I read Feyerabend a long time ago. It was recommended to me by someone I deeply respect so I was predisposed to like it, but it struck me as unalloyed nonsense. It was a long time ago and I don't really remember the details any more. My impression is that Feyerabend is mostly cited by crackpots who are bitter because they are not being taken seriously.
However, this question too can be settled empirically: can you point to any useful results that were produced by someone who credits them to Wittgenstein or Feyerabend? I'm not aware of any.
It wasn't meant to be convincing, it was meant to be an honest report of the situation. I don't remember the details. All I remember was that my assessment of it at the time was that it was devoid of merit, which is one of the reasons I don't remember the details.
Now, there are two possibilities: one is that I was wrong, that it has merit, and if I go back and revisit it that I will see now what I missed then. The second possibility is that I got it right back in the day.
But notice that we can actually use the scientific method to test this. These are hypotheses and they make predictions. In particular, the first hypothesis predicts that there should be some evidence that Feyerabend has merit. In particular, I would expect to be able to find someone who produced a useful result and credited that at least in part to his or her having read Feyerabend. I have never seen such an example. To the contrary, the only people I see citing Feyerabend are crackpots who are bitter about not being taken seriously.
Of course, I haven't looked very hard either, so it's entirely possible that there are counterexamples out there. But the appropriate response is not to argue about this or impugn my character, but simply to point me to the evidence that I've missed.
>Now, there are two possibilities: one is that I was wrong, that it has merit, and if I go back and revisit it that I will see now what I missed then. The second possibility is that I got it right back in the day.
A third option is that the merit of someones worked cannot be judged from whether one person find it compelling or not.
That's not a third option. The question of how to decide whether something has merit is orthogonal to the question of whether something has merit or not.
When someone is comfortable dismissing extremely influential thinkers because they "don't remember and had a feeling it was dumb", they aren't engaged in a serious conversation, and they aren't a serious thinker. This isn't how actual philosophy works. Your intellectual laziness isn't my problem.
Feyerabend is widely considered one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century. This is not controversial. These are not crackpots, unless you think that the entire field of academic philosophy is composed of crackpots. Then again, it wouldn't surprise me if you did.
Your arrogant attitude here is very anti-science and very anti-curiosity. Dismissing someone that clearly is considered an expert in their field because they seemed "devoid of merit" is both lazy and ignorant. Again, you may disagree with Feyerabend (or with anyone else), but your lack of knowledge on something is not equivalent to a counterargument. A counterargument requires knowledge of the argument – which you neither have nor are interested in acquiring.
If you want to actually write something of value on the philosophy of science, I really suggest you go read a book about it first. If you think you've already got the answers and can easily dismiss a respected thinker's work because you "deemed it devoid of merit, maybe, but I can't remember," there isn't much serious philosophical discussion to have here.
Sigh. The philosophy of science is a well-established field. This isn't a controversial or fringe thing. To know this requires a few minutes of reading on Wikipedia.
No one thinks that Hubbard is a philosopher of science, probably not even Scientologists. (Because it's a different thing entirely.)
How can you be the author of a series on science and not be the slightest bit familiar with the field? And you want people to take your ideas seriously?
I'll say it again for the third time: this isn't a serious discussion.
Oh, the irony of someone defending Feyerabend on the one hand while dismissing Hubbard, Rand, Ham etc. on the grounds that "philosophy of science is a well-established field." Do you really not see how this is self-defeating?
> No one thinks that Hubbard is a philosopher of science, probably not even Scientologists.
I will bet you $1000 that I can find at least five Scientologists who will profess to believe that LRH was a philosopher of science.
No, that isn't ironic or self-defeating. Feyerabend was a member of more than half a dozen respected philosophy departments around the world. Hubbard was a science fiction writer that started a religion. There are in no way equivalent.
Again, you really don't seem to know what you're talking about here, at any level.
The whole point of "Against Method" was to argue for epistemological anarchy. A logical consequence of that is that the scientific establishment should not be given any special deference or credence. You are citing that very same establishment to support the proposition that this idea has merit. You don't see how that is self-defeating?
No, again, because L. Ron Hubbard wasn’t writing about topics generally covered by the philosophy of science. Epistemological anarchy doesn’t mean that words suddenly don’t have meaning and that a sci-fi writer is reclassified as a philosopher of science. Feyerabend was not a philosopher of science because institutions deemed him so, but because he did work on subjects considered to be philosophy of science, which was then considered exemplary by other philosophers of science. This is common sense and not at all complicated for anyone that stops to think about it for half a second.
I am really having to re-invent the wheel here, it seems. And I am having a difficult time believing that you’re discussing this in good faith, so I think I’ll end it here.
> Ron Hubbard wasn’t writing about topics generally covered by the philosophy of science.
So? I didn't bring up LRH as an example of a philosopher of science, I brought up LRH as an example of someone who has been influential to make the point that just because someone is influential doesn't necessarily mean that they are worth paying attention to, and this is true no matter what field they're in.
BTW, I've been re-reading Against Method and it is every bit as nonsensical and incoherent and just downright stupid as I remember it. AFAICT, what it's saying is, essentially, here are things that scientists have done in the past that look dumb to me with the benefit of hindsight, and here is a straw-man characterization of the scientific method, and so we should throw it all out and just allow anyone to do whatever the fuck they want to because reasons.
In the hope of maybe finding something that I'm missing, I also went to the Wikipedia article:
> The primary thesis of Against Method is that there is no such thing as the scientific method and that it is not appropriate to impose a single methodological rule upon scientific practices. Rather, 'anything goes', meaning that scientists should be free to pursue whatever research seems interesting to them. The primary target of Against Method is 'rationalism', or the view that there are rational rules that should guide scientific practices.
More patent nonsense is hard to imagine. There manifestly is such a thing as the scientific method. There is something that scientists do that allows them to produce theories with more predictive power than shamans or psychics or astrologers. Something distinguishes scientists from crackpots. In fact, we actually know pretty much exactly what that something is. But even if we didn't know, that wouldn't mean that it doesn't exist.
Here is a specific example from the "Sketch of the main argument" at the start of the book:
"The consistency condition which demands that new hypotheses agree with accepted theories is unreasonable because it preserves the older theory, and not the better theory."
There is no "consistency condition" which "demands" anything. This is just utter nonsense. I even wrote specifically about this in the previous installment of my series:
If this "consistency condition" were real we would never have gotten relativity nor quantum mechanics nor plate tectonics nor H. Pylori nor RNA vaccines nor even sanitation (because Pasteur's germ theory did not agree with the accepted theories of the day). This "consistency condition" is a straw man of the first water.
It's like an aggregation of the worst parts of scientism manifest in one single human...I have trouble believing this is actually real, it's too far beyond what my absurdity meter can measure.
I see you too were present for the former clinic he put on in the philosophy thread, that was something to see.
However, this question too can be settled empirically: can you point to any useful results that were produced by someone who credits them to Wittgenstein or Feyerabend? I'm not aware of any.