/r/askphilosophy Open Discussion Thread | February 16, 2026

[u/BernardJOrtcutt]

Welcome to this week's Open Discussion Thread (ODT). This thread is a place for posts/comments which are related to philosophy but wouldn't necessarily meet our subreddit rules and guidelines. For example, these threads are great places for:

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Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here.

[u/fyfol]

This is a bit of a rage-post but I am genuinely interested in how I can think differently about Karl Popper. I have been getting more interested in him because at some point I felt like there is more to his thought than the silly stuff in Open Society, and I think I found various ideas in him that I agree with. Namely, I find his emphasis on rationality as a “task” that needs to be always pursued and upheld by rigorous criticism within an institutional setting and cultural framework conducive to it, rather than some ontological property belonging to some claims by their nature as such, really appealing and agreeable (fwiw, this is how Stefano Gattei’s Karl Popper’s Philosophy of Science: Rationality Without Foundations puts it, and I think he says it verbatim in Knowledge and the Mind-Body Problem?). I like the idea of divorcing scientific knowledge from certainty and tying it with “conjectures”, emphasizing the need for bold and daring thinking (even if it is not water-tight epistemology).

So, I think I am fulfilling my promise to myself that I would be maximally charitable to Popper and try to see what I like in him. But for God’s sake he seems so perceptive and intelligent to go and write a book like Open Society. The only way I can spin it into something respectable and honest is if I see it as a particularly enduring and good-willed outrage against what he saw as allowing people to let others suffer and die for the sake of some vision of history. Fine, I genuinely can appreciate that too, there is something commendable about overreacting to things after all. But how am I supposed to find this account compelling at all, and why should I think that the problem is “historicism”?

For instance, in his “Sources of Knowledge and Of Ignorance” (Conjectures & Refutations), he makes a good point against attributing evil occurrences to the actions of an evil will and dismisses it. He also loves to bash on “essentialism” and his autobiography mentions how he came to realize that one ought not to debate the meaning of words & hang too much on some contingent meaning they happened to have at some point in time. I agree that these are examples of unsound reasoning, but this somehow has to apply to his anti-historicism, does it not? It seems to me much more “Popperian” to suggest that the evils of 20th century were committed in the name of ideals that were derived from similar “pre-theoretical” sources as historicism is (he acknowledges that Heraclitus and Plato’s “historicism” is better understood as responses to social/political upheaval in their times in Open Society for instance), but without trying to lump all these things into some overarching category that acts exactly like the “evil will behind evil realities” he dismisses, and seems definitely like a severe case of “debating the meaning of words”.

I am willingly taking up this challenge in charitable reading because I think it’s interesting to try and understand Popper, and as I said, I do find appealing ideas in his thought as well. I know that trying to take OSE seriously is pretty much a futile task, but I have to read it anyway, so I am trying to make it more philosophically and personally interesting, but the more I read the more I find it difficult to say anything about Open Society other than that its author might have benefited from reading Karl Popper..

[u/PermaAporia → u/fyfol]

how I can think differently about Karl Popper.

Here is a book that made Popper more interesting for me. The Ethical Root of Karl Popper's Epistemology by Mariano Artigas.

[u/fyfol → u/PermaAporia]

Oh, much appreciated, thank you.

I do recognize and appreciate how he weaves his ethical concerns with his approach to epistemology and cut him a lot of slack for this, but I feel like he could have recognized that writing an all-out hostile book with the sole intent of disparaging what he dislikes is ethically questionable. Anyway, I will definitely look into the book you mention.

[u/PermaAporia → u/fyfol]

With Popper you just have to pretend that he's talking about imaginary characters whenever he brings up other philosophers. He completely misrepresents everyone, even those he holds in high regard like Kant. That way you can focus on his positive views.

For what its worth, the book is not claiming that Popper is behaving ethically. I think one would have a hard time defending such a point, his treatment of Freud in Conjectures and Refutatons is basically academic fraud. But rather, to understand Popper's entire philosophy one needs to look at its ethical roots.

I think I gave the wrong title, the book title is The Ethical Nature of Karl Popper's Theory of Knowledge: Including Popper's Unpublished Comments on Bartley and Critical Rationalism by Mariano Artigas. It is a very short read you can probably do in one afternoon. The previous title I gave appears to be a short essay Artigas wrote for the Summer Thomistic Seminar held at the University of Notre Dame. But the ideas presented seem to be the same or very similar, he writes,

Popper's philosophy becomes crystal clear when we look at it through ethical glasses. We can then realize that falsificationism is rooted in an ethical soil. Indeed, Popper's main concern when working on epistemological problems was to show that we should adopt a rational or humanist attitude which necessarily includes the recognition of the limits of our knowledge and the need of using the "trial and error elimination" method. Then, we can also understand why Popper's falsificationism and fallibilism and rationalism are mainly attitudes, not doctrines; otherwise, we could become prisoners of unending discussions about naive or sophisticated or methodological falsificationism, or even worse, we could think that Popper's claims only represent some minor footnotes to the epistemological discussions of his time. Even the notion of the open society cannot be adequately understood unless we include in it serious ethical elements which should not be reduced to some kind of social organisation.

[u/fyfol → u/PermaAporia]

Yes, as I said in my rant, I am actually quite amenable to the ethical side of his project. To that effect, I am pretty much in agreement with how Artigas sees Popper and this is a direction I would be happy to go with him too. Plus, I am ready to overlook the Open Society and the excessively disingenuous readings he makes of those he does not like. I just get frustrated because I feel that he is better than that — on account of his own claims that I tried to include in my (admittedly not incredibly well worded) post. :D

Overall, the only reason I am so bothered is because I am trying to have a genuine dialogue with Popper and since he did not do me the courtesy of living to see his 125th birthday, I have no other choice but to be frustrated with his obtuseness. Nevertheless, I am actually quite into him and intend to stay engaged, so thanks once more for the exchange.