated by Eli Vieira Araujo Junr.

Key words: scientism; honorific use of “science”; demarcation of science; scientific method; science and values

The permissibility of actions depends upon facts about the flourishing and separateness of persons. Persons differ from other creatures in having the task of discovering for themselves, by conjecture and refutation, what sort of life will fulfil them. Compulsory slavery impermissibly prevents some persons from pursuing this task. However, many people may conjecture that they are natural slaves. Some of these conjectures may turn out to be correct. In consequence, voluntary slavery, in which one person welcomes the duty to fulfil all the commands of another, is permissible. Life-long voluntary slavery contracts are impermissible because of human fallibility; but fixed-term slavery contracts should be legally enforceable. Each person has the temporarily alienable moral right to direct her own life.

I show how Karl Popper reconciled scepticism with epistemology and how he retrogressed when he identified truth as our epistemic aim. I criticise David Miller's defence of Popper's error and I consider and rebut objections, derived from Popper and Miller, to a purely sceptical epistemology.

This article builds on C. S. Peirce’s suggestive blueprint for an inclusive outlook that grants reality to his three categories. Moving away from the usual focus on (contentious) cosmological forces, I use a modal principle to partition various ontological layers: regular sign-action (like coded language) subsumes actual sign-action (like here-and-now events) which in turn subsumes possible sign-action (like qualities related to whatever would be similar to them). Once we realize that the triadic sign’s components are each answerable to this asymmetric subsumption, we obtain the means to track at which level of complexity semiosis finds itself, in a given case. Since the bulk of such a “trinitarian” metaphysics would be devoted to countenancing un-interpreted phenomena, I argue that current misgivings about sign-based ontologies are largely misplaced.

In The Open Society and its Enemies, Karl Popper contrasts closed and open societies. He evaluates irrationalism and the different kinds of rationalism and he argues that critical rationalism is superior. Living in an open society bestows great benefits but involves a strain that may in some people engender a longing to return to a closed society of tribal submission and an attraction for irrationalism. Attempts to recreate a closed society lead to totalitarianism. In the light of Popper's arguments I criticise contemporary identity politics and I show that identity politics is irrationalist and tends to totalitarianism.

It is often contended that the special sciences, and even fundamental physics, make use of ceteris-paribus law-statements. Yet there are general concerns that such law-statements are vacuous or untestable or unscientific. I consider two main kinds of ceteris-paribus law-statement. I argue that neither kind is vacuous, that one of the kinds is untestable, that both kinds may count as scientific to the extent that they form parts of conjunctions that imply novel falsifiable statements which survive testing, but that one kind has an affinity with ad hoc manoeuvres that are unsatisfactory from a scientific point of view. I show that the contemporary debate about ceteris-paribus law-statements is afflicted with error and confusion because of a general failure to disentangle the notions: non-vacuous, testable, scientific, verifiable, falsifiable, and ad hoc.

This paper constitutes one extended argument, which touches on various topics of Critical Rationalism as it was initiated by Karl Popper and further developed (although into different directions) in his aftermath. The result of the argument will be that critical rationalism either offers no solution to the problem of induction at all, or that it amounts, in the last resort, to a kind of Critical Rationalist Inductivism as it were, a version of what I call Good Old Induction. One may think of David Miller as a contemporary representative of what I consider as the ‘no solution’ version of critical rationalism, while Alan Musgrave stands for the version of ‘critical rationalist induction’. Popper’s own writings admit of either interpretation.

I argue that social-contract theory cannot succeed because reasonable people may always disagree, and that social-contract theory is irrelevant to the problem of the legitimacy of a form of government or of a system of moral rules. I note the weakness of the appeal to implicit agreement, the conflation of legitimacy with stability, the undesirability of “public justification” and the apparent blindness to the evolutionary critical-rationalist approach of Hayek and Popper. I employ that approach to sketch answers to the theoretical, historical and practical questions about the legitimacy of government or of systems of moral rules.

I offer a personal case-study to show how poor self-knowledge due in part to self-deception led to wasted life, a life lacking in meaning, and descent into severe anxiety and depression. A meaningful human life connects with things of value outside of itself and provides fulfilment for its bearer. For humans, fulfilment depends upon self-discovery, which requires a process of conjecture and refutation, a willingness to question and criticise received views and to welcome challenges and criticism to views that one holds dear and that may seem to be part of one's identity. When one pursues an organised project of self-discovery, living one's life is intertwined with drafting a philosophical autobiography.

I apply Karl Popper’s conception of critical rationality to the question of personal fulfilment. I show that such fulfilment normally depends upon the person achieving positive freedom, and that positive freedom requires negative freedom, including freedom of expression. If the state has legitimacy, its central duty must be the enforcement of those rules that provide the best prospects for personal fulfilment for the people under its jurisdiction. The state is therefore morally debarred from suppressing freedom of expression. I consider and rebut arguments from falsity, harm, offence, and democratic principles, which are intended to show that the state should prohibit the expression of some types of content. I go on to argue that common university speech codes are incompatible with the aims of an institution of higher education.

It appears that light may be thrown on the nature of moral principles if they are construed as moral laws analogous to ceteris-paribus laws of nature. Luke Robinson objects that the analogy either cannot explain how moral principles are necessary or cannot explain how obligations can be pro-tanto; and that a dispositional account of moral obligation has explanatory superiority over one in terms of moral laws. I explain the analogy, construing laws of nature as necessary relationships after the fashion of William Kneale and Karl Popper. I then show that Robinson’s objections are mistaken and that if the difference between a dispositional account and a law account is not merely verbal, then it is the law account that is superior. I also dispel the common confusion between the necessity of laws and the existence of forces.

Popper proposed falsificationism as a solution to the problem of induction. What was that problem and how does falsificationism purport to solve it? Is it a plausible solution?


Falsificationism, sometimes called critical empiricism is a branch of the critical rationalism in philosophy of science. It was originally advanced by Karl R. Popper, an Austrian-British philosopher and philosopher of science and is a further development of two fundamental problems in epistemology, which he describes in his main work “The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959)”. One of the two problems is the so-called “Hume’s problem of induction”, the question of the validity or the grounds of the general propositions of empirical science, especially the laws of nature. Although the problem of induction was formulated in empiricism, it is a problem of all philosophies or sciences that permit inductive inferences as proof procedures. It is a modern variant of nominalism, which denies the reasonable orders of rationalism, but also based on measurements generalizations of science, an observer-independent reality.

I summarise Robert Audi's 'Moral Perception.' I concede that there is such a thing as moral perception. However, moral perceptions are culturally-relative, which refutes Audi’s claims that moral perception may ground moral knowledge and that it provides inter-subjectively accessible grounds which make ethical objectivity possible. Audi's attempt to avoid the refutation tends to convert rational disputes into ad hominem ones. I illustrate that with the example of the ethics of prostitution.

Karl Popper champions an open society in which all institutions, principles and values are open to criticism. Anthony O'Hear contends that Popper's vision is utopian because an open society can survive only if some non-liberal values are assumed, including the prohibition of criticism of fundamental liberal principles and values. I correct O'Hear's interpretation of Popper and I rebut most of his criticisms, arguing that an open society is stronger if it permits criticism of all views. However, I accept and strengthen O'Hear's rejection of Popper's assimilation of an open society to a scientific community. I also suggest that the survival of open societies may require limits on immigration from societies permeated by Islamic fundamentalism or similar ideologies.

Criticisms of Karl Popper's critical rationalist epistemology are often confused and misleading. In part that is due to Popper's somewhat lax use of language, in which technical terms are used in more than one sense. I attempt to clarify Popper's views by regimenting his terminology. The result is offered as a clear and concise exposition of the main points of Popper's epistemology.

Movido pelo título de um ensaio de Jacob Bronowski dedicado a Karl Popper, "Humanism and the growth of knowledge" (1974), busca-se retomar o humanismo na ciência, talvez não em sua estrita conotação renascentista, senão enquanto resistência ao avanço do positivismo na ciência, da anti-metafísica, do negacionismo e do reducionismo logicista, responsáveis pela dissecação da ética do interior da atividade científica e pela eliminação da busca pela verdade como objetivo primeiro da ciência.  Apesar de ter sido publicado dois anos depois, este ensaio foi pensado e escrito como continuação do texto monográfico "O 'mundo 3' assombrado pelos demônios: Popper e o positivismo de Copenhagen" (2013). O resumo que consta no artigo e a tradução para o inglês foram feitos pelos editores da Revista Diaphonía.

Oleh Shepetyak. The Belief in the Critical Rationalism of Karl Popper. The article deals with the problem of belief in the conception of critical rationalism of Karl Popper. On the base of thoughts of philosopher, which he wrote in his works. We make the conclusion about irrational factors of formation of scientific theory and its perception by scientific community.
Key words: belief, critical rationalism, irrationality, philosophy of science.

If the task of theoretical reason is to discover truth, or reasons for belief, then theoretical reason is impossible. Attempts to circumvent that by appeal to probabilities are self-defeating. If the task of practical reason is to discover what we ought to do or what actions are desirable or valuable, then practical reason is impossible. Appeals to the subjective ought or to subjective probabilities are self-defeating. Adapting Karl Popper, I argue that the task of theoretical reason is to obtain theories that we can agree to instate given that they appear to have greater explanatory merit than their rivals. I then argue that the task of practical reason is to decide which ought-propositions to act on. As a consequence theoretical reason is seen as a branch of practical reason. This approach makes both theoretical and practical reason practicable and free of the defects of the usual accounts.

La reflexión sobre la metodología de la investigación no puede olvidar las aportaciones de Popper, especialmente por su formulación de un modelo específico para las ciencias sociales y educativas, el de la lógica situacional.

Se trata de un tipo de metodología basada en explicaciones detalladas de las condiciones iniciales (análisis de la situación social: contexto y sujetos), la elaboración de modelos teórico-prácticos y la consideración del principio de racionalidad.

Una metodología fundamentada en la lógica situacional es capaz de racionalizar la metodología de las teorías educativas, así como reconocer los paradigmas no positivistas tan importantes en la investigación educativa.

ABSTRACT

The reflection on the methodology of the investigation can not forget the contributions to Popper, especially by his formulation to a specific model for the educational and social sciences, that of the situational logic.

It is considered a form of methodology based on detailed explanations of the initial conditions (analysis of the social situation: context and subject), the theoretical and empirical models elaboration, and the consideration of the rationality principle.

A methodology based in the situational logic is able of rationalising the methodology of the educational theories, as well as recognize the paradigms not positivists so important in the educational investigation.""

Disclaimer:
The literature extract was gathered purely and subjective according the interests of the author (Manfred Bundschuh). Usually there were complete sentences from the original transferred. There's no guarantee for correctness.

1. Rupert Riedl     2
1.1 Menschwerdung             2
1.2 Theorem der Homologie     3
1.3 Mängel unserer Denkprogrammierung und Folgen  4
1.4 Erkenntnis             5
1.5 Ordnung/Entropie     6
2. Nikolaus Cusanus     7
• Koinzidenz Lehre             7
3. René Descartes     8
• Prämissen             8
4. Ludwig Wittgenstein     9
• 7 Hauptsätze des Tractatus     9
5. Gregory Bateson I   10
• Die Zeit ist aus den Fugen   11
6. Günter Anders   12
• Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen   12
  7. Gregory Bateson II   13
7.1 Erkenntnistheorie   13
7.2 Herausforderungen durch komplexe Systeme      14
7.3 Übungen   15
7.4 Jedes Schulkind weiß   18
8. Karl Popper   19
        Drei Welten           19
Rupert Riedl: Die 3 Erkenntnisstufen     20
9. Aristoteles   21
• Erkenntnistheorie   21
10. Arthur Schopenhauer   22
• 4-fache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grund 22
11. Rupert Riedl   23
• Metadisziplinen           23
• Erkenntnistheorien   24
• Forschungsgebiete   25
12. Stafford Beer     26
• Vorwort zu Maturana: Autopoietische Systeme   26

.

Contribution to The  4th European Conference on

SOFTWARE MEASUREMENT AND ICT CONTROL

in co-operation with DASMA, May 9 – 11, 2001, Heidelberg (Germany)

Contents      Page

Abstract: 2
Contents 2
A Holistic Dynamic Classification Framework for Software Estimation 3
1. Introduction 3
2. Popper’s three worlds 3
3. Cybernetic Circuits 4
4. The Cybernetic Circuit of Software Estimation 5
5. The Application of the combined models to Software Estimation 7
Figures Index 8
Literature 8

A detailed critique of Popper's idea of "epistemology without a knowing subject."


Probably almost unread at the time, more recently this paper has excited a lot of interest---to judge by the letters Haack received about it in 2009, from China and Romania! It has appeared in both these languages.

I explain how the growth of knowledge depends upon World 3 even though it involves creative discovery. I show the falsity of the oft-repeated claim that the conclusion of a valid argument is contained in its premises and I explain how that claim is a consequence of early modern conceptions of logical analysis, the structure of propositions and concepts, and the nature of necessary truth. I argue that inference, and also logical analysis, is a matter of guessing and testing, that is, a matter of discovery that depends upon World 3. I explain in what sense it is true that, as Karl Popper says, ‘we never know what we are talking about.’

›Bottom-up‹ and ›top-down‹ are common terms of methods in all sciences. However, both methods are not an invention of modern times, but rather have often been used in the history of science by synonyms and hypnoyms such as ›ascending‹ and ›descending‹, ›induction‹ and ›deduction‹, in order to describe and structure complex banks of knowledge. Paradigmatic for such a structuring are the medieval summa and the modern system. But, according to current research, such a summa has already been made in late antiquity by Dionysius the Areopagite; on the other hand, all modern system requirements were first fulfilled by Johann Gottlieb Fichteʼs ›Science of Knowing 1804‹. For that reason, the present study ›Summa and System‹ analyses the bottom-up- and top-down-methods in Dionys and Fichte, the prehistory of both methods and contrasts them with current models in philosophy of science. In doing so, it has been found that the first completed summa and the first completed system apply several methods, that are as yet unknown, in order to solve the problem of induction.

›Bottom-up‹ und ›top-down‹ sind heutzutage gängige Methodenbezeichnungen in allen Bereichen der Wissenschaft. Dennoch sind beide Methoden keine Entdeckung der Moderne, sondern wurden unter Begriffen wie beispielsweise ›Auf-‹ und ›Abstieg‹, ›Induktion‹ und ›Deduktion‹ in der Wissenschaftsgeschichte häufig verwendet, um komplexe Wissensbestände vollständig aufzuarbeiten und zu strukturieren. Paradigmatisch für eine derartige Aufarbeitung stehen die mittelalterliche Summa und das neuzeitliche System. Aktuellen Studien zufolge hat aber bereits Dionysius Areopagita in der Spätantike eine derartige Summe verfasst, während in der Neuzeit erst J. G. Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre (1804) allen Systemansprüchen genügen konnte. Daher beschäftigt sich die vorliegende Studie mit den Auf- und Abstiegsmethoden bei Dionysius und Fichte, ihrer antiken Vorgeschichte und kontrastiert ihre Methoden mit der aktuellen Wissenschaftsphilosophie. Dabei zeigt sich, dass beide Autoren bei der Aufstiegs- bzw. bottom-up-Methode bislang unberücksichtigte Strategien zur Lösung des Induktionsproblems anwenden.

In Chapter 2 of Escape from Leviathan, Jan Lester defends two hypotheses: that instrumental rationality requires agents to maximise the satisfaction of their wants and that all agents actually meet this requirement. In addition, he argues that all agents are self-interested (though not necessarily egoistic) and he offers an account of categorical moral desires which entails that no agent ever does what he genuinely feels to be morally wrong. I show that Lester’s two hypotheses are false because they cannot accommodate weakness of will, because they are inconsistent with agency, which requires free will, because ends, obligations and values cannot be reduced to desires, and because maximisation is often not possible. Further, Lester’s claim that agents are self-interested is vacuous, his attempted reduction of moral behaviour to want-satisfaction fails, and his contention, that agents always do what they genuinely think to be morally required, seems untenable. A defence of freedom that depends on homo economicus is far from promising.

1. Einführung                                                                                         2
    1.1  Der Kommunikationsapparat                                                 4
    1.2 Impulsbewegung entlang der Faser                                         5
    1.3 Die Leitungsgeschwindigkeit                                                         7
    1.4 Die Übertragung an peripheren Synapsen                                 8
    1.5 Die motorische Einheit                                                                 9
2. Die Übertragung an der Riesensynapse im Ganglium stellatum
    des Tintenfisches.                                                                               13
3. Synapsenübertragung und Leitungsbahnen im Gehirn               14
4. Allgemeine Kennzeichen der Synapsenübertragung im Gehirn.    16
    4.1 Die präsynaptische Hemmung                                               18
    4.2 Unterscheidungsfähigkeit                                                         21
6. Die motorische Rinde                                                                         22
    6.1 Das Bereitschaftspotential                                                         23
    6.2 Inputs über spezifische Afferenzen                                         23
7. Das Kleinhirn                                                                                         26
8. Der Aufbau des Gehirns                                                                         31
    8.1 Über die Regeneration getrennter Bahnen                                 35
    8.2 Schneller Transport entlang der Nervenfasern                         38
    8.3 Langzeit- und Kurzzeitgedächtnis                                                 40
    8.4 Der Hippocampus                                                                         41
    8.5 Das Langzeitgedächtnis                                                                 44
9. Die Hirnfunktion                                                                                 45
    9.1 Das Gehirn-Geist-Problem und Popper’s 3 Welten                 45
    9.2 Die Hemisphären-Asymmetrie                                                 49
    9.2.1 Das Corpus Callosum                                                                 51
    9.2.2 Die untergeordnete Hemisphäre                                         53
    9.2.3 Die übergeordnete Hemisphäre                                                 53
    9.3 Der freie Wille                                                                                 54
    9.4 Das bewußte Selbst                                                                         57

Warum habe ich diesem Buch (in der Originalausgabe) den Titel "The Understanding of the Brain" gegeben? Ich erhebe natürlich keinen Anspruch auf ein endgültiges und vollständiges Verstehen. Dies liegt in unabsehbarer Zukunft und mag sogar paradox sein - ein Gehirn, das ein Gehirn vollständig versteht.

Notwendigerweise wird diese persönliche Mitteilung, was ihre Ausführung und die Festlegung des Schwerpunktes anbelangt, voreingenommen sein. Ich versuche hier ein Buch zu schreiben, das kurzerhand durchgelesen werden kann und das eine Vorstellung von vielen Aspekten der Hirnforschung geben wird, von denen ich glaube, dass sie einige der für das weiter vordringende Unternehmen der Hirnforschung und auch für die begrifflichen Entwicklungen in den verwandten Disziplinen Psychologie und Philosophie grundlegende Ideen bietet. Ich habe aber versucht, einen Text zu verfassen, der so einfach zu lesen ist, dass er zum Beispiel für einen Oberschüler fassbar sein sollte.

Dieses Buch ist nicht als Lehrbuch oder Nachschlagewerk zu betrachten. Eher ist es eine persönliche Mitteilung, in der ich über diejenigen Aspekte des Gehirns schreibe, die für mich von besonderem Interesse sind und von denen ich denke, dass sie wesentlich für jegliches Verständnis dafür sind, wie das Gehirn seine wundervollen und vielfältigen Funktionen ausführen kann.

Ich glaube, dass wir älteren Wissenschaftler verpflichtet sind, unsere wissenschaftlichen Ideen an eine so breite Zuhörerschaft wie irgend möglich weiterzugeben.

Ich glaube, dass es wichtig ist, unseren Bericht über das Gehirn so aufzubauen, dass er sich auf das menschliche Gehirn im vollen Umfang seiner Leistung bezieht.

Contribution to The  4th European Conference on
SOFTWARE MEASUREMENT AND ICT CONTROL
in co-operation with DASMA, May 9 – 11, 2001, Heidelberg (Germany)

Contents

Abstract: 2
Contents 2
A Holistic Dynamic Classification Framework for Software Estimation 3
1. Introduction 3
2. Popper’s three worlds 3
3. Cybernetic Circuits 4
4. The Cybernetic Circuit of Software Estimation 5
5. The Application of the combined models to Software Estimation 7
Figures Index 8
Literature 8