Wednesday Wisdom

WHO?

Karl Raimund Popper was born on July 28, 1902, in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. He studied at the University of Vienna, earning a doctorate in philosophy in 1928. He was influenced by prominent intellectuals and philosophers of the Vienna Circle, a group of thinkers interested in logical positivism and the foundations of science. Logical positivism held that meaningful statements are only those that can be empirically verified or are true by logical reasoning, scientific and linguistic analysis. Metaphysical statements that cannot be empirically tested were considered pseudo.

Karl Popper spent much of his academic career in the United Kingdom, teaching at the London School of Economics and the University of London. He continued to develop his philosophical ideas, including his theory of knowledge (epistemology) and his views on the philosophy of mind. Popper's ideas have had a lasting impact on the philosophy of science and continue to be influential in contemporary discussions on scientific methodology and rationality. In 1965, Popper was enshrined into the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire whereas he became known as Sir Karl Popper.

What he produced

Popper’s scientific philosophy emphasized the importance of empirical testing and the potential for scientific theories to be proven false through observation and experimentation. The concept of “Falsifiability” entails the idea that there is no way to have total information or complete knowledge, so for a theory to be true it must also be proved as negative. For example, if you went to the park and observed a flock of swans, and they were all white, one could surmise all swans are white. No matter how many swans observed, all it takes is one instance of a black swan to falsify the premise. He arrived at this theory by studying the work of some of his contempory thinkers like Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx and Albert Einstein. Popper observed that Freud and Marx works, which looked to explain the human condition and economic institutions were more theoretical and not practical enough to disprove. Their work was a juxtaposition to Einstein’s work on physics and led Popper to make a distinction between pseudo-science and science, which he called the “Demarcation Problem”. This influenced Popper’s thinking and led him to explore paradoxes that arrived from contradictory information.

In 1945 Popper wrote “The Open Society and it’s Enemies” where he defended liberal democracy and criticized totalitarian ideologies. He introduced the concept of the "paradox of tolerance”. The idea revolves around the tension between promoting a tolerant society and the limits of that tolerance, particularly when it comes to intolerant ideologies or individuals. Tolerance is generally seen as a virtue in a democratic and open society. It involves respecting diverse opinions, beliefs, and lifestyles, even if they differ from one's own. According to the paradox of tolerance, a society that is entirely tolerant without limits can paradoxically become intolerant. If a society tolerates everything, including intolerance itself, it risks being undermined by those who seek to exploit tolerance to promote ideologies that are fundamentally intolerant or oppressive. Popper argued that for a tolerant society to thrive, it must be intolerant of intolerance to some extent. This is because if intolerant ideologies gain power, they may suppress opposing views and undermine the democratic principles that allow tolerance to exist in the first place. The paradox highlights the need for a balance between fostering tolerance and recognizing that not all ideas are compatible with the values of an open society. There must be a limit to tolerance when it comes to ideologies that seek to undermine the very principles that make tolerance possible.

2024 - why do we care?

The term pogrom comes from the turn of the previous century from Russia and Eastern Europe, and it describes a violent riot against a particular ethic group. The aim is to pit people against each other mainly by an authoritative government to place blame elsewhere while gaining more power. While the original word pogrom came from violence against Jews in Eastern Europe and Russia, unfortunately the term now encompasses violence across many ethnic groups worldwide and should be seen as a red flag of a society trending towards a more authorative society.

Why do we care in 2024? this paragraph almost writes itself given the rise of anti-semiticism, nationalism and a trend towards more authoritative governments worldwide. Popper’s paradox looks to define; when does free speech become hate speech? and where does a society draw the line of being tolerant to insidious speech?

The paradox of tolerance suggests that for a society to remain tolerant and open, it must be willing to confront and set limits on ideologies that, if allowed to flourish unchecked, would undermine the foundations of tolerance and democracy. It's a philosophical argument that encourages reflection on the boundaries of tolerance in the interest of preserving a just and free society.

Perhaps now, more than ever, we need to understand Sir Karl Popper’s ethical essays on what it means to be an open democratic society.

And now you know...

Philosophy is the art of thinking, the building block of progress that shapes critical thinking across economics, ethics, religion, and science. 

Thank you, Dad, for the gift of curiosity!

METAPHYSICS: Literally, the term metaphysics means ‘beyond the physical.’ Typically, this is the branch that most people think of when they picture philosophy. In metaphysics, the goal is to answer the what and how questions in life. Who are we, and what are time and space?

LOGIC: The study of reasoning. Much like metaphysics, understanding logic helps to understand and appreciate how we perceive the rest of our world. More than that, it provides a foundation for which to build and interpret arguments and analyses. 

ETHICS: The study of morality, right and wrong, good and evil. Ethics tackles difficult conversations by adding weight to actions and decisions. Politics takes ethics to a larger scale, applying it to a group (or groups) of people. Political philosophers study political governments, laws, justice, authority, rights, liberty, ethics, and much more.

AESTHETICS: What is beautiful? Philosophers try to understand, qualify, and quantify what makes art what it is. Aesthetics also takes a deeper look at the artwork itself, trying to understand the meaning behind it, both art as a whole and art on an individual level. A question an aesthetics philosopher would seek to address is whether or not beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

EPISTEMOLOGY: This is the study and understanding of knowledge. The main question is how do we know? We can question the limitations of logic, how comprehension works, and the ability (or perception) to be certain.2