The Spell of Wittgenstein (Part III)
Winch v. Popper: Rationality in the Social Sciences
Or
How to parry a poker
By John Saudino
19 August 2020
This is the final article in a three-part series. See Part I and Part II.
4. Conclusion: the commanding significance of Popper’s moral and social philosophy
4.1 Popper’s advocacy of the Western Rational Tradition and his Critique of Relativism
This certainly would not be an adequate article on Karl Popper if it were to run off into non-scientific arguments about morality and political philosophy without any methodological foundation. That I assure you will not be the case here. On the contrary, as I indicated at the very beginning, it is precisely the methodological principles, his view of objectivity and the unity of science, that he so ardently defends in his Philosophy of Science that make his moral and political philosophy so compelling. It will not be until the final conclusion regarding the contemporary situation that I will allow myself to express my thoughts more freely.
Popper starts out the Addenda at the back of Volume II with the words, “The main philosophical malady of our time is an intellectual and moral relativism.”[1]
As I have tried to show above, this is a problem that has stuck with us till today and has even worsened in many ways. Before I explain why this is such a problem and that we may need Popper to help us out of it, I will explore the addenda and its refutation of relativism.
The arguments made throughout The Open Society are reiterated and expressed more systematically in the Addenda to Volume II entitled “Facts, Standards, and Truth: A Further Criticism of Relativism.”[2] It is here that Popper puts both his rejection of relativism and the foundation of his moral and political philosophy on firmer philosophical grounds.
Winch’s notion mentioned above that “all traditions are more or less equal”[3] is for Popper the mistaken equivalence of a relativist, in this case Winch. Popper does not view traditions to be equal and spends a good part of the first volume of The Open Society exploring the tradition he favors over all others, namely the Western rationalist tradition of the “Great Generation” during the time of Pericles in Athens in the 5th Century B.C. Popper grounds this tradition in the moral vision of Socrates and spends the rest of Vol. I explaining how this tradition was so treacherously and brutally betrayed by Socrates pupil, Plato.[4]
Plato represents the ideologue of the totalitarian eugenic caste system of his eutopia or the “Closed Society” as opposed to the “Open Society” represented by the rationalism of democratic Athens. The particularly interesting feature of Socrates and his followers was their combination and unity of the ideals of individualism and equality.[5] These two principles are often put at odds in contemporary discourse, something that must be seen as a fatal philosophical error according to the norms of Popper’s Social Democratic liberalism.[6] It must of course be pointed out that the kind of equality important to Popper and other liberals is not equality of outcomes but equality of opportunity, and of course the freedom to succeed on one’s merit.[7] This is a far cry, however, from Plato’s eugenic totalitarian caste system based on the dominance of natural masters over natural slaves.[8] This is the Closed Society of Plato that Popper rejects. Here as well in his strong support for egalitarianism are clear indications of the strongly Social Democratic foundation of Popper’s world view.[9]
Popper’s argument for the Western rational tradition of the Open Society can be conceived as an epistemological argument. It is the only tradition that allows for the kind of criticism necessary for the growth of knowledge, our getting closer to the truth, both in the realm of facts and in the realm of norms.[10]
The problem according to Popper is that because of a combination of romanticism and Hegelianism, German philosophy was not able to cope with the critical idealism of Kant. Therefore there has been a move in the direction of relativism and historicism or what Popper calls “Oracular Philosophy”. [11]
The “linguistic turn”, inspired in large part by Wittgenstein, is a tradition that leads to relativism as we have seen above. Although the primarily “left wing” relativists who advocate cultural relativism and the “right wing” totalitarian “historicists” like Hegel might be at opposite ends politically, they share the same fatal flaw of attempting to create a monism of facts and norms that is both impossible and fatal to the liberalism Popper advocates:
The monistic position—the possibility of the identity of facts with standards is dangerous; for even where it does not identify present might and right—it leads necessarily to the identification of future might and right. Since the question of whether a certain movement for reform is right or wrong (or good or bad) cannot be raised, according to the monist, except in terms of another movement with opposite tendencies.[12]
The “moral positivism”[13] inherent in Hegel’s diction that “world history is a court of justice”[14] is one that equates might and right. The relativism that accepts the social construction of reality is no different in principle. Such a might and right position means that an opposing movement, say, for example, the movement favoring the “dictatorship of the proletariat” as envisioned and carried out by Lenin, might rightfully take over. The relativist and historicist monism of fact and value, might and right, would “justify” the immorality that would ensue. The same goes for any other unavoidable “destiny” read out of Hegel’s or Marx’s determinism/historicism. Only the rational tradition that recognizes Popper’s critical duality of facts and decisions, propositions and proposals, can lead to the growth of factual and moral knowledge.
Let us apply more closely Popper’s arguments in the Addenda not to the relativism of historicism but to the other relativism that comes out of the linguistic turn. As we have seen above Winch’s notion of the equivalence of traditions rejects the claim to objectivity and rationality Popper attributes to the western tradition. According to Popper relativists fall into a trap of thinking that “two Wrongs…make two rights”[15] As Popper points out, criticism and relativism are not the same thing:
If two parties disagree, this may mean that one is wrong, or the other, or both: this is the view of the criticist. It does not mean, as the relativist will have it, that both may be equally right…anybody who says that to be equally wrong means to be equally right is merely playing with words, or with metaphors.[16]
Once again the obsession with the meaning of words has led to obscurantism, irrationality and relativism.
What is to be said to Winch and to so many others who insist that one must not give “epistemic privilege” to Western rationalism lest one be ethnocentric and imperialist towards other cultures?
In the same way that he sees an analogy between theories and norms Popper also sees a relation between or “model” connecting truth to values: “we may take the idea of absolute truth—of correspondence to the facts—as a kind of model for the realm of standards.”[17]
This means that all traditions, be they those within our own cultural milieu or in another, can be and in fact often are mistaken and are open to rational criticism, that is to say a criticism that accepts fallibilism and is based on some notion of objective truth.
It is a fact that people with the most divergent cultural backgrounds can enter into fruitful discussion, provided they are interested in getting nearer the truth, and are ready to listen to the other.[18]
If one or both of them reject the regulative notion of truth, however, relativism, ethical positivism and nihilism[19] can be the only results. On the other hand, because of fallibilism there is no reason to believe that a universalist approach to social life commensurate with the regulative notion of truth based on the correspondence theory would end up being absolutist. In fact it is exactly the western rational tradition, and any rational framework like it emanating from another culture, that would provide for the kind of plurality and enlightened debate that would prevent absolutism:
It is the great tradition of Western rationalism to fight our battles with words rather than with swords. This is why our Western civilization is an essentially pluralistic one, and why monolithic social ends would mean the death of freedom: of the freedom of thought, of the free search for truth, and with it, of the rationality and the dignity of man.[20]
4.2 So what does all this mean for 2020?
Here I will have to be brief. In my concluding words I will take the liberty of writing more freely and speculatively, with a view to future investigations. I ask that the reader be understanding of this as it may lead to opinionated and polemic statements on my part. I hereby formally claim my right to make these claims and I maintain that they flow intrinsically from the above discussion. A systematic analysis of why this is the case will have to wait. A cursory awareness of the current state of the world on the part of the reader will have to suffice for now. I ask you to bear with me and follow the argument before you judge.
In his 1933 essay “The Triumph of Stupidity” Bertrand Russell lamented the rise of the Nazis with the famous words “The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” Well unfortunately we cannot help but notice similar trends today. Since roughly 1980 nativism combined with religious fundamentalism, a kind of resurgence of Clero-fascism, has been steadily claiming ascendancy both to the West and East of Continental Europe, and the relativist positions of what Maajid Nawaz has aptly dubbed “The Regressive Left”[21] have had nothing whatsoever to put up in the defense of the western rational tradition, a tradition they would rather tear down in an orgy of politically correct cultural masochism.
The signs are everywhere to be found that a resurgence of the Closed Society is upon us. Several important countries including those countries at the center of traditional liberalism itself, the United States and the United Kingdom, are well on their way to becoming post-democratic societies. In the Muslim world and in formerly secular countries to the East the situation is, of course, a good deal worse. Russia, Turkey, Poland, Hungary have already become, in varying degrees, authoritarian. The resurgence of tribalism has most recently plagued the world’s leading military and economic power, the United States, to the point where the country seems closer to civil war than could have been imagined just a short time ago.
I would argue that relativism has played a significant roll in bringing on this malaise. The relativism, social construction, and post-modernism of the left might have been conceived as liberating at one time, but the contempt for objective truth has been fashioned into a two-edged sword that has been flung back at the left with a vengeance.
The best example would be Kelly-Anne Conway’s famous slip of the tongue in 2017. After President Trump’s very poorly attended inauguration she went on TV as Trump’s press officer and defended Trump’s obviously incorrect statement that he had had the biggest attendance of any inauguration ever. She said the president was right and that they were just giving “alternative facts” to prove it. The “alternative narrative” was that the empty spaces were not empty. Another “narrative” of a world in which CO2 does not cause global warming and there is no climate change is likewise promoted and most of all believed by a shocking number of people.
When post-modernism has befallen both journalism and politics, then everything is just an “alternative narrative” and an alternative narrative requires alternative facts to back it up. Commentators have spoken of a “post fact” era. In political discourse it is seldom about what actually happened, what the truth is; truth as an independent objective category is often rejected altogether. Public relations professionals, lobbyists, think tanks, pundits, political operatives, super PAC’s etc. do not investigate facts; they make the facts. Because of competition from the internet and the financial crisis of 2008, investigative journalism has largely died out with the hundreds of newspapers that went bankrupt. The deregulation of the 1990’s and corresponding consolidation of media conglomerates[22] means that fewer and fewer people are controlling more and more media. Fact based journalism has been replace with corporate directed punditry and the kind of partisan editorializing that Fox News has pioneered. The result is a propaganda machine that would make even Joseph Goebbels blush.
The situation in Russia, where the term and tactic of so called “fake news” was born, is even worse. According to Yale historian, Timothy Snyder, the Russians have officially accepted a kind extreme relativism as part of Putin’s Clero-fascist ideology. This is an ideology that has been introduced into Russia in the form of ideas formulated nearly a century ago by the rehabilitated fascist philosopher Ivan Ilyn (1883—1954). Ilyn’s philosophy holds that it is required for the renewal of the nation to abolish not only facts but factuality itself. Factuality is part of this material and hence corrupt world; the true, good and inherently innocent Russian is to embrace the spiritual world provided by the divine unity of the Orthodox Church and nations anointed leader. They must thereby accept the existing hierarchy as inherently good and eternal.[23]
In its oligarchical collectivism[24], ridged hierarchy, its series of “noble lies”[25], stage managed pseudo-elections, and media propaganda, Russia since 2012, the year of Putin’s illegitimate reelection, has been embracing a system with alarming parallels to Plato’s “Closed Society” as described by Popper in Vol. I of the Open Society. The connection between Russian cyber-meddling and it’s illicit funding of Brexit, the Trump campaign, and European far right parties is well documented.
So while the fascist tribalist “anti-globalist” right is using the double—edged sword of post-modern relativism against the left, the left is only exacerbating the situation by means of their collectivism, irrationality, post-modernism, relativism, their promotion of misguided identity politics and the stifling of academic discourse at the Universities by their politically correct thought police. A rational dialogue like the one I spoke of above that can take place between members of two different cultures cannot even take place within the same American culture at this point. This is because without the truth as a regulatory standard there cannot be any real dialogue. The result of philosophical and epistemic relativism always ends with the repugnant moral positivism of might makes right that Popper warns against. This is because without any notion of objectivity, truth becomes merely a question of power. The atrocious depravity of totalitarianism experienced by Popper and his generation should be enough to show us that this is most certainly the path into the abyss. With some luck Popper’s philosophy of fallibilism, rationality, thorough going egalitarian liberalism and objective truth may help us to rescue the Open Society from the clutches of its formidable enemies. Let us bend ourselves presently to the task with undaunted courage and clarity. If not us, who? If not now when?
[1] O.S. Vol. II, p. 369
[2] O.S. Vol. II, pp. 369-396
[3] L.O.L.P, (see above)
[4] O.S. Vol. I, pp. 1-201
[5] Ibid, p. 70
[6] O.S Vol. II, pp. 392-393
[7] Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography, Karl Popper, The Open Court Publishing Co., La Salle, Illinois, 1974, pp. 34-36
[8] O.S. Vol. I, pp. 138-156
[9] Ibid, pp. 95-96
[10] O.S. Vol. II, p. 390
[11] Ibid, pp. 381-383
[12] Ibid, pp. 392–393
[13] O.S. Vol. I, pp. 68-79
[14] Elements of the Philosophy of Right, G.W.F. Hegel, § 341
[15] O.S. Vol. ll, p. 386–387
[16] Ibid, p. 387
[17] Ibid, p. 385
[18] Ibid, p. 387
[19] O.S. Vol. I, pp. 71—72
[20] Ibid, p. 396
[21] https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/anti-extremism-muslim-far-left-politics-quilliam-social-reform-a7388931.html
[22] https://www.aph.gov.au/binaries/library/pubs/rp/2007-08/08rp01.pdf
[23] The Road to Unfreedom, by Timothy Snyder, 2018
[24] See Part Two Chapter 9 of 1984 by George Orwell
[25] Book Three of Plato’s Republic