Practice is the criterion for testing truth ... I personally think both are indispensable ~

In academic circles, we are used to awe obscure theories, but we often forget that it is through excellent works that some originally complicated ideological mysteries become clear, and some problems repeatedly discussed in many obscure texts can be solved. Popper is such an outstanding thinker. A century ago, the criticism of absolute truth and determinism was still a heresy in the ideological circle, and Popper promoted the turning point in the history of thought with his unique style (and almost paranoid eloquence), making this heresy even common sense today. But this is by no means trivial common sense, but great common sense that rewrites people's views on science, history and social evolution. In this sense, Popper can be rightly listed as a first-class thinker.

Achievements as a philosopher

The significance of Popper as a thinker may be easy to clarify, but there are many controversies about his contribution to philosophy. Although Popper himself tends to regard himself as a philosopher, his reputation in the field of professional philosophy is quite suspicious. Many people despise his work, and some people simply don't recognize his qualification as a philosopher. The reasons for this situation are very complicated. My following analysis will emphasize that Popper's philosophical achievements are difficult to evaluate, which is related to the uniqueness of his research field and personal style.

Popper's academic career began with a critical study of induction, which belongs to a typical field of epistemology. His falsificationism theory comes from questioning induction as the logical basis of knowledge growth, but it is not an original discovery. Hume put forward the problem of induction as early as 200 years ago, and Russell once humorously mentioned it again (a chicken fed by its owner as usual every day cannot be "summarized" as being broken by its owner one day). Wittgenstein (the bitter enemy of Popper's life) clearly reiterated this point in his unique book On Logical Philosophy published by 192 1: "The process of induction lies in that we adopt the simplest rule (6.363) that can be coordinated with our experience. But this process has no logical basis, only psychological basis (6.438+0). " So as far as the discovery of inductive problems is concerned, Hume proposed it before, and then Russell and Wittgenstein discussed it again. Popper has no originality at all. Popper is not original in this respect.

Popper's philosophical contribution lies in putting forward a possible solution to the inductive problem. Contrary to the basic idea of the Vienna School, Popper's falsificationism takes the empirically tested falsifiability instead of verifiability as the demarcation standard of scientific and non-scientific statements, and replaces the empirical mechanism of observation-induction-verification with the trial-and-error mechanism of question-conjecture-refutation, which provides a new explanation for the growth of scientific knowledge. Popper clearly put forward this idea as early as1early 1930 s, which is undoubtedly original. But how to evaluate this idea in philosophy is debatable. Perhaps, the work of the Vienna School can be used for reference.

The Vienna School, with Russell and Wittgenstein as its spiritual leaders, has gathered many outstanding philosophers and mathematicians. They have read and discussed Wittgenstein's On Logical Philosophy word for word for a year (not once, but twice! ), of course, have long been fully aware of the difficulty of inductive problems. In other words, they face the same problems as Popper. However, the main members of the logical positivism school still insist on solving it in the direction of experience. Among them, Carnap's road to saving inductive methods by probability explanation seemed promising at first, but later he met many strong refutations (including Popper), and gave up R. Carnap himself because he could not see a more promising prospect, and finally turned to semantic research. The Vienna School eventually disintegrated for various reasons (especially the assassination of Shrek).

In his autobiography Infinite Exploration, Popper claimed that he "killed logical positivism". Although not intentional, he was still "responsible" for the bankruptcy of this important philosophical school at that time. Although this is boastful, the following conclusion can still be established: no one (including members of the Vienna Group) has completed a possible solution to the inductive problem in the theory of scientific knowledge, which is competitive with Popper's falsificationism. This is an important contribution to philosophy, although it may be difficult to call it a "first-class achievement".

The bigotry and stubbornness in Popper's personality tendency may affect the philosopher's evaluation of him to some extent. For example, he firmly declared that he had completely solved Hume's puzzle that had puzzled philosophers for 200 years, and was called "the dirty clothes of philosophy" by Braud. But this confident assertion has been questioned by many philosophers and some scientists. In particular, it is difficult for Popper to explain why people still rely on inductive methods in their daily experience (in Eier's view, this is the key to Hume's puzzle). Popper made a lot of self-defense, including distinguishing the psychological process and logical basis of scientific discovery. Many arguments have indeed brought theoretical perfection, but if Popper can be more humble, he may get more affirmation.

So is the actual effectiveness of the "conjecture-refutation" mechanism. Exquisite Falsificationism or "Methodology of Scientific Research Program" put forward by lakatos later gave a better explanation. Although this is not so much a philosophical method as a technical revision and supplement, Popper can't tolerate students' critical inheritance of themselves, which eventually leads to the breakdown of their friendship. Perhaps the most unacceptable thing for professional philosophers is Popper's attack on Wittgenstein. He arrogantly claimed that Wittgenstein's later research and the philosophy of language developed from it were completely misled. In any case, Popper's personality is arbitrary, which contradicts the spirit of openness and tolerance advocated by himself, so that some people jokingly call Popper "the enemy of an open society".

Popper's affront to Plato may be another reason why he lost the favor of philosophers. His interpretation of Plato in the first volume of "Open Society", from the translation details of Greek to the understanding of specific text paragraphs, and then to the overall grasp of Plato's intentions, has been criticized a lot. Greek philosopher R.B. levinson published a monograph "Defending Plato", which made a comprehensive attack on Popper. Popper added an appendix to the fourth edition to refute this point. Of course, some philosophers support Popper's explanation of Plato. Gilbert Ryle, a famous professor of analytical philosophy at Oxford University, once published a monograph on Plato himself. He published a book review in Mind magazine, pointing out that Popper's research on Greek history and Greek thought is obviously profound and original. From then on, Plato's explanation will no longer be a cliche. "And Russell also said that Popper's" attack on Plato is against orthodoxy, but in my opinion it is completely established. "If Plato and Greek philosophy are not thoroughly and specially studied, it is impossible to make a proper judgment on this argument. Besides, Whitehead famously said, "The whole western philosophy is Plato's footnote". It is also difficult to draw a clear conclusion from the argument between different footnotes. But one thing is almost certain: in the study of professional philosophy, Popper's interpretation of Plato and Hegel will not be seriously discussed as an important point of view.

Generally speaking, Popper's most ardent admirers in the humanities (such as Hayek and Berlin) are mostly "thinkers" rather than professional philosophers in a strict sense. In the interview, Popper pointed out that the task of philosophy is to reflect on our unconscious prejudice and explicitly oppose philosophy "imitating the model of modern science" on the issue of specialization. In the modern discipline system, Popper's professional identity is quite ambiguous and even embarrassing. This also makes it difficult for people to evaluate Popper's academic achievements. His course "Logic and Scientific Methods" at the London School of Economics doesn't even have a professorship. At that time, the "internationally renowned" senior lecturer was promoted to professor, which was quite tortuous. It was not until 1948 (three years after the publication of Open Society) that the school agreed to establish the post of "Professor of Logic and Scientific Methods" for Popper on Hayek's motion, and finally solved his "title problem".

Most of Popper's research topics are between professional philosophy and natural science, especially in his less famous special research. For example, at the Venice International Philosophy Conference in 1958, Popper presented a paper to analyze how Leibniz's criticism of Descartes influenced the development of physics from atomism to Faraday-Maxwell field theory. This paper was praised in a very small circle, but most philosophers hardly know what to say. His book "The Self and Its Brain" co-written with eccles has a similar fate. Popper is more like a scholar in Leibniz era, working between natural science and philosophy. In this sense, he doesn't have many peers in the contemporary era, and it is difficult to be recognized in the field of professional philosophy.

Two common misunderstandings about Popper

There are two popular misunderstandings about Popper's thought, and it seems necessary to clarify them. Because of Popper's extensive and detailed exposition of the demarcation standard between science and pseudoscience, some people think that he is an advocate of "science first" or "scientism". This is a very basic misunderstanding.

In Popper's view, the difference between science and non-science lies in the falsifiability of experience, but he firmly denies that this is the demarcation standard to distinguish between "meaningful" and "meaningless". On this issue, Popper had a sharp conflict with logical positivists, who thought that only logical propositions and scientific (empirically testable) propositions were "meaningful". Popper insists that the demarcation standard between science and non-science is by no means the demarcation standard of "meaning". On the contrary, he believes that propositions such as religion, myth and metaphysics, although not scientific statements, have their own rich significance and value, some of which can be the source of scientific conjecture. He even thinks that many theories he calls "pseudoscience", such as Freudian psychology, may have profound insight, and their theories may be correct, but they do not have falsifiability and cannot be tested empirically.

In Popper's dictionary, "science" is not synonymous with "meaningful" or "valuable", let alone "correct" or "truth". Scientific knowledge is not the only meaningful intellectual undertaking of mankind. He emphasized that scientific theory is only a temporary hypothesis that has not been falsified, and whether a superstition that equates science with truth has been established. Therefore, contrary to popular misconception, Popper is actually the strongest critic of scientific supremacism and scientism.

Another misunderstanding of Popper's political position deserves more serious discussion. Hayek is generally regarded as a "right-leaning" liberal thinker, and his close relationship with Popper for half a century is well known. He even mentioned "our philosophy" in his letter to Popper. Berlin, another liberal thinker, also praised Popper. In the preface of his Biography of Marx (version 1963), Berlin called Popper's Open Society "a rare, creative and powerful work" and thought that among all living authors, Popper made "the most cautious and attractive criticism of Marxist philosophy and historical theory". Popper himself called himself a liberal. These factors will naturally lead people to infer that he will take a "right-wing stance" in politics. Although this view is not groundless, there are still serious deviations. In fact, Popper has a considerable distance from his liberal companions in political position.

First of all, it should be pointed out that although Popper was biased against Marxism, he did not carry out ideological attacks. The book Developing Society is an analysis and criticism of Marxist theory and practice from the perspective of critical rationalism. Popper has deep respect for Marx himself and thinks that Marx is a talented philosopher. He was also keenly aware that it was reasonable for Marx to distinguish his theory from "utopian socialism", and his theory was indeed scientific at that time, because he put forward many predictions that could be tested by empirical facts. Only in Popper's view, many of these important predictions have been falsified by history. However, the main target of his criticism is what he calls "vulgar Marxists". No matter how many facts contrary to the theory appear in social practice, they still adhere to the dogma of the theory and make unremitting excuses for it. This dogmatic self-defense violates a basic quality of science, that is, theory should bravely face the test of practice. Therefore, this vulgar Marxism is no longer scientific. At the same time, Popper also pointed out that Marxism is a kind of historical determinism, which will lead to the overall and long-term planning of social practice. Although Popper didn't touch the disadvantages of Soviet model socialism at that time, his idea of "progressive social engineering" and a social evolution model of correcting mistakes through constant attempts are not without enlightenment to today's socialist practice.

Pope was a producer of * * * when he was a teenager. Although he later gave up this belief, he still believed in socialism for many years and still had a deep recognition of Marx's moral ideal of human equality and freedom. He wrote in Infinite Exploration: "If it is possible to combine socialism with individual freedom, then I am still a socialist. Because nothing is better than living a simple, simple and free life in an equal society. " He later realized that freedom is more important than equality, because striving for equality may endanger freedom, but there will be no equality between people who are not free. In this sense, Popper did emphasize the priority of freedom to equality. However, it cannot be inferred that he holds a right-wing political position. On the contrary, his views on many important issues seem to have "left-wing" political tendencies.

In the second volume of Open Society, Popper explicitly opposes extreme liberalism, especially economic laissez-faire liberalism; Criticize market fundamentalism violently, thinking that this will allow the rich to exploit the poor indefinitely, and the poor will die and be free as a result. Therefore, he strongly supports the state's economic interventionism: "We must establish a system to protect the economically weak from the strong, and consolidate this system through state power ..., which means we must abandon the principle of state non-intervention and the principle of unconstrained economic system. If we want freedom to be maintained, then I must ask the state to replace the unrestricted economic freedom policy with planned economic intervention, and we must ask economic interventionism to replace capitalism. " This quotation itself is very clear. If Popper is a liberal, then a liberal who wants to replace economic capitalism is at least a "liberal left" here.

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A profound and clear thinker, a scholar wandering between science and philosophy, an anti-capitalist liberal, an orator who preaches prudence and openness in a paranoid style, and an intellectual who is widely known and misunderstood in fashion, this is the outstanding and unique karl popper. He explored all his life and finally took Socrates' motto "I know nothing" as the epitaph of his thoughts. He warned people of the limitations of knowledge in the most powerful way to guard against the danger of rational conceit. For the disasters and horrors experienced by human beings in the 20th century, Popper was a doctor who diagnosed the ideological plague. If his warning has become common sense today, it is also his outstanding achievement to be forgotten. If one day, a similar plague prevails again, people will think of him again and remember his diagnosis.

Precautions:

1[ Austria] Wittgenstein, translated by Guo Ying, On Logical Philosophy (The Commercial Press,1August 985), p. 93.

2 Carl? Popper, translated by Qiu Renzong and Duan Juan, Infinite Exploration-An Autobiography of Thought (Fujian People's Publishing House,1February 987), pp. 33-34.

3 Karl R. Popper, Open Society and Its Enemies, Volume II: The climax of prophecy: Hegel, Marx and their aftermath (London: routledge Press, 5th edition, 1973 reprint), p. 125.