OVO

1. There are no ultimate sources of knowledge. Every source, every suggestion, is welcome; but every source, every suggestion, is also open to critical examination. As long as we are not dealing with historical matters, we usually examine the asserted facts themselves, rather than investigate the sources of our information.

2. The proper questions of epistemology are not actually concerned with sources at all; rather, we ask whether an assertion is true – that is to say, whether it agrees with the facts. In connection with this critical examination of the truth, all kinds of arguments may be brought to bear. One of the most important procedures is to take a critical attitude towards our own theories and, in particular, to look for contradictions between our theories and observations.

3. Tradition is – apart from inborn knowledge – by far the most important source of our knowledge.

4. The fact that most of the sources of our knowledge are traditional demonstrates that opposition to tradition, that is to say, antitraditionalism, is of no importance. But this fact must not be held to support traditionalism; for every bit, however small, of our traditional knowledge (and even of our inborn knowledge) is open to critical examination and may be overthrown if need be. Nevertheless, without tradition, knowledge would be impossible.

5. Knowledge cannot start from nothing – from the tabula rasa – nor yet from observation. The advance of our knowledge consists in the modification and the correction of earlier knowledge. Of course it is sometimes possible to take a step forward through an observation or through a chance discovery; but the significance of an observation or of a discovery generally depends upon whether it enables us to modify existing theories.

6. Neither observation nor reason is an authority. Other sources, such as intellectual intuition and intellectual imagination, are most important, but they are also unreliable: they may show us things with the utmost clarity and yet mislead us. They are the main sources of our theories and are therefore indispensable; but the vast majority of our theories are false. The most important function of observation and logical thought, but also of intellectual intuition and imagination, is to help us in the critical examination of those bold theories which we need in order to delve into the unknown.

7. Clarity is an intellectual value in itself; exactness and precision, however, are not. Absolute precision is unattainable; and there is no point in trying to be more precise than our problem demands. The idea that we must define our concepts to make them ‘precise’ or even to give them a ‘meaning” is misleading. Every definition must make use of defining concepts; and so we can never ultimately avoid working with undefined concepts. Problems connected with the meaning or the definition of words are unimportant. Indeed, these purely verbal problems are tiresome: they should be avoided at all costs.

8. Every solution of a problem creates new unsolved problems. The harder the original problem and the bolder the attempt to solve it, the more interesting these new problems are. The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, clear and well-defined will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. The main source of our ignorance lies in the fact that our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

We get an idea of the vastness of our ignorance when we contemplate the vastness of the heavens. It is true that the size of the universe is not the deepest cause of our ignorance; but it is nevertheless one of its causes.

I believe that it is worthwhile trying to discover more about the world, even if this only teaches us how little we know. It might do us good to remember Rom time to time that, while differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal. If we thus admit that there is no authority beyond the reach of criticism to be found within the whole province of our knowledge, however far we may have penetrated into the unknown, then we can retain, without risk of dogmatism, the idea that truth itself is beyond all human authority Indeed, we are not only able to retain this idea we must retain it. For without it there can be no objective standards of scientific inquiry; no criticism of our conjectured solutions, no groping for the unknown, and no quest for knowledge.

Lecture delivered to the University of Salsburg 27 July 1979.  From In Search of a Better World. London: Routledge 1984.

But are there ultimate explanations? The doctrine which I have called ‘essentialism’ amounts to the view that science must seek ultimate explanations in terms of essences: if we can explain the behaviour of a thing in terms of its essence – of its essential properties – then no further question can be raised, and none need be raised (except perhaps the theological question of the Creator of the essences). Thus Descartes believed that he had explained physics in terms of the essence of a physical body which, he taught, was extension; and some Newtonians, following Roger Cotes, believed that the essence of matter was its inertia and its power to attract other matter, and that Newton’s theory could be derived from, and thus ultimately explained by, these essential properties of all matter. Newton himself was of a different opinion. It was a hypothesis concerning the ultimate or essentialist causal explanation of gravity itself which he had in mind when he wrote in the Scholium generale at the end of the Principia: ‘So far I have explained the phenomena… by the force of gravity, but I have not yet ascertained the cause of gravity itself… and I do not arbitrarily [or ad hoc] invent hypotheses.’

I do not believe in the essentialist doctrine of ultimate explanation. In the past, critics of this doctrine have been, as a rule, instrumentalists: they interpreted scientific theories as nothing but instruments for prediction, without any explanatory power. I do not agree with them either. But there is a third possibility, a ‘third view’, as I have called it. It has been well described as a ‘modified essentialism’ – with emphasis upon the word ‘modified’.

This ‘third view’ which I uphold modifies essentialism in a radical manner. First of all, I reject the idea of an ultimate explanation: I maintain that every explanation may be further explained, by a theory or conjecture of a higher degree of universality. There can be no explanation which is not in need of a further explanation, for none can be a self-explanatory description of an essence (such as an essentialist definition of body, as suggested by Descartes). Secondly, I reject all what-is questions: questions asking what a thing is, what is its essence, or its true nature. For we must give up the view, characteristic of essentialism, that in every single thing there is an essence, an inherent nature or principle (such as the spirit of wine in wine), which necessarily causes it to be what it is, and thus to act as it does. This animistic view explains nothing; but it has led essentialists (like Newton) to shun relational properties, such as gravity, and to believe, on grounds felt to be a priori valid, that a satisfactory explanation must be in terms of inherent properties (as opposed to relational properties). The third and last modification of essentialism is this. We must give up the view, closely connected with animism (and characteristic of Aristotle as opposed to Plato), that it is the essential properties inherent in each individual or singular thing which may be appealed to as the explanation of this thing’s behaviour. For this view completely fails to throw any light whatever on the question why different individual things should behave in like manner. If it is said, ‘because their essences are alike’, the new question arises: why should there not be as many different essences as there are different things?

Plato tried to solve precisely this problem by saying that like individual things are the offspring, and thus copies, of the same original ‘Form’, which is therefore something ‘outside’ and ‘prior’ and ‘superior’ to the various individual things; and indeed, we have as yet no better theory of likeness. Even today, we appeal to their common origin if we wish to explain the likeness of two men, or of a bird and a fish, or of two beds, or two motor cars, or two languages, or two legal procedures; that is to say, we explain similarity in the main genetically; and if we make a metaphysical system out of this, it is liable to become a historicist philosophy. Plato’s solution was rejected by Aristotle; but since Aristotle’s version of essentialism does not contain even a hint of a solution, it seems that he never quite grasped the problem.

By choosing explanations in terms of universal laws of nature, we offer a solution to precisely this last (Platonic) problem. For we conceive all individual things, and all singular facts, to be subject to these laws. The laws (which in their turn are in need of further explanation) thus explain regularities or similarities of individual things or singular facts or events. And these laws are not inherent in the singular things. (Nor are they Platonic ideas outside the world.) Laws of nature are conceived, rather, as (conjectural) descriptions of the structural properties of nature – of our world itself.

Here then is the similarity between my own view (the ‘third view’) and essentialism; although I do not think that we can ever describe, by our universal laws, an ultimate essence of the world, I do not doubt that we may seek to probe deeper and deeper into the structure of our world or, as we might say, into properties of the world that are more and more essential, or of greater and greater depth.

Every time we proceed to explain some conjectural law or theory by a new conjectural theory of a higher degree of universality, we are discovering more about the world, trying to penetrate deeper into its secrets. And every time we succeed in falsifying a theory of this kind, we make a new important discovery. For these falsifications are most important. They teach us the unexpected; and they reassure us that, although our theories are made by ourselves, although they are our own inventions, they are none the less genuine assertions about the world; for they can clash with something we never made.

From Ratio, December 1957.  Reprinted in Objective Knowledge.  Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986

For we may distinguish two main types of government. The first type consists of governments of which we can get rid without bloodshed – for example, by way of general elections; that is to say, the social institutions provide means by which the rulers may be dismissed by the ruled, and the social traditions ensure that these institutions will not easily be destroyed by those who are in power. The second type consists of governments which the ruled cannot get rid of except by way of a successful revolution – that is to say, in most cases, not at all. I suggest the term ‘democracy’ as a short-hand label for a government of the first type, and the term ‘tyranny’ or ‘dictatorship’ for the second. This, I believe, corresponds closely to traditional usage. But l wish to make clear that no part of my argument depends on the choice of these labels; and should anybody reverse this usage (as is frequently done nowadays), then I should simply say that I am in favour of what he calls ‘tyranny’, and object to what he calls ‘democracy’ ; and I should reject as irrelevant any attempt to discover what ‘democracy’ ‘really’ or ‘essentially’ means, for example, by translating the term into ‘the rule of the people.’ (For although ‘the people’ may influence the actions of their rulers by the threat of dismissal, they never rule themselves in any concrete, practical sense.)

If we make use of the two labels as suggested, then we can now describe, as the principle of a democratic policy, the proposal to create, develop, and protect, political institutions for the avoidance of tyranny. This principle does not imply that we can ever develop institutions of this kind which are faultless or foolproof; or which ensure that the policies adopted by a democratic government will be right or good or wise – or even necessarily better or wiser than the policies adopted by a benevolent tyrant. (Since no such assertions are made, the paradox of democracy is avoided.) What may be said, however, to be implied in the adoption of the democratic principle is the conviction that the acceptance of even a bad policy in a democracy (as long as we can work for a peaceful change) is preferable to the submission to a tyranny, however wise or benevolent. Seen in this light, the theory of democracy is not based upon the principle that the majority should rule; rather, the various equalitarian methods of democratic control, such as general elections and representative government, are to be considered as no more than well-tried and, in the presence of a widespread traditional distrust of tyranny, reasonably effective institutional safe-guards against tyranny, always open to improvement, and even providing methods for their own improvement.

He who accepts the principle of democracy in this sense is therefore not bound to look upon the result of a democratic vote as an authoritative expression of what is right. Although he will accept a decision of the majority, for the sake of making the democratic institutions work, he will feel tree to combat it by democratic means, and to work for its revision. And should he live to see the day when the majority vote destroys the democratic institutions, then this sad experience will tell him only that there does not exist a foolproof method of avoiding tyranny. But it need not weaken his decision to fight tyranny, nor will it expose his theory as inconsistent.

From The Open Society and its Enemies Volume 1. Princeton University Press 1966

Why do the results achieved by a conspiracy as a rule differ widely from the results aimed at? Because this is what usually happens in social life, conspiracy or no conspiracy. And this remark gives us an opportunity to formulate the main task of the theoretical social sciences. It is to trace the unintended social repercussions of intentional human actions. I may give a simple example. If a man wishes urgently to buy a house in a certain district, we can safely assume that he does not wish to raise the market price of houses in that district. But the very fact that he appears on the market as a buyer will tend to raise market prices. And analogous remarks hold for the seller. Or to take an example from a very different field, if a man decides to insure his life, he is unlikely to have the intention of encouraging other people to invest their money in insurance shares. But he will do so nevertheless.

We see here clearly that not all consequences of our actions are intended consequences; and accordingly, that the conspiracy theory of society cannot be true because it amounts to the assertion that all events, even those which at first sight do not seem to be intended by anybody, are the intended results of the actions of people who are interested in these results.

It should be mentioned in this connection that Karl Marx himself was one of the first to emphasize the importance, for the social sciences, of these unintended consequences. In his more mature utterances, he says that we are all caught in the net of the social system. The capitalist is not a demoniac conspirator, but a man who is forced by circumstances to act as he does; he is no more responsible for the state of affairs than is the proletarian.

This view of Marx’s has been abandoned – perhaps for propagandist reasons, perhaps because people did not understand it – and a Vulgar Marxist Conspiracy theory has very largely replaced it. It is a come-down – the come-down from Marx to Goebbels. But it is clear that the adoption of the conspiracy theory can hardly be avoided by those who believe that they know how to make heaven on earth. The only explanation for their failure to produce this heaven is the malevolence of the devil who has a vested interest in hell.

First published in the Library of the10th International Congress of Philosophy, 1948. From Conjectures and Refutations. Routledge 1989

Though truth is not self-revealing (as Cartesians and Baconians thought), though certainty may be unattainable, the human situation with respect to knowledge is far from desperate. On the contrary, it is exhilarating: here we are, with the immensely difficult task before us of getting to know the beautiful world we live in, and ourselves; and fallible though we are we nevertheless find that our powers of understanding, surprisingly, are almost adequate for the task – more so than we ever dreamt in our wildest dreams. We really do learn from our mistakes, by trial and error. And at the same time we learn how little we know – as when, in climbing a mountain, every step upwards opens some new vista into the unknown, and new worlds unfold themselves of whose existence we knew nothing when we began our climb.

Thus we can learn, we can grow in knowledge, even if we can never know – that is, know for certain. Since we can learn, there is no reason for despair of reason; and since we can never know, there are no grounds here for smugness, or for conceit over the growth of our knowledge.

It may be said that this new way of knowing is too abstract and too sophisticated to replace the loss of authoritarian religion. This may be true. But we must not underrate the power of the intellect and the intellectuals. It was the intellectuals – the ‘second-hand dealers in ideas,’ as F. A. Hayek calls them – who spread relativism, nihilism, and intellectual despair. There is no reason why some intellectuals – some more enlightened intellectuals – should not eventually succeed in spreading the good news that the nihilist ado was indeed about nothing.

From The Open Society and its Enemies Volume 2. Princeton University Press 1966

The early history of philosophy, especially the history from Thales to Plato, is a splendid story. It is almost too good to be true. In every generation we find at least one new philosophy, one new cosmology of staggering originality and depth. How was this possible? Of course one cannot explain originality and genius. But one can try to throw some light on them. What was the secret of the ancients? I suggest that it was a tradition – the tradition of critical discussion.

I will try to put the problem more sharply. In all or almost all civilizations we find something like religious and cosmological teaching, and in many societies we find schools. Now schools, especially primitive schools, all have, it appears, a characteristic structure and function. Far from being places of critical discussion they make it their task to impart a definite doctrine, and to preserve it, pure and unchanged. It is the task of a school to hand on the tradition, the doctrine of its founder, its first master, to the next generation, and to this end the most important thing is to keep the doctrine inviolate. A school of this kind never admits a new idea. New ideas are heresies, and lead to schisms; should a member of the school try to change the doctrine, then he is expelled as a heretic. But the heretic claims, as a rule, that his is the true doctrine of the founder. Thus not even the inventor admits that he has introduced an invention; he believes, rather, that he is returning to the true orthodoxy which has somehow been perverted.

In this way all changes of doctrine – if any – are surreptitious changes. They are all presented as re-statements of the true sayings of the master, of his own words, his own meaning, his own intentions.

It is clear that in a school of this kind we cannot expect to find a history of ideas, or even the material for such a history. For new ideas are not admitted to be new. Everything is ascribed to the master. All we might reconstruct is a history of schisms, and perhaps a history of the defence of certain doctrines against the heretics.

There cannot, of course, be any rational discussion in a school of this kind.  There may be arguments against dissenters and heretics, or against some competing schools. But in the main it is with assertion and dogma and condemnation rather than argument that the doctrine is defended.

The great example of a school of this kind among the Greek philosophical schools is the Italian School founded by Pythagoras. Compared with the Ionian school, or with that of Elea, it had the character of a religious order, with a characteristic way of life and a secret doctrine. The story that a member, Hippasus of Metapontum, was drowned at sea because he revealed the secret of the irrationality of certain square roots, is characteristic of the atmosphere surrounding the Pythagorean school, whether or not there is any truth in this story.

But among Greek philosophic schools the early Pythagoreans were an exception. Leaving them aside, we could say that the character of Greek Philosophy, and of the philosophical schools, is strikingly different from the dogmatic type of school here described. I have shown this by an example: the story of the problem of change which I have told is the story of a critical debate, of a rational discussion. New ideas are propounded as such, and arise as the result of open criticism. There are few, if any, surreptitious changes. Instead of anonymity we find a history of ideas and of their originators.

Here is a unique phenomenon, and it is closely connected with the astonishing freedom and creativeness of Greek philosophy. How can we explain this phenomenon? What we have to explain is the rise of a tradition. It is a tradition that allows or encourages critical discussions between various schools and, more surprisingly still, within one and the same school. For nowhere outside the Pythagorean school do we find a school devoted to the preservation of a doctrine. Instead we find changes, new ideas, modifications, and outright criticism of the master.

(In Parmenides we even find, at an early date, a most remarkable phenomenon – that of a philosopher who propounds two doctrines, one which he says is true, and one which he himself describes as false. Yet he makes the false doctrine not simply an object of condemnation or of criticism; rather he presents it as the best possible account of the delusive opinion of mortal men, and of the world of mere appearance – the best account which a mortal man can give.)

How and where was this critical tradition founded? This is a problem deserving serious thought. This much is certain: Xenophanes who brought the Ionian tradition to Elea was fully conscious of the fact that his own teaching was purely conjectural, and that others might come who would know better. I shall come back to this point again in my next and last section.

If we look for the first signs of this new critical attitude, this new freedom of thought, we are led back to Anaximander’s criticism of Thales. Here is a most striking fact: Anaximander criticizes his master and kinsman, one of the Seven Sages, the founder of the Ionian school. He was, according to tradition, only about fourteen years younger than Thales, and he must have developed his criticism and his new ideas while his master was alive. (They seem to have died within a few years of each other.) But there is no trace in the sources of a story of dissent, of any quarrel, or of any schism.

This suggests, I think, that it was Thales who founded the new tradition of freedom-based upon a new relation between master and pupil and who thus created a new type of school, utterly different from the Pythagorean school. He seems to have been able to tolerate criticism. And what is more, he seems to have created the tradition that one ought to tolerate criticism.

Yet I like to think that he did even more than this. I can hardly imagine a relationship between master and pupil in which the master merely tolerates criticism without actively encouraging it. It does not seem to me possible that a pupil who is being trained in the dogmatic attitude would ever dare to criticize the dogma (least of all that of a famous sage) and to voice his criticism. And it seems to me an easier and simpler explanation to assume that the master encouraged a critical attitude – possibly not from the outset, but only after he was struck by the pertinence of some questions asked, by the pupils perhaps, without any critical intention.

However this may be, the conjecture that Thales actively encouraged criticism in his pupils would explain the fact that the critical attitude towards the master’s doctrine became part of the Ionian school tradition. I like to think that Thales was the first teacher who said to his pupils: ‘This is how I see things-how I believe that things are. Try to improve upon my teaching’ (Those who believe that it is ‘unhistorical’ to attribute this undogmatic attitude to Thales may again be reminded of the fact that only two generations later we find a similar attitude consciously and clearly formulated in the fragments of Xenophanes.). At any rate, there is the historical fact that the Ionian school was the first in which pupils criticized their masters, in one generation after the other. There can be little doubt that the Greek tradition of philosophical criticism had its main source in Ionia.

It was a momentous innovation. It meant a break with the dogmatic tradition which permits only one school doctrine, and the introduction in its place of a tradition that admits a plurality of doctrines which all try to approach the truth by means of critical discussion.

It thus leads, almost by necessity, to the realization that our attempts to see and to find the truth are not final, but open to improvement; that our knowledge, our doctrine, is conjectural; that it consists of guesses, of hypotheses, rather than of final and certain truths; and that criticism and critical discussion are our only means of getting nearer to the truth. It thus leads to the tradition of bold conjectures and of free criticism, the tradition which created the rational or scientific attitude, and with it our Western civilization, the only civilization which is based upon science (though of course not upon science alone).

In this rationalist tradition bold changes of doctrine are not forbidden. On the contrary, innovation is encouraged, and is regarded as success, as improvement, if it is based on the result of a critical discussion of its predecessors. The very boldness of an innovation is admired; for it can be controlled by the severity of its critical examination. This is why changes of doctrine, far from being made surreptitiously, are traditionally handed down together with the older doctrines and the names of the innovators. And the material for a history of ideas becomes part of the school tradition.

To my knowledge the critical or rationalist tradition was invented only once. It was lost after two or three centuries, perhaps owing to the rise of the Aristotelian doctrine of epistémé, of certain and demonstrable knowledge (a development of the Eleatic and Heraclitean distinction between certain truth and mere guesswork). It was rediscovered and consciously revived in the Renaissance, especially by Galileo Galilei.

First published in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society NS 59, 1958-9.  From Conjectures and Refutations. Routledge 1989

One of the most important ingredients of our western civilization is what I may call the ‘rationalist tradition’ which we have inherited from the Greeks. It is the tradition of critical discussion – not for its own sake, but in the interests of the search for truth. Greek science, like Greek philosophy, was one of the products of this tradition, and of the urge to understand the world in which we live, and the tradition founded by Galileo was its renaissance.

Within this rationalist tradition science is valued, admittedly, for its practical achievements; but it is even more highly valued for its informative content, and for its ability to free our minds from old beliefs, old prejudices, and old certainties, and to offer us in their stead new conjectures and daring hypotheses. Science is valued for its liberalizing influence as one of the greatest of the forces that make for human freedom.

According to the view of science which I am trying to defend here, this is due to the fact that scientists have dared (since Thales, Democritus, Plato’s Timaeus, and Aristarchus) to create myths, or conjectures, or theories, which are in striking contrast to the everyday world of common experience, yet able to explain some aspects of this world of common experience. Galileo pays homage to Aristarchus and Copernicus precisely because they dared to go beyond this known world of our senses: “I cannot,” he writes, ”express strongly enough my unbounded admiration for the greatness of mind of these men who conceived [the heliocentric system] and held it to be true [...], in violent opposition to the evidence of their own senses.” This is Galileo’s testimony to the liberalizing force of science. Such theories would be important even if they were no more than exercises for our imagination. But they are more than this, as can be seen from the fact that we submit them to severe tests by trying to deduce from them some of the regularities of the known world of common experience by trying to explain these regularities. And these attempts to explain the known by the unknown (as I have described them elsewhere) have immeasurably extended the realm of the known. They have added to the facts of our everyday world the invisible air, the antipodes, the circulation of the blood, the worlds of the telescope and the microscope, of electricity, and of tracer atoms showing us in detail the movements of matter within living bodies.  All these things are far from being mere instruments: they are witness to the intellectual conquest of our world by our minds.

First published in Contemporary British Philosophy, 3rd Series, ed. H. D. Lewis, 1956. From Conjectures and Refutations. Routledge 1989

Since the terms ‘reason’ and ‘rationalism’ are vague, it will be necessary to explain roughly the way in which they are used here. First, they are used in a wide sense; they are used to cover not only intellectual activity but also observation and experiment. It is necessary to keep this remark in mind, since ‘reason’ and ‘rationalism’ are often used in a different and more narrow sense, in opposition not to ‘irrationalism’ but to ‘empiricism’ ; if used in this way, rationalism extols intelligence above observation and experiment, and might therefore be better described as ‘intellectualism’. But when I speak here of ‘rationalism’, I use the word always in a sense which includes ‘empiricism’ as well as ‘intellectualism’; just as science makes use of experiments as well as of thought. Secondly, I use the word ‘rationalism’ in order to indicate, roughly, an attitude that seeks to solve as many problems as possible by an appeal to reason, i.e. to clear thought and experience, rather than by an appeal to emotions and passions. This explanation, of course, is not very satisfactory, since all terms such as ‘reason’ or ‘passion’ are vague ; we do not possess ‘reason’ or ‘passions’ in the sense in which we possess certain physical organs, for example, brains or a heart, or in the sense in which we possess certain ‘faculties’, for example, the power of speaking, or of gnashing our teeth. In order therefore to be a little more precise, it may be better to explain rationalism in terms of practical attitudes or behaviour. We could then say that rationalism is an attitude of readiness to listen to critical arguments and to learn from experience. It is fundamentally an attitude of admitting that ‘I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth’. It is an attitude which does not lightly give up hope that by such means as argument and careful observation, people may reach some kind of agreement on many problems of importance; and that, even where their demands and their interests clash, it is often possible to argue about the various demands and proposals, and to reach – perhaps by arbitration – a compromise which, because of its equity, is acceptable to most, if not to all. In short, the rationalist attitude, or, as I may perhaps label it, the ‘attitude of reasonableness’, is very similar to the scientific attitude, to the belief that in the search for truth we need co-operation, and that, with the help of argument, we can in time attain something like objectivity.

From The Open Society and Its Enemies Volume 2. Harper Torchbooks 1967.

Plato was the theorist of an aristocratic form of absolute government. As the fundamental problem of political theory, he posed the following questions: ‘Who should rule? Who is to govern the state? The many, the mob, the masses, or the few, the elect, the elite?’

Once the question ‘Who should rule?’ is accepted as fundamental, then obviously there can be only one reasonable answer: not those who do not know, but those who do know, the sages; not the mob, but the few best. That is Plato’s theory of the rule by the best, of aristocracy.

It is somewhat odd that great theorists of democracy and great adversaries of this Platonic theory – such as Rousseau – adopted Plato’s statement of the problem instead of rejecting it as inadequate, for it is quite clear that the fundamental question in political theory is not the one Plato formulated. The question is not ‘Who should rule? or ‘Who is to have power? but ‘How much power should be granted to the government?’ or perhaps more precisely, ‘How can we develop our political institutions in  such a manner that even incompetent and dishonest rulers cannot do too much harm?’ In other words, the fundamental problem of political theory is the problem of checks and balances, of institutions by which political power, its arbitrariness and its abuse can be controlled and tamed.

I do not doubt that the kind of democracy in which we in the West believe is no more than a state in which power is in this sense, limited and controlled. For the kind of democracy in which we believe is by no means an ideal state; we know perfectly well that much happens that should not happen. It is childish to strive after ideals in politics, and any reasonable mature man in the West knows that ‘All political action consists in choosing  the lesser evil’ (to quote the Viennese poet Karl Kraus).

For us there are only two types of government: those in which the governed can get rid of their rulers without bloodshed, and those in which the governed can, if at all, get rid of their rulers only by bloodshed. The first of these types of government we call democracy, the second tyranny or dictatorship. But the names do not really matter here, only the facts do.

We in the West believe in democracy only in this sober sense: as the least evil form of government. This is also how the man described it who has done more than anyone to save democracy and the West: ‘Democracy is the worst form of government,’ Winston Churchill said once, ‘except of course all those other forms of government that have been tried from time to time.’

Thus we believe in democracy, but not because it is the rule of the people. Neither you nor I rule; on the contrary, both you and and I are being ruled, and sometimes more than we like. Yet we believe in democracy as the form of government which is compatible with peace and effective political opposition, and therefore with political freedom.

I have mentioned above the unfortunate fact that Plato’s misleading question ‘Who is to rule?’ was never clearly rejected by the philosophers of politics. Rousseau asked the same question, but give the opposite answer: ‘The will of the people shall rule – the will of the many, not of the few;’ a dangerous answer indeed, since it leads to the mythological deification of ‘The People’ and ‘The Will of the People.’ Marx too asks, quite in Plato’s vein: ‘Who shall rule, the capitalists or the proletarians?’ And he too gave the answer; ‘The many; not the few; the proletarians should rule, not the capitalists.’

Contrary to Rousseau and to Marx we see in the majority decision of a vote or of an election only a method of producing decision without bloodshed, and with the least possible restriction of freedom. Of course, majorities often arrive at mistaken decisions, and we must insist that minorities have rights and freedoms which no majority decision can overrule.

What I have said may support my suggestion that the fashionable terms ‘mass’, ‘elite’ and ‘uprising of the masses’ originate from the ideologies of Platonism and Marxism.

Just as Rousseau and Marx simply inverted the Platonic answer, so some opponents of Marx inverted the Marxist answer: they want to counteract the ‘revolt of the masses’ by a ‘revolt of the elite’, thereby reverting to the Platonic answer and the claim of the elite to rule. But this whole approach is mistaken. God save us from that anti-Marxism which simply inverts Marxism: we know it only too well; even Communism is no worse than the anti-Marxist ‘elite’ which ruled Italy, Germany and Japan and which it took a global war to remove.

Lecture in Zurich 1958 at invitation of Albert Hunold. From In Search of a Better World. Routledge 1984

I mean by ‘historicism’ an approach to the social sciences which assumes that historical prediction is their aim, and which assumes that this aim is attainable by discovering the ‘rhythms’ or the ‘patterns,’ the ‘laws or the ‘trends’ that underlie the evolution of history.

I propose to give here, in a few words, an outline refutation of historicism. The argument may be summed up in five statements, as follows.

1. The course of human history is strongly influenced by the growth of human knowledge. The truth of this premise must be admitted even by those who see in our ideas, including scientific ideas, merely the by-products of material developments of some kind or another.
2. We cannot predict, by rational or scientific methods, the future growth of our knowledge.
3. We cannot, therefore, predict the future course of human history.
4. This means that we must reject the possibility of a theoretical history; that is to say, of a historical social science that would correspond to theoretical physics. There can be no scientific theory of historical development serving as a basis for historical prediction.
5. The fundamental aim of historicist methods is therefore misconceived; and historicism collapses.

The decisive step in this argument is 2.  I think that it is convincing in itself: if there is such a thing as growing human knowledge, then we cannot anticipate today what we shall know only tomorrow.

From The Poverty of Historicism. Routledge 2002.

I suggest that we need a new professional ethics, mainly, but not exclusively, for scientists. I suggest that it be based upon the following twelve principles:

1. Our objective conjectural knowledge goes further and further beyond what any one person can master. So there simply cannot be any ‘authorities’. This holds true also within specialized subjects.
2. It is impossible to avoid all mistakes, or even all those mistakes that are, in themselves, avoidable. All scientists are continually making mistakes. The old idea that one can avoid mistakes and is therefore duty bound to avoid them, must be revised: it is itself mistaken.
3. Of course it remains our duty to avoid mistakes when ever possible. But it is precisely so that we can avoid them, that we must be aware, above all, of how difficult it is to avoid them and that nobody succeeds completely. Not even the most creative scientists who are guided by intuition succeed: intuition may mislead us.
4. Mistakes may be hidden even in those theories which are very well corroborated; and it is the specific task of the scientist to search for such mistakes. The observation that a well-corroborated theory or a technique that has been used successfully is mistaken may be an important discovery.
5. We must therefore revise our attitude to mistakes. It is here that our practical ethical reform must begin. For the attitude of the old professional ethics leads us to cover up our mistakes, to keep them secret and to forget them as soon as possible.
6. The new basic principle is that in order to learn to avoid making mistakes we must learn from our mistakes. To cover up mistakes is, therefore, the greatest intellectual sin.
7. We must be constantly on the look-out for mistakes. When we find them we must be sure to remember them; we must analyse them thoroughly to get to the bottom of things.
8. The maintenance of a self-critical attitude and of personal integrity thus becomes a matter of duty.
9. Since We must learn from our mistakes, we must also learn to accept, indeed accept gratefully, when others draw our attention to our mistakes. When in turn we draw other people’s attention to their mistakes, we should always remember that we have made similar mistakes ourselves. And we should remember that the greatest scientists have made mistakes. I certainly do not want to say that our mistakes are, usually, forgivable: We must never let our attention slacken. But it is humanly impossible to avoid making mistakes time and again.
10. We must be clear in our own minds that we need other people to discover and correct our mistakes (as they need us); especially those people who have grown up with different ideas in a different environment. This too leads to toleration.
11. We must learn that self-criticism is the best criticism; but that criticism by others is a necessity. It is nearly as good as self-criticism.
12. Rational criticism must always be specific: it must give specific reasons why specific statements, specific hypotheses, appear to be false, or specific arguments invalid. It must be guided by the idea of getting nearer to objective truth. In this sense it must be impersonal.

I ask you to regard these points as suggestions. They are meant to demonstrate that, in the field of ethics, too, one can put forward suggestions which are open to discussion and improvement.

Lecture delivered to the University of Tubingen on 26 May 1981.  From In Search of a Better World, Routledge 1984.

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive , and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

From The Open Society and Its Enemies.  Princeton 1971

A friend recently asked me for recommended reading on the subject of ethics.  Here’s my reply, along with… “Note well that these are sometimes at odds with each other.  That conflict will help you ask the right questions, which counts more than having the right answers.  I’ve ordered the links from shortest to longest, from one-page comics to entire books.”

“Nice” books…

Tsai Chih Chung: Zen Speaks.
Some examples…
http://www.duke.edu/web/meditation/image/carrying.gif
http://homepage.mac.com/dave_rogers/ZenMtnPaths.jpg
http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/25/l_4c4c6e8e509048599029ac0584e7ec5d.jpg
http://c1.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/55/l_370aef5ce1e14275938aff692bae0b58.jpg
http://c3.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/66/l_8c90f97ed3d848a99c34f197249d9156.jpg

Julian Baggini: Atheism / A Very Short Introduction.
Chapter 3, on atheist ethics…
http://www.andrsib.com/dt/moral.htm

Epicureanism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism

“Not Nice” books…

Anton LaVey: The Satanic Bible.
Related, but not necessarily in this book…
http://www.churchofsatan.com/Pages/Eleven.html
http://www.churchofsatan.com/Pages/NineStatements.html
http://www.churchofsatan.com/Pages/Sins.html
http://www.churchofsatan.com/Pages/MostPower.html

Ragnar Redbeard: Might is Right.
A sample chapter, the whole thing and where to buy the best edition…
http://www.feastofhateandfear.com/archives/redbeard.html
http://tinyurl.com/ycfb6lx
http://ninebandedbooks.com/?p=329

Egoism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_egoism
http://www.df.lth.se/~triad/stirner/theego/theego.html

Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince

The Guardian quotes the Wall Street Journal quoting the founder of the Whole Foods chain of grocery stores:

“Basically, we used to think it was enough just to sell healthy food, but we know it is not enough. We sell all kinds of candy. We sell a bunch of junk.” [John Mackey] said the store would now attempt to educate in the ways of healthy eating: “There will be someone in a kiosk to answer questions, they’ll have cookbooks and health books, there will be some cooking classes. It will be about how to select food, because people don’t know.”

Mr. Mackey is claiming that people would eat healthy if they knew how to, or knew the benefits of doing so.  He is bringing in books and teachers to combat akrasia, or acting against one’s own best interests (in this case by eating a bunch of junk).  But will he succeed?  We know more about nutrition than we used to, but it is likely that there is much to learn.  Even acting on the best knowledge available at present might be going against our best interests in light of future discoveries. We may eat as healthily as possible and still fall sick, or be killed in an accident that eating well could not have prevented.  This is not an argument against attempting to act in one’s best interests but it is a warning that we may not always succeed.

There are a number of explanations for akrasia. Each has its limitations.  In stating “No one goes willingly toward the bad,” Socrates claimed that akrasia simply does not exist.  If you can think of a single instance in your life when you’ve willingly gone toward the bad, you’ve demonstrated that Socrates was mistaken.  The ethical school called enlightened self-interest claims we always act in our own self-interest even when we appear to or intend to do otherwise.  But if we always and only act in our self-interests, we have to ask what other sort of interests there might be – thus enlightened self-interest doesn’t really explain anything.  Akrasia is explained as being weak willed when we judge it harshly and deferment to a greater good when we judge it favorably. Stated in this way, our interests are more like our preferences.  If there is a conflict of interests we may engage in akrasia, such as when it is equally in a person’s best interests to stay in the city they love and to move to another city for a good-paying job.  Where we cannot determine which conflicting self-interest is lesser, there is no way to identify akrasia.  An explanation for akrasia found especially among the politically left is that people act against their self-interests through lack of knowledge only, and that being exposed to knowledge will spontaneously and always result in self-interest choices.  Mr. Mackey of Whole Foods is banking on exposure to information as the key to lessening akrasia.  But every day experience shows that people will believe what they want in spite of the information they are exposed to.  Knowledge is not hidden in objects and experiences like a gift in a box, waiting for us to unwrap it.  And exposure to information does not equal acceptance or agreement or action.  Perhaps by having books and teachers on-hand Mr. Mackey hopes to be ‘forgiven’ for selling a bunch of junk.  Me, I like books and teachers and junk.

I claim the political left tends to use the lack of knowledge explanation for akrasia for two reasons.  First, at present the left is where intellectuals are valued, and this is an intellectual sort of explanation.  Intellectuals consider options and make nuanced choices.  Intellectuals also forget considering options and making nuanced choices is not always in one’s self interest – for future reference, go ahead and fight an attacker to the death, don’t debate them.  Second, the political left is deeply invested in the claim that there is an equality and sameness found in all people.  The political left thinks that being an intellectual will come to people and be their preference if they are exposed to the idea of being an intellectual, and that having become an intellectual they will consider options and make nuanced choices.  Part of why I’ve found less to agree with in the political left is my claim that there are a great deal of people (some of them quite smart) who are not intellectuals and who don’t value or prefer intellectual perspectives; there are a great many people who are not capable of being intellectuals even if they might value or prefer to be; and there are a great many people who use violence to get what they want and not the intellect.  Bluntly stated, I claim that akrasia exists in part because some people at some times are stupid and evil.  Fortunately for most people, my claims are next to ineffectual in the world.  I make no public policy, I control no one and influence very few, and eventually I won’t be around at all.  If I’m wrong, just be patient and I’ll go away.

Why do you think akrasia exists?  What do others think?  What is to be done?

Apparently we are designed to be very good at status moves, but to be unconscious of them. So to be more self-aware of how you really treat those around you, learn to see your status moves.

Overcoming Bias : Actors See Status

I have an amateur interest in the connection between biology and behavior.  This is often called the ‘nature versus nurture’ debate, described by wikipedia as “the relative importance of an individual’s innate qualities (‘nature,’ i.e. nativism, or innatism) versus personal experiences (‘nurture,’ i.e. empiricism or behaviorism) in determining or causing individual differences in physical and behavioral traits.”  I think this is a false dilemma, or what we in the Church of the SubGenius call a nontroversy.  On the nature side, there are behaviors influenced or controlled by our biology.  On the nurture side, there are our behaviors influenced or controlled by other people’s biology.  Unless there is a mind / soul / ghost / phantom captain in us that is not biological, our behavior is influenced or controlled by biology (sometimes once removed).  Biology in turn is influenced or controlled by the natural universe, its chemistry and physics.  I claim all behavior is biology, and all biology is chemistry and physics.  I refer less to the nature versus nurture debate and more to the connection between biology and behavior.  I could be wrong in my claims or in how my claims are formulated.  Here are some recent examples of biology influencing or controlling behavior…

• Why Anorexic Patients Cling To Their Eating Disorder: Processes in brain metabolism that explain this disturbed eating behavior.
• Women are getting more beautiful: Beautiful women have more children than their plainer counterparts and that a higher proportion of those children are female. Those daughters, once adult, also tend to be attractive and so repeat the pattern.
• Are We What Our Mothers Ate?: Mothers’ health in the days and weeks prior to becoming pregnant may determine the health of offspring much later in life.
• Babies Understand Dogs, Bark-matching Study Finds: Six-month-old babies can match the sounds of happy and angry barks to pictures of happy and angry dogs.
• Parts Of Brain Involved In Social Cognition May Be In Place By Age Six: A group of regions has been discovered in the human brain that are specifically used for social cognition.
• Rush Of Blood To The Head: Anger Increases Blood Flow: Mental stress causes carotid artery dilation and increases brain blood flow. A series of ultrasound experiments also found that this dilatory reflex was absent in people with high blood pressure.
• Brain Differences Reinforce Preferences For Those In Same Social Group: Unconscious prejudices against outside groups exist at a basic level.
• A biomarker for anorexia?: A new study shows that the levels of a brain protein differ between healthy and anorexic women.
• Mechanisms Of Self-control Pinpointed In Brain: Scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have uncovered differences in the brains of people who are able to exercise self-control versus those who find it almost impossible.
• Child abuse ‘alters stress gene’: Chemical changes which reduced the activity of the gene for glucocorticoid receptor in those who suffered child abuse.
• Hormones affect men’s sense of fair play: Men with high levels of testosterone are more likely to turn down low [business] offers, even if they stand to gain money by accepting them.
• Delinquency In Children Now Linked To Biology: A highly reactive autonomic nervous system, which regulates our cardiovascular, digestive and respiratory functions, paired with a stressful family environment leads to increased instances of maladaptive personality change.

… not a one of which proves my claim, nor do they prove my claim as a whole, but they lend some support.  My claim that behavior is biology could be refuted by demonstrating the existence of a mind / soul / ghost / phantom captain in us that is not biological, or the existence of a God that is somehow ‘outside’ of the natural Universe.  If behavior is biology then interesting and disturbing possibilities arise.  The non-existence of some concepts of free will and personal accountability must be considered.  Statistical regularities in behavior are explained (the overwhelming amount of violent behavior being carried out by men and not by women is explained by having biological roots, for example) but that can be cold comfort.  The line between the individual and the species is blurred.  The possibility of an ‘afterlife’ is lessened, but the possibility one might nudge the lives of future generations is confirmed.  Natural rights may be shown to have a firm foundation, or be shown to have no foundation at all.  How would your day-to-day life be different if you thought you were part of the natural universe?

the term “free will,” appears to me to be an incoherent concept

If Free Will Were Coherent, We Ought to Believe in It

philosophy books online.

Klassikkokirjasto | Filosofia.fi

A 1959 interview with philosopher, mathematician and peace campaigner Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). Works and pictures online . Russell is also known for his pithy quotes, his teapot and was the subject of poem Mr Apollinax by T.S. Eliot.

He laughed like an irresponsible foetus | MetaFilter

Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion. / As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.

William Blake – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia