We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day Sir Karl Popper is not really a participant in the contemporary professional philosophical dialogue; quite the contrary, he has ruined that dialogue. If he is on the right track, then the majority of professional philosophers the world over have wasted or are wasting their intellectual careers. The gulf between Popper’s way of doing philosophy and that of the bulk of contemporary professional philosophers is as great as that between astronomy and astrology.
– W. W. Bartley, Philosophia (September–December 1976)
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If he [Popper] is on the right track, then the majority of professional philosophers the world over have wasted or are wasting their intellectual careers.
That depends on how you define “wasting”, I guess — in terms of benefits to the philosophers themselves, or in terms of the actual usefulness (or ruinousness) of their work to the rest of humanity?
This is, broadly, an existentialist view, and the ‘majority of professionals….’ would never accept that.
Nice the way Popper’s non-authoritarian epistemology (a )chimes with his crit of sovereignty in politics (b).
a. http://www.the-rathouse.com/CRIntroductionSources.html
b. http://www.the-rathouse.com/OpenSocietyOnLIne/Chapter-7-Leadership.html
I think Bartley’s astronomy/astrology analogue makes his meaning pretty clear.
Just read Wittgenstein’s Logisch-Philosophische-Abhandlung and you shall understand Popper’s ruination. That red-hot-poker was in many ways a symbolic ‘act’ for all that followed…
It was Wittgenstein who delivered the antics with the poker was it not? I don’t really remember.
I took a copy of The Open Society from Edinburgh’s central public library with me on a trip to Berlin back in summer 2003. I learned more of value during that week-long trip reading Popper than during every single lecture or seminar I have ever sat through. I basically quit my PhD because of that book.
(consensus != truth);
(consensus != truth);
Unless you are a politician,
or an AGW hysteric.
As someone who has wasted and is wasting (in every sense) his time in the world of professional Eng. Lit. I concur with the astronomy/astrology analogy. In fact, quite literally, for the trend has been, for a few decades, towards a mode of thought that understands objectivity as an ideology.
Ironically, while the stated aim is to open the discourse to the full spectrum of voices (rather than privileging a certain one) anyone working past undergraduate level who dares suggest that there is such a thing as truth will be shunned into silence.
As one who has benefitted tremendously from W.W.B., III’s compilations and editing, it may be ungrateful to observe his potential to arrogate to himself a “better” understanding of the thinking of others than those thinkers (who deeply attracted him) had of their own thoughts.
It is perhaps in the nature of some “seminar leaders” to address thoughts expressed in their seminars with “What you mean to say…,” or some other formulations or recastings. That can carry over into “editing” and “critiques” of the works of others.
That creates the risk of receiving the thinking of one through the filter of another’s interpretation.
Thanks for the link, which looks to be very useful.
There is as much risk in receiving the thinking through your own interpretation, because there is no ‘receiving’ without interpretation. The problem with reading critical rationalist’s like Popper, Bartley, Miller, etc. is that they operate outside of the justificationist metacontext, to use Bartley’s term, but almost everyone who “recieves their thinking” is interpreting it within that metacontext, and therefore radically misunderstands the views presented to them. The consequence is a endless supply of “refutations” of critical rationalism, dependent on assumptions which critical rationalism explicitly rejects, and yet its critics cannot think without.
Sorry to differ, or perhaps I was too brief.
If one receives in the manner I mentioned, one is receiving the interpretation, not the original thinking.
The risk being one of not receiving the original thinking to interpret for one’s self, whether it’s done in metacontext or in an easy chair.
Of course, not all have the ability, or desire to expend the effort. to do so.
That was a nice comment by Mike on the Open Society, which he read on a trip from Edinburgh to Berlin. It reminds me of Mark Blaug’s story that he took The Open Society on a weekend trip from London to Paris (as a young man) and read the two volumes straight through! The two vols run to 800 pages which is a lot of reading for busy people and students who have forgotten how to find the library, so the good news is that there is a condensed version on line!
http://www.the-rathouse.com/OpenSocietyOnLIne/AATheProjectwithIndex.html
It is most unfortunate that Bill Bartley died aged 55, he was working on the authorised biographies of both Popper and Wittgenstein. He intended to write four fat volumes that would be the history of ideas from Vienna in the 20th century. That would have put Mises and the Austrian economists on the board in a big way!
For Ham the Eng LIt man, don’t miss the Buhler and Wellek page in the Rathouse!
http://www.the-rathouse.com/Revivalist_winter.html
In 1947 Harold Prichard struggled against the illness that was killing him to go hear a talk by a visting Wittgenstein in Oxford, At the end of the talk he asked some critical questions (pointing out contradictions and, what he believed to be, errors) – and came up against the force of the Wittgenstein fan club.
They did not care whether what Prichard said was right or not (that it might be right never crossed their minds) – he had been critical of the great Wittgenstein so Prichard was a monster.
This is the difference between how Wittgenstein was treated and how Popper was treated.
I am not saying that Wittgenstein is wrong or that Popper is right – but the academic community does clearly play favourates and Popper was never a favourate of academic philosophers.
Perhaps he wrote too clearly.