John J. Preston

Identifications, diagnoses, and treatments of pseudo-problems form a family of classic methodologies in later nineteenth century philosophy and at least partly, as I shall argue, in the philosophy of science. They were devised, not by academic philosophers, but by three of the greatest of the philosopher-scientists. (Later, the idea was taken up by academic philosophers, of course. But I will not discuss that development). Here I show how Ernst Mach, Heinrich Hertz and Ludwig Boltzmann each deployed methods of this general kind, how they identified different pseudo-problems, how they gave different diagnoses of such problems, and how they suggested quite different treatments for them. I argue that it was Mach who really first developed the idea of a pseudo-problem, that he did so in a relatively focused way on the basis of two kinds of examples. Hertz’s contribution was much more limited, identifying two specific pseudo-problems concerning physics, and suggesting a way in which they might be treated. Boltzmann’s conception of pseudo-problems, though, was far less focused, being applied to a very wide range of problems in philosophy and physics. However, his conception was certainly more influential in philosophy, and perhaps ultimately more fruitful and suggestive. I argue for the originality and continuing interest of such approaches, and I try to dissociate them from any problematic ‘positivism’.

Since the publication of Sein und Zeit in 1927, scholars have coupled Martin Heidegger’s reflections on authenticity with a rich tradition of thought which reminds us that philosophy can, from time to time, function as a catalyst for self-discovery. While this function is an undeniable feature of Heideggerian authenticity, I would like to suggest that it is secondary to the role that authenticity plays in Heidegger’s philosophical investigations. By analyzing the full phenomena of authenticity and tracing its first technical uses back to Heidegger’s early lectures on Aristotle, I show that Heidegger’s methodological breakthrough in the early 1920s, the development of hermeneutic phenomenology, and the very structure of Being and Time are the result of Heidegger’s appropriation of Aristotle’s philosophical method. By analyzing these lectures and traditionally ignored uses of authenticity in Being and Time, I develop an account of the methodological sense of authenticity which looks to the tradition to uncover phenomena which have been obscured and covered over. In comparing this methodological reading to some standard readings, what I call the existential, intentional, and practical readings of authenticity, I show that the problems which arise in these accounts can be addressed by considering the full phenomena of authenticity and its methodological role in Heidegger’s thinking. Ultimately, I show that the term “authenticity [Eigentlichkeit]” is not only an ineliminable part of the structure of Heidegger’s Being and Time but that it is also at the heart of his phenomenological method.

To what extent should we think of Mary Hesse as having been a scientific realist? Her early works were clearly intended to make space for a form of realism based on a fuller recognition of the role of models and analogies in science than existing empiricist views allowed. Her commitment to realism is explicit in her publications from the mid-1960s until at least the mid-1970s. But there were also some kinds of realism that she always distanced herself from. I investigate what all these versions of realism were, and why she endorsed some but opposed others. In the 1970s, Hesse’s growing conviction that there is no cumulation or convergence of theory across the history of science, together with the idea of the underdetermination of theory by data, led her to endorse what she thought of as a form of ‘pragmatism’ or ‘instrumentalism’. Had she turned against her earlier form of scientific realism, or perhaps all forms of scientific realism, and if so, why? Or did she think her pragmatism was compatible with her initial, model-based realism? I draw attention to a residually realist aspect of her views, one that should make us think of her as having suggested what others would later come to think of as structural realism. But I also argue that her approach to language might well jeopardise the idea that she was ever a realist.

I set out the factors which tempt people into reading Ernst Mach's book The Analysis of Sensations as putting forward either a version of phenomenalism or a version of neutral monism, and then assess the strengths and weaknesses of these two readings. I present an ‘internal’ view of that text, showing that it by no means mandates the phenomenalist reading, and that a case for something more like the neutral monist reading can be made from within that book, indeed largely from within its famous first chapter.

The Tractatus’ remarks on natural science contain the idea of comparing different forms of mechanics in terms of the unity and simplicity with which they can be used to describe the world. The Notebooks, surprisingly, pointed to this specific idea as something Wittgenstein had already felt ‘for a long time’. The mesh metaphor that follows is supposed to allow us to see ‘the relative position of logic and mechanics’. I argue first that Wittgenstein takes mechanics not to consist in Bilder, pictures. Evidence against this reading is addressed, before I move on to the idea that each form of mechanics is an ‘a priori insight into the forms in which the propositions of science can be cast’. I argue that one must go further than such a declaration, since the Tractatus contains ideas that make it problematic. Making the required link to logic, I introduce the idea of understanding the concepts of mechanics as ‘formal concepts’. I use this Tractarian notion to make sense of Wittgenstein’s attitude towards metaphysics. Finally, I explain what the relative position of logic and mechanics is, by reference to the idea of forms of representation.

To what extent should we think of Mary Hesse as having been a scientific realist? Her early works were clearly intended to make space for a form of realism based on a fuller recognition of the role of models and analogies in science than existing empiricist views allowed. Her commitment to realism is explicit in her publications from the mid-1960s until at least the mid-1970s. But there were also some kinds of realism that she always distanced herself from. I investigate what all these versions of realism were, and why she endorsed some but opposed others. In the 1970s, Hesse’s growing conviction that there is no cumulation or convergence of theory across the history of science, together with the idea of the underdetermination of theory by data, led her to endorse what she thought of as a form of ‘pragmatism’ or ‘instrumentalism’. Had she turned against her earlier form of scientific realism, or perhaps all forms of scientific realism, and if so, why? Or did she think her pragmatism was compatible with her initial, model-based realism? I draw attention to a residually realist aspect of her views, one that should make us think of her as having suggested what others would later come to think of as structural realism. But I also argue that her approach to language might well jeopardise the idea that she was ever a realist.

Paul Feyerabend was indebted to certain physicist-philosophers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly Ernst Mach and Ludwig Boltzmann. My paper is a critical study of some main aspects of the latter’s influence on Feyerabend. I begin by outlining Feyerabend’s account of the role and influence of Boltzmann’s scientific work, especially his role as ‘the last pillar’ of atomism and the mechanical world-view. Then, endorsing Feyerabend’s 1967 contention that Boltzmann’s philosophy had been neglected, I pay tribute to his role in drawing attention to it. Moving on to Feyerabend’s basic claims about Boltzmann’s philosophy, I first agree with him that Boltzmann was an evolutionary thinker, and thus a confirmed fallibilist. I then deal with the two most constant themes in Feyerabend’s mentions of Boltzmann, that Boltzmann was a pioneer pluralist, and that he endorsed a certain kind of anti-empiricism. While the identification of Boltzmann as a pluralist is correct and important, I urge reservations about the idea that he opposed empiricism. Feyerabend’s view of logic seems to have been a radicalised version of Boltzmann’s, so I discuss Boltzmann’s views on logic, and argue that his evolutionary approach to that subject was one of the less convincing aspects of his philosophy. I then discuss the vexed issue of whether or not we should think of Boltzmann as committed to ‘scientific realism’. At first, Feyerabend identified him straightforwardly as such. Under the influence of Martin Curd’s unpublished doctoral dissertation on Boltzmann, though, he clearly began to have doubts. The formulation he eventually came up with was that Boltzmann endorsed ‘the positivistic version of scientific realism’. I explain what that version was supposed to be. I conclude that although Feyerabend’s picture of Boltzmann is somewhat one-sided, he does deserve credit for keeping the views of these philosopher-physicists in focus during an era in which they were overshadowed by philosophies of science deriving from logical positivism and critical rationalism.

Paul Feyerabend’s 1970 article “Experts in a Free Society” tries to make the case that scientific experts can only be tolerated if they are dilettantes. He uses Galileo, Newton and Kepler as examples of great scientists whose writing is nothing like that of contemporary “experts’, these latter being represented by the authors of the well-known book Human Sexual Response, Bill Masters and Virginia Johnson. He goes on to argue against the idea that the Scientific Revolution represented the triumph of empiricism. I take issue with the way Feyerabend represents Galileo as implacably opposed to empiricism, with his supposition that good science requires a particular personality, and with the way in which he represents the work of Masters and Johnson.

Of all the influences on the work of Paul Feyerabend, Ernst Mach’s was probably the most long-standing, and undoubtedly among the most important. I first show that Feyerabend’s earliest mentions of Mach are heavily under the influence of Karl Popper. Early Feyerabend characterises Mach in traditional terms as a positivist whose philosophy is flawed in comparison with critical rationalism. Next, in the papers Feyerabend published during the early and mid-1960’s, Mach appears in two main guises: not only as an anti-realist, but also as an anti-pluralist. I show that while there are some flashes of insight about Mach here, by and large Feyerabend sticks to the traditional way of reading him as aligned with the logical empiricists. Feyerabend did, however, come to change his mind about Mach. He eventually came to be at the forefront of those who initiated a re-evaluation of Mach, thereby beginning to move opinion away from the ‘received view’. Feyerabend’s published struggle on Mach’s behalf began in earnest around 1970. From this point onwards, his attitude to Mach was relatively constant. While endorsing several of the ways in which Feyerabend came to characterise Mach’s thought, I take issue with some other themes in these publications. I suggest that we should not follow Feyerabend’s mature reading of Mach in its entirety, since he had turned away from certain sensible aspects of Mach’s ideas. Most notably, Feyerabend misinterpreted what Mach said about world views, he wrongly imagined that Mach endorsed the ‘constructivist’ ideas that human cognition transforms (non-cognitive) facts, and that facts themselves get adapted, and he fancifully ascribed to Mach his own view that all concepts are ‘theoretical’ concepts.

In Science, Faith and Society, Michael Polanyi speaks about various ‘interpretations of nature’. I discuss the items that he has in mind, identify two of his major theses about them, and investigate the extent to which he treated science as resting on different ‘ultimate suppositions’ at different times in its history.I then consider what he says about how to decide between science and rival ‘interpretations of nature’, arguing that the idea of such a choice or decision is dubious, and that there is no prospect, nowadays, of rejecting science ‘as a whole’. Polanyi’s better approach to the issue, I urge, is in terms of the replacement of our natural inclination through education.Polanyi’s account of free discussion rests on the two principles of fairness and tolerance. Rival interpretations of nature, though, are too different for the decision procedure that he envisages to work. And only a public committed to a scientific interpretation of nature could nowadays count as judicious.Finally, I discuss the debate between what Polanyi calls the ‘metaphysical believer’ and the ‘nihilist’, arguing that Polanyi’s recognition that universal nihilism is logically untenable implies that we do not have to resort to the ‘mental satisfactions’ to which he appealed.

Since the publication of Sein und Zeit in 1927, scholars have coupled Martin Heidegger’s reflections on authenticity with a rich tradition of thought which reminds us that philosophy can, from time to time, function as a catalyst for self-discovery. While this function is an undeniable feature of Heideggerian authenticity, I would like to suggest that it is secondary to the role that authenticity plays in Heidegger’s philosophical investigations. By analyzing the full phenomena of authenticity and tracing its first technical uses back to Heidegger’s early lectures on Aristotle, I show that Heidegger’s methodological breakthrough in the early 1920s, the development of hermeneutic phenomenology, and the very structure of Being and Time are the result of Heidegger’s appropriation of Aristotle’s philosophical method. By analyzing these lectures and traditionally ignored uses of authenticity in Being and Time, I develop an account of the methodological sense of authenticity which looks to the tradition to uncover phenomena which have been obscured and covered over. In comparing this methodological reading to some standard readings, what I call the existential, intentional, and practical readings of authenticity, I show that the problems which arise in these accounts can be addressed by considering the full phenomena of authenticity and its methodological role in Heidegger’s thinking. Ultimately, I show that the term “authenticity [Eigentlichkeit]” is not only an ineliminable part of the structure of Heidegger’s Being and Time but that it is also at the heart of his phenomenological method.