"Bacon's Problem" And Its Influence

"Bacon's Problem" means the problem of prejudice, or we can simply say that it is people's attitude to prejudice. It is involved in the important epistemology problem about cognition's possibility and the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity, and it has significantly academic meaning. This paper is divided into four parts and discusses the development course, significance and predicament of "Bacon's Problem", mainly on Bacon, Popper, and Gadamer.The first part mainly analyzes the first embodiment of "Bacon's Problem". Although Bacon didn't definitely put forward the philosophy concept of "Bacon's Problem", his theory contained the thought of this aspect, or we can say it was the first embodiment of "Bacon's Problem". In the book , Bacon systematically analyzed how the idola or prejudice could cause cognition's mistakes, and he was caught in a dilemma: On the one hand, he definitely advocated that the cognition may make mistakes if it was on the basis of prejudice, and on the other, the cognition was always inevitably on the basis of prejudice. On the basis of his paradoxical thought of the prejudice's position and effect in cognition, Bacon also had a paradoxical attitude in the solution of the prejudice problem. According to the cognitive principle in virtue of experience, Bacon thought that all cognition starts from our sense, the cognition's core is the description of the subjective nature, and human's cognition activity is a reflection activity. However, our sense is not fully reliable, its reflection is objective instead of perfect and accurate, and it may courses the prejudice. So we should combine our rationality with sense by using experiential induction, overcome the sense's limitation and eliminate the prejudice. Furthermore, in some places Bacon also admit that prejudice was impossible to eliminate, and the purpose of "doctrine of four idolas" was only to remind us of the prejudice's hindrance to the truth.The second part discusses Popper's rediscovery of "Bacon's Problem" and his solution. Popper called Bacon's theory as a dogmatism and criticized its mistake. In this process, Popper rediscovered Bacon's paradoxical attitude in prejudice question, and put forward "Bacon's Problem" very clearly, which meant the contradictory problem between the prejudice and the knowledge obtained from experience. He believed that the prejudice was a normal phenomenon and starting point of people's cognition instead of a barrier to people's correct cognition, and the contradiction between prejudice and knowledge obtained from experience which didn't exist. So he thought that it was insignificant to confirm a theory, and the observation can only falsificate it. According to this view, Popper put forward his falsificationism resolution of "Bacon's Problem". Popper divided his solution into two steps: The first step was to put forward a standard of refutability, a standard of falsification, or a standard of examination. The second step was to propose that the observation can only falsificate a theory instead of confirm it. Certainly, Popper has not truly solved"Bacon's problem". He thought that our observation can't confirm a theory, and its purpose was to find out the theory's weakness, then falsificate it. So he only tried to solve the contradiction by removing it, so in fact he has cancelled"Bacon's problem".The third part mainly introduces Gadamer's attention and hermeneutic solution of "Bacon's Problem". On the basis of his criticism to Bacon'natural interpretive method, Gadamer called the prejudice as"Vorsicht", and expounded his theory of"Vorsicht". Influenced by Heidegger, Gadamer thought that all understanding contains certain"Vorsicht", and"Vorsicht"suffered an injustice treatment because of the influence of Didacticism. On the basis of the contradictory between the authority and rationality, Didacticism thought that it was their rule to weaken the authority, so as to upgrade rationality's position. Therefore, when Didacticism put everything in front of the rationality and tried to remove all the Vorsicht in people's thought, it inadvertently set up a Vorsicht for themselves: regarding the rationality as authority's final source instead of the tradition. So, Gadamer has showed the shortage of Vorsicht in Didacticism, and defended the validity of Vorsicht. Furthermore, Gadamer recognized that there were two kinds of Vorsicht, namely "real Vorsicht" and "false Vorsicht"; he affirmed the "real Vorsicht", meanwhile definitely expressed his attitude to eliminate those "false Vorsichts ". In order to do this, he put the Zeitenabstand on an outstanding position. He proposed that Zeitenabstand distinguished "real Vorsicht" from "false Vorsicht" in the comprehension process itself, and those "false Vorsichts " was eliminated, thereby finishing his hermeneutic solution of "Bacon's Problem".The fourth part sums up the significance and predicament of "Bacon's Problem". "Bacon's Problem" has great theory significance. Firstly, though the philosophers'views are different, they all have honored human's gnosia, and expanded the cognition theory. Secondly, "Bacon's Problem" treats the problem about the cognition's possibility and objectivity, and negates the existence of absolute objectivity. Finally, the research in "Bacon's Problem" offers a chance of modern cognition's turning. Though Bacon, Popper and Gadamer all have analyzed "Bacon's Problem" in their way and put forward their solution, they didn't really finish this task. The reason is that their trains of thought have some problem. Bacon and Popper both studied this problem from the angle of epistemology, and analyzed whether there was some relationship between the reason why the cognition makes mistake and the prejudice, so that they can decide their attitude to the prejudice. Different from them, Gadamer explored this problem by returning himself to the prejudice again, and studied "Bacon's Problem" in terms of the ontology. However, Gadamer didn't solve the problem between the prejudice and the cognition's subjectivity, and absolutized the prejudice from the angle of the ontology. Obviously, if we want to solve "Bacon's Problem", we must return ourselves to the prejudice, to the ontology, and blend ourselves into the world.