The Philosophy of 'As if'

The Philosophy of 'As if': A System of the Theoretical, Practical and Religious Fictions of Mankind (Die Philosophie des Als Ob) is a 1911 book by the German philosopher Hans Vaihinger, based on his dissertation of 1877. The work for which Vaihinger is best known, it was published in an English translation by C. K. Ogden in 1924. In 1935, a revised and abbreviated English translation by Ogden was published. The revised translation was based on the sixth German edition of the original work. Within a philosophical framework of epistemology, the book argues for false premises or false assumptions as a viable cognitive heuristic. For example, simplified models used in the physical sciences are often formally false, but nevertheless close enough to the truth to furnish useful insight; this is understood as a form of idealization. Vaihinger begins with an autobiography, discussing the origins of his philosophical ideas. He writes that he chose the title The Philosophy of 'As If because "it seemed to me to express more convincingly than any other possible title" his view that, "appearance, the consciously-false, plays an enormous part in science, in world-philosophies and in life."Vaihinger, Hans (1968). The Philosophy of 'As If'''. Fakenham: Cox & Wyman, Ltd. pp. xxiii-xlviii. The book presents an epistemology as well as a practical world and life view. Vaihinger describes human knowledge as erroneous and contradictory and asks how to explain the fact that one can still arrive at the right thing based on these false assumptions. Vaihinger's answer is that the assumptions are a practically useful fiction, and that knowledge can therefore only be pragmatically substantiated by the success that is achieved in its application. Religious and metaphysical views, like logic, are not true in an objective sense, since this cannot be established. Instead, the question had to be asked whether it was useful to act "as if" they were true.