umanity is "a species of monkey suf- fering from megalomania," said the

young Hans Vaihinger (1852-1933). Although much that he later wrote was less caustic, the mature views of this German philosopher tended to be contro-versial. He was born in a devout home and attended the Theological College at the University of Tübingen. His early views were theistic, but they developed in a pan-theistic direction. At Tübingen he became an agnostic and later an atheist along Schopenhauerian lines. However, some-what like Santayana, Vaihinger saw aes-thetic and ethical value in Christian doc-trines. Although sympathetic to "theoreti-cal atheism," he deplored "practical athe-ism," which he viewed as the failure to act in ways making the world better. For Vaihinger, religion should be construed as a way of behaving well rather than as doc-trinal belief; so construed it is the highest point humanity can reach.

His major work defended the role of fictions in diverse realms of discourse.' For Vaihinger, fictions are known to be inconsistent with the facts or to be self-contradictory, but they function as if true. Fictions illuminate a complex situation by substituting a part of the full range of facts and causes for that full range. They are only provisional and disappear as inquiry progresses. They are expedient in the sense of providing the means to a specific end. According to Vaihinger, the notion of an atom involves a group of contradictory concepts, but is useful for dealing with reality. Materialism, although false, sim-plifies our view of the external world and lends support to a scientific outlook. Despite its falsity, Goethe's notion of an animal archetype of which all known species are modifications had consider-able usefulness, for it suggested a new

Rollo Handy is a philosopher, now retired, who specializes in philosophy of science and value theory.

"That we never achieve finality is not a cause for despair, but

offers hope that our `knowns' can be improved, via a continual

interweaving of conjectures and observation, thus improving our

problem-solving capabilities."

classificatory system and had heuristic value for Darwin's later theory. God, immortality, and the virgin birth are fic-tions helping many people to live better lives.

Vaihinger's emphasis on the known fal-sity of fictions differentiates his view from others with which he had some sympathy. Vaihinger took pragmatism as holding that a statement is true if it is useful, whereas fictions—although useful—are false. He took skepticism as the doubting of the truth of an idea, but fictions are known to be false rather than merely doubted. As noted, Vaihinger found merit in certain Christian doctrines, but conventional Christians found scant consolation in his conversion of "eternal truths" into expedi-ent falsehoods that eventually will be dropped' In general, Vaihinger opposed any view arguing that a doctrine known to be false should be eliminated, for he believed that often we usefully act on what is false. In that sense there is an enormous gulf between Vaihinger's view and W. K. Clifford's insistence that all beliefs should be justified by the evidence'

In recent years, a position close to Vaihinger's was advocated by the econo-mist Milton Friedman. He suggests as a hypothesis to account for observed density of a tree's leaves that the leaves conscious-ly know the scientific basis for calculating the amount of sunlight that would be received in any position and can freely move to the position maximizing sunlight. After noting important ways in which the implications of that hypothesis meet

observational tests, he argues that the hypothesis should not be rejected merely because a leaf does not consciously seek, has not learned the science and mathe-matics necessary to calculate the optimum position, and cannot move from position to position. The hypothesis "does not assert that leaves do these things but only that their density is the same as if they did."'

A common line of criticism of Vaihinger is expressed by Morris R. Cohen:

. . . contrary to the contention of Vaihinger, none of the so-called fictions of science involve any contradiction. If they did so, they could not be useful, since no consistent inferences could be drawn from them. Even when not com-pletely true, they are analogies which offer useful suggestions just to the extent that they are true. To the extent that they fail they are subject to the process of correction.'

But since Vaihinger's fictions are only provisional and later dropped, he does allow for a "process of correction," and often in the history of science useful con-clusions have been drawn from what later turned out to be overgeneralizations.

In my opinion, the view developed by John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley in their Knowing and the Known' incorpo-rates many of Vaihinger's useful points while avoiding his celebration of incor-rect generalizations. Dewey and Bentley see the achieving of "warranted asser-tions" (rather than "truths") as the objec-tive. Warranted assertions, although the best obtainable generalizations to date, are subject to future correction. Indeed, all aspects of inquiry are subject to change as inquiry progresses; we neither start nor end with certitudes. As inquiry proceeds, a useful solution may generate new problems, additional facts may be discovered and old facts discarded, and eventually even the most venerated "laws" may require modification. That we never achieve finality is not a cause for despair, but offers hope that our "knowns" can be improved, via a contin-ual interweaving of conjectures and observation, thus improving our problem-solving capabilities.

Vaihinger's view have proved stimulat-ing to workers in diverse fields. For exam-ple, the anthropologist Weston La Barre

Vaihinger and the 'As If'

Rollo Handy

Summer 1995

45

recommends Vaihinger's book as "nourish-ing ... for the general reader."' Vaihinger's trenchant criticism of the alleged truth of cherished doctrines can be fascinating to those working their way out of convention-al belief systems, even if they come to reject many of his contentions.

Notes

1. Die Philosophie des Als-Ob was first pub-lished in 1911. The sixth edition, containing an auto-

biography by Vaihinger, was translated into English as The Philosophy of 'As If' by C. K. 0gden (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1924).

2. Vaihinger's "defense" of Christian doctrines included other items unpalatable to the faithful. Although he thought the fiction of a world created by a Higher Spirit was expedient for many, he insisted a further fiction was required in which that order was destroyed by a hostile force.

3. "The Ethics of Belief," a talk originally deliv-ered in 1876. W. K. Clifford. Lectures and Essays, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1886).

4. "The Methodology of Positive Economics," expanded version printed in William Breit and Harold M. Hochman, eds., Readings in Micro-

economics (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968) p. 33. The original version is from Friedman's book, Essays in Positive Economics (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1953).

5. Reason and Nature, 2nd ed. (original edition 1931) (Glencoe: The Free Press of Glencoe, p. 162, 1953).

6. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1949); reprinted in Rollo Handy and E. C. Harwood, Useful Procedures of Inquiry (Great Barrington, Mass.: Behavioral Research Council, 1973) which also discusses in more detail many methodological points raised in this article.

7. The Human Animal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954) p. 351.

hat smoking is dangerous is a notion 1 that people scoffed at once. It has recently been said that too much rational-ity is dangerous to one's mental health, upending the long-held contention that the mentally healthy person is the realistic one. This has been argued by Taylor and Brown in their paper, "Illusion and Well-being,"' and by Taylor in her book, Positive Illusions.' They claim that men-tally healthy people are characterized by illusions that enhance the believer's view of himself or herself, illusions of control, and unrealistic optimism about the future. I want to resist this claim. Although Taylor and Brown may have shown that not all illusions are inimical to mental health, they have not shown that rationali-ty, like smoking, is injurious to one's health.

ou can't always believe what people 1 say. The research often doesn't corre-

late mental health with beliefs, illusory or not, but with statements of belief. The two are not the same. Bigots have been known to sincerely assert that they are unpreju-diced. We could judge people's attitudes toward, say, their future prospects more accurately by looking at the insurance they've got relative to the amount they can afford than by taking their statements at

Brian Zamulinski is an Overseas Post-graduate Research Scholar at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. His research is in the field of ethics.

46

"Although [researchers] may have shown that not all

illusions are inimical to mental health, they have not shown that

rationality, like smoking, is injurious to one's health."

face value. People are sometimes simply mistaken about what they believe.

Leaving aside honest mistakes about what one believes, there is some evidence that people are not always honest with researchers, even if they are honest with themselves. This is the case with children. Jerome Kagan reports that

children's responses to direct questions about their psychological qualities appear to be relatively valid indexes of the child's belief ... when the self-ranks admit to undesirable attributes. But pos-itive evaluations are more suspect, for at least one-third of all children who did not possess the positive attributes .. . evaluated the self positively. However, some of these children acknowledged their undesirable quality on the triads or film.' [Italics added.]

The triads and film were methods of discovering the children's beliefs indi-rectly. If the children truly believed that they were as good as they claimed, the three methods would not have produced divergent results. Adults are not conspicu-ously more honest than children.

The tendency to make inaccurate state-ments is especially strong when it comes

to what people believe as opposed to what they do. We can expect people to want to make positive belief statements even when they don't believe. People have been admonished to think positively for a long time, the implication being that belief is necessary to success in many endeavors. We are told that we must have something to believe in to live the good life, for our lives to have meaning. Christianity teaches that belief determines our eternal prospects. These factors will incline peo-ple to want to believe. If they want to believe, people are probably going to use belief statements incantationally. Think of the people who say, "I know that X is still alive," when it is almost certain that X is dead. In these cases, apparent belief state-ments cannot be taken at face value because the people are making belief state-ments in hopes of inculcating real belief or preventing disbelief in themselves.

Another problem is that people have a tendency to look for confirming evidence even when their interests or desires are not involved.4 For instance, people who are asked whether two things are similar look for similarities while people who are asked whether two things are dissimilar look for dissimilarities. (This cognitive bias might explain why the religious man-age to miss all the horrors that religions produce—they're simply looking for the good.) People who are asked whether their futures are going to be better than average are going to look for things that show that their futures are going to be bet-ter than average. Moreover, it is not known to whom they are comparing them-selves or in what respects. The same per-son could give different answers to the question depending on whether he or she compares himself or herself with inhabi-

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