Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 12:34:41 +0000
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Re: Re: Primacy of practice, sophistry, and other fun stuff


Hi Steve,

To say that Popper was a cold war warrior is not necessarily to dismiss 
his philosophy of science (though it could be used as an excuse to do 
so), rather to call into question his denunciation of Plato, Hegel, Marx 
etc in the non-phil sci books referred to. I'm aware that there are 
important realist strands in Popper's philosophy of science, and look 
forward to reading Fuller some time. That said, he operated until his 
dying day with a positivist conception of a causal law (such that the 
D-N model of explanation is often referred to as 'the 
Mill-Hempel-Popper' model), so to say that he wasn't  a positivist can 
only be something like half true, as this is pretty central to 
positivism.

I hope you don't mind my asking, but are you yourself a philosopher of 
science by any chance (they're still in fairly short supply in CR)?

Mervyn

  <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk> writes
>Mervyn
>
>Within the philosophy of science perhaps the biggest argument of the 
>century is between Kuhn notable 'The structure of`scientific 
>revolutions' and Popper -  like most  people on the left I also assumed 
>that the below rationale was broadly correct - Fuller has done a 
>remarkably good job of throwing this presumption into question.
>
>I am not concerned to defend Popper regarding the Open Society or the 
>Poverty of Historicism, after all a social-democrat like Popper could 
>hardly be expected to agree with Marx and Hegel,  rather the interest I 
>have is in Fuller's attempt to recover the philosophy of 'science' and 
>'knowledge' from the predominance of the relativist Kuhn's paradigm 
>shifts, 'where knowledge is adequate to its objects'. The argument goes 
>that Popper '...took seriously both that science aspires to universal 
>knowledge and that scientists - our representatives in this project are 
>inherently flawed and biased agents. The result was to make  science 
>game-like and democratic as possible...' But to clarify this Popper's 
>version of science is essentially dialectical pitting one 
>hypothesis/theory against another over a disputed issue. This goes back 
>to Athens, the model being Socrates model of questioning, constructed 
>in the 18th/19th centuries as the 'academic practice of scholarly 
>disputation', from this derives the German dialectical tradition and of 
>course Hegel and Marx.  An example of this dispute in a non-science 
>area is the Popper/Adorno dispute over positivism which when looked at 
>shows perhaps rather typically that they are remarkably similar... both 
>anti-positivists, both dialectical thinkers, one a marxist the other a 
>social-democratic liberal.
>
>A single issue it seems to me throws the outright rejection into 
>question: "At the height of the Vietnam War, Karl Popper called for 
>scientists to adopt a version of the Hippocratic Oath to restrain their 
>propensity for harm."
>regards
>sdv
>
>Mervyn Hartwig wrote:
>
>>I don't know about Kuhn, but anybody of intellectual integrity with a
>>reasonable familiarity with Hegel and Marx who reads The Open Society
>>and its Enemies and The Poverty of Historicism could scarcely doubt that
>>Popper was a cold war warrior. He is not only sly, he is dishonest,
>>deliberately suppressing key words and omitting context in quotes to
>>suit his cold warrior distortions and travesties. His characteristic
>>method is to set up a scarecrow and demolish it as if it were the real
>>thing. To spring to his defence on this issue in the current context can
>>only mean to defend the totalitarian commercialism (Collier) that Popper
>>himself promoted and which is now being imposed on the world by all
>>force necessary. (The very skies over London have been emptied for the
>>god of totalitarian commercialism to arrive as I type this...)
>>
>>Mervyn
>>
>> steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk writes
>>
>>>James
>>>
>>>The fifties cold warrior labelling of Popper has been challenged in very
>>>interesting ways by Steve Fuller just recently in his book Kuhn vs Popper.
>>>As Fuller points out it is Kuhn who is in the pay of the coldwar warriors...
>>>
>>>(this is not to disagree or comment on the thrust of the below - merely to
>>>spring to the defence of popper...)
>>>
>>>regards
>>>sdv
>>>
>>>
>>>>Hi Carroll
>>>>
>>>>Your punchline was strong -- that the purpose of reading Plato's
>>>>Republic was to understand The Enemy.  But, only one? Why is his name
>>>>on Lenin's tomb?  Your approach calls to mind the Fifties cold warrior
>>>>Sir Karl Popper's *Open Society and Its Enemies*, after which George
>>>>Soros named his foundation. Slyly, Sir Karl manages to suggest that
>>>>Plato's target is workers who must be kept in their place, whereas his
>>>>real target (see the Gorgias) is the unscrupulous Nietzschean rich who
>>>>want to exploit and rule.
>>>>
>>>>It is nearly always forgotten that the society of Plato's first choice
>>>>is a communist one, and that the rest of the argument is about a
>>>>second-best society. And even the second-best society is not a class
>>>>society in Marx's sense, in that the philosopher rulers do not
>>>>appropriate the surplus, but live a frugal life.
>>>>
>>>>I suppose the jury is out on whether Plato meant by "gennaion pseudos"
>>>>Big or Noble Lie, or both, but the myth of noble and base metals in the
>>>>soul is an answer to the problem of legitimising the rule of
>>>>reason, and defending it against the power of wealth. Lenin had the
>>>>same problem. It's quite a problem!
>>>>
>>>>James



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