Rooting Philosophy in Non-Philosophical Problems

Where Is Popper When You Need Him?

As a practitioner, my thinking is rooted in the belief that you cannot go from books to problems, but the reverse, from problems to books. This approach incapacitates much of that career-building verbiage. A scholar should not be a library’s tool for making another library, as in the joke by Daniel Dennett.

Of course, what I am saying here has been said by philosophers before, at least by the real ones. The following remark is one reason I have inordinate respect for Karl Popper.

The degeneration of philosophical schools in its turn is the consequence of the mistaken belief that one can philosophize without having been compelled to philosophize by problems outside philosophy. … Genuine philosophical problems are always rooted outside philosophy and they die if these roots decay. … [emphasis mine] These roots are easily forgotten by philosophers who “study” philosophy instead of being forced into philosophy by the pressure of nonphilosophical problems.

Such thinking may explain Popper’s success outside philosophy, particularly with scientists, traders, and decision makers, as well as his relative failure inside of it. (He is rarely studied by his fellow philosophers; they prefer to write essays on Wittgenstein.)

Also note that I do not want to be drawn into philosophical debates with my Black Swan idea. What I mean by Platonicity is not so metaphysical. Plenty of people have argued with me about whether I am against “essentialism” (i.e., things that I hold don’t have a Platonic essence), if I believe that mathematics would work in an alternative universe, or some such thing. Let me set the record straight. I am a no-nonsense practitioner; I am not saying that mathematics does not correspond to an objective structure of reality; my entire point is that we are, epistemologically speaking, putting the cart before the horse and, of the space of possible mathematics, risk using the wrong one and being blinded by it. I truly believe that there are some mathematics that work, but that these are not as easily within our reach as it seems to the “confirmators.”