Richard Avenarius is a German-Swiss positivist philosopher who taught in Zurich. Created an epistemological theory of knowledge, known as empirio-criticism, according to which the main task of philosophy is to develop a natural concept of the world based on pure experience. Traditionally, metaphysicists divided the latter into two categories - external and internal. In their opinion, external experience is applicable to sensory perception, which supplies the brain with primary data, and internal - to processes occurring in the mind, such as comprehension and abstraction. In his work, A Critique of Pure Experience, Avenarius proved the absence of differences between them.
short biography
Richard Avenarius was born in Paris on November 19, 1843. He was the second son of the German publisher Eduard Avenarius and Cecile Gayer, the daughter of actor and artist Ludwig Gayer and half-sister of Richard Wagner. The latter was the godfather of Richard. His brother Ferdinand Avenarius founded the DĂĽrerbund union of German writers and artists, which was at the forefront of the German cultural reformation movement. According to the wishes of his father, Richard devoted himself to bookselling, but then went to study at the University of Leipzig. In 1876, he became a privatocenter of philosophy, defending the work of Baruch Spinoz and his pantheism. The following year, he was appointed professor of philosophy in Zurich, where he taught until his death.
In 1877, with the help of Goering, Heinze and Wundt, he founded the Quarterly Journal of Scientific Philosophy, which has been publishing all his life.
His most influential work was the two-volume “Critique of Pure Experience” (1888–1890), thanks to which he developed followers such as Joseph Petzold and opponents such as Vladimir Lenin.
Avenarius died in Zurich on August 18, 1896 after a long illness of the heart and lungs.
Philosophy (briefly)
Richard Avenarius is the founder of empirio-criticism, an epistemological theory according to which the task of philosophy is to develop a “natural concept of the world” based on “pure experience”. In his opinion, in order for such a consistent view of the world to become possible, a positivistic restriction of what is directly given by pure perception is required, as well as the elimination of all metaphysical components that a person imports through experience into an act of cognition.
There is a close relationship between the positivism of Richard Avenarius and Ernst Mach, especially in the form in which they are set out in the “Analysis of Sensations”. Philosophers were never personally acquainted and developed their views independently of each other. Gradually they became convinced of the deep agreement of their basic concepts. Philosophers adhered to a common fundamental opinion on the relationship between physical and mental phenomena, as well as on the importance of the principle of “saving thoughts”. Both were convinced that pure experience should be recognized as the only acceptable and fully adequate source of knowledge. Thus, the elimination of introjection is only a special form of the complete destruction of metaphysics, to which Mach aspired.
In addition to Petzold and Lenin, Wilhelm Schuppe and Wilhelm Wundt studied in detail the philosophy of Richard Avenarius . The first, the philosopher of immanence, agreed with the founder of empirio-criticism on important issues, and the second criticized the scholastic nature of his expositions and sought to point out the internal contradictions in his doctrines.
Axioms of Avenarius Philosophy
Two prerequisites for empirio-criticism are postulates about the content and forms of cognition. According to the first axiom, the cognitive content of all philosophical views of the world is just a modification of the initial assumption that each person initially assumes that he is in a relationship with the environment and other people who speak about it and depend on it. According to the second axiom, scientific knowledge does not have any forms and means that are significantly different from those of pre-scientific knowledge, and that all forms and means of knowledge in special sciences are extensions of pre-scientific.
Biological approach
Characteristic of Avenarius' theory of knowledge was his biological approach. From this point of view, each process of cognition should be interpreted as a vital function, and only in this way can it be understood. The interest of the German-Swiss philosopher was focused mainly on the all-pervasive relationship of dependence between people and their environment, and he described these relations in original terminology, using numerous symbolism.
Principal coordination
The starting point for his research was the “natural” assumption of “principle coordination” between a person and the environment, as a result of which everyone is faced with it, as well as with other people who speak about it. The famous aphorism of Richard Avenarius is that "without the subject there is no object."
The initial principle coordination, therefore, consists in the existence of a “central concept” (individual) and “opposing concepts”, about which he makes statements. The individual is represented and centralized in system C (the central nervous system, brain), the main biological processes of which are nutrition and work.
Fixture processes
System C is subject to change in two ways. This depends on two “partially systematic factors”: changes in the environment (R) or stimuli of the outside world (what the nerve can stimulate) and fluctuations in metabolism (S) or absorption of food. System C constantly strives for the life maximum of preserving its strength (V), a state of rest in which the mutually opposite processes ƒ (R) and ƒ (S) cancel each other, maintaining the equilibrium ƒ (R) + ƒ (S) = 0 or Σ ƒ (R) + Σ ƒ (S) = 0.
If Ć’ (R) + Ć’ (S)> 0, then in a state of rest or equilibrium there is a disturbance, a relationship of tension, "vitality". The system seeks to reduce (cancel) and even out this disturbance, spontaneously moving to secondary reactions in order to restore its original state (maximum conservation or V). These secondary reactions to deviations from V or physiological fluctuations in system C are the so-called independent life series (vital functions, physiological processes in the brain), which take place in 3 stages:
- initial (emergence of vital difference);
- average;
- final (return to the previous state).
Of course, eliminating differences is only possible in a way that system C is ready. Among the changes that precede the achievement of readiness are hereditary dispositions, development factors, pathological variations, practice, etc. “Dependent life series” (experience or E-values) are functionally determined by independent life series. Dependent life series, which also proceed in 3 stages (pressure, work, release), are conscious processes and cognition (“statements about the content”). For example, an instance of knowledge is present if the initial segment is unknown and the last is known.
About problems
Richard Avenarius sought to explain the emergence and disappearance of problems in general as follows. A mismatch can occur between stimulation from the environment and the energy at the individual’s disposal (a) because the stimulation is amplified as a result of an individual finding anomalies, exclusions or contradictions, or (b) because there is an excess of energy. In the first case, problems arise that can, under favorable circumstances, be resolved by knowledge. In the second case, practical and idealistic goals arise - the positioning of ideals and values ​​(for example, ethical or aesthetic), their testing (i.e. the formation of new ones), and through them - the change of the given.
E-values
Statements (E-values), depending on the energy fluctuations of the system C, are divided into 2 classes. The first includes “elements” or the simple content of utterances - the content of sensations, such as green, hot and sour, which depend on the objects of sensation or stimuli (whereby the “things” of experience are understood as “complexes of elements”). The second class consists of "entities", subjective reactions to sensations or sensory modes of perception. Avenarius distinguishes 3 groups of basic entities (types of awareness): "affective", "adaptive" and "predominant". Affective essences include sensual tone (pleasantness and unpleasantness) and feelings in a figurative sense (anxiety and relief, a sense of movement). Adaptive entities include identical (identical, identical), existential (being, appearance, non-being), secular (certainty, uncertainty) and musical (known, unknown), as well as many of their modifications. For example, modifications to the identical include, but are not limited to, community, law, whole, and part.
Pure experience and peace
Richard Avenarius created the concept of pure experience and connected it with his theory of the natural concept of the world based on his views on the biology and psychology of knowledge. His ideal of the natural concept of the world is fulfilled with the complete elimination of metaphysical categories and dualistic interpretations of reality by eliminating introjection. The basic premise for this is, first of all, the recognition of the fundamental equivalence of everything that can be understood regardless of whether it is obtained through external or internal experience. Owing to empirio-critical principle coordination between the environment and the individual, they interact in the same way, without distinction. In a quote from Richard Avenarius from the book “The Human Concept of the World,” this idea is stated as follows: “As for givenness, man and the environment are on the same level. He gets to know her just as he knows himself, as a result of a single experience. And in every experience that is realized, the self and the environment are, in principle, consistent with each other and equivalent. ”
Similarly, the difference between the values ​​of R and E depends on the way of perception. They are equally accessible for description and differ only in that the former are interpreted as constituents of the medium, and the latter are regarded as statements of other people. In the same way, there is no ontological difference between the mental and the physical. Rather, there is a logical functional relationship between them. The process is mental, because it depends on a change in the system C, it has more than a mechanical value, that is, to the extent that experience means. Psychology does not have at its disposal another subject of study. This is nothing more than a study of experience, since the latter depends on system C. In his statements, Richard Avenarius rejected the usual interpretation and distinction between mind and body. He recognized neither mental nor physical, but only one type of being.
The Economics of Knowledge
Of particular importance for the realization of the cognitive ideal of pure experience and for understanding the natural concept of the world is the principle of the economy of knowledge. Likewise, thinking in accordance with the principle of least stress is the root of the theoretical process of abstraction, so knowledge is usually oriented to the degree of stress required to gain experience. Therefore, it is necessary to exclude all elements of the mental image that are not contained in this one in order to think about what is encountered in the experiment with the lowest possible energy expenditure and, thus, get a pure experience. The experience, “cleansed of all falsifying additions,” contains nothing but the components, which suggest only the components of the environment. That which is not pure experience and the content of the statement (E-value) in relation to the environment itself should be eliminated. What we call “experience” (or “existing things”) has a certain relationship with system C and the environment. Experience is pure when it is devoid of all utterances that are independent of the environment.
Concept of the world
The concept of the world refers to the “sum of the components of the environment” and depends on the final nature of the C-system. It is natural if it avoids the mistake of introjection and is not falsified by animistic “inserts”. Introjection transfers the perceiving object to the perceiving person. She divides our natural world into internal and external, subject and object, mind and matter. This is the source of metaphysical problems (such as immortality and the problem of the mind and body) and metaphysical categories (for example, matter). Therefore, all of them must be eliminated. Introjection, with its unjustified duplication of reality, should be replaced by empirio-critical principle coordination and a natural world outlook that builds on it. Thus, at the end of its development, the concept of the world returns to its original form: a purely descriptive understanding of the world with the least expenditure of energy.