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The reception and influence of Popper’s philosophy of science and his political philosophy in Latin America have depended heavily on the translation of his major works originally published in German and English. Thus, for example, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, which was originally published in 1959, was translated into Spanish in 1962 and into Portuguese only in 1974. Similarly, The Open Society and Its Enemies, originally published in 1945, was translated into Spanish twelve years later in 1957 and into Portuguese in 1974. But apart from a discussion of the impact of the translations of his books, I also want to show that the political situation in some Latin American countries, for example, Chile, Cuba and Peru, has played a very important role in the introduction, reception and influence of Popper’s philosophy of science in general and his social and political thought in particular. Accordingly, the main purpose of this article is to examine the reception of Popper’s ideas in Latin America and give an account of his influence and legacy in some of the Latin American countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay.

Our analysis of Popper’s philosophy of science focuses on his concepts of tradition and situational analysis. These concepts represent innovative Popperian contributions to a historical and hermeneutical turn in philosophy of science that most of his critics, especially Kuhn, fail to recognize. According to his historical view, Popper conceives sciences as a complex of traditions in continuous transformation and progress by means of rational discussion of theories. In order to grasp the rational progress of scientific traditions, Popper proposes an original method that he calls “situational analysis”. This hermeneutical method seeks to understand the concepts, hypotheses, actions, practices, controversies and products that scientists made to solve problems in their specific historical contexts to improve the truth content of theories. In addition to his historical and hermeneutical turn, Popper also inquired about the social and political conditions for the progress of scientific traditions by means of intersubjective criticism of theories and conjectures. According to him, the rational discussion of ideas requires, as necessary conditions, plurality of ideas, intellectual humility, and freedom of thought and communication that can only exist in an open and democratic society. With these considerations, we may say that in addition to a historical and hermeneutical turn, Popper also contributed to a social and political turn in the philosophy of science

In this paper, I address the issue of the possible applicability of the ideas of Karl R. Popper’s social and political philosophy in the contemporary political life of postcolonial countries. Through reference to the reception of Popper’s philosophy in Central and Eastern Europe, I argue that Popper’s writings were effective in catalysing the political wholesale transformation by undermining Marxists’ pretensions to scientific status rather than through his anti-utopian and anti-revolutionary political recommendations. In the context of attempts to apply Popper’s ideas in postcolonial countries, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, I claim that the influence of Popper’s social thought on the politics of those countries may not be as effective as expected or desired.

This paper analyses social cognition by considering the analytic philosophy of mind, neurophenomenology and social neuroscience. Many social neuroscientists rely unconsciously on different philosophical answers to the question "how do we understand each other?". Consequently, we will compare the principal philosophical and experimental approaches to social cognition that have been proposed so far and join them in an integrationist account by taking into consideration the direct embeddedness of social interactors. First, the "theory theory" (T.T.) affirms that mindreading consists in inferring the other's mental state by observing his behaviour from a third-person perspective. A neural network called the "mentalizing system" (M.E.N.S.) underlies mindreading activities.Second, the Simulation Theory (S.T.) assumes that social cognition involves simulating the mental states of the other. The neural substrate for the simulatory activities is the "mirror neurons system" (i.e., M.N.S.). Both TT and S.T. are fastened to the "observer paradigm" since the experimental set-ups involve detecting the brain's activity of a participant observing or simulating someone else's movement, and intersubjective dynamics are not at play. Finally, the 2nd person approach invites to consider the other as the one who is directly intervening on our perception and is responsible for the meaning we assign to his mental states (cf. Schillbach et al., 2013). Consequently, Schilbach et al. (2013) have established an experimental setting that is "minimalist and naturalistic" because it focuses on basic kinds of embedded interactions such as mutual gaze. This paper argues that the philosophical theories underlying those approaches do not conflict with each other, but they highlight different moments of social interaction in real life. Indeed, their neural substrates partially overlap. Hence, we want to establish in which order these three moments of social interaction occur. We hold that a realistic phenomenology must consider second-person interactions as the beginning of a realistic phenomenology.