Photo: Grazia Borrini-Feyerabend (attribution), via Wikimedia Commons
Paul Feyerabend public figure — reconstructed profile
This is a reconstruction from published statements, not a real account. Only questions with a documented position are answered, and each one cites its source below. Spotted an error? Bring a better citation to the forum and it gets fixed.
Philosophy's anarchist (Against Method, 1975). "Anything goes": every tradition — science included — must earn its authority, and none gets it by office. Positions from his published works — not a member.
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Kindred % · overall match
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Twin % · thinks like you
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World % · lives in your world
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Life % · lives like you
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Opposition % · opposite poles, held with certainty
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Bubble
Positions & sources
| Question | Position | Source |
|---|---|---|
| For a non-urgent condition, your doctor recommends treatment A, per current specialty guidelines. You spent about 40 hours on the primary literature and concluded B is better. You can't find a flaw in your reasoning, and you can't rule out that specialists know something you don't. Stipulate: both are covered, available and similar in side-effect risk, and no second opinion is available in time. You choose: | B | Science in a Free Society (1978) — his defense of patients' freedom to choose non-orthodox medicine: your own forty hours outrank the guideline's authority. The anarchist answer. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Before results, you strongly doubted this: a one-time, one-hour classroom exercise measurably raises students' grades a year later. Then a randomized trial reports exactly that, statistically significant. Stipulate: preregistered, a large multi-school sample, an independent team, analysis matching the preregistration, and no flaws you can find. Where do you land now? | Somewhat more likely than before, but still probably not | Against Method (1975) — proliferation: a single result, however clean, is one move in a game that needs rival theories kept alive; credence moves cautiously. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Five people you know well report the same event: one evening, an object hovered unsupported in a public square for about ten seconds. Stipulate: each has been reliable for years, none knows the others, each reported separately, there's no footage, and no one has identified a trick, wire, magnet or collusion that could explain it. How likely is it that the object really hovered, with no conventional explanation? | Unlikely, but the testimony is doing real work | Science in a Free Society (1978) — lay testimony deserves a hearing against the scientific establishment's reflex dismissal; five reliable witnesses earn real credence. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| You read a long essay arguing a policy claim, find it persuasive, and can't find a factual error. You then learn it was commissioned and paid for by an organization whose goals you oppose, and its author writes only for them. Stipulate: no claim in it has been shown false. Compared with right after reading, your confidence in its conclusion: | Is unchanged | Against Method (1975) — all inquiry is interest-laden; provenance is a fact about everything and therefore a discount on nothing in particular. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| When a major event dominates the news, how much of the official account is usually deliberate deception? | A substantial part — key facts are routinely hidden | Science in a Free Society (1978) — official accounts are crafted by institutions defending their standing; substantial management of the story is the norm. |
| Two physical theories predict identically every observation anyone can foresee making. By whatever measure of simplicity you'd defend, T1 is simpler. How much does T1's simplicity raise your confidence that T1 is the true one? | Not at all — when predictions are identical, simplicity is taste, not evidence | Against Method (1975) — simplicity is one tradition's aesthetic preference dressed as a law of reason; it carries no probability with it. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| You've taken a $20-a-month supplement for three months and feel clearly better. Stipulate: two large, well-run, placebo-controlled trials found no effect beyond placebo for the symptom you take it for. What do you do? | Keep taking it — trial averages hide responders, and I may be one; it clearly helps me | Science in a Free Society (1978) — the testimony of lived practice is knowledge too; two trials do not erase what a tradition of use reports. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| A physical-science theory you accept has passed every test for decades. Two independent teams, using different equipment and methods, now report the same observation that contradicts it. Stipulate: no explanation exists yet. Twenty years from now, how likely is it that the anomaly has been explained as error, or absorbed within the existing theory with no revision needed? | Very unlikely — I'd bet on revision | Against Method (1975) — anomalies are treasures, not embarrassments: Galileo prevailed by counterinduction, and today's anomaly is tomorrow's revolution more often than the textbooks admit. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| A mechanism predicts that drug D should help condition C. Stipulate: every step of the mechanism has been shown in human tissue, and on mechanism alone you started out fairly confident D helps. Two independent randomized trials then found no significant effect — though each trial was small enough that it could have missed a real effect. Where do you land on D now? | Probably still helps — underpowered nulls are weak evidence against a strong mechanism | Against Method (1975) — tests are theory-laden; two null trials say as much about the trial tradition as about the drug. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Your organization has a 40-year-old rule nobody can explain. Following it costs staff about 100 hours a week in total. Stipulate: you have authority to drop it, the records of why it began are lost, asking around has turned up nothing, and no one objects. You: | Drop it now | Against Method (1975) — an unexplained rule defended by no one is exactly what his anarchism exists to discard. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| You read a long essay arguing a policy claim, find it persuasive, and can't find a factual error. You then learn it was commissioned and paid for by an organization whose goals you support, and its author writes only for them. Stipulate: no claim in it has been shown false. Compared with right after reading, your confidence in its conclusion: | Is unchanged | Same, applied symmetrically to his own side. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Organized religion's overall effect on society has been: | Somewhat positive | Farewell to Reason (1987) — judged as one tradition among many, religion compares favorably with the imperialism of rationalist establishments; his defense of cultural traditions applies. |
| God exists | Genuinely unsure | Science in a Free Society (1978) — he defended the rights of religious traditions against scientism and refused the atheist establishment's framing as firmly as the church's. Scored unsure. |
| Human beings arose entirely through unguided natural processes | Probably true | Against Method (1975) — evolution accepted as one successful tradition's account; what he attacked was its dogmatic, alternatives-free teaching. |
| Long-standing traditions usually contain wisdom we can't see | Certainly true | Science in a Free Society (1978) and Farewell to Reason (1987) — traditions are repositories of knowledge refined by practice; the burden of proof sits on whoever would abolish them. |
| Experts are usually right about questions in their own field | Certainly false | Science in a Free Society (1978) — experts are a pressure group like any other; in a free society laypeople must supervise them, not defer. His signature position, argued at book length. |
| Official institutions are honest with the public | Probably false | Science in a Free Society (1978) — state and scientific institutions protect their authority first; honesty to the public is incidental. |