Abstract
In this article, a comparative analysis of Karl Popper’s falsifiability theory and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theory of meaning in the context of the historical-philosophical approach to the problem of new knowledge formation and justification is undertaken. An assumption is made that the constellation of fact is connected with the possibility of the emergence of an epistemological field. Researchers have repeatedly addressed this issue; however, one important detail received no due attention: Popper’s counter-arguments regarding Wittgenstein’s view on semantic paradoxes show the fundamental difference of these philosophers’ views on the sign and the signified (language and world), which contributes to the analysis of new knowledge formation. Arguments that concern both early and late periods of Wittgenstein’s philosophy are used in this study. The uncertainty of the demarcation criterion (according to Popper) allowed analyzing Wittgenstein’s position as to how and why different rules of inference form different epistemological fields.
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Notes
In this work, the constellation of fact refers to the epistemological organization of the interaction of different factors and elements that form new aspects of the view on previously known states of affairs.
In this context, Jimmy Plourde’s new discussion on the terms of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is relevant: state of affairs, fact, and situation. In the discussion, facts are proposed to be interpreted as the existence and non-existence of states of affairs, and situations as possibilities for the existence and non-existence of states of affairs (Plourde 2016).
I must note here that the early Wittgenstein’s concept, which Popper repeatedly called the theory of ‘meaning’ or ‘sense’ (Popper 1966:755) and which affirms the need to clarify the meaning of terms to achieve language clarity (this is the main goal of philosophy), seems to be the initial stage of the late concept of meaning in retrospection; therefore, when analyzing the latter, this factor should be taken into account.
To support this position, it suffices to recall the ontological argument of Willard Van Orman Quine: “So I have insisted down the years that to be is to be the value of a variable” (Quine 1990:26).
A logically possible fact is a logically possible world (according to Saul Kripke, the abstraction of possible states of the real world), constructed by a logical order; the simultaneous empirical presence of this fact is not always possible.
An epistemological field is a certain discourse domain or a discourse, the core of which is fact with all its logically possible interpretations. Each subsequent interpretation becomes possible as a result of the emergence or formation of new knowledge, a new definition of one or another element of this discourse, etc. The totality of all these interpretations creates a single discourse domain that refers to a specific fact.
I am stressing here that Popper considers falsifiability as a demarcation criterion: “But I shall certainly admit a system as empirical or scientific only if it is capable of being tested by experience. These considerations suggest that not the verifiability but the falsifiability of a system is to be taken as a criterion of demarcation.” (Popper 2002b:18).
Popper’s example of the non-existence of a perpetual motion machine intends to confirm the possibility of an experimental justification for the denial of the existential (metaphysical) assertion “There exists a perpetual motion machine.” Thus, the latter statement is an isolated metaphysical statement, but such isolated statements are found not only in the field of metaphysics (Popper 2002a:347–348). Further in the paper, I will discuss the problem of the demarcation criterion in more detail, from the point of view of the isolation and non-derivability of knowledge (and hence its non-verifiability).
Here it makes sense to pay attention to the fact that Manfred Lube, discussing Popper’s World 3, quite accurately notices in one of his works that since the processes of cognition in science differ from the processes of the development of art, since in the first case the existing and emerging knowledge matters, and in the second the change itself causes a new understanding, World 3 can be represented by theories of different types (Lube 2016).
Here it makes sense to pay attention to the fact that Popper separately analyzed Wittgenstein’s approach proposed in Tractatus, for he did not quite agree with it: “... in the case of Wittgenstein, according to whom every meaningful proposition must be logically reducible to elementary (or atomic) propositions, which he characterizes as descriptions or ‘pictures of reality’ (a characterization, by the way, which is to cover all meaningful propositions). We may see from this that Wittgenstein’s criterion of meaningfulness coincides with the inductivists’ criterion of demarcation, provided we replace their words ‘scientific’ or ‘legitimate’ by ‘meaningful’. And it is precisely over the problem of induction that this attempt to solve the problem of demarcation comes to grief: positivists, in their anxiety to annihilate metaphysics, annihilate natural science along with it. For scientific laws, too, cannot be logically reduced to elementary statements of experience.” (Popper 2002b:13).
In addition, based on the idea of increasing verifiability, we can also assume that some existential statements have big chances to become non-isolated, that is, deducible.
“Carnap starts with a somewhat different question. His thesis is that all philosophical investigations speak ‘of the forms of speech’. The logic of science has to investigate ‘the forms of scientific language’. It does not speak of (physical) ‘objects’ but of words; not of facts, but of sentences. With this, the correct, the ‘formal mode of speech’, Carnap contrasts the ordinary or, as he calls it, the ‘material mode of speech’.” (Popper 2002b:77).
Despite the fact that we are talking about artificial languages here, this approach extends to natural language, since the well-known verification criterion of meaning of the early Wittgenstein, shared by Carnap, proceeds from the relevance of similar principles: the meaningfulness of a judgment is determined by the following: (1) all elements that make it up are meaningful, and (2) they are correctly connected to each other.
What I mean here is the following: the foundation of the “empirical basis” or “protocol sentences” is subjective experiences that, as such, acquire their relevance only through language; hence, the intersubjectivity of the “empirical basis” is linguistic intersubjectivity.
For example: “My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless...”; “ ‘On the other hand’, as Wittgenstein says in his Preface, ‘the truth of the thoughts communicated here seems to me unassailable and definite’.” (Popper 1966:282); “The totality of true propositions is... the totality of natural science.” (Popper 1966:330).
“ < Wittgenstein > asserted in 1931 that scientific theories are’ not really propositions’, i.e. not meaningful. Theories, hypotheses, that is to say, the most important of all scientific utterances, are thus thrown out of the temple of natural science, and therefore put on a level with metaphysics... The anti-metaphysical theory of meaning in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, far from helping to combat metaphysical dogmatism and oracular philosophy, represents a reinforced dogmatism that opens wide the door to the enemy, deeply significant metaphysical nonsense, arid throws out, by the same door, the best friend, that is to say, scientific hypothesis.” (Popper 1966: 284).
“... That we can communicate unassailably and definitely true thoughts by way of propositions which are admittedly nonsensical, and that we can solve problems ‘finally’ by propounding nonsense... For now we have a new kind of nonsense at our disposal, nonsense that communicates thoughts whose truth is unassailable and definitive; in other words, deeply significant nonsense.” (Popper 1966:283).
“... We find that a theory which implies its own meaninglessness is not meaningless but false, since the predicate ‘meaningless’, as opposed to ‘false’, does not give rise to paradoxes. And Wittgenstein’s theory is therefore not meaningless, as he believes, but simply false (or, more specifically, self-contradictory).” (Popper 1966:337).
Naturally, this process leads to a further transformation of an epistemological field.
I believe it is hardly possible to formulate comments of this kind.
According to Popper, psychological, social, artistic and other worlds are related to the world of our consciousness.
Here I will only give a rather illustrative example from the biography of Popper himself. After the National Socialists came to power, because of the ideology that they preached (the Jewish question) Popper was forced to emigrate to New Zealand. It follows that the fact of the physical world (Popper’s relocation in space) was caused by the European social reality of the 1930s, and by the psychological reaction of Popper himself, as a result of which he decided to emigrate. Thus, we see the interaction of three factors: physical, social and psychological; they created a new fact of the physical world: Popper’s position as lecturer in philosophy at Canterbury University College in New Zealand.
P1 is a problem from which the knowing subject starts and which he tries to solve by means of tentative theories (TT) and error elimination (EE), thus getting a new problem (P2).
In this connection, Wittgenstein’s statement that epistemological problems remain the same at all times because of language, which continues to formulate the same questions (Edmonds and Eidinow 2001), is relevant. Perhaps, it was also due to this Wittgenstein’s assertion that Popper believed that facts were the result of language and reality (Popper 2002a:290).
Again, to illustrate the non-identity of the logical and the empirical, I am giving Popper’s example connected with the phenomenon of induction (Popper 2002a). Despite David Hume’s well-known argument about the sun (that the sun has risen for thousands of years gives us no reason at all to believe it will rise tomorrow), Popper believes that, according to the principle of induction, we cannot be sure that every next time a jump off the top of a tower will end tragically for the jumper. Thus, the fact of logic here is reduced to the state of affairs described by the law of gravitation, and the empirical fact is the jump or falling of the body. From the standpoint of induction, there is no and there cannot be a regularity that would guarantee the possibility of repeating anything. Consequently, the logical fact (like procedure or rules of inference) and the empirical fact (like application or use of inference) do not always interact, according to Popper.
Though much later, in 1982, in his “Postscript”, Popper recognized: “My theory of science was not intended to be an historical theory or to be a theory supported by historical or other empirical facts...” (Popper 1996:XXXI).
In this connection, John Preston made interesting conclusions in his “The rise of western rationalism: Paul Feyerabend’s story” (Preston 2016), according to which Paul Feyerabend’s analysis of the principles of Western rationalism makes possible an alternative approach to the argumentation of objective knowledge formulated by Popper.
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The research is carried out at Tomsk Polytechnic University within the framework of Tomsk Polytechnic University Competitiveness Enhancement Program.
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Goncharenko, M. Epistemological Field and Constellation of Fact in Wittgenstein’s and Popper’s Philosophy. Axiomathes 30, 327–346 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-019-09458-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-019-09458-7