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Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994) was one of the foremost twentieth-century philosophers of science. Although he attained infamy by embracing cultural relativism and by providing a searing critique of the claims of science, there has been, to date, no comprehensive critical study of the major themes in Feyerabend’s philosophy. This book rectifies that situation. The book traces the evolution of Feyerabend’s thought, beginning with his attempt to graft insights from Wittgenstein’s conception of meaning onto Popper’s falsificationist philosophy. The component parts of Feyerabend’s ‘model for the acquisition of knowledge’, the normative aspect of his project, and its roots in a Popperian conception of epistemology, are identified and critically evaluated. Feyerabend’s early work emerges as thoroughly post-Popperian, rather than as a contribution to the historical approach to philosophy of science with which he is usually associated. In his more notorious later work, notably the 1975 book Against Method, Feyerabend claimed that there was, and should be, no such thing as the scientific method. This ‘epistemological anarchism’ and Feyerabend’s attendant relativism are examined here in the light of his recognition that Against Method was a collage constructed out of his earlier thoughts. The roots of epistemological anarchism are exposed, and the weaknesses of Feyerabend’s later thesis of incommensurability are brought out. Throughout the book, the influence of Feyerabend’s thought on contemporary philosophers is tracked. The author draws attention to Feyerabend’s exciting but divided legacy. On the one hand, contemporary scientistic philosophers have used his earlier views in a vigorous defence of an uncompromising ‘eliminative’ materialist view of the mind. On the other hand, thinkers influenced by Feyerabend’s later work have begun a humanistic critique of science, scientific myth-making, and scientific claims to knowledge. The book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of philosophy, methodology, and the social sciences.
This piece is the English translation of our introduction to Paul K. Feyerabend: Philosophy of Nature, co-edited with Eric Oberheim. We show the significance of Feyerabends work on archaic and ancient Greek thought and his engagement with the history of human understanding of nature. The Philosophy of Nature, written in the early 1970s, is a companion book to Against Method. This work not only improves or understanding of Feyerabend intellectual development, but also sheds new light on Western philosophy, history, and science.
2013 •
This thesis will address two questions: Does philosophy contribute to the ‘public understanding of science’ (PUoS), and if so, how? The popular public image of science is one of methodology. Science is a means for making true statements about the world, where we compare hypothesis with observation against the evidence. This then allows for a body of knowledge that guides further advancements and progress. Philosophy, however, seems to be antithetical to this. A popular notion is that philosophy is either what science was, or it deals with objects and ideas so intangible, that they have no real effect in the world. Either it is an outmoded way of doing science, or it is the preserve of armchair academics. In both cases the average person would be forgiven for thinking it had no relevance to them, and especially their ability to understand science. This thesis will look to challenge this relationship. Using hermeneutics, discourse-textual analysis and deconstruction, I present two int...
This paper is not a full comparison of the philosophies of Mach and Feyerabend, nor a defence of modern readings of Mach, such as Feyerabend’s, against the received view of Mach as a pre-logical positivist. What is attempted here is an account and critical evaluation of the most significant things Feyerabend said about Mach. I first trace the ways in which Mach appears in Feyerabend’s works, from the mid-1950s right up until the mid-1990s, before moving on to a critical evaluation of the themes which are either most prominent (being repeated most often) or most important in some other way, e.g., in assessing the extent to which we should consider Feyerabend to have been a follower of Mach.
Ian C. Jarvie, Karl Milford, David W. Miller (eds.), Karl Popper: A Centenary Assessment, vol. II: Metaphysics and Epistemology, Aldershot: Ashgate
Rationality without Foundations2006 •
Synthese
Decision-Based Epistemology: sketching a systematic framework of Feyerabend's metaphilosophy2020 •
In this paper I defend the claim that Paul Feyerabend held a robust metaphilosophical position for most of his philosophical career. This position I call Decision-Based Epistemology and reconstruct it in terms of three key components: (1) a form of epistemic voluntarism concerning the justification of philosophical positions and (2) a behaviorist account of philosophical beliefs, which allows him (3) to cast normative arguments concerning philosophical beliefs in scientific methodology, such as realism, in terms of means-ends relations. I then introduce non-naturalist and naturalist variants of his conception of normativity, which I trace back to his mentors Viktor Kraft and Karl Popper, respectively. This distinction, introduced on the metaphilosophical level, can can be put to use to explain key changes in Feyerabend's philosophical proposals, such as the viability of his methodological argument for realism. I conclude that this Decision-Based Epistemology should be further explored by historically embedding Feyerabend's metaphilosophy in a voluntarist tradition of scientific philosophy.
Forthcoming in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Reappraising FeyerabendWittgenstein and Scientism
Reawakening to Wonder: Wittgenstein, Feyerabend, and Scientism2007 •
Social Epistemology 30.4 (2016): 464-482.
Why Did Feyerabend Defend Astrology? Integrity, Virtue, and the Authority of ScienceMetascience
Radical fallibilism vs conceptual analysis: The significance of Feyerabend’s Philosophy of science1999 •
Journal of Macromarketing
Postmodernism and Marketing: Separating the Wheat from the Chaff2002 •
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A
Relations between Karl Popper and Michael Polanyi2011 •
Revisiting discovery and justification
Context of discovery versus context of justification and Thomas Kuhn2006 •
2004 •
East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal
The STS Challenge to Philosophy of Science in Taiwan (2011)2011 •
History of the Human Sciences
Brecht and Lukacs as teachers of Feyerabend and Lakatos: the Feyerabend-Lakatos debate as scientific recapitulation of the Brecht- Lukacs debate1998 •
Science Education
Reappraising Positivism and Education: The Arguments of Philippa Frank and Herbert Feigl2004 •
Studies in History and Philososphy of Science
Pluralism and Anarchism in Quantum Physics: Paul Feyerabend's writings on quantum physics in relation to his general philosophy of scienceScience & Education
Reappraising Positivism and Education: The Arguments of Philipp Frank and Herbert Feigl2000 •