2134/15491
Phil Parvin
Phil
Parvin
The rationalist tradition and the problem of induction: Karl Popper's rejection of epistemological optimism
Loughborough University
2014
Philosophy
Fallibilism
Induction
Rationalism
Popper
Political Science not elsewhere classified
Philosophy
2014-08-11 13:18:45
Journal contribution
https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/The_rationalist_tradition_and_the_problem_of_induction_Karl_Popper_s_rejection_of_epistemological_optimism/9469271
This article evaluates Karl Popper's contribution to analytic philosophy, and outlines some
of the contradictions in his work which make it difficult to locate in any particular tradition.
In particular, the article investigates Popper's own claims to be a member of the
rationalist tradition. Although Popper described himself as a member of this tradition, his
definition of it diverged quite radically from that offered by other supporters of rationalism,
like, for example, Mach, Carnap, and the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle. The
reason for this was that the rationalist tradition, if it were to remain coherent and relevant,
needed to overcome the dilemma posed by Hume’s problem of induction. Popper
believed that this problem rendered conventional understandings of rationalism, science,
and inductive reasoning incoherent. This article suggests that Popper's principal
contribution to modern philosophy was to reconfigure the rationalist tradition in such a
way as to circumvent the problem of induction while preserving the rationalist
commitment to reason, rational debate, and objective knowledge. Popper's
reconfiguration of the epistemological bases of the rationalist tradition challenged
dominant understandings of rationalist and analytic philosophy, and may be appropriately
understood as part of a wider move among philosophers like Quine and Putnam to
challenge conventional understandings of analytic philosophy, and of what philosophy
itself could and could not achieve. It also informed a vision of social and political life (and
of the social and political sciences) as rooted in principles of freedom, equality, and
rational debate, but which cannot be fit within the traditional ideological landscape.