Date: Sat, 18 Oct 1997 05:05:31 +0100
From: Carsten Agger <agger-AT-faklen.dk>
Subject: Re: PKF: PKF - realism?


Jean-Luc Gautero wrote:

> >In "Against Method",  third edition, chapter 20, the autobiographical
> >sketch, Feyerabend speaks of his conversion to realism:

[...]

>realism had fruits, positivism had none." Does he elaborate on the realist

> >position anywhere else?
>
> I don't know where I have put his "Philosophical Papers", volume 1,
> Cambridge University Press, 1981 (I bought it three or four years ago), so
> I can't be precise as regards its content, but its subtitle is "Realism,
> rationalism and scientific method", and I remember that here Feyerabend
> argues for "realism", though when I have read it I found strange and hard
> to understand the idea of a "pluralistic realism" (I have now an idea of
> what this could mean, but I don't know, and cannot check because I don't
> find the book, if my idea is near the idea of Feyerabend).
>

    To me, the "pluralistic realism" seems related to the "pragmatic
realism" defended by Heisenberg, where things are considered real
as long as they are valid in a definite conceptual framework -
specifically,
you an regard the objects of everyday life and the predictions of
classical
physics as descriptions of an independent reality, but only in the
domain where these concepts are valid - which they are not in
atomic systems.
    This pragmatic realism is, of course, an epistemological relativism
since it allows different realities for different conceptual systems
(like
those of different cultures).
    And in that sense it is definitely not positivistic in Comte's sense
-
so Feyerabend's statement seems to make good sense, even though
I would describe his position as relativism and not as realism.


    regards,

        Carsten

--
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