1. Probability and Chance, Fritz Mauthner's Studies of Improbability

I have often had occasion to mention the fact that there is a contemporary philosopher by the name of Fritz Mauthner who has written a Critique of Language.[^1] This Critique of Language was intended to provide our period with something better suited to it than Kant provided for his time with his Critique of Pure Reason.[^2] For Mauthner no longer believes—if that expresses it—that people seek knowledge in the form of concepts. It is rather his conviction that it is fundamentally just language to which people attach their insights. He believes that they don't really have true concepts when they are thinking, but merely have what words convey, and that words simply suggest this or that to them. He pictures people as having certain inner experiences in connection with words, putting their faith in words, jumbling them up, putting them together, and deriving insights from these processes. This is a total misconception of the entire cognitive process, but one that was bound to emerge eventually in an age working its way through to the worst consequences of materialism.