The foundation of historical materialism.--A study on authority.--Sartre's existentialism.--Karl Popper and the problem of historical laws.--Freedom and the historical imperative.

Karl Popper is one of the greatest and most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Originally published in German in 2000, Herbert Keuth's book is a systematic exposition of Popper's philosophy covering the philosophy of science (Part 1); social philosophy (Part 2); and metaphysics (Part 3). More comprehensive than any current introduction to Popper, it is suitable for courses in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of social science.

Mit "propensity" meint Popper die Neigung oder Tendenz einer Versuchsanordnung ein bestimmtes Versuchsergebnis zu produzieren. Sie wird durch die Wahrscheinlichkeit des Ergebnisses gemessen oder ist sogar mit ihr identisch. Zunächst hatte er behauptet, jeder Wahrscheinlichkeitskalkül lasse sich als Axiomatisierung sowohl der Theorie subjektiver Wahrscheinlichkeiten als auch der propensity-Theorie der Wahrscheinlichkeit interpretieren. Ohne diese Position ausdrücklich aufzugeben hat er nun einen Kalkül vorgelegt, der die einzig adäquate Axiomatisierung der propensity-Theorie darstellen soll. Seine Postulate widersprechen aber nicht nur allen herkömmlichen Wahrscheinlichkeitskalkülen. (...) Da die meisten seiner Axiome gleichzeitig für die logische Wahrscheinlichkeit von Sätzen gelten sollen und da er ausdrücklich bestimmte Zusammenhänge zwischen logischer Wahrscheinlichkeit und propensity postuliert, ist seine Axiomatisierung auch inkonsistent, zumal selbst seine Axiome für die logische Wahrscheinlichkeit mit den herkömmlichen Kalkülen logischer Wahrscheinlichkeit nicht vereinbar sind. (shrink)

Popper schätzt Kant als Erkenntnistheoretiker, Aufklärer und Moralphilosophen. Er teilt Kants kritischen Realismus und rückt dessen ‚kopernikanische Wende‘ ins Zentrum der Erkenntnistheorie, deutet sie aber im Sinne der denkpsychologischen These, dass wir empirische Theorien nicht anhand von Beobachtungen bilden, sondern frei erfinden. Er glaubt, der kritische Rationalismus könne als Vervollständigung der kritischen Philosophie Kants gelten. Auch bei den Themen Ethik und Aufklärung geht seine Interpretation über das hinaus, was sich mit dem Wortlaut der Texte Kants vereinbaren lässt.

Karl Raimund Popper war einer der bedeutendsten Philosophen unserer Zeit. Die 'Logik der Forschung' ist sein Hauptwerk. Sie enthält die Grundlagen des „Kritischen Rationalismus“. Carnap zählte sie 1935 „zu den wichtigsten gegenwärtigen Arbeiten auf dem Gebiet der Wissenschaftslogik“ und sie zählt heute zu den wichtigsten wissenschaftstheoretischen Arbeiten des 20. Jahrhunderts. Der kritische Rationalismus zeigt, warum unser Wissen fehlbar ist und erklärt den Erkenntnisfortschritt als Resultat von Versuch und Irrtum, von Hypothesenbildung und -widerlegung. Wir lernen nicht primär aus erfüllten, sondern (...) aus gescheiterten Erwartungen. In seinen Büchern 'Die offene Gesellschaft und ihre Feinde' und 'Das Elend des Historizismus' übertrug Popper diese Gedanken auf die Sozialwissenschaften und die politische Philosophie. Der vorliegende Sammelband übernimmt im wesentlichen die Gliederung der 'Logik der Forschung'. Seine Beiträge kommentieren die jeweiligen Themen gemäß dem heutigen Stand der Forschung. (shrink)

Die Logik der Forschung ist Poppers Hauptwerk. Sie entstand in der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Neopositivismus des Wiener Kreises. Sein Abgrenzungskriterium löste Wittgensteins Sinnkriterium ab und seine Lösung des Basisproblems beendete die Protokollsatzdebatte. Er zeigt, dass Theorien nicht beweisbar, sondern fehlbare Vermutungen sind. Die Erkenntnistheorie versteht er als Methodologie. Sie soll die Prüfbarkeit unserer Theorien sichern, damit wir aus Versuch und Irrtum lernen können.

The foundation of historical materialism -- A study on authority -- Sartre's existentialism -- Karl Popper and the problem of historical laws -- Freedom and the historical imperative.

Science progresses if we succeed in rendering the objects of scientific inquiry more comprehensively or more precisely. Popper tries to formalize this venerable idea. According to him the most comprehensive and most precise description of the world is given by the set T of all true statements. A hypothesis comes the closer to T, or has the more verisimilitude, the more true consequences and the fewer false consequences it implies. Popper proposes to order hypotheses by the inclusion relations (...) between the sets of their true and of their false consequences ("truth contents" and "falsity contents"). A partial ordering would permit one to decide whether the substitution of theory t 1 by t 2 represents scientific progress. But because of the logical relations between the elements of the sets of logical consequences, or contents, false hypotheses cannot be compared. As our theories usually turn out to be false sooner or later, they can seldom be compared as to their verisimilitude and when they can, the result depends only on which theory implies the other and on their truth-values. Popper even tries to define a measure of verisimilitude on the partial ordering. It has to fail for the same reason. In addition he tries to relativize the concept of a content and fails. What is more, any attempt at defining a measure of better or worse correspondence to the whole truth must fail, as there is no justification for saying that any true primitive sentence asserts as much about reality as some other primitive sentence, or more. (shrink)

The rules of scientific discovery as formulated by K. Popper are briefly reviewed. Historical examples such as the prediction of planets and outstanding events in elementary particle physics are used to show how these rules are applied by the working physicist. Thus these rules are shown to be actual tools rather than abstract norms in the development of physics.

Summary In his Logic of Scientific Discovery and also in Conjectures and Refutations Karl Popper laid down methodological rules. They were to secure severe tests of our theories so that we might at least prove our false theories to be false, if we cannot prove our true theories to be true. But falsification turned out to be as impossible as verification. What is more, the rules, which are here examined, do not even advance criticism of theories. Either they are (...) trivial or not applicable or even untenable or they refer to problems, which do not exist. There is no reason to expect that those rules, which we could not here examine, are essentially different. Hence applying the methodological rules of critical rationalism in empirical sciences seems out of the question. (shrink)

In his “Logic of Scientific Discovery” and also in “Conjectures and Refutations” Karl Popper laid down methodological rules. They were to secure severe tests of our theories so that we might at least prove our false theories to be false, if we cannot prove our true theories to be true. But falsification turned out to be as impossible as verification. What is more, the rules, which are here examined, do not even advance criticism of theories. Either they are trivial (...) or not applicable or even untenable or they refer to problems, which do not exist. There is no reason to expect that those rules, which we could not here examine, are essentially different. Hence applying the methodological rules of critical rationalism in empirical sciences seems out of the question. (shrink)

At the risk of being ostracized (if not annihilated) by the community of Popperians present, I wish to remark that Professor Lakatos is - and, I think - cannot help being, a second-level inductivist. If Professor Kuhn has pointed out (most eruditely) that science quite frequently is in a rut, and occasionally gets out of it (and into a new one), then Professor Lakatos appraises problem and theory shifts, and methodological innova- tions in the sciences, in the light of his (...) criteria of 'progress' or 'degenera- tion'. There can be little doubt that he wishes to serve (at least) in a critical and/or advisory capacity to scientists. But he can do that only if he 'places his bets', i.e., conjectures as to the fruitfulness of a method, and along with it of a theory engendered or supported by such a method along the lines of success or failure, whichever may be plausibly indicated. I find Professor Lakatos's refutations of simple inductivism (here he agrees with Popper), as well as of simple falsificationism (here he disagrees with a caricature of the early Popper), completely convincing. But if he is to fulfill the critical and/or advisory functions, what else can he do but watch the course of the 'shifts' and extrapolate?! (shrink)

In his “Logic of Scientific Discovery” and also in “Conjectures and Refutations” Karl Popper laid down methodological rules. They were to secure severe tests of our theories so that we might at least prove our false theories to be false, if we cannot prove our true theories to be true. But falsification turned out to be as impossible as verification. What is more, the rules, which are here examined, do not even advance criticism of theories. Either they are trivial (...) or not applicable or even untenable or they refer to problems, which do not exist. There is no reason to expect that those rules, which we could not here examine, are essentially different. Hence applying the methodological rules of critical rationalism in empirical sciences seems out of the question. (shrink)

Das Ideal der Objektivität i. S. wahrer und unpersönlicher Darstellung der Realität wird von Vertretern der "kritischen Theorie" mit der Behauptung angegriffen, es könne Tatsachen, die epistemologisch von unseren Theorien unabhängig sind, nicht geben. Insbesondere wurde Popper von Habermas wegen seines Festhaltens an der Korrespondenz-theorie der Wahrheit angegriffen. Habermas nimmt an, daß die Standards, nach denen wir über die Annahme oder Verwerfung einer Aussage entscheiden, von unseren Interessen abhängen und daß wir deshalb nicht in der Lage sind unparteilich zu (...) entscheiden. Der vorliegende Beitrag soll zeigen, daß es unmöglich ist, wissenschaftliche Tätigkeit am Ideal der Suche nach solchen Sätzen zu orientieren, die existierende Sachverhalte bezeichnen, und daß Objektivität in diesem Sinne daher tatsächlich nicht verlangt werden kann, daß aber unsere Standards für die Beurteilung von Hypothesen, welche die verschiedensten Interessen berühren, die gleichen sind und deshalb Objektivität i. S. unparteilicher, von Interessen unbeeinflußter Entscheidung über die Annahme von Hypothesen möglich ist. (shrink)

Kaum einer hat die offene Gesellschaft in der politischen Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts so leidenschaftlich verteidigt wie Karl Popper. Sein Demokratieverstandnis ist eng gekoppelt an seine Wissenschaftstheorie und die Kritik an Platon, Hegel, Marx. Als Liberaler und sozialer Reformist wird er parteiubergreifend zum Stichwortgeber bundesdeutscher Politik seit den 70er Jahren. Popper-Rezeptionen finden sich bis in die Staatsrechtslehre (namentlich Peter Haberle) und das Bundesverfassungsgericht hinein. Noch heute lasst sich mit Popper gegen Diktaturen wie uberhaupt gegen Konzepte von "Gemeinschaft" (...) Position beziehen - aber auch gegen einen pseudo-liberalen, gnadenlosen Kapitalismus der "Ich-AGs". Mit Beitragen von Dorothea Frede, Peter Haberle, Herbert Keuth, Hubert Kiesewetter, Martin H. W. Mollers, Jurgen Nordmann, Harald Stelzer, Robert Chr. van Ooyen, Robert Zimmer. (shrink)

Herbert Simon’s work on scientific discovery deserves serious attention by philosophers of science for several reasons. First, Simon was an early advocate of rational scientific discovery, contra Popper and logical empiricist philosophers of science (Simon 1966). This proposal spurred on investigation of scientific discovery in philosophy of science, as philosophers used and developed Simon’s notions of “problem solving” and “heuristics” in attempts to provide rational accounts of scientific discovery (See Nickles 1980a, Wimsatt 1980). Second, Simon promoted and developed (...) many of the crucial techniques and methods used in cognitive science. One is the use of computers to model internal psychological processes, a technique central to his account of scientific discovery. Another is protocol analysis, the use of the verbal reports of experimental subjects in psychology to construct accounts of their psychological processes. Protocol analysis is given a detailed formulation by Simon (Simon and Ericsson 1984), and is modified for use in the study of scientific cognition in the paper on Krebs (Kulkarni and Simon 1988). (shrink)

Written in political exile during the Second World War and first published in 1945, Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemiesis one of the most influential books of the twentieth century. Hailed by Bertrand Russell as a 'vigorous and profound defence of democracy', its now legendary attack on the philosophies of Plato, Hegel and Marx exposed the dangers inherent in centrally planned political systems. Popper's highly accessible style, his erudite and lucid explanations of the thought of great (...) philosophers and the recent resurgence of totalitarian regimes around the world are just three of the reasons for the enduring popularity of The Open Society and Its Enemies, and for why it demands to be read both today and in years to come. This is the second of two volumes of The Open Society and Its Enemies. (shrink)

Reflecting on the development of social theory in postwar Germany, Habermas asked, Who better than Germany’s expelled Jewish scholars had something to teach the new nation’s young intellectuals about the dark elements of the all-too-near Nazi past? Habermas’s respect for Adorno, Horkheimer, Löwith, Popper, and others who returned is enormous. Still, he makes clear in this personal letter to Marcuse that it was Marcuse whom he found more exhilarating than any of the others. This he says was due to (...) Marcuse’s critical Marxism, the links he forged between Marx and Freud, and his ability to connect Frankfurt theory to radical praxis against militarism and colonialism. (shrink)

Reflecting on the development of social theory in postwar Germany, Habermas asked, Who better than Germany’s expelled Jewish scholars had something to teach the new nation’s young intellectuals about the dark elements of the all-too-near Nazi past? Habermas’s respect for Adorno, Horkheimer, Löwith, Popper, and others who returned is enormous. Still, he makes clear in this personal letter to Marcuse that it was Marcuse whom he found more exhilarating than any of the others. This he says was due to (...) Marcuse’s critical Marxism, the links he forged between Marx and Freud, and his ability to connect Frankfurt theory to radical praxis against militarism and colonialism. (shrink)

Described by the philosopher A.J. Ayer as a work of 'great originality and power', this book revolutionized contemporary thinking on science and knowledge. Ideas such as the now legendary doctrine of 'falsificationism' electrified the scientific community, influencing even working scientists, as well as post-war philosophy. This astonishing work ranks alongside _The Open Society and Its Enemies_ as one of Popper's most enduring books and contains insights and arguments that demand to be read to this day.

Herbert Spencer , Victorian philosopher, biologist, sociologist and political theorist, one of the founders of Social Darwinism and author of the phrase 'survival of the fittest', was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1902, losing out to Theodor Mommsen. Spencer left his post at The Economist in 1857 to focus on writing his ten-volume System of Synthetic Philosophy, a work that offers an ethics-based guide to human conduct to replace that provided by conventional religious belief. Published in (...) 1879, this volume seeks to demonstrate that social evolution tends towards greater individualism, altruism and co-operation. Spencer argues that it is possible to establish rules of right conduct on a scientific basis, and declares that this work is the culmination of his life's study. He was anxious to publish it outside the planned order of the System, because he feared that his death would prevent its completion. (shrink)

My work is concerned mainly with an abstract subject: the problem of human knowledge and, in particular, of scientific knowledge.I am an optimist. I am an optimist in a world where among the intelligentsia it has become a strict rule that one must be a pessimist if one wants to be “in”. But I do believe that our age is not so bad as is generally maintained; I do believe that it is better and more beautiful than its reputation. A (...) quarter of a century ago, I gave a lecture, the title of which sounds today even more provocative than it did then: “The History of our Time: An Optimist's View”. (shrink)

One of the most important books of the twentieth century, Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies is an uncompromising defense of liberal democracy and a powerful attack on the intellectual origins of totalitarianism. Popper was born in 1902 to a Viennese family of Jewish origin. He taught in Austria until 1937, when he emigrated to New Zealand in anticipation of the Nazi annexation of Austria the following year, and he settled in England in 1949. Before the (...) annexation, Popper had written mainly about the philosophy of science, but from 1938 until the end of the Second World War he focused his energies on political philosophy, seeking to diagnose the intellectual origins of German and Soviet totalitarianism. The Open Society and Its Enemies was the result. An immediate sensation when it was first published in two volumes in 1945, Popper's monumental achievement has attained legendary status on both the Left and Right and is credited with inspiring anticommunist dissidents during the Cold War. Arguing that the spirit of free, critical inquiry that governs scientific investigation should also apply to politics, Popper traces the roots of an opposite, authoritarian tendency to a tradition represented by Plato, Marx, and Hegel. In a substantial new introduction written for this edition, acclaimed political philosopher Alan Ryan puts Popper's landmark work in biographical, intellectual, and historical context. Also included is a personal essay by eminent art historian E.H. Gombrich, in which he recounts the story of the book's eventual publication despite numerous rejections and wartime deprivations. (shrink)

Resumen: El objetivo aquí­ es dilucidar algunos aspectos de la lógica de la investigación de Popper y situarla en la discusión filosófica del descubrimiento cientí­fico. Un análisis más cercano de su propuesta revela que su obra, a la luz de textos más recientes, sí­ apunta en la dirección de algunos mecanismos fundamentales que caen en el rubro del estudio del descubrimiento. El argumento en favor de esta tesis tiene dos partes: por un lado, cuando se hace un análisis más (...) fino de los contextos de investigación, parece que la lógica de Popper puede ser considerada como parte del contexto de descubrimiento, y, por el otro, su explicación sobre el crecimiento del conocimiento mediante el método de conjeturas y refutaciones coincide con la corriente dominante de los llamados "œAmigos del descubrimiento", al menos en lo que respecta a la obra de Herbert Simon.: The aim of this paper is to elucidate some aspects of Karl Popper"™s logic of research and place it in the philosophical discussion of scientific discovery. A closer look into his proposal reveals that his work, in the light of recent literature, does point into the direction of some fundamental mechanisms which fall under the study of discovery. The argument for this claim is twofold: one the one hand, when a finer analysis of contexts of research is done, it seems that Popper"™s logic may be considered as part of the context of discovery, and on the other hand, his account on the growth of knowledge by the method of conjectures and refutations, is in accordance with the "œFriends of Discovery" mainstream, at least is so far as the work of Herbert Simon is concerned. (shrink)

-- Douglas Kellner, University of Texas, Austin.

Herbert Spencer, Victorian philosopher, biologist, sociologist and political theorist, one of the founders of Social Darwinism and author of the phrase 'survival of the fittest', was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1902, losing out to Theodor Mommsen. Spencer left his post at The Economist in 1857 to focus on writing his ten-volume System of Synthetic Philosophy, a work that offers an ethics-based guide to human conduct to replace that provided by conventional religious belief. Published in 1879, (...) this volume seeks to demonstrate that social evolution tends towards greater individualism, altruism and co-operation. Spencer argues that it is possible to establish rules of right conduct on a scientific basis, and declares that this work is the culmination of his life's study. He was anxious to publish it outside the planned order of the System, because he feared that his death would prevent its completion. (shrink)

Continuing his exploration of the organization of complexity and the science of design, this new edition of Herbert Simon's classic work on artificial ...

A constantly changing social reality means economic theories, even if correct today, need to be constantly revised, updated, or abandoned. To maintain an up-to-date understanding of its subject matter, economists have to continuously assess their theories even those that appear to be empirically corroborated. Economics could gain from a method that describes and is capable of generating novel explanatory hypotheses. A pessimistic view on the existence of such a method was famously articulated by Karl Popper in The Logic of (...) Scientific Discovery. He wrote ‘there is no such a thing as a logical method of having ideas or a logical reconstruction of this process.’ Herbert Simon responded to Popper and argued the opposite, namely, that there is a model of discovery and its name is abduction. Simon acknowledges his debt to Charles Peirce – the first modern logician to explicitly formulate a theory of abduction – and explains that abduction is a model of discovery that works as a problem-solving heuristic encoded.. (shrink)

Existential-Ontologie und historischer Materialismus bei Herbert Marcuse, von A. Schmidt.--Das Ganze und das ganz Andere; zur Kritik der reinen revolutionären Transzendenz, von W.F. Haug.--Technik und Eindimensionalität; eine Version der Technokratiethese? Von C. Offe.--Technologische Rationalität und spätkapitalistische ökonomie, von J. Bergmann.--Die geschichtliche Dimension des Realitätsprinzips, von H. Berndt und R. Reiche.--Marcuse and the New Left in America, by P. Breines.--Ausgewählte Bibliographie der Schriften Herbert Marcuses (p. 155-[161]).

It is widely believed that experimental results of behavioral game theory undermine standard economic and game theory. This paper suggests that experimental results present serious theoretical modeling challenges, but do not undermine two pillars of contemporary economic theory: the rational actor model, which holds that individual choice can be modeled as maximization of an objective function subject to informational and material constraints, and the incentive compatibility requirement, which holds that macroeconomic quantities must be derived from the interaction and aggregation of (...) individual choices. However, we must abandon the notion that rationality implies self-regarding behavior and the assumption that contracts are costlessly enforced by third parties. (shrink)