What is Philosophy? The nature of
philosophical problems and their roots
in Science
Júlio Fontana
“In the last fifty years, there has been more controversy regarding the nature of philosophy than in
any other previous period of history in the Western thought.”
David Pears
Although Popper has said that the questioning over the character of philosophical problems is more appropriate than the question “What is philosophy?”, I kept
it as a motto since the reader is already used to seeing such kind of questioning
throughout the whole history of philosophy.
The critique as a starting point
As usual, Popper will tell us “what Philosophy is” by criticizing conceptions he
considers wrong. In this particular case, he criticizes Fritz Waismann’s vigorous and
famous work, How I see philosophy, and some doctrines present in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractadus logico-philosophicus.
What is easily noticed is that both of them are associated to Popper’s traditional
adversaries: the logical positivists. Waismann belonged to the Vienna Circle while
Wittgenstein granted this group their main canons.
We see that Popper will oppose the logical positivism’s ideas due to his concern
in emphasizing that he never belonged to the Circle. He says he has never belonged
to the Vienna Circle and that he is not a positivist. Nevertheless, I must admit that
our philosopher “drank from that well”, despite keeping strong opposite opinions
to the Circle. This, by the way, Popper himself admits:
Julio Fontana is the author of articles and reviews for magazines such as Inclusividade, from the Center of
Anglican Studies; Ciberteologia, from Paulinas Editora; Religião e Cultura, from PUC-SP; and Correlatio,
from the Paul Tillich Association of Brazil, of which he is an effective member.
Cf. POPPER, Karl. O eu e o seu cérebro. São Paulo-Brasília, Papirus-UNB, 1991. p. 26. [The self and its
brain, London, Routledge, 1986.] POPPER, Karl. Conhecimento objetivo: uma abordagem evolucionária.
Belo Horizonte, Itatiaia, 1999. p. 183. [Objective knowledge; evolutionary approach. New York, Oxford
University Press, 1972.]
As na example, it is enough to quote Martin Heidegger’s famous essay, “What is Philosophy” “Que é isto
– A filosofia?”, in Martin Heidegger, Os pensadores, São Paulo, Nova Cultural, 2005, pp. 27-40.
POPPER, Karl. Lógica das ciências sociais. Rio de Janeiro-Brasília, Tempo Brasileiro-UNB, 1978. pp. 85101. This article is also found in: Id. Em busca de um mundo melhor. São Paulo, Martins Fontes, 2006. pp.
221-241. [In search of a better world. London, Routledge, 1995.]
Id. Conjecturas e refutações. 2. ed. Brasília, UNB, 1982. p. 97. [Conjectures and refutations. London,
Routledge, 2002.]
Popper positively alludes to the Circle in almost all his works. Cf. POPPER, Karl. Autobiografia intelectual.
São Paulo, Cultrix-Edusp, 1977. pp. 95-98. Id. A lógica da pesquisa científica. 18. ed. São Paulo, Cultrix,
2006. p. 535. [The logic of scientific discovery. London, Routledge, 2002] Id. Sociedade aberta, universo
aberto. Lisboa, Publicações Dom Quixote, 1991. p. 37. See also: EDMONDS, David. O atiçador de
Wittgenstein: a história de dez minutos entre dois grandes filósofos. Rio de Janeiro, Difel, 2003. pp. 177186. [Wittgenstein’s poker; the story of a tem minute argument between two great philosophers. New York,
Harper Perennial, 2002.]
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I was never invited to any of the Circle’s meetings, maybe because of my known opposition to positivism. I would happily have accepted an invitation, for not only some of the Circle’s members
were close friends of mine, but I also had great admiration for some of the other members.
Sometimes I ask myself who belonged most to the Vienna Circle: Popper or Wittgenstein?
Wittgenstein was invited to a meeting once, but he did not show up. The members of the Circle shared some wittgensteinian ideas, but not all of them, especially
those concerning religion. Popper even attributes to Wittgenstein one of the main
causes of the logical positivism’s bankruptcy.
“Under the influence of Wittgenstein’s Tractadus logico-philosophicus, the Vienna Circle had become not only antimetaphysical but also antiphilosophical.”
Thus, in my point of view, Popper is more linked to the Circle than Wittgenstein
himself. Despite having defended philosophy and metaphysics before the Circle,
Popper agrees with many of the neopositivists’ ideas and even with many Wittgensteinian ideas, as we will see ahead.
The Popperian critiques always take into account the opinion of the Circle’s
members, and Popper was a close friend of Rudolf Carnap, the group’s main theoretician. These facts put Popper very close to the Circle; perhaps that is why Otto
Neurath has qualified him as the “official opposition” to the Vienna Circle.10
The philosopher
When seeking to understand “what philosophy is”, scholars often forget to examine who may be considered a philosopher or not, and the role they must play to
do so. Hence, it is not enough to know the object and the appropriate method of
Philosophy, but we must clarify the features of the one who makes philosophy; the
one who is committed to philosophizing.
Who is a philosopher?
Waismann takes for granted that philosophers are a special kind of people and
that Philosophy is nothing more than their exclusive activity. He shows this with the
help of some examples, pointing out the distinctive character of the philosopher
and of philosophy, when compared to other academic disciplines, such as mathematics or physics.
Nonetheless, Karl Popper’s view on Philosophy is entirely different from that
of Waismann. He thinks that everyone — men and women — is a philosopher,
although some are more than others. Popper agrees that there is an exclusive and
distinct group of people — the academic philosophers — but he is far from sharing
Waismann’s enthusiasm. Popper believes there is much to be said by those who are
suspicious of the academic philosopher, so he rejects any idea of a philosophical
and intellectual elite.
Such discrimination was internalized in such a way that the philosophy student
does not self-proclaim himself/herself a philosopher until he/she graduates. After
graduation, he/she has some cards readily manufactured with the word “philoso POPPER, Karl. Lógica das ciências sociais. p. 89. Also: Id. Em busca de um mundo melhor. pp. 226-227.
[In search of a better world, op. cit.]
POPPER, Karl. Em busca de um mundo melhor. p. 227. [In search of a better world, op. cit.]
Cf. Id. Conjecturas e refutações. pp. 100-103. [Conjectures and refutations, op. cit.]
10 See: MAGEE, Bryan. As idéias de Popper. 4. ed. São Paulo, Cultrix, 1983. p. 16.
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pher” right below his/her name. So, the philosophical knowledge is given to us by
the community? Are we philosophers only when we possess a certificate? Perhaps
those who think so are not philosophers, for they have never thought that the great
philosophy — for example, that of the Pre-Socratic philosophers — precedes all
professional and academic philosophy.
The philosopher’s function
In order to describe the philosopher’s function, Popper compares the tasks of
the scientist and those of the philosopher. Such attitude is historically founded,
because in Ancient Greece philosophy and science were closely linked aspects
of knowledge. They were not yet distinct spheres of knowledge as they are today.
By the way, Popper attributes such separation between science and philosophy to
Hegelianism.11
In the Preface to the first edition of his The logic of scientific discovery (1934),
our philosopher shows that a scientist engaged in research — let us say, in the field
of physics — can directly attack the problem he is facing. He can immediately penetrate the heart of the question, that is: the heart of an organized structure. In effect,
he always counts with an existing structure of scientific doctrines and with a situation known as a problem in such structure. This is why the task of adjusting one’s
contribution to the general frame of the scientific knowledge is given to others.12
The philosopher, on his turn, is in a different position. He does not deal with
an organized structure; on the contrary, he faces something similar to a mass of
ruins (although there may be hidden treasures). He is not supported by the fact that
there is a situation problem, generally acknowledged as such, for the inexistence
of something similar is possibly the known fact. Consequently, it is now a frequent
question in the philosophical circles whether Philosophy will ever place a genuine
problem.
Nevertheless, Popper says, there are those who believe that Philosophy may
place genuine problems about things, so there are people who hope to see these
problems being discussed, withdrawn from those disheartening monologs taken
as philosophical debates today.13 According to him, the existence of urgent and
serious philosophical problems and the need to discuss them critically are the sole
excuse for what may be called academic philosophy or professional philosophy.14
Hence, for Popper, the scientist and the philosopher’s function consists in solving problems,15 despite the existence of profound differences in the way how they
appear in the respective areas. Thus, it is not the function of the scientist and the
philosopher to talk of what they are doing or might do. According to him, “even an
unsuccessful attempt to solve a scientific or philosophical problem, if it is an honest
11 Cf. POPPER, Karl. Conjecturas e refutações. p. 97. [Conjectures and refutations, op. cit.]
12 Popper’s description of the scientific work is very close to Thomas Kuhn’s concept of normal science. Popper
admits such closeness in: “A ciência normal e seus perigos”, in Imre Lakatos & Alan Musgrave (Orgs),
A crítica e o desenvolvimento do conhecimento, São Paulo, Edusp, 1979, pp. 63-71. [Criticism and the
growth of knowledge. Cambridge, CUP, 1970.]
13 POPPER, Karl. A lógica da pesquisa científica. p. 23. [The logic of scientific discovery, op.cit.]
14 Cf. Id. Em busca de um mundo melhor. p. 227. [In search of a better world, op. cit.]
15 There is full agreement here between Karl Popper and Gaston Bachelard. For them, the ability to formulate
pertinent questionings is one of the most distinctive signs of the true philosophical spirit. In the present
Brazilian context, Hilton Japiassu states: “All knowledge is a response to a question. If there is no question,
there is no knowledge. Nothing is evident. Nothing is given. Everything is constructed”. JAPIASSU, H. O
sonho transdisciplinar e as razões da filosofia. Rio de Janeiro, Imago, 2006. p. 177.
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and devoted attempt, appears to me more significant than any discussion of a question such as ‘What is science’ or ‘What is philosophy’”.16
The philosopher’s function is coherent with all Popperian theory of knowledge,
which admits that knowledge begins with the attempt to solve a problem, according
to the following formula:
P1 - TT - EE - P2
Where:
P1 = Initial problem
TT = Tentative theories
EE = Error elimination
P2 = New problems
Based in a problem (P1), whether practical or theoretical, we seek to establish a
temporary solution, or several solutions, destined to solve it (TT). These, however,
must be capable of being submitted to tests. Then we adopt a critical attitude, aiming at eliminating the theory’s errors (EE). In the end of the process, a new problem
arises (P2).17
If for Popper the philosopher’s function is to solve problems, for Wittgenstein
all genuine problems are scientific. Thus, the philosopher’s function is the logical
clarification of scientific propositions. His task is merely therapeutic, reducing the
scientific problems to mere language analysis.18 According to Wittgenstein, the real
nature of philosophy is not that of a theory, but of an activity. The function of the
genuine philosophy would be to unmask the philosophical absurdities and teach
people to speak in a way that makes sense.19
The philosopher’s method
The language analysts consider themselves practitioners of a method peculiar to
philosophy. This idea is already found in Carnap, who affirmed that philosophy’s
task consist not in building theories or systems, but in elaborating a method, the
method of logic or linguistic analysis, and sorting out all that is affirmed in the several fields of knowledge.
According to Carnap, this method has two functions: to eliminate meaningless
words and the pseudo propositions and clarify those concepts and propositions that
16 POPPER, Karl. Conjecturas e refutações. p. 95. [Conjectures and refutations, op. cit.]
17 To know more about how rational knowledge evolves, according to Popper, see: Luis Alberto Peluso, A
filosofia de Karl Popper, Campinas, Papirus-PUCCamp, 1995, pp. 93-123. My doubt concerning Popper’s
fourfold scheme regarded the error elimination leading to new problems, that is: P2. A listener of his lectures
given in 1969 at the University of Emory on the body-mind problem raised this doubt. Popper’s answer was
not satisfactory ([POPPER, Karl. O conhecimento e o problema corpo-mente. Lisboa, Edições 70, 1999. p.
81. [Knowledge and the body-mind problem. London, Routledge, 1995.]) I believe new problems may arise
from our attempts to solve problem situations, but not infinitely. I do believe this process repeats itself a few
times, when the problem is of practical nature.
18 Popper reacts to this thought for his entire life; even in his Autobiography, the philosopher considers this one
of his oldest philosophical problems. “I have long believed that there are genuine philosophical problems,
which are not mere puzzles arising out of the misuse of language.” POPPER, Karl. Autobiografia intelectual.
p. 21.
19 “Wittgenstein denied the existence of authentic problems or authentic riddles. He later started to speak of
puzzles, that is, of embarrassments or misunderstandings caused by the philosophical misuse of language.
As to this, all I can say is that, for me, there would be no excuse for being a philosopher if I had no serious
philosophical problems and no hope of solving them: in my opinion, neither would there be an excuse for
the existence of philosophy.” POPPER, Karl. Em busca de um mundo melhor. p. 228. [In search of a better
world, op. cit.]
18
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have meaning, to give a logic basis to the experimental sciences and physics. This
method is called verification method.20
The verification method consists in translating into a series of experimental propositions that one proposition whose meaning one wishes to determine. When “a
proposition is not translatable into propositions of empirical nature […], it is in no
way an assertion and says nothing but a series of empty words; it is simply meaningless”.21
When applying the experimental verification principle to the different kinds of language in use
in the several fields of knowledge, Carnap comes to the conclusion, already announced by Wittgenstein, that only the scientific knowledge (that of the experimental sciences) has theoretical
significance; the metaphysical, ethic, religious, aesthetic, and literary languages can only have
emotional significance.22
Popper, on the contrary, understands that there is no specific method that might
be used by the philosopher. For him, “Philosophers are as free as others to use any
method in searching for truth. There is no method peculiar to philosophy”.23 Nonetheless, Popper proposes a method:
And yet, I am quite ready to admit that there is a method which might be described as “the
one method of philosophy.” But it is not characteristic of philosophy alone; it is, rather, the one
method of all rational discussion, and therefore of the natural sciences as well as of philosophy.
The method I have in mind is that of stating one’s problem clearly and of examining its various
proposed solutions critically. 24
This method consists in that whenever we propose a solution to a problem, we
must try, as intensely as possible, to knock down such solution instead of defending
it. Unfortunately, few of us keep such precept. Fortunately, others will make the critiques we did not. However, critique will only be fruitful if we enunciate the problem as precisely as possible, stating our proposed solution in a way well enough
defined — a way that is susceptible of being critically analysed.
It is important to note that such method is (or at least should be) used in an almost instinctive way by the human being in searching for truth. Thus, Popper does
not assume a dogmatic posture of imposing a method to philosophy: “I am not concerned with the methods which a philosopher (or anybody else) can use as long as
there is an interesting problem and that he sincerely tries to resolve it.”25
Philosophy
Having analysed the philosopher’s role, we will now examine what he produces,
that is: philosophy.
20 Quanto ao metódo de verificação, Popper diz: “Em verdade, a verificação de uma lei natural só pode
ser levada a efeito se se estabelecer empiricamente cada um dos eventos singulares a que a lei poderia
aplicar-se e se se verificar que cada um desses eventos se conforma efetivamente com a lei — tarefa,
evidentemente, impossível”. As to the verification method, Popper says: “For the verification of a natural law
could only be carried out by empirically ascertaining every single event to which the law might apply, and
by finding that such event actually conforms to the law – clearly an impossible task”. POPPER, Karl. A lógica
da pesquisa científica. p. 66. [The logic of scientific discovery, op.cit.] Uma outra crítica em: AYER, A. J.
As questões centrais da filosofia. Rio de Janeiro, Zahar, 1975. pp. 37-43. [Central questions of philosophy.
Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1973.]
21 MONDIN, Battista. Curso de filosofia. 8. ed. São Paulo, Paulus, 2003. v. III, p. 212.
22 Id., ibid.
23 POPPER, Karl. A lógica da pesquisa científica. p. 535. [The logic of scientific discovery, op.cit.]
24 Id., ibid. p. 536.
25 Id., ibid.
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What has philosophy produced lately?
Popper says that professional philosophy has not produced great things lately, lacking an apologia pro vita sua, that is, a defense of its existence. Wittgenstein agrees with
Popper as to the unproductiveness philosophy has been showing, however he does not
defend its existence, on the contrary, he points out its conflict of competence:
Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but
nonsensical. Consequently we cannot give any answer to questions of this kind, but can only
establish that they are nonsensical. Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise
from our failure to understand the logic of our language And it is not surprising that the deepest
problems are in fact not problems at all.26
Wittgenstein basis his doctrine of the discourse’s meanings in Bertrand Russel’s
Theory of types.27 Aiming at solving the problem of the logical paradoxes he had
discovered, Russel discriminated the linguistic expressions into:
1.true statements;
2.false statements;
3.Meaningless expressions.
We might say, using ordinary language, that a false statement, such as “3 times 4
equals 173” or “all cats are oxes”, is meaningless. But Russell reserved the qualification “deprived of sense” to statements of a kind that preferably should not be described simply as “false statements” (in effect, the denial of a false proposition that
has sense will always be true. But the prima facie denial of the pseudo-proposition
“all cats equal 173” is “some cats equal not 173” – a proposition as unsatisfactory
as the first). Thus, the negative counterpart of pseudo-statements are also pseudostatements, as well as the negative counterpart of valid propositions (true or false)
are always valid propositions (false or true, respectively).
Such distinction allowed Russell to eliminate paradoxes (which, for him, were
meaningless pseudo-propositions).
Wittgenstein, however, moved beyond that. Stirred, perhaps, by the feeling that
philosophers (specially the Hegelian ones) were proposing something very similar
to the paradoxes of logic, he used Russell’s discrimination to denounce all philosophy as strictly meaningless.
Popper accepts Wittgenstein’s motivation to propose such doctrine, but he does
not agree with the proposal’s radicalism, as we will see in the next section.
What interests us now is to show that the low level of philosophical production,
specially that of the Hegelians, led Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle and all their
philosophy to adopt antimethaphysical and antiphilosophical stands. Such stands
were so radical that Popper qualified them as “more radical the Comte’s positivism”.28
In his article How I see philosophy,29 Popper accuses four great philosopher of
having “something weighing upon their consciousness”.30 They are Plato, Hume,
26 WITTGENSTEIN, Ludwig. Tractadus logico-philosophicus. 2. ed. São Paulo, Edusp, 1994. prop. 4. [English
version: Tractadus logico-philosophicus. London, Routledge, 2001.]
27 Cf. AYER, Alfred. As idéias de Bertrand Russell. São Paulo, Cultrix/Edusp, 1974. pp. 48-53. [Bertrand Russel.
Chicago, CUP, 1988.]
28 Id., ibid. p. 98.
29 POPPER, Karl. Em busca de um mundo melhor. pp. 221-241. Also in: Id. Lógica da pesquisa social. pp.
85-101. [In search of a better world, op. cit.]
30 It is hard to grasp what Popper really meant by this. I believe, though, that he wanted to point out that these
four great philosophers committed a gross mistake in some point of their respective philosophical systems.
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Spinoza, and Kant. In Conjectures and refutations, he adds Hegelianism to them,
that is, the German idealism represented by Hegel, Fichte, and Schelling.
Popper considered Plato’s31 view of the human life repulsive and truly horrifying.
According to Popper, Plato’s weakness was to believe, as so many professional philosophers after him, in the elite theory, in a total contraposition to Socrates. While
Socrates demanded wisdom from a statesman, saying with this that he should be
conscious of how little he knew, Plato demanded that the wise philosopher was a
statesman, an absolute governor. Popper comments that “since Plato, megalomania
is most widespread occupational disease of the professional philosopher.”32
According to Popper, David Hume was not a professional philosopher and, together with Socrates, was perhaps the frankest and most balanced of philosophers.
He was also modest, rational and somewhat dispassionate. Nevertheless, he was
led by a sad and erroneous psychological theory to a horrid doctrine according to
which reason is, and must be, a slave of passions and must aim at no other function
than to serve and obey them. Popper disagrees with Hume, but he admits that without passion nothing grandiose is ever attained. He even declares that “the taming
of passions by the limited rationality we, irrational beings, are capable of is, in my
point of view, the only hope for humanity”.33
Spinoza, the saint among the great philosophers and, as Socrates and Hume, a
non-professional philosopher, taught almost the opposite of Hume, but in a way not
only false, but also ethically unacceptable. Like Hume, he was a determinist: he did
not believe in the human being’s free-will and considered the intuition of the will’s
freedom an illusion. He also taught the human freedom may consist only in terms of
a clear, distinct and appropriate understanding of the coercive, unavoidable causes
of our actions. According to Spinoza, as long as something is passion, we remain
caught in its claws and unfree. As soon as we form a clear and distinct conception
of it, we remain determined by it, but transform it in part of our reason. And only
this is freedom, Spinoza teaches.
Popper considers this doctrine an unsustainable and dangerous form of rationalism, even though he is a rationalist himself.34 He also disagrees of Spinoza’s determinism. Although Popper is not a determinist, we cannot classify him as an undeterminist.35
According to him, no one has ever presented serious arguments on behalf of
determinisms or arguments that conciliate determinism with the human freedom
(and thus with common sense). He says: “It seems to me that Spinoza’s determinism is a typical misunderstanding of a philosopher, although it is evidently true that
most of what we do (but not all) is determined and even predictable.”36 Another of
Popper’s critiques to Spinoza’s doctrine is that, although being true that an explosion of feeling, which Spinoza calls “passion”, makes us unfree, according to his
previously quoted formula, we will not be responsible for our action as long as we
are not capable of forming a clear, distinct and appropriate rational conception of
31 Prior to his critique, Popper qualified Plato as the greatest, deepest and most ingenious of all philosophers.
POPPER, Karl. Em busca de um mundo melhor. p. 224. [In search of a better world, op. cit.]
32 For more on Popper’s critique to Plato, see: POPPER, Karl. A sociedade aberta e seus inimigos. Belo
Horizonte, Itatiaia, 1998. v. I. [Open society and its enemies. London, Routledge, 2002.
33 Id. Em busca de um mundo melhor. p. 225. [In search of a better world, op. cit.]
34 Id., ibid. Ver também: Id. Conjecturas e refutações. p. 34. [Conjectures and refutations, op. cit.]
35 Id. Conhecimento objetivo. pp. 193-233. [Objective knowledge, op. cit.]
36 Id. Em busca de um mundo melhor. p. 226. [In search of a better world, op. cit.]
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the reasons of our action. Despite this being a craving of the human being, Popper
questions if someone has ever reached it.
As to Kant, Popper considers him one of the few admirable and highly original
thinkers among the professional philosophers. Nonetheless, he tried to solve the
problem of the slavery of reason (Hume) and the problem of determinism (Spinoza),
but failed in both attempts.37
Finally, Popper evalluates Hegel. He says the philosopher was a mediocre Platonic (rather, a Neoplatonic) and, like Plato, a mediocre Heraclitan. He was a Platonic whose world of ideas was changing, evolving. Plato’s “forms” or “ideas” were
objective and had nothing to do with conscious ideas in a subjective mind. They inhabited a divine, immutable, and heavenly world (superlunar, in Aristotle’ sense). In
contrast, Hegel’s ideas, as those of Plotinus, were conscious phenomena: thoughts
that thought of themselves and inhabited a kind of consciousness, a kind of mind or
“Spirit”; and together with this “Spirit”, they changed or evolved.38 Thus, while Plato
lets his hypostatized ideas inhabit some divine heaven, Hegel personalizes his Spirit
in a divine consciousness. Ideas inhabit such divine consciousness as the human
ideas inhabit a human consciousness. His full doctrine is that the Spirit is not only
conscious, but a being.39
Thus, according to Popper, Wittgenstein is justified when proposing a theory
that attempts to distinguish science from metaphysics.40 However, Wittgenstein’s
demarcation criterion is wrong in classifying the metaphysical and philosophical
discourse as nonsensical.
Of course I know there are many people who make meaningless statements. It is conceivable
that some people have the (unpleasant) task of unmasking these people, because the lack of meaning is dangerous. I believe, though, that some people have already said things without much
meaning and that did not respect the grammar – but extremely interesting and exciting, perhaps
more valuable than some meaningful things said by others. As an example, I could mention the
differential and integral calculus, which, especially in their initial form, were undoubtedly paradoxical and absurd according to Wittgenstein’s criteria.41
Having in mind philosophy’s production over these 2.500 years of existence,
Popper feels the need to apologize, which he does in chapter two of his book Objective knowledge:
It is much necessary these days to apologize for being interested in philosophy, whatever form it
takes. Except maybe for some Marxists, most professional philosophers seem to have lost contact
37 Cf. Id. A lógica da pesquisa científica. p. 29. [The logic of scientific discovery, op.cit.] Despite such critique
to Kant, we can still consider Popper a “converted “Kantian”. Cf. MAGEE, Bryan. Confissões de um filósofo.
São Paulo, Martins Fontes, 2001. p. 209. [Confessions of a philosopher. New York, Random House, 1998.]
38 To see Popper’s full critique to Hegelianism, read the second tome of his work Open society and its
enemies.
39 Despite all of Popper’s critiques to these philosophers are correct, that does not mean they are valid. His
approach was an anachronic one. With today’s scientific knowledge, to evaluate these philosophers as
Popper did is, at the least, unfair.
40 Evidently, for Popper, science and metaphysics are forms of knowledge with distinct power. The former
has more credibility than the latter due to the critical attitude in which it is generated. Cf. POPPER, Karl.
Autobiografia intelectual. pp. 43-45. Dogmatic scientists do not agree with such position. Richard Dawkins,
for example, said in an interview to John Horgan: “They [some intellectuals who think science alone cannot
answer the basic questions about existence] think science is too arrogant and that there are some questions
that science is not apt to ask and in which the religious people are traditionally interested. As if they had
answers. It is a lot different to say that it is too hard to know how the universe began, what caused the big bang,
what is consciousness. However, if science has a hard time explaining something, surely no one will be able
to explain it”. HORGAN, John. O fim da ciência: uma discussão sobre os limites do conhecimento científico.
São Paulo, Companhia das Letras, 1998. p. 153. [The end of science. New York, Bantam Books, 1997.]
41 POPPER, Karl. Conjecturas e refutações. p. 99. [Conjectures and refutations, op. cit.]
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with reality. [...] In my opinion, the greatest scandal of philosophy is that, while all around us the
world of nature perishes - and not the world of nature alone - philosophers continue to talk, sometimes cleverly and sometimes not, about the question of whether this world exists get involved
in scholasticism, in linguistic puzzles such as, for example, whether or not there are differences
between “being” and “existing”.42
We now enter a new theme: What should philosophy study?
What should philosophy study?
For Popper, philosophy should study problems, which are not limited or subdivided into disciplines. Thus, philosophy should investigate everything. He explains that
The belief that there is such a thing as physics, or biology, or archaeology, and that these “studies”
or “disciplines” are distinguishable by the subject matter they investigate, appears to me to be
a residue from the time when one believed that a theory had to proceed from a definition of its
own subject.43
In fact, it is not possible to distinguish disciplines according to their subject matters; they distinguish themselves from one another partly because of historical reasons and management convenience and partly because the theories we formulate
to solve our problems tend to evolve under the form of unified systems.
Thus, for our philosopher there is no such entity we might call “philosophy” or
“philosophical activity”, as a determined “nature”, essence, or character. This is a
belief that comes from the Comtean positivism.
For Popper, “We are not students of some subject matter but students of problems. And problems may cut across the borders any subject matter or discipline”.
Let us see an example:
It hardly needs mentioning that a problem posed to a geologist such as the evaluation of the
possibility of finding deposits of oil or of uranium in a certain district needs for its solution the
help of theories and techniques usually classified as mathematical, physical, and chemical. It is,
however, less obvious that even a more ‘basic’ science such as atomic physics may have to make
use of a geological and of geological theories and techniques, if it wishes to solve a problem related to its most abstract theories: for example, the problem of the predictability test on the relative
stability of instability of atoms of an even or odd atomic number.44
That does not mean there are no problems “belonging” to some of the original disciplines. For Popper, however, their solution involves too many different disciplines.
the two problems mentioned “belong” clearly to geology and physics respectively. This is due to
the fact that each of them arises out of a discussion which is characteristic of the tradition of the
discipline in question. It arises out of the discussion of some theory, or out of empirical tests bearing upon a theory; and theories, as opposed to subject matter, may constitute a discipline (which
might be described as a somewhat “loose” cluster of theories undergoing a process of challenge,
change, and growth). But this does not affect my argument in the sense that the classification of
disciplines has relatively little significance; we are not students of subject matters but students of
problems.45
But are there philosophical problems? As to this, Popper directly confronts Wittgenstein’s doctrine.46
42 Id. Conhecimento objetivo. p. 41. [Objective knowledge, op. cit.]
43 Id. Conjecturas e refutações. p. 95. [Conjectures and refutations, op. cit.]
44 Id., ibid. p. 96.
45 Id., ibid.
46 Popper believes that the English philosophy’s present position has its origin in Wittgenstein’s doctrine.
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Wittgenstein’s doctrine
For Wittgenstein, philosophy’s true method would be to say nothing but that
which can be said, that is, scientific propositions. Thus, Wittgenstein gives a negative answer to our question, saying that all genuine problems are scientific. The
alleged philosophical problems would be nothing more than pseudo-propositions
and the alleged theories or philosophical propositions would be pseudo-theories
and pseudo-propositions. Nevertheless, these would not be false but simply a combination of meaningless words, no more significant then the inconsequent babbling
of a child who has not yet learned to speak. For Wittgenstein, philosophy is a “child
babbling”.47
Consequently, there could be no genuine philosophical problems. All the supposed “philosophical problems” could be classified in four categories:
• purely logical or mathematical ones that should be solved through logical or
mathematical propositions;
• factual ones, to be solved through a statement of an emprirical science;
• those combining 1 and 2;
• meaningless pseudo-problems.
Philosophy’s task consists not in building theories or systems, but in elaborating
a method – the method of logical or linguistic analysis – and sort out with it all that
is affirmed in the several fields of knowledge. This method has two functions: to
eliminate meaningless words and pseudo-propositions and clarify the meaningful
concepts and propositions, giving a logical basis to the experimental sciences and
to physics.
The verification method consists in translating into a series of experimental propositions that proposition whose meaning one wishes to determine. When “a proposition is not translatable into propositions of empirical nature […], it is in no way an
assertion and says nothing but a series of empty words; it is simply meaningless.”48
Popper’s critique
Popper believes there are philosophical problems that are worth being investigated. For him, “philosophers must philosophize”.49 Our philosopher believes in
the existence of genuinely philosophical problems. “In fact”, Popper says, “the existence of urgent and serious philosophical problems and the need to discuss them
critically are the sole excuse for what may be called academic philosophy or professional philosophy”.50 And he continues: “I can say that if I thought there were no serious philosophical problems I would have no reason for being a philosopher”.51 In
Conjectures, Popper declares “[…] My own view of the matter is that only as long as
I have genuine philosophical problems to solve shall I continue to take an interest in
philosophy. I fail to understand the attraction of a philosophy without problems”.52
And what would these genuine philosophical problems be? Popper agrees with
Wittgenstein: “pure” philosophical problems do not exist. In fact, our philosopher
47 This was the theme of the famous argument between Popper and Wittgenstein in Cambridge, 1946. See:
POPPER, Karl. Autobiografia intelectual. pp. 130-133. See also: EDMONDS, David. op. cit. pp. 255-306.
48 POPPER, Karl. Conjecturas e refutações. p. 96. [Conjectures and refutations, op. cit.]
49 Id., ibid. p. 97.
50 Id. Lógica das ciências sociais. p. 90.
51 Id., ibid.
52 Id. Conjecturas e refutações. p. 99. [Conjectures and refutations, op. cit.]
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thinks that “the purer a philosophical problem becomes, the more is lost of its
original sense, significance, or meaning, and the more liable is its discussion to degenerate into empty verbalism”. As we have seen, problem-solving may cut across
the borders of many sciences. Thus, a problem may be appropriately called “philosophical” if we understand that, although having arisen, for example, in the field of
the atomic theory, it is more closely related to the theories and problems discussed
by philosophers than with the theories that physics presently takes interest in.
Popper goes further and says that cosmology is philosophy’s major area of interest, as we can see in the preface to the first English edition of his Logic of scientific
discovery (1959):
Language analysts believe that that there are no genuine philosophical problems, or that the
problems of philosophy, if any, are problems of linguistic usage, or of the meaning of words. I,
however, believe that there is at least one philosophical problem in which all thinking men are
interested. It is the problem of cosmology: the problem of understanding the world including
ourselves, and our knowledge, as part of the world. All science is cosmology, I believe, and for
me the interest of philosophy, no less than science, lies only in the contributions which it has
made to it. Both philosophy and science would lose, as I see it, their whole attractiveness if they
abandoned this goal.53
Also for Popper, philosophy “has never to be, and in fact can never be, divorced
from sciences”. This is indeed one of the central dogmas of positivism, but with a
different view, as we can see in Popper’s justification:
Historically, all Western science is a product of the Greek philosophical speculation on the cosmos, the world’s order. Common ancestors to all philosophers are Homer, Hesiod and the PreSocratic philosophers. Basic for them is the question of the universe’s structure and our place in
this universe (a problem that, in my point of view, remains decisive for all philosophy).54
To what conclusions do we come?
For Popper there is no such thing as an essence of philosophy to be taken and
condensed in a definition. Even if we read entire libraries of philosophical books,
we would never be able to precise a univocal, unique, and satisfactory answer
to the question of its nature. Thus, a definition of the word “philosophy” has the
character only of convention, of agreement. Nevertheless, it was not the aim of this
article to define philosophy. So what is its objective? It is to point out solutions that
free philosophy from this moment of crisis and discomfort it is now facing. Let us
take a look at the conclusions we came to.
Firstly, we may say that when philosophy abandoned sciences, it suffered a great
fall into the unreal.
Secondly, we may indicate as one of the great causers of philosophy’s decline
the passivity with which philosophers received the sciences’ critiques. Many of
them entrenched themselves academically, leaving philosophy without its main
characteristic: critique. Philosophers became politicians in order to maintain the
status quo. The philosopher’s prophetic spirit dissipated. The values esteemed by
the consumer society enraptured the prophets making them priests. By attributing
supreme value to money, mediatic notoriety, competition, consume, and power,
philosophers were stimulated to live according to these principles, and thus they
lost their natural (if not divine) vocation.
53 Id. A lógica da pesquisa científica. p. 535. [The logic of scientific discovery, op.cit.]
54 Id. Lógica das ciências sociais. p. 98.
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Thirdly, it was greatly spread in the West the idea that philosophy lost its reason
for being, that it belongs to other times, and that it has nothing else of effectively
relevant to say, because sciences, specially the human and social sciences, do it
with more objectivity and credibility.55 Thus, one concludes that philosophy must
be replaced as a useless and sterile speculative knowledge. Intriguing is that philosophers themselves preach that.56 Many false prophets stand up and announce
the end of philosophy and the advent of a new age. Why does that happen?
Philosophy submits itself and resigns when it limits its role to the comment and
interpretation of canonical texts; when it accepts to be dismembered between a
soulless scholastic academicism and the fashion’s deconstructionist irrelevance,
attempting just to rescue the ambivalences, the contradictions, and the impasses
found in the source of all reflection work. When political forces try to find in philosophy the intellectual justifications of their conquest of power and domination, or
the rationalizations for their conservative interests, its space of freedom is subjected
to authorities, to revelation, to powers, to the bureaucracies, to the Being’s destiny.
Hilton Japiassu comments that “for many philosophers, the history of philosophy
has represented a safe shelter, protected by the great names, living heirs of a glorious but heavy and suffocating past, against the attacks of those who intend to quiet
its voice. Such turn over itself, such withdrawal, seems more like a long (spiritual)
‘retreat’, a departing — if not a escape — from the world, in imitation of the ancient monks: it is in the world, but it is not from this world”.57 I expand Japiassu’s
comments to the logicians. Logic has always been an instrument used by the philosophers.58 From the beginning of the 20th century until now, however, it became
the main object of study for many. I find the study of logic much valid, but I should
make a distinction, valid in this case: the person who devotes himself/herself to the
study of logic is a logician, not a philosopher.59
Little by little, an idea was imposed that philosophy would be just a discipline,
like so many others, as to the established boundaries, and that it should make only
some technical and administrative adjustments to establish good relationships with
the other disciplines of knowledge.
Japiassu tells us that the great project of philosophers from the 1930’s was to
build a positivist philosophy founded in empiricism and making experience the
only source of our knowledge; reason would have just a coordinating function, but
capable of furnishing us a “scientific conception of the world” and opposing the
rise of the German “irrationalism”. To confront this (Nazi) danger, they defended the
following thesis: we must strive to accumulate positive knowledge in all domains
and promote its progressive mathematization in order to be applied by the “democratic” governments. Following this last movement, there was an academic professionalization, causing a real cleavage in the philosophical world:
55 “Those philosophers who insist on rejecting the Western metaphysics, such as Rorty and Derrida, are
much more influent in departments of literature than those of philosophy.” SEARLE, John R. Rationality and
Realism: What is at Stake? Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, from the issue entitled,
“The American Research University”. Fall 1993, vol. 122, n. 4.
56 Some scientists also affirm this. Physics Nobel Prize winner Stefen Weinberg, for example, said that
philosophers did not contribute, directly or indirectly, to any scientific knowledge. So philosophy should be
eliminated as a useless and even harmful exercise to thought.
57 JAPIASSU, H. op. cit. p. 168.
58 “Logic. One of philosophy’s parts: science whose object is to determine, among all intellectual operations
that tend to the knowledge of the truth, those that are valid and those that are not.” LALANDE, op. cit. p.
630.
59 H. Japiassu (op. cit., p. 170) agrees.
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a) there was an intensification of the sophistication of formalisms (with no concern for the scientific thought in action) in the distinct domains of logic;
b)many philosophers felt themselves exempt from thinking their time and placing the problem of their responsibility before the political and social disasters.
c) they enclosed themselves in works of history of philosophy and in more or less
erudite commentaries on texts, with no concern for the living philosophy and
for the real problems of the human beings.60
Philosophy cannot enclose itself in the narrow limits of the discipline or in the
mere academic teaching. Neither can it resign itself with the rereading and the exegesis of classical authors: had we read all of Plato and Aristotle’s arguments, we
would only have learned history, not done philosophy, which is nothing more that
the “intellectual activity becoming conscious of itself in order to be freed from the
prejudices of beliefs and convictions from the past”.61
If philosophy is now undergoing a moment of eclipse or unfruitfulness, the guilt
falls upon us, philosophers, because we have yielded to the pressures and accommodated ourselves in the bottom of our caves. I finish this article quoting Bertrand
Russell:
Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual
imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation;
but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates,
the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which
constitutes its highest good.
60 Cf. JAPIASSU, H. op. cit. p. 171.
61 Id., ibid. p. 173.
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