Abstract
In this paper I defend the claim that Paul Feyerabend held a robust metaphilosophical position for most of his philosophical career. This position I call Decision-Based Epistemology and reconstruct it in terms of three key components: (1) a form of epistemic voluntarism concerning the justification of philosophical positions and (2) a behaviorist account of philosophical beliefs, which allows him (3) to cast normative arguments concerning philosophical beliefs in scientific methodology, such as realism, in terms of means-ends relations. I then introduce non-naturalist and naturalist variants of his conception of normativity, which I trace back to his mentors Viktor Kraft and Karl Popper, respectively. This distinction, introduced on the metaphilosophical level, can can be put to use to explain key changes in Feyerabend’s philosophical proposals, such as the viability of his methodological argument for realism. I conclude that this Decision-Based Epistemology should be further explored by historically embedding Feyerabend’s metaphilosophy in a voluntarist tradition of scientific philosophy.
Highlights
In this paper I am going to defend the claim that Paul Feyerabend held a robust metaphilosophical position, i.e. a structured set of beliefs about how to conceive of philosophy
Synthese (2021) 199:3271–3299 abend addressed epistemological matters for most of his intellectual life. This conception of philosophy rests on a form of epistemic voluntarism, according to which philosophical beliefs are not justified by evidence, but by an appeal to epistemic values; and it uses a behaviorist account of philosophical beliefs, which makes these beliefs amenable to pragmatic warrant
As an account detailing the connection between Feyerabend’s later naturalist conception of Decision-Based Epistemology (DBE) and his adherence to the “historical turn” in philosophy of science is developed in Kuby, I will devote the rest of the section to give an account of Feyerabend’s earlier non-naturalist conception of DBE: the development of an axiological reasoning, connecting epistemic values and moral values, which is deemed independent from the axiological inquiry in the sciences (3.3) and led Feyerabend to uphold an interventionist conception of philosophy of science, i.e. the view that philosophy of science has standing to intervene in the development of science, not just to describe or analyze it (3.4)
Summary
In this paper I am going to defend the claim that Paul Feyerabend held a robust metaphilosophical position, i.e. a structured set of beliefs about how to conceive of philosophy. Feyerabend used the methodology of science as the central arena in which these philosophical arguments can be put to work; and developed a domain of axiological reasoning, as the normative grounding of his position, which can be either dependent or independent of scientific practice In advancing this account, I question Eric Oberheim’s influential (and in many ways excellent) interpretation of Feyerabend’s philosophy (Oberheim 2006). Proposing the framework of Decision-Based Epistemology as an account of Feyerabend’s conception of philosophy has interesting consequences, two of which I will discuss in this paper These metaphilosophical views tie him to a specific (but not homogeneous) philosophical heritage, namely, Viennese scientific philosophy (Stadler 2010).
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