Paul Feyerabend - Criticism

Criticism

The rationalist philosopher and popular essayist David Stove claimed that, in his philosophical work, Feyerabend was responsible for "neutralizing success-words" and "sabotaging logical expressions". The first of these rhetorical devices involves casting success-words like 'progress', 'advance' and 'improvement' in a doubtful light. According to Stove, Feyerabend does this, first of all, by allowing the reader their own understanding of these terms. In Feyerabend's words,

Everyone can read the terms in his own way and in accordance with the tradition to which he belongs. Thus for an empiricist, 'progress' will mean transition to a theory that provides direct empirical tests for most of its basic assumptions. For others, 'progress' may mean unification and harmony, perhaps even at the expense of empirical adequacy. Against Method. p. 18.

This, Stove understands as a "promise to neutralize all success-words". Unfortunately, according to Stove, Feyerabend "does not keep his promise but still he often does neutralize them; and when he does it is often by means of quotation-marks.". Stove explains,

Thus in certain circumstances a journalist might write "The Minister 'refuted' the allegations", meaning, and being understood to mean, that the Minister did not refute but only denied them. Popper and After. p. 9.

The second rhetorical device Stove criticised was the practise of robbing logical statements of their logical force by placing them in epistemic contexts; for example, instead of saying "P is a proof for Q" one would say "It is generally believed by scientists that P is a proof for Q". This produces what Stove calls a "ghost logical statement": it gives the impression that serious statements of logic are being made when they are not - all that is really being made are sociological or historical claims which are immune to criticism on logical grounds.

Having exposed these "literary devices", Stove does not consider Feyerabend's arguments further. Instead, he chooses to show that Hume's inductive scepticism is irrational since, Stove believes, it "operates as a tacit premise, indeed, in the philosophy of Feyerabend". In other words, if Hume's inductive scepticism falls, then so do Feyerabend's arguments of "Against Method".

Stove attempts this by dissecting Hume's argument. He shows that Hume has good grounds for the proposition denoted N, that "An inductive argument is invalid, and any validator of it is not a reason or part of a reason to believe its conclusion.". Stove, however, denies that this is grounds for accepting Hume's conclusion, denoted C, that "No proposition about the observed is a reason to believe a contingent proposition about the observed.". As he explains,

some other philosophers (of whom I am one) resist this step from N to C. We have a less exacting standard of reasonable argument than most philosophers incline to. We say that an argument can be invalid, and even incurably so, but still its premise can be a reason to believe its conclusion. It is so, we say, with some inductive arguments in particular. Hume's result N we accept, and we admire it, as a profound truth about induction which his argument brought to light. But the sceptical conclusion C which Hume drew from N does not follow, we say, and is false. Popper and After. p. 73.

To bridge the gap from the proposition N to the proposition C requires an addition proposition which gives deduction as the only valid form of reasoning from a premise to a conclusion. If, as Stove believes, inductive scepticism is an unspoken, yet key, assumption in Feyerabend's writing, then it follows that the foundations of Feyerabend's philosophy also suffer this weakness. In Stove's opinion this is sufficient to show that the Feyerabend of "Against Method" is irrational.