• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• v.117
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• pp.57-84
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• 2011

As for the methodology of physical science, on the one side, Ludwig Boltzmann was declined to Scientific Realist and at the same time Epistemological Idealist. But on the other. He was neither fully nor consistently either one of them, because of rejecting the causal realism of the former and the belief in absolute certainty of the latter. Is there nevertheless any evidence that he had a coherent world view of his own? Yes. In short, he seems to identify his own position with what is called a mind-matter identity theory. In 1897, he supported that psychological processes are identical with certain processes in the brain(realism). And in 1903, he said : "Physics is not separated from psychology. They are only different sides." But Boltzmann did not explain concretely the possibility of this identity. So I tried to construct one theory of identity which is suitable for understanding problems n the physical world, though whether it would work for a full-scale world view which includes both physical and mental phenomena remains problematic. If light phenomena, for example, tend to be measured in terms of some contexts as if light were a wave and in others as if light were a particle, then one may be able to reasonably suppose that light has whatever characteristics in itself which it must have in order to seem like a wave under some conditions of measurement and like a particle in others. If this theory is provisionally to mental phenomena as well, it would mean that reality has those characteristics in itself which it must have to appear as it does to the various faculties of the mind and as it is measured in different physical situations. This is probably not what Boltzmann meant by his theory of identity, since it is very ontological and metaphysical. But in my opinion it is by far the most reasonable identity theory.