Notes on Popper's Conjectures and Refutations, Chapter 2 -- The Nature of Philosophical Problems
Justin Mallone
Also let me give a shout-out to Rafe Champion's chapter-by-chapter C&R summaries, Chapter 2 of which is here: http://www.the-rathouse.com/CRNatureofproblems2.html
Also some introductory commentary. I think Popper's point about the "prima facie" method of studying philosophers is a good one.
It's an especially good point to keep in mind for anyone considering the study of philosophy in an academic setting. There's lots of criticisms to keep in mind about academic study in universities generally (it's coercive, inefficient, authoritarian). And there's criticisms to the academic study of philosophy in particular, such as the fact that it doesn't engage with the best philosophers (such as Popper, Rand, and others).
In this chapter Popper adds to this list. Not only does the academic study of philosophy almost systematically avoid engaging with the best philosophers, but even its methodology for studying bad/outdated philosophers is poor! By not focusing on the problem situations the old philosophers were facing, as Popper does, academic philosophy fails to even provide a meaningful sense of intellectual history to undergraduates studying philosophy. This encourages the further alienation of the study of philosophy from its purpose, which should be helping to solve people's actual problems.
Chapter 2: The Nature of Philosophical problems
Popper rejects “naïve belief” that there is “such a thing as physics, or biology, or archaeology, and that these ‘studies’ or ‘disciplines’ are distinguishable by the subject matter which they investigate (this is part of essentialism).
Fields distinguished for historical reasons and administrative convenience, and partly because theories we construct to solve problems have a tendency to grow into unified systems.
We are not students of some subject matter but students of problems. These problems can be interdisciplinary. (88) For instance geologists can need to draw on physics, math, chemistry in order to figure out chances of finding oil. Physicists can need to drawn on geology in order to test proposition of relative stability of atoms of even or odd atomic number.
Problems can “belong” to a discipline, if they arise out of a discussion characteristic of the tradition of the discipline in question. “[T]heories, as opposed to subject matter, may constitute a discipline (which might be described as a somewhat loose cluster of theories undergoing challenge, change, and growth).” (89)
Are there philosophical problems? Wittgenstein said no, all genuine problems are scientific, all so-called philosophical problems are meaningless.
Wittenstein based his approach to philosophy on Bertrand Russell’s theory of types, which categorized expressions of a language into:
1) true statements
2) False statements
3) Meaningless expressions, which include statement-like sequences of words, so called pseudo-statements
Russell solved certain paradoxes which he discovered using this distinction, particularly by distinguishing 2 and 3. While we might call a false statement like “3 times 4 equals 173” meaningless, Russell reserved meaninglessness for statements like “3 times 4 are cows.” “3 times 4 are cows” is meaningless because its negation is also a pseudo-statement, whereas the negation of 3 times 4 equals 173 (in other words, 3 times 4 does NOT equal 173) is true. (91-92).
Wittgenstein used these distinctions to say all philosophy is meaningless. He had four problem headings (92):
1. Purely mathematical or logical
2. factual
3. combinations of 1 & 2
4. meaningless pseudo-problems
Popper disagrees with Witt. “I believe that some people have said things which were not very good sense, and certainly not very good grammar, but which were all the same highly interesting and exciting, and perhaps more worth listening to than the good sense of others.”(93)
NOTE: Popper’s a little unclear here. But it seems like he must mean “good sense” as something like “conventional wisdom,” or “well-established theory” and not “quality idea.”
Popper notes that if Witt’s philosophy had been taken seriously, stuff like calculus, the foundations of which are still undergoing refinement, would have been strangled. (93)
Popper is nice to Wittgenstein and grants that there is much philosophical writing which can be criticized as meaningless verbiage, and that Witt and his language analysts checked this influence for a time. (94)
He also says (95):
1. That every philosophical school is liable to degenerate in such a way that its problems become practically indistinguishable from pseudo-problems. This results from belief that one can philosophize without having been compelled to philosophize by problems arising outside philosophy. Genuine philosophical problems are always rooted in urgent problems outside philosophy, and they die if these roots decay.
a. There is no philosophical “trick” or technique for problem solving. Any method is legitimate if it leads to results capable of being rationally discussed. “What matters is not methods or techniques but a sensitivity to problems, and a consuming passion for them; or, as the Greeks said, the gift of wonder.”
2. (96) The “prima facie” method of teaching philosophy – just reading philosophers, without having an understanding of the problem situation they were addressing – likely to lead to interpretation that the great philosophers were just spouting nonsense.
Popper thinks that perhaps “pure” philosophical problems “by and large” do not exist, since purity in this context means more loss of its original significance and a greater chance of descending into empty verbalism. (97) But philosophical problems still exist, even though they may grow out of other areas, if they are more closely connected in current discussion with problems and theories addressed by philosophers than the original field (98).
Witt’s doctrine result of thesis that all problems / statements in one of two classes :
factual statements,
logical statements.
This is designed to exclude philosophy.
Even accepting this (which Popper disputes), factual/logical problems still turn out which are philosophical.
Popper uses the example of Plato’s famous theory of Forms, and says that its development is connected to the discovery of the irrationality of the square root of 2. (100)
Under early Pythagorean theory, plane figures, and even three-dimensional objects, had a numerical sequence/ratio which represented it (a Form); therefore in that sense everything could be characterized by numbers. (103)
Pythagoreans extended this to other concepts (table of opposites, 103). Idea of concept being reducible or understandable in terms of numbers extended to other stuff, like Beauty, Health, Knowledge. Plato borrowed heavily from this in formulating theory that True and Certain Knowledge of Forms was the legitimate knowledge (104).
Popper discusses primitive atomism of pythagoreans and their dot diagrams (104).
1) Then goes on to discuss Parmenides theory that change is only apparent (105) and Democritus’ subsequent criticism of Parmenides and formulation of atomic theory (106-109).
2) Discovery of irrationalism fatal blow to atomism and pythagoreanism, since they were both ultimately based on the doctrine that all measurement is ultimately counting of natural units, and so reducible to pure numbers. (111)
3) Plato realized irrationals were catastrophic for Pythagorean project of explaining world through numbers. So he encouraged development of geometric method of explaining the world. (116-117)
Popper goes through all this Plato/Democritus/Pythagoras history to illustrate point that “prima facie” method of teaching philosophy without showing the problems philosophers were solving bad idea.
Popper explains Plato a bit more. Plato thought that the structure of matter at its lowest level consisted of triangles incorporating the irrationals √2 and √3. He furthermore believed that all irrationals could be obtained by adding to the rationals multiples of √2 and √3. This would mean that all geometrical distances are commensurable in some way with 1, √2 and √3. (121).
Plato’s theory of the Forms and theory of matter were “restatements” of Pythaogreans and Democritus with the additional idea that geometry should come before arithmetic. This approach had a huge impact on development of Euclid’s system, Newton, Einstein, etc. But Plato’s problem-situation which gave rise to philosophical problem is not well understood, and his scientific interests/achievements forgotten or taken for granted (124-125).
Popper also discusses Kant some as an example of the importance of understanding the problem situation faced by a philosopher.
The success of Newton’s theory had convinced people, including Kant, that mankind had achieved true certain knowledge. (124-125) But Hume had taught there was no certain knowledge of universal laws. (125) In Kant’s problem in Critique of Pure Reason, “How is pure natural science possible?”, pure natural science means Newton’s theory. (126). (So basically Kant assumed that Newton had Pure Knowledge and was trying to figure out how to justify this assumption.)
Kant thought we digested and assimilated sense data and gave them form, organizing them into a Cosmos and imposing upon the material presented to our senses the mathematical laws which are apart of our digestive and organizing mechanism. (NOTE: It’s not clear to me how literal Kant meant all this but from Popper’s discussion that follows it seems like this was not just some kind of weird metaphor). (126)
Popper notes that the theory proves too much – Kant’s theory says that “pure natural science” not only possible but inevitable. But then, how did it take until Newton to make Newton’s discoveries? (127)
But Popper says if Kant’s question had been “How are successful conjectures possible,” that is a good question. And the answer is human conjecturing and thirst for knowledge. (127-128). And Kant’s theory of creating theories and imposing them on world can’t explain their success, since most theories fail. (128).
Unfortunately Kant’s successors seem to fail to understand the precise problem-situation which gave rise to his work. (128).
Elliot Temple
On Dec 21, 2011, at 4:33 PM, Justin Mallone wrote:
> Below I present my reading notes on Karl Popper's Conjectures and Refutations, Chapter 2.
>
> Also let me give a shout-out to Rafe Champion's chapter-by-chapter C&R summaries, Chapter 2 of which is here: http://www.the-rathouse.com/CRNatureofproblems2.html
>
> Also some introductory commentary. I think Popper's point about the "prima facie" method of studying philosophers is a good one.
What is the "prima facie" method?
> Are there philosophical problems? Wittgenstein said no, all genuine problems are scientific, all so-called philosophical problems are meaningless.
This obscures some of Wittgenstein's nature.
He "said no", yes. But in what manner? Is this the same sort of statement as when Popper says something?
When you relate that Popper said something, your reader (accurately) expects that Popper had some reason for saying this, and that he attempted to criticize the idea before saying it, and that he investigated the topic. Popper's statements are, as a rule, rational, carefully selected and high quality, albeit some are false.
Wittgenstein's statements are different. For example, they are less uniform than Popper's in the above respects, because those things were not major focusses of his. Many of his statements are not part of the rational philosophical tradition at all.
Wittgenstein's statement that there are no philosophical problems has a simple and compelling explanation offered by Bryan Magee (in _Confessions_, IIRC): Wittgenstein did not have any philosophical problems himself.
He wasn't interested in philosophy and mistook this parochial flaw for a universal truth.
That may seem like a bit of an odd statement. Was he not a philosopher? Well, not exactly. He made no useful contributions to philosophy, and engaged in activities not designed or effective for solving philosophical problems. For example, he wrote obscure and confusing statements. That is not what people do to solve philosophical problems (so that fits with him not having any), it's what people do to put up a facade, gain prestige in the minds of fools, etc.
And he explicitly denied there are any philosophical problems. Would he have done that if he was aware of any?
So, Wittgenstein said there are no philosophical problems -- yes. But one must clarify. He has a reputation as a philosopher but was not a philosopher. He has a reputation as an expert on this sort of topic, and an author of books on this sort of topic. Construing the topic as rational or philosophical thoughts about the nature of philosophy -- the sort of thing one might expect from a similar Popper statement -- Wittgenstein is not an expert on that and never published anything about it.
To report that Wittgenstein said this at all is to give him too much credit. It's to implicit endorse his reputation and the meaningfulness of his utterances. Why is his statement worth remembering or noting? It is not. It's best forgotten (its only use is in philosophical debates to help those taken in by Wittgenstein and his reputation). Wittgenstein had no ideas of merit and note -- or perhaps everyone has a few of those, but he had fewer than my neighbor.
> Wittgenstein based his approach to philosophy
He did not have an approach to philosophy. He didn't do philosophy. He had no philosophical problems and denied there are any. He had an approach to *writing* and *gaining prestige* perhaps. Also an approach to *hitting children*. If he had a good approach to anything significant in life, it has pretty much escaped notice.
> on Bertrand Russell’s theory of types, which categorized expressions of a language into:
> 1) true statements
> 2) False statements
> 3) Meaningless expressions, which include statement-like sequences of words, so called pseudo-statements
>
> Russell solved certain paradoxes which he discovered using this distinction, particularly by distinguishing 2 and 3. While we might call a false statement like “3 times 4 equals 173” meaningless, Russell reserved meaninglessness for statements like “3 times 4 are cows.” “3 times 4 are cows” is meaningless because its negation is also a pseudo-statement, whereas the negation of 3 times 4 equals 173 (in other words, 3 times 4 does NOT equal 173) is true. (91-92).
It's not difficult to imagine a person saying those words and another understanding him: a message could be communicated. The meaning, or not, depends on context.
What I think Russell wants us to do is privilege a particular context which is similar to how he thinks, and which he regards as the most logical and rational and correct. I'm not quite sure what the point of this exercise is: I see that logic needs objective criteria for judgment, but language is for communicate between persons and we never speak in that ideal context in which we aim to evaluate logic.
> Wittgenstein used these distinctions to say all philosophy is meaningless. He had four problem headings (92):
> 1. Purely mathematical or logical
> 2. factual
> 3. combinations of 1 & 2
> 4. meaningless pseudo-problems
>
> Popper disagrees with Witt. “I believe that some people have said things which were not very good sense, and certainly not very good grammar, but which were all the same highly interesting and exciting, and perhaps more worth listening to than the good sense of others.”(93)
> NOTE: Popper’s a little unclear here. But it seems like he must mean “good sense” as something like “conventional wisdom,” or “well-established theory” and not “quality idea.”
It can mean "good idea" -- many *mistaken ideas* have been fruitful. E.g. Popper may regard Marxism as not very good sense -- a bad idea -- yet also interesting and exciting, and worth listening to over various mundane truths. (Because, Popper might think, a revised version of parts of Marxism could be important progress, or even if not, it *raises some problems* and thinking about those problems could lead progress.)
>
> Popper notes that if Witt’s philosophy had been taken seriously, stuff like calculus, the foundations of which are still undergoing refinement, would have been strangled. (93)
Why would it ever have been taken seriously like that?
This is imagining what it'd be like if his statement had been offered *like one of Popper's statements*, with fans and critics *like Popper's* would would criticize it, evaluate it, and, should they be persuaded, live by it -- all that constitutes taking it seriously.
But what would really have happened if Wittgenstein had offered the statement in a more Popperian context to be taken seriously? Well, it's hard to imagine him saying it in the first place -- it is grossly inconsistent with the serious Popperian types of attitudes to thinking. And if he had mistakenly said it, someone would have pointed out his mistake to him, and, were he taking the issue seriously, he would have learned something. No harm done. No calculus strangled.
Or perhaps Wittgenstein sticks to the idea for life. Well, so what? It won't fool a ton of people, all taking it seriously, will it? They won't all repeat his mistake because they are critical thinkers instead of followers. They want genuine understanding and to use individual judgment, so they won't just repeat a leader's mistake en masse. Again, calculus is not strangled.
Or what if Wittgenstein somehow managed to achieve a status like Christianity or Aristotle where very many people share some mistakes? That doesn't actually happen when everyone is taking stuff seriously in a Popperian way (though it could certainly happen to a bunch of Popperians if they all had a shared blind spot). But let's consider it anyway. Would Wittgenstein-as-ubiquitious-dogma strangle calculus?
I wouldn't count on it. People are hypocrites about their dogmas. It always happens because the dogmas are too inconvenient, far reaching, false, etc... So they don't apply them to every domain. When religion went after Gallileo and other science, it was not a crackdown on all hypocrisy or irreligiousness in general, but repression of a high profile threat to some of the *core ideas* of religion. Would calculus represent such a threat to Wittgenstein's imaginary anti-philosophy religion? No. Science, math, logic would have favored status and, even if imperfect, be allowed. They'd have a hell of a lot of other stuff to be more worried about.
OK, so, try to imagine a religion of Wittgenstein, which everyone holds as a dogma instead of critically questioning -- so it can be widespread -- but also which people take seriously in the sense of carefully and rationally considering its implications in all parts of life, and figuring out how it interacts with all new ideas and experiences.
This is a contradiction. There is no such thing. The people who take it seriously enough to be constantly examining its subtle consequences, applying it, using it, etc, must be constantly thinking about what it means, why it's true, etc, as part of their use of it. They must encounter times where they aren't quite sure how to apply it, so they have to fallback to some core principles and think them through -- and to do that they must have core principles they have thought about and understand and know how to use and apply in real life situations. But if you know all this stuff, and think about it all well, you aren't just going to accept a bunch of nonsense that is incompatible with most of life. You'll constantly run into problems due to the contradictions in your thinking. Instead of calculus being strangled, people will discover a million problems and have to resolve them.
What Popper means is something like if you consider the logical implications and full consequences of some of Wittgenstein's ideas, you get a mess (including harm to calculus -- though, really, including whatever Popper wants since anything follows from a contradiction).
The right takeaway is the initial context itself: Wittgenstein is not a rational philosopher. So, yes, his utterances, transplanted, wreck havoc.
It's hard to tell how much Popper intends to be addressing basic misconceptions vs treating Wittgenstein as something he was not. Did Popper want to use this to argue that Wittgenstein was not a rational type thinker by showing his ideas weren't taken rationally-seriously and couldn't be? Or was Popper mistakenly arguing with Wittgenstein as a fellow philosopher with rival theories in the same sort of context or tradition as Popper's own?
> Popper is nice to Wittgenstein
I don't think so.
Popper is nice to *ideas* -- as a general policy. It has nothing to do with kindness to *Wittgenstein* as a person.
> and grants that there is much philosophical writing which can be criticized as meaningless verbiage, and that Witt and his language analysts checked this influence for a time. (94)
Hitler must have checked various bad influences for a time. When you shut down a ton of stuff, you shut down many mistakes along with it.
Witt attacked philosophy, reason, and human thought. And not in the manner of persuasion. I don't see that any credit is due just because some of his many foes were themselves fools.
It's not as if Witt was promoting clear thinking or writing. He wrote a bunch of nonsense and verbiage himself, as well as various disguised versions of the same.
> He also says (95):
> 1. That every philosophical school is liable to degenerate in such a way that its problems become practically indistinguishable from pseudo-problems. This results from belief that one can philosophize without having been compelled to philosophize by problems arising outside philosophy. Genuine philosophical problems are always rooted in urgent problems outside philosophy, and they die if these roots decay.
I don't see anything wrong with all pure philosophical problems.
Life states with life. This leads to philosophy. When you have lots of different philosophy, you can find meta-problems: problems to do with connections or themes across many philosophical issues. These meta problems are not directly related to life but may be important because a breakthrough here may help solve various other philosophical problems (or it could do something else good).
> a. There is no philosophical “trick” or technique for problem solving. Any method is legitimate if it leads to results capable of being rationally discussed.
Right, so Witt's method is illegitimate.
> “What matters is not methods or techniques but a sensitivity to problems,
Just what Witt lacked so much that he denied any existed.
> and a consuming passion for them; or, as the Greeks said, the gift of wonder.”
> 2. (96) The “prima facie” method of teaching philosophy – just reading philosophers, without having an understanding of the problem situation they were addressing – likely to lead to interpretation that the great philosophers were just spouting nonsense.
>
> Popper thinks that perhaps “pure” philosophical problems “by and large” do not exist, since purity in this context means more loss of its original significance and a greater chance of descending into empty verbalism. (97) But philosophical problems still exist, even though they may grow out of other areas, if they are more closely connected in current discussion with problems and theories addressed by philosophers than the original field (98).
>
> Witt’s doctrine result of thesis that all problems / statements in one of two classes :
> factual statements,
> logical statements.
> This is designed to exclude philosophy.
> Even accepting this (which Popper disputes), factual/logical problems still turn out which are philosophical.
>
> Popper uses the example of Plato’s famous theory of Forms, and says that its development is connected to the discovery of the irrationality of the square root of 2. (100)
>
> Under early Pythagorean theory, plane figures, and even three-dimensional objects, had a numerical sequence/ratio which represented it (a Form); therefore in that sense everything could be characterized by numbers. (103)
>
> Pythagoreans extended this to other concepts (table of opposites, 103). Idea of concept being reducible or understandable in terms of numbers extended to other stuff, like Beauty, Health, Knowledge. Plato borrowed heavily from this in formulating theory that True and Certain Knowledge of Forms was the legitimate knowledge (104).
>
> Popper discusses primitive atomism of pythagoreans and their dot diagrams (104).
> 1) Then goes on to discuss Parmenides theory that change is only apparent (105)
For more on this, see Popper's _The World of Parmenides_. I think it's interesting.
-- Elliot Temple
http://curi.us/
Justin Mallone
On Dec 27, 2011, at 6:27 PM, Elliot Temple wrote:
>
> On Dec 21, 2011, at 4:33 PM, Justin Mallone wrote:
>
>> Are there philosophical problems? Wittgenstein said no, all genuine problems are scientific, all so-called philosophical problems are meaningless.
*snip*
> To report that Wittgenstein said this at all is to give him too much credit. It's to implicit endorse his reputation and the meaningfulness of his utterances. Why is his statement worth remembering or noting? It is not. It's best forgotten (its only use is in philosophical debates to help those taken in by Wittgenstein and his reputation). Wittgenstein had no ideas of merit and note -- or perhaps everyone has a few of those, but he had fewer than my neighbor.
>
Do you think Popper granted too much by engaging with Witt's work (or in the way he engaged)? Should people like Witt just be ignored? How does one engage with bad philosophy without giving it too much status?