Paul Feyerabend and Epistemological Anarchy

Dear Orlando, I appreciate your comment. However, I believe that implicitly Feyerabend does not really mean that ANYTHING goes. For example, when he was confronted with some statements regarding Aristotle, he first read Aristotle (which is pretty time-consuming task) before building his arguments. His most famous book "Against Method" uses a lot of reasoning and it is clear that he knows what he is talking about. So his method is reasoning built on profound knowledge. I believe that this contradicts "anything goes".

Orlando M Lourenço

Dear Horst.

I can see that you are more acquainted with Feyerabend's thinking than me. Diversity is, in principle, good for research. Even thoough, as I said, my worldview accords more with Popper's than Feyerebend's epistemological assumptions.

Best regards,

Orlando

Dear Orlando,

do you know that Feyerabend was a former student of Popper, but later turned against him? I believe that Popper was extremely smart, but I prefer the pluralist worldview of Feyerabend ;-) Reading his work is always a revelation, but it takes a lot of time. I guess that he is most likely the most misunderstood philosopher of science (which was partly his fault).

Hi Horst, so if you were to recommend somebody to read Feyerabend, what do you recommend reading? I assume 'Against Method' but the epistemological anarchy concept seems interesting whatever that means!

Hi Michael, you should definitely start with "Against Method". I started reading this book because I was interested in methodology and, just by reading the title, I expected something completely different. It took me a while to get the main message and then I read it a second time. I believe that "against method" is as misleading as "epistemological anarchy". Feyerabend enjoyed to be provocative and so he used terms such as these and others (e.g., dadaism) to describe his position. However, this does not do him justice. I then started reading other books and papers (unfortunately, some of them are only published in German). "Tyranny of science" and "Killing time" are examples for really interesting books that are also available in English.

btw: I already got four rejoinders to my own paper in DATA BASE and and I am overwhelmed by the positive response so far. However, there was also some criticism such as that, for example, "epistemological anarchy" is unclear. I am currently working on a paper in which I strive to clarify a couple of things ;-)

Thanks Horst, much appreciated. Have you a reference to your paper or a DOI? (Apologies if I am missing the obvious!)

Hi Michael, here is the DOI and the link. If you cannot access the paper, please let me know.

1. 10.1145/3229335.3229342

https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3229342

This is a rather short paper, and so far I already got four rejoinders (all published in the same journal). This is really flattering and I did not expect such a positive (and critical) response. The editor asked me to write another paper, in which I can clarify the fuzzy terms, such as "epistemological anarchy". It is really hard to squeeze the complex thinking of Feyerabend into just a few pages.

Thanks Horst, no problem logging in with the institution and getting a PDF! Certainly looks something that every philosopher of science needs to know about :-)

You are welcome, Michael. Yes, I fully agree with you. All of the big names (e.g., Popper, Kuhn) were definitely very smart guys, but Feyerabend has simply the best fit for the social sciences, which is ironic, since his background was in the natural sciences (astronomy, physics). But much too often social scientists tend to follow a "paradigm" (e.g., falsification), which does not really fit very well in a different context. In my next paper on Feyerabend I will elaborate more on that. I am really looking forward to writing it ;-)

Look forward to seeing that too, my research is very focused on the philosophy of science and I am buried deep in Quine at the moment :-)

I will let you know as soon as I have finished the paper. The submission deadline is December 1st ;-) Quine is also very interesting, as far as I can tell. I briefly cover him in the PhD course I teach, but I do not really know much about him.

Martin, I fully agree with you. And it is not only philosophers. It can be economists, sociologists, and even statisticians, ... All too often a 1000-page book is reduced into a handful of tenets and most of the content gets lost. Currently I have Adam Smith on my "to read" list....

I do not know Ludwig Fleck yet, but just put a book of his into my shopping basket ;-)

@Lakatos and Feyerabend: Yes, I know about the underlying story of "Against Method" (I have read it ;-)), and I currently have "For and Against Method" in front of me, which includes Lakatos' lectures and the correspondence between him and Feyerabend. Highly recommended!

Stephen I. Ternyik

Kropotkin was not misunderstood in czarist Russia; PF was also not misunderstood by the academic nomenclature. Mr. Feyerabend is right in his democratic point to promote methodical pluralism, because scientific hierarchy is based on methodical monoculture. Especially in the medical profession, this a matter of death or life, when alternative therapies are not considered for the reason to profit from disease. The power structure in any given human society is based on methodical uniformity; so, PF was very well 'understood' and rejected.

Orlando M Lourenço

Dear Horst,

To be sincere, when I read Paul Feyerabend's book "Against Method" I was a bit disappointed, maybe because I am a fan, say, of Popper's idea of falsifiability or falsification. I see that you have a deeper knowledge of Paul Feyerabend than I have. I know of no great mind that has not been misunderstood. Fortunately, as Charles Darwin once remarked "great is the power of misinterpretation; but the history of ideas shows us that this power does not endure for long". Puralist worldviews are much attractive, and I like them, for example, in the political domain. Even though they do not fall prey to the postmodernist claim that "anything goes", they run this risk in the scientific domain. In the scientific domain there are theories that are better than other ones. Popper, Laudan, and Lakatos, to cite three examples, espouse, I think, this idea. Does Paul Feyerabend also espouse this idea? As a psychologist I have to think of myself as a "soft scientist". If we think of pluralism, then psychology is a telling example for it has a myriad of theories. However, if the number of theories were a criterion of scientific progress, then psychology would be, say, the queen of sciences. This, I know is not the case. Will it be a mere coincidence that Paul Feyeraband is more invoked by social scientists than say, by "hard" scientists"?

Let me end by saying that, although I am a senior researcher, I am quite willing to learn from you about Feyeraband and other epistemologists.

Best regards,

Orlando

Dear Stephen, you make an interesting point. I just realized that there are different forms of "being misunderstood". First, it could mean that the writings of Feyerabend (and many others) are reduced to a couple of PPT-slides that are used for teaching PhD students. In the case of Feyerabend this would mean to teach the students that he was "against method". Later on, this knowledge further spreads. This was the kind of misunderstanding that I was originally referring to. The second type of misunderstanding could be that you read somebody's works and you do not get what (s)he actually means. The third option could be that you fully understand what somebody wants and therefore you quote him/her "out of context" or misinterpret him/her. I guess it is the latter that you are referring to. I believe that this frequently happens to Popper and his falsificationism.

Dear Orlando, if you read the book and you disagree this is perfectly fine. My initial post was triggered by my experience that hardly anyone is reading the original work anymore. I am teaching a couple of PhD classes and the workload for the students is huge even without reading books. What happens to Feyerabend (and many others) is that they are reduced to a couple of pointed statements such as "anything goes", which in my opinion does not represent the complex reasoning behind it.

As far as the number of theories is concerned, I do not think that he advocates "counting" them. On a side note: Many other communities envy psychology since you have original theories. In Information Systems, for example, there is an ongoing discussion that we need to develop theories on our own.

As far as falsification is concerned, I have a very differentiated opinion. I agree with Popper that theories should be falsifiable, otherwise we have "metaphysics" ;-) Too often, however, the idea is applied in a way which I think is not fully correct. When I talk to my students they tell me that "you can falsify theories, but you cannot verify them". This might be more relevant in the natural sciences, but in the social sciences we have distributions and we specify an alpha-level (most of the times we forget about beta). So my logic is that you cannot fully verify a theory, but you also cannot falsify it. It might be the case that you simply got a biased sample. I thought about this quite a bit and will elaborate on it in my next paper.

Horst, metaphysical theories are falsifiable: by reasoning (dianoia) and intuition (noesis)---i.e., in the same way physical theories are falsifiable.

Isn't every theory a practical example of reasoning and intuition?

Aristotle: The Physics

The Metaphysics of Aristotle

Martin, now I get your point. You were talking about "falsifiable" and I was referring to "has been falsified". This was already discussed many decades ago in the Vienna circle and I guess it was mainly Neurath who was very skeptical about what he called "metaphysics". I agree with you that every theory is an example of applying reasoning and intuition. We would just need to agree on what is a "purely" metaphysical theory. I have not read Aristotle's metaphysics, so I cannot comment on that.

For Aristotle, metaphysics = first philosophy (prote philosophia) = theology (theologia) = divine science = logos about the gods (the first principles).

"All ... that have ever touched upon theology, have called things first, according to nature, Gods; and have said that the theological science is conversant about these." --Proclus (Theology of Plato)

Physics is the science of natural (material) phenomena. Metaphysics is the science of divine (immaterial) principles. Importantly, physics and metaphysics are two sides of the same coin. Or, more properly, metaphysics is about the hole in the center of the bi disc and physics is about the material part of the bi disc; the source of the material part is the immaterial part.

That much I understand and I also have the writings of Aristotle at home. But is there a single metaphysical theory that has ever been falsified by reasoning or intuition? (cf., in the natural sciences the shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric view, relativity theory, or plate tectonics)

Horst, Aristotle irrefutably demonstrates, that (i) it is impossible for one statement to be both true and false, (ii) it is impossible for all statements to be true, and (iii) it is impossible for all statements to be false. With this as a foundation, it is clear, that of two contradictory theories at least one must be wrong, and if two contradictory theories are the only alternatives, one is correct and the other is not. Three examples are below:

(1) A (meta)physical theory that says "there is no First Principle" can be refuted by showing that "progression to infinity is impossible."

(2) A metaphysical theory that says "the First Principle is this and that" can be refuted by showing that "nothing true can be said about the First Principle, for it is, at the end, totally ineffable."

(3) A physical theory that says "space is infinite" can be refuted by showing that "if space were infinite, there would be no motion, but there is motion, therefore, space is not infinite" and because the natural law is an image of the divine law, one can further say [bearing in mind the limitation of the via positiva approach (viz. 2)] that "The First Principle is infinite, immovable, and eternal."

I definitely find this discussion very inspiring. @Martin Böhnert, as far as Galileo is concerned, we are back to Feyerabend ;-) In his book "Against Method" he describes in great detail how Galileo's refracting telescope was in fact not well-suited to prove the heliocentric view. In fact, Galileo used a lot of "propaganda" to support his position. If it comes to the "falsification" of the geocentric worldview I guess that we have to refer to Copernicus or Kepler, who used sophisticated mathematical methods. This raises an interesting question: When do you actually falsify a theory? Take Wegener's theory of the continental drift, for example. When did it "falsify" previous beliefs? Was this the case when somebody figured out that shape of the continents match, biologists found related species or paleomagnetism produced further empirical data? I guess that it was a gradual process.

Martin Klvana , those are very interesting and inspiring arguments. Here is my two cents:

*) I would add that in the case of two conflicting theories, both might be equally wrong ;-)

*) I believe that, for example, in economics most (all?) theories are neither wrong nor right, but only "partially correct" (i.e., they hold under certain conditions, which are far too complex to be shown in a mathematical model).

*) The notion of infinity from Aristotle is interesting. I wonder if this still holds in light of later research (e.g., Georg Cantor), with which I am not really familiar.

*) You write "because the natural law is an image of the divine law". Is this a statement from Aristotle? I consider this to be a statement that definitely cannot be proved. Goedel once came up with a proof for the existence of god, but, quite naturally, it has also been criticized a lot.

Horst writes: I would add that in the case of two conflicting theories, both might be equally wrong

Yes, this is included in my statement that "of two contradictory theories at least one must be wrong, and if two contradictory theories are the only alternatives, one is correct and the other is not."

Horst writes: I believe that, for example, in economics most (all?) theories are neither wrong nor right, but only "partially correct"

A theory is correct only if it does not contradict logic. If the theory is in discrepancty with logic, it is incorrect. i cannot imagine anything inbetween---do you have any example of "partially correct theory" and what makes it only "partially" incorrect?

Anyhow, no such issue arises in the case of two theories that are mutually exclusive, such as finite vs infinite, yes vs no, possible vs impossible, etc.

Horst writes: The notion of infinity from Aristotle is interesting. I wonder if this still holds in light of later research (e.g., Georg Cantor), with which I am not really familiar.

i don't know anything about Georg Cantor and his research. But Aristotlelian logic bears Aristotle's name for a reason (pun not intended). Aristotle's understanding of the basic concepts such as space, time, measure, infinity, etc.---as well as the relationships between these---holds (as far as i know).

Horst writes: You write "because the natural law is an image of the divine law". Is this a statement from Aristotle? I consider this to be a statement that definitely cannot be proved.

i am paraphrasing many philosophers of the (Neo-)Platonic golden chain. For example, Proclus writes: "time ... is the image of eternity." (Note: Aristotle writes about time from the physical point of view and concludes that "time is a register of motions.")

And Porphyry writes: "you must ... first understand the law of nature, and then proceed to the divine law, by which also the natural law has been prescribed."

If one goes step by step, statement by statement, and applies the inescapable law of causation, one necessarily arrives to the irrefutable conclusion that the divine realm not only logically precedes the phenomenal realm but is its very cause. And one reason for this is that nothing can set itself in motion---not even the First Principle, which is called "the Prime Mover" (which is what Aristotle's arrives at, step by step, in his Metaphysics). [But the notion of the image is far far older---viz. inverted tree.]

But i am but a newbie, so 'buyers beware.'

Martin, those are good points. I would especially like to comment on your statement:

A theory is correct only if it does not contradict logic. If the theory is in discrepancy with logic, it is incorrect. i cannot imagine anything in between---do you have any example of "partially correct theory" and what makes it only "partially" incorrect?

Yes, I claim that I have more than one example: Basically every theory in the social sciences is, at least in my understanding, probabilistic (at least that is how we tend to test them). Here is a long list of theories (I am not even sure if all of them do really qualify as theories):

https://is.theorizeit.org/wiki/Main_Page

Consider economics, for example. If there would be one kind of economic theory that would be 100% correct, than all economic problems would be solved. In the real word, however, many schools compete (monetarist, neoliberal, neoclassical, Keynesian, etc...). Their theories hold under textbook conditions, but not in the real world (at least not 100%). This is what I mean with "partially (in)correct".

Maybe i am too naïve, but what would happen if we strip every theory of that which "does not hold in the real world"? Wouldn't our view of the reality be better rather than worse?

[By "does not hold" i mean generally, allowing for "accidental" exceptions (the origin of which should, however, also be covered by the theory) to happen.]

On a side note: personally, i would include "Austrian" before "etc." in any list of economic theories; not only that, i would put it at the beginning of the list.

That sounds like an interesting idea, but in the social sciences it will not work. The thing is that sometimes things work out and sometimes they not. In economics this is mostly contingent on complex external factors, many of which are hard to predict, and in models that involve human behavior it depends on the individual. I guess that this is perfectly fine ("as good as we can get"), but the problem is that social scientists mostly operate under the paradigms of the natural sciences (e.g., "falsificiation"). That is why I like the open approach of Feyerabend.

Austrian school: Yes, of course, you can include it. It influenced many of the others and it was not my goal to create a comprehensive list.