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

Now what have Mauthner and all the other philosophers who agree with him done to arrive at the insight that the concepts of God and chance and order are human products, and that neither order nor beauty and so on really exist outside us? You needn't believe me, but they have demonstrated with all possible philosophical incisiveness how profoundly human reason goes to work to produce such concepts and how true it is that they are human products. They have demonstrated this. He has offered proof when he says, “But we know ...” etc. He has proved it! But if we look at how he proved it, we have to say, Yes, dear Mr. Mauthner, you are right. But we are familiar with the fact that the concepts of chance, beauty, God, and the June bug are all the work of man. That is true, looked at in the right light. Now you would have to spend years making a really thorough study of it, but if you were to examine the penetrating thinking that has gone into demonstrating how all the concepts mentioned above are the fruits of human thinking, you would find trains of thought that can very properly be applied to the assertion that the June bug concept is also man-made. That is certainly true, but does that say anything about whether June bugs can fly around outside there and are real? What is childish is to say that the concept of the June bug is just a human product. One can think really penetratingly and be totally convinced of the correctness of one's conclusions, and yet have lost the thread on which the true facts are strung. All the proofs adduced in support of the finding that the above concepts are simply fruits of human thinking do not say anything about the objective existence of these things; just as calling the June bug concept a human product does not help us when its objective existence is in question.