Evolutionary Epistemology, Rationality and the Sociology of Knowledge
Edited by Gerard Radnitzky and W. W. Bartley Ill
Sir Karl Popper is not really a participant in the contemporary professional philosophical dialogue; quite the contrary, he has ruined that dialogue. If he is on the right track, then the majority of professional philosophers the world over has wasted or is wasting their intellectual careers. The gulf between Popper's way of doing philosophy and that of the bulk of professional philosophers is as great as that between astronomy and astrology. I believe that Popper is on the right track. (William W Bartley, Philosophia, 1976)
This volume adds weight to Bartley's claim that Popper is on the right track but has not received due credit because his ideas have suffered from misreading and other mishaps. While the Popper school fell apart in the 1960s, Popper and Donald T. Campbell independently pursued their work on evolutionary epistemology and this volume picks up some of the pieces of the Popper program that should have been assembled two decades before.
It would help to have an introductory statement in Evolutionary Epistemology to place the main themes of the volume in context to explain some of the themes in this book that are likely to be novel for people who are not familiar with evolutionary epistemology in general and the ideas of Karl Popper in particular. This is required to explain the nature of Popper's achievement and its failure to impress the academic philosophers. I will offer some ideas along those lines, followed by an account of Bartley's work on rationality before returning to the topic of evolutionary epistemology. The reason for this crab-like approach to the main topic of the book is that the new ideas offered here are not terribly difficult to grasp provided that we can get some old ideas out of the way.
Railway Lines of Thought
Western thought has been dominated by a cluster of ideas that may be called the basic categories of thought, ultimate presuppositions or framework assumptions. They operate like invisible railway lines that dictate the type of problems that people choose to work on, the way that they are formulated and the type of solutions that are sought. These invisible 'railway lines' render certain theories and methods either 'wrong' or stupid or in some cases, virtually unthinkable. Shifting to a biological image, these pervasive themes provide the intelIectual equivalent of an ecological niche where some species of ideas are stunted or killed outright while others survive and flourish. They are not amenable to experimental test or falsification and so they have persisted despite the rise of empiricism in the philosophy of science and the triumphs of science itself. Far from being challenged by science, some of these ideas are located at the core of modern physics, like worms in an apple and they derive strength from their association with popular interpretations of quantum physics.
Bartley pinpointed some of these ideas in his opening chapter where his special target is a version of subjectivism or idealism ("the world is my dream") which he labels 'presentationalism'. A presentationalist such as Ernst Mach (1838-1916) would argue that there is no such thing as a real tree, out there in the garden. When we claim to see a tree we only see an image of a tree as it is presented to our mind's eye by our sensory and cognitive equipment. There is some truth in this because our perception is a function of an elaborate decoding process which converts signals from outside into mental images. But the presentationalist goes a step further to claim that the external world is entirely a creation or an expression of our senses and cognition. The mind is a lamp, and the external world 'really' has the properties that we project upon it. This view prevails in parts of the social sciences where the external world is regarded as a social construct, and a delusive, ideologically biased construct to boot.
This anthropomorphic account of the external world can be criticised on biological grounds as Bartley does with a section "About a frog, idealistically disposed". The frog registers only four kinds of visual effects, which means that only four types of signal can be sent to the brain). These enable it to perform tasks such as catching small moving objects and leaping towards dark spaces if a predator appears. The world of the frog, as a projection of its limited visual capacity is very impoverished and it is not one that we would accept as the full story even with our own fairly limited senses. In the presentationists' scheme the development of knowledge, or of presentations, would appear to depend on the evolution of sense organs and brains, which is not a rapid process though its results are impressive over long periods. However the miracle of human knowledge follows a different timescale and it proceeds by the elaboration of organs outside the body including tools, weapons, machines and pre-eminently ideas. Language appears as an evolutionary product and human language occupies a strategic position as a link between brains and the world of ideas, as sketched by Popper in a chapter contributed to Evolutionary Theory: Paths Into the Future, edited by J. W. Pollard (John Wiley, 1984).
Bartley suggested that the roots of presentationalism
........may be not only deep but psychological, and even metaphysical for it seems to me that philosophers of science do not ordinarily choose presentationalism: rather they are driven to it by certain deep structural assumptions that permeate most of western philosophy.
This process of being driven by deep structural assumptions is the heart of the matter that Popper's theory of MRPs illuminates. The psychological aspect of this situation can be exaggerated; Popper expelled psychologism from epistemology and his theory of objective knowledge expels psychologism from psychology itself . In other words, psychology needs to look at the brain as an organ for interacting with ideas, and these ideas can be subjected to criticism when we become aware of them. At that point they become something more than a part of our psychology; they become part of our objective problem situation. Of course, people can internalise ideas and then use them as the basis of their own identity, with resulting problems if the ideas are challenged. This highlights the need to develop methods to appraise and criticise deep structural assumptions without putting our personal identity at risk.
Bartley nominated a number of deep assumptions that cause trouble; reductionism, instrumentalism, determinism, inductivism, positivism, justificationism and the subjectivist interpretations of the calculus of probability. These constitute what could be called the 'old program' of Western thought and in contrast the program offered by Popper contradicts the old at almost every point, from evolutionary emergence (against reductionism) through to his theory of propensities to generate objective probabilities for singular events at the quantum level. The 'old program' draws its strength from a number of sources, the chief being the fact that it was there first and it is well entrenched. In addition the themes tend to support each other, for example reductionism supports subjectivism by demanding that complex beliefs (theories) be reducible to more basic elements in perception (sense data in the empiricist tradition, clear and distinct ideas in the tradition of Continental rationalism). The criss-crossing support that these ideas provide for each other means that they may need to be refuted or replaced as a set, in the way that all the tentacles of an octopus need to be unwrapped from round your neck, otherwise if one is left in place the others will snap back into position when you relax your efforts for a moment.
Metaphysical ideas such as determinism and reductionism have proved almost impossible to subject to effective criticism because discussion of these matters fell into the hands of people whose forte is conceptual analysis. Popper has criticised this method at length under the label of 'essentialism', especially in his intellectual autobiography, Unended Quest. Conceptual analysts generally turned their backs on science (the paradigm is Sir Alfred Ayer, as described in his autobiography) and the resulting proliferation of unhelpful verbiage did much to prejudice positivists against metaphysics. It is often assumed that metaphysical theories are beyond the limits of rational criticism because they provide the framework of discourse. The view is widespread (and was held by Popper in his youth) that the domain of rational criticism Is limited to ares where empirical tests can be used. Finally, metaphysical theories play a vital role in creating and supporting self-images, world views, ideologies, religions and paradigms so a shift of metaphysical allegiance can be as traumatic and unsettling as a radical change of political or religious affiliation.
Popper and Bartley have transformed this situation in four ways. First, Popper's theory of MRPs has made metaphysical theories visible, in the way that an improved microscope brings objects into sharp focus where previously they were either invisible or indistinct. Second, Popper has systematically provided criticisms of (and alternatives to) the theories of reductionism, determinism and subjectivism in the context of live scientific problems. A prime example of this Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics which explores the impact of the old metaphysics on the interpretation of theories in quantum physics. Thirdly, Bartley's work on the limits of criticism shows that we can form critical preferences for the non-empirical theories of morals and metaphysics instead of being forced to rely on acts of faith or allegiance to authority. Finally, Bartley's results can be applied to the practical matter of creating 'non-dogmatic zones' where people can explore and criticise metaphysical ideas and other deep structural assumptions, which carry high emotional charges. These 'zones' could also be used for counselling, for psychotherapy and indeed for any type of self-exploration and transformation. All four of these developments are necessary and none alone is sufficient for the kind of work that needs to be done to make the world safe for evolutionary epistemology and other living things. Popper has made giant strides in some areas of the program but the technology for creating non-dogmatic zones is lagging and where it is most developed (in California?) the necessary ideas from Popper and Bartley are not widespread.
Bartley on Rationality and the Limits of Criticism
Part II of Evolutionary Epistemology treats Bartley's ideas under the heading Rationality and Self Reference. Bartley has the first and last say, with John F. Post (three short pieces), John W. N. Watkins and Gerhard Radnitzky. The point of departure is Bartley's theory of rationality and the limits of criticism, which he advanced In The Retreat to Commitment (Knopf 1962, Open Court, 1984). Much of the criticism of Bartley's views (here and elsewhere) misses the point through failing to understand the problem that Bartley addressed. One of the principles of Bartley's (and Popper's) rationality is that all statements are open to criticism, including any statement of the principle of rationality itself. Post and Watkins wonder whether such a position statement (which appears to refer to itself) can hold up under logical analysis, or whether it may fall into some kind of semantic paradox. At the level of logical minutiae these criticisms are answered by Radnitzky and Bartley, and by Vollmer's chapter in Part I. The more exciting task is to pursue the consequences of Bartley's work into all domains of human problem solving and especially to develop institutions and techniques that facilitate imaginative criticism, the discovery of ever deeper problems and the elimination of error.
What was Bartley's problem? He addressed the problem created by the breakdown of various programs that set out to provide methods to positively justify beliefs. They break down on the dilemma of the infinite regress versus dogmatism. Following Popper, Bartley explored the logical limits of rational criticism and the problem of bringing criticism to bear upon fundamental beliefs, especially the 'ultimate presuppositions' of ideology and metaphysics. He confronted the problem of validation and the dilemma of the infinite regress versus dogmatism which arises as follows. If a belief claims validation by a supporting argument, what justifies the support? Where and how does the chain of justifications stop? How do we stop the child who persistently asks 'Why?'. If one attempts to provide reasons for the supporting argument then an infinite regress can be forced by anyone who emulates the persistent child and presses for more supporting statements which in turn demand justification. It appears that this can only be avoided by an arbitrary decision to stop the regress at some stage and settle on a belief at that point.
This dilemma creates 'conscientious objections' to open- mindedness because a logical chain of argument apparently justifies the conclusion that the only way out of the, infinite regress is to take a dogmatic stand somewhere (or anywhere). To the despair of people who believe in reason, their opponents can defeat the principle of open-ended criticism and debate on impeccably logical grounds, simply by pointing to the problem of the infinite regress. Bartley retrieved this situation when under the inspiration of Popper's non-authoritarian theory of knowledge he located a barely recognised assumption that permeates Western thought;
Beliefs must be justified by an appeal to an authority of some kind, generally the source of the belief in question, and this justification makes the belief either rational, or if not rational at least valid for the person who holds it.
Popper and Bartley labelled this theory 'justificationism' and they showed how it creates a demand for positive (certain) justification which can never be met for the reasons outlined above. The solution is to abandon the quest for positive justification and instead to settle for a critical preference for one option rather than others, in the light of evidence and arguments offered to that point. As Radnitzky put it "Questions of acceptance are replaced by questions of preference". A preference may (or may not) be revised in the light of new evidence and arguments. This appears to be a simple, commonsense position but it defies the dominant traditions of Western thought which have almost all taught that some authority provides (or ought to provide) grounds for positively justified beliefs.
Many insights follow from Bartley's work; among them the melancholy discovery that rationalists, so long as they persist in the quest for justified beliefs, (thereby supporting the tradition of justificationism) are 'selling the other guy's product,' as an ad man would say. The justificationist framework, or context, or metacontext as Bartley calls it, is a framework in which irrationalists can always win, any time that they force the issue and demand that the rationalist produce truly justified beliefs. Justificationism provides the seed-bed for the weeds of irrationalism; theories of rationality have traditionally been justificationist and so rationalists have unwittingly nurtured this seed-bed. As long as justificationism persists as the unstated and uncriticised framework or metacontext of discourse, rationality will be constantly threatened by offshoots and revivals of irrationalism in diverse shapes and forms.
Clearly a pressing task for rationalists is to find ways to transform the metacontext of thought and any progress in this direction will help to overcome a host of problems that spring from the justificationist tradition. justificationism in the form of entrenched and dogmatic thinking can be seen at: work in all fanatics, ranging from terrorists to single-minded supporters of a particular sporting team. Justificationism in the form of suspicion or even hatred of novelty has always created problems for innovators. This has spawned the mythology of 'genius and insanity' due to the strain placed on people who explore new territory and challenge entrenched modes of thought. At a less exalted level, Mark McCormack in What They Don't Teach at Harvard Business School noted that the 'not invented here' mentality, the trashing of an idea by someone because he or she did not originate it, is one of the biggest sales problems in his own corporation (International Management Group) and is pervasive, even endemic in the firms with which he does business.
Self-improvement methods from 'How to win friends and influence people' down to the modern 'consciousness-raising' movement have not helped people as much as they might. Their positive elements are cancelled out by rigid and dogmatic adherence to the bad habits of a lifetime ("I know that's silly but that's just me") that are locked into place by the justificationist metacontext. It is quite likely that the success of psychotherapy and counselling depends to a large extent on the ability of individual practitioners to create 'non-dogmatic zones' where clients can explore their problems in an atmosphere that promotes creative self-criticism and error elimination. From this it follows that the overt content of the theory that 'drives' the therapy is less important than the capacity to create the appropriate environment. This conjecture is possibly supported by Morris Parloff et al. who reported in the 1986 Annual Review of Psychology that all of about 200 diverse forms of psychotherapy can claim some success.
Evolutionary Epistemology
After these preliminary remarks the searchlight now shifts to the topic of Evolutionary Epistemology which is pursued in the eight chapters of Part I that make up almost half the book. Bartley provides a chapter and Donald Campbell contributes two pieces of wide-ranging scholarship. Popper also has two chapters, one of them the first Darwin Lecture at Darwin College, Cambridge in 1977. A breath-taking contribution from Gunter Wachterhauser offers some exciting ideas about the evolutionary origin of vision as an aid to seeking light for photosynthesis. Gerhard Vollmer's chapter refutes various relativistic conclusions that are often drawn from Godel's theorems. A short commentary by Rosaria Egridi indicates that plenty of work remains to be done to sort out the empirical, methodological and metaphysical aspects of evolutionary emergence. For example both Popper and Medawar advocate methodological reductionism even though Popper is convinced that it will never fully succeed; even so, any progress in that direction will be a great scientific triumph. Campbell's chapter 'Evolutionary Epistemology' drew attention to the vogue of evolutionary scholarship last century which had a marked impact on the theories of knowledge propounded by many philosophers. But in this century evolutionary epistemology had to be rediscovered after a lapse of some decades.
This remarkable disappearance can be partly attributed to the rise of the philosophy of physics to dominate the philosophy of science (as noted in Bartley's Chapter I). But the real damage was done by the particular philosophy of physics that achieved dominance, a philosophy thoroughly permeated by those themes of determinism, reductionism, subjectivism and inductivism. The revival of evolutionary epistemology by Campbell, Popper and others was hard-won against the metaphysical tide.
Campbell's second chapter dates from 1960 and it takes up the theme of blind variation and selective retention in creative thought. He argues that the growth of knowledge, whether manifest in the process of biological evolution or in the advance of physics itself, required 'breakouts' from the tyranny of the known: 'Real gains must have been the products of explorations going beyond the limits of foresight or prescience, and in this sense blind.' The notion of blind creation arouses a great deal of antagonism (as does the view that theories are 'mere' conjectures).
Campbell's paper contributes to the task of creating institutions and environments where creativity and imaginative criticism can thrive (a program started at by Popper in section 32 of The Poverty of Historicism). Campbell objects to the Gestalt psychologists' notion of 'insight' as an alternative to the trial and error method of problem-solving because 'it connotes 'direct' ways of knowing. Furthermore, when publicised as a part of an ideology of creativity, it can reduce creativity through giving students a feeling that they lack an important gift possessed by some others'.
He also throws some much-needed cold water on the artificial intelligence industry which has for some time threatened to make breakthroughs in simulating creative problem-solving, only to defer the great leap forward to the next generation of computers.
Rationality and the Sociology of Knowledge
Part III on Rationality and the Sociology of Knowledge contains essays from Peter Munz, Anthony Flew and Bartley (again). Munz responds to Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature where Rorty's main theme is argument that philosophers should not try to compete with scientists at solving problems but instead should sustain elegant conversations. Munz provides an example for the benefit of people who have not had the benefit of the company of Quine, Ayer, Dummet et al. or of Thomas Love Peacock's brains trust in Crotchet Castle. Jokes aside, Munz shows that Rorty has ignored Popper's work (and evolutionary epistemology in general) as an alternative to the positivist's 'mirror' theory of knowledge (the mind passively copies the world), which he rejects, and the appeal to the select community of peers to settle knowledge claims, which he apparently accepts. It may be noted that Munz mounted a formidably detailed case for evolutionary epistemology against Kuhn, Rorty and Wittgenstein in Our Knowledge of the Growth of Knowledge (Routledge, 1985). Flew breaks a lance or two with people who take refuge in various forms of the sociology of knowledge to avoid the rigours of genuine criticism and debate. And Bartley closes the collection with a critical piece on the idea of 'alienation' as it is used (or abused) by Marx and his followers.
The Popperian Harvest
Like children who grow up, leave home and seek fame and fortune in distant lands, important ideas have implications far beyond their point of conception. This applies to Popper's theory of MRPs and the alternative metaphysical program that he provides. I will offer some concluding comments on the wide-ranging implications of the research program that flows from Popper's work, especially its capacity to liberate the potential of many other lines of thought that have been suppressed or devalued. These include some aspects of the Austrian tradition in economics, individualism in literature and the political philosophy of classical liberalism. Common to these movements is the notion of the creative individual who has a degree of autonomy and the capacity to be an agent, not merely a passive response mechanism. This perspective is not compatible with determinism, reductionism and holism which are part and parcel of the dominant metaphysics.
In economics the old program sponsors various forms of economic determinism and analysis of aggregates, also the collective choice theory where Kenneth J. Arrow made such a mark. In contrast, Israel M. Kirzner offers an 'Austrian' perspective in The Crisis in Economic Theory edited by Bell and Kristol (Basic Books, 1981). The last decade has witnessed a tentative revival of the Austrian tradition that dates from Carl Menger (1840-1921:). It may be that the intellectual ecosystem provided by Popper's metaphysics is hospitable to such a revival and if this is the case then the revival may gain momentum if Popper's ideas become better understood and more widely disseminated. The theory of literature has been dominated by I. A. Richards' psychologism (precursor of the New Criticism), by psychoanalytical probing for themes of neurotic maladjustment in artists and their products, by Marxist reductionism and its offspring, structuralism. The creative function of the author is replaced by the confluence of drives and influences. Counter-attacks on these overtly reductive tendencies (by T. E. Hulme, T. S. Eliot, F. R. Leavis and the deconstructionists) have not succeeded because much of the old metaphysics is common to both parties. Some genuine progress in the theory of criticism could result in literature becoming once again an agent of civilised values instead of being a vehicle for the expression of boredom, hatred and pessimism. A critical review of In Defense of Reason by Yvor Winters could be a starting point for a program of renovation.
In psychology the reductionist program is clearly apparent in the two major schools of psychoanalysis and behaviourism which share the old metaphysics however much they are antagonistic towards each other. One of the victims of the dominant program is George Kelly's 'inquiring man' who lives by a process of conjecture and refutation. Political theory and practice are dominated by collectivist ideas such as 'social justice,' originally propounded by Plato and revived by Hegel and the socialists. These ideas have poisoned the theory of democracy which is almost universally summed up in the simplistic: formula 'majority rule'. Under the influence of this formula persecuted minorities attempt to secede to form their own majority and freedom fighters establish new dictatorships. In the climate of a non-reductive and individualistic metaphysics it may be possible to explain that the task for democracy is not just to establish a representative system of some kind but to secure the rights of individuals and minorities against unreasonable interference from other people and from the state itself.
A revival of these minority interests depends on recruiting people from the dominant orthodoxies where they tend to be 'locked in' by three influences. First, by the guild mentality (professional brand loyalty) second, by ideological commitments (another form of brand loyalty) and finally by the hidden hand of unexamined metaphysical beliefs. The third is probably the most insidious influence because it traps people who might otherwise be prepared to resist brand loyal ties. The ideas of Popper and Bartley hold up hope for progress in throwing off the fetters of counter-productive metaphysics. They provide methods to expose the roots of deep structural assumptions and they show how to subject them to criticism. The papers in Evolutionary Epistemology perform a valuable function in bringing together some disparate yet linked ideas and this may enable people to discover the depth of Popper s thought that has been overlooked by the majority of academic philosophers.
Rafe Champion . Submitted to the Critical Review (New York) 1986
