Beyond Wittgenstein's Poker

Book excerpt: "Munz argues that the later Wittgenstein and Popper ought to be seen as complementing one another. Popper believed that when truth is discovered meaning will take care of itself. However, since, in Popper's view, we can never verify a general proposition, we can never be certain of its truth. There must therefore be a way of understanding what it means even though we cannot be sure of its truth. The post-Tractatus Wittgenstein enables us to see how propositions are meaningful regardless of whether we can ascertain their truth and thus fills a gap in Popper's philosophy." "At the same time, Popper was able to make up a deficiency in Wittgenstein's later philosophy. While Wittgenstein had had it that meaningful propositions can be generated in any social order, Popper showed that if propositions are to be true as well as have meaning, the socio-political order in which they are put forward, has to be free and open.".