Showing papers in "Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement in 1995"

Karl Popper: philosophy and problems

Abstract: Introduction Anthony O'Hear 1. Popper, science and rationality W. H. Newton-Smith 2. Popper and reliabilism Peter Lipton 3. The problem of empirical basis E. G. Zahar 4. 'Revolution in permanence': Popper on theory-change in science John Worrall 5. Popper's contribution to the philosophy of probability Donald Gillies 6. Propensities and indeterminism David Miller 7. Popper on determinism Peter Clark 8. Popper and the quantum theory Michael Redhead 9. The uses of Karl Popper Gunther Wachtershauser 10. Popper and Darwinism John Watkins 11. Popper and the scepticism of evolutionary epistemology, or, what were human beings made for? Michael Smithurst 12. Does Popper explain historical explanation? Kenneth Minogue 13. The grounds for anti-historicism Graham MacDonald 14. What use is Popper to a politician? Bryan Magee 15. Ethical foundations of Popper's philosophy Hubert Kieswetter Index.

Art and Technology: An Old Tension

Abstract: This is not the first time the title ‘Art and Technology’ has been used, but to distinguish what I have to say from Walter Gropius's Bauhaus exhibition of 1923, I am subtitling my paper ‘an old tension’, where the architect spoke of ‘a new unity’. In a way, Gropius has been proved right; the structures of the future avoiding all romantic embellishment and whimsy, the cathedrals of socialism, the corporate planning of comprehensive Utopian designs have all gone up and some come down. We have a mass media culture also largely made possible by technology. Corporatist architecture, whether statist ‘social housing’ or freemarket inspired, films, videos, modern recording and musical techniques are all due to technological advances made mostly this century. Only in a very puritanical sense could what has happened be thought of as inevitably bringing with it enslavement. All kinds of possibilities are now open to artists and architects, which would have been imaginable a few decades ago. No one is forced to use these possibilities in any specific way.

Technology: Liberation or Enslavement?

Abstract: The week, twenty-five years ago, of the Apollo spacecraft's return visit to the moon was described by Richard Nixon as the greatest since the Creation. Across the Atlantic, a French Academician judged the same event to matter less than the discovery of a lost etching by Daumier. Attitudes to technological achievement, then, differ. And they always have. Chuang-Tzu, over 2,000 years ago, relates an exchange between a Confucian passer-by and a Taoist gardener watering vegetables with a bucket drawn from a well. ‘Don't you know that there is a machine with which 100 beds are easily watered in a day?’—‘How does it work?’—‘It's a counterbalanced ladle’—‘too clever to be good … all machines have to do with formulae, artificiality [which] destroy native ingenuity … and prevent the Tao from residing peacefully in one's heart’. ‘Engines of mischief, in the words of the Luddite song, or testaments to ‘the nobility of man [as] the conqueror of matter’, in those of Primo Levi, the products of technology continue to inspire phobia and philia.

Popper and the Quantum Theory

Abstract: Popper wrote extensively on the quantum theory. In Logic der Forschung (LSD) he devoted a whole chapter to the topic, while the whole of Volume 3 of the Postscript to the Logic of Scientific Discovery is devoted to the quantum theory. This volume entitled Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics (QTSP) incorporated a famous earlier essay, ‘Quantum Mechanics without “the Observer”’ (QM). In addition Popper's development of the propensity interpretation of probability was much influenced by his views on the role of probability in quantum theory, and he also wrote an insightful critique of the 1936 paper of Birkhoff and von Neumann on nondistributive quantum logic (BNIQM).

The Problem of the Empirical Basis

Abstract: In this paper I shall venture into an area with which I am not very familiar and in which I feel far from confident; namely into phenomenology. My main motive is not to get away from standard, boring, methodological questions like those of induction and demarcation; but the conviction that a phenomenological account of the empirical basis forms a necessary complement to Popper's falsificationism. According to the latter, a scientific theory is a synthetic and universal, hence unverifiable proposition. In fact, in order to be technologically useful, a scientific hypothesis must refer to future states-of-affairs; it ought therefore to remain unverified. But in order to be empirical, a theory must bear some kind of relation to factual statements. According to Popper, such a relation can only be one of potential conflict. Thus a theory T will be termed scientific if and only if T is logically incompatible with a so-called basic statement b, where b is both empirically verifiable and empirically falsifiable. (We shall see that neither the verifiability nor the falsifiability of b was meant, by Popper, in any literal sense.) In other words: T is scientific if it entails ¬b; where b, hence also ¬b, is an empirically decidable proposition.

Technology and Culture in a Developing Country

Abstract: Even though the subject of my paper is ‘Technology and Culture in a Developing Country’, it seems appropriate to preface it by examining science itself in the cultural traditions of a developing country, such as Ghana, in view of the fact that the lack of technological advancement, or the ossified state in which the techniques of production found themselves, in the traditional setting of Africa and, in many ways, even in modern Africa, is certainly attributable to the incomprehensible inattention to the search for scientific principles by the traditional technologists. I begin therefore with observations on how science and knowledge fared in the traditional culture of a developing country.

Popper's Contribution to the Philosophy of Probability

Abstract: Popper's writings cover a remarkably wide range of subjects. The spectrum runs from Plato's theory of politics to the foundations of quantum mechanics. Yet even amidst this variety the philosophy of probability occupies a prominent place. David Miller once pointed out to me that more than half of Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery is taken up with discussions of probability. I checked this claim using the 1972 6th revised impression of The Logic of Scientific Discovery, and found that of the approximately 450 pages of text, approximately 250 are to do with probability. Thus Miller's claim is amply justified. It seems indeed that the philosophy of probability was one of Popper's favourite subjects, and, as we shall see, Popper certainly enriched the field with several striking innovations. In this area, as in others, Popper held very definite views, and criticized his opponents in no uncertain terms. Popper was an objectivist and anti-Bayesian, and his criticisms were directed against subjectivism and Bayesianism.

What Use is Popper to a Politician

Abstract: Some years acquire symbolic status, and one such year is 1968. All over Europe and the United States university students exploded into violent rebellion. Insofar as this would-be revolution had an ideology it was unquestionably Marx-inspired, even if the Marxism was not always orthodox. It so happens that in the years 1970–1971 I was teaching philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford. And because of Oxford University's system, almost unique, of individual tuition for undergraduates, this meant I found myself in a continuing one-to-one relationship with bright students who were in the throes of revolutionary fervour. Arguing with them was enormously illuminating for me. It seemed as if the more intelligent they were the more passionately Marxist they were–but also the more affected they were by intellectually serious criticisms of Marxism, which usually they were hearing for the first time. It was when they found themselves unable to meet these that they revealed where their fundamental motivation lay. This was not usually a positive one of belief in Marxist ideas. Still less was it commitment to communist forms of society, which usually they had been defending without knowing anything about the reality of them. The motivation was usually negative: it was inability or refusal to come to terms with their own society as they saw it. Psychologically, this was nearly always at the root of their attitude. Basically the chain of cause and effect between their ideas seemed to go something like this.

Values, Means and Ends

Abstract: Morals and politics occupy themselves, if not exclusively, then at any rate centrally, with questions of value. Politicians and moralists deplore the alleged decline of values while pressing supposedly new ones upon us. The fiercest sympathies and antipathies, whether between individuals or between societies, are those which stem either from a community or from a divergence of values. ‘So natural to mankind,’ said Mill, ‘is intolerance in whatever they really care about.’

Popper, Science and Rationality

Abstract: We all think that science is special. Its products—its technological spin-off—dominate our lives which are thereby sometimes enriched and sometimes impoverished but always affected. Even the most outlandish critics of science such as Feyerabend implicitly recognize its success. Feyerabend told us that science was a congame. Scientists had so successfully hood-winked us into adopting its ideology that other equally legitimate forms of activity—alchemy, witchcraft and magic—lost out. He conjured up a vision of much enriched lives if only we could free ourselves from the domination of the ‘one true ideology’ of science just as our ancestors freed us from the domination of the Church. But he told us these things in Switzerland and in California happily commuting between them in that most ubiquitous product of science—the aeroplane.

Instrument and Reality: The Case of Terrestrial Magnetism and the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis)

Abstract: In recent years there has been an increasing focus on the role of instruments in the study of nature, both by historians and by philosophers of science, and even by a few art historians who are interested by the images produced by these devices.

Popper and Darwinism

Abstract: The first Darwin Lecture was given in 1977 by Karl Popper. He there said that he had known Darwin's face and name ‘for as long as I can remember’ (‘NSEM’ p. 339); for his father's library contained a portrait of Darwin and translations of most of Darwin's works (‘IA’, p. 6). But it was not until Popper was in his late fifties that Darwin begin to figure importantly in his writings, and he was nearly seventy when he adopted from Donald Campbell the term ‘evolutionary epistemology’ as a name for his theory of the growth of knowledge (OK, p. 67). There were people who saw evolutionary epistemology as a major new turn in Popper's philosophy. I do not share that view. On the other hand, there is a piece from this evolutionist period which I regard as a real nugget.

Realism and Progress: Why Scientists should be Realists

Abstract: For as long as realists and instrumentalists have disagreed, partisans of both sides have pointed in argument to the actions and sayings of scientists. Realists in particular have often drawn comfort from the literal understanding given even to very theoretical propositions by many of those who are paid to deploy them. The scientists' realism, according to the realist, is not an idle commitment: a literal understanding of past and present theories and concepts underwrites their employment in the construction of new theories. The theme of this book is philosophy and technology, and here's the connection: new theories point out—and explain—new phenomena. So realism, claim the realists, is at the heart of science's achievement of what Bacon, that early philosopher of technology, identified as science's aim: new knowledge offering new powers.

Popper on Determinism

Abstract: There is no doubt at all that the issue of determinism versus indeterminism was a central, dominating theme of Popper's thought. By his own account he saw his criticism of the thesis of determinism as crucial to his defence not only of the reality of human freedom, moral responsibility and creativity but also as equally fundamental to his account of human rationality and to his theory of the content and growth of science as an objective, rational and most importantly demonstrably rational enterprise. Consequently a great deal of his writings discussing both the content and methodology of the natural and the social sciences alternately bear upon and presuppose his defence of indeterminism.

Popper and Reliabilism

Abstract: Karl Popper attempted to give an account of scientific research as the rational pursuit of the truth about nature without any appeal to what he took to be the fictitious notion of non-demonstrative or inductive support. Deductive inference can be seen to be inference enough for science, he claimed, once we appreciate the power of data to refute theory. Many of the standard objections to Popper's account purport to show that his deductivism actually entails a radical scepticism about the possibility of scientific knowledge. Some of these objections appear unanswerable in the context of the traditional analysis of knowledge as justified true belief; but this is neither a conception of knowledge that Popper himself accepted nor one that is currently in fashion. Reliabilism, the view that knowledge is a true belief generated by a reliable method, is now a popular replacement for the traditional analysis and one that is closer to Popper's own conception of knowledge. My aim in this essay is to consider in brief compass the prospects of a reliabilist reading of Popper's account of science. Such a reading makes it possible to turn some of the standard objections and helps to show which of Popper's views should be accepted and which rejected.

The Grounds for Anti-Historicism

Abstract: In his seminal The Poverty of Historicism (hereafter PH) Sir Karl Popper deployed a number of arguments to prick the pretensions of those who thought that they were, or could come to be, in possession of knowledge of the (social) future. These ‘historicists’ assumed that they could lay bare the law of evolution of a society, and that their possession of knowledge of such a law justified (large-scale) political action which had the aim of removing obstacles to the progress of history. In arguing against historicism Popper was clearly motivated by his interest in removing the intellectual backing for such revolutionary political practice. My first reading of PH was in the company of people who were extremely dismissive of the anti-revolutionary message, and who tended to argue that if that was the conclusion of Popper's theoretical argument, then obviously the argument was flawed. Within their context, that of the implementation of apartheid policy in South Africa, there was much to be said for this attitude. There is no doubt that Popper's message was insufficiently contextualised, or rather that he did not signpost very clearly whether he intended the anti-revolutionary political prescription to have limited or universal application. In this paper I want to reconsider some of these issues, particularly whether the truth of anti-historicism, in the sense intended by Popper, has such conservative consequences for political action.

Quantum Technology: Where to Look for the Quantum Measurement Problem

Abstract: Introduction This paper, I am afraid, advocates the philosophy of technology without actually doing it. It can best be seen as a plea for the philosophical importance of technology; in this case, importance to one of the most widely discussed problems in philosophy of physics—the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. What I want to do here is to lay out a point of view that takes the measurement problem out of the abstract mathematical structure of theory, where we discuss questions about unitary operators or conditions for the disappearance of certain inner products supposed to represent interference terms, and locate it elsewhere. Where is the measurement problem? Answer: It had better be found in the quantum technology or it is not to be found at all. My view in many respects follows ideas I have learned from Willis Lamb. The evolution of states is supposed to be governed by the Schroedinger equation. The measurement problem arises when we become convinced that there are a range of cases in which we no longer want to assign the state dictated by the Schroedinger equation but want to assign a different state instead. Why do we want to assign this second state? We call the problem “the measurement problem” and this canonical example is a good illustration. You can't measure a quantum system without coupling to it.

The Uses of Karl Popper

Abstract: Karl Popper's work is of great diversity. It touches on virtually every intellectual activity. But he himself considered his philosophy of science one of his most important achievements. And indeed his achievement here is revolutionary. It destroyed the philosophy of inductivism which held sway over science for hundreds of years.

Does Popper Explain Historical Explanation

Abstract: It is one of Karl Popper's great distinctions that he has an intense—some would say too intense—awareness of the history of philosophy within which he works. He knows not only its patterns, but also its comedies, and sometimes he plays rhetorically against their grain. He knows, for example, that the drive to consistency tends to turn philosophy into compositions of related doctrines, each seeming to involve the others. Religious belief, for example, tends to go with idealism and free will, religious scepticism with materialism and determinism. Popper does not believe in a religion, was for long some kind of a socialist, and takes his bearings from the philosophy of science. Aha! it seems we have located him. Here is a positivist, a materialist, probably a determinist. But of course he denies he is any of these things. Again, like many modern thinkers, he wants to extend scientific method not only to the social sciences but also to history. So far so familiar, until we discover that he regards nature as no less ‘cloudy’ than human societies.

Tools, Machines and Marvels

Abstract: Technology, according to Derry and Williams's Short History , ‘comprises all that bewilderingly varied body of knowledge and devices by which man progressively masters his natural environment’. Their casual, and unconscious, sexism is not unrelated to my present topic. Women enter the story as spinners, burden bearers and, at long last, typists. ‘The tying of a bundle on the back or the dragging of it along upon the outspread twigs of a convenient branch are contributions [and by implication the only contributions] to technology which probably had a feminine origin’. Everything else was done by men , and what they did was master, conquer , and control . It is also significant that Derry and Williams take it for granted that ‘the men [sic] of the Old Stone Age, few and scattered, developed little to help them to conquer their environment’: until the advent of agriculture, and settled civilization, there was, they say, neither leisure nor surplus.

Popper and the Scepticisms of Evolutionary Epistemology, or, What Were Human Beings Made For?

Abstract: There is a sort of scepticism, or, at least, epistemological pessimism, that is generated by appealing to Darwin's theory of evolution. The argument is that nature, that is the selective pressures of evolution, has clearly fitted us for certain sorts of learning and mundane understanding, directly beneficial in point of individual survival and chances for reproduction. Very likely then, it is argued, nature has not fitted us for arcane intellectual accomplishments remote from, or quite disconnected from, those ends. So, it is suggested, perhaps we cannot understand, perhaps never will understand, because we are not made to understand, such matters as consciousness, its nature and causes, the origins of life, the beginning of the universe, or astro-physics in its more finalist pretensions. Sometimes, taken with the claim that manifestly we do understand some of these things, the argument becomes a reductio, and its exponents claim that consequently Darwinism must be false, or of only limited application. More commonly, however, in ‘naturalized epistemology’, it is made the vehicle of a claim about the limits of science, limits imposed by the evolutionarily derived frailty of human understanding. Popper, the late Popper, is one of the progenitors of naturalized epistemology. I want to ask what Popper's response would be, or ought to be, to this epistemological nihilism (to purloin a phrase of Quine's) conjured out of Darwinism.

Acts, Omissions and Keeping Patients Alive in a Persistent Vegetative State

Abstract: There are many conflicting attitudes to technological progress: some people are fearful that robots will soon take over, even perhaps making ethical decisions for us, whilst others enthusiastically embrace a future largely run for us by them. Still others insist that we cannot predict the long term outcome of present technological developments. In this paper I shall be concerned with the impact of the new technology on medicine, and with one particularly agonizing ethical dilemma to which it has already given rise.