Category: Conjectures and Refutations

Routledge: 2002.

Authoritarian sources of knowledge

But what, then, are the sources of our knowledge?

The answer, I think, is this: there are all kinds of sources of our knowledge; but none has authority. …

The fundamental mistake made by the philosophical theory of the ultimate sources of our knowledge is that it does not distinguish clearly enough between questions of origin and questions of validity. Admittedly, in the case of historio­graphy, these two questions may sometimes coincide. The question of the validity of an historical assertion may be testable only, or mainly, in the light of the origin of certain sources. But in general the two questions are different; and in general we do not test the validity of an assertion or information by tracing its sources or its origin, but we test it, much more directly, by a critical examination of what has been asserted – of the asserted facts themselves.

Thus the empiricist’s questions ‘How do you know? What is the source of your assertion?’ are wrongly put. They are not formulated in an inexact or slovenly manner, but they are entirely misconceived: they are questions that beg for an authoritarian answer. [32]

Science: answers to our problems

Thus we accept the idea that the task of science is the search for truth, that is, for true theories (even though as Xeno­phanes pointed out we may never get them, or know them as true if we get them). Yet we also stress that truth is not the only aim of science. We want more than mere truth: what we look for is interesting truth – truth which is hard to come by. And in the natural sciences (as distinct from mathematics) what we look for is truth which has a high degree of explana­tory power, which implies that it is logically improbable.

For it is clear, first of all, that we do not merely want truth – we want more truth, and new truth. We are not content with ‘twice two equals four’, even though it is true: we do not resort to reciting the multiplication table if we are faced with a difficult problem in topology or in physics. Mere truth is not enough; what we look for are answers to our problems.

Only if it is an answer to a problem – a difficult, a fertile problem, a problem of some depth – does a truth, or a conjecture about the truth, become relevant to science. This is so in pure mathematics, and it is so in the natural sciences. And in the latter, we have something like a logical measure of the depth or significance of the problem in the increase of logical improbability or explanatory power of the proposed new answer, as compared with the best theory or conjecture pre­viously proposed in the field. [311-2]

The question of the authoritative sources of knowledge

Yet the traditional question of the authoritative sources of knowledge is repeated even today — and very often by posi­tivists, and by other philosophers who believe themselves to be in revolt against authority.

The proper answer to my question ‘How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?’ is, I believe, ‘By criticizing the theories or guesses of others and — if we can train ourselves to do so — by criticizing our own theories or guesses.’ (The latter point is highly desirable, but not indispensable; for if we fail to criticize our own theories, there may be others to do it for us.) This answer sums up a position which I propose to call ‘critical rationalism’. It is a view, an attitude, and a tradition, which we owe to the Greeks. It is very different from the ‘rationalism’ or ‘intellectualism’ of Descartes and his school, and very different even from the epistemology of Kant. Yet in the field of ethics, of moral knowledge, it was approached by Kant with his principle of autonomy. This principle expresses his realization that we must not accept the command of an authority, however exalted, as the basis of ethics. For whenever we are faced with a command by an authority, it is for us to judge, critically, whether it is moral or immoral to obey. The authority may have power to enforce its commands, and we may be powerless to resist. But if we have the physical power of choice, then the ultimate respon­sibility remains with us. It is our own critical decision whether to obey a command; whether to submit to an authority.

Kant boldly carried this idea into the field of religion: ‘…in whatever way’, he writes, ‘the Deity should be made known to you, and even … if He should reveal Himself to you: it is you … who must judge whether you are permitted to believe in Him, and to worship Him.’

In view of this bold statement, it seems strange that Kant did not adopt the same attitude — that of critical examination, of the critical search for error — in the field of science. I feel certain that it was only his acceptance of the authority of Newton’s cosmology — a result of its almost unbelievable success in passing the most severe tests — which prevented Kant from doing so. If this interpretation of Kant is correct, then the critical rationalism (and also the critical empiricism) which I advocate merely puts the finishing touch to Kant’s own critical philosophy. And this was made possible by Einstein, who taught us that Newton’s theory may well be mistaken in spite of its overwhelming success.

So my answer to the questions ‘How do you know? What is the source or the basis of your assertion? What obser­vations have led you to it?’ would be: ‘I do not know: my assertion was merely a guess. Never mind the source, or the sources, from which it may spring — there are many possible sources, and I may not be aware of half of them; and origins or pedigrees have in any case little bearing upon truth. But if you are interested in the problem which I tried to solve by my tentative assertion, you may help me by criticizing it as severely as you can; and if you can design some experimental test which you think might refute my assertion, I shall gladly, and to the best of my powers, help you to refute it.’ [34-5]

Kant’s improvement on Hume

Thus Kant’s reply to Hume came near to being right; for the distinction between an a priori valid expectation and one which is both genetically and logically prior to observation, but not a priori valid, is really somewhat subtle. But Kant proved too much. In trying to show how knowledge is possible, he proposed a theory which had the unavoidable consequence that our quest for knowledge must necessarily succeed, which is clearly mistaken. When Kant said, ‘Our intellect does not draw its laws from nature but imposes its laws upon nature’, he was right. But in thinking that these laws are necessarily true, or that we necessarily succeed in imposing them upon nature, he was wrong. Nature very often resists quite successfully, forcing us to discard our laws as refuted; but if we live we may try again. [63]

In our infinite ignorance we are all equal

I believe that it would be worth trying to learn something about the world even if in trying to do so we should merely learn that we do not know much. This state of learned ignorance might be a help in many of our troubles. It might be well for all of us to remember that, while differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal. [38]

The thousand-fold experience of induction

I found that those of my friends who were admirers of Marx, Freud, and Adler, were impressed by a number of points common to these theories, and especially by their apparent explanatory power. These theories appeared to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, opening your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated. Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirming instances everywhere: the world was full of verifi­cations of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. Thus its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refuse to see it, either because it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions which were still ‘un-analyzed’ and crying out for treatment.

The most characteristic element in this situation seemed to me the incessant stream of confirmations, of observations which ‘verified’ the theories in question; and this point was constantly emphasize by their adherents. A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history; not only in the news, but also in its presentation—which revealed the class bias of the paper—and especially of course what the paper did not say. The Freudian analysts emphasized that their theories were constantly verified by their ‘clinical observa­tions’. As for Adler, I was much impressed by a personal experience. Once, in 1919, I reported to him a case which to me did not seem particularly Adlerian, but which he found no difficulty in analyzing in terms of his theory of inferiority feelings, although he had not even seen the child. Slightly shocked, I asked him how he could be so sure. ‘Because of my thousandfold experience’, he replied; whereupon I could not help saying: ‘And with this new case, I suppose, your experience has become thousand-and-one-fold.’ [45-6]

Not subjects but problems

Disciplines are distinguished partly for historical reasons and reasons of administrative convenience (such as the orga­nisation of teaching and appointments), and partly because the theories which we construct to solve our problems have a tendency to grow into unified systems. But all this classification and distinction is a comparatively unimportant and superficial affair. We are not students of some subject matter but students of problems. And problems may cut right across the borders of any subject matter or discipline. [88]

Truth relative to our problems

When the judge tells a witness that he should speak ‘The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’, then what he looks for is as much of the relevant truth as the witness may be able to offer. A witness who likes to wander off into irrelevancies is unsatisfactory as a witness, even though these irrelevancies may be truisms, and thus part of ‘the whole truth’. It is quite obvious that what the judge — or anybody else — wants when he asks for ‘the whole truth’ is as much interesting and relevant true information as can be got; and many perfectly candid witnesses have failed to disclose some important information simply because they were unaware of its relevance to the case.

Thus when we stress, with Busch, that we are not interested in mere truth but in interesting and relevant truth, then, I contend, we only emphasize a point which everybody accepts. And if we are interested in bold conjectures,even if these should soon turn out to be false, then this interest is due to our methodological conviction that only with the help of such bold conjectures can we hope to discover interesting and relevant truth.

There is a point here which, I suggest, it is the particular task of the logician to analyse. ‘Interest’, or ‘relevance’, in the sense here intended, can be objectively analysed; it is relative to our problems; and it depends on the explanatory power, and thus on the content or improbability, of the information. The measures alluded to earlier […] are precisely such measures as take account of some relative content of the information — its content relative to a hypothesis or to a problem. [312-3]

Science starts from problems

As to the starting point of science, I do not say that science starts from intuitions but that it starts from problems; that we arrive at a new theory, in the main, by trying to solve problems; that these problems arise in our attempts to understand the world as we know it […]. [209]

How the terrorists win

Not only do I hate violence, but I firmly believe that the fight against it is not hopeless. I realize that the task is difficult. I realize that, only too often in the course of history, it has happened that what appeared at first to be a great success in the fight against violence was followed by a defeat. I do not overlook the fact that the new age of violence which was opened by the two World wars is by no means at an end. Nazism and Fascism are thoroughly beaten, but I must admit that their defeat does not mean that barbarism and brutality have been defeated. On the contrary, it is no use closing our eyes to the fact that these hateful ideas achieved something like a victory in defeat. I have to admit that Hitler suc­ceeded in degrading the moral standards of our Western world, and that in the world of today there is more violence and brutal force than would have been tolerated even in the decade after the first World war. And we must face the possi­bility that our civilization may ultimately be destroyed by those new weapons which Hitlerism wished upon us, per­haps even within the first decade after the second World war; for no doubt the spirit of Hitlerism won its greatest victory over us when, after its defeat, we used the weapons which the threat of Nazism had induced us to develop. [477-8]