The basic theme of Popper's philosophy--that something can come from nothing--is related to the present situation in physical theory. Popper carries his investigation right to the center of current debate in quantum physics. He proposes an interpretation of physics--and indeed an entire cosmology--which is realist, conjectural, deductivist and objectivist, anti-positivist, and anti-instrumentalist. He stresses understanding, reminding us that our ignorance grows faster than our conjectural knowledge.

It has been argued that Kant's all-consuming efforts to place autonomy at the center of philosophy have had, in the long-run, the unintended effect of leading to the widespread discrediting of philosophy and of undermining the notion of autonomy itself. The result of this 'Copernican revolution' has seemed to many commentators the de-centring, if not the self-destruction, of the autonomous self. In this major reinterpretation of Kant and the post-Kantian response to his critical philosophy, Karl Ameriks argues that such (...) a view of Kant rests on a series of misconceptions. By providing the first systematic study of the underlying structure of the reaction to Kant's critical philosophy in the writings of Reinhold, Fichte and Hegel, Karl Ameriks challenges the presumptions that dominate popular approaches to the concept of freedom, and to the interpretation of the relation between the Enlightenment, Kant and post-Kantian thought. (shrink)

The Open Universe is the centerpiece of the argument of the Postscript.

Immanuel Kant's work changed the course of modern philosophy; Karl Ameriks examines how. He compares the philosophical system set out in Kant's Critiques with the work of the major philosophers before and after Kant. Individual essays provide case studies in support of Ameriks's thesis that late 18th-century reactions to Kant initiated an "historical turn," after which historical and systematic considerations became joined in a way that fundamentally distinguishes philosophy from science and art.

This book explores the main stages and key concepts in the development of Kant's critical philosophy, from the early 1760s to the 1790s. Karl Ameriks provides a detailed and concise account of the main ways in which the later critical works provide a plausible defense of the conception of humanity's fundamental end that Kant turned to after reading Rousseau in the 1760s. Separate essays are devoted to each of the three Critiques, as well as to earlier notes and lectures (...) and several of Kant's later writings on history and religion. A final section devotes three chapters to post-Kantian developments in German Romanticism, accounts of tragedy up through Nietzsche, and contemporary philosophy. The theme of an elliptical path is shown to be relevant to these writers as well as to many aspects of Kant's own life and work. The topics of the book include fundamental issues in epistemology and metaphysics, with a new defense of the Amerik's 'moderate' interpretation of transcendental idealism. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell described this study, with its companion volume on Hegel and Marx, as 'a work of first-class importance which ought to be widely read for its masterly criticism of the enemies of democracy, ancient and modern. His (Popper's) attack on Plato, while unorthodox, is in my opinion thoroughly justified. His analysis of Hegel is deadly. Marx is dissected with equal acumen, and given his due share of responsibility for modern misfortunes. The book is a vigorous and profound defence of (...) democracy, timely, very interesting, and very well written'. 'A powerful and important book. It is a criticism of a set of dogmas which underlie the most influential political theories, and in consequence powerfully affect the actual conduct of human affairs. Dr Popper writes with extreme clarity and vigour. His studies in Greek history and Greek thought have obviously been profound and original. Platonic exegesis will never be the same again. Nor, I think, will Marxist exegesis. Readers should not miss studying the notes collected at the end of the two volumes.' - Gilbert Ryle, Mind. (shrink)

A brief historical comment on scientific knowledge as Socratic ignorance -- Some critical comments on the text of this book, particularly on the theory of truth Exposition [1933] -- Problem of Induction (Experience and Hypothesis) -- Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge -- Formulation of the Problem -- The problem of induction and the problem of demarcation -- Deductivtsm and Inductivism -- Comments on how the solutions are reached and preliminary presentation of the solutions -- Rationalism and empiricism-deductivism (...) and inductivism -- The possibility of a deductivist psychology of knowledge -- The Problem of Induction -- The infinite regression (Hume's argument) --The inductivist positions -- The Normal-Statement Positions -- The normal-statement positions: naive inductivism, strict positivism and apriorism -- Critique of strict positivism - twofold transcendence of natural laws -- The transcendental method - presentation of apriorism -- Critique of apriorism -- Kant and Fries -- Supplement to the critique of apriorism. (Psychologism and transcendentalism in Kant and Fries.-On the question of the empirical basis.) -- Probability Positions -- The probability positions - subjective belief in probability -- Statements about the objective probability of events -- Probability as an objective degree of validity of universal empirical statements -- One way of more closely defining the concept of the probability of a hypothesis (primary and secondary probability of hypotheses). The concept of simplicity -- The concept of the corroboration of a hypothesis - positivist, pragmatist and probabilistic interpretations of the concept of corroboration -- The infinite regression of probability statements -- Pseudo-Statement Positions -- The pseudo-statement positions: new formulation of the problem -- Natural laws as "instructions for the formation of statements" -- "True - false" or "useful - useless"? Consistent pragmatism --Difficulties of consistent pragmatism -- Tool and schema as purely pragmatic constructs -- Natural laws as propositional functions -- Conventionalism -- The pseudo-statement positions will temporarily be put away: conventionalism -- The three interpretations of axiomatic systems. (The circle of problems surrounding conventionalism) -- Conventionalist implicit and explicit definitions Propositional function and propositional equation -- Conventionalist propositional equations as tautological general implications -- Can axiomatic-deductive systems also be understood as consequence classes of pure propositional functions (of pseudo-statements)? -- The coordinative definitions of empiricism: synthetic general implications -- Conventionalist and empiricist interpretations, illustrated by the example of applied geometry -- Strictly Universal Statements and Singular Statements -- Implication and general implication -- General implication and the distinction between strictly universal and singular statements -- Universal concept and individual concept-class and element -- Strictly universal statements-the problem of induction and the problem of universals -- Comments on the problem of universals -- Back to the Pseudo-Statement Positions -- Return to the discussion of the pseudo-statement positions -- Symmetry or asymmetry in the evaluation of natural laws? -- The negative evaluation of universal statements. Critique of the strictly symmetrical interpretation of pseudo-statements -- An infinite regression of pseudo-statements -- An apriorist pseudo-statement position -- Interpretation of the critique up to this point; comments on the unity of theory and practice -- A last chance for the pseudo-statement positions -- Pseudo-Statement Positions and the Concept of Meaning -- The concept of meaning and logical positivism -- The concept of meaning and the demarcation problem-the fundamental thesis of inductivism -- Critique of the inductivist dogma of meaning -- Fully decidable and partially decidable empirical statements-the antinomy of the knowability of the world. (Conclusion of the critique of the pseudo-statement positions.) -- The dialectical and the transcendental corroboration of the solution -- Is the problem of induction solved? (shrink)

There is a growing trend in policy making of holding people responsible for their lifestyle-based diseases. This has sparked a heated debate on whether people are responsible for these illnesses, which has now come to an impasse. In this paper, I present a psychological model that explains why different views on people’s responsibility for their health exist and how we can reach a resolution of the disagreement. My conclusion is that policymakers should not perceive people as responsible while health care (...) personnel should take the opposing view. (shrink)

In the present study, using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated a group of participants on a grammaticality classification task after they had been exposed to well-formed consonant strings generated from an artificial regular grammar. We used an implicit acquisition paradigm in which the participants were exposed to positive examples. The objective of this studywas to investigate whether brain regions related to language processing overlap with the brain regions activated by the grammaticality classification task used in the present study. (...) Recent meta-analyses of functional neuroimaging studies indicate that syntactic processing is related to the left inferior frontal gyrus (Brodmann's areas 44 and 45) or Broca's region. In the present study, we observed that artificial grammaticality violations activated Broca's region in all participants. This observation lends some support to the suggestions that artificial grammar learning represents a model for investigating aspects of language learning in infants [TICS 4 (2000) 178] and adults [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of United States of America 99 (2002) 529]. (shrink)

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. In the book, Popper condemned Plato, Marx, and Hegel as "holists" and "historicists"--a holist, according to Popper, believes that individuals are formed entirely by their social groups; historicists believe that social groups evolve according to internal principles that it is the intellectual's task to uncover. Popper, by contrast, held that social affairs are unpredictable, and argued vehemently against social engineering. He also sought to shift the focus of political philosophy away from questions about who ought to rule toward questions about how to minimize the damage done by the powerful. The book was an immediate sensation, and--though it has long been criticized for its portrayals of Plato, Marx, and Hegel--it has remained a landmark on the left and right alike for its defense of freedom and the spirit of critical inquiry. (shrink)

--1.bd. Natur und gesellschaft.--2.bd. Der staat und die entwicklung der menschheit.

The Road to Power was a highly controversial political pamphlet published in 1909—an important document for the understanding of the Wilhelmine Empire and especially of the German Social Democratic Party and Kautsky's role in it—and it was Kautsky's last major attack on the revisionists' hope for a gradual "growth in socialism" without any drastic changes in the political order. To this, Kautsky opposed his view of the political revolution that he hoped for and predicted as the achievement of parliamentary democracy (...) and of working-class power through parliamentary majority. He believed that the initial democratization of the autocratic empire could be realized peacefully by electoral victories and trade-union political action. The present edition contains an excellent new translation of Kautsky's text; a scholarly introduction by John H. Kautsky; the author's prefaces to three German editions; and the correspondence concerning Kautsky's conflict with the Social Democratic Party's Executive Committee regarding publication of his work. (shrink)

In this volume, Karl Ameriks explores 'Kantian subjects' in three senses. In Part I, he first clarifies the most distinctive features-such as freedom and autonomy-of Kant's notion of what it is for us to be a subject. Other chapters then consider related 'subjects' that are basic topics in other parts of Kant's philosophy, such as his notions of necessity and history. Part II examines the ways in which many of us, as 'late modern,' have been highly influenced by Kant's (...) philosophy and its indirect effect on our self-conception through successive generations of post-Kantians, such as Hegel and Schelling, and early Romantic writers such as Hölderlin, Schlegel, and Novalis, thus making us 'Kantian subjects' in a new historical sense. By defending the fundamentals of Kant's ethics in reaction to some of the latest scholarship in the opening chapters, Ameriks offers an extensive argument that Hölderlin expresses a valuable philosophical position that is much closer to Kant than has generally been recognized. He also argues that it was necessary for Kant's position to be supplemented by the new conception, introduced by the post-Kantians, of philosophy as fundamentally historical, and that this conception has had a growing influence on the most interesting strands of Anglophone as well as Continental philosophy. -/- . (shrink)

We express here the statement » The probability of a given b equals r « symbolically by » p = r «. A formal axiomatic calculus can be constructed comprising all the well‐known laws of probability theory. This calculus can be interpreted in various ways. The present paper is a criticism of the subjective interpretation; that is to say, of any interpretation which assumes that probability expresses degrees of incomplete knowledge: a is the statement incompletely known, b is our total (...) knowledge, and p is the degree to which a is entailed by b. The subjective interpretation has often been proposed as an explanation and even a sharpening of the various objective theories . It is shown in the paper that this proposal cannot be realised because the subjective theory cannot lead to results which are compatible with the objective theory. This is due to various reasons, the most important of which is that the objective theory interprets » b « in » p « as a statement of the objective conditions of an experiment and » a « as one of its possible results. The subjective theory on the other hand interprets » b « as our total relevant knowledge which will in general include some knowledge of previous results of the experiment. It is shown that this must lead to incompatibility owing to the fact that this knowledge of previous results must influence the value of the probability.It is shown, in this way, that any probabilistic theory of the process of learning from experience—that is to say, any probabilistic theory of induction—must lead to contradictions.RésuméL'énoncé: » La probabilité de a, si b est donné, est égale à r « est ici exprimé symboliquement par » p = r «. On peut construire un système axiomatique formel qui contient toutes les règles bien connues du calcul des probabilités. Ce calcul formel peut ětre interprété de manières très différentes. L'article contient une critique des interprétations subjectives, c'est‐à‐dire des interprétations qui admettent que la probabilité exprime des degrés de connaissance incomplète: a est un énoncé qu'on ne connaǐt que partiellement, b est notre connaissance totale, et p exprime le degré auquel a est implicitement contenu dans b. L'interprétation subjective a souvent été proposée comme une explication et un renforcement des différentes théories objectives . Dans cet article, l'auteur montre que ce projet n'est pas réalisable, car la théorie subjective mène à des résultats qui contredisent la théorie objective. Plusieurs circonstances sont responsables de cette situation; la plus importante, c'est que la théorie interprète le » b « dans » p « comme une description des conditions objectives d'une expérience . D'autre part, la théorie subjective interprète » b « comme notre savoir total , et ce savoir inclura en général des informations sur les résultats obtenus antérieurement pour cette expérience. L'auteur montre que ce fait conduit à une contradiction entre les deux interprétations, car cette connaissance doit avoir une influence sur la valeur subjective de la probabilité.A l'aide de ce raisonnement, on peut montrer que la théorie des probabilités appliquée au processus inductif tirant une expérience du domaine expérimental conduit à des contradictions.ZusammenfassungDie Aussage » Die Wahrscheinlichkeit von a, wenn b gegeben ist, ist gleich r « wird hier symbolisch durch » p = r « ausgedrückt. Ein formales Axiomensystem kann konstruiert werden, das alle die wohlbekannten Regeln der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung enthält. Dieser formale Kalkül kann in sehr verschiedener Weise interpretiert werden. Der Artikel enthält eine Kritik der subjektiven Interpretationen; das heisst, jener Interpretationen die annehmen, dass die Wahrscheinlichkeit Grade von unvollständigem Wissen ausdrückt: a ist ein Satz der unvollständig gewusst wird, b ist unser Gesamtwissen, und p drückt den Grad aus zu dem a in b implizit enthalten ist. Die subjektive Interpretation wurde oft als eine Erklärung und Verschärfung der verschiedenen objektiven Theorien vorgeschlagen. In dem Artikel wird gezeigt, dass der Vorschlag undurchführbar ist, da die subjektive Theorie zu Resultaten führt, die der objektiven Theorie widersprechen. Verschiedene Umstände tragen zu dieser Situation bei. Der wichtigste dieser Umstände ist, dass die objektive Theorie das » b « in » p « als eine Beschreibung der objektiven Bedingungen eines Experimentes interpretiert . Andererseits interpretiert die subjektive Theorie » b « als unser Gesamtwissen , und dieses wird im allgemeinen Informationen bezüglich früherer Resultate dieses Experiments einschliessen. Es wird gezeigt, dass das zu einem Widerspruch zwischen den Interpretationen führt, da dieses Wissen Einfluss auf den subjektiven Wahrscheinlichkeitswert haben muss.Mit Hilfe dieses Gedankenganges wird gezeigt, dass die Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie des induktiven Lernens aus der Erfahrung zu Widersprüchen führt. (shrink)