Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem

by Karl Popper

Based upon the Kenan Lectures that Karl Popper delivered at Emory University in 1969, Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem raises problems connected with human freedom, creativity, rationality, and the relationship between human beings and their actions. These are what Popper calls big issues - too big for easy answers, but too important to be ignored. In these lectures, and in the discussions that follow them, Sir Karl develops a theory of body-mind interaction. This theory involves evolutionary emergence, human language, and that realm of autonomous products of the human mind which Popper calls World 3. According to Popper, consciousness emerged in the course of evolution as a kind of control system for the body, like a driver is a control system for a car. Objective knowledge - the kind of knowledge that is found in books and libraries - then emerged in the course of evolution as a higher level control system for the mind. Simply put, objective knowledge is the mind's control system for critical problem solving. In this way, full consciousness - the kind of consciousness that humans can have - is anchored in World 3 and is closely linked to human language, problems, theories, and criticism. And it is mainly through this use of objective knowledge as a control system for critical problem solving that we are able to exercise our freedom, creativity, and rationality - first by making contributions, like science books and works of art, to World 3; and then by using these contributions to bring about changes in Worlds 1 and 2. The Kenan Lectures were well-attended and provoked lively discussions. This book is published in the same informal language in which they were originally delivered and so can be easily understood by a general audience.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Science

170 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1994

About the author

Sir Karl Raimund Popper, FRS, rose from a modest background as an assistant cabinet maker and school teacher to become one of the most influential theorists and leading philosophers. Popper commanded international audiences and conversation with him was an intellectual adventure—even if a little rough—animated by a myriad of philosophical problems. He contributed to a field of thought encompassing (among others) political theory, quantum mechanics, logic, scientific method and evolutionary theory.

Popper challenged some of the ruling orthodoxies of philosophy: logical positivism, Marxism, determinism and linguistic philosophy. He argued that there are no subject matters but only problems and our desire to solve them. He said that scientific theories cannot be verified but only tentatively refuted, and that the best philosophy is about profound problems, not word meanings. Isaiah Berlin rightly said that Popper produced one of the most devastating refutations of Marxism. Through his ideas Popper promoted a critical ethos, a world in which the give and take of debate is highly esteemed in the precept that we are all infinitely ignorant, that we differ only in the little bits of knowledge that we do have, and that with some co-operative effort we may get nearer to the truth.

Nearly every first-year philosophy student knows that Popper regarded his solutions to the problems of induction and the demarcation of science from pseudo-science as his greatest contributions. He is less known for the problems of verisimilitude, of probability (a life-long love of his), and of the relationship between the mind and body.

Popper was a Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the British Academy, and Membre de I'Institute de France. He was an Honorary member of the Harvard Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, and an Honorary Fellow of the London School of Economics, King's College London, and of Darwin College Cambridge. He was awarded prizes and honours throughout the world, including the Austrian Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold, the Lippincott Award of the American Political Science Association, and the Sonning Prize for merit in work which had furthered European civilization.

Karl Popper was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1965 and invested by her with the Insignia of a Companion of Honour in 1982.

(edited from http://www.tkpw.net/intro_popper/intr...)

Reviews

[Cam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Popper is the most important philosopher on epistemology (the theory of what knowledge is and how it's created). However, this collection, based on a set of six lectures he gave in the '60s, mainly discusses metaphysics.

This is probably non-essential Popper material. Anyone who isn't familiar with him should instead start with either David Deutsch's books or Popper's Conjectures and Refutations, Objective Knowledge, or The Myth of the Framework.

[Sam Reaves · Rating 4 out of 5]

From a series of lectures given by Popper in 1969 on his main themes of knowledge and its growth. Often pigeonholed as a philosopher of science, Popper was in fact a big-picture thinker, the greatest critic of totalitarian thought and the preeminent defender of the idea of objective truth. A little Popper is the best antidote there is to philosophical bullshit.

[AJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent material - popper's theories are clear and concise with a force behind them that most philosophers lack. Book is a collection of his lectures on his theory of 3 worlds and the mind-body problem (along with some additions to evolutionary theory) - q&a section is added to the end of each chapter or lecture, which can be a bit disjointed. Would recommend reading lecture portion straight through and returning to discussion sections later. Some questions have interesting answers and are worth reading.

[T. Tokunaga · Rating 5 out of 5]

【Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem / Karl Popper, ed. M. A. Notturno / 1994, Routledge】

--Although its reproduction maybe said to belong both to the world 1 [as a book] of physical things and to the world 3 of products of the mind, the play, Hamlet itself, belongs only to the third world. (P6)

Basically, even though the play Hamlet is a consequence of scenes and performances included in it, if one wasn't familiar with its iconography, it'd be very much an unfathomable body movements - it'd be even more obvious if it was like Noh play, for example, provided you know little about this Japanese, highly stylised performing arts from Medieval days.

This book somewhat shows us the literary part of Popper as a philosopher:

--And I will say that world 3, though originating with ourselves, is very largely autonomous. There may be many autonomous problems, arguments, and theorems of which we know nothing as yet - and they may never be discovered by us. (P30)

Or even something fusing the problem of training of actors and evolutionary biology in a very interesting style, just as taking evolutions not by 'fitting by genetics,' but 'adopting one's behaviours to genetics':

--But there are, of course, lots and lots of problems faced all the time by the various individuals, and these are behavioural problems. (P56)

--This is the mistaken philosophical theory that art is self-expression and communication - imitative communication, communication on the level of direct response, such as fear - that is exciting direct response. (P94)

--But accordion to the theory of solipsism, only I exist - so that in dreaming these works [Shakespeare and Michelangelo] I am, in fact, their creator. (P107)

[Patrícia Aboim · Rating 3 out of 5]

O livro descreve a teoria sobre o conhecimento de Karl Popper, explicada pelo próprio num seminário que foi transcrito através de gravações e alguns apontamentos do autor já após a sua morte.
É extremamente académico e, talvez por isso, bastante complexo. E, como o próprio defende, mesmo tendo entendido as palavras não estou certa de ter entendido todo o seu conteúdo, até porque o P1 (problema para o qual pretende encontrar uma solução com esta teoria) rapidamente se tranformou no P2 (novo problema que advém de pensar sobre esta teoria).

[Catherine J. Calogero · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clearly written. Describes Popper's view of knowledge (that he calls World 3), but does not really address the body-mind problem (i.e. how matter can generate consciousness); he only posits that consciousness arises thru natural selection (well, duh! What doesn't?). However, he mentions smthng very interesting that I did not know: that Hegel thought electrons hd sm sort of basic consciousness; THAT cd indeed explain how matter is able to generate consciousness. To be explored!