My dissertation project investigates Paul Feyerabend's early scientific and philosophical formative years in both an historical and systematic fashion. In seeming contrast to his later iconoclastic work in philosophy of science, Feyerabend’s early work is rooted in the tradition of scientific phi-losophy. I will interpret Feyerabend’s early philosophical proposals as an attempt to revive a spe-cific conception of scientific philosophy, in which classical epistemological questions are mainly reinterpreted in terms of empirical research questions, logical analysis and means-ends rational-ity.

Based on these findings, I put forward a novel interpretation of Feyerabend’s philosophy and its development, showing multiple ways in which the “positivist” Feyerabend is connected to the “post-positivist” Feyerabend.

Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994)

Ph.D. advisors:Elisabeth NemethWolfgang L. Reiter

DK Program The Sciences in Historical, Philosophical and Cultural ContextsSupported by FWF grant W1228-G18

Daniel Kubydaniel.kuby@univie.ac.at

Feyerabend’s Decision-Based EpistemologyFrom Logical Empiricism to the Historical Turn in Philosophy of Science

The voluntarist tradition Proponents of this tradition highlight the role of volitional decisions in science and its phi-losophy.

‘Logical’ Behaviorism During his studies (1946-1951) Feyerabend engaged in the continuation of the interrupted protocol sentence debate of the Vienna Circle, to which his dissertation (1951) is a belated contribution.

Building upon Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath and Karl Popper, Feyerabend developed a be-havioristic account of basic sentences.

The “Theorie der Reaktoren” developed in his dissertation would be later called “pragmatic theory of observation”, which, together with his “contextual theory of meaning”, got him to formulate the problem of incommensurability for formal accounts of intertheoretic reduction.

Scientific philosophyFeyerabend’s philosophical apprenticeship at the University of Vienna was carried out mainly under Viktor Kraft, who attempted to revive a scientific conception of philosophy in the post-war period.

Feyerabend’s understanding of scientific phi-losophy follows Kraft’s conception: it com-prises both a descriptive and a normative task, gives a deductivist account of science; does not merely analyze science but advances it, and takes procedures of justification from ac-tual scientific practice (Kraft 1925).

Kraft’s conception of scientific philosophy, as well as his own self-understanding as a scien-tist, motivated Feyerabend to reject analytic philosophy as well as ‘Wissenschaftslogik’, which he deemed to be out of touch with ac-tual scientific practice and thus not useful to the advancement of knowledge.

AntimetaphysicsFeyerabend adopted Philipp Frank’s thesis that common sense and everyday experience are the product of “sedimented” past scientific theories: Folk-theories are superseded scien-tific theories in a state of “petrification” (Uebel 2011).

According to Frank, metaphysics is the attempt to interpret actual science through these folk-theories. The antimetaphysical stance denies folk-theories any kind of epistemic authority in the evaluation and interpretation of actual science.

Frank’s thesis of folk-theories as “petrified science” is a long standing theme in Feyera-bend’s philosophy. It motivates his general critique of a stable, pre-theoretical basis of experience and reason, his proposal of an “eliminative materialism” in the philosophy of mind, as well as his opposition to ordinary language philosophy.

My first aim is to show that many epistemological claims of Feyerabend’s alleged “post-positivist” work can be traced back to his early writings and his intellectual socialization in Vienna that took place within the broad tra-dition of scientific philosophy and, more specifically, historical Logical Empiricism (Kuby 2010, Stadler 2010).

Despite these continuities, Feyerabend’s philosophical activity did undergo development. My second aim is to develop an interpretation which can account for Feyerabend’s changing views. To this end I develop an inter-pretation that emphasizes the role of “practical reason” in Feyerabend’s early philosophy and embeds his philosophical approach into a voluntarist tradition of scientific philosophy.

The ‘historical turn’ Surprisingly, Feyerabend’s retreat from a nor-mative task is mainly the result of his technical work in the interpretation of quantum me-chanics, and its history. Due to his work he re-alized that epistemic values are often the out-come of scientific research, that the same epistemic value may be instantiated through different epistemic norms, and that epistemic norms are underdetermined with respect to behavioral patterns of scientists.

Decision-based Epistemology Feyerabend’s strong conception of normativity can be understood as an extreme form of Decision-Based Epistemology

Epistemic values are introduced in science as volitional decisions; epistemic values deter-mine epistemic norms; means-end considera-tions connect epistemic norms to behavioral guidelines of scientists.