things.37 However, in later texts Hägerström awards or attributes scientific argumentation (including philosophical) a restricted reach and applicability to function only obligatorily in purely scientific, theoretical discourses. For the truths of empirical science are only relative corresponding to their material, which weakens any claim that empirical sciences have any necessary relevance or bearing on political and ethical discourses38 - the same holds for philosophy. This train of thought can be applied ex analogia to other areas of science, irrespective of their subject matter and method (synthetic or analytic).There is thus no immediate reason why nonempirical sciences such as philosophy and theology (the examples given in “Botanisten och filosofen”)39 should have any necessary, mandatory, or binding effect upon the premisses and the material conclusions of non-philosophical sciences such as law or biology - or for that matter why certain philosophical truths should have any direct bearing on argumentation and decisions of nonscientific discourses such as politics, religion, or ethics and morals. Accordingly, Hägerström’s critique implies formally that the philosophical investigation cannot claim to establish materially true judgments having the necessary material relevance for the outcome of empirical investigations.What they have is formal relevance. On a material level, philosophy need not have any relevance for the empirical sciences: It is on a formal level that philosophy can be of help as philosophy, regardless of subject matter, by investigating the formalities of thinking, thus deciding whether or not a judgment is formally correct. Philosophy has the authority to determine the formal validity of the scientific argumentation, but not the authority to prescribe its material truths.Accordingly, the Botanist’s question regarding philosophy’s relevance to p a r t i i i , c h a p t e r 2 180 37 Cf. ibid., pp. 15-18. 38 Cf. Hägerström, “I moralpsykologiska frågor II,” p. 90. 39 Hägerström, “B. o. F.,” p. 18.
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