Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 11:04:50 +1000 (EST)
From: John Fox <J.Fox-AT-latrobe.edu.au>
Subject: PKF: what is "anything goes"?


In reply to J C Teo - What is "anything goes"?
This seems to be _the_ F.A.Q about Feyerabend.

Old readers skip this; it's much what I said last time a new reader asked.

A.G. is a general methodological_permission.  It rules out no first-order
methods; what it does rule out is all (second-order) universal _prohibitions_
of using any method.
One weak version, which I think is a kind of core that PKF
kept to under his various weaker and stronger statements,
comes roughly to this: there are no applicable rules of method
that ought never be violated.

This is of course a double negative.  A more or less equivalent positive
version: there's no trick or technique or method or strategy that
might not under some circumstances be just what's appropriate.

PKF, even in the early '70s and certainly in his last years, was quite
strong and clear that to follow customary modes or even rules of
what was considered scientific rationality was included among the
strategies that could at times be appropriate. His emphasis, though,
was usually on what he took to be the fact that really creative and
breakthrough work typically involved bending or violating such rules.

Few things irritated him as much as being understood as
propounding A.G. as a methodological _rule_ people were meant
_always to follow_.  Not only did this not make literal sense, but it
was quite the contrary of the _spirit_ of his philosophy.

Any disagreement on all this?

Best wishes
John Fox

John F Fox
School of Philosophy
La Trobe University
Bundoora, Vic 3083
Australia


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