General Theory of Knowledge

by Moritz Schlick

First published in Germany in 1918, this acutely reasoned treatise attacks many of philosophy’s contemporary sacred cows, including the concept of metaphysics and Kant’s arguments for synthetic a priori knowledge. The book expounds most of the doctrines that would later be identified with the “classical period” of the Vienna Circle. Unlike many of his peers, Schlick displays a detailed and sensitive knowledge of the traditions he criticizes, displayed here in the chief work of this pioneering Viennese philosopher.

Genres: Philosophy

410 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1974

Reviews

[Tim Schoettle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This work is greatly under appreciated. In effect, Schlick's project is to tell us what language and meaning must be if science is to be possible. Science requires a sharp separation between objective fact, which is conceptual, and our mere subjective perspective of the world. This split requires Schlick to adopt a structuralist theory of meaning. According to structuralism when it comes to meaning difference is more fundamental than identity. Each term or sentence means what it does only insofar as it differs from other terms and other sentences. The challenge to Schlick is to explain our immediate awareness of the present. For example, it seems that I can pick out myself now simply by thinking, "I'm here now," without having the capacity to give a distinguishing structural description of myself. According to Schlick's theory this is, strictly speaking, not possible. But despite this Schlick is anything but dismissive of consciousness. He struggles valiantly to fit it into his story. History has judged his effort to be a failure and I concur. But it is an extremely important and interesting failure. In effect, we get an insightful critique (in the Kantian sense) of science, that is, a careful exploration of the conditions of the possibility of science. Science can tell a story of the only insofar as it cannot include its own acts of narration. There is a great deal more that is good about this book, particularly Schlick's struggle with the problem of judgment. Some day it will be recognized as a classic. Schlick was ahead of his time.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moritz Schlick was the head of the "Vienna Circle"; a philosophical movement starting in the 1920's. They were primarily concerned with epistemology - how we know what we know. Their work is sometimes referred to as "logical positivism" or just "positivism."

I became interested in it, because of it's affect on Economics. The Vienna Circle is contemporary with Austrian Economist Ludwig von Mises. Mises, and, in later, Murray Rothbard, largely define "Austrian Economics" - A purist market-oriented view. Rothbard is one of the chief thinkers behind "anarcho-capitalism", which even questions the roll in government in protecting property rights, believing a private market of insurance companies could just as easily do the roll.

I wanted to understand the differences between mainstream economics and its Austrian heterodox sibling. Turns out, it goes deeper than just political philosophy. It cuts to the very ability to scientifically test societies using empirical observation and economic laws. The split between Mises and the rest of Western Economics rests on deep questions.

Mises' brother, Carl Menger's son, and other economists were connected to the Vienna Circle. Mises rejected them, forming his views along a more Aristotelian/Kantian epistemological framework of pure deductive reasoning, rejecting the assumptions necessary to perform scientific tests. All because humans have the power to "act".

Now let's move to what Schlick did in his book. He very carefully defines knowledge - identifying the correct definition for phenomenon. I really enjoyed the difficulty of defining things in a platonic - ideal form. Because our brains are imperfect at perceiving reality, or in even thinking of reality, any image or thought will always be an incomplete definition of a thing. Mathematics is a platonic ideal. Baring our psychological limitations in performing mathematical deductive reasoning, it is a purely imaginary construct. That's why it is the only system with a perfect definitions. Schlick questions whether any mathematical discovery is really finding new knowledge, or if it is just another way of expressing a tautology. "The construction of a strict deductive science has only the significance of a game with symbols."

He spends a considerable amount of time rebutting Kant's "synthetic a priori" judgements. David Hume differentiated between definition, deductive methods of reasoning - like geometry, and imperfect inductive methods, such as empirical observation and hypothesis. The first, Kant called "analytic judgements", the later, he called "synthetic judgements". Kant adds another dimension. He notes that one can make a judgement beforehand, a priori, and one can make a judgement after the fact, a posterior. The assumptions necessary to carry out deductive reasoning - the axioms - are a priori analytic judgements. They are true by definition. "All bachelors are unmarried." Empirical observations, such as "That particular man is a bachelor" are made after the fact - "synthetic a posterior," in Kant's terms.

But, here's the weird part. Where I get lost. Kant introduces a third category of judgement. The "synthetic a priori." Something observed empirically - beforehand? A statement such as "every event has a cause" is a "synthetic a priori" judgement. Schlick's General Theory of Knowledge spends a great deal of time rejecting this third option. It didn't take much to convince me, but I'm not philosopher.

However, questions of causality and human agency rely on questions of causality. Now, we see why Mises gets attached to it, rejecting the positivist and building his whole economic system on the axiom of human action.

Philosophy moved on from Logical Positivism. Turns out philosophy of science is really hard. Mainstream economics still uses some of it for our underlying assumptions. Any standard economic paper is assuming that human behavior - to some extent - follows a set of behavioral laws, and that we can test if those laws are true by observing human action.

One of the largest gaps between Austrian economists and mainstream economists, especially in the past thirty years, is abundance of empirical testing in the later. The explosion of computational power, leads even undergrads to run tests on millions of observations in mere minutes. Personally, I compare this to Galileo's telescope in our ability to observe human societies and actions in ways never done, before. But, like any instrument, it still has important limitations.

[Steve Levai · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent and underrated work from an excellent and underrated philosopher. The General Theory of Knowledge is Schlick's attempt to give an account of thought and language that could fulfill the rigorous standards required if anything like scientific knowledge is to be possible. Although he fails to accomplish his goal his failure is very instructive and there is much to be learned from a study of this work with applications in both contemporary epistemology and philosophy of mind.

[Pratik Lohia · Rating 5 out of 5]

it is the best