00:00:00.000 One hour and four uncertain truth, and in the last program of the series,
00:00:04.000 a Karl Popper and Lord Anthony Quinton discuss knowledge.
00:00:09.000 Our situation, if we don't know and want to obtain knowledge,
00:00:17.000 can be compared with that of a black man in a dark home who looks for a black head,
00:00:33.000 He can only feel with his hands, perhaps with his feet.
00:00:44.000 I think that is the fundamental situation of any organism trying to get knowledge.
00:01:23.000 Well, sir Karl, you've covered a great range of subjects in your writings over the years,
00:01:29.000 but I think you'd probably agree that the basis of everything you've had to say in the wide array of philosophical topics you've treated
00:01:38.000 is your views about knowledge, and these are of an original and radical character,
00:01:45.000 and perhaps the best way of bringing out what's special about them is to contrast them
00:01:50.000 with the conventional, more or less traditional view of knowledge.
00:01:55.000 People think usually that we acquire knowledge by opening our eyes and our ears,
00:02:27.000 and they believe that we record this like a camera.
00:02:35.000 In my opinion, if we wish to get knowledge, we have to have a problem.
00:02:42.000 It has to be knowledge of something. We have to find out something.
00:02:47.000 We don't have to wait for information to stream into us,
00:02:58.000 but we have to be inquisitive if we want to get knowledge.
00:03:03.000 If we were passive, we would gain a confused mass of sensations or something like that,
00:03:15.000 which we would hardly be able to understand and to convert into what one may call knowledge.
00:03:27.000 Quite apart from that perception is not really in my opinion,
00:03:42.000 The role of perception is to inform us about a momentary situation in our environment,
00:03:57.000 but we couldn't really interpret our perceptions without knowing much more about our environment,
00:04:08.000 namely whether we are in a house or whether we are in a glacier.
00:04:21.000 this wider knowledge of a frame in which we orientate ourselves,
00:04:30.000 and the momentary perception which gives us information about the situation at that particular moment,
00:04:42.000 and it is only this situation in which we can use our perception.
00:04:51.000 So we have theoretical knowledge, and if you lack the momentary practical challenge
00:05:02.000 to our theoretical knowledge, and here comes perception in.
00:05:09.000 I suspect that some defenders of the traditional conception would say,
00:05:13.000 well, we admit that there is activity in that we admit that people have to attend that one can easily fail to register
00:05:23.000 masses of things that are in principle perceivable because of failure of attention.
00:05:28.000 They would admit that in seeking knowledge of the world round us,
00:05:32.000 we engage in more or less exploratory activity or manipulate things,
00:05:37.000 and I think in particular they'd say, wherever we look around in the world,
00:05:43.000 we're always ready to draw inferences of a certain kind from what we see using our background knowledge.
00:05:50.000 And so they would argue perhaps that they don't see that you're really correcting them by saying
00:05:57.000 that the mind is active in the pursuit of knowledge.
00:06:01.000 You mentioned that traditionally it is said that with the activity comes in
00:06:16.000 because we draw inferences from our perceptions, let us see,
00:06:24.000 but it is also at once said yes, but with that there is the danger of error.
00:06:32.000 So if you admit activity, you do admit our human erroneous moves,
00:06:48.000 It was for this reason, I think, that the traditional theory stress the possibility
00:06:58.000 that is to see the data, it spoke about sense data.
00:07:07.000 So we are given certain things and that it's not active, but there we are passive.
00:07:16.000 We have given certain things and as this given knowledge,
00:07:24.000 this is to be taken as a really certain walk bottom on this we can build.
00:07:34.000 If we replace the given by our active intervention from the very beginning
00:07:43.000 or trying to solve problems from the very beginning, not passively waiting for what we have given,
00:07:54.000 then the uncertainty comes in even according to the traditional view of knowledge.
00:08:05.000 The interesting question that seems to me to arise here is why has it been thought
00:08:10.000 that we can attain certainty and in some sense should that we aren't doing our bit intellectually speaking
00:08:20.000 And I think one reason is perhaps emotional and if you agree with this,
00:08:23.000 that people find doubt an uncomfortable state of mind.
00:08:26.000 It's like sitting on a twisted cushion that you need to straighten out to be comfortable
00:08:32.000 or like passing your desk and seeing an unanswered letter or an unpaid bill,
00:08:38.000 a belief that to some extent rendered it, it's been rendered acceptable by your investigations
00:08:47.000 but has not been rendered certain is a piece of uncompleted business
00:08:52.000 in that it's susceptible to further improvement.
00:08:55.000 In my logic of scientific discovery has suggested that instead of building on the walk bottom
00:09:12.000 an edifice of knowledge which then will be absolutely certain what we have to do
00:09:21.000 is to drive piles in a swamp sufficiently deep to carry the building at least for some time
00:09:35.000 the building which we erect this kind of metaphor also indicates that we drive down from above
00:09:49.000 that is to say we have our theoretical knowledge.
00:09:54.000 This theoretical knowledge has to have a certain priority.
00:10:00.000 We come from up down the black man who looks for a black head in a dark room
00:10:14.000 At least knows something, at least knows his problem of finding the black head
00:10:24.000 that is the minimum he has to know and this is theoretical knowledge which is prior to the empirical knowledge,
00:10:36.000 the feeling of the head for which he is seeking.
00:10:43.000 The main instigation for the search of truth is really that we see new problems.
00:10:57.000 The discovery of new problems can be more important than the solution of the problem.
00:11:06.000 I think this is perhaps the most important thing inside and is the result of an attitude
00:11:20.000 which does not go for certainty but goes for where we feel for the uncertainty.
00:11:29.000 There are the problems where we do not find satisfaction, certainty, there we should go on digging.
00:11:41.000 All right, so you abandon certainty as an object because in effect it is a block.
00:11:47.000 It is the idea that you can achieve certainty, abstracts what the mind ought to be doing,
00:11:53.000 pursuing ever deeper into the know abilities of the world without any assumption
00:12:04.000 Fine, but it is all very well say the alternative is the search for truth
00:12:08.000 but to know that we are doing this more or less right that we are pushing in the right direction in this search
00:12:16.000 and we have to have some alternative to certainty, something in the nature of truth likeness,
00:12:23.000 probability, confirmation, support, justification, all ideas about which you have been very critical.
00:12:30.000 We need something like that to show us that we are pointed in the right direction.
00:12:39.000 We have to replace it by the search for truth in the form of criticism.
00:12:48.000 We have constantly to criticize our own theories, our own interpretations
00:12:56.000 and criticism of this kind which I have in mind could be called rational criticism
00:13:05.000 because it is criticism of our own theories in this interest of truth.
00:13:13.000 It must be impersonal, completely impersonal, a criticism.
00:13:20.000 It is criticism which asks itself have we not made a mistake, have we not overlooked something.
00:13:33.000 Can we not find thought in what we have thought interpreted, constructed, or whatever?
00:13:45.000 It is criticism as it were from inside in the sense that it is a criticism directed to improving our knowledge,
00:14:01.000 the knowledge which we have may be faulty and therefore should be improved through criticism.
00:14:18.000 The search for certainty is like erecting a wall around your castle
00:14:26.000 and build the wall higher and higher and higher. It will never be quite high enough to establish certainty.
00:14:36.000 So we have to buy a watchdog and we don't need such a high wall
00:14:47.000 That is this internal criticism which I have in mind.
