For the record, it seems Hark’s references to W2 and W3 – I see no explicit
reference to W1 – appear at the very end of the essay. Hark plays with the
expression, “the best of both worlds,” which works if one sort of dismisses W1
– “the best of the triad of worlds,” or, “the best of the fourfold set of
worlds” (if we take rather seriously Popper’s idea of morality as constituting
a W4) does not seem to have quite the same ring to it.
Thus, Hark argues that Popper's early embrace of the theories of the
psychologist Selz, despite Popper’s later anti-psychologism and his generally
dismissive attitude towards psychologists may be explainable, Hark notes, in
terms of Selz’s specific approach to problem-solving, via a realistic LOGIC or
EPISTEMOLOGY developed out of Meinong's “Gegenstands Theorie.”
Indeed, Hark concludes, it is given the formidable [Hark’s adjective]
ABSTRACTION of Selz’s psychological theory, that in fact “approaches” (again,
Hark’s wording) a “world-3-based” description of problem-solving.
For, Hark notes that Selz’s theory, in fluctuating between being a
psychological (W2) and a logical (W3) approach to problem-solving, turns out to
be, dare we say, “the best of both worlds” [whatever is Hark’s meta-implicature
here] for Popper.
Hark describes this ‘best’ of both worlds in the last but final, disjunctive,
utterance to his essay: a theory of world 2 cast in terms of world 3 items, or
a theory of world 3 which is also assumed to be valid for what happens in the
world 2 of psychology.
Hark adds for effect that hardly any other “psychological theory” than Selz’s
could also serve Popper just as well as the basis for Popper’s theory of
“objective,” i.e. a very “epistemology without a knowing subject”.
Cheers,
Speranza
REFERENCES
MEINONG, A. 1877. Hume-Studien I: Zur Geschichte und Kritik des modernen
Nominalismus. Wien. –. 1882. Hume-Studien II: Zur Relationstheorie. Wien. –.
1899. “Über Gegenstände höherer Ordnung”. Zeitschrift für Psychologie und
Physiologie der Sinnesorgane 21.
POPPER, K. 1927. ‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis’ in der Erziehung: Eine
pädagogisch-strukturpsychologische Monographie. Vienna (Hoover Institute
Archives, The Karl Popper Papers, box 12, file 11). –. 1928. Zur Methodenfrage
der Denkpsychologie. Ph.D. diss., University of Vienna. –. 1931. “Die
Gedächtnispflege unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Selbsttätigkeit”. Die Quelle 81:
607-619. –. 1935. Logik der Forschung: Zur Erkenntnistheorie der modernen
Naturwissenschaft. Vienna (Engl. transl.: The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
London 1959). –. 1972. “The Bucket and the Searchlight: Two Theories of
Knowledge”. In Objective Knowledge. Oxford: 341-362. –. 1974. Unended Quest: An
Intellectual Autobiography. London. –. 1979. Die beiden Grundprobleme der
Erkenntnistheorie [1930-33]. Ed. T. E. Hansen. Tübingen.
SELZ, O. 1910. “Die psychologische Erkenntnistheorie und das
Transzendenzproblem”. Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie 16: 1-110. –. 1913.
Über die Gesetze des geordneten Denkverlaufs. Eine experimentelle Untersuchung.
Stuttgart. –. 1922. Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums.
Bonn. –. 1924. Die Gesetze der produktiven und reproduktiven Geistestätigkeit.
Kurzgefasste Darstellung. Bonn. (Engl. transl. in Frijda / de Groot 1980,
20-76).
