UDC: 101.9+001.83
https://doi.org/10.25198/2077-7175-2024-5-103
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KARL POPPER AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY

D. V. Ankin
Ural Federal University named after the First President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin, Yekaterinburg, Russia
e-mail: dmitryankin@gmail.com

Abstract. The purpose of the article is to study modern forms of objectivity characteristic of analytical philosophy using the example of the great 20th century philosopher K. R. Popper. Thus, we will need to: 1) present arguments that K. Popper is an analytical philosopher, 2) consider his ideas of the objectivity of truth and criticism of relativism.

Firstly, Karl Popper is in no way different from his friends the logical empiricists (logical positivists) in understanding and using the achievements of modern logic. Modern symbolic logic for K. Popper, as for all analytical philosophers without exception, is the basis of philosophizing.

Secondly, the article presents arguments against the interpretation of Karl Popper as a «rationalist» (in the classical sense for modern epistemology). It is shown that K. Popper’s falsificationism is an empiricist methodology, justified in the field of substantive, but not in the field of formal, theories.

The hypothetico-deductive method becomes the basis of empiricism, defended by K. Popper, empiricism that is not confirming (verifying), but refuting (falsifying), empiricism is not sensationalistic, but «critical», somewhat reminiscent of the position of I. Kant (intermediate between empiricism and rationalism). Such empiricism was given by K. Popper the not very successful – as we try to show in the article – name of «critical rationalism», given in order to distance ourselves from sensualist and inductive empiricism.

Fallibility and finitude (another Kantian motif in Popper’s work) are integral features of man. We are in a swamp and never have reliable foundations and criteria. We never know and cannot know how far/close we are from objective Truth, the presence and uniqueness of which K. Popper has no doubt. Our progress is some kind of wonderful, «apophatic» progress (like that of «hedgehogs in the fog»). In K. Popper we see a fallibilist2, alien and hostile to relativism; we see anti-relativistic fallibilism. The fallibilist, who talks about the fallibility and finitude of human knowledge, gets along well in K. Popper with the metaphysical realist (not at all according to I. Kant). Realist metaphysics, combined with fallibilism, fits well with the apophatic interpretation of scientific progress. K. Popper’s metaphysics is based on the idea of three worlds. The third world is the world of languages, theories, symbols, etc.; the first is the world of things in space and time; the second is the world of mental events of consciousness.

It turns out that we are all as «hedgehogs in the fog» in relation to the Truth. We are not able to say how close we are to Truth. However, the rapprochement between K. Popper and his «followers», postpositivists of a relativistic type – T. Kuhn, P. Feyerabend, M. Polanyi - looks, to put it mildly, very doubtful. It is better to exclude K. Popper from this far-fetched category of «post-positivism» altogether.

We will consider mainly the epistemology and, a little, the metaphysics of K. Popper; we will not be interested in his social philosophy.

Key words: criticism of relativism, anti-relativistic fallibilism, falsificationism as a version of empiricism, Popper’s realism, Popper’s internalism.

Cite as: Ankin, D. V. (2024) [Karl Popper as a Representative of the Analytical Philosophy]. Intellekt. Innovacii. Investicii [Intellect. Innovations. Investments]. Vol. 5, pp. 103–113. – https://doi.org/10.25198/2077-7175-2024-5-103.


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