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Logical Empiricism as Scientific Philosophy
- Alan W. Richardson
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- 11 December 2023
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- 18 January 2024
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- Element
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This Element offers a new account of the philosophical significance of logical empiricism that relies on the past forty years of literature reassessing the project. It argues that while logical empiricism was committed to empiricism and did become tied to the trajectory of analytic philosophy, neither empiricism nor logical analysis per se was the deepest philosophical commitment of logical empiricism. That commitment was, rather, securing the scientific status of philosophy, bringing philosophy into a scientific conception of the world.
Contributors
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- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
- Edited by Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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- The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
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- 05 August 2015
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- 27 April 2015, pp ix-xxx
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Contributors
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- By Yasir Abu-Omar, Matthew E. Atkins, Joseph E. Arrowsmith, Alan Ashworth, Rubia Baldassarri, Craig R. Bailey, David J. Barron, Christiana C. Burt, David Cardone, Coralie Carle, Jose Coddens, Alan M. Cohen, Simon Colah, Sarah Conolly, David J. Daly, Helen M. Daly, Stefan G. De Hert, Ravi J. De Silva, Mark Dougherty, John J. Dunning, Maros Elsik, Betsy Evans, Florian Falter, Nigel Farnum, Jens Fassl, Juliet E. Foweraker, Simon P. Fynn, Andrew I. Gardner, Margaret I. Gillham, Martin J. Goddard, Maximilien J. Gourdin, Jon Graham, Stephen J. Gray, Cameron Graydon, Fabio Guarracino, Roger M. O. Hall, Michael Haney, Charles W. Hogue, Ben W. Howes, Bevan Hughes, Siân I. Jaggar, David P. Jenkins, Jörn Karhausen, Todd Kiefer, Khalid Khan, Andrew A. Klein, John D. Kneeshaw, Andrew C. Knowles, Catherine V. Koffel, R. Clive Landis, Trevor W. R. Lee, Clive J. Lewis, Jonathan H. Mackay, Amod Manocha, Jonathan B. Mark, Sarah Marstin, William T. McBride, Kenneth H. McKinlay, Alan F. Merry, Berend Mets, Britta Millhoff, Kevin P. Morris, Samer A. M. Nashef, Andrew Neitzel, Stephane Noble, Rabi Panigrahi, Barbora Parizkova, J. M. Tom Pierce, Mihai V. Podgoreanu, Hans-Joachim Priebe, Paul Quinton, C. Ramaswamy Rajamohan, Doris M. Rassl, Tom Rawlings, Fiona E. Reynolds, Andrew J. Richardson, David Riddington, Andrew Roscoe, Paul H. M. Sadleir, Ving Yuen See Tho, Herve Schlotterbeck, Maura Screaton, Shitalkumar Shah, Harjot Singh, Jon H. Smith, M. L. Srikanth, Yeewei W. Teo, Kamen P. Valchanov, Jean-Pierre van Besouw, Isabeau A. Walker, Stephen T. Webb, Francis C. Wells, John Whitbread, Charles Willmott, Patrick Wouters
- Edited by Jonathan H. Mackay, Joseph E. Arrowsmith
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- Core Topics in Cardiac Anesthesia
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- 05 April 2012
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- 15 March 2012, pp x-xiii
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Engineering Philosophy of Science: American Pragmatism and Logical Empiricism in the 1930s
- Alan W. Richardson
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- Philosophy of Science / Volume 69 / Issue S3 / September 2002
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- 01 January 2022, pp. S36-S47
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- September 2002
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This essay examines logical empiricism and American pragmatism, arguing that American philosophy's embrace of logical empiricism in the 1930s was not a turning away from Dewey's pragmatism. It places both movements within scientific philosophy and finds two key points on which they agreed: their revolutionary ambitions and their social engineering sensibility. The essay suggests that the disagreement over emotivism in ethics should be placed within the context of a larger issue on which the movements disagreed: demarcationism and imperialism.
Science as Will and Representation: Carnap, Reichenbach, and the Sociology of Science
- Alan W. Richardson
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- Philosophy of Science / Volume 67 / Issue S3 / 2000
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- 01 April 2022, pp. S151-S162
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- 2000
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This essay explores some of the issues raised as regards the relations of philosophy and sociology of science in the work of Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach. It argues that Hans Reichenbach's distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification should not be seen as erecting a principled normative/descriptive distinction that demarcates philosophy of science from sociology of science. The essay also raises certain issues about the role of volition, decision, and the limits of epistemological concern in the work of Carnap and Reichenbach and in some recent sociology of science. The relations of philosophy of science to sociology of science are seen to be more deeply rooted and more interesting than the Science Warriors would have us believe.
1 - Reconstructing the Aufbau
- Alan W. Richardson, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
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- Carnap's Construction of the World
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- 30 October 2009
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- 13 December 1997, pp 5-30
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Summary
there is no question that Rudolf Carnap's first major book, Der logische Aufbau der Welt (The logical structure of the world; hereafter Aufbau), published in 1928, is a central document of analytic philosophy. Its place has been secured by Carnap's general importance in setting the agenda for analytic philosophy from the late 1920s until his death in 1970. The Aufbau itself has been seen as perhaps the crucial document in the formation of the project of logical positivism. It is also Carnap's most sustained attempt to provide a general epistemology of empirical knowledge. Because of its historical role in shaping analytic philosophy generally and logical positivism in particular, many of the standard-bearers of analytic philosophy have had occasion to engage in interpretations of this book– often as a way of motivating their own philosophical enquiries. Among them we find Hillary Putnam, David Lewis, and, most importantly, Nelson Goodman and W. V. Quine. There is no better place to turn for a preliminary account of the epistemology put forward in Carnap's book than to the text itself. To fix certain points of reference, therefore, let us, without further ado, rehearse some of the principal themes of Carnap's epistemological project.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE AUFBAU
Der logische Aufbau der Welt begins with these words (§1): “The aim of the present investigations is the establishment of an epistemo-logical [erkenntnismassig-logischen] system of objects or concepts, the ‘constitutional system’” Two important points are then made. First, “object” is taken “in its widest possible sense, namely, for anything about which a statement can be made” (§1).
6 - Carnap's neo-Kantian origins: Der Raum
- Alan W. Richardson, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
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- Carnap's Construction of the World
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- 30 October 2009
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- 13 December 1997, pp 139-158
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Summary
the neo-Kantian themes uncovered in Chapter Five provide an entry point to Carnap's thinking about epistemological and methodological issues throughout the 1920s. Carnap's dissertation, Der Raum (Space; hereafter Raum), written and defended in 1921 and published in 1922, shows him to be an unabashed, if unorthodox, neo-Kantian about space. His views show many similarities to the account of physical methodology we saw in Cassirer, especially as regards the distinction between the universal and relativized synthetic a priori. There are, of course, differences, which stem largely from Carnap's commitment to Russellian logicism and from his more detailed understanding of the technical physical and mathematical issues. In this chapter and the next, our goal is to use the framework for thinking about neo-Kantianism to investigate Carnap's evolving thought in his pre-Aufbau period. We shall see that in Carnap's work, also, there is an attempt to tie the methodological synthetic a priorito a logic of objective knowledge. Conventionalism in mathematical physics, combined with a desire to have a scientific understanding of philosophy itself, leads ultimately to the problems Carnap finds in explaining the relation among objectivity, intersubjectivity, and logical form in the Aufbau.
This chapter is given over entirely to an outline of the theories about space and geometry that Carnap presents in his dissertation. Chapter Seven provides a brief examination of the main themes of the essays on the methodology of physics that he published during the years (1922–6) when he was writing the Aufbau. At no point in any of these essays does Carnap endorse anything that looks like strict empiricism.
2 - The problem of objectivity: An overview of Carnap's constitutional project
- Alan W. Richardson, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
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- Carnap's Construction of the World
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- 30 October 2009
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- 13 December 1997, pp 31-64
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Summary
in this chapter we shall examine more closely the epistemological problem of the constitutional system of the Der logische Aufbau der Welt, as well as some of the technical means that Carnap proposes to use to solve this problem. Our first order of business will be to examine the import of the epistemological vocabulary used to motivate the projects of the work. This vocabulary emphasizes the subjective-objective distinction. It is incumbent upon us, then, to try to acquire a better sense of Carnap's use of these terms. Most particularly, we must try to understand what is at stake in the claim that structure yields objectivity.
The main purpose of this chapter is to present Carnap's major motivating ideas as an introduction to his thought on objectivity. In Chapter Three, we shall examine his particular solutions to the problem of objectivity in the Aufbau. The point is to emphasize the crucial interpretative issues raised by the work on their own terms, while freeing ourselves from the need to cram their significance into ready-made philosophical pigeonholes. The puzzles that we will be left with at the end of these chapters and the question of how they arise within the philosophical context of Carnap's book will be our major concern in the remainder of the book.
KNOWLEDGE VERSUS EXPERIENCE: THE PROBLEM OF SUBJECTIVE ORIGINS
Let us recall the form of the epistemological problem that Carnap presents at the opening of his book: Knowledge, for any given agent, begins in the stream of experience of that individual.
9 - After objectivity: Logical empiricism as philosophy of science
- Alan W. Richardson, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
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- Carnap's Construction of the World
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- 30 October 2009
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- 13 December 1997, pp 207-229
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Summary
i ended Chapter Eight with remarks about the development of Carnap's thought, especially his rejection of epistemology. I shall end our consideration of Carnap's early philosophy of empirical knowledge by examining more closely some of the major themes of this development as it occurred in the 1930s. This will indicate, I hope, that the interpretative framework within which we have been considering Carnap's early work can illuminate further developments as well. At the close, I shall indicate that from Carnap's point of view there can be no empiricism without dogmas, if we insist on using this term to characterize a view that claims methodological ineliminability of the analytic-synthetic distinction. To disagree with Carnap on this matter is to disagree with him about what empiricism is or could be.
FROM EPISTEMOLOGY TO THE LOGIC OF SCIENCE
In the mid-1930s Carnap rejected epistemology in no uncertain terms. This is most explicit in an address presented at the 1935 “Congress for the Unity of Science,” in Paris, entitled “Von Erkenntnistheorie zur Wissenschaftslogik” (From epistemology to the logic of science; hereafter VEW). In this essay, Carnap invited his audience to view current developments as a move to a third stage of scientific philosophy. In the first stage, scientific philosophy had rejected metaphysics. This ushered in a “transition from speculative philosophy to epistemology” (VEW, p. 36). The second stage had involved the rejection of the synthetic a priori and the consequent adoption of empiricism in epistemology.
Introduction
- Alan W. Richardson, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
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- Carnap's Construction of the World
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- 30 October 2009
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- 13 December 1997, pp 1-4
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this study examines a particular portion of Rudolf Carnap's philosophical career, from a particular point of view. The period covered is roughly the fifteen years from Carnap's first publication– his 1922 dissertation, Der Raum – to the full flowering of his theory of the logical syntax of scientific language in his 1934 book, Die logische Syntax der Sprache and his seminal 1936–7 paper, “Testability and Meaning.” Although in the final chapter I speak to some central issues in the analyticity debate, I make no claim to deal with the details of Carnap's semantic period, for by the syntax period his general philosophical orientation had already been set, and those details are largely irrelevant for the story I want to tell. That is the story of Carnap's thinking about what it is to have an epistemology of empirical knowledge. The principal text for the story is Carnap's first book, Der logische Aufbau der Welt (The logical structure of the world; hereafter Aufbau). This was his most detailed and influential statement of a project in general epistemology. It contrasts both with the methodological focus of his earliest essays and with the rejection of epistemology that marks his syntax period.
The account given is somewhat novel. It rejects the easy assimilation of Carnap's epistemological views to those of Bertrand Russell's “external world program.” This rejection is guided by contextual and historiographic concerns. The Russellian perspective fails to engage with the text of the Aufbau in anything like its own terms. Rather, it imposes on it a philosophical perspective concerning epistemology that stands quite at odds with Carnap's own views of what epistemology is and what it is for.
Contents
- Alan W. Richardson, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
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- Carnap's Construction of the World
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- 30 October 2009
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- 13 December 1997, pp vii-viii
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8 - Epistemology between logic and science: The essential tension
- Alan W. Richardson, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
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- Carnap's Construction of the World
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- 30 October 2009
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- 13 December 1997, pp 183-206
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Summary
the look back at neo-Kantian epistemology and Carnap's own work in the 1920s leading to Der logische Aufbau der Welt has served to highlight important themes that we shall examine in this chapter in relation to the 1928 book itself. First, the point of view of the epistemological project of the Aufbau is in some respects closer to, for example, Ernst Cassirer's general epistemology in Substance and Function than to Carnap's own conventionalist methodology of science. Three aspects of the Aufbau are particularly noteworthy in this regard: First, the stress on the epistemological centrality of objectivity is more pronounced than it was in Carnap's methodological work; second, the role of logic is much greater here than it had been previously in Carnap's work; third, simply as a general epistemology, the Aufbau has the broad scope of Cassirer's logic of objective knowledge, rather than the more narrow scope of Carnap's work on physics. These connections, of course, give rise ultimately to great divergences between the project of the Aufbau and Cassirer's logical idealism. The principal reason for this is that Carnap's formal logic allows him to present a technical project that Cassirer had never attempted. This technical project no longer allows the expression of Carnap's earlier rejection of strict empiricism. But this does not mean that he now endorses strict empiricism; it means, rather, that he can no longer distinguish the genuinely epistemological aspects of the project of empiricism from the epistemological aspects of neo-Kantianism.
Beyond this, however, we now have all the pieces we need to understand the circumstance that has driven our curiosity.
Index
- Alan W. Richardson, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
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- Carnap's Construction of the World
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- 30 October 2009
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- 13 December 1997, pp 239-242
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7 - Critical conventionalism
- Alan W. Richardson, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
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- Carnap's Construction of the World
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- 30 October 2009
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- 13 December 1997, pp 159-182
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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.
4 - The background to early Carnap: Themes from Kant
- Alan W. Richardson, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
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- Carnap's Construction of the World
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- 30 October 2009
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- 13 December 1997, pp 92-115
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Summary
we have had occasion to note Carnap's advocacy of Kantian themes in his early philosophical thought. But, of course, Carnap is not adopting Kantianism in all its details– too many aspects of Kant's own philosophical thought were rendered implausible, if not simply exposed as mistaken, by scientific and mathematical advances in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Carnap's early views are much more substantially informed by the views of the scientific neo-Kantians of the early twentieth century. These neo-Kantians both took considerable insight from Kant's own work and significantly changed some central Kantian tenets. Thus, for an understanding of Carnap, it is the work of the neo-Kantians that is of primary importance. Nevertheless, the best place to start in examining the work of the neo-Kantians is with the metaphysical and epistemological positions of Kant himself and the problems that arose for these positions in the evolution of scientific, mathematical, and logical theorizing in the years between Kant and Carnap. With this in hand we will be better able to see the continuities and discontinuities between neo-Kantian and Kantian thought. Thus, in this chapter we shall reconstruct some themes in Kant's account of the synthetic a priori and its role in objective, theoretical knowledge. In the next, we shall see how the twentieth-century neo-Kantians take up these themes in the post-Einsteinian era.
THE KANTIAN PROBLEMATIC
In this section I will briefly review some of the major themes in Kant's account of scientific and metaphysical knowledge, as presented in the Critique of Pure Reason (Kant 1781/1787/1965) and related documents. I will then explain how post-Kantian scientific advances rendered some details of Kant's account implausible.
3 - An outline of the constitutional projects for objectivity
- Alan W. Richardson, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
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- Carnap's Construction of the World
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- 30 October 2009
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Summary
we are now in a position to undertake a closer examination of the details of the actual projects for achieving objectivity presented in Der logische Aufbau der Welt. An outline of Carnap's levels of constitution is, therefore, in order. In this way, we will be able to see what Carnap is doing in his two projects. Again, many questions about constitution and the order of the definitions will not be addressed in order to focus our attention solely on the question of the way the constitutional system explicates the objectivity of scientific claims.
THE LOWEST LEVELS OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM
The constitutional system meant to mirror the epistemic primacy relation begins, as we have noted, from a single relation, the “recollection of similarity” relation (Rs), over total cross-sections of experience at a time. Carnap's first order of business in the constitutional system is to constitute the rich texture of individual psychological life, the auto psychological domain, from this slender basis (cf., esp. §§108–20). Our primary concern is with the role of the auto psychological domain in the construction of objectivity, so I shall only sketch the definitions here. Of primary importance for our purposes is the final accounting of the auto psychological domain and the transition to the world of physics.
Before discussing the definitions, there is a noteworthy aspect of Carnap's procedure that warrants a brief mention. In accordance with the methodological strictures of “purely structural definite description” (PSDD), the definitions depend only on the structure of the recollection of similarity relation, but this structure is itself only empirically known.
Acknowledgments
- Alan W. Richardson, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
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- Carnap's Construction of the World
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- 30 October 2009
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Carnap's Construction of the World
- The Aufbau and the Emergence of Logical Empiricism
- Alan W. Richardson
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- 30 October 2009
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- 13 December 1997
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This book is a major contribution to the history of analytic philosophy in general and of logical positivism in particular. It provides the first detailed and comprehensive study of Rudolf Carnap, one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century philosophy. The focus of the book is Carnap's first major work: Der logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logical Structure of the World). It reveals tensions within the context of German epistemology and philosophy of science in the early twentieth century. Alan Richardson argues that Carnap's move to philosophy of science in the 1930s was largely an attempt to dissolve the tension in his early epistemology. This book fills a significant gap in the literature on the history of twentieth-century philosophy. It will be of particular importance to historians of analytic philosophy, philosophers of science, and historians of science.
Frontmatter
- Alan W. Richardson, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
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- Carnap's Construction of the World
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- 30 October 2009
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- 13 December 1997, pp i-vi
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5 - The fundamentals of neo-Kantian epistemology
- Alan W. Richardson, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
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- Carnap's Construction of the World
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- 30 October 2009
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- 13 December 1997, pp 116-138
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all the creative Kantian reconstruction in Chapter Four was not simply make-believe, although it may well have been a bit of “leading” history. It was, indeed, designed to lead naturally into a discussion of the foremost neo-Kantian thinking on the exact sciences in the first quarter of the twentieth century. I have in mind neo-Kantian philosophy as articulated by authors such as Ernst Cassirer (1910, 1921), Bruno Bauch (1911, 1914), and Paul Natorp (1910a, 1910b). I shall consider only the works of these three philosophers in this chapter, because they are the neo-Kantians who most influenced Carnap's thinking. Bauch was Carnap's dissertation director and the philosopher from whom Carnap learned what he knew about Kant. Cassirer's Substanzbegriff und Funktionbegriff (Substance and function) (1910) was clearly the most systematic discussion of the general neo-Kantian line on science and mathematics; as we have already seen in Chapter Two, Carnap's references to it in Der logische Aufbau der Welt show a deep appreciation of some of its central points. Moreover, Cassirer's (1921) monograph on the theory of relativity, Zur einstein'schen Relativitdtstheorie (On Einstein's theory of relativity) was the most methodologically sophisticated and technically informed neo-Kantian discussion of the issues raised by relativity. As for Natorp, Carnap, in a letter to the conventionalist physicist Hugo Dingier in 1920, indicated that Natorp was the neo-Kantian whose views on mathematics and physical methodology had most occupied his thinking during the writing of his dis-sertation.