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The Philosophy of 'as If '
Hans Vaihinger (1852–1933) was an important and fascinating figure in German philosophy in the early twentieth century, founding the well-known journal Kant-Studien. Yet he was overshadowed by the burgeoning movements of phenomenology and analytical philosophy, as well as hostility towards his work because of his defense of Jewish scholars in a Germany controlled by Nazism.
However, it is widely acknowledged today that The Philosophy of ‘As If’ is a philosophical masterwork. Vaihinger argues that in the face of an overwhelmingly complex world, we produce a simpler set of ideas, or idealizations, that help us negotiate it. When cast as fictions, such ideas provide an easier and more useful way to think about certain subjects, from mathematics and physics to law and morality, than would the truth in all its complexity. Even in science, he wrote, we must proceed "as if " a material world exists independently of perceiving subjects; in behaviour, we must act "as if " ethical certainty were possible; in religion, we must believe "as if" there were a God. He also explores the role of fictions in the history of philosophy, going back to the ancient Greeks and the work of Leibniz, Adam Smith and Bentham.
The Philosophy of ‘As If’ was a powerful influence on the emerging philosophical movement of pragmatism and was groundbreaking in its anticipation of the central role that model-building and simulation would come to play in the human sciences.
This Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by Michael A. Rosenthal, which provides a fascinating and important background to Vaihinger’s life and the legacy of The Philosophy of ‘As If’.
However, it is widely acknowledged today that The Philosophy of ‘As If’ is a philosophical masterwork. Vaihinger argues that in the face of an overwhelmingly complex world, we produce a simpler set of ideas, or idealizations, that help us negotiate it. When cast as fictions, such ideas provide an easier and more useful way to think about certain subjects, from mathematics and physics to law and morality, than would the truth in all its complexity. Even in science, he wrote, we must proceed "as if " a material world exists independently of perceiving subjects; in behaviour, we must act "as if " ethical certainty were possible; in religion, we must believe "as if" there were a God. He also explores the role of fictions in the history of philosophy, going back to the ancient Greeks and the work of Leibniz, Adam Smith and Bentham.
The Philosophy of ‘As If’ was a powerful influence on the emerging philosophical movement of pragmatism and was groundbreaking in its anticipation of the central role that model-building and simulation would come to play in the human sciences.
This Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by Michael A. Rosenthal, which provides a fascinating and important background to Vaihinger’s life and the legacy of The Philosophy of ‘As If’.
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400 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1911
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About the author
Hans Vaihinger
115 books17 followersHans Vaihinger was a German philosopher, best known as a Kant scholar and for his Die Philosophie des Als Ob (The Philosophy of 'As if'), published in 1911 although its statement of basic principles had been written more than thirty years earlier.
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November 16, 2023
The Scaffolding Around Reality
Although it is anchored in 19th century issues and language (especially archaic psychological language), The Philosophy of As If is still worthwhile as both an historical document and an important contribution to the philosophy of inquiry. Vaihinger’s central thesis is simple but profoundly so, namely that “… the object of the world of ideas as a whole is not the portrayal of reality — this would be an utterly impossible task — but rather to provide us with an instrument for finding our way about more easily in this world.” That is, what we call knowledge is not a description of Reality but is merely the scaffolding we erect around Reality in order to survive in it.
Although the book was first published in 1911, its content was formulated in the 1870’s. This is contemporaneous with the work of C.S Peirce in the United States on essentially the same subject matter. And although Vaihinger is keen to distinguish his views from what he knew of American Pragmatists (probably only James and Dewey), I think he would have recognised the congruence of his own thoughts with those of Peirce had he been aware of them. In particular, both men accepted Kant’s analysis that the thing-in-itself, or what we casually call Reality, is undiscoverable even through rigorous scientific inquiry. The statement “Fictions are never verifiable, for they are hypotheses which are known to be false, but which are employed because of their utility,” could have been made by either man (it is in fact Vaihinger).
The intellectual connection between Vaihinger and Peirce is demonstrated in many ways but most acutely in their views on the constitution of the ideal as a presumption of scientific inquiry, and in the importance of creative imagination in scientific development. For both, the concept of the ideal was neither a hypothesis nor an existent. Rather it was a logically necessary condition of inquiry, “a practical fiction,” analogous to the concept of God as the ‘guarantor’ of medieval theology. The ideal, unlike the guarantor however, is determined by the purpose of the inquiry itself and is therefore neither stable nor a matter of any sort of philosophical or religious dogma. Perhaps their similar religious educations account for the similarity of their conclusions (Peirce’s mother was a Protestant mystic; Vaihinger’s father was a pastor).
Both Peirce and Vaihinger put a good deal of stress on the creative imagination in inquiry. In fact both insist that there is a reputable logic that is neither deductive nor inductive. Peirce called this the logic of ‘abduction’ which resembles that of Kantian transcendental deduction. Vaihinger sees this same logic as a “synthesis of induction and deduction,” the result of which he calls “artifices.” As with Peirce these artifices (Peirce calls them hypotheses but this is only a matter of conflicting vocabulary) originate in a manner that can’t be accounted for by either inductive or deductive rules alone. They are imagined in some distinctive way. For Vaihinger they are “Stimulated by the outer world, [but] the mind discovers the store of contrivances that lie hidden within itself.”
Despite these similarities, however, I think Vaihinger is both broader and deeper than Peirce. In the first place Vaihinger’s philosophy is not just about scientific inquiry but of inquiry in general from mathematics to law and even to literature. In this he anticipates Wittgenstein in all but the terminology he uses. Unlike Peirce, Vaihinger was never a student of language. He nevertheless made an important point about language (using the term ‘discursive thinking’) that Peirce never made explicitly, namely that it has no reliable relation to reality. This is the whole basis for his fundamental thesis. Language can tell us nothing about Reality despite its usefulness which is
And Vaihinger takes this a step further. Not only is language unreliably connected with Reality, it is inevitably contradictory to Reality. That is to say, whatever terms we might use to describe those things that are not words will be wrong. No fictions, even scientific ones, accurately ‘cut the world at its joints.’ As he says, “Rigidly applied, such fictions lead to contradictions with reality.” But it is this very characteristic that is essential for the progress of science. It is when the inherent contradictions become clear - instantaneous force at a distance in Newtonian physics, or the violation of Einsteinian relativity by quantum entanglement for example - that science recognises the need for new research. Peirce had a similar view but applied it only to statistical error in empirical findings.
Vaihinger is also more than an intellectual bridge between Kant and 20th century philosophy, or between German Idealism and American Pragmatism. He is also an example of the significance of medieval philosophy in modern thought. For example, despite the approximately one million words Thomas Aquinas spent on his Theo-philosophy, he was well aware that absolutely nothing he said about God could be known without what he called revelation, and that even then this knowledge was distorted by the means necessary to convey it - human language.
Since the Enlightenment we have faced exactly the same situation with what we term Reality. Except that we now recognise that divine revelation is merely another fiction claiming a privilege it doesn’t warrant, and that there is no evidence that Reality is interested in revealing itself anyway. The Thomistic tradition of ‘negative theology’ - whatever we think God is, he is not that - is as relevant now as it was in the 13th century and might assist more than a few scientists to get over themselves as the new priests providing access to the Absolute.
Postscript 16/11/2023: Vaihinger’s work anticipates the very latest in physical theory, particularly that of Donald Hoffman and his colleagues. See: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Although it is anchored in 19th century issues and language (especially archaic psychological language), The Philosophy of As If is still worthwhile as both an historical document and an important contribution to the philosophy of inquiry. Vaihinger’s central thesis is simple but profoundly so, namely that “… the object of the world of ideas as a whole is not the portrayal of reality — this would be an utterly impossible task — but rather to provide us with an instrument for finding our way about more easily in this world.” That is, what we call knowledge is not a description of Reality but is merely the scaffolding we erect around Reality in order to survive in it.
Although the book was first published in 1911, its content was formulated in the 1870’s. This is contemporaneous with the work of C.S Peirce in the United States on essentially the same subject matter. And although Vaihinger is keen to distinguish his views from what he knew of American Pragmatists (probably only James and Dewey), I think he would have recognised the congruence of his own thoughts with those of Peirce had he been aware of them. In particular, both men accepted Kant’s analysis that the thing-in-itself, or what we casually call Reality, is undiscoverable even through rigorous scientific inquiry. The statement “Fictions are never verifiable, for they are hypotheses which are known to be false, but which are employed because of their utility,” could have been made by either man (it is in fact Vaihinger).
The intellectual connection between Vaihinger and Peirce is demonstrated in many ways but most acutely in their views on the constitution of the ideal as a presumption of scientific inquiry, and in the importance of creative imagination in scientific development. For both, the concept of the ideal was neither a hypothesis nor an existent. Rather it was a logically necessary condition of inquiry, “a practical fiction,” analogous to the concept of God as the ‘guarantor’ of medieval theology. The ideal, unlike the guarantor however, is determined by the purpose of the inquiry itself and is therefore neither stable nor a matter of any sort of philosophical or religious dogma. Perhaps their similar religious educations account for the similarity of their conclusions (Peirce’s mother was a Protestant mystic; Vaihinger’s father was a pastor).
Both Peirce and Vaihinger put a good deal of stress on the creative imagination in inquiry. In fact both insist that there is a reputable logic that is neither deductive nor inductive. Peirce called this the logic of ‘abduction’ which resembles that of Kantian transcendental deduction. Vaihinger sees this same logic as a “synthesis of induction and deduction,” the result of which he calls “artifices.” As with Peirce these artifices (Peirce calls them hypotheses but this is only a matter of conflicting vocabulary) originate in a manner that can’t be accounted for by either inductive or deductive rules alone. They are imagined in some distinctive way. For Vaihinger they are “Stimulated by the outer world, [but] the mind discovers the store of contrivances that lie hidden within itself.”
Despite these similarities, however, I think Vaihinger is both broader and deeper than Peirce. In the first place Vaihinger’s philosophy is not just about scientific inquiry but of inquiry in general from mathematics to law and even to literature. In this he anticipates Wittgenstein in all but the terminology he uses. Unlike Peirce, Vaihinger was never a student of language. He nevertheless made an important point about language (using the term ‘discursive thinking’) that Peirce never made explicitly, namely that it has no reliable relation to reality. This is the whole basis for his fundamental thesis. Language can tell us nothing about Reality despite its usefulness which is
“… exactly what Kant so laboriously demonstrated in his theory of cognition, namely that it is utterly impossible to attain knowledge of the world, not because our thought is too narrowly circumscribed — this is a dogmatic and erroneous interpretation — but because knowledge is always in the form of categories and these, in the last analysis, are only analogical apperceptions.”
And Vaihinger takes this a step further. Not only is language unreliably connected with Reality, it is inevitably contradictory to Reality. That is to say, whatever terms we might use to describe those things that are not words will be wrong. No fictions, even scientific ones, accurately ‘cut the world at its joints.’ As he says, “Rigidly applied, such fictions lead to contradictions with reality.” But it is this very characteristic that is essential for the progress of science. It is when the inherent contradictions become clear - instantaneous force at a distance in Newtonian physics, or the violation of Einsteinian relativity by quantum entanglement for example - that science recognises the need for new research. Peirce had a similar view but applied it only to statistical error in empirical findings.
Vaihinger is also more than an intellectual bridge between Kant and 20th century philosophy, or between German Idealism and American Pragmatism. He is also an example of the significance of medieval philosophy in modern thought. For example, despite the approximately one million words Thomas Aquinas spent on his Theo-philosophy, he was well aware that absolutely nothing he said about God could be known without what he called revelation, and that even then this knowledge was distorted by the means necessary to convey it - human language.
Since the Enlightenment we have faced exactly the same situation with what we term Reality. Except that we now recognise that divine revelation is merely another fiction claiming a privilege it doesn’t warrant, and that there is no evidence that Reality is interested in revealing itself anyway. The Thomistic tradition of ‘negative theology’ - whatever we think God is, he is not that - is as relevant now as it was in the 13th century and might assist more than a few scientists to get over themselves as the new priests providing access to the Absolute.
Postscript 16/11/2023: Vaihinger’s work anticipates the very latest in physical theory, particularly that of Donald Hoffman and his colleagues. See: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
June 20, 2017
Vaihinger provides here, I think, the clearest exposition of the thread that runs from the medieval nominalists, through Hume, Kant, and ultimately, Nietzsche. He shows how each of these thinkers contributes to the emergence of "the philosophy of as-if," which is a mode of philosophizing that seeks to face squarely the epistemic implications that emerge from the pervasiveness of illusion in human life. In this view, the fullest lucidity we can have access to as embodied existents is the lucidity to be found when we peer through the pervasive veneer of illusion that shrouds our lives, and gain thereby a liberating detachment from these by seeing them for the first time for what they really are, i.e., fictional constructs.
He argues, via a comparative historical analysis that is focused through the prism of his own synoptic interpretation, that these thinkers taken together show us how knowledge itself is best understood as an edifice of fictional constructs built atop the "optical illusions" and "aesthetic anthropomorpshisms" (as Nietzsche called them, in Beyond Good and Evil) created by our organismic embodiment in the world. In this view, the clearest view we can attain of the real is the negative, self-reflexive view afforded us when we see our organismic illusions for what they are. Reading back from Nietzsche, Vaihinger casts a new light on the true epistemic function, for organismic existents, of the laws of nature, of causality, of the lines, points, and of axioms of the mathematician, of the independent substances inevitably postulated by the logician, and of the very principle of parsimony posited by Occam as the regulative principle of science.
In a way, he shows how Nietzsche (following Kant's re-interpretation of the foundational concepts of ontology in terms of the perspective of the human subject) more seriously takes into account the epistemic implications of the purely organismic grounding of knowledge than do most optimistic, positivistically-inclined evolutionary epistemologists: namely, the fact that knowledge serves survival and organismic thriving, not the exigencies of objective truth. Knowledge is the means whereby we construct a human, cognizable, systematizable world atop the intractable otherness of the real world.
The "philosophy as-if" suspends belief in the foundational faith of any rational epistemology, namely, the belief that the pattern of the mind is adequate to grasp the pattern of the world, that the human part can grasp the form of the universal whole. Once you suspend this foundational act of faith and take a very clear look at the nature of the knowledge situation, as well as the human drives that power it, Vaihinger persuasively argues, "the philosophy of as-if" is what is left to our honest perusal.
Among many other things, he shows that, in order to rightly understand any of these thinkers, we must understand them as tributaries that flow into and contribute to the unfolding of this larger pattern of philosophizing. This, he argues persuasively, is especially true in the case of Kant and Nietzsche, neither of which you can understand unless you place them in relation to each other on this larger map of philosophical positions that converge around "the philosophy of as-if," which he also calls "fictionalism," or the view that whatever else our knowledge-constructs may happen to be, what we can most surely say about them, from the vantage point which we, in fact, occupy, is that they are postulates grounded solely in our organismic striving to progressively extend the pattern set by our organismic requirements by re-creating the world in a human form. Following Nietzsche, Vaihinger ruefully notes that we do not seek to know the world in itself; this is the foremost illusion of pre-critical epistemologies. Rather, we seek to know a world fully colonized by our own human reflection, a world rendered a home for the human spirit, a world that is no longer an inscrutable, alien other. Ultimately, all postulates that ground and direct the process of knowledge-acquisition spring from organismic values, from our striving to humanize the world and bring it into a humanly graspable and relatable form.
I cannot help but admire the way that he shows that Nietzsche takes up the Kantian critique of the instrument of all knowing, reason, only to radicalize it by showing that all our ontology, which is used, among other things, to ground our various disciplines (including those of science), is really a subset of aesthetics and axiology. It takes guts to take the critique of knowledge to such terrifying lengths. One wonders how sustainable this stance is in practice. "Animal faith" is a welcome anesthetizing antidote to such lucidity; it carries us ever on with the hope that through the mirage of the construct, we're establishing a real, substantive relation to the world in itself.
Ultimately, this thread in philosophy redefines wisdom as the insight born of our progressive detachment from our most nourishing illusions. We must not bank on finding a basis for any positive theoretical postulates once the process has run its course, for precisely the reasons that Kant offered in his first Critique. In this, Vaihinger's method seems to be a philosophical adaptation of the spiritual via negativa: all we can say is what the real is not. It is not precisely everything that we are. This is because we cannot assume that we are in any way "the measure of all things." As Vaihinger concludes though, one is still left with the question of how it is precisely that we stand in relation to the world. All depends on making the perhaps pre-theoretical decision as to whether we find the world as essentially being friend or foe to our human strivings for our progressive organismic realization.
Vaihinger's is an important history to tell because, I find, this particular side of our philosophical tradition is not often enough appreciated in the neo-positivist and happy-go-lucky (because unreflective) intellectual climate of today. His is a sobering, chilling look, but one that brings the beauty of clarity. And it's not "just" a re-telling of one under-remembered side of the history of philosophy, which holds a mere theoretical interest. I think the view of human life that emerges here, from this closer look at all our illusions about knowledge, is deeply poignant and transformative, if you let it sink in. Perhaps, if you expunge all faith and wishful thinking from epistemology, something like Vainhiger's view is what is left.
He argues, via a comparative historical analysis that is focused through the prism of his own synoptic interpretation, that these thinkers taken together show us how knowledge itself is best understood as an edifice of fictional constructs built atop the "optical illusions" and "aesthetic anthropomorpshisms" (as Nietzsche called them, in Beyond Good and Evil) created by our organismic embodiment in the world. In this view, the clearest view we can attain of the real is the negative, self-reflexive view afforded us when we see our organismic illusions for what they are. Reading back from Nietzsche, Vaihinger casts a new light on the true epistemic function, for organismic existents, of the laws of nature, of causality, of the lines, points, and of axioms of the mathematician, of the independent substances inevitably postulated by the logician, and of the very principle of parsimony posited by Occam as the regulative principle of science.
In a way, he shows how Nietzsche (following Kant's re-interpretation of the foundational concepts of ontology in terms of the perspective of the human subject) more seriously takes into account the epistemic implications of the purely organismic grounding of knowledge than do most optimistic, positivistically-inclined evolutionary epistemologists: namely, the fact that knowledge serves survival and organismic thriving, not the exigencies of objective truth. Knowledge is the means whereby we construct a human, cognizable, systematizable world atop the intractable otherness of the real world.
The "philosophy as-if" suspends belief in the foundational faith of any rational epistemology, namely, the belief that the pattern of the mind is adequate to grasp the pattern of the world, that the human part can grasp the form of the universal whole. Once you suspend this foundational act of faith and take a very clear look at the nature of the knowledge situation, as well as the human drives that power it, Vaihinger persuasively argues, "the philosophy of as-if" is what is left to our honest perusal.
Among many other things, he shows that, in order to rightly understand any of these thinkers, we must understand them as tributaries that flow into and contribute to the unfolding of this larger pattern of philosophizing. This, he argues persuasively, is especially true in the case of Kant and Nietzsche, neither of which you can understand unless you place them in relation to each other on this larger map of philosophical positions that converge around "the philosophy of as-if," which he also calls "fictionalism," or the view that whatever else our knowledge-constructs may happen to be, what we can most surely say about them, from the vantage point which we, in fact, occupy, is that they are postulates grounded solely in our organismic striving to progressively extend the pattern set by our organismic requirements by re-creating the world in a human form. Following Nietzsche, Vaihinger ruefully notes that we do not seek to know the world in itself; this is the foremost illusion of pre-critical epistemologies. Rather, we seek to know a world fully colonized by our own human reflection, a world rendered a home for the human spirit, a world that is no longer an inscrutable, alien other. Ultimately, all postulates that ground and direct the process of knowledge-acquisition spring from organismic values, from our striving to humanize the world and bring it into a humanly graspable and relatable form.
I cannot help but admire the way that he shows that Nietzsche takes up the Kantian critique of the instrument of all knowing, reason, only to radicalize it by showing that all our ontology, which is used, among other things, to ground our various disciplines (including those of science), is really a subset of aesthetics and axiology. It takes guts to take the critique of knowledge to such terrifying lengths. One wonders how sustainable this stance is in practice. "Animal faith" is a welcome anesthetizing antidote to such lucidity; it carries us ever on with the hope that through the mirage of the construct, we're establishing a real, substantive relation to the world in itself.
Ultimately, this thread in philosophy redefines wisdom as the insight born of our progressive detachment from our most nourishing illusions. We must not bank on finding a basis for any positive theoretical postulates once the process has run its course, for precisely the reasons that Kant offered in his first Critique. In this, Vaihinger's method seems to be a philosophical adaptation of the spiritual via negativa: all we can say is what the real is not. It is not precisely everything that we are. This is because we cannot assume that we are in any way "the measure of all things." As Vaihinger concludes though, one is still left with the question of how it is precisely that we stand in relation to the world. All depends on making the perhaps pre-theoretical decision as to whether we find the world as essentially being friend or foe to our human strivings for our progressive organismic realization.
Vaihinger's is an important history to tell because, I find, this particular side of our philosophical tradition is not often enough appreciated in the neo-positivist and happy-go-lucky (because unreflective) intellectual climate of today. His is a sobering, chilling look, but one that brings the beauty of clarity. And it's not "just" a re-telling of one under-remembered side of the history of philosophy, which holds a mere theoretical interest. I think the view of human life that emerges here, from this closer look at all our illusions about knowledge, is deeply poignant and transformative, if you let it sink in. Perhaps, if you expunge all faith and wishful thinking from epistemology, something like Vainhiger's view is what is left.
April 8, 2018
The Philosophy of As If is Vaihinger's major work and probably has primarily historical importance, as part of the 19th century rejection of rationalism and as a precursor to logical positivism later in the 20th century.
Vaihinger, like other positivists, takes his metaphysical cue from empiricist theories of knowledge, claiming that our access to reality is limited to "sensations", and then claims that everything beyond that, including scientific theories, ethical claims, and religion is built upon frameworks provided by "fictions". These fictions include both what are fairly explicit fictions, like the social contract, but also, maybe most interestingly, all general concepts, including fundamental concepts like space, time, and causality, ethical concepts like good and evil, and the very language of everyday life -- the general terms for everyday objects, like table, chair, bird, mammal, . . .
Unlike nominalists, Vaihinger, coming in the wake of Darwin and other evolutionary thinking, focuses equally on the usefulness of these fictions, as much as on their fictional status. Although he uses such terms as "error" and "mistake" in describing our reliance on such concepts, he distinguishes those errors as the attempts to describe reality via the concepts rather than use them to successfully cope, manipulate, and predict. Fictions are, for him, valuable or less valuable in so far as they provide this ability to cope with the world around us. Their value is proven over time, as they aid or fail to aid us in our interactions with the world and each other, much as biological traits prove more or less adaptive.
Like other German philosophers of the 19th century (this book was originally written thirty years before its first publication in 1911), Vaihinger takes pains both to tie his thought to and distinguish it from Kant. Like Kant, he adopts a "critical" position (he calls his theory "critical positivism"), denying knowledge of a reality of "things-in-themselves", and supposing our knowledge of what we call objective reality to be built upon a framework provided by ourselves. Unlike Kant, though, he claims no a priori status for that fundamental framework, rejecting Kant's rationalism. The justification for those concepts, and the basis for their change over time, lies in their pragmatic value (although he criticizes the pragmatists themselves for taking pragmatic criteria to provide criteria for "truth").
I think what Vaihinger is attempting really is to displace a conception of mind as primarily a knower to mind as a biological function -- whereas even for Kant, knowledge is an activity whose end is purely its own, knowledge for Vaihinger is in service to the requirements of a biological organism, analogous to digestion. He says:
"Just as the physical organism that breaks up the matter which it receives, mixes it with its own juices and so thus makes it suitable for assimilation, so the psyche envelopes the thing perceived with categories which it has developed out of itself." (p. 2)
There is something intriguing and even right in this way of naturalizing human thought, placing it in the context of the activity of a biological organism rather than a creature with privileged access to an independent reality. That conception is lacking, I think, in the later development of positivism, particularly logical positivism, which, while deflating the scope of metaphysics and philosophy in general, puts little or nothing in its place other than empirical science -- religion and ethics become strictly "meaningless" rather than, as for Vaihinger, the human strivings for means of coping with what life presents us.
All in all, I can't say that this is one of the must-read books in the history of philosophy. Its value is mainly as an interesting episode in the rejection of rationalism and the development of pragmatism and positivism.
Vaihinger, like other positivists, takes his metaphysical cue from empiricist theories of knowledge, claiming that our access to reality is limited to "sensations", and then claims that everything beyond that, including scientific theories, ethical claims, and religion is built upon frameworks provided by "fictions". These fictions include both what are fairly explicit fictions, like the social contract, but also, maybe most interestingly, all general concepts, including fundamental concepts like space, time, and causality, ethical concepts like good and evil, and the very language of everyday life -- the general terms for everyday objects, like table, chair, bird, mammal, . . .
Unlike nominalists, Vaihinger, coming in the wake of Darwin and other evolutionary thinking, focuses equally on the usefulness of these fictions, as much as on their fictional status. Although he uses such terms as "error" and "mistake" in describing our reliance on such concepts, he distinguishes those errors as the attempts to describe reality via the concepts rather than use them to successfully cope, manipulate, and predict. Fictions are, for him, valuable or less valuable in so far as they provide this ability to cope with the world around us. Their value is proven over time, as they aid or fail to aid us in our interactions with the world and each other, much as biological traits prove more or less adaptive.
Like other German philosophers of the 19th century (this book was originally written thirty years before its first publication in 1911), Vaihinger takes pains both to tie his thought to and distinguish it from Kant. Like Kant, he adopts a "critical" position (he calls his theory "critical positivism"), denying knowledge of a reality of "things-in-themselves", and supposing our knowledge of what we call objective reality to be built upon a framework provided by ourselves. Unlike Kant, though, he claims no a priori status for that fundamental framework, rejecting Kant's rationalism. The justification for those concepts, and the basis for their change over time, lies in their pragmatic value (although he criticizes the pragmatists themselves for taking pragmatic criteria to provide criteria for "truth").
I think what Vaihinger is attempting really is to displace a conception of mind as primarily a knower to mind as a biological function -- whereas even for Kant, knowledge is an activity whose end is purely its own, knowledge for Vaihinger is in service to the requirements of a biological organism, analogous to digestion. He says:
"Just as the physical organism that breaks up the matter which it receives, mixes it with its own juices and so thus makes it suitable for assimilation, so the psyche envelopes the thing perceived with categories which it has developed out of itself." (p. 2)
There is something intriguing and even right in this way of naturalizing human thought, placing it in the context of the activity of a biological organism rather than a creature with privileged access to an independent reality. That conception is lacking, I think, in the later development of positivism, particularly logical positivism, which, while deflating the scope of metaphysics and philosophy in general, puts little or nothing in its place other than empirical science -- religion and ethics become strictly "meaningless" rather than, as for Vaihinger, the human strivings for means of coping with what life presents us.
All in all, I can't say that this is one of the must-read books in the history of philosophy. Its value is mainly as an interesting episode in the rejection of rationalism and the development of pragmatism and positivism.
May 20, 2016
A comprehensive, meticulous and intellectually engaging master-piece which - at the same time - tended to take its own argument to extremes and also didnt provide within itself a basis for self-criticism. The title of the work refers to the use of fictions in all fields of study. For example; how do we calculate the area of a circle? We treat it 'as-if' it can be made up of a number of lines, each of length r. Vaihinger gives an in-depth history of such concepts, primarily from science and philosophy. Kant, whose school Vaihinger belonged to, is given particular attention. It really was impressive how the author continually found textual material to support his argument. Where the book erred was treating the core insight of the book into an instrument for denying all reality. This tendency became painfully obvious when subjects other than science were being discussed. Vaihinger seemed to deny any objective reality and became mired in a rationalistic error. Nonetheless, as a whole, the work is towering and well worth a read.
September 29, 2024
A very particular way of approaching the world of concepts and words through ‘as if’. Vaihinger applies one thinking tool to all categories of activities, inevitably ensnaring himself in simplification and reduction. At best, he shows us how one tool works across the board to reveal fictionalism in different guises; at worst, we wonder (like I do now) what have we been told that we didn’t already know in more detail and from more diverse viewpoints.
His work might be informative or interesting to non-philosophers curious about how theories are built or to budding scientists who sense science hardly equals truth.
His work might be informative or interesting to non-philosophers curious about how theories are built or to budding scientists who sense science hardly equals truth.
May 29, 2019
أعتقد اسم أنسب للكتاب هو 'As if in Philosophy'
نقطة قوة الكتاب هي تحليله لأعمال الفلاسفة السابقين باستخدام مفهوم الـfiction. تحليله يوضح كيف أن إدراك أن بعض المفاهيم هي خيالية وضعت لمساعدة الوعي يختصر الكثير من الجهد ويتخلص من أسئلة تبدو لوهلة أولى وكأنها معضلات.
الجزء اللي كان بيكون مثير للاهتمام أكثر، بالنسبة لي على الأقل، هو كيف هذا المفهوم يلعب دور في الرياضيات.
الكاتب يحاول بكل جهده أنه يبين تناقضات غير موجودة، أو تم التخلص منها منذ زمن، في المعرفة الرياضية. معظم نقاشه عن الرياضيات كان متعلق بالتفاضل والتكامل. كل الصعوبات الذي تكلم عنها تم التخلص منها عبر مفهوم الـlimit بس يبدو أن الكاتب غير مطلع عليه.
باقي نقاشه عن الرياضيات ناتج عن خلطه بين الأدوات اللي نستخدمها لفهم المفهوم الرياضي، وبين الأسس اللي المفهوم نفسه مبني عليها.
نقطة قوة الكتاب هي تحليله لأعمال الفلاسفة السابقين باستخدام مفهوم الـfiction. تحليله يوضح كيف أن إدراك أن بعض المفاهيم هي خيالية وضعت لمساعدة الوعي يختصر الكثير من الجهد ويتخلص من أسئلة تبدو لوهلة أولى وكأنها معضلات.
الجزء اللي كان بيكون مثير للاهتمام أكثر، بالنسبة لي على الأقل، هو كيف هذا المفهوم يلعب دور في الرياضيات.
الكاتب يحاول بكل جهده أنه يبين تناقضات غير موجودة، أو تم التخلص منها منذ زمن، في المعرفة الرياضية. معظم نقاشه عن الرياضيات كان متعلق بالتفاضل والتكامل. كل الصعوبات الذي تكلم عنها تم التخلص منها عبر مفهوم الـlimit بس يبدو أن الكاتب غير مطلع عليه.
باقي نقاشه عن الرياضيات ناتج عن خلطه بين الأدوات اللي نستخدمها لفهم المفهوم الرياضي، وبين الأسس اللي المفهوم نفسه مبني عليها.
September 26, 2012
"O idee al cărei neadevăr teoretic sau incorectitudine, iar prin aceasta falsitatea, sunt admise, nu este din acest motiv practic fără valoare şi inutilă; căci o asemenea idee, în pofida nulităţii ei teoretice, poate să aibă o mare însemnătate practică."
Cea mai buna analiza filosofica a autocontrolului si a irealitatii imediate!
Cea mai buna analiza filosofica a autocontrolului si a irealitatii imediate!
June 27, 2024
Vaihinger proposes, accurately, that Kant's insights regarding human knowledge as being based on the perceptual and cognitive peculiarities of the species are correct. What we 'know' is the product of human cognition interacting with human sensation. Where Kant goes wrong, subsequently, says Vaihinger, is in supposing that there is some real Real that provides the noumenal substrate of which the senses convey their impressions, the famed Ding in Sich. No, that's unwarranted, says Vaihinger; there is no thing-in-itself.
What there is, becomes clear when Vaihinger appreciatively quotes Lange, "A 'thing' is known to us only through its properties… But the 'thing' is, in fact, only the resting place demanded by our thought. We know nothing but the properties, and their concurrence is an unknown, whose assumption is a figment of our mind, though, as it seems, an assumption made necessary and imperative by our organisation." Or, as Nietzsche has it, "At the beginning of all intellectual activity, we encounter the grossest assumptions and inventions, for instance, identity, thing, permanence – these are all coeval with the intellect, and the intellect has modelled its conduct on them."
Beyond the necessary, actionable fiction of time and space, then, is the manifold of the cosmos, in all its unrelenting energetic churn.
Consider this: our eyes are so evolved to discern only a section of the electromagnetic spectrum. Were they to have absolute openness to light, across the spectrum, we would effectively be blinded by the luminescence of undifferentiated whiteness, aka chaos. Rather than enhancing clarity, such an expansion would drown us in a flood of uninhibited luminosity.
We are necessarily limited creatures, who must necessarily live within a comple/matri-x of fiction, in which, rightly, we have faith.
What there is, becomes clear when Vaihinger appreciatively quotes Lange, "A 'thing' is known to us only through its properties… But the 'thing' is, in fact, only the resting place demanded by our thought. We know nothing but the properties, and their concurrence is an unknown, whose assumption is a figment of our mind, though, as it seems, an assumption made necessary and imperative by our organisation." Or, as Nietzsche has it, "At the beginning of all intellectual activity, we encounter the grossest assumptions and inventions, for instance, identity, thing, permanence – these are all coeval with the intellect, and the intellect has modelled its conduct on them."
Beyond the necessary, actionable fiction of time and space, then, is the manifold of the cosmos, in all its unrelenting energetic churn.
Consider this: our eyes are so evolved to discern only a section of the electromagnetic spectrum. Were they to have absolute openness to light, across the spectrum, we would effectively be blinded by the luminescence of undifferentiated whiteness, aka chaos. Rather than enhancing clarity, such an expansion would drown us in a flood of uninhibited luminosity.
We are necessarily limited creatures, who must necessarily live within a comple/matri-x of fiction, in which, rightly, we have faith.
May 19, 2024
If nothing else, the final chapter on Nietzsche's perspectivism was helpful
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