Karl Popper was without question one of the most eminent philosophers of the 20th Century. Author of several ground-breaking and highly influential books, and of hundreds of articles; winner of many rare priz ... read full comment
INTRODUCTION1
Karl Popper was without question one of the most eminent philosophers of the 20th Century. Author of several ground-breaking and highly influential books, and of hundreds of articles; winner of many rare prizes and other honours, such as a British knighthood; and founder of two new schools of thought, Critical Rationalism and Evolutionary Epistemology: few thinkers have made more extensive contributions to the intellectual life of their times. When he died in 1994, after a career spanning nearly 70 years, many agreed with his fellow philosophers Anthony Quinton and Rom Harré that Popper was "this century's most important philosopher of science," and "the last of the great logicians."2
As the name Critical Rationalism may suggest, Popper regarded a critical attitude as the most important virtue a philosopher could possess. Indeed, he called criticism "the lifeblood of all rational thought" [PKP2 977]3 and, as his obituarists implied, it was towards science, and the logic of science, that his critical powers were chiefly directed. In his magnum opus, The Open Society and its Enemies, he wrote: "... all criticism consists in pointing out ... contradictions or discrepancies, and scientific progress consists largely in the elimination of contradictions wherever we find them. This means, however, that science proceeds on the assumption that contradictions are impermissible and avoidable ... once a contradiction is admitted, all science must collapse" [OSE2 39].
It is thus surprising to discover that Popper himself hardly lived up to this ideal of non contradiction. When one examines Critical Rationalism, for example, one soon notices that it is based on questionable premises; that its internal logic is seriously flawed; that it is inconsistent with other elements of Popper's thought; and that it leads to conflicts with his own publicly stated convictions.
Acknowledgements
Before beginning, the author would like to express his sincere thanks to David Conway, Anthony Flew, David Kelley, Tibor Machan and David Miller for valuable observations or criticisms which led to the reworking of many passages; to Kevin McFarlane and Brian Micklethwait for encouragement and practical help; and to The Estate of Karl Popper for kind permission to reproduce copyright material.
1. A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF CRITICAL RATIONALISM
Critical Rationalism has also been referred to, by Popper himself and by others, as the theory of falsification, or falsificationism, and as fallibilism. It would be tempting, for the sake of brevity, to employ 'fallibilism' throughout, but the term is also associated with the founder of Pragmatism, C.S. Peirce, who actually coined it long before Popper began his career.4 This paper therefore follows the lead of later Popperians such as W.W. Bartley III5 and David Miller6 in employing Critical Rationalism, which in any case better encompasses Popper's thought.
The Critical Rationalism of Karl Popper [henceforth CR] begins by rejecting induction as a scientific method. The actual method of science, Popper maintained, is a continuous process of conjecture and refutation: "The way in which knowledge progresses, and especially our scientific knowledge, is by unjustified (and unjustifiable) anticipations, by guesses, by tentative solutions to our problems, by conjectures. These conjectures are controlled by criticism; that is, by attempted refutations, which include severely critical tests. They may survive these tests; but they can never be positively justified: they can be established neither as certainly true nor even as 'probable'..." [C&R vii].
Elsewhere, Popper put the matter more succinctly: "all knowledge is hypothetical" [OKN 30] or "All knowledge remains... conjectural" [RASC xxxv]; and it is in the form 'all knowledge is conjectural' that the essence of his philosophy has been captured - and has influenced others.7
CR was originally developed by Popper to demarcate science from non-science. He stated that for scientific knowledge to be considered knowledge it had to be refutable: "'In so far as scientific statements refer to the world of experience, they must be refutable ... in so far as they are irrefutable, they do not refer to the world of experience'" [OSE2 13].
It follows that we can never attain certainty: "The quest for certainty... is mistaken.... though we may seek for truth... we can never be quite certain that we have found it" [OSE2 375]. "No particular theory may ever be regarded as absolutely certain.... No scientific theory is sacrosanct..." [OKN 360]. "Precision and certainty are false ideals. They are impossible to attain and therefore dangerously misleading..." [UNQ 24]. He summed up with an oft-repeated aphorism: "We never know what we are talking about" [UNQ 27].
Accordingly, Popper refused to grant any philosophical value to definitions: "Definitions do not play any very important part in science.... Our 'scientific knowledge'... remains entirely unaffected if we eliminate all definitions" [OSE2 14]. "Definitions never give any factual knowledge about 'nature' or about the 'nature of things'" [C&R 20-21]. "Definitions.... are never really needed, and rarely of any use" [RASC xxxvi].
Although he held these positions all his working life, Popper did acknowledge that they were open to criticism: "nothing is exempt from criticism ... not even this principle of the critical method itself" [OSE2 379].
2. THE FIRST PREMISE OF CRITICAL RATIONALISM
Popper built his philosophy on foundations borrowed from Hume and Kant. His first premise was wholehearted acceptance of Hume's attack on induction. The second, to be addressed in the next section, was agreement with Kant's view that it is our ideas which give form to reality, not reality which gives form to our ideas.
Hume, whom Popper called "one of the most rational minds of all ages" [PKP2 1019], is renowned for elaborating the 'problem of induction' - a supposedly logical proof that generalisations from observation are invalid. Most later philosophers have accepted Hume's arguments, and libraries have been filled with attempts to solve his 'problem.'
Popper thought he had the answer. "I believed I had solved the problem of induction by the simple discovery that induction by repetition did not exist" [UNQ 52; c.f. OKN 1ff & PKP2 1115]. What really took place, according to Popper, was CR, knowledge advancing by means of conjecture and refutation: "... in my view here is no such thing as induction" [LSCD 40]; "what characterises the empirical method is its manner of exposing to falsification, in every conceivable way, the system to be tested" [LSCD 42].
Hume, said Popper, had shown that: "there is no argument of reason which permits an inference from one case to another... and I completely agree" [OKN 96]. Elsewhere he referred to induction as "a myth" which had been "exploded" by Hume [UNQ 80]. He further asserted that "There is no rule of inductive inference - inference leading to theories or universal laws - ever proposed which can be taken seriously even for a minute" [UNQ 146-7; see also RASC 31].
The Problem with 'The Problem'
Popper's solution was certainly correct in one respect. The problem of induction would indeed vanish if there were no such thing as induction. However, the issue would be resolved much more positively were it to turn out that Hume had been wrong, and that there never had been any problem with induction in the first place. And, in point of fact, this is the case. Despite his great skill as a thinker and writer, Hume missed the point. Induction does not depend for its validity on observation, but on the Law of Identity.
Hume stated, in essence, that since all ideas are derived from experience we cannot have any valid ideas about future events - which have yet to be experienced. He therefore denied that the past can give us any information about the future. He further denied that there is any necessary connection between cause and effect. We experience only repeated instances, we cannot experience any "power" that actually causes events to take place. Events are entirely "loose and separate.... conjoined but never connected."8
According to Hume, then, one has no guarantee that the hawthorn in an English hedge will not bear grapes next autumn, nor that the thistles in a nearby field won't produce figs. The expectation that the thorn will produce red berries, and the thistles purple flowers, is merely the result of "regular conjunction" which induces an "inference of the understanding."9 In Hume's view, there is no such thing as objective identity, there is only subjective "custom" or "habit."
However, Hume also wrote: "When any opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false"10 and the idea that one might gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles is surely absurd enough to qualify. And false is what Hume's opinions most certainly are. Left standing, they lead to what he himself called "the flattest of all contradictions, viz. that it is possible for the same thing both to be and not to be."11
The crux of the case against Hume was stated in 1916 by H.W.B. Joseph in An Introduction to Logic: "A thing, to be at all, must be something, and can only be what it is. To assert a causal connexion between a and x implies that a acts as it does because it is what it is; because, in fact, it is a. So long therefore as it is a, it must act thus; and to assert that it may act otherwise on a subsequent occasion is to assert that what is a is something else than the a which it is declared to be."12 Hume's whole argument - persuasive though it may be - is, to borrow Joseph's words, "in flat conflict with the Law of Identity."13
Existence implies identity. It is not possible to exist without being something, and a thing can only be what it is: A is A. Any actions of that thing form part of its identity: "the way in which it acts must be regarded as a partial expression of what it is."14 Thus to deny any connection between a thing, its actions, and their consequences, is to assert that the thing is not what it is; it is to defy the Law of Identity.
It is not necessary to prolong this discussion. Entities exist. They possess identity. By careful observation - free from preconception - we are able to discover the identities of the entities we observe. Thereafter, we are fully entitled to assume that like entities will cause like events, the form of inference we call induction. And, because it rests on the axiom of the Law of Identity, correct induction - free from contradiction - is a valid route to knowledge. The first premise of CR is therefore false.
There is nonetheless a substantial grain of truth in Hume's position, or few philosophers would have followed him. The grain lies in the precision of our knowledge of future events. Hume denied all knowledge of the future because we can have no experience of it. As we have seen, this is not true, it overlooks the Law of Identity. What is true, is that our prediction of events is limited by the unforeseeable. An 'O' ring may fail and destroy an otherwise reliable spacecraft; an icy road surface may cause a pristine Rolls-Royce to crash. For, no matter how sound our judgement nor wide our experience, we cannot possibly have complete, certain and absolute knowledge of future events. We are not omniscient: all kinds of unforeseen happenings may intervene to spoil even the best laid of our plans. Further, new information about old subjects continuously comes to light and, over time, things can evolve or change. Nonetheless, armed with the Law of Identity, there is no reason to allow the unforeseeable to turn us into sceptics. The universe is not a series of "loose and separate events" any more than time is a series of discrete, unrelated segments of duration.
It should also be noted that, in fact, all knowledge of entities, and all knowledge of language, is acquired inductively. A child's knowledge of apples, for example, is based on a very limited sampling. A student's knowledge of the word 'inference' is founded on a similarly narrow acquaintance. If it were true that induction is a myth, then all knowledge of external reality, all language, and all human thought - which depends on knowledge of reality and on language - would be myths as well, including, of course, CR.
3. POPPER'S KANTIAN PREMISE
Popper described himself as an "unorthodox Kantian" [UNQ 82]; i.e., he accepted part of Kant's epistemology, but not all of it: "Kant was right that it is our intellect which imposes its laws - its ideas, its rules - upon the inarticulate mass of our 'sensations' and thereby brings order to them. Where he was wrong is that he did not see that we rarely succeed with our imposition" [OKN 68n31; c.f. OKN 328, C&R 48-9].
Popper's Kantianism reveals itself most clearly in his view of our senses, which he saw as creative modifiers of incoming data, not as neutral 'windows on the world': "Classical epistemology which takes our sense perceptions as 'given', as the 'data' from which our theories have to be constructed by some process of induction, can only be described as pre-Darwinian. It fails to take account of the fact that the alleged data are ... adaptive reactions, and therefore interpretations which incorporate theories and prejudices and which, like theories, are impregnated with conjectural expectations... there can be no pure perception, no pure datum..." [OKN 145].15
A Fundamental Difficulty
Popper's Kantian premise raises enough issues for a book. In this short paper, there is room only for a single objection. Namely, if it is true that our senses are pre-programmed; if it is true that "there is no sense organ in which anticipatory theories are not genetically incorporated" [OKN 72]; then what flows into our minds is determined and what flows out of them is subjective. If our senses are not neutral, if they organise incoming data using pre-set theories built into them by evolution, then they do not provide us with unalloyed information, but only with prescriptions, the content of which is determined by our genetic make up. Whatever is thereafter produced inside our heads - cut off as it is from any objective contact with reality - must be subjective.
Popper's Kantian premise thus deprives CR of universality. Since it is ultimately the product of the pre-programmed interpretation of the data which entered Popper's mind, CR is a theory which can only be applied to Popper. According to his own view of his contact with reality, he would not be able to verify the relevance of CR to anybody else.
Solipsism looms, yes, but that is a natural consequence of all theories of determinism. For if thought, or the basis of thought, is determined; whether by social class, or the subconscious, or whatever determinant is preferred; then the deterministic theory itself must be determined, according to the theory, and can only be relevant to the person who expounds it. Everybody else is determined by their class, subconscious, genes, material substrate, environment, or whatever it is that is supposed to do the determining. All theories of determinism are, to use Brand Blanshard's term, 'self-stultifying.'16
The objection is analogous to the one raised by Anthony Flew against those philosophers - e.g. Hume and Kant - who claim that we can only have knowledge of our own sense impressions. If sense data are all we can know, solipsism is the inevitable result: "mental images .... are (necessarily) private ... and (logically) cannot be accessible to public observation."17
Objectivity
In Unended Quest Popper observed bluntly that "there is no such thing as an unprejudiced observation" [UNQ 51]. Although this appears to rule out the possibility of objectivity, that was not Popper's intention. Rather, again following Kant perhaps, he thought the basis for objectivity lay elsewhere: "the objectivity of scientific statements lies in the fact that they can be inter-subjectively tested" [LSCD 44]. He later restated this slightly differently: "it is the public character of science... which preserves the objectivity of science" [POH 155-6].
Unfortunately, these assertions do not bear the weight placed upon them. For if Popper's Kantian premise were true (i.e., if anticipatory theories are genetically incorporated into our sense organs and, therefore, there is no such thing as an unprejudiced observation) then senses would not cease to be prejudiced merely by being multiplied. The defective logic could hardly be more clear. One cannot offer as an universal affirmative proposition 'all human senses are prejudiced, i.e. subjective' then ask one's readers to accept that pooling the senses of many persons yields objectivity. If senses are subjective individually they are subjective collectively.18
To conclude under this head, it is plain - even after only a very brief treatment - that Popper's Kantian premise, far from providing CR with a secure footing, leads instead to insuperable problems, not least of which are conflicts with Popper's own rejection of determinism and subjectivism in such works as The Poverty of Historicism and The Open Universe.
4. LANGUAGE DIFFICULTIES
Popper called conjecture and refutation a "new way of knowing" [OSE2 383]. However, from a common sense point of view, it can immediately be objected that we do not normally claim to 'know' something which is unjustifiable, tentative or hypothetical. Knowledge, for most people - and for most scientists - is something which it is possible to be sure of, to justify, to validate, to prove; in other words, to know.
Conjecture, on the other hand, is by definition not knowledge. According to Chambers English Dictionary, a conjecture is "an opinion formed on slight or defective evidence or none: an opinion without proof: a guess". Since one cannot define an idea by means of other ideas which are contrary to it, it is clearly illegitimate to place knowledge in the same category as conjecture. More pointedly, the proposition "all knowledge remains conjectural" is a contradiction in terms.
The objection gathers strength when one notices that Popper's proposition is itself not conjectural. Universal and affirmative, it states that "All knowledge remains conjectural" - which is a claim to knowledge. The proposition thus asserts what it denies and is self-contradictory on a second count.19
Another immediate problem is that the notion of 'conjecture' depends for its intelligibility upon the prior concept of 'knowledge.' The idea of a 'conjecture' arose precisely to designate a form of mental activity which was unlike knowledge, and to distinguish clearly from knowledge an idea put forward as opinion without proof. In the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand this error is known as 'the fallacy of the stolen concept.' A classic example was Proudhon's claim that 'property is theft.' But the concept of 'theft' depends on the prior concept of 'property' and would be unintelligible without it.20 In exactly the same way, and to repeat, the concept of 'conjecture' cannot be understood apart from the prior concept of knowledge - from which it is to be distinguished. For example, 'Northern Dancer might win the Kentucky Derby' was once a conjecture. When the horse did come first, its win became an item of knowledge.
The invalidity of the proposition 'All knowledge remains conjectural' becomes even more apparent when one considers that Popper employed a large vocabulary of English and German words all of which he had to learn, and to know, in order to express any or all of his ideas. There is little conjectural about the words of a language: either the German word Forschung means 'scientific discovery' or it does not. Similarly, in all his philosophical and scientific work Popper depended on a broad range of core concepts - evolution, energy, light, atom, mass, force, etc - all of which are normally recognised as unalterable brute facts, not as conjectures. 'All knowledge is conjectural' may sound intriguing, but throughout his career Popper actually worked within a framework of knowledge, not of conjecture.
A further problem arises when one considers the concept of 'growth' in Popper's claim that knowledge grows through conjectures and refutations. (The subtitle of his book by that name is The Growth of Scientific Knowledge.) A legitimate response to this assertion is: 'What exactly is it that grows?' The concept of growth implies the existence of a thing, a body, an entity of some sort, that which grows. It may well be true that conjectures and refutations play a role in the growth of knowledge, but they could hardly do this without some knowledge to work on. The growth of knowledge via conjecture and refutation presupposes pre-existing knowledge, not pre-existing conjectures.21
That the growth of knowledge implies knowledge is another illustration of Popper's dependence on something he attempted to deny, effectively 'stealing' a concept. CR is supposed to replace our commonsense idea of inductively-acquired knowledge with a more accurate one of a continuous process of conjecture and refutation. But that process would be meaningless without something for the process to process, and that something is knowledge, not conjecture.
Lastly, the proposition 'all knowledge is conjectural' is simply not true. The writer's observation that 'the sun is shining' is not conjectural, it is a fact known to him and countless other observers. At 11am on 5 May 2003 in western England the sun is shining. The observation is no more conjectural than 'George Bush is President of the USA (at time of writing),' or 'Einstein's grandparents are dead,' or 'the French for 'yes' is 'oui,'' or '2 plus 2 = 4.' These statements are true. They are demonstrable to any sane person; either ostensibly, or through the presentation of evidence beyond reasonable doubt, via simple common sense, or by means of logic. They constitute knowledge, not conjecture.
5. PROBLEMS IN PRACTICE
Other problems surface when one considers actually employing conjecture and refutation; i.e., when one looks at CR in practice. Briefly stated, the method urges us to conjecture, then to subject the resultant theory to severely critical tests. If it survives those tests, we are permitted to grant the theory a degree of verisimilitude, the more stringent the tests, the higher the degree.
The first problem is the method's apparent arbitrariness. The conjecture or theory to be tested - and Popper said the bolder the better - would presumably be selected by the tester. But no criterion for selection is given.22 We might be referred to an earlier CR exercise, but since that route risks infinite regress (via earlier and earlier CR exercises), the conjecture to be tested must fall outside the scope of CR. Therefore, unless further information is provided, it is not obvious how the charge of arbitrariness can be resisted.
Consequently, the whole approach smacks of straw men. If a conjecture survives all CR tests, it could merely be that a 'virtuous straw man' (the conjecture) has one by one fended off an army of lesser straw men (the tests). But nothing would be proven by all this. Not only do we still require evidence of the worthwhileness of the conjecture, some other method is needed to show that the opposing arguments are truly exhaustive and not just straw. To use an analogy: it is perfectly possible for a dangerous lunatic to pass a driving test. Even the most stringent 'advanced driver' courses ever devised may not uncover the explosive unroadworthiness of 'the nut behind the wheel.'
The method of conjecture and refutation also appears to be a form of question begging. It must surely assume some measure of truth in the conjecture under examination, or there would be little point in the exercise. Put simply, the method states: 'My proposition deserves examination. Nothing in the process of examination undermined my proposition. Ergo my proposition has verisimilitude.' It may well have, but the proposition's soundness has not been established by that reasoning. One recalls the famously circular Ontological Argument for the existence of God: 'God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived. If 'that than which' didn't exist, it couldn't be 'the greatest'. Therefore God exists.' But the argument assumes in its first premise that which it sets out to establish and is clearly invalid.
The fact of the matter is that the truth of a proposition rests on the correct identification of the referents and relationships involved, not on any prior or subsequent argumentation. In any design, philosophical or practical, if a false identification is incorporated, whole libraries of arguments may not reveal the consequent flaws. A building can be the most beautiful ever built, but a single misplaced decimal point in a stress calculation can bring it crashing down. As Popper so rightly said: "contradictions are impermissible and avoidable... once a contradiction is admitted, all science must collapse" [OSE2 39].
6. REFUTABILITY AS A CRITERION OF DEMARCATION
CR claims to distinguish science from non-science by the refutability of scientific theories. Popper's standard example was Newtonian physics, so radically displaced by Einstein.23 On the other hand, Popper maintained, there were theories such as those of Marx and Freud, which were non-science because irrefutable. This was Popper's famous 'criterion of demarcation,' which he developed as a young man and held to all his life.
Relatively few philosophers have embraced it however. Tom Settle, a major contributor to P.A. Schilpp's massive festschrift, The Philosophy of Karl Popper, stated firmly in 1970: "As a criterion of demarcation between science and nonscience, Popper's 'falsifiability'-plus-a-critical-policy does not work" [PKP2 719]. Other contributors evidently agreed; among them A.J. Ayer, William C. Kneale, Imre Lakatos, Grover Maxwell, and Hilary Putnam.
One can understand the importance of the distinction to the young Popper. Fascinated by science, he was surrounded by true-believing Marxists and Freudians all of whom claimed science on their side while espousing doctrines which seemed to Popper obviously false. Nonetheless, 'refutability' seems to miss the mark. The ideas of Marx or Freud stand or fall on their conformity to logic and the available evidence - in exactly the same way as the ideas of Newton or Einstein. Marxism and Freudianism failed to survive as viable theories due to myopic concentration on a narrow range of data, false interpretations of evidence, and logical inconsistency. They never were 'irrefutable.' They failed precisely because they could be, and were, refuted; either by contrary evidence, by exposure of contradictions, or by the resolute refusal of reality to conform to their predictions. It wasn't refutability which made them unscientific, it was inaccuracy and/or illogicality.
Science is distinguished by its strict adherence to physical evidence. Non-science, on the other hand, is invariably characterised by preconception, followed by a cavalier disregard for, or rationalisation of, anything that doesn't fit into the preconceived schema. In one sense, this is what Popper was saying. But, due perhaps to his dislike of definitions, he homed in on the wrong identifying characteristic.
There are other, more serious, criticisms of Popper's theory of demarcation. Grover Maxwell pointed out that 'All men are mortal' is a perfectly sound scientific statement which is not falsifiable [PKP1 292]. Popper defended himself robustly [PKP2 1037ff], but Maxwell seemed to have the stronger case. Maxwell might also have taxed Popper about mathematics. The axioms of mathematics cannot be refuted. According to the demarcation theory, therefore, mathematics is not a science. But physics is inseparable from mathematics. Quantum mechanics, for example, could hardly be expressed without it. So physics cannot be a science either. Much the same could be said about logic. The Law of Contradiction, etc, cannot be refuted, so logic is not a science.
There is besides the singularly Popperian problem of Marxism. Marxism was one of the theories which led Popper to develop his conception of demarcation in the first place: "I had been shocked by the fact that the Marxists... were able to interpret any conceivable event as a verification of their theories" [UNQ 41-2]. Yet in "Replies to my Critics" Popper changed his tune: "Marxism was once a scientific theory"; "Marxism was once a science" [PKP2 984-5]. No doubt Popper would have swamped this objection with distinctions between Marx and Marxism,24 but the notion that Marxism could both be and not be a science does little to inspire confidence in Popper's theory of demarcation.
7. POPPER'S VIA NEGATIVA
One of the most troubling aspects of Popper's philosophy is his devout refusal to consider anything positive, a negativity which reminds one of the via negativa of medieval theology.25 The scholastic principle, "we cannot know what God is, but rather what He is not" is remarkably similar to Popper's assertion that "natural laws.... do not assert that something exists or is the case; they deny it" [LSCD 69]. CR is invariably concerned with what is not, never with what is. Yet the negative 'it is not' cannot be uttered without implying the positive 'it.' A negative implies a positive, unless one is actually denying the existence of an entity, but that is a different issue.
That negative implies positive was clearly understood by Popper. He referred to "the notion of falsity - that is, of untruth - and thus, by implication, the notion of truth" [UNQ 98]. But he did not seem to see that truth implies a 'what is' question every time CR tells us what is not. It is a stolen concept situation: the idea of 'falsity' depends upon the logically prior idea of 'truth.' Or, as Anthony O'Hear has expressed it: "there can, in fact, be no falsification without a background of accepted truth."26
Grover Maxwell also noted this problem. He pointed out that many theories are in fact positively confirmed [PKP1 292ff]. Yet Popper continued to insist in "Replies to My Critics" that, "we certainly are not justified in reasoning from an instance to the truth of the corresponding law.... we are justified in reasoning from a counterinstance to the falsity of the corresponding universal law" [PKP2 1020].
However, recalling Popper's Kantian premise, one might reasonably enquire at this point: if all observations are theory-laden, and thereby suspect, what justifies our placing any confidence in negative observations? The procedure of observation is identical whether one is seeking evidence in favour of a theory, or testing for evidence against it. If our senses are automatically suspect, as Popper maintained, negative or falsifying instances deserve no more credibility than positive or confirming ones.
Further, remembering Popper's Humian premise, one immediately wants to ask: If we are not allowed to argue from positive instances to true laws, why are we allowed to argue from counterinstances to negative laws (we were told above that "natural laws... deny"). The reasoning process is the same. Collecting disconfirmations and arguing negatively scarcely differs from collecting confirmations and arguing positively. Both are inductive procedures and, as such, have been disallowed in advance by Popper's rejection of induction.
Certainly, a single negative instance suffices to refute any universal proposition. Australian black swans falsified the belief that all adult swans were white. Popper was perfectly correct to remind us of this, and also that one or more positive instances do not necessarily establish universal propositions. But colour never was the defining characteristic of swans. The discovery of black ones did not entitle Popper to assert that their essential features - long necks, powerful wings, etc - were equally suspect.
The bottom line which CR must confront, however, is that one cannot falsify a scientific theory without inference from observed instances. However much Popper may have rejected induction, his own method was in fact dependent upon it.27
8. TRUTH, FACTS AND REALISM
As a metaphysical realist, Popper upheld the correspondence theory of truth: "A statement is true if and only if it corresponds to the facts" [OKN 46]. Although he reiterated this frequently [e.g. OSE2 369ff, UNQ 140ff], only once did he go into detail about what he meant by 'fact.' "Facts are something like a common product of language and reality... they are reality pinned down by descriptive statements.... New linguistic means not only help us to describe new kinds of facts; in a way, they even create new kinds of facts. In a certain sense, these facts obviously existed before the new means were created.... But in another sense we might say that these facts do not exist as facts before they are singled out from the continuum of events and pinned down by statements - the theories which describe them" [C&R 214].
Unfortunately, neither the lines quoted, nor the rest of the passage in the book, clarify the meaning of the word 'fact.' Since Popper's claim that 'truth means correspondence to the facts' cannot be evaluated without such clarification, we turn again to Chambers Dictionary, which defines 'fact' as "reality, a real state of things, as distinguished from a mere statement or belief." But if this definition is correct, it leads immediately to another problem with CR.
CR states that for knowledge to be regarded as scientific it must be falsifiable. Plainly then, if an item of 'knowledge' is falsified, it can no longer be regarded as a fact. In Popper's own words, a false conjecture "contradicts some real state of affairs;" "falsifications... indicate the points where we have touched reality" [C&R 116]. What we are left with are conjectures which have not yet been falsified. But a yet-to-be-falsified conjecture can hardly be called a fact, 'a real state of things.' It is rather 'a mere statement or belief' from which facts are to be distinguished.
Remembering that we have been forbidden to regard as certain anything which we may think we know about facts, all knowledge is conjectural; and that our senses are suspect because 'theory impregnated;' we are led to the seemingly inevitable conclusion that we can never know any facts. All we can 'know' are falsifiable conjectures which, as we have just seen, are not facts. Further, if this is the case, we can never find out what is true. For if truth means correspondence with the facts, as Popper assured us it did, and we cannot know any facts, then we cannot know any truth.
It could be argued that this is precisely Popper's whole philosophy. That might be correct. But so arguing would not remove the incompatibility between Critical Rationalism and Popper's espousal of the correspondence theory of truth.
It would also appear that CR conflicts with another foundation of Popper's thought, his realism. "Denying realism" he stated, "amounts to megalomania (the most widespread occupational disease of the professional philosopher)" [OKN 41]. He himself had always been: "a commonsense realist.... I was interested in the real world, in the cosmos, and I was thoroughly opposed to every idealism..." [OKN 322-3]. A few pages later he wrote: "whether our man-made theories are true or not depends upon the real facts; real facts, which are, with very few exceptions, emphatically not man-made. Our man-made theories may clash with these real facts, and so, in our search for truth, we may have to adjust our theories or to give them up" [OKN 328-9].
One must agree with these sentiments. But, if the arguments just outlined are correct, it is CR which is in need of adjustment. For if CR does deny us any knowledge of real facts, the theory not only contradicts realism, it leaves one with no good reason to be a realist. Secondly, if the reasoning in other sections of this essay is correct, then CR conflicts with the fact that, having discovered such real facts as the existence of the works of Karl Popper, say, we can and do have true knowledge of reality. No matter which way one looks at it, CR seems out of place in the mind of anyone who aspires to be a realist.
9. DEFINITION AND CONTRADICTION
Popper's espousal of the correspondence theory also conflicts with his scorn for definitions. When we assert that a statement corresponds to the facts we mean that the words we are employing accurately describe a specific, external, state of affairs. But we could not assert correspondence if our words did not have precise meanings; i.e. did not have precise definitions.
Popper liked to aver, provocatively, that we never know what we are talking about. But if his aphorism were true, a statement such as 'arsenic is poisonous' would be vacuous. Yet arsenic does exist. It is a chemical substance which, ingested above a certain concentration, is very likely to kill a human being. Which means, arsenic is poisonous. The statement is true, it corresponds to the facts. But it is only true because the words employed are accurately defined.
The correspondence theory of truth refers to human ideas. Whether one calls those ideas 'concepts,' 'statements,' 'propositions' or 'theories,' we are only able to hold them in consciousness, to relate them to facts, and to communicate them, via the medium of words. Words are the audio-visual symbols of our ideas. In a very real sense they link us to reality. Which means that if their definitions are vague or shifting, we cannot hope to arrive at any reliable truth: no definitions, no correspondence theory. As Aristotle said: "not to have one meaning is to have no meaning, and if words have no meaning, our reasoning with one another, and indeed with ourselves, has been annihilated."28
Even more serious is the matter of contradictions. Although he held contradictions to be "impermissible and avoidable" [OSE2 39] Popper had previously dismissed the Laws of Thought (which of course include the Law of Contradiction) as "psychologism" and "a thing of the past" [LSCD 98]. Whatever the merit of that judgement, it is difficult to see how we can uncover contradictions if definitions "never give any factual knowledge about 'nature' or about the 'nature of things'" [C&R 20-21] which statement must imply that there is no significant connection between words and facts. Indeed, it is hard to see how logic and the Law of Contradiction are possible if discussions of the meaning of words - i.e., of their relationship to facts - are "tiresome phantoms" or "verbal quibbles" as Popper insisted [e.g. C&R 28, or TOU xxi].
The upshot here is that the Law of Contradiction, far from being all-important to science, as Popper so vigorously implied, seems excluded by CR. If all identifications are conjectural, just 'guesses,' and definitions of no value, we would not be able to identify subject and attribute positively enough to show that they do, or do not, belong together.
10. POPPER'S THREE WORLD THEORY
Early in his career, Popper began developing a theory in which he split reality into three parts: the physical world, or the world of facts; the world of consciousness, of mental processes and events; and a third world, the products of the human mind, which he called 'objective knowledge.' Popper obviously regarded the theory as important and described it in detail several times [e.g. OKN 106ff, & 152ff]. The following is from his autobiography, Unended Quest: "If we call the world of... physical objects... the first world, and the world of subjective experiences... the second world, we may call the world of statements in themselves the third world. (I now prefer to call these... 'world 1', 'world 2', and 'world 3')" [UNQ 180-1].
After asking us to imagine a picture; distinguishing between the actual picture, one's mental image of it, and one's thoughts about that image; Popper used his own mental processes to illustrate the generation of a world 3 thought which, once written down, and "formulated in language so clearly that I can look at it critically from various sides" becomes "the thought in the objective sense, the world 3 object which I am trying to grasp.... The decisive thing seems to me that we can put objective thoughts - that is, theories - before us in such a way that we can criticize them and argue about them. To do so, we must formulate them in some more or less permanent (especially linguistic) form.... Books and journals can be regarded as typical world 3 objects..." [UNQ 182]. He added, "we may include in world 3 in a more general sense all the products of the human mind, such as tools, institutions, and works of art" [UNQ 187].
Popper described world 3 somewhat paradoxically as both "man-made" and "autonomous:" "the third world, the world of objective knowledge... is man-made. But... this world exists to a large extent autonomously... it generates its own problems, especially those connected with methods of growth; and... its impact on any one of us, even on the most original of creative thinkers, vastly exceeds the impact which any of us can make upon it" [OKN 147].
Problems
First, there seems little conjectural about the theory of worlds 1, 2, & 3. In none of Popper's several presentations is the theory offered as an hypothesis. Rather, it is laid out as a discovery, as what Popper thought the facts to be.
Second, the idea of objective knowledge appears directly to contradict CR. If knowledge can exist objectively, it is not clear how it remains at the same time conjectural. The exercise of studying Popper, for instance, depends on the existence of a dozen or so world 3 objects - his books. Now, either those books exist and say what they say or they don't, there is simply no room for conjecture.
Third, it not clear how we gain access to this objective third world when our brains and senses are 'impregnated' with inborn expectations, and are thus incapable of unadulterated contact with reality. World 3 may exist, 'out there,' objectively, but Popper said, "there is no such thing as an unprejudiced observation" [OKN 51]. It would therefore be difficult to know if we were actually observing world 3, or to identify what we were observing in it.
Further, when thoughts have been objectified as world 3 artefacts, it is not apparent how they accord with Popper's rejection of definitions. Once CR is part of an objective world 3, then either the words 'Critical Rationalism' correspond to the world 3 fact that there is such a scientific method, or they do not. We have a genus (scientific methods) and a species (Popper's method) whose differentia is the process of conjecture and refutation. Calling Popper's method syllogistic, or dialectical, would be manifestly wrong. Thus it would be perfectly in order, not a 'tiresome quibble,' to argue about the definition of CR with anyone who maintained, say, that conjecture and refutation was merely Logical Positivism in disguise. Their assertion would be untrue; it would not correspond to the objective, world 3 facts.
The existence of objective world 3 ideas also seems to conflict with Popper's rejection of 'essentialism' - the real existence of concepts - which formed an integral part of his notorious attack on Aristotle29 and underlay his dislike of definitions. Surely it is unreasonable on the one hand to lambaste essentialism - the idea that concepts are, or have, real 'essences,' which exist in our own reality or in another dimension - while claiming on the other hand that concepts have a separate existence in world 3.30
Another awkward question must be 'Why should we stop at worlds 1, 2, and 3?' The basis for the theory is fundamental difference in kind, the worlds are "utterly different" [UNQ 181]. However, in The Open Universe, Popper suggested the possibility of a world 4 of art [TOU 115] and a world 5 of human institutions [TOU 154]. He also spoke of "the gulf which separates the human brain from the animal brain" [TOU 122]. But if we are dividing reality according to fundamental differences in kind, animal consciousness ought to be world 6; and if art gets a world of its own, surely commerce is sufficiently different to qualify as world 7 - 'utterly different' things should not be left together. So plants would require a separate world from animals; elephants from amoebas; inanimate things from animate, etc. The logic of Popper's argument thus seems to lead to an Aristotelian universe of distinct entities grouped according to the identifying characteristic (or 'essence') of each kind, an inference Popper would have disliked.
Finally, the 'autonomy' of man-made, objective knowledge shows a marked kinship to Aristotle's concept of potentiality. Popper often used number theory to explain world 3: "natural numbers are the work of men," he stated. However "unexpected new problems arise as an unintended by-product of the sequence of natural numbers.... These problems are clearly autonomous. They are in no sense made by us; rather, they are discovered by us; and in this sense they exist, undiscovered, before their discovery" [OKN 160-1]. That is fair enough, but is it not merely another way of saying that the future is not actual but potential; that unknown future advances do not actually exist, yet must exist as potential in the known?
In this regard it is instructive to look at Popper's idea (in physics) of "the measures of possibilities" which he called "objective probabilities" or "propensities" [TOU 105] and thought of as "physically real" [QTSP 133]. These provide "a programme for a theory of change... which would allow us to interpret any real state of the world as both an actualisation or realisation of some of the potentialities or propensities of its preceding states, and also as a field of dispositions or propensities to realise the next state" [QTSP 198].
Leaving aside the problem of how 'physically real possibilities' fit into the category of conjectural knowledge, Popperian 'propensity' appears so similar to Aristotelian 'potentiality' - "all movement or change means the realisation (or 'actualisation') of some of the potentialities inherent in the essence of a thing" [OSE2 6] - that, in fairness, one must note that Popper dismissed Aristotle's ideas about potentiality as "pretentious jargon" [OSE2 7].
Popperian Idealism
Another problem with Popper's three-world theory concerns idealism. Popper rejected idealism with characteristic bluntness: "To me, idealism appears absurd" [OKN 41]; "I was thoroughly opposed to every idealism" [OKN 323]. Yet when one examines Popper's three-world theory, idealist overtones fairly spring from the page.
For instance, in one of his several discussions of worlds 1, 2 & 3, he wrote: "I regard world 3 as being essentially the product of the human mind. It is we who create world 3 objects.... these objects have their own inherent or autonomous laws which create unintended and unforeseeable consequences.... [these] repercussions on us are as great as, or greater than, those of our physical environment" [UNQ 186]. Elsewhere he wrote of "the 'objective mind' or 'spirit'" [OKN 149]; and that "the third world is... superhuman", it "transcends its makers" [OKN 159]. But surely the notion of a transcendent mind or spirit which effects human beings more than their physical environment is a straightforward depiction of idealism?
In The Open Universe, the idealist element seems even plainer: "we ought to admit the existence of an autonomous part of World 3; a part which consists of objective thought contents which are independent of, and clearly distinct from, the subjective or personal thought processes by which they are grasped, and whose grasp they can causally influence. I thus assert that there exist autonomous World 3 objects which have not yet taken up either World 1 shape or World 2 shape, but which, nevertheless, interact with our thought processes" [TOU 119-20]. It would be hard to describe 'independent, autonomous, objective thought contents which influence human thought processes' in other than idealist terms.
In The Self and Its Brain Popper's idealism becomes explicit. The thesis of the work, a joint effort by Popper and neuroscientist Sir John Eccles, consists of a revival of Cartesian dualism. Without admitting a mental substance, the authors defend "interactionism", the theory that "the self-conscious mind is an independent entity" [TSIB 355], which interacts with the physical brain: "something totally different from the physical system acts in some way on the physical system" [TSIB 472]. Early in the book, Popper wrote of "unembodied" World 3 objects [TSIB 41ff]. Towards the end, he stated: "the World 3 object is a real object which exists, but exists nowhere.... In a sense World 3 is a kind of Platonic world of ideas, a world which exists nowhere but which does have an existence and which does interact, especially, with human minds" [TSIB 450, see also 43ff, and OKN 154]. Popper may have consciously rejected idealism as absurd, but his thinking in the above passages is clearly identifiable as idealism - even if he was unconscious of that fact, and even if his idealism is of a somewhat novel kind.31
There is no doubt much more that could be said about Popper's three-world theory but there is no further space available here. Suffice it to say that it is this world we seek to understand; and while idealist philosophers from Plato onward have speculated about other worlds, not one of their conjectures has deepened our understanding of this one. In the words of John Searle: "We live in one world, not two or three or twenty-seven."32
11. ESTABLISHED THEORIES
The last major area of difficulty with CR to be examined in this paper concerns theories which have successfully withstood criticism. Popper did allow that after scientific theories have passed a great number of severe tests, "their tentativeness may cease to be obvious" [POH 131]. But if asked about 'established' theories he was very likely to point to Isaac Newton's "unquestionable truths" [UNQ 37] which, seemingly unassailable for over 200 years, were pushed aside by the "Einsteinian revolution" [UNQ 81].
Yet theories do exist which, in fact, are positively confirmed, as Grover Maxwell has pointed out [PKP1 292ff]. Copernicus's heliocentric theory, for example, was indeed hypothetical in 1543 because the instruments did not then exist with which to prove it. But now that huge telescopes and space probes have eliminated any rational doubt that the earth revolves around the sun, it would seem bizarre to maintain that heliocentricity remains conjectural.
Another famous theory is that of Harvey and the circulation of the blood. Once, that was indeed a bold conjecture. But if one were to declaim nowadays that Harvey's theory is refutable, or that we don't know what we are talking about when we say that blood circulates in the human body, one should expect laughter from one's audience.33
Popper was evidently aware of this problem. He once wrote about the "realisation" of the "conjecture" of an atomic bomb [TSIB 47]. But if a conjecture is realised it is very difficult to see how it remains a conjecture. One might fairly retort, rather, that this one admission blows apart the notion of demarcation by refutability and the whole of CR along with it.
There is also the awkward subject of evolution. Popper called Darwinism "a brilliant scientific hypothesis" about "a host of biological and palaeontological observations." He added: "I see in modern Darwinism the most successful explanation of the relevant facts" [POH 106]. Later, he confirmed that he was "very ready to accept evolution as a fact" [UNQ 167].34 But it is not easy to see how a 'fact' can be based on observations when Popper has told us that there is no such thing as an unprejudiced observation. Nor did he explain why we should suddenly accept an 'hypothesis' as a fact and not as a conjecture.
Popper's problem was of course that the theory of evolution is just about as inductive as one can get, yet he wanted us to believe that induction is a myth. He found no way out of this impasse, and in the end decided that the only solution was to evade the issue: "I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme" [UNQ 168].35
12. THE ULTIMATE TEST
Critical Rationalism urges us to submit our theories to severely critical tests. For a philosophy, the most critical test of all may be whether its proponents actually follow it. The example was set by Hume, who admitted that he found his scepticism hard to live by. Popper evidently experienced the same difficulty. It is easy enough to say, "our scientific theories must always remain hypotheses" [OSE2 12] but it is much more difficult to abide by that principle consistently. Thus Popper's use of the words 'knowledge,' 'know,' 'truth' and 'fact' often seemed to conflict with CR. He wrote, for instance: "Matter... consists of complex structures about whose constitution we know a great deal" [TOU 152-3]. He urged us to pay attention to the "invariant content or meaning" of a theory "upon which its truth depends" [OKN 240]. He referred to "universal laws" as "part of our common knowledge" [POH 145]; to "objectively true" statements [TOU 119]; to the 'fact' that "theories or expectations are built into our very sense organs" [OKN 146], and to the "undoubted" fact that "we can learn from experience" [C&R 291]. All these assertions seem to defy, in one way or another, the idea that knowledge remains conjectural.
Popper's philosophical premises also led him into more serious confusions. For example, he explicitly rejected as "utterly naïve and completely mistaken" what he called "the bucket theory of the mind" [OKN 61], the idea that "before we can know or say anything about the world, we must first have had perceptions - sense experiences" [OKN 341]. Yet earlier he had stated: "I readily admit that only observation can give us 'knowledge concerning facts', and that we can... become aware of facts only by observation" [LSCD 98].
Popper's attitude to 'the laws of nature' was just as perplexing. In Open Society he called natural law a "a strict unvarying regularity.... A law of nature is unalterable; there are no exceptions to it.... laws of nature... can be neither broken nor enforced. They are beyond human control..." [OSE1 57-58, c.f. OKN 196]. But such absolutist claims are difficult to reconcile with the actual discovery of natural laws when, according to Popper: "There can be no valid reasoning from singular observation statements to universal laws of nature" [RASC 32, c.f. OKN 359].
In like vein, Popper's use of illustrations often involved disregard of his own dicta. In Realism and the Aim of Science, when once again attacking induction, he told us that "mere supporting instances are as a rule too cheap... they cannot carry any weight" [RASC 130]; and that, "confirming instances are not worth having" [RASC 256]. However, when he had earlier sought to demonstrate the case that "practically every... 'chance observation' is an example of the refutation of some conjecture or assumption or expectation," he unhesitatingly drew attention to scientific discoveries by Pasteur, Roentgen, Crookes, Becquerel, Poincaré and Fleming to reinforce his point [RASC 40].
The trait of employing what he sought to deny can be found throughout Popper's work. Take his critique of Plato's politics. In Volume 1 of Open Society Popper went through the Republic, Laws, etc, with a sort of remorseless philosophical laser. Yet not once did he give any hint that he regarded the object of his study as conjectural. His method was purely and simply inductive. He took Plato's dialogues as fact, examined them line by line in search of evidence, and generalised his (very firm) conclusions.36
Another failing was Popper's occasional lack of response to important criticisms of his philosophy. As a critical rationalist, to whom criticism was "the lifeblood of all rational thought," this was serious indeed. There was, for example, the incisive refutation of the falsification principle published by the famous American philosopher Brand Blanshard. Blanshard noted that particular propositions such as 'some swans are white' can only be falsified by showing that 'no swans are white.' Since the latter would be self-evidently untrue, 'some swans are white' is a perfectly valid scientific statement which cannot be falsified.
This simple observation, which demolished both the central pillar of CR and Popper's long-cherished notion of demarcation by refutability, was published by Blanshard in 196437 but to this writer's knowledge Popper never attempted to rebut it. Certainly, there was no mention of it in Replies to my Critics, published ten years later, which would have been the perfect place for a response. Blanshard's critique has also been ignored by the Critical Rationalist scholar David Miller,38 and by the well-known British Popperian Bryan Magee, whose little book Popper has maintained through ten editions that: "Popper's seminal achievement has been to offer an acceptable solution to the problem of induction."39
As a footnote here, it may be recorded that Popper was not renowned for living up to his philosophy in his professional life. His obituary in The Times recorded his reputation as "a difficult man." The Daily Telegraph commented, "Popper's belief in his own infallibility was remarkable."40 Later, The Times Magazine reported that Popper's students at the London School of Economics found him so intolerant of criticism that they used to joke about "The Open Society, by one of its enemies."41
Popper and Marx
Popper's most egregious lapse as a critical rationalist concerns Karl Marx. Like so many young men of his era, Popper early embraced Marxism, but unlike so many, he also early rejected it - as an economic theory: he never discarded the Marxian ideal of social betterment for the working class, and for most of his life remained a dedicated interventionist and welfare-statist. Thus in Open Society, while criticising Marxism, he presented an almost fulsome portrait of Marx the man as a brilliantly original thinker and philanthropist, and as one of the "liberators of mankind" [OSE2 122].
In 1948, however, Leopold Schwartzschild published The Red Prussian. In this critical biography, based on original sources such as the Marx-Engels correspondence, Marx emerged as anything but a philanthropist. He was in fact a disgraceful sponger and drunkard, as deceitful and vindictive as he was lazy, who loathed and despised the workers ("those asses") and whose only real animus was a deep lust for power. Nor was Marx's thinking either original or based on original research. He borrowed most of his ideas from other socialists42 and his best-known thesis was pulled out of thin air without a shred of fact to support it. When he did bestir himself to try and corroborate "our view" - and found that the historical and economic data flatly contradicted him - he ignored or suppressed the evidence.43
Although Popper read The Red Prussian "some years" after it came out [OSE2 396], he never corrected or modified the glowing portrait of Marx he had given us in Open Society. It took him some 15 years even to acknowledge his awareness of the "shattering" evidence which had so drastically falsified his most famous work [OSE2 396].
In 1986, Anthony Flew, in his Introduction to a new edition of Schwartzschild's book, gently chastised Popper for not correcting his false picture of Marx.44 The publisher sent a copy to Popper, and two years later Popper wrote to Flew saying, "I wish to explain my final note [on Schwartzschild]. (1) Routleges [sic] never told me in time of a new reprint. I had to squeeze things in, at the last moment. (2) I was personally shattered by Schwartzschild's book; and it was only my view of Marx's moral stature that was shattered. The reason that my view of Marx's status as a scientist was not shattered is very simple: I had not had a very high opinion to start with, but I had given him all the benefit of the doubt; and my opinion had slowly deteriorated, both while writing the book and after.... it was only when I now read your Introduction that I saw I ought to have referred to my changed view of Marx's scientific sincerity. I therefore accept your criticism fully."45
This explanation is not really satisfactory. Popper saw the 'shattering' evidence about Marx in the late 1940s or early 1950s, yet his "final note" was not penned until 1965. In between, there were no less than four new editions of Open Society in which he could have published a revised judgement of Marx. In the end, all he gave us was a reluctant, 150-word appendix on the last page of the last edition (1966).
It is also hard to accept that Popper's opinion of Marx had not been very high. When someone writes, for example, that Marx's theory of surplus value was "brilliant" and "a theoretical success of the first order" [OSE2 172-3]; that Marx's exploitation theory "deserves the greatest respect" [OSE2 178]; and that Marx made "serious and most important contributions to social science" [OSE2 253]; it does not look as though the writer's opinion is 'deteriorating.'
There is besides the problem that Popper later had a perfect opportunity to retract his portrait of Marx. In 1966, Professor H.B. Acton of Edinburgh University wrote that, according to Popper, "Marx was primarily concerned with achieving freedom for individual men and women" and that nothing published in the twenty years since Open Society had appeared required "any radical modification" of this view [PKP2 876]. Yet, in his 1974 response to Acton, Popper merely pleaded guilty to having "idealized the picture of Marxism" over some minor points: there was not one word about Schwartzschild [PKP2 1162-5].46
CONCLUSION47
This paper is not the first to subject Popper's Critical Rationalism to detailed criticism. P.A. Schilpp's The Philosophy of Karl Popper contains several less than sympathetic essays, as does Anthony O'Hear's Karl Popper: Philosophy and Problems. And of course O'Hear earlier devoted a whole book to the matter. Other writers have been led to outright rejection. When The Logic of Scientific Discovery first appeared, Popper's famous contemporary Hans Reichenbach asserted bluntly: "The results of this book appear to me completely untenable... I cannot understand how Popper could possibly believe that with respect to the problem of induction his investigations mean even the slightest advance."48
Nonetheless, although this paper rejects Popper's main theses, it should not be construed to imply that study of his work is valueless. Far from it. Popper wrote well and clearly, and books such as The Open Society and its Enemies, The Poverty of Historicism and The Open Universe, while flawed or incomplete, are full of valuable insights, astute observations, and stimulating, sometimes inspiring, prose.
A critical attitude, particularly a self-critical one, is also every bit as important in philosophy as Popper thought it was, even if he did not always exercise his own. Subjecting one's pet theories to the kind of penetrating analysis Popper was so good at is the healthiest mental activity one can undertake. Conviction is much easier to come by than rectitude and we must always be on guard against "cocksureness" - as Popper so rightly warned us [OSE2 387].
It is also well worth keeping in mind that even if Popper was mistaken in his overall rejection of induction, CR does share with induction one of its most important elements - disconfirmation - an element which has not lost one iota of its importance since Francis Bacon first drew our attention to it in the 17th Century. We are not omniscient. We are fallible. Disconfirming instances must be sought and, where not found, anticipated at any and all times.
One famous instance cited by Popper was the discovery of deuterium in water, or 'heavy' water: "Prior to this discovery, nothing more certain and more settled could be imagined in the field of chemistry than our knowledge of water.... This historical incident is typical... we cannot foresee which parts of our scientific knowledge may come to grief one day" [OSE2 374-5].
There is much truth in that. But "come to grief" overstates the case. And that is where Popper went wrong: he focused on disconfirmation to the exclusion of everything else. He tried to elevate an important but isolated premise to the status of a philosophical system. Critical Rationalism is not a replacement for induction, it is an exaggerated focus on the negative element of induction.
The Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand was referred to earlier. Although as unacademic as Popper was academic, Rand did share with him a number of philosophic premises; such as dedication to metaphysical realism, opposition to conceptual realism, and rejection of determinism and subjectivism. Ind
Tim Owusu 8 years ago
Baidoo is sill struggling to understand.The fact of the matter is Kwarteng is too advanced for many readers on this forum including Baidoo.
Baidoo is sill struggling to understand.The fact of the matter is Kwarteng is too advanced for many readers on this forum including Baidoo.
francis kwarteng 8 years ago
Dear Readers,
This article is from The Guardian. Read on:
.........................................................................................................................................................
Boris ... read full comment
Dear Readers,
This article is from The Guardian. Read on:
.........................................................................................................................................................
Boris Yeltsin, who has died aged 76, was the most controversial figure in recent Russian history, provoking even stronger emotions in his compatriots than Mikhail Gorbachev, the man he replaced in the Kremlin.
While Gorbachev presided over the decline of the Communist party and the end of the Soviet empire in eastern Europe, it was Yeltsin, Russia's first elected president, who buried the Soviet Union itself. For that he earned euphoric admiration from some of his fellow-citizens and raging hatred from others.
Yeltsin's second outstanding claim to fame was his decision to launch Russia towards market reforms via the route known as "shock therapy", again covering himself with an avalanche of praise and fury.
Then, in October 1993, in a bizarre episode for an emerging democracy, he ordered tanks to assault the seat of the Russian parliament in the climax of an 18-month struggle with elected deputies.
Finally, just over a year later, he ordered Russian troops, most of them conscripts, to try to put down a rebellion in Chechnya that has remained a key issue ever since. The rash move sent more Russian citizens to their deaths than the 10-year-war, which the Soviet Union waged in Afghanistan till 1989.
Any of these actions would have ensured Yeltsin a place in the catalogue of strong Russian leaders from Ivan the Terrible onwards. The four together create an extraordinary record for a man who was virtually unknown in Russia, let alone abroad, until the age of 56.
Yeltsin's name is indelibly linked with Russia's faltering experience in trying to create democracy in a country which had known centuries of authoritarianism. He was given strong support by western governments who feared a return to communist rule but confused personality with process. They frequently overlooked Yeltsin's mistakes and encouraged him to bring in a constitution that concentrated massive power in the presidency rather than achieving a reliable system of checks and balances. But western support did at least prevent backsliding, and in spite of hints that he might cancel the presidential elections of 1996, when opinion polls suggested he would lose massively, or indeed the parliamentary elections of 1999, Yeltsin reluctantly honoured the system.
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Yeltsin was born to a peasant family in the village of Butko in the Urals. When the family's only cow died, Yeltsin's father moved to Perm to work as a labourer on a building site. The family of five lived in one room of a communal hut for 10 years. Undistinguished at school, Yeltsin worked as a construction engineer for 14 years until he joined the Communist party's city committee in Sverdlovsk (the former Yekaterinburg) as a full-time official.
The party ladder was the only path to upward mobility available to an ambitious, but not outstanding, young man. The intellectually brilliant could aspire to a scientific career and membership of the Academy of Sciences, where party membership was advisable but by no means essential. For the less talented, the Communist party was the best avenue to advancement.
In the rough-and-ready postwar environment of the industrial Urals that were earmarked for rapid development by Moscow's planners, Yeltsin's skills and energy helped him advance. He became the first secretary of the Sverdlovsk party in 1976. In the monolithic system of Communist party rule, being head of a regional branch was equivalent to being a kind of colonial administrator. The Communist party was almost a military structure. Regional bosses took orders from the men above, and passed them on to the lower echelons. There was no need to negotiate with competing power structures or political leaders with different views, since there were none. The extent of a regional party secretary's room for manoeuvre was to lobby the central authorities for extra funds for his area, to build new factories, roads, or schools. A party secretary showed his worth by his efficiency in getting things done.
Yeltsin was a loyal servant of the centre. When he was ordered in 1977 by the Politburo to demolish the house where the last tsar, Nicholas II, and his family were murdered in July 1918, he complied readily. The house was becoming a focal point for low-key demonstrations and Moscow wanted it removed.
After Gorbachev came to power in March 1985 and started his perestroika reforms, Yeltsin was invited to join the Politburo as a non-voting member. His dynamism made him seem a good man. He was put in charge of running Moscow. Although he launched himself into the new job with energy and created a populist image with well-publicised trips on buses and trams, he began to lose patience when he ran into opposition from entrenched bureaucrats. By the summer of 1987 he was anxious to move. At a spectacular session of the Central Committee in October, which was meant to concentrate exclusively on Gorbachev's draft speech celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Revolution, Yeltsin criticised Gorbachev and announced he would resign from the Politburo. His action started a rift between the two men that was never healed.
The immediate crisis was hushed up, but after the anniversary celebrations Yeltsin was summoned to a meeting of the Moscow branch of the party where he was sacked as city leader. But instead of being removed from the scene altogether, as would have happened under earlier Soviet leaders, Yeltsin was given a second chance. Gorbachev made him deputy minister in charge of construction. The job was a demotion, but Gorbachev wanted to present himself as a leader with a softer and more consensual style of government than his predecessors. In the past top men who fell out of favour had lost everything.
As preparations developed in 1989 for the country's first contested elections for more than 60 years, Yeltsin - down but far from out - saw the opportunity for a comeback. Projecting himself as a martyr, and making strong criticism of perestroika's failure to improve people's standard of living, Yeltsin won a landslide victory to the Congress of People's Deputies.
In the new parliament he joined the radical wing of perestroika's critics. A year later he was elected to the new Russian parliament, making it clear he hoped to become its chairman. He probably did not yet see the job as a base from which to oust Gorbachev altogether, but he clearly wanted to reduce the Soviet leader's power. As the drive for independence developed in the Baltics, the notion of "sovereignty" - even for the other republics that did not want to leave the Soviet Union - became attractive. Yeltsin argued for a new treaty to transform the Soviet Union, not to abolish it.
By mid-1990 the Communist party's monolithic rule was being openly challenged. The party had agreed to change the constitution to allow for other parties to emerge, but Gorbachev's efforts to remove the conservatives from influence in the Communist party were meeting growing resistance. Yeltsin decided to abandon the party completely. At its congress in July 1990 he stunned fellow delegates by announcing his resignation and walking out of the hall.
During the crisis over the Baltic republics' moves towards independence, when Soviet forces seized the television headquarters in Lithuania in January 1991 in support of a mysterious Committee of National Salvation that wanted to overthrow the elected government, Yeltsin rushed to the area to show solidarity with the independence movements. He called on Soviet troops not to obey illegal orders. It was a bold move that undoubtedly helped to split the Soviet establishment and prevent the coup attempts going further. Gorbachev, meanwhile, kept silent for 10 days, apparently unwilling to confront the hardliners in the KGB and the military.
The Lithuanian crisis led many radicals to conclude that Gorbachev himself had become an obstacle to change. Yeltsin took the same view, calling publicly for Gorbachev's resignation in February 1991. Meanwhile, he strengthened his own power base by persuading a majority of deputies in the Russian parliament to amend the constitution and establish an executive presidency for Russia, to be chosen by direct national ballot. Yeltsin went on to win the election handsomely. He now had an alternative power base from which to challenge Gorbachev, as well as the legitimacy of victory in national elections - a position that Gorbachev never achieved.
The hardliners, led by the head of the KGB, the defence minister, and the interior minister, took Gorbachev hostage while he was on holiday in the Crimea two months later. They set up an emergency junta to run the country with the aim of reversing the reforms, reimposing central rule, and halting the republics' drive to independence.
As elected president of Russia, Yeltsin was in an unparalleled position to oppose them. With energy and flair he led the resistance, calling on ordinary people to defend the White House, the seat of the Russian parliament. The image of him standing on a tank and inviting the army to break from the coup was the high point of his career. The army split, with the officers of the units on the streets of Moscow crucially throwing their weight behind the elected Russian president rather than an unconstitutional junta.
The failed coup exposed the political bankruptcy of the Communist party, which did nothing to rally support for Gorbachev, its leader, held hostage in the Crimea. Fear of the hardliners alarmed those republics that wanted looser control from Moscow, or outright independence. Taking advantage of the vacuum of power in Soviet institutions, Yeltsin started his own economic reforms in Russia. Increasingly he ignored Soviet law, as he decreed the suspension of the Russian Communist party and withheld Russian taxes from the central budget. In December he met the leaders of Byelorussia and Ukraine at a hunting lodge in a forest near the Polish border, where they formally announced the Soviet Union was dead. Gorbachev accepted he was finished, and resigned on December 25.
Yeltsin was now the supreme master of Russia. He agreed to plans by his radical economic advisers for an end to price subsidies in an effort to spur the economy towards the market. "Everyone will find life harder for approximately six months, then prices will fall," he told parliament.
It was an unfortunate prediction, as inflation rose in 1992 by 2,000%. Millions of Russians saw their savings wiped out. Others found themselves forced to reduce their diet because of high prices of food. For the next two years the botched economic reform became a battleground between Yeltsin and the parliament. A majority of MPS had given the president special powers in October 1991 to bring in a reform, but when they saw the results, their support flagged.
By character and instinct, and with his long background as a party apparatchik, Yeltsin was never a man disposed to compromise or negotiation. He tried to outflank the parliament by demanding a renewal of his special powers and holding a referendum calling for early parliamentary elections. He won the referendum in April 1993 but not by a big enough vote to make it binding. He then sought to change the constitution unilaterally to give the president the power to dissolve parliament. Most MPs, meanwhile, had turned against the president. The battle lines were hardening on both sides.
In September 1993 Yeltsin's patience ran out. He ordered the dissolution of parliament and sacked his vice-president, Alexander Rutskoi, even though he had no constitutional right to do either. Scores of MPs decided to stay in the building and resist eviction. There were strange ironies in that Yeltsin was now the man putting pressure on the same building and the same MPs that he had been defending only two years earlier during the 1991 coup.
Ten days after the siege started a pro-parliamentary demonstration broke through police lines several hundred yards away from the building. Inexplicably, the main police cordon round the White House was lifted as the marchers approached. In the excitement of apparent "liberation" Rutskoi and Ruslan Khasbulatov, the leader of parliament, urged their supporters to seize the mayor's office, the main state television station, and the Kremlin. A number of armed paramilitaries, representing extreme nationalist and pro-Soviet revanchists, had camped round the White House to help to "defend" it. Many of them stormed the mayor's office and moved on towards the television station. The police held them away from the TV headquarters, and according to Pavel Grachev, the defence minister, the threat only lasted 10 minutes.
Yeltsin nevertheless decided to order an assault on the White House. The army commanders hesitated for several hours, but on the morning of October 4 the decision was taken to bring tanks to the building. Firing went on all day, and Rutskoi and Khasbulatov were arrested and imprisoned. It appeared that Yeltsin had achieved what he had wanted. Parliament was closed. The army had stayed loyal. The president was free to rewrite the constitution.
But the seeds of disappointment were already there. The assault on parliament shocked most Russians and when elections were held for a new parliament and to endorse the new constitution two months later Yeltsin was rebuffed. The Central Election Commission, whose chairman was a Yeltsin appointee, declared the constitution had passed but there were strong suspicions that they were fudging the figures. In the parliamentary poll Yeltsin's strongest supporters, the block known as Russia's Choice, won barely 15 per cent of the vote. An extreme nationalist party, led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, which strongly criticised the economic reform programme, came first with 23 per cent. The communists made a strong comeback.
Worse was to come for Yeltsin. In almost its first act, the new parliament passed an amnesty for the October detainees, releasing Rutskoi and Khasbulatov from prison. Six months after dissolving the previous parliament, Yeltsin found himself no stronger politically than before. It was the first reverse he had suffered since his expulsion from the Politburo in 1987. It seemed that his luck had run out.
The setback appeared to affect Yeltsin's morale. He frequently disappeared from Moscow for unexplained reasons. His health was known to be poor and he drank heavily, but no official bulletins were published. The weakness of the president exacerbated the tensions within his administration, as different groups battled for influence. The economy was nominally under the control of Viktor Chernomyrdin, the prime minister, but pro-western monetarists like Anatoly Chubais, the privatisation minister, tried to steer it in a different direction by playing on Yeltsin's wish to be well-perceived in Washington. Meanwhile, the real influence over Yeltsin was his old tennis partner and the head of his bodyguard, Alexander Korzhakov.
Korzhakov allied with Pavel Grachev, the defence minister, to convince Yeltsin to launch a military attack on the separatist Chechen leader, Zhokar Dudayev, in December 1994. The move caused a major rift with the liberals in Yeltsin's camp, many of whom resigned or publicly denounced the president. Yeltsin's only support came from the maverick nationalist, Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
The futility of the attack and its ham-fisted implementation, as Russian tanks and artillery pulverised villages, killing hundreds of civilians and turning thousands of others into refugees, caused a new decline in Yeltsin's morale as well as his public support. For much of 1995 the president appeared not to be in control of the country. The December 1995 parliamentary elections dealt him a new blow. Viktor Chernomyrdin's party, the only one identified clearly with Yeltsin, won less than ten per cent of the vote. It looked as though Yeltsin's presidency was going to end in disaster.
Yet even at this late hour Yeltsin showed he could fight his way out of depression. Emboldened by his advisers, who feared their own demise if their boss's regime came to an end, Yeltsin decided to run for re-election. By now the main opposition was no longer the ultra-nationalists like Zhirinovsky. The baton had been picked up by the communists, who won the largest share of votes in the December 1995 elections.
The communists had made themselves leaders of the "patriotic popular block", an eclectic combination that favoured a greater role for the government in running the economy and a foreign policy less sympathetic to Western views. The block's main electoral strength was widespread opposition to Yeltsin's market reforms and anger over the non-payment of wages in hundreds of firms, whether they had been privatised or not.
The Kremlin turned the communists' strength to its own advantage. The government already controlled the two state-owned television channels. By using the intellectuals' fear that a communist comeback was knocking at the door, Yeltsin's advisers persuaded the third television channel, the privately owned NTV, to join their camp. This monopoly of the main broadcasting media became the decisive factor in Yeltsin's victorious election campaign.
Instead of having a referendum on five years of Yeltsin's rule, his advisers managed to turn the election into a referendum on the abuses and atrocities of the communist past. When Yeltsin had been elected president in 1991, the two national TV channels were divided. One supported him. One opposed him. The fact that five years later, voters were subjected to a less open democratic process was a sad reflection on Yeltsin's failure to build on the foundations that Gorbachev had left for him.
Yeltsin had suffered a heart attack between the two rounds of the 1996 election. The controlled media and Yeltsin's press spokesmen concealed the fact. With victory secure, the truth of his health problems could no longer be concealed. Yeltsin virtually dropped out of action until he was given a quintuple heart bypass operation in November 1996. His major achievement was to accept the peace plan for Chechnya negotiated by Alexander Lebed, one of his defeated rivals for the presidency, who briefly served as secretary of the security council.
The basis of Yeltsin's second-term government was a group of multimillionaire businessmen who had done well out of privatisation. These were the oligarchs, whose activities are still a key facto in Russian politics. Then they called the shots and ran the main media, although inevitably rivalries developed amongst them. Alexander Korzhakov, who had been Yeltsin's main drinking companion and adviser for several years was embroiled in the factional struggles and broke with the president. Yeltsin's excessive drinking on foreign trips became an increasing embarrassment both for Russians and his western hosts.
Power in the Kremlin revolved around what Russian analysts called the "family". Most prominent was Yeltsin's younger daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko, who was the only person considered able to talk to the president frankly. Others included Boris Berezovsky, the billionaire businessman now in London exile, and Anatoly Chubais, still a key economic adviser under Putin. Yeltsin had a succession of different chiefs of staff and press secretaries but relied heavily on the "family". He took the final decisions himself, which explained the capriciousness of his moves in 1998 and 1999 when he sacked and appointed five prime ministers in thirteen months. There seemed no point in some of the moves, except that the president was jealous of anyone stealing his limelight.
In spite of Yeltsin's erratic behaviour, western governments continued to support him on the grounds that he was leading a process of economic "reform". But the reform was highly flawed. Income inequalities grew. Homelessness and poverty increased as the government failed to pay pensions or the wages of workers in the state sector. Manufacturing output continued to slump. Financial crime and corruption flourished with impunity. The country became even more dependent on its raw material sector than it had been in the communist years while the consumers of its wealth became more concentrated on Moscow. This created the paradox of an affluent-looking capital city and increasingly desperate provinces.
In 1998 the economy for the first time began to register a mild upswing, but it was based largely on massive loans from the International Monetary Fund and a budget deficit financed by the sale of government bonds with absurdly high rates of interest. In the summer the bubble burst. The government defaulted on its loan repayments and the rouble lost three-quarters of its value. Yeltsin's legacy on the economic front looked in tatters. The fruits of privatisation had been hijacked by asset-strippers who sent their profits abroad rather than investing in Russia. Tens of thousands of small businesses had come to life in the decade since communism but living standards for Russians were precarious.
Facing new parliamentary elections in December 1999 and a presidential poll in 2000 (in which he could not go for a third term), Yeltsin and the "family" were desperate to find a way of ensuring that the succession should not pass out of their hands with the risk they could be charged with abuse of power. Thanks to an increase in the world price of oil, Russia's economy began to revive in 1999 but not enough to revive the president's popularity. Yevgeni Primakov, a former prime minister, seemed to have a strong chance of winning the presidency on an anti-corruption ticket with a centre-left programme. For the first time since 1991 there was a credible challenger who did not represent the Communist party.
Yeltsin's team felt they had to divert attention from their economic failures. A new issue had to be found. In August 1999 Yeltsin changed prime ministers again, appointing an unknown former KGB officer, Vladimir Putin, who promptly ordered the army into Chechnya after a small group of fundamentalists from Chechnya invaded the neighbouring republic of Dagestan. It seemed a bizarre and highly risky decision but the Kremlin's efforts were helped by a series of unexplained terrorist bombings in Moscow and other cities, which left around 400 Russians dead. The state-controlled TV stations manipulated popular anger against Chechens, limited news of Russian casualties on the battlefield, and, as it had done in 1996, denied the opposition fair coverage in the December elections. As a result a new party supporting Putin did unexpectedly well, gaining 23% of the vote to 13% for the party led by Primakov.
The first stage of Yeltsin's bold but unprincipled strategy had worked. With the opposition still reeling, he then took the second step. On December 31 1999 he resigned. Putin became acting president and in his first move granted Yeltsin amnesty and immunity from prosecution. With the advantage of incumbency and control over state TV, he entered the presidential election with a massive headstart. Primakov decided not to run. Within less than six months Yeltsin and his cronies had thus brilliantly ensured that power would remain in safe hands.
The manner of his departure from power fully confirmed the description of Yeltsin which had been given some years earlier by Pavel Voshchanov, his first press secretary. Voshchanov called him "a battering-ram". In the days when destruction was on the agenda he performed a powerful role, undermining the Communist party and defeating the August 1991 coup. In government, he was less impressive. He did not have the political skills to reconcile opposing views or search for consensus. He was not a dictator, but he was authoritarian. He accepted the broad rules of democracy, provided that he could manipulate them sufficiently to remain on top. He tolerated widespread corruption, and though he frequently sacked ministers, it was never because of their dishonesty or because of their ties to the new economic oligarchs. He left complex issues to his experts, preferring to remain above the battle while confining himself to shuffling and re-shuffling the ambitious men in his team.
In retirement he virtually disappeared from public view, not attempting to be an elder statesman or travelling on the international circuit. His health was fragile and he was apparently nervous of the image he would strike, once he was devoid of power.
Yeltsin presided over Russia's first decade of post-communism. The fact that it did not lead to a more stable form of democracy cannot be blamed on him alone, but he bears a large measure of responsibility for the disappointment. Russia needed a more sensitive and intelligent leader during the transition from the politics of one-party control and repression to the politics of negotiation and compromise. Yeltsin, unfortunately, was not the man. He is survived by his wife Naina and two daughters.
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francis kwarteng 8 years ago
As for what one theorist can say about another's work, there is so much we can say in this regard:
For starters, readers may want to read the lastest on John Maynard Keynes, Richard Devenport-Hines "Universal Man: The Li ... read full comment
As for what one theorist can say about another's work, there is so much we can say in this regard:
For starters, readers may want to read the lastest on John Maynard Keynes, Richard Devenport-Hines "Universal Man: The Lives of John Maynard Keynes."
This latest publication relies on new documents on Keynes' life and economic theories made available to the world.
In fact, it has information on John Maynard Keynes that was not available to Michael Holroyd his tow-part biography of Lytton Strachy. Readers will be surprised how Keynes ideas helped save the economies of Britain, America, and Europe among others!
Readers will also learn more abou how Keynes finally won out over hos critics (Alan Greenspan, Milton Friedman, etc. Pease aslo see the book "GREENSPAN'S BUBBLES: THE AGE OF IGNORANCE AT THE FEDERAL RESERVE" for a detailed discussion of Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve).
What does Keynes' got to say about Marx's "Das Kapital"?
Well, we should ask the following:
What does Marx's "Das Kapital" say about Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations"?
What does Keynes' "General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money" and "The End of Laissez-Faire" say about Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations"?
What does Milton Friedman's "A Theory of the Consumption Function" say about Keynes' "General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money"?
What does Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" say about Milton Friedman's economic theories"?
What do Sharp's and Skousen's "The Big Three In Economics: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes" say about Smith, Keynes, and Marx?
What do Anthony C. Sutton says about the descendants of all three (see below):
1) Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution
2) Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development (1917-1930)
3) Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development (1930-1945)
4) Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development (1945-1965)
5) National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union
6) Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler
7) IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation (expanded version) (Edwin Black)
8) Nazi Nexus: America’s Corporate Connections to Hitler’s Holocaust (same author)
9) War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race (expanded version)
10) The Hundred-Year Marathon (Michael Pillsbury)
11) The Untold History of the United States (Oliver Stone & Peter Kuznick)
12) The Nazi Hydra in America: Suppressed History of a Century (Wall Street and the Rise of the Third Reich) (John Hawkins/Glen Yeadon)
13) America’s Nazi Secret: An Insider’s Story (John Loftus)
Additional texts:
1) The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (Robert Heilbroner)
2) Teachings from the Worldy Philosophers (same author)
3) New Ideas from Dead Economists (George Bushholz)
4) The Authentic Adam Smith: His Life And Ideas (James Buchan)
5) Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Thomas Piketty)
Thanks.
MARCUS AMPADU 8 years ago
Mr. P.K. Baidoo Jnr., I believed you when you made it known that you are "a principled man, and not a cheap hack". I do not expect you to attack the people you disagree with, like Kwarteng, based on his morality.
I just w ... read full comment
Mr. P.K. Baidoo Jnr., I believed you when you made it known that you are "a principled man, and not a cheap hack". I do not expect you to attack the people you disagree with, like Kwarteng, based on his morality.
I just want you to cease referring to the politicians, philosophers, and economic theorists of Western Europe who cannot help our nation to come up with a political and economic system that essentially rests on robust sustainability.
In your next write up, please refrain from unleashing your animosity on Kwarteng and the Nkrumahists and their socialist ideology that you find offensive, and zero in on suggesting a democratic, sustainable governance based on accountability, responsible behavior, and effective communication. The Das Kapital series is a waste of your time and everybody's.
Take Care, PKB, Jnr.
Philip Kobina Baidoo 8 years ago
Hello Mr Ampadu, I do appreciate your frustration, but the problem is I did not start this. It was Mr Kwarteng who started making 1,001 European references and I am paying him back in kind. Besides, I want to prove to him tha ... read full comment
Hello Mr Ampadu, I do appreciate your frustration, but the problem is I did not start this. It was Mr Kwarteng who started making 1,001 European references and I am paying him back in kind. Besides, I want to prove to him that he might have read all the books on God’s planet, and unquestionable has the capacity to produce his endless verbiage, but he lacks the intellectual skills to understand what he reads.
If you have read the first part of the series I did offer Mr Kwarteng an olive branch and he threw it in my face. I tried to be civil, because I thought I was too aggressive in my earlier submission and I was rebuffed. He opined that I was not in his league like the way he haemorrhage words in every single article he post on ghanaweb. Maybe you have not been reading his comments to the series; he has been using words like sentimental, and effeminate to describe me for brooding over the murder of people in the millions. I am spineless for crying over the death of millions that is what he has been posting. Just go back and read some of them, and you will understand my position.
In my first article most of the statements I made were couched in my personal beliefs and sentiments. Of course, he rubbished them and introduced the all these people that I have been discussing their work as superior to anything that I have to say.
For your request, I have actually been offering suggesting in so many of the articles I have written before on this forum, the classic responds has been endless insults. Of course, what I offer is capitalist in perspective so I am not surprise about the responds. Most of the people think they can have free lunch without anybody paying for it. With such mentality why do we cry when the economy is poorly managed? I wrote about the government taking loans to provide sanitary pads for school girls. I have suggested that the problem with the constant depreciation of the national currency is due to TOR, and the only solution is to privatise it. However, you wouldn’t like to hear that. I wrote about the unconscionable, perhaps the madness of increasing the number of parliamentary seats as well as the number of districts in these times of economic malaise. Unfortunately, the comments to that one has been taken off by ghanaweb. You will be surprised to know the scolding I got for my trouble. Lastly, I have written that the only way to solve our economic malaise permanently is to reduce government expenditure especially on consumption.
Thank you
MAARCUS AMPADU 8 years ago
Thank you for taking time to respond.
I hope in you next article you suggest how Ghana could minimize consumption. wastage, laziness, and corruption, and seek sustainability.
Thank you for taking time to respond.
I hope in you next article you suggest how Ghana could minimize consumption. wastage, laziness, and corruption, and seek sustainability.
Philip Kobina Baidoo 8 years ago
I thank you for keeping up. I am now certain that you are concerned. However, I have to answer every inconsequential question that Mr Kwarteng threw at me. Don't worry your request will come later. Thank you
I thank you for keeping up. I am now certain that you are concerned. However, I have to answer every inconsequential question that Mr Kwarteng threw at me. Don't worry your request will come later. Thank you
francis kwarteng 8 years ago
Ampadu,
Please tell Baidoo to take a look Mazower's text "The Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century."
I have always forgotten to mention. This one book alone destroys his faulty assumptions. Baidoo should then com ... read full comment
Ampadu,
Please tell Baidoo to take a look Mazower's text "The Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century."
I have always forgotten to mention. This one book alone destroys his faulty assumptions. Baidoo should then come and refute the arguments and facts presented in this excelent book.
Thanks.
francis kwarteng 8 years ago
Dear Baidoo,
How are you?
I threw an olive branch not because of what you were writing about. I did that because I did not want you to personalize the debate. It is clear you are taking it too personal, which should not ... read full comment
Dear Baidoo,
How are you?
I threw an olive branch not because of what you were writing about. I did that because I did not want you to personalize the debate. It is clear you are taking it too personal, which should not be the case.
That is why Kosovo, a commentator, said your articles are not "scientific." And is also why other commentators have also suggested you have no knowledge of the things you are talking about.
Thus, I am not throwing an olive branch to you because you think I am scared or want you to stop writing what you are writing about now. NO.NO.NO.
You are certainly one of the easiest on Ghanaweb to handle if I should decide to mount a formal rebuttal. Please understand that the olive branch is not indirect means of telling to stop writing your rebuttals.
Again NO, NO, NO, NO and a big NO. You should continue writing your rebuttals till the world ends. That will not add anything to your intellectual credibility as far as I am concerned.
Like I have repeatedly said, I don't have time on my side to write a formal rebuttal to your grossly uninformed articles because that will be too much of a task for me, given that I have to be more detailed than my former rebuttals.
This series you have embarked upon is laced with too many erreneous assumptions, flawed and porous arguments, quoting books out of context, misrepresentations and misparaphrasing, factual errors, serious analyptic lapses, and what have you.
Thus, the little contributions I am making here by way of references, etc., is to give readers' a broader perspective on the issues than the faulty, erroneus and narrow perspectives you are giving readers and yourself.
I bet you no serious writer will give you the attention I am giving you. They will completely ignore you as others have asked me to do. Some of these are individuals who have been working in some of the major areas (for decades here in America and around the world) you have chosen to write about. So I am here to give a broader and more "well-informed" perspctive (not an insult).
I am not lying when I said and continue to say you have not shown depth yet and mastery of the subject matter (please don't personalize this too). It is why I am assembling some of the most technical texts on the planet for you.
These texts will come from one whose work has impacted Wall Street (and other American institutions), national governments, World Bank, etc.
You Baidoo will also be surprised that some of those (one or two)on Ghanaweb who have been saying you are ignorant about some of the things you are talking about are experts in those very things.
The American government has been relies on "these persons" (whose identity it is no my place to reveal on Ghanaweb) and other experts to do for it some of the isssues you so ignorantly talk about. So you can see why I say your articles are grossly misinformed.
I wanted you to simply deal with the facts, which you have woefully failed to do. You have not demonstrated a "scientific" grasp of the issues you or the sources which you have been discussing.
For instance, just consider how narrow your views are with regard to the work of Karl Popper. There is so much you don't know about about Popper's body of work which I have not brought to your attention yet. This includes the works of other philosophers of science and my own take.
More important, I have provided enough data to show how logically flawed (and non-inclsive your sources are) and grossly erroneous your arguments are.
For instance, read Richard Davenport-Hines' latest biography of John Maynard Keynes and compare that with Michael Holroyd's biography of Lytton Strachey, which has very "little" to say about Kyenes anyway.
Also look at the way in which Karl Popper is laid bare before the world! Did you take time to read how some of his major assumptions undergirding some of his major works which you quote are flawed?
And did you carry out research into how Popper's "The Open Society" is itself flawyed in some important respects? I bet you did not.
This is something for you to think about. I do not have the time to discuss that in detail because if you closley read the book as I have, then the flaws of the book should have been clear to you by now!
All in all, stop personalizing your series and deal with the facts, if you have any, as Marcus has suggested to you. And never make the mistake of thinking that my olive branch to you was intended to ask you to discontinue your series (if I have misread you on this, then you will have tp pardon me).
After all, you have not made any serious or cogent arguments yet as far as I am concerned. I am looking forward to one in your series before you finally decide end it, whether today or hundred years from now.
On the technical texts, you will get the opportunity to understand what the things you are talking about works in democracy. You will get a highly technical discussion on capitalism (classical and neoclassical), Marxism, mixed economy, Keynesian economics, etc., from the standpoints of mathematics, epistemology, nominalism, historism, philosophy, statistics, urban studies, management science/operations research, engineering, law, rational choice theory, logic, topology, power dynamics, national politics, science, social science, measurement theory, risk and uncertaintly, investment strategies, forecasting, time series analysis, etc.
Baidoo, you will realize after reading these texts (which will probably take you years to read, not because they are many but because the texts are written exclsuively for specialists whose work directly impact institutions, governments, etc) how far and far and far you are from writing any meaningful stuff for others to read (as you have done in this series so far).
I hope to be forgiven if there is something I did not say right, for I am not the kind to insult people I disagree with. We all have our fallibilities and sometimes say the right things in the wrong way.
I WILL ALSO ASK BAIDOO THAT SAYING HE IS A "PRINCIPLED MAN" AMOUNTS TO NOTHING IN MY OPINION. IT IS STICKING TO SOUND, LOGICAL ARGUMENTS AND "SCIENTIFIC" FACTS THAT MATTER THE MOST TO ME. BEING "A PRINCIPLED MAN" ADDS NOTHING TO OR DETRACT FROM HIS INTELLECTUAL "CREDIBILITY." IT IS THE FACTS AND "SCIENTIFIC" ARGUMENTS THAT MATTER. AFTER ALL GHANAWEB IS NOT FOR KIDS. BEING "A PRINCIPLED MAN" IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR FLAWED AND ILLOGICAL ARGUMENTS OR DECEPTIVELY "SOUND," "LOGICAL" ARGUMENTS.
Having said all that, my olive branch to Baidoo was meant to tell him to depersonalize his essays and make a bit "scientific." That is, for him not to take the ongoing discussion too personal. I don't think Baidoo wants to make it personal but that is what comes across in his essay. He will get to understand why I fault his arguments after reading the technical texts (and the others I had already given him and readers).
All errors are mine.
My regards to your families. Have a great weekend.
Thanks.
MARCUS AMPADU 8 years ago
You threw an olive branch you said in your previous response. "...I did not want you to personalize the debate. It is clear you are taking it too personal, which should not be the case". Well I wonder if Baidoo will accept y ... read full comment
You threw an olive branch you said in your previous response. "...I did not want you to personalize the debate. It is clear you are taking it too personal, which should not be the case". Well I wonder if Baidoo will accept your magnanimous olive branch.
What has Kwarteng got to say now?
INTRODUCTION1
Karl Popper was without question one of the most eminent philosophers of the 20th Century. Author of several ground-breaking and highly influential books, and of hundreds of articles; winner of many rare priz ...
read full comment
Baidoo is sill struggling to understand.The fact of the matter is Kwarteng is too advanced for many readers on this forum including Baidoo.
Dear Readers,
This article is from The Guardian. Read on:
.........................................................................................................................................................
Boris ...
read full comment
As for what one theorist can say about another's work, there is so much we can say in this regard:
For starters, readers may want to read the lastest on John Maynard Keynes, Richard Devenport-Hines "Universal Man: The Li ...
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Mr. P.K. Baidoo Jnr., I believed you when you made it known that you are "a principled man, and not a cheap hack". I do not expect you to attack the people you disagree with, like Kwarteng, based on his morality.
I just w ...
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Hello Mr Ampadu, I do appreciate your frustration, but the problem is I did not start this. It was Mr Kwarteng who started making 1,001 European references and I am paying him back in kind. Besides, I want to prove to him tha ...
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Thank you for taking time to respond.
I hope in you next article you suggest how Ghana could minimize consumption. wastage, laziness, and corruption, and seek sustainability.
I thank you for keeping up. I am now certain that you are concerned. However, I have to answer every inconsequential question that Mr Kwarteng threw at me. Don't worry your request will come later. Thank you
Ampadu,
Please tell Baidoo to take a look Mazower's text "The Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century."
I have always forgotten to mention. This one book alone destroys his faulty assumptions. Baidoo should then com ...
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Dear Baidoo,
How are you?
I threw an olive branch not because of what you were writing about. I did that because I did not want you to personalize the debate. It is clear you are taking it too personal, which should not ...
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You threw an olive branch you said in your previous response. "...I did not want you to personalize the debate. It is clear you are taking it too personal, which should not be the case". Well I wonder if Baidoo will accept y ...
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Philip and nonsense again.
Thanks for your comments