A META-ETHICAL INTERPRETATION OF KARL POPPER’S CRITICAL RATIONALISM: TOWARDS THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL GROUNDINGS OF HUMAN FLOURISHING

Abstract

This Paper attempts to unveil the ethical inkling of critical rationalism ,which is the logic of knowledge and science in Karl Popper’s epistemological edifice. Such endeavour transcends two philosophical positions: First and foremost, the contention that Karl Popper is not an ethicist , given he did not write systematically on ethics and secondly, the exclusive grounding of moral motivation on metaphysics, anthropology, and psychology. To proceed, we will examine the concept of critical rationalism in Karl Popper’s epistemology, in order to deduce its moral implications. Thus, after getting across the basic articulations of Popper’s critical rationalism, we establish our contention that the moral innuendos of critical rationalism constitute evidence that morality can also be based on epistemology. As a result, we can logically proceed from epistemological attitudes and virtues to infer moral values. This paper is then another challenge for ethicists, philosophers of the mind, and psychologists to rethink the question of the relationship between the will (nerve-centre of morality) and the intellect (faculty of understanding or knowing).