Popper
OSE p174-5

There are many people living in a modern society who have no, or extremely few, intimate personal contacts, who live in anonymity and isolation, and consequently in unhappiness. For although society has become abstract, the biological makeup of man has not changed much; men have social needs which they cannot satisfy in an abstract society.

It is unfortunate that Popper has swallowed this propaganda. This sort of biological fatalism is a way of denying that people bear responsibility for their personality traits. There are no arguments that biology determines personality or needs. There never have been. No one has ever invented a quality explanation of how it could be the case. So why did Popper adopt the idea?

Calling these things "needs" is used for the purpose of advocating violence. If I want something, I am not justified to take it. If I need it, and declare that you do not need it, then I have a case to force you to give it to me (not a good case, but one that the new left will find convincing). If all people have a particular "need" then that is used as a justification that the Government provide it, in order that it be guaranteed to everyone. And if I don't want it, and don't want to pay for it, that's my tough luck (which is a euphemism for my turn to be forced to sacrifice what I wanted). And if I need something which my society does not provide for (including providing ways it can be attained) then I am doomed to unhappiness, so I will ask my society to change, and if it does not I am justified in starting a violent revoultion to change it. If two people need contradictory things, and cannot talk the other person into conceding, then there is nothing let for them to do but fight it out. Why has Popper used the language of the violent new left?

bad starting question: what is good?

good starting question: how should i live?

initial answer: in a way that creates a lot of knowledge

some might object that this is vague, abstract, and useless, and won't help them with practical problems.

that, of course, is due to their lack of knowledge :)

anyhow, i'll connect it to 4 practical issues.

1) how do i save money for a car?

by getting a job and spending less money.

but i don't know how to do that!

well then you need more knowledge. you need to learn about those things.

how do i do that?

think about them, read books, make guesses at the answer, and then subject the guesses to criticism, use trial and error, etc (read Karl Popper's books for more details, or it's in my blog archives somewhere)

2) i don't like criticism. is it ok if i don't listen to it?

suppose you're wrong about 10 things. everyone makes mistakes sometimes, so that's nothing special. if you never listen to criticism (including self-criticism) then you'll never find out about the areas where you're mistaken. if you do listen to criticism, it might sometimes help you identify one of those areas. the policy of ignoring all criticism prevents *correcting errors*.

what does that have to do with creating knowledge?

if you have 3 good ideas and 3 bad ideas, and then you correct an error and now you have 4 good ideas, and 2 bad ideas, then you have more knowledge. knowledge is the good parts of your ideas but not the bad parts.

3) my kid keeps asking for stuff and i say "shut up; i'll make the decisions in my house" and ignore him. is that ok?

if one of his requests is a good idea you'll never learn that by ignoring all his requests. your policy prevents creating knowledge of which of his requests are good. it also prevents you helping him create knowledge about his requests. if he learned more, then he'd make less bad requests because he'd know how to evaluate them himself. so, no it is not ok.

4) should i get married?

marriage means promising to be together forever. to reasonably make that promise you have to have a plan for how you will avoid drifting apart. if, after 10 years, you find that you have completely different interests than your spouse, and no interest in doing anything with them, then you will spend all your time apart and your marriage will be pointless and you've broken your promise. so you gotta have a way to prevent drifting apart. what causes or risks drifting? new interests. when you learn new things you change, if you change you might end up different than your spouse. the growth of knowledge is unpredictable, so you can't guarantee your spouse will change in the same ways. preventing drift means keeping change and learning under control. so marriage is the opposite of open-ending knowledge creation. so you should not marry.

David Friedman recently gave a talk about market failures which I heard about second hand. In the talk was the following story, which is a typical example of a public good problem:

Two armies face off. One has horses. The other has only spears. The men with spears can do two thinks: hold a line against the charge, or run away. Horses are faster than people, so if they all run away they will die. So the best outcome is that they face the charge. But the best outcome for an individual is that everyone else face the charge while he runs away. That is in his self interest. So everyone will individually decide to run away, and they will all die. So the question is: what can be done to make sure everyone holds the line? This is said to be an example of a market failure: the market cannot make everyone hold the line, but the Government can.

The public good is holding off the charge, but people can become free riders by running away (they get the benefits of the charge being held off even though they didn't participate). And the question is how to make sure everyone stands the line.

I think public good problems are a mirage, and the arguments for them are flawed in a variety of ways. Here I want to talk about one flaw in this story which I think is the worst one.

The situation has, as a premise, what the best outcome is. It treats "What should the people do?" as a given. Because the correct outcome is a premise, the scenario is fundamentally different than all real situations. In particular this approach makes the following question worthless: "What is the best thing to do?" Having the correct outcome be an unquestionable premise prevents all debate, discussion, argument, brainstorming, and criticism about what the people ought to do.

By contrast, in real life we never know what we should do with certainty, and such debate and discussion is critically important. Such thinking and discussing is how people come to learn, to agree, and to cooperate. It is the very mechanism which solves problems like market failures and public good problems. And it's exactly the area where the Government is at its weakest.

The Government's strength is forcing policies on everyone that it believes are best (whether they are mistakes or not), and its weakness is creating knowledge. That's why Government intervention always appeals to people who think they know the truth and that there is no need for further debate. And in seems appealing in situations where the best outcome is given as a premise. The market's strength is creating knowledge and its "weakness" is using force. Using a premise that obviates any need for knowledge creation, and hints that the correct outcome is so good that it's best even if force is used to bring it about, fundamentally distorts the scenario in a heavily Government-biased direction.

The is/ought problem is the claim that theories should be supported by facts, but that moral theories apparently cannot be supported by factual statements about what exists. This leads to the problem: how can we justify our moral theories? Can we somehow bridge the gap and infer moral theories from facts? Can we derive moral theories in another way? Or are moral theories always to be mere assumptions or guesses without any sound basis?

This is a bad problem, and we can avoid it.

We should start with the moral question: "How should I live?"

And we should start with the life we have now, not take a revolutionary view and try to discover morality starting from absolutely nothing.

We should take our current life, and our ways of making decisions, and we should try to improve them. In particular we can criticize them and look for problems in our life, and then we can try to think of new ways of life that wouldn't have those problems. Through this process of brainstorming and criticism we can improve on our life. Then we'll have a better life. We'll have made moral progress. We'll have learned something about morality, which means to have created moral knowledge.

And thus the is/ought problem is circumvented. The is/ought problem is only important when you approach morality in the wrong way, e.g. by asking "What is good?" or by asking "How can we justify our moral theories?" If we are not essentialists or justificationists (ways of thinking that Karl Popper refuted) then we won't care too much about those questions. If they were fruitful then they'd be fine, but if we find they are not (which is the thing the is/ought problem asserts: it says that these questions are very hard to answer) then that is not a serious problem, we are not required to answer them.

This is an incomplete summary of OSE ch5, by Karl Popper, focussed mostly on criticism of the claim that Popper is an excellent moral philosopher.

p57-58 we must distinguish between natural and normative laws. natural laws are literally impossible to break, but normative ones can be broken.

p58 denies true/false applies to normative laws

p60 people in primitive societies don't see the difference between natural and normative laws. they don't understand that laws of physics cannot be changed and cultural norms can be changed, and how to figure out which is which. (Elliot: this gets more confusing when we consider technology that increases our power over nature, so that natural laws which were major barriers become less important. in that case the laws of nature didn't really change, just our ability to circumvent or harness them.)

p61 says morality is a human construct

p61 says there are no moral facts or moral regularities in nature

p62 says you can never derive moral knowledge from facts or regularities or laws of nature (I take him to mean by "derive" something he would consider possible to do in science, not something impossible in all fields)

p62 gives example saying if you think people getting diseases is alterable, you can still take any attitude about whether this would be a good or bad change

p62 shoves a lot of morality into a category which he dismisses as unimportant and not worth calling morality. it's any way of life which, as a matter of fact, won't work because of the laws of nature. his example is working more and eating less (impossible beyond a certain point). but other examples of things we can rule out in this way include trying to have communism and prosperity, or trying to have trade protectionism without hurting your citizens, or trying to keep children innocent without harming the growth of knowledge. this category Popper dismisses includes important and controversial moral issues. I don't think that Popper knows that the moral question is "How should I live?" and thus "Should I be a communist?" is a question about how to live, and an important moral question, not just a trivial factual matter.

p63 mentions the impossibly of "logically" deriving decisions from facts. well, you can't logically derive scientific theories from facts either. so who cares?

p63 says "simply impracticable" decisions are "pointless and without significance". he is dismissing much of morality as trivial. his attitude denies that attempting projects that will fail is harmful. it second denies that ruling out bad ways of life has any value to someone who wants to learn about how to live. that's ridiculous; as Popper taught us, in science we think up a bunch of theories then use criticism to rule them out until just one stands. we should do the same in morality, and thus we should treat figuring out what won't work as very important -- it's a fundamental part of the knowledge creation process.

p64 representative quote:

But the norm 'Thou shalt not steal' is not a fact, and can never be inferred from sentences describing facts. This will be seen most clearly when we remember that there are always various and even opposite decisions possible with respect to a certain relevant fact. For instance, in face of the sociological fact that most people adopt the norm 'Thou shalt not steal', it is still possible to decide either to adopt this norm, or to oppose its adoption; it is possible to encourage those who have adopted the norm, or to discourage them, and to persuade them to adopt another norm. To sum up, it is impossible to derive a sentence stating a norm or a decision or, say, a proposal for a policy from a sentence stating a fact; this is only another way of saying that it is impossible to derive norms or decisions or proposals from facts.

This doesn't really say why, it just asserts these things.

Whatever this may be, it is not excellent moral philosophy. That would tell us about how we should live, rather than engaging in technical analysis about the philosophical limits of various statements.

From the fact that communism cannot work (whether this really is a consequence of the laws of physics is controversial, but assume for a moment that it is true) we can, at least in lay terminology, easily infer that purusing communism would be a mistake -- a poor way of life -- immoral. All communists would abandon communism if they thought, factually, that it would not achieve their goals. Technically one could still take the position that communism is good despite believing it would not achieve any good goals, but that would be ridiculous and easy to criticize, so why does it concern Popper so much? Sounds like borderline relativism.

p65 argues that morality is not "entirely arbitrary". concedes it is partially arbitrary. it's not entirely clear what being partially arbitrary means.

p65 gives 3 "moral demands" of mankind: "for equality, for freedom, and for helping the weak". two thirds of these are bad demands! It's very strange that they appear in a book touted as one of the best attacks on communism ever written. Does everyone but Ayn Rand sympathize with communism?

p67 there are "sociological laws" such as laws of economics

The rest of the chapter mostly talks about Plato.

OSE p104 Popper writes:

'Friends have in common all things they possess.' This is, undoubtedly, an unselfish high-minded and excellent sentiment. Who could suspect that an argument starting from such a commendable assumption would arrive at a wholly anti-humanitarian conclusion?

There are also various hints that Popper likes altruism before and after this. But this is worse than just advocating altruism. It is an unlimited form of altruism where nothing is held back. It tells us that all possessions should be common.

The sentiment also sounds something like a generic attack on people having differences, and therefore a very intolerant statement, but perhaps it's different with more context.

OSE p100: Popper says the term 'individualism' has two dictionary meanings. The first is the opposite of collectivism. The second is the opposite of altruism. He says one of Plato's tactics was to lump both senses of individualism together, in order to argue for collectivism by attacking selfishness (an invalid and dishonest approach). And Popper separates them out, in part for accuracy, and in part so he can defend anti-collectivism without having to defend selfishness, and can say the first sense of individualism is compatible with altruism.

I think Popper's dictionary is correct to connect these two concepts. If you value individuals in their own right, then how can you advocate those individuals all individually choose to sacrifice themselves for others? That is not the standard individualist attitude of people caring deeply about their own lives, and taking responsibility for themselves, and pursuing their own interests. Altruism is a way of sneaking collectivism in through the back door.

Popper only goes half way in his support of individualism. He opposes collectivism but not altruism. Ayn Rand goes the whole way. She vigorously supports both meanings of individualism. I wonder did anyone else before her ever seriously defend selfishness? I mean for a good reason, not something like advocating tyranny and trying to justify powerful people selfishly keeping their power.

Popper does a great job of presenting opposing views fairly, with ample quoting, and generous interpretations. Popper writes very clearly, and he makes sure to explain the opposing views as clearly as possible. That often means writing them more clearly than their proponents ever did. Popper frequently uses more words to explain an opposing view than he does to criticize it. I can't think of anyone else who is comparable; this is one of of the wonderful things about reading Popper.

That's why I was very surprised to find one case where Popper provided a single, hard-to-read quote, and gave an ungenerous and unreasonable interpretation. Unfortunately, Popper does this to one of my favorite authors: Burke.

Quotes are from The Open Society and Its Enemies p112-113. Popper starts by lumping Burke together with Aristotle even though their statements are quite different. Here's Aristotle:

To take care of virtue is the business of a state

And here is what Burke said[1]:

[the state is] to be looked upon with other reverence, because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature

Note that it says "other reverence" not just "reverence". This is because Popper left out important context. Popper goes on to paint Burke as a worshipper of the State. But Burke was actually saying the State deserves more reverence than a temporary agreement for trading coffee or calico. That's where the word "other" comes from.

Now, the main thing Popper says is that Burke and Aristotle are demanding that the State be worshipped, and be in charge of morality. Aristotle says very clearly that virtue is in the domain of the State, but Burke does not. Burke says the State is more important than "things subservient...". What things is he talking about? Trade of coffee for one. Burke goes on to explain that the State is a longterm partnership to achieve longterm ends. The main theme is to get liberty and prevent chaos. Those are exactly the things Popper thinks it proper that a State do. But Popper takes Burke to mean something else:

In other words, the state is said to be something higher or nobler than an association with rational ends; it is an object of worship.

That is not what Burke said, at all. His ends are rational and he did not ask for worship. My guess is that Popper is being harsh because Burke used one religious word ("reverence") despite the fact that Burke was only demanding more reverence than trade contracts. Popper goes on to accuse Burke of wanting to legislate morality:

it is a demand that the realm of legality ... should be increased at the expense of the realm of morality proper ... [at the expense of] our own moral decisions ... [at the expense of] our conscience.

That is what Aristotle demanded, but it's not even close to what Burke said. Nor is it consistent with Burke's record, e.g. his asking the State to be more lenient with Catholics. Popper then expands on his favored view (he calls it "protectionist"), which he is opposing to the Burke/Aristotle view:

from the protectionist point of view, the existing democratic states, though far from perfect, represent a very considerable achievement in social engineering of the right kind. Many forms of crime, of attack on the rights of human individuals by other individuals, have been practically suppressed or very considerably reduced, and courts of law administer justice fairly successfully in difficult conflicts of interest.

I can't imagine Burke disagreeing with this!



[1] Popper gave no citation, but I found it, here's the full paragraph:

http://www.constitution.org/eb/rev_fran.htm

SOCIETY is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure "” but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico, or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence, because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of those who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and supreme necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no discussion and demands no evidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no exception to the rule, because this necessity itself is a part, too, of that moral and physical disposition of things to which man must be obedient by consent or force; but if that which is only submission to necessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/10/universal-design-pattern.html

OK, I admit it, he's actually talking about software design patterns (and one in particular that is highly general). But it is basically epistemology. It's about how to organize knowledge. He even opens with a quote about epistemology that doesn't mention software:

This idea that there is generality in the specific is of far-reaching importance.
"” Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach

It may be unclear that this quote is about epistemology because it omits the word "knowledge". But we can put it back in. It's saying that parochial knowledge can have general importance. Specifics can help us in creating general purpose knowledge.

I don't think many philosophers know about organization of knowledge. For example, they may not realize that "the same knowledge" (i.e. a particular idea) can be organized in different ways, and that it matters which way (a lot). They know you can say the same thing in different ways, and that some are shorter or clearer, but I don't think they know that it's a really big important issue, rather than just a minor one (they think of it something like just a matter of using grammar properly and following various simple rules for editing English prose, not a deep subject).

But programmers do know this. They know, for example, that two programs can have the same complex functionality and one can be a maintenance nightmare and the other wonderful. And one can have general purpose functions, organized into library modules, that can be easily and usefully re-used in other projects, and the other can have nothing like that. One can have dozens of global variables used all over the places in complex ways, and the other can mostly use local scope. One can have goto statements, and the other not. One can have the code organized into separate files, in a nice tree of labelled folders, and the other could have it all in one single giant file. And, of course, two programs to do the same thing can be written in different languages.

What programmers don't know is that their knowledge has philosophical relevance. And indeed that it is better quality than most philosophy. There are only a handful of recent philosophers who were any good, but there are lots of people who understand software design. And the software design field is making active progress. Anyway, Steve Yegge is one of those people who knows something about organizing knowledge, so go read his lengthy essay.