Popper's world 3 & human creativity

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse Karl Popper's conception of ‘three worlds’, and especially the problem of world 3—the world of objective knowledge. Firstly, I try to explain Popper's turn to ontological questions which I link to his antipsychologism and to issues raised by the development of logic after World War II. I then consider Popper's concept of the autonomy of world 3 and his attempt to introduce world 3 as a world of knowledge without a knowing subject. I conclude that Popper did not succeed in unifying his central idea of autonomy of knowledge with the requirement of the creative role of the critical subject carrying out the evolution of knowledge. I see the core of this contradiction especially in his co‐existing ideas of the timeless existence of world 3 and the elimination of the subject from it. The attempt to desubjectivize the realm of objective knowledge leads to a philosophically unbalanced standpoint which presupposes a creative subject and at the same time neglects it. Finally, I question Popper's account of the growth of world 3. Popper considers only cognitive motivations, and excludes a broad range of motivating factors which originate in the problems which we face in our lives, and affect our cognitive interests in world 3.