Mysteriet med den fjärde världen. Om objektivitet och reformism hos Karl Popper

Abstract

The mystery of world 4. Karl Popper's strong attachment to music is seldom observed. He has — as usual — strong opinions about what is good and bad in that field. Are these opinions just expressions of his subjective preferences? No, it is obvious that Popper finds ";;a place for musical values in his 'world 3'. One of the aims of Popper's theory of the three worlds is to solve the body-mind problem, another is to demonstrate the possibility of objective knowledge. And, as the case of music indicates, world 3 does not consist of just factual knowledge, even values has a place there. Each world is said to be autonomous but interacting. What Popper has to say about the interaction between world 1 and world 2 is a polemic against the thesis that mental processes can be reduced to physical. In the same way the interaction between worlds 2 and 3 contradicts the idea that knowledge can be reduced to knowing and values to evaluation. Although Popper is the author of a book with the title Objective knowledge, and accordingly suspected of being a 'positivist', it is on the other hand also possible to pick up arguments to accuse him of 'decisionism'. For example, he says that there is nothing that strictly compels the researcher to accept a falsification; after evaluating the results he has to make a decision. And more fundamentally, nothing compels Popper or me or you to choose a critical-rationalistic philosophy. For Popper's part, such an attitude to life seems to be the only alternative to violence, and Popper insists that he hates violence. That means that objectivism follows from a fundamental ethical choice. Even the second word in the title Objective knowledge may mislead the unprepared reader. The fact is, that Popper emphasises how uncert a i n and limited our rational-knowledge is: Wellr - but how is it possible to survive under such conditions? The answer is that we—provisionally— have to trust a lot of 'knowledge' that is not rationally grounded. Does that means that anything goes? No, in life as in science we have to start with what is delivered, traditional, but we also should make our best to refine it into rational knowledge. Popper's acceptance of 'metaphysics' is what separates him from the 'positivists'. From this it can already be anticipated that Popper is a 'reformist' and that is, of course, what interests us as political scientists. I will return to that theme in a forthcoming paper.