Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Reconstructing the Aufbau
- 2 The problem of objectivity: An overview of Carnap's constitutional project
- 3 An outline of the constitutional projects for objectivity
- 4 The background to early Carnap: Themes from Kant
- 5 The fundamentals of neo-Kantian epistemology
- 6 Carnap's neo-Kantian origins: Der Raum
- 7 Critical conventionalism
- 8 Epistemology between logic and science: The essential tension
- 9 After objectivity: Logical empiricism as philosophy of science
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - Critical conventionalism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Reconstructing the Aufbau
- 2 The problem of objectivity: An overview of Carnap's constitutional project
- 3 An outline of the constitutional projects for objectivity
- 4 The background to early Carnap: Themes from Kant
- 5 The fundamentals of neo-Kantian epistemology
- 6 Carnap's neo-Kantian origins: Der Raum
- 7 Critical conventionalism
- 8 Epistemology between logic and science: The essential tension
- 9 After objectivity: Logical empiricism as philosophy of science
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
ON THE TASK OF PHYSICS
Carnap's first postdissertation publication, his 1923 Kant-Studien essay, “Über die Aufgabe der Physik und die Anwendung des Grundsatzes der Einfachstheit” (On the task of physics and the use of the axiom of simplicity; hereafter UAP), brings with it many divergences from the view put forward in the dissertation. Carnap makes no mention of intuition and presents a more general framework for physical conventionalism. His one reference to the Kantian synthetic a priori, a halfhearted nod in the direction of the relativized a priori, reveals his reluctance to engage Kantian terminology or to wear a neo-Kantian mantle. Nonetheless, the essay begins with a clear rejection of strict empiricism, worth quoting in full (UAP, p. 90):
After a long time period during which the question of the sources of physical knowledge has been strenuously debated, perhaps it may be said already today that pure empiricism has lost its dominance [Herrschaft]. That the construction of physics cannot be founded on experimental results alone, but rather must employ nonempirical axioms, has already been proclaimed for a long time by philosophy. However, only after representatives of the exact sciences had begun to investigate the particular nature of physical methodology, and had in so doing been led to a nonempiricist conception, were solutions produced that could satisfy even the physicists.
Carnap backs this rejection of pure empiricism up with an argument against reductionism that makes clear that the conventional choices underlying mathematical physics are not to be viewed as logical definitions on the basis of experiential primitives in the manner of Russell.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Carnap's Construction of the WorldThe Aufbau and the Emergence of Logical Empiricism, pp. 159 - 182Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997