Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Karl Popper's Open Society and Objective Knowledge

I have been an admirer of Karl Popper, but with Objective Knowledge I understood more fully what he was interested in debating and I found my increase in understanding meant I was less interested. Ultimately, I don't think it is possible to settle the issue of whether we are bound to repeat history or, really, whether we are free or not, which are the issues underlying the discussions about inductivism and all the rest. What is striking to me in Open Society and its Enemies is the ease with which he identifies problems of incipient authoritarianism in all these philosophers in vogue. The other striking fact is that he feels free to criticize just about anybody really vigorously, and I wonder he didn't run into all sorts of trouble with his fellow academics. He savages intuition, which I value, with the following: "'intuitionist logic' is ...just a name for a very interesting and somewhat weakened form of classical logic." (p. 306). So there!

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