Myth of the Framework Book Club
Dennis Hackethal started this discussion 22 days ago.
ActivityFull citation: Popper, Karl. The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality. Kindle Edition.
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With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas, and submit new ideas.Tradition is important, but:
[O]rthodoxy is the death of knowledge, since the growth of knowledge depends entirely on the existence of disagreement.
The myth Popper criticizes, in one sentence:
A rational and fruitful discussion is impossible unless the participants share a common framework of basic assumptions or, at least, unless they have agreed on such a framework for the purpose of the discussion.
By ‘framework’, Popper means an intellectual framework (as opposed to, say, certain attitudes like a desire to find truth).
Popper grants that the myth has a “kernel of truth” (p. 35). A fruitful discussion can be hard without a common framework. But it’s not impossible.
A discussion is fruitful if people learn. The more their views differ, the more they can learn from each other!
The myth stems from a “disappointed over-optimism concerning the powers of reason …”. (P. 44)
People think truth should win decisively. But discussions usually don’t lead to such a decisive victory (see #3568). So then people become pessimistic about the fruitfulness of discussions.
The myth also stems from cultural relativism: the idea that truth is different for different cultures and that “there is no absolute or objective truth, but rather one truth for the Greeks, another for the Egyptians, still another for the Syrians, and so on.” (P. 45)
Popper opposes this relativism. He says it’s devastating when it comes to the administration of justice, say. “[W]e should try to understand and to compare [different cultures and conceptual frameworks]. We should try to find out who has the better institutions. And we should try to learn from them.” (P. 46)
Cultural relativism and the doctrine of the closed framework are serious obstacles to the readiness to learn from others. They are obstacles to the method of accepting some institutions, modifying others, and rejecting what is bad.
Fallibilism refutes the relativism on which the myth rests because fallibilism provides an absolute standard:
[T]here exists a very different attitude towards absolute truth, in fact a fallibilist attitude. It stresses the fact that the mistakes we make can be absolute mistakes, in the sense that our theories can be absolutely false – that they can fall short of the truth. Thus to the fallibilist the notion of truth, and that of falling short of the truth, may represent absolute standards – even though we can never be certain that we are living up to them. But since they may serve as a kind of steering compass, they may be of decisive help in critical discussions.
Popper then says that Alfred Tarsky revived this notion of absolute truth.
But is not Tarski's notion of truth a relative notion? Is it not relative to the language to which the statement whose truth is being discussed belongs?
The answer to this question is 'no'. Tarski's theory says that a statement in some language, say English, is true if and only if it corresponds to the facts. And Tarski's theory implies that whenever there is another language, say French, in which we can describe the same fact, then the French statement which describes this fact will be true if and only if the corresponding English statement is true. Thus it is impossible, according to Tarski's theory, that of two statements that are translations of each other, one can be true and the other false. Truth, according to Tarski's theory, is therefore not dependent on language, or relative to language.
[W]e should look with tolerance and even with respect upon customs or conventional laws that differ from our own.
A fruitful discussion between people of different frameworks is possible, but we should not expect too much (p. 37).
Don’t expect to find agreement! If we learn “new and interesting arguments”, then even if they are “inconclusive”, the discussion is still fruitful. It can take “time and patience”.
“Truth is hard to come by.” (P. 44)
Don’t view discussions like debate club. The goal isn’t to win a debate or to convert others.
[E]ven the slightest clarification of one's problem - even the smallest contribution made towards a clearer understanding of one's own position or that of one's opponent - is a great success.
And:
[I]t is enough, more than enough, if we feel that we can see things in a new light or that we have got even a little nearer to the truth.
Even without a common framework, people usually share problems, “such as the problems of survival.” (P. 38) But even if they don’t, they can still learn from each other. Success “will depend largely on our goodwill, and to some extent also on our historical situation, and on our problem situation.”
Historically, Western culture is the result of culture clash between Romans and Greeks, Greeks and Egyptians, Persians, Phoenicians. (P. 38)
Such clashes led Xenophanes to draw important epistemological conclusions about truth and guesswork (p. 39). They also helped develop Greek science, including math and astronomy (p. 40).
Science, a tradition of criticism, is unlike other traditions, whose “function is, and has always been, to preserve the purity of the teaching of the founder of the school.” (P. 43)
Popper guesses that science started “when Thales, the founder [of the Ionian school], encouraged Anaximander, his follower, to see whether he could produce a better explanation of the apparent stability of the earth than he himself had been able to offer.” (P. 43)