Talk:Karl Popper/Archive 1

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To begin with I like a lot of Popper stuff and think that "The Open Society" is a great book in lots of ways, but.... I don't know any professional classicists who think that his take on Plato holds water. There may be some philosophers who do, but I wonder if they're specialists in Ancient (i.e., read Plato {1} in Greek and {2} for anything other than a 100-level course. I am far from thinking that one should defer to specialists, but the tone of dismissiveness from classicists is significant. --MichaelTinkler

I added a brief comment about Popper's influence on George Soros. It is not of philosophical importance per se, but I think it is interesting that a philosopher who did not, to my knowledge, even seriously treat economic or business questions can be applied successfully to questions of investment. Hieronymous

I think this entry is not trying to be objective and not in line with the NPOV. It is by far too positive on Popper; all critics are belittled, spurious statements abound (I think citations show clearly that most philosophers of science put, e.g., Kuhn over Popper), see MichaelTinkler's comments above (this is not only so with Classicists but also with Philosophers), etc. etc. The problem is that one cannot really edit the article at all, because the hagiographic tone is part of the structure, so one would have to rewrite it altogether. Clossius 06:36, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy starts its entry on Popper with “Karl Popper is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century.” By all means, add some crticism to this article. But might I sugest moving cautiously, and please check out Falsificationism and related pages as well. Banno 21:04, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

One of them, surely; this is not, however, what the current entry says. And as I said, adding criticism won't help in this case. Clossius 21:21, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

So do you intend to do a re-write, or is this just wind? Banno 09:14, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Oh, is this the alternative? I think I've said now twice that this is clearly and demonstrably a biased article (which Popper himself really wouldn't have liked), but that it can't be changed piecemeal, or by addition. I think the best option for now is to let it stand as is but marked as non-objective, until a brave Popper expert finds the time to write a better one, or to edit it very thoroughly. Clossius 09:21, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Would that we had some brave Popper experts on whom we could rely. Unfortunately, we have only you and I. ; )

Perhaps you might assist by being a bit more specific in your comments. What specific errors of fact occur in the article? Which statements do you find “spurious”? Or is your objection simply to the tone of the article, admittedly high in praise.

Incidentally, a straw pole among the philosophers of my acquaintance definitely put Popper well ahead of Kuhn. Do you have anything concrete - numbers of citations, or whatever – to back up your claim? Banno 22:31, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I really liked the Freudian slip. :-) I'm sure there'll be some more Popper experts to come, in case that some aren't here already. The problem for me is, to answer you on the level you require would take far more research into Popper and Popper reception than I'd like to invest, although I've done some of that already for dead tree publications. Yes, you can demonstrate the Kuhn vs. Popper reception / impact via citations, but then e.g. you'd get into the problem of blind citation (both OSE and SSR are famous in citation studies for being cited without being read), so you'd have to edit those out which don't provide page no.s, etc. No, I don't only object to the tone of the article, I really think that the description of Popper's epistemology is outdated as far as the scientific discourse is concerned (and the description of the criticism starts with saying why the criticism is wrong, rather than listing it in good faith first, i.e. the rebuttal is at the beginning!), and the problems with Popper's political philosophy, historicism, etc., aren't addressed at all. But again, to counter these in detail would require much more effort and a much grander restructuring (which I think given the hierarchy mechanisms of the wikipedia might easily not hold ;-)) than I am able to expand on right now. I think, though, that - especially from a Popperian perspective - you don't have to substitute a "better" version for something you criticize; criticizing is already a contribution, no? Clossius 09:18, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I definitely think that among professional philosophers of science, Popper is not seen as the most important philosopher of science of the 20th century. (Although it would be hard to prove this short of taking a large poll among them, which is somewhat unpractical.) Victor Gijsbers 14:57, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

In case anyone is interested, Google searches for a few modern day philosophers give the following results: Karl Popper (111,000 hits), Ludwig Wittgenstein (77,300 hits), Thomas Kuhn (61,000 hits), Paul Feyerabend (13,400 hits), Imre Lakatos (8,310 hits).

Poppers philosophy, for me, is like popular music. I used to like it when I was younger and now its popularity is strangely inexplicable. I guess it's a matter of taste (or age [or the will to express individuality]). Chris

Reversion

I have several problems with the way this article has been written and structured. However, the most recent round of edits, including such statements as:

According to a view that still persists in Britain, Germany, and Austria (but not among American philosophers), Popper has played a vital role in establishing the philosophy of science as a vigorous, autonomous discipline within Analytic philosophy, …

and:

… Within the academy, Popper has been much more influential among philosophically naive scientists and social scientists than among philosophers themselves, who view his work as amounting to little more than a footnote to logical positivism.

… is completely unacceptable POV. The portrayal of Popper as a marginal figure considered as a serious thinker only by a band of "philosophically naive" "proponents," "supporters," etc. is not the way to counteract an overly hagiographic article. This is, among many other things, simply counterhistorical. (Follow the citations in the work of Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, Putnam, and others and you will find Popper there. Most people doing contemporary Analytic philosophy of science—in America or in Britain—are by no means Popperians, and Popper's work has persisted more strongly amongst scientists themselves than amongst philosophers of science. But to claim that he has only had marginal influence in the recent history of Analytic philosophy of science is, quite bluntly, absolutely loopy.)

There are several other complaints that I think are important to lodge, where the cases are too numerous and too repetitive to put forward an exhaustive set of examples. The wholesale revision of claims about Popper's influence, arguments, conclusions, theories, etc. to claims ostentatiously placed only in the mouth of Popper himself and an anonymous horde of acolytes is similarly POV. I mean things such as the transformation of this claim:

He is counted among the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century; …

to this:

By his proponents, he is claimed to be an influential philosopher of science of the 20th century; …

and what's worse, this:

He is best known for his repudiation of the classical observationalist-inductivist account of science, his espousal of falsifiability as a criterion of demarcation between science and non-science, and his defence of the 'Open Society'.

to this:

He and his followers viewed him as best known for his repudiation of the classical observationalist-inductivist account of science, is espousal of falsifiability as a criterion of demarcation between science and non-science, and his defence of the 'Open Society'.

(Popper certainly did repudiate the classical observationalist-inductivist account of science, did put forward empirical falsifiability of theories as a criterion for distinguishing science from non-science, and did publicly and extensively defend a conception of the open society. If he is not actually best known for these three elements of his work, then what in the world is he best known for?)

Here's a moral about the critical revision of articles that are lopsidedly positive toward a particular thinker: it's tempting to try to fix the problem by simply visibly putting all of the claims into the mouths of the people who allegedly advocate the claims (such as the thinker herself or the thinker's proponents). That's a fine way to do it in some cases, but as a general procedure I have to say that it is lazy and it is ineffective; what it amounts to is simply casting doubt on all of the positions espoused by ostentatiously scare-quoting them, and then dismissing them by appealing to an untested consensus of an anonymous set of authorities, rather than doing the work of rewriting the article in a more balanced fashion. And more than that, through the scare-quoting it amounts to POV: we don't scare-quote things visibly and repeatedly to express a neutral stance toward them; we scare-quote them to explicitly indicate that the usages are not ours, that they are at least dubious, or even to suggest that they are out-and-out shams. Editing the Popper article as it has been edited here is no different.

(Imagine if I were to try editing an essay on Leninism and replaced every reference to the "worker's state" with "the so-called 'worker's state'" or all the references to the dictatorship of the proletariat with "what Lenin and his coterie claimed to be a dictatorship of the proletariat". In some cases such revisions would be perfectly acceptable; but if repeated throughout the article and in several different contexts and even when statements are taken to be internal to an argument in the voice of the subject it would, I think, pretty transparently come across as the POV claim that the Leninist claims of worker autonomy and revolutionary freedom were tendentious, dubious, or an outright sham. Of course, in fact they were all those things, but adjudicating such a dispute (1) isn't the job of WikiPedia, and (2) can't even be successfully done through such tactics, since they syntactically preclude any chance of charitably reconstructing the positions and arguments to be understood and disputed.)

I think it's worth paying attention to some of the tendentious areas that these most recent edits may have highlighted, but the edits themselves are flagrantly POV. I have reverted to the most recent previous edit.

Radgeek 21:17, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Is it reasonable to remove the "disputed" flag? The current version (Sep 27, 2004) of the article seems to me to have a fairly NPOV, after many of the criticisms in this talk thread have been addressed. (Like most scientists who have an opinion, I prefer Popper over Kuhn and I find the POV mildly anti-Popper, which I take to be a sign that it is probably about neutral.) --Crust 21:21, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 I don't think Popper can be called a "British philosopher", so a changed it. Daniel Müller, Germany.

"disputed"? - as in how

The fact that, say, there are professional classicists out there who don't think very highly of Popper (because Popper doesn't think highly of Plato, or for whatever reason) is "interesting" but rather irrelevant (worth a footnote at best given good contextual reasoning & backed up by serious evidence): Not a legitimate reason to prohibit the writer of this article to lay out Popper's ideas on the page dedicated to - Popper.

To pull out the "dispute"-club on an entry only because there are people out there who disagree with the views laid out (pretty authentically) at one's own site? That's why the entry exisits in the first place: to put forth POPPER'S ideas, not X's, Y's, or Z's.

There is more than plenty of space on wikipedia for X, Y and Z to lay out THEIR ideas and claims; and if those are at odds with others', including Popper's: all the better and more colorful and appreciated. As long as they do it on their own respective pages.

That's not to say that references and side bars should be completely excluded... not only quite impossible in social/philosophical discussion, but it would also make the entry rather sterile and dull. It is legitimate to attack competing positions on one's "own" site (& vice versa), but it would be methodologically illegitimate and highly undesirable to have B prescribe how A hast to frame his thoughts at his, A's, own page (as the "disputed"-label implies).... (& vice versa).

rgrds, AL

appropriate wikilink

I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with this subject. I was reading the article, and in the introduction, I was wondering whether it would be possible to wikilink the phrase "the classical observationalist-inductivist account of science", or some part of it. I wasn't sure what that meant, and I didn't want to add links to the wrong places. Thanks! -- Creidieki 12:46, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The Later Popper

The article, in my judgement, does a good job in covering roughly the first half of Popper's career. However there are later developments that should be mentioned. One is his notion of three realms or 'worlds.' This is a notion of Popper's that people find most difficult to accept. Popper distinguished between different sorts of reality: the physical realm like rocks, rivers, etc; a person's private feelings (World2); and what he called World3, the products of the human mind, such as a mathematical theorem, a scientific theory, a work of art. This ontology, Popper thought, had important ramifications for the theory of knowledge (see a later work of his, _Objective Knowledge_) and for the mind-body problem (see another later work, with Nobel Prize Winner Sir John Eccles, _The Self and Its Brain_.) Another development is the turn toward evolutionary epistemology. Popper, indeed, may be considered to be one of the most important figures in this research program. Evolutionary epistemologists hold that Darwin should be "taken seriously." Another leader in this movement, the late psychologist Donald Campbell, held that knowledge grows by a process of blind variation and selective retention. Essays by Popper on evolutionary epistemology can be found in his _All Life Is Problem Solving_.

By all means, feel free to add to the article. Your contributions would be appreciated. -Seth Mahoney 02:47, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

announcing policy proposal

This is just to inform people that I want Wikipedia to accept a general policy that BC and AD represent a Christian Point of View and should be used only when they are appropriate, that is, in the context of expressing or providing an account of a Christian point of view. In other contexts, I argue that they violate our NPOV policy and we should use BCE and CE instead. See Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate for the detailed proposal. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:55, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Additions

I have added paragraphs on Popper's Conjectures and Refutations, and his Three Worlds conjecture. The latter was inspired by the remarks in a recent post, above (I added them while I was logged out, but the remarks are mine).

Hopefully my comments meet with the NPOV standard.

--Parker Whittle 02:41, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Additions

I added a reference to Popper's relationship with Friedrich Hayek.

--Parker Whittle 20:10, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Moving the link is better

A previous user removed Kadvany's Lakatos link entirely from the article. Better to move it to the External Links section. Also, rather than linking to Kadvany's home page, I changed the link to go directly to the Lakatos section. Less self-promotional that way.

--Parker Whittle 18:46, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Dualism

There's only a brief mention of Cartesian dualism in the article at the end of the description of his three worlds hypothesis. In John Horgan's book The End of Science he mentions that Popper and Eccles' The Self and It's Brain is a defense of dualism. Can someone who has read that book expound on Popper's stance on dualism? Does he explicitly defend it, or did Horgan just exaggerate the supposed similarity between the three worlds hypothesis and Cartesian dualism? There's also no mention of his stance on free will.

--AAMiller 18:29, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

The Matrix?

For me the reference to the Matrix series detracts from the article by suggesting that it merits a place alongside a discussion of the relationship of Khun's Structure of Scientific Revolutions to Popper's philosophy. Eric 19:16, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

The reference to the popular move "The Matrix" is comparable to the frivolous mention of the movie "Young Einstein" in the Einstein article. Is the same contributor responsible for both? The fact that some script writer used Popper's name in his movie is of absolutely no importance or value. It significantly lowers the value of the Wikipedia article. I will delete it if no one objects. (Oct. 15, 2005) 205.188.117.72 19:39, 15 October 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

Wittgenstein's poker

There may be room in this article for discussion of the incident described in Wittgenstein's Poker, or the differences in philosophical approach between Wittgenstein and Popper, but the recent edits won't do:

1. Both edits were inserted between pairs of paragraphs which are clearly linked, disrupting the flow of the discussion of Popper's views of epistemology and induction.
2. Wittgenstein's Poker is the name of a book, not a catch-all term for the differences between Popper and Wittgenstein, or the name of the incident which inspired the book. The account of the incident inserted here is inaccurate (indeed, part of the point of the book is that various attendees recalled completely different accounts of the incident).
3. The rejection of Marxism, Freudianism et al as non-falsifiable is already covered in this article.
4. The idea that there is a "secular Popper Church" and something similar for Wittgenstein is idiosyncratic, to say the least.

--  ajn (talk) 17:51, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Doubtful phrase

I'm reading now Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery (last edition), and the following phrase seems mistaken to me:

"His scientific work was influenced by his study of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity."

At least in that book plus his later footnotes I find *no* influence at all of Einstein's ontology wrt the theory of relativity, and he makes little mention of that theory. In contrast, he elaborates and philosophies a lot about the ontology of quantum mechanics, in which he adopted Einstein's POV. He also added a letter exchange with Einstein about QM, whereby Einstein showed that an experiment that Popper proposed on that issue would be useless. Your comments are welcome! Harald88 22:02, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

In response to the post above: though Popper in LScD might not have footnoted Einstein in regard to his influence on Popper, I think it was some else where else, perhaps in a biography, which Popper says Einstein influence him. Popper held the view that the theorist should state what would have to happen in order for him, the theorist, to give up his theory, and Popper says he got this idea from Einstein. Concerning Popper, Einstein, and QM: Popper agreed with Einstein (and others) in the rejection of the Copenhagen Interpretaion of QM. On the other hand, while Einstein was a determinist ("God does not play dice!") Popper championed indeterminism. As to the experiment that Popper proposed, actually in the LScD, it turns out it is not useless. It was actually performed in the 1990s, though of course there was differing opinions about it. Do a google search and one can find a summary of Popper's proposed experiment.

Here above I wrote that I have the impression that Popper was not significantly influenced by the theory of relativity, but instead by Einstein on other issues, so that that phrase is No Good. Here you sustained my impression, but phrased your response such that it sounds as if you disagree with me! If within one week nobody comes up with support for that phrase nor corrects it, then I will.

For example, better would be: "His scientific work was influenced by his study of quantum mechanics and by Albert Einstein's approach to scientific theories." Suggestions are welcome. Regards, Harald88 07:20, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Popular Culture

The "Reference in popular culture" has no worth. If no one objects, I will delete it. Lestrade 00:45, 23 October 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

These references to popular culture in Wikipedia articles seem to be of no value whatsoever. I am deleting it here. If anyone sees any redeeming value in this section, I guess they will revert. To me, it is all junk.Lestrade 18:56, 18 December 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

Verisimilitude and the acceptance of Tarksian truth theory

Popper eventaully developed an extremely important notion of verisimilutude which has experienced something of a revitalization in current philophy of science (see Nini Lilliluoko?, I can never get that damned name right, among others). He did indeed beleif that scientific theories approximate increasinly toward TRUTH and interpereted,perhaps wrongly, Tarski's theory of truth as a correspondence theory with which he came to identify himself. This clear position of scientific realism, which is obviouvly dominant in modern philsophy of science (see the Sokal affair) over against Kuhnian and Feyerabednian relativism, is completely unmentioned in the article. This needs significant revision. --Lacatosias 10:21, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

This is listed as a GOOD ARTICLE???

We have a serious problem here, folks. Listen up, listen up....I don't understand why I'm being almost compltely ignored in this place!! This is VERY IMPORTANT. Popper does not discuss "evolutionary epistemology" in his "Conjectures and Refutations." Not AT ALL: I hav the book right here in front of me. Where is it?? Anyone??

He discusses verisimiliate (extensively), the improbability of the best science, the progess of science by virtue of increasing content which inverselt proportional to probability, Tarski's theory of truth and the distnction between himself and others who beleif in the objective search for the truth versus instrumentalists and the like. There is absolutely nothing about evolutionary epistemplogy. That is later work.

This obviously needs to be fixed. --Lacatosias 18:18, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

New edit unintelligible

This sentence was removed:

[Charles Taylor (philosopher)|Charles Taylor]] accused Popper of using his reputation as an epistemologist to obtain hearings for his negative views about famous philosophers of the tradition, which, according to Taylor, bore a distant relation to the truth, being heard with an attention and respect that Popper's "intrinsic worth hardly commands".

Let's try this reformulation: Charles Taylor accuses (the present tense is normally prefered in philosophical discussions even in the recent past) Popper of exploiting his fame as an epistemologist to diminish the importance of philosophers of the continental tradition. According to Taylor, Popper's views are compltely baseless, but they are received with an attention and respect that Popper's "instrisinc worth....". Is that alright with you??--Lacatosias 16:45, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Posthumous publication?

Was All Life is Problem Solving published after his death? I'm asking because the book is dated 1999 and he died in 1994, so either the date of the book is wrong or I suggest that a note be added saying that the book is posthumous. Just my two cents : ) Zav 05:27, 17 June 2006 (UTC)