For Popper, philosophy is an attempt to get nearer to a true view of the world, that is, a view that corresponds to the facts. This makes philosophy a serious and important activity. To approach the truth, we must scrutinize assumptions — metaphysical, moral, and political — that affect everything we do. So philosophy is not just an intellectual game. It really does matter.
Tag: philosophy
The continuum of philosophy and science
Wo aber heute noch Erkenntnistheorie im alten Sinne auftaucht – zum Beispiel in analytischer Maskerade –, da sucht sie sich oft scharf von den Realwissenschaften abzugrenzen, und zwar mit dem Hinweis, daß sie im Gegensatz zu diesen Sinn- und Geltungsprobleme behandle, während diese es nur mit Tatsachenproblemen zu tun hätten. Im Grunde genommen hat sich hier die auf Hume und Kant zurückgehende scharfe Scheidung von quaestio juris und quaestio facti, deren Berechtigung ich hier keineswegs bestreiten will, in eine Bereichsabgrenzung zwischen reiner Philosophie und Realwissenschaft umgesetzt, die die Möglichkeit einer sauberen Arbeitsteilung suggeriert, aber es mitunter schwer macht, wichtige Zusammenhänge zu erkennen. [8]
The need for precision as relative to a problem
When I wrote my Logik der Forschung I thought that the quest for the meanings of words was about to end. I was an optimist: it was gaining momentum. The task of philosophy was more and more widely described as concerned with meaning, and this meant, mainly, the meanings of words. And nobody seriously questioned the implicitly accepted dogma that the meaning of a statement, at least in its most explicit and unambiguous formulation, depends on (or is a function of) that of its words. This is true equally of the British language analysts and of those who follow Carnap in upholding the view that the task of philosophy is the “explication of concepts”, that is, making concepts precise. Yet there simply is no such thing as an “explication”, or an “explicated” or “precise” concept.
However, the problem still remains: what should we do in order to make our meaning clearer, if greater clarity is needed, or to make it more precise, if greater precision is needed? In the light of my exhortation the main answer to this question is: any move to increase clarity or precision must be ad hoc or “piecemeal”. If because of lack of clarity a misunderstanding arises, do not try to lay new and more solid foundations on which to build a more precise “conceptual framework”, but reformulate your formulations ad hoc, with a view to avoiding those misunderstandings which have arisen or which you can foresee. And always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you. If greater precision is needed, it is needed because the problem to be solved demands it. Simply try your best to solve your problems and do not try in advance to make your concepts or formulations more precise in the fond hope that this will provide you with an arsenal for future use in tackling problems which have not yet arisen. [30]
Precision for its own sake
[B]oth precision and certainty are false ideals. They are impossible to attain, and therefore dangerously misleading if they are uncritically accepted as guides. The quest for precision is analogous to the quest for certainty, and both should be abandoned.
I do not suggest, of course, that an increase in the precision of, say, a prediction, or even a formulation, may not sometimes be highly desirable. What I do suggest is that it is always undesirable to make an effort to increase precision for its own sake—especially linguistic precision—since this usually leads lo loss of clarity, and to a waste of time and effort on preliminaries which often turn out to be useless, because they are bypassed by the real advance of the subject: one should never try to be more precise than the problem situation demands.
I might perhaps state my position as follows. Every increase in clarity is of intellectual value in itself; an increase in precision or exactness has only a pragmatic value as a means to some definite end—where the end is usually an increase in testability or criticizability demanded by the problem situation (which for example may demand that we distinguish between two competing theories which lead to predictions that can be distinguished only if we increase the precision of our measurements). [24-5]
Bad philosophy
Let me define ‘bad philosophy’ as philosophy that is not merely false, but actively prevents the growth of other knowledge. [308]
On the shoulders of giants
The reverence that philosophers show for the historical sources of ideas is very perverse, you know. In science we do not consider the discoverer of a theory to have any special insight into it. On the contrary, we hardly ever consult original sources. They invariably become obsolete, as the problem-situations that prompted them are transformed by the discoveries themselves. For example, most relativity theorists today understand Einstein’s theory better than he did. The founders of quantum theory made a complete mess of understanding their own theory. Such shaky beginnings are to be expected; and when we stand upon the shoulders of giants, it may not be all that hard to see further than they did. But in any case, surely it is more interesting to argue about what the truth is, than about what some particular thinker, however great, did or did not think. [157]
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