Diálogos sobre el conocimiento

by Paul Karl Feyerabend

DIALOGOS SOBRE EL CONOCIMIENTO

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Science

132 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Paul Karl Feyerabend was an Austrian-born philosopher of science best known for his work as a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked for three decades (1958–1989).

His life was a peripatetic one, as he lived at various times in England, the United States, New Zealand, Italy, Germany, and finally Switzerland. His major works include Against Method (published in 1975), Science in a Free Society (published in 1978) and Farewell to Reason (a collection of papers published in 1987). Feyerabend became famous for his purportedly anarchistic view of science and his rejection of the existence of universal methodological rules. He is an influential figure in the philosophy of science, and also in the sociology of scientific knowledge.

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily one of my favorite books ever. Paul understood what science really is and measures the contemporary enterprise by its own measuring stick (spoiler alert: it comes short). I think of this as a nice summary of his other more verbose work. It's extremely easy to read and you will learn and/or think about a lot of stuff. I love you Paul!

[Mohamed Issam · Rating 2 out of 5]

كتاب ممتع وشيق وبيفتح الفكر علي جدل اعتقد مكنش الواحد بيفكر فيه.
المهم بردو, تقرأ المقدمة الاول لانك ممكن تفهم الكتاب مش صح :)
Recommended

[Otto Lehto · Rating 5 out of 5]

This thrilling trio of dialogues (1976-1989-1990) is a joy to read, and surprisingly holistic, considering that it encompasses three texts written at different times. It reads like a single book. It comprises a thrilling intellectual adventure, or a world class Olympic triathlon: an expertly (he would hate being called an "expert") rocket launch into relativistic space. It tackles, and evades, the hard questions of philosophy. It even gives answers to some of them. The texts consist of autobiographical asides, masked in non-authorial voice, mixed in with philosophically inspired, penetrating discussions on such wide-ranging topics as science, arts, metaphysics, psychology, religion, medicine, poetry - and even astrology and popular television.

The positions and examples are full of iconoclastic, controversy-prone argumentation, wit, irony and humour. The provocative tone - the "anarchism" of this fine gentleman - is certain to arouse anger as much as laughter and wonder. It is not without its faults, however. It shares the weaknesses common to all of Feyerabend's philosophy: Some of his arguments are hard to pin down, which comes off as defensive, and he seems to enjoy being controversial for the sake of being controversial. And he writes the sorts of nasty things about Karl Popper that no sane person, who wasn't holding a grudge, would say about one's ex-friend without blushing.

But those are minor issues and easily forgiven. Like the "other" three dialogues, by George Berkeley, these texts should be read by anyone interested in first class, gorgeously written and fiercely argued, intellectual prose. Philosophy needs its fine rhetoricians as much as its dry scholastics.

Fans of Feyerband and all students of the philosophy of science should definitely read the book; it might even convert (some) skeptics. Not only a great book by its own right, but perhaps the best introduction to Feyerabend's thought.

[Connor Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first two dialogues are uninteresting if you've read anything else of Feyerabend's, but the third, written near the end of his life, seems to pull his ideas together in the most coherent way... partly because by the third dialogue he wrote he had learned the form a bit more -the first two read like an essayist trying to escape- and partly because he goes after some of the ragged ends of his thinking. He addresses the idea of himself as a relativist, and talks about why what he proposes has life to it and can't finally be reduced to the proposition "everything is relative to a certain system."

It is a great introduction for anyone who does not want to slog through Against Method, and more importantly the third dialogue is sharpened by the negative criticism (smart and stupid) he got for publishing AM, and elaborates his system a bit (he sort of adopts the idea of a position for arguement's sake, though denying explicitly it is a system he is trying to craft. A creative and useful solution.)

[Hakkı Sayın · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cok sevmedim bu kitabı. Çeviride çok fazla Öztürkçe kelime kullanılmış, bir bölümünü anlamakta zorlandım. Hoşlanmıyorum böyle şeylerden ya.. Herkesin anlayacağı gibi çevir işte! Söyleşiler de bana pek hitap etmedi, dağınık geldi. Oysa ne kadar hevesli başlamıştım... Tümünü de okumadım zaten, bıraktım...

[Ming · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars for its usefulness, its insight and its originality - not because the dialogues don't have imperfections. But, disregarding these flaws (or even taking them into consideration), it's incredibly useful to read the dialogues in context with one another. Furthermore, the Postscript assured me by agreeing with a lot of my feelings about the book so, in light of its self-awareness, I became more inclined to be forgiving of the book's shortcomings.

I agree with Feyerabend that the 1st Dialogue is probably the best dialogue - it was very dense, very knotty and very chewy as a piece of philosophical work and that, to me, is the best kind. Philosophy is supposed to be difficult work, it's a practice that requires plenty of slogging and anytime a piece of philosophical book doesn't make you do that, it's probably just singing pleasant intellectual arias and just being glib. I found the 1st Dialogue difficult to digest, but also quite rewarding; the other two dialogues were reasonably okay to read, but that was probably because there were only two speakers (A & B) instead of many (as was the case in the 1st Dialogue). The constant barrage of opinions and the intellectual tug-of-war between the various speakers in the 1st Dialogue made it hard to keep abreast of the logical flow of the discussion because it kept making very sharp right-turns and zigzags, but working through them slowly yields its own rewards. As for the other 2 dialogues, for now, my opinion is that they are interesting but seem at parts to be somewhat glib. There was a part in the 2nd dialogue about how society ought to be modelled like the jury system, where a bunch of normal people ought to decide what they want and be simply informed by expert opinions. The usual objections popped into my head - problems with the democratic system in general, standard objections to the jury system (also, how do we avoid the problem of the experts simply bamboozling the average folk into following his own intents? It seems that we are to a certain degree simply postponing large parts of the problem and still failing to obtain proper checks on chauvinism of the intellectual elite. Anyone remember how Socrates denied the equivalence put forth by Protagoras in the 1st Dialogue? Ay there's the rub) etc. Perhaps I need to reread the dialogue again but these concerns weren't adequately addressed by the interlocutors' debate in the dialogue. Also, there is a constant attempt to flatten and level the epistemic standing of astrology and science. The general mode of attack hinges on how science is often aided by non-empirical "hunches" as opposed to being merely helmed by empirical facts or logic. I don't find this manouevre particularly convincing. All Feyerabend seems to be gesturing towards is that the enterprise of constructing scientific knowledge depends on metaphysical judgements (i.e. the so-called "hunches"), which makes it not too different from the obviously metaphysical art of astrology. But all this simply prompts the question: are all metaphysical judgements made equal? Why or why not? Again, perhaps I need to reread this book but I'm not sure if this concern is properly engaged with in the text.


This review has largely consisted of some of the reservations I've had about the book. So why 5 stars? Well, like what "B" says in the 2nd dialogue, it doesn't matter if i don't entirely agree with the content of the writer's position as long as the work makes me think. And this work accomplishes that marvellously. There's something to be said about a piece of work, philosophical or otherwise, that manages to be irreverent without just being pedantic, clever without just being glib (at least most of the time) and bold without being dogmatic or careless. Books written by intellectual gadflies tend to be overly simplistic, they exchange meticulous arguments and observations for bold statements and polemics. I don't know how Feyerabend managed to create a book of that avoided all these pitfalls but hey, I'm glad he did. It's a book I'll return to this book for sure, to pick apart my thinking, the characters' thinking, and Feyerabend's own thinking as well. I particularly value the experience of forcing your mind to engage with something that has a different pattern, especially since it helps to dislodge many false chimeras of clarity that one may have (to borrow Feyerabend's own phrasing).

Also, it's pleasing to see philosophy being done something other than the essay format. Using the format of Socratic dialogues is a pleasing return to form, for me anyway.

[Ege · Rating 5 out of 5]

The First Dialogue

1)
Jack: ... Well - put a stick into water - it looks crooked. But you know it is straight by feeling it.
Arthur: How do you know that? The feeling of straightness might be mistaken!
...
Arthur: ... I feel cold and I am not too sure that I can judge the shape of the pencil. But assume I can -
well, then all I can do, according to your suggestions, is to make a list: pencil bent when looked at while in water, pencil straight when felt while in water, pencil invisible when I close my eyes ... and so on where 'pencil' is defined by the list.
Jack: This is absurd - there is the pencil!
Arthur: OK, you want to talk about something that has stable properties even if no-one is looking at it - you can do that; but you have to go beyond observations.
...
Arthur: ... You have a choice - doing science in a fruitful way you can either rely on faith, or you can rely on reason. If you do the latter then you will have to become a metaphysician, metaphysics being defined as a discipline that is not based on observations but examines things independently of what observation seems to tell you. In a word - good science needs metaphysical arguments to keep it going; it would not be what it is today without this philosophical dimension

2)
Not only that. The two main characters of the dialogue Professor Cole wants to read with us, Theaetetus and Theodorus, were historical figures, both outstanding mathematicians. And Theaetetus, it says in the introduction, had been severely wounded in a battle and shortly after died from dysentery. In a way the dialogue is written in his memory. In the memory of a great mathematician who was also a valiant fighter. These are very interesting things. First, the fact that it is a dialogue; that has nothing to do with poetry in the superficial sense of pretty talk; it comes from a special conception of knowledge - and this conception is very much alive today, as Arthur said, not in (with a glance at Jack) backward subjects' but in the most respected and the most quick developing disciplines like mathematics and high energy physics. Secondly, there is an existential dimension' as one might call it - the way in which the entire conversation is inserted into extreme situations of real life. I feel this is very different from large parts of modern philosophy where you analyse only the logical properties of concepts and think that is all that can be said about them.

3) I think this summarizes the philosophy of Feyerabend
Jack: Well, we have to draw a line somewhere, especially today and with people around who want to revive astrology, witchcraft, magic. Some things are knowledge, others are not - do you agree to that?
Arthur: Sure. But I don't believe you can draw the line once and for all, and with the help of a simple formula. I don't even think you can draw it, like a traffic law. Boundaries emerge, fade, disappear again as part of a very complex historical process ...

4)
Arthur: ... according to your definition of 'claim to knowledge' most scientific theories are not such claims for, given a complicated theory, scientists hardly ever know in advance what particular circumstances will make them give it up. Theories very often contain hidden assumptions one is not even aware of. New developments bring these assumptions to the fore - and then the criticism can begin. Lee Feng: Do you have an example?
Bruce: Yes - the assumption of infinite signal velocities became known only with the special theory of relativity. In your definition you are supposed to say in 1690 what will happen to Newton's theory in 1919 - and that's absurd. It is the same kind of absurdity that is contained in the demand for a definition of knowledge'. New subjects are constantly entering the scene, old subjects change, which means that the definition will be both very long, with lots of qualifications, and that it will be subjected to change.
Arnold: But you have to have a criterion to separate fake subjects from genuine subjects and you have to formulate this criterion independently of what subjects exist - how else can you judge them in an objective way?
Arthur: In an objective way' - these are mere words. Don't you think that something as decisive as the criteria that define knowledge must be examined very carefully? And if they are being examined, then we have research about criteria and this research will itself be guided by criteria - you simply cannot put yourself outside knowledge and research. Besides, assume you have a criterion. That is not enough. You also want to have something that agrees with the criterion - otherwise your criterion is empty. Hardly anybody today will spend much time on finding the correct definition of unicorn'.

5) I think Feyerabend also wanted to share his other opinions, not just about epistemology, science and relativism. For example, in some parts of the first dialogue, the people in conservation talks about the fact that the translation of ancient Greek to English is flawed. Greek words can have many meanings in English, therefore, it we must be careful when we say "Plato says ..., Aristotle assumes..." and Feyerabend suggests McDowell for translation via the mouth of Lee Feng and Dr. Cole.


6) It is interesting how Theaetetus defines rational numbers. In summary, he says if you can fill a rectangular with squares, then the length of sides are rational numbers. I tried to prove informally to fill a rectangular with squares, rectangular must have sides with length which is rational number. Yet, Theaetetus accepts this as a definition.

7) I guess Feyerabend speaks with the mouth of Bruce and says knowledge is not like numbers since it is made by people and therefore, it is a social phenomenon.


8)
Donald: ... Man is a measure, but man constantly changes...
...
Jack: ... There are six dice - they are more than four dice and less than twelve dice. Now we did not take anything away from the six, the six remained the same and yet they became less.
Donald: That's trivial - 'greater' and 'less' are relations.
Jack: Aha! So what we have are stable things, six dice here, four dice and twelve dice there, and different relations between them. Now the measure doctrine of Protagoras also introduces a relation, between what is and the activity of measuring. But here we have no stable entities with relations between them, the situation is the other way around - everything THAT IS is being constituted by the relation: the measuring makes it BE.
...
Charles: ... After all, an argument is like a battle. One party is defeated - given the weapons of the time. But the weapons constantly change. We learn new things, our mathematics
becomes more complicated in one respect, much simpler in another - what took pages and pages of proof before can now be dealt with in a line or two - our experimental equipment changes, and so on. So an idea defeated today may be an idea proved to be right tomorrow - think of the idea that the earth moves.

9) Via the mouth of Lee Feng, Feyerabend interprets quantum entanglement with these words:
Lee Feng: Unless you do the same thing we did there - declare position and momentum to be relations, not properties inherent in particles, and not simply relations between things that have stable properties apart from the relations but relations between things part of whose properties are being constituted by an interaction - exactly as in the theory of vision Plato develops and attributes to Protagoras. I think this is very interesting for it shows that Plato's arguments against Protagoras may also be turned against quantum mechanics which, however, is pretty well established.

10)
Dr Cole: ... I think Plato would say that people are not always able to create the right kind of order - that it needs an expert to do that. That is his main point. Not everybody judges - experts do. For example (reads) 'The cook will be a better judge than the guest who is not a cook, of the pleasure to be derived from the dinner which is in preparation ... '
David: Well, he can't have visited many restaurants! Yesterday I ate at a French restaurant. The restaurant critics praised it, cooks at other restaurants praised it, it was even recommended in Time magazine and what happened? I almost threw up!
Charles: Precisely! And are the experts better 'in themselves'? No. They are treated better and paid better because lots of people believe in what they say. Because to many people it seems good to have an expert who tells them what to do.
Leslie: Well, it seems the 'real' criticisms are not much better than the sham criticisms.

11)
Seidenberg: Well, let me try. (To Jack) I don't have your logical education and I may make mistakes, but I'll try. So. Protagoras says 'What seems to a man is for him' or, with a simple change, 'What seems to a man is true for him'. Also, 'What seems that it is not for a man is not true for that man'. Do you agree?
Jack: Yes, go on.
Seidenberg: And we can further say, taking those two things together, that Protagoras pronounces the equivalence of 'It seems to x that p' and 'It is true for x that p'. Am I right so far?
Dr Cole: I would say, yes.
Seidenberg: Now I want to imitate you logicians (to Jack) - I call this equivalence P. Now assume that somebody denies P. Socrates, for example.
Jack: Well, then it seems to him that non-P and, therefore, for him, non-P, in agreement with the principle.
Seidenberg: That may be. He may say 'non-P' in accordance with the principle - but saying it, no matter in accordance with what principle, he denies the principle. Note, he does not deny it universally. Socrates. does not say 'For me P is never true', or 'For all propositions p and all people x it is false that if it seems to x that p then p is true for x' - he simply says 'For me P is false' which means that for him there are some sentences where the appearance, for a person, that they are true does not make them true for that person. Socrates certainly would not deny P for sense-data statements - here to appear true is indeed to be true, and he says so himself.
Jack: And?
Seidenberg: Well, according to Protagoras what appears to a person is for that person. So according to Protagoras some appearances (for Socrates) differ from the corresponding truths (for Socrates). And so, according to Protagoras P is not true - for him, for Protagoras himself. The only way he could get out of trouble would be by denying that two people can ever have opinions about the same sentence, but in this case his principle which is supposed to be about any proposition held by any person and not only about propositions held by Protagoras ceases to be meaningful. Now it is true that Plato expresses the matter by saying that the principle is false period; but he can do this, for once 'true for' has been separated from 'seem to', there is no further reason for retaining the 'for', because it entered only in analogy to the seeming. So for me the argument is really decisive.
Bruce: Well, I am not so convinced. I don't say that your interpretation of the argument was not correct, but you both, Plato and you, made one big assumption. You assumed that a principle, or a procedure which, applied to itself, leads to an absurdity or a contradiction, has to be given up. That is a very questionable assumption. To start with, Protagoras may not have wanted to use his principle in this way.
Dr Cole: I am not so sure. Protagoras was a sophist and sophists were artisans in the construction of tricky arguments.
Charles: Then let us separate Protagoras' principle from his interpretation of it. What can we do with the principle? Must we accept the refutation we have just heard?
Bruce: No, because we need not accept the rule that a principle whose self-application creates trouble must be given up. Look at the sentence in the space below:
the only sentence in this space in false
Reading the sentence I can infer that it is true, and if true then false and if false then true - and so on. It is the old paradox of the liar allover again. Some people concluded that self reference has to be avoided; a sentence must never talk about itself. For example, I must never utter a sentence like II am now talking very softly'. Why? Because it was assumed that all the possible sentences of a language have already been pronounced and exist as an abstract system. Introducing self reference into such a system creates trouble, naturally. But the languages we speak are not such systems. Their sentences do not already exist, they are produced, one by one, as we speak, and rules of speaking take shape accordingly. Assume I say 'Pink melancholy climbed over the hills'. Do I make sense? Not in a tyrannical system where colour words are supposed to be applied to material objects only. Still, I may be introducing a new poetic fashion, I may utter the statement to convey the mood of a dream to my psychiatrist - and he most likely will understand what I mean - I may say it to a singing student to help her placing her voice - and believe me, singing teachers do use statements like these, and with great success! In each of these cases we not only follow rules but constitute and modify them by the way in which we proceed.
...
Arthur: And I would add that science is the result of doing research, not of following rules, and therefore one cannot judge science by abstract epistemological rules except when these rules are a result of a special and constantly changing epistemological practice.
Jack: But what becomes now of proofs, such as Gödel's incompleteness proof? Or of the much simpler proof of the consistency of the propositional calculus?
Gaetano: I have thought about that. This proof is not about spoken languages, for example about languages using numbers, but about formal reconstructions of them and it shows that such reconstructions are definitely limited. If you decide to stick to certain rules, come what may, then you are bound to run into all sorts of obstacles.
Bruce: These are excellent illustrations of what I wanted to say! Applying the attitude of a composer, or of a speaker of a language to Protagoras' principle, we regard it as a rule of thumb whose meaning emerges from its use and is not fixed in advance. Socrates' arguments, therefore, do not refute relativism. They refute a Platonic version of relativism where statements are not tied to utterances but exist independently of speech so that a new statement may turn the preceding
performance into a farce.
Jack: Well, if you decide to make up your statements as you go along then, of course, nobody can refute you.
Arthur: Not at all! The complex of statements called 'Newton's theory' changed in the hands of Euler, the Bernoullis, Lagrange and Hamilton; in a way it was the same theory, in a way it was not, and yet scientists eventually specified definite troubles for this not very stable structure. If you adopt Bruce's practical attitude then your ideas about the relation between a theory and its difficulties will of course have to be modified. You will no longer think of a theory as a well-defined entity that says exactly what difficulties will make it disappear; you will think of it as a vague promise whose meaning is constantly being changed and refined by the difficulties one decides
to accept. We already talked about this a little earlier when discussing 'All ravens are black' and Socrates' rejection of his own first series of criticisms. In a way logicians and the philosophers
who follow their lead are very superficial. They see a statement, such as Protagoras' statement. They interpret the statement in a simple-minded way and they triumphantly refute it! But this procedure would have killed science long ago. Every scientific theory, interpreted in a literal way, is in conflict with numerous facts! Plato was aware of this situation, he criticized the practice of easy removal, but then fell for it and used it himself.
Charles: Which means that we must separate relativism from what Socrates makes of it for the purpose of easy refutation ...


The Second Dialogue

12)
A: What have you got against critical rationalism?
B: Critical rationalism?
A: Yes, critical rationalism; Popper's philosophy.
B: I didn't know Popper had a philosophy.
A: You cannot be serious. You were his student
B: I listened to some of his lectures
A: And became his pupil
B: I know this is what Popperians say
A: You translated Popper's Open Society
B: I needed the money
A: You mentioned Popper in footnotes, and quite frequently
B: Because he, and his pupils begged me to do so and I am kindhearted. Little did I know that one fine day such friendly gestures would give rise to serious dissertations about 'influences'.
A: But you were a 'Popperian' - all your arguments were in the Popperian style.
B: ... my discussions with Popper are reflected in my early writings - but so are my discussions with Anscombe, Wittgenstein, Hollitscher, Bohr, and even my reading of Dadaism, Expressionism,
Nazi authorities has left a trace here and there. You see, when I come across some unusual ideas I try them out. ... There is much Wittgenstein in all my papers - but Wittgensteinians neither seek nor are in need of great numbers of followers and so they do not claim me as one of their own. Besides they understand that while 1 regard Wittgenstein as one of the great philosophers of the twentieth century
A: Greater than Popper?
B: Popper is not a philosopher, he is a pedant - this is why the Germans love him so.


13)
A: Not quite. For what you claim is that while you may use certain ideas you need not accept them.
B: Yes.
A: Are you an anarchist?
B: I don't know - I haven't considered the matter.
A: But you have written a book on anarchism!
B: And?
...
B: When a good play is performed the audience takes the action and the speeches of the actors very seriously; they identify now with the one, now with the other character and they do so even though they know that the actor playing the puritan is a rake in his private life and the bomb-throwing
anarchist a frightened mouse.
A: But they take the writer seriously!
B: No, they don't! When the play gets hold of them they feel constrained to consider problems they never thought about no matter what additional information they may obtain when the play is over. And this additional information is not really relevant
A: But assume the writer produced a clever hoax
B: What do you mean - hoax? He wrote a play - didn't he? The play had some effect, didn't it? It made people think didn't it?
A: It made them think by deceiving them.
B: They were not deceived for they did not think about the author. And if it turns out that his beliefs are different from those of his characters then we shall admire him even more for being able to transcend the narrow boundaries of his private life. You seem to prefer a playwright who is a
preacher
A: I prefer a playwright I can trust ...
B: Because you don't want to think! You want him to assume responsibility for his ideas so that you can accept them without qualms and without having to examine them in detail. But let me assure you that his being honest would not help you. There are many honest morons, and criminals.

14)
A: Now if that is your attitude - does it mean that you are against making the idea of honesty an important part of our behaviour and, therefore, of our education?
B: Well, if that was the question, then my answer is obvious. It should be an important part of our education provided we are also told that it has limits and receive some instruction as to
how to behave in these limits.
A: Would you say the same about truth and decency?
B: I would say the same about all ideas expressed by Big Words such as Truth, Honesty, Justice which batter our brains and mutilate our best instincts.
...
(to be continued)

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

For all of Feyerabend's ramblings in these dialogues a reader is led to understand that subjective and objective knowledge mix equally across the domains of science and the arts, and everything in between. As I read this book I was reminded of Laura Dassow Walls' understanding of Thoreau and empirical holism. Can Feyerabend be understood as an empirical holist? A case could be made.

[Eli Entrenebras · Rating 4 out of 5]

Desprecio, autocrítica, pedantería y mala hostia. Ojalá toda la Filosofía fuera así.

[بو جاسم · Rating 3 out of 5]

قرأته بترجمة محمد أحمد السيد

بعنوان : ثلاث محاورات في المعرفة

[Recep Güler]

Birinci söyleşiyi okudum sadece şunu söylemeliyim berbat bir çeviriyle karşı karşıyayız daha ilk sayfada 'çağcıllık sonrası yemek dersi' diye bir ifade geçiyor. Şimdi ingilizcesine bakalım 'class on postmodern cooking' Türkçeye takla attırmaktan geri durmamışlar. Postmodern kelimesini niye çeviriyorsun zaten, ama çevirmenimiz durur mu biyolojiye yapıştırmış dirimbilim'i, atom kuramına yapıştırmış öğecik kuramını, yüksek enerji fiziğine (parçacık fiziği, ana metinde high energy physicist) yapıştırmış yüksek erke fiziği, moleküler biyoloji olmuş özdecik dirimbilim vesaire vesaire.

İnsan biraz tutarlı olur en azından, öztürkçe kelimeler kullanıyorsa o zaman böyle devam eder ama 27. Sayfada kunduracı, ayakkabıcı kelimeleri yerine hop köşker kelimesini kullanıyor ve çeviride öztürkçe tutarsızlığını zirveye ulaştırıyor.

Kendimi sıkıp diğer söyleşileride okumaya yeltenicem.

[Pavlogreen]

Siento por Feyerabend una extraña y peligrosa predilección. Las soluciones pragmáticas, no sistemáticas y tan apegadas a la vida y el sentido común siempre me han seducido y el filósofo (o pensador) austriaco es un maestro en esto. Por otro lado, sé que en sus seductoras propuestas hay un afán iconoclasta a veces desmedido, algo que lo hace peligroso. Todo esto se muestra en grado sumo en sus dos excelentes Diálogos sobre el conocimiento, irónicos, precisos y llenos de contenido. Especialmente valioso es el segundo, que supone un repaso general a la filosofía del autor de una manera dinámica y abarcadora. Quien quiera conocer a Feyerabend debe pasar por estos dos diálogos, que a la par que brillantes son entretenidos y comprensibles.

[Jayson Gonzalez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book of dialogues concerning our modern views of knowledge. Feyerabend argues that science, although definitely a force that has changed the world, still is incomplete in its search for the final 'Theory of Everything' and dispenses with the idea that science is the final domain of knowledge as such.
Here Feyerabend shows his postmodern tendency by claiming all metanarratives and systems as obsolete and even dangerous to the young mind. Systems of thought in themselves can trap us intellectually and practically and should be questioned rigorously not defended when contradictory discoveries arise. Feyerabend here is trying to save science, and methodologies, as a whole from themselves.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I was a relativist, at least in one of the many meanings of this term, but I now regard relativism as a very useful and, above all, humane approximation to a better view. Which view? I haven't found it yet."

The first dialogue is almost a parody of philosophical dialogues, with a class on epistemology reading a dialogue by Plato and arguing. There are too many characters and the dialogue goes nowhere, but maybe that's the whole point. The second and third dialogues are basically Feyerabend debating himself. You get some clarification on his views, but there isn't anything new here if you've read his other works, just the same arguments made in different ways.

[Fernando Pestana da Costa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very short book with two dialogues on the philosophic problem of the nature of knowledge. Of the two, the second one was, for me, the most interesting and enlightening: it is a dialogue between Feyerabend and a student; it seems to encapsulate Feyerabend's thinking about his work, as well as his critical stance in relation to philosophy, the sciences (and scientific knowledge) and life. It seemed to me a lot less radical than I had expected, but then I had never read Feyerabend before. Maybe I should continue now...

[Airam · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most thought-provoking books I have come across. Will make you rethink all your facts and take nothing for granted.
Controversial, to say the least, but quite necessary in a society where science seems to have granted us the right to be all too self-assured.

[شفيق · Rating 2 out of 5]

أن تكون كالثعبان ، أن تكون ليس لديك فلسفة خاصة ولكن تتكلم فى كل المجالات والفلسفات، هذا هو ملخص هذا الكتاب.

[Mustafa Samir · Rating 2 out of 5]

لم استَسِغه....

[Jade Aslain]

A most delightful book! This is not only an excellent intellectual work, it is also a strong work of tolerance and love, and prossibly the best (agnostic) argument for the existence of gods. It is the most sincere spiritual account I've ever read. I know Feyerabend says he isnt an anything (except a professor by trade), but I regard this as an accurate exposition of anti-foundationalism. This is one of my favorite books.

[Cassidy Brinn]

Done with this. The conversational format is just an excuse for self-gratifying, misogynist rambling.