Subject: PKF: epistemology and method
Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 15:00:58 +0200


Hello, my name is David Stockelberg and I'm a student at Gothenburg University, Sweden. Last season I wrote an essay, during a course in the history of ideas, about the dispute between Popper and Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) and Feyerabend (Against Methodology). My aim was to examine what this dispute really was about and my primarily concern when I started was those three thinkers opinion in methodological and epistemological questions, and the relationship between those.
I will here give you a short presentation of my result. I hope you could excuse my bad English and my tendency of simplification, but I have the experience that people do not read very long letters they get from mailing lists. Also I do not have an abundance of time. Thank you.

I mean that this methodological debate must be seen as ordered in two levels. Those levels are hierarchical ordered, the former is the base and the necessary ground for the latter. Before one can apply an answer at the latter level one must have given an answer of the question that appears on the former. The questions of the former level are such as: "Is knowledge possible", and it has to be answered positively. If it is not one can not legitimate further activity, that is activity on the second level. Because on that level the discussion is about which method that gives us knowledge.

So, there are two levels in the epistemological/methodological discussion, which basically handles different kind of questions about knowledge. On the former one is occupied with the question if knowledge is possible, and an answer of that will embrace a theory about the relation between the human brain and the world around. Or, more succinct, between the subject and the object. On the latter level the discussion is about which method scientists should use to reach knowledge in the most efficient way. The questions that appears on the first level is of a more philosophical nature, than on the second, where one is much more concerned about the empirical examples that is given. There one tries to explain why and how some knowledge about the world could be produced. For example: how could Galilee's theories, which than is hold to be true, really appear. The theorist has to describe (!) what happened. And this he can do, as we shall see, in different ways.
But of course the border is not very distinct. The discussion that primarily is concerned about method can actually give ideas about if knowledge is possible or not. And vice versa. Often they, as we shall see, coincide.
This is the glasses I used when I tried to understand the Popper - Kuhn, Feyerabend dispute.

Karl Popper is, in a very explicit way, concerned with both how/if human can get knowledge, and how scientists must proceed to achieve knowledge. I will not here make an account of his theory, you have probably all been in touch with its essential thesis: verification, corroboration, falsification, induction, verisimilitude, boldness, conjectures, trial and error etc. I presume you recognise the concepts and that you are aware of its connotations.
My interest about Popper is primarily about which relation one can find in his theory (-ies) between his arguments why he thinks that men can achieve knowledge and his proclamation of how scientists must/shall proceed. I think that he explicitly constitutes a strong relationship between those theories. And I am surprised that Kuhn and, especially, Feyerabend, who is so clear with who he is aiming at, does not observe this when they criticise Poppers theory.

Popper means that objective knowledge is possible. This we can know because we have ability to try our thesis about the world. We can make a statement about the world and then we can examine if there was a resemblance between these two. And find out if it was a correct statement. If it was corroborated.  This Popper calls the method of conjectures and refutations, which is the method human beings use to get knowledge about the world around them. Its formal is: P1 - TT - EE - P2, which accordingly is the common formal for achieving knowledge. This is both how the painter, in his process of making a painting, and the researcher at the university, trying to find the laws of nature and in the society, works in their process of thinking. This is Poppers explanation of how men in common work and his defence of the thesis that knowledge is possible. This, he means, is the logic of mind.
With this theory of knowledge Popper has laid the foundation for his theory of the method of science. I am almost apt to say that they are the same. I might not agree that knowledge is possible, but I do agree with Popper that if you believe in knowledge you must have (that is: you have) a theory about the relation between the subject and the object (the world around).

There is a problem with using this perspective when trying to understand/examine Kuhns and Feyerabends critic of Popper. The problem is that it is not really clear that they do believe that knowledge is possible. One of my aims when writing the essay was to examine if the accusations against them for being relativists had any ground. I found that so was the case. Anyway this does not really disturb my project - they do criticise Poppers methodology on a methodological level. Their problem is that they do not totally account for their epistemological standpoints. They are very ambivalent and contradictory in there texts.

We now have to deal with the crucial question which was the result of my reading of Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend, and which my essay tried to answer: Is this debate really about what it seems to be? And my answer of that question, which is pretty negative, led me to assert what I already have indicated: that Kuhn and Feyerabend have got a problem. Do not misunderstand me at this moment. I am definitely no Popperian; I have a strong doubt in all philosophy that claims the possibility of truth. In this matter I think that both Kuhn and Feyerabend has given us some nice reflections and theories. My scepticism is only directed against their efforts to undermine Poppers methodological theory.

Poppers theory is first of all about how we can try if we have knowledge. He means that we can do that because of our ability to formulate a statement about the world, and then examine if it was right. In the perspective of this, Popper develops a bunch of rules that our statements must follow to be possible to falsify. This is the theory Kuhn and Feyerabend have to stand out against. Their task is to refute this theory about how we (human conscious beings) work.
As I have said before they both do and do not assert the possibility of achieving knowledge. Their texts are ambivalent and self-contradictory. For example: "Galilee's theory was right.  But, on the other hand, that is only in our conception of the world." (no quote) There are arguments for apprehending them both as relativists. (I should probably add that I do not accept those theorists that say that one could be both a relativist and an objectivist. As R J Bernstein in Beyond Objectivism and Relativism). Even this ambivalence I mean that it is possible to (temporary anyway) treat them as if they were objectivists. My strongest argument for that is that they seriously are trying to solve the problem of scientific method. That is: the method with which we can reach what we hold for true. Kuhn and Feyerabend do this in an elegant way. They show us, by analysing the actual historical development, how our/the truth was produced. That it is not a history of simple conjectures and refutations, not using ad-hoc hypothesis etc. If we used this method there would be no progress. The story about achieving truth is instead about puzzle-solving, holding at a theory even if there is many empirical arguments against it, incommensurability, the death of the defenders of the old theory, using ad-hoc hypothesis, propaganda, lying, decreasing the empirical content etc. The development of truth is not an evolutionary, cumulating process. Rather it is uneven and heterogeneous.

This refutation against the prior methodological theory (that is Popper) gets its most radical form in Feyerabends formulations such as: Anything goes! and Epistemological anarchy! Assertions as those, I mean, am very problematic, and do not really hurt what they are meant to hurt: Popper. I think that you at this time can understand why. To set up a theory about scientific methods one must accept an objectivistic epistemological theory, because a method is always a method to achieve truth. This is what Popper do, and his methodological theory and its rules do stand in a strong connection with his epistemology. Feyerabend instead refutes all sense of logic when it comes to epistemology. I mean that his formulations in this matter are incomprehensible. Does actually anything go? For me it is hard to accept that for example contra-induction as an epistemological concept could work. Would that mean not holding anything for true or false? Even things that we have no reason at all to believe in, that we do not think have anything to do with reality?  Religion or woodo for example. For me truth (if one could talk about it) is a question of praxis. Something goes! Something must go! Feyerabends contradiction is that he both says that there is something true, which, as we have seen, legitimate us to talk about the method for achieving this, and that on the another level (the methodological) claims that anything goes. He does not deal with the relation between method and epistemology (the latter and the former level of the methodological/epistemological debate), therefor his critic almost is being rhetoric. Popper on the other hand does this. He deduces methodological rules out of his epistemological theory.
This does not mean Feyerabends critic is nonsense. I think that he has very much to say to us, especially about epistemology. Though I think that he to some degree misses what he is aiming at.

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