Abstract
PROF. VAIHINGER'S work, now translated into English, has been well known by philosophers almost from its first appearance in 1911. The translation is made from the sixth edition of the original, specially revised by the author to meet the case “of historical references which might be obscure to the English reader. The doctrine is that ‘as if,’ i.e. appearance, the consciously false, plays an enormous part in science, in world-philosophies, and in life.” The basis of the theory is Kant's doctrine of the Ideas of Reason, God, Freedom, and Immortality. These Ideas, according to Prof. Vaihinger's reading of the Critique, are not objects of knowledge the existence of which, though it cannot be proved by pure reason, is a necessity of the practical reason. He holds, on the contrary, that they are conscious fictions, and that the condition of our human activity is that we must act “as if” they were true. The same principle he holds applies not only to Ideas of Reason but also to all the categories of the understanding, in fact throughout the realms of science and philosophy.
The Philosophy of “As if”: a System of the Theoretical, Practical and Religious Fictions of Mankind.
H.
Vaihinger
By. Translated by C. K. Ogden. (International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method.) Pp. xlviii + 370. (London: Kegan Paul and Co., Ltd.; New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., Inc., 1924.) 25s. net.
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The Philosophy of “As if”: a System of the Theoretical, Practical and Religious Fictions of Mankind. Nature 114, 714 (1924). https://doi.org/10.1038/114714a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/114714a0