Knowledge: Genuine and Bogus

Abstract

It has been said that humans can fake anything, even altruism and love, as well as science and philosophy. Some theories and practices can be recognized at first sight as being bogus and unrecyclable. This is the case of palmistry, homeopathy, and creation “science.” Others demand plowing through esoteric texts. This is the case of phenomenology, which its founder, Edmund Husserl (1960), launched as a “rigorous science,” yet at the same time as “the polar opposite” of science proper. Phenomenologists claim to be able to know anything instantaneously, apodictically, and exclusively through introspection – by pretending that the external world does not exist, instead of assuming it and exploring it. And, since they reject the scientific method, they do not feel obliged to offer any evidence for their claims. But, since phenomenologists have never produced anything other than phenomenology itself, why should we feel compelled to believe the claim that theirs is a rigorous science?.