Karl Popper and the Idea of Liberal Social Reform

Transcription

1 Karl Popper and the Idea of Liberal Social Reform A paper presented at the Karl Popper Seminar Series anchored by Prof. Jeremy Shearmur, held at the Department of Philosophy, Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, Australia. (22 nd June, 2011). Abstract By Oseni Taiwo Afisi Department of Philosophy Lagos State University, Ojo oseni.afisi@lasu.edu.ng This paper examines the hypothesis that there is a great deal of plausibility in the equation between a liberal society that aims to achieve a truly open society, and a non-liberal society that desires intellectual openness. For a society to be truly open requires the primacy of individual freedom. The extent to which individuals are free to perform actions that they desire without external constraints, and the level of their individuality in relations to others when performing such actions, remain a contentious issue between liberals and non-liberals. Karl Popper s critical rationalism provides the necessary impetus to the freedom and individuality that the openness of society entails. Popper s politics of liberalism provides an effective model of how a truly open society can be achieved. The values inherent to Popper s liberalism as intellectual openness, individual freedom, mutual respect for others, welfarism, humanitarianism, accountability, critical debates and feedback from the citizens; together thus allow a society to be truly open. Introduction Although there are many competing thoughts as to what openness might be in Popper s philosophy, this present work does not presume to address them all. The focus here is specifically on using Popper s idea of critical rationalism to balance relations between liberal politics of individual rights and freedom, and non-liberal politics of the common good advocated by some communitarians such as Charles Taylor (1979), Michael Sandel (1982) and Alasdair MacIntyre (1984). The aim of this paper is to explore Popper s project of the open society across the plurality and differences of human societies, so that the liberal ideas of individual freedom are not undermined, and the progress of the communitarian idea of the common good is also enhanced. 1

2 Popper s philosophy is important to the plausibility of an equation between liberalism and communitarianism because of his unique philosophical development of critical rationalism. One reason that critical rationalism is important to this study is because of the individual and social aspects it entails; the former is explicit while the latter, I will argue, is implicit. Individualistic liberalism and communitarianism are both well accommodated within Popper s critical rationalism. Popper s Critical Rationalism Generally speaking, Popper s critical rationalism is an epistemological philosophy which emphasizes rational criticism or falsification of theories in the natural science and social sciences. Critical rationalism emphasizes the need to be critical of all existing forms of knowledge. It requires every participant in the game of critical discussion to be prepared to listen to criticism, to be able to accept criticism from others, to practice self-criticism, and to engage in mutual criticism with others. (Gattei 2002: 247). Hence, while rational criticism can be located within the realm of the individual, the engagement in mutual criticism with others is in the social realm. Although philosophy of science and political philosophy are different foci of philosophical reflection, both are connected methodologically in Popper s critical rationalism. In Popper s view, critical rationalism is the sole method of philosophy, it is the essential method of all rational discussion, and therefore of the sciences as well as of philosophy (Popper 1959:16). Clearly, the central themes of Popper s philosophy of science and political philosophy, such as; fallibilism, anti-inductivism, hypothetico-deductive methodology, falsificationism, noninductivist concept of corroboration, concept of verisimilitude, evolutionary epistemology, demarcation criterion, and political liberalism all arise out of his philosophy of critical rationalism. The coherence of critical rationalism is impressive in the application of the critical method in political philosophy of the insights Popper drew from philosophy of science. This paper demonstrates how much science we can apply to politics. Popper s significance to philosophy of science comes from his idea of a critical method that is applicable across to all fields of (scientific) knowledge. It is this scientific application of critical method to knowledge that Popper also proposed as a model for looking at solutions to problems in human condition which humans should appropriately apply to society. Popper s importation into political philosophy of the critical method that seems natural to him in philosophy of science is the strength of his philosophical contribution. However, the 2

3 importation of the method of science to political philosophy is too universalistic in doctrine and in application. My concern is whether the professed universality of what it is to do good science is a mark for, or against, using the same critical method when evaluating proposed solutions to societal problems. I will question several of the themes, features and contents of Popper s philosophy of science, but I focus on whether the connection of science and politics by the critical method is appropriate. Although, it is necessary to assume in the current investigation that Popper s critical method in political philosophy can suitably lead us to good political philosophical understanding, I leave open the possibility that Popper s critical method in philosophy of science is remediable, when we consider the notion of confirmation within the context of several testing of hypothesis. In addition to raising the well documented shortcoming in Popper s philosophy of science I evaluate in this presentation the potential enduring worth of critical rationalism, particularly at it concerns politics which is suitable for proper democratic social reconstruction. My mission is to suggest Popper s critical rationalism in order to show the continued relevance of his ideas in contemporary political philosophy. Popper, in turning from philosophy of science to political philosophy, had certain ideas in mind about the kind of open society that was anchored in liberal politics. His form of liberalism characterizes only of a certain kind of individualism which seems unsuitable for societies that are non-liberal. However, I argue that Popper s liberalism entails social aspects as well as individual one, and the former should be applicable to non-liberal political philosophical strands as well as to liberalism. The position I argue is that while there is an explicit theme of individualism in Popper s liberalism promoting the values of individual liberty and equality, it has an implicit social element by virtue of the emphasis in mutual criticisms with others and mutual respects for others that shapes his philosophy of critical rationalism. As mentioned above, Popper s critical rationalism is itself a product of both the individual and the social. The thesis that I defend in this paper is that the individualism in Popper s philosophy of politics is a commitment which follows from an analysis starting from the position of the individual rather than the community. Such a commitment does not, I argue, entail a disregard for community values of social relation or any selfless voluntary action that would benefit the community. This position challenges many Popper critics, such as Fred Eidlin, who see as the blind spot in Popper s political thought the problem of community (Eidlin 1997: 2). 3

4 Liberal Social Reform In arguing for a valid recognition of the explicit individualism and the implicit social element that are inherent in Popper s liberal politics, it is clear that this argument would also aid the appropriate application of his liberal ideas to political philosophical strands that are non-liberal. Modifying the argument in this way would significantly enhance Popper s project of the open society within liberal and non-liberal politics. This would particularly be in the use in nonliberal political philosophies with communitarian ideals as it would return social unity in general. The philosophical strand of Popper s critical rationalism is laid out in The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959), and Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963). They contain some of the central themes of critical rationalism in science as well as in his political philosophy. Popper s other texts such as The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), Vols.1 & 2, and The Poverty of Historicism (1957), contain the ideas that explicitly articulate Popper s defence of liberalism and the intellectual openness of society over against historicism: the belief in making predictions of the events of social development; and totalitarian ideologies that, according to Popper, were defended by the philosophies of Plato, Hegel and Marx. Popper labelled these three philosophers enemies of the open society and insisted that philosophy needed to be saved from such false prophets (Popper 1945b:229). The Open Society and Its Enemies and The Poverty of Historicism also contain Popper s application of the critical method of science to social reform. In these works, Popper defended what he termed piecemeal social engineering in direct opposition to utopian social engineering (Popper 1945a: 1, 1957 section 21: 64-70). Popper criticized totalitarian historicism in Plato s republicanism, in Hegel s philosophy of history, and in Marx s historical materialism contending that these works were historicist because they claimed the ability to foretell the future course of economic and power-political development and especially of revolutions (Popper 1945b:79). They were also holist in social reform, believing society could be controlled and restructured as a whole. In Popper s understanding, this implies utopian social engineering leading to the implementation of large-scale reform. Large-scale planning or centralised decision making often required a totalitarian political structure because this was a basic feature of a closed society. For Popper, democratic social reconstruction must be piecemeal in order to preserve individual freedom and to ameliorate human suffering. Popper recommended a liberal society where reform would be dealt with piecemeal with a view to learn from one s mistakes. 4

5 With these books, Popper claimed to have referenced the principles that brought about the transition from the tribal or closed society, with its submission to magical forces, to the open society which sets free the critical powers of man (Popper 1945a: xiii). It was an historical claim that the rational methods within society had taken humans beyond tribalism. In his Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography (1974), Popper remarked on what led to the writing of the two books: The Poverty and The Open Society were my war effort. I thought that freedom might become a central problem again, especially under the renewed influence of Marxism and the idea of large-scale planning (or dirigisme ); and so these books were meant as a defence of freedom against totalitarian and authoritarian ideas, and as a warning against the dangers of historicist superstitions. Both books, and especially The Open Society (no doubt the more important one), may be described as books on the philosophy of politics. Both grew out of the theory of knowledge of Logik der Forschung and out of my conviction that our often unconscious views on the theory of knowledge and its central problems ( What can we know?, How certain is our knowledge? ) are decisive for our attitude towards ourselves and towards politics. (Popper 1974: 115) This presentation explores the enduring significance of Popper s central commitment to the critical method in all his philosophical writings, with a particular focus on the value of this commitment to his works on politics. Each of the arguments that I will put forward in the various chapters show this commitment to the critical method by providing supports or modifications to the different themes of Popper s critical rationalism. It is pertinent to note that I have primarily structured Popper s ideas around the evaluation of four basic interrelated issues in his critical rationalism: (1) scientific method in politics; (2) piecemeal social engineering versus holistic/utopian social engineering; (3) politics of liberalism and (4) liberal-communitarian philosophy. Each of these issues engages scholars in two different senses. On the one hand, there are scholars who are concerned about the methodological validity of using the critical method in both science and politics. On the other hand, there are those who regard that the use of critical discussion as this operates in science as enhancing the open society. It is among the latter scholars that I belong. On the first side of the debate on the relation of scientific knowledge to society is Alan Ryan (1985, 2004) who was concerned with how Popper s philosophy of science informs his political philosophy. On the one hand, he agreed with Popper that for scientific advancement to flourish, it requires an open society or a liberal democratic environment. But, on the other, he 5

6 berated Popper for carrying on the Kantian 1 idea of what it is like to make sense of the world into his politics of liberalism. Ryan agreed that the connection between Popper s philosophy of science and his political liberalism cannot hold because the defence of political liberalism cannot be based upon an appeal to science. To Ryan, science does not, in any way, assist the functioning and practice of democratic politics. Harald Stelzer (2006) acknowledged the method of trial and error as one which connects Popper s science to his politics. This is important to social reform, and, equally, helps in the piecemeal transformation of institutions. However, Stelzer s objected that Popper s condition for critical discussion; argumentation and criticism as they take place in science do not, as a matter of fact, apply in social practice. What we can refer to as the rational method in science is not applicable in the functioning of social practice because of insufficiently rational process as in contrast with processes in the sciences. Gurol Irzik (1985) held a negative stance on Popper s contribution of critical method from science to politics. Irzik argued the thesis that although Popper s piecemeal approach is compatible with the logic of scientific discovery by changing few variables at a time, it is not plausible for changing society by making small changes. Irzik s claim is that in making small changes the magnitude of causes and effects in the piecemeal approach would be too tiny to be detected. Thus, causes and effects of such piecemeal changes would not necessarily commensurate with one another. What is important in Ryan, Stelzer, and Irzik s arguments is the recognition that while the critical method of science holds in terms of theories of falsification, conjecture and refutation, trial and error, it does not necessary have connections to how society might be better organized in Popper s philosophy. As I shall argue in chapter six while providing a modification to Popper s piecemeal social engineering I disagree with Irzik that Popper s piecemeal engineering is a scientific method which is best suited to the field of the natural sciences. My position is that Popper s piecemeal social engineering is only an approach which deals with social issues and democratic social transformation. The primarily focus of piecemeal social 1 Popper was a lifelong advocate of Immanuel Kant. There are some parallels between Popper s conception of the critical method in the open society, and Kant s conception of public use of reason. With Kant s objective of attaining a universal civil society administered in accord with the right (Kant 1983: 33), such height is achievable by the public use of reason : a conception that encourages the individual thinker to speak his/her mind freely without any external constraints. The phrase public use of reason refers to Immanuel Kant s (1784) response to the question what is Enlightenment? This is where he distinguished between public reason and private reason. See Onora O Neill (1989, 1990) 6

7 engineering is not scientific but to help the social reformers to learn from their mistakes and avoids holistic/utopian social planning. Popper preferred that urgent evils of society be dealt with piecemeal with a view to best learn from one s mistakes. No matter how slowly this piecemeal approach was applied, the outcomes were always preferable to the consequences of totalitarian holistic or utopian/largescale social planning approach. This idea is novel on the basis that Popper rejected the idea that the state should be managed by those who are deeply insightful about public good rather than dealing with the greatest and most urgent evils of society (Popper 1945a: 158). However, Graham Macdonald s (1995) observation, that the most appropriate reform to apply to political situations depends on the social condition at any point in time, aligns with the reasons that I shall introduce as modifications to Popper s piecemeal reform. This can be termed many pieces at once social engineering. Macdonald asserted that small scale changes may provoke a crisis where radical revolutionary reforms are required. While not rejecting Popper s piecemeal method, Macdonald feared that certain conservative actions (in terms of piecemeal reforms) by governments in some societies may bring about unintended revolutionary consequences because of their slow pace (Macdonald 1995: 18). Philosophers like Michael Freeman (1975), Thomas Avery (2000) and Eidlin (2007) were critical of Popper s distinction between piecemeal social engineering and utopian/holistic social engineering. Popper made this distinction when criticizing Plato, Hegel and Marx who recommended the reconstruction of society as a whole (Popper 1945a: 161). For Avery in particular, Popper was mistaken to have distinguished between piecemeal social engineering and holistic/utopian social engineering. To Avery, there is no need for the distinction because holistic/utopian social engineering is also involved in his method of piecemeal social engineering. Accordingly, the best method, Avery asserted, is the piecemeal utopian reform (Avery 2000:33). Although I shall properly address Avery s critique of Popper s piecemeal social engineering in chapter six it can be quickly pointed out that Avery s position on piecemeal utopian reform is vague. What Avery presents as an alternative to Popper s piecemeal social engineering is counterintuitive in the sense that it ignores the doctrine of negative utilitarianism that Popper established to protect against attempts for a blueprint in social policy. This debate about the status of piecemeal social engineering provides a context within which a philosophical evaluation for a suitable democratic social reform may be considered. I will argue in chapter six that this consideration would lead to a proposal for a modification of the 7

8 term to be many pieces at once social engineering. This modified term stipulates that Popper s idea of the logic of the situation 2 is applicable where the speed and scale of proposed reforms may require faster and sweeping changes. In all of these debates about Popper s political philosophy, what underlies the foundation for a philosophical justification of reform in Popper is built on his liberal political philosophy. Such themes as individual freedom, negative utilitarianism, state protectionism, piecemeal social engineering, and the open society, underpin his political liberalism. Scholars such as Shearmur have raised the question of what kind of liberal political order is entailed by Popper s philosophy of politics. That is, Shearmur had remarked about the difficulty in classifying the political ideas of The Open Society and Its Enemies. Those ideas seem incompatible with either liberalism or socialism in their traditional kind, and they are perhaps, closest to social democracy (Shearmur 1996: 114). It is within the context of Shearmur s remark that Bryan Magee (1973) portrayed Popper s liberal democracy as a unique form of social democracy. Magee s argument was that the kind of liberalism that Popper presented involves state intervention in political, economic and social life. So it is plainly a philosophy of social democracy. For Magee, Popper s views in political philosophy are anti-conservative as well as anti-totalitarian. Popper s political philosophy is a philosophy of social change, change which is not violent, but rational and humane (Magee 1973: 75). The problem that these scholars have in placing Popper s political thought within the conventional liberal canon reflects the unique standing of Popper s politics of liberalism from all other liberals. Many other liberals such as John Rawls (1993), Thomas Franck (2001), Fernando Tesrn (2003), J.L. Holzgrefe (2003), and Richard Miller (2003), more expressed the liberal view that human freedom is sacrosanct and that universal human rights are applicable to everybody everywhere. This kind of liberal view is directed at non-liberal ideas, particularly 2 One of Popper s contributions to the social sciences is his theme on logic of the situation or situational analysis. Discussions on the theme are found in The Poverty of Historicism (1957: 149) as it relates to methodological individualism, institutionalism, and the rationality principle. In The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945b: 90), the logic of situation or situational analysis is detailed as an alternative to psychologism. However, comprehensive information of what Popper detailed as the logic of situation or situation analysis is found in an article he presented at the Department of Economics at Harvard University on 26 th February 1963 titled: Models, Instruments, and Truths- the Rationality Principle in the Social Sciences. The logic of situation or situation analysis, as presented by Popper, entails how individual actions can be explained depending on a typical situational model (Popper 1994: 168) or what is implicit in the social situation (p.169). See the article mentioned above in Popper s The Myth of the Framework (1994). This gives further information on the example of a pedestrian called Richard who intended to cross a street that Popper used for illustration of the kind of situation analysis that Popper had in mind. 8

9 communitarianism, for their attempt to locate individual freedom within the purview of the common good of the community. However, unlike most liberals, Popper has a unique brand of politics that treats individual primacy as sacrosanct; yet, individual freedom makes more sense when it is recognized within the confines of society (Popper 1953, ff. 1962: 297, Popper ff. Magee 1973: 64-65). This simply explains that the place of the individual must be located within the growth and progress of its community. This view represents the individual and social aspects of Popper s liberalism. This view of Popper does not categorize him in the realm of communitarians such as Charles Taylor (1979), Michael Sandel (1982) and Alasdair MacIntyre (1984), he equally believed in upholding the conception that the identity of the self exists within its community of others. Popper s attempt to provide adequate room for both the individual and the social in his philosophy of politics requires a balance between liberalism and communitarianism. My reason for attempting to bridge the gap between these two natural political opposites is anchored on an evaluation of the prospects that Popper s kind of liberalism allows non-liberal societies to become liberal and yet retains the ideals of those values of community and social cohesion that enhances human relationship and tolerance. With Popper s social aspect, I agree with communitarians that the self must be located within a social environment but I diverge from them for their failure to explain what kind of social environment they would favour within a society which is liberal in terms of its institutions. This is a kind of liberal social reform or what I call liberal-communitarian philosophy. With the liberal-communitarian philosophy that I propose, I will enhance Popper s project of the open society. This is a new thinking in political philosophy which seeks to uphold the liberal conception of individual rights and freedom, while, at the same time recognizes the social dependence of the individuals to their community. Both conceptions constitute the individual and the social elements of Popper s critical rationalism. With these conceptions, there is no threat to individual freedom, and it considers social relations as a condition necessary for the growth and progress of the individual with others in the community. 9