[lit-ideas] Re: Hands Across The Bay
- From: "Donal McEvoy" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "donalmcevoyuk" for DMARC)
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2017 18:12:17 +0000 (UTC)
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.”>
This apparent contradiction is resolved by understanding Selz' psychology as an
'anti-psychologism psychology'.
Popper's 'anti-psychologism' never denied the existence of psychology or even
'the autonomy of psychology' (i.e. that psychology had problems that were not
collapsible into problems in other domains). Popper was against that aggressive
strain in psychology that would assert that the problems of other domains, such
as history or epistemology or sociology, were collapsible into problems of
human psychology) - and when he defended "The Autonomy of Sociology" in the
chapter of that title in _The Open Society_ it is clear that this is his line
of attack.
This becomes allied and reinforced by the view that human psychology is, at
least in part, a result of human processing of "objective knowledge" - where
"knowledge" is no longer itself a mere upshot of underlying psychology but has
objective properties that may be objectively investigated.
DL
From: "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, 15 December 2017, 13:39
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Hands Across The Bay
For the record, it seems Hark’s references to W2 and W3 – I see noexplicit
reference to W1 – appear at the very end of the essay. Hark plays withthe
expression, “the best of both worlds,” which works if one sort of dismissesW1 –
“the best of the triad of worlds,” or, “the best of the fourfold set ofworlds”
(if we take rather seriously Popper’s idea of morality as constitutinga W4)
does not seem to have quite the same ring to it. Thus, Hark argues that
Popper's early embrace of the theories ofthe psychologist Selz, despite
Popper’s later anti-psychologism and his generallydismissive attitude towards
psychologists may be explainable, Hark notes, interms of Selz’s specific
approach to problem-solving, via a realistic LOGIC orEPISTEMOLOGY developed out
of Meinong's “Gegenstands Theorie.” Indeed, Hark concludes, it is giventhe
formidable [Hark’s adjective] ABSTRACTION of Selz’s psychological theory,that
in fact “approaches” (again, Hark’s wording) a “world-3-based” descriptionof
problem-solving. For, Hark notes that Selz’stheory, in fluctuating between
being a psychological (W2) and a logical (W3) approachto 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 world3 items, or a theory of world 3 which is also assumed to
be valid for what happensin the world 2 of psychology. Hark adds for effect
thathardly any other “psychological theory” than Selz’s could also serve Popper
justas 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 Kritikdes
modernen Nominalismus. Wien. –. 1882. Hume-Studien II: ZurRelationstheorie.
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
InstituteArchives, The Karl Popper Papers, box 12, file 11). –. 1928. Zur
Methodenfrageder Denkpsychologie. Ph.D. diss., University of Vienna. –. 1931.
“DieGedächtnispflege unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Selbsttätigkeit”. Die Quelle
81:607-619. –. 1935. Logik der Forschung: Zur Erkenntnistheorie der
modernenNaturwissenschaft. Vienna (Engl. transl.: The Logic of Scientific
Discovery.London 1959). –. 1972. “The Bucket and the Searchlight: Two Theories
ofKnowledge”. In Objective Knowledge. Oxford: 341-362. –. 1974. Unended Quest:
AnIntellectual Autobiography. London. –. 1979. Die beiden Grundprobleme
derErkenntnistheorie [1930-33]. Ed. T. E. Hansen. Tübingen.SELZ, O. 1910. “Die
psychologische Erkenntnistheorieund das Transzendenzproblem”. Archiv für die
gesamte Psychologie 16: 1-110. –.1913. Über die Gesetze des geordneten
Denkverlaufs. Eine experimentelleUntersuchung. Stuttgart. –. 1922. Zur
Psychologie des produktiven Denkens unddes Irrtums. Bonn. –. 1924. Die Gesetze
der produktiven und reproduktivenGeistestätigkeit. Kurzgefasste Darstellung.
Bonn. (Engl. transl. in Frijda / deGroot 1980, 20-76).
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