PHILOSOPHY

PHILOSOPHY

THE AS-IF PHILOSOPHY

THE PREDICTION PHILOSOPHY


 Philosophie of Als Ob (Philosophy of As If), published in 1911, but written more than thirty years earlier.

In Philosophie des Als Ob, Hans Vaihinger argued that human beings can never really know the underlying reality of the world, and that as a result we construct systems of thought and then assume that these match reality: we behave "as if" the world matches our models. In particular, he used examples from the physical sciences, such as protons, electrons, and electromagnetic waves. None of these phenomena have been observed directly, but science pretends that they exist, and uses observations made on these assumptions to create new and better constructs.
Vaihinger admitted that he had several precursors, especially Jeremy Bentham's Theory of Fictions. In the preface to the English edition of his work, Vaihinger expressed his Principle of Fictionalism. This is that "an idea whose theoretical untruth or incorrectness, and therewith its falsity, is admitted is not for that reason practically valueless and useless; for such an idea, in spite of its theoretical nullity, may have great practical importance."
This philosophy, though, is wider than just science. One can never be sure that the world will still exist tomorrow, but we usually assume that it does.