Kant called the dogmatic mistake of not testing an observed fact without prejudice, and letting the prevailing dogmas, rather than critical analysis, serve as the standard of truth.205 The method used by Hägerström to achieve his goals can be summed up in three closely related reductive enterprises: logical reduction, ontological reduction, and epistemological reduction of philosophical premisses to singular principles.This is an enterprise that eventually led Hägerström to classify every concept and notion that did not, without contradiction, allow itself to be reduced in the aforementioned manner as: illogical, unreal, and metaphysical respectively. (Three judgments that, on the one hand are intrinsically interwoven when it comes to conceptual analysis, but on the other, inapplicable when it comes to the analysis of physical objects,which by virtue of their existence are selfidentical, thus real and non-metaphysical). Hence, the analysis of physical objects constitutes an ultimately empirical enterprise (concluding whether the objects in question exist or not) rather than a philosophical analysis (as meta-physics would have it). The intrinsic relationship between Hägerström’s condemnations over certain concepts and notions invariably refer back to his basically logical point of view, which determined his entire philosophy. Here he makes a logical condition, the absence of contradictions, a conditio sine qua non for reality and valid knowledge. He stresses that the presence of contradictions in concepts and notions constitutes a tell-tale sign for the metaphysical - provided that the contradictory concept is maintained, argued for,and even explained by the metaphysician despite the concept’s obvious non-correspondence to reality.The final aim in this respect is that the eradication of unscientific concepts, namely illogical, unreal, and metaphysical concepts, in turn should facilitate secure concept formulation. On the same level of importance as his principle of parsimony is to a tenable philosophy, is his postulation of the apodictic cera ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 237 205 Kant, Cr. P. R., pp. B xxxv-xxxvii.
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