Rudolf Carnap and the Legacy of Logical Empiricism

209 Pages·1.606 MB·English

by  Michael Friedman (auth.), Richard Creath (eds.)

RUDOLF CARNAP AND THE LEGACY OF
LOGICAL EMPIRICISM
VIENNA CIRCLE INSTITUTE YEARBOOK
16
VIENNA CIRCLE INSTITUTE YEARBOOK
16
Institut Wiener Kreis
Society for the Advancement of the Scientific World Conception
Series-Editor:
Friedrich Stadler
University of Vienna, Austria and Director, Institut Wiener Kreis
Advisory Editorial Board: Honorary Consulting Editors:
Jacques Bouveresse, Collège de France, Paris, France Robert S. Cohen, Boston University, USA
Martin Carrier, University of Bielefeld, Germany Wilhelm K. Essler, University of Frankfurt/M.,
Nancy Cartwright, London School of Economics, UK Germany
Richard Creath, Arizona State University, USA Kurt Rudolf Fischer, University of Vienna, Austria
Massimo Ferrari, University of Torino, Italy Adolf Grünbaum, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Michael Friedman, Stanford University, USA Rudolf Haller, University of Graz, Austria
Maria Carla Galavotti, University of Bologna, Italy Gerald Holton, Harvard University, USA
Peter Galison, Harvard University, USA Jaakko Hintikka, Boston University, USA
Malachi Hacohen, Duke University, USA Allan S. Janik, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Rainer Hegselmann, University of Bayreuth, Germany Andreas Kamlah, University of Osnabrück,
Michael Heidelberger, University of Tübingen, Germany Germany
Don Howard, University of Notre Dame, USA Eckehart Köhler, University of Vienna, Austria
Paul Hoyningen-Huene, University of Hanover, Germany Brian McGuinness, University of Siena, Italy
Clemens Jabloner, Hans-Kelsen-Institut, Vienna, Austria Erhard Oeser, University of Vienna, Austria
Anne J. Kox, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Jan Šebestík, CNRS Paris, France
Martin Kusch, University of Vienna, Austria Christian Thiel, University of Erlangen, Germany
James G. Lennox, University of Pittsburgh, USA Walter Thirring, University of Vienna, Austria
Juha Manninen, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies,
Finland
Thomas Mormann, University of Donostia / San Sebastián, Review Editor:
Spain
Donata Romizi, University of Vienna, Austria
Edgar Morscher, University of Salzburg, Austria
Kevin Mulligan, Université de Genève, Switzerland
Editorial Work/Layout/Production:
Elisabeth Nemeth, University of Vienna, Austria
Julian Nida-Rümelin, University of Munich, Germany Robert Kaller
Ilkka Niiniluoto, University of Helsinki, Finland Camilla Nielsen
Otto Pfersmann, Université Paris I Panthéon – Sorbonne,
France Editorial Address:
Miklós Rédei, London School of Economics, UK
Institut Wiener Kreis
Alan Richardson, University of British Columbia, CDN
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Thomas E. Uebel, University of Manchester, UK
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Gereon Wolters, University of Konstanz, Germany
Anton Zeilinger, University of Vienna, Austria
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
Richard Creath
Editor
Rudolf Carnap and the Legacy of
Logical Empiricism
Editor
Richard Creath
School of Life Sciences 874501
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-4501
USA
ISSN 0929-6328
ISBN 978-94-007-3928-4 e-ISBN 978-94-007-3929-1
DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-3929-1
Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012932633
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012
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T C
able of onTenTs
Editorial ...............................................................................................................vii
MiChael friedMan, Scientific Philosophy from Helmholtz
to Carnap and Quine ..............................................................................................1
GeorG sChieMer, Carnap’s Untersuchungen: Logicism, Formal Aximatics,
and Metatheory ............................................................................................13
MaTThias neuber, Realism as a Problem of Language – From Carnap
to Reichenbach and Kaila .............................................................................37
riChard CreaTh, Analyticity in the Theoretical Language:
Is a Different Account Really Necessary? ....................................................57
ChrisTian daMböCk, Rudolf Carnap and Wilhelm Dilthey:
“German” Empiricism in the Aufbau ...........................................................67
ChrisToph liMbeCk-lilienau, Carnap’s Encounter with Pragmatism .................89
ThoMas MorMann, Toward a Theory of the Pragmatic A Priori:
From Carnap to Lewis and Beyond ............................................................113
ThoMas uebel, Carnap, Philosophy, and “Politics in its Broadest Sense” .......133
General parT
review essays
ThoMas MorMann, A Virtual Debate in Exile: Cassirer and the
Vienna Circle after 1933 ............................................................................149
John MiChael, Emergence – still trendy after all these years ...........................169
reviews
Anne Siegetsleitner (Ed.), Logischer Empirismus, Werte und Moral,
Wien–New York: Springer, 2010 (Massimo Ferrari) ................................181
Matthew Eve and Christopher Burke (Eds.), Otto Neurath:
From hieroglyphics to Isotype. A Visual Autobiography. London:
Hyphen Press 2011. (Günther Sandner) .....................................................184
v
v i Table of Contents
Giovanni Vailati. Logic and Pragmatism. Selected Essays
by Giovanni Vailati. Edited by Claudia Arrighi, Paola Cantù,
Mauro de Zan, and Patrick Suppes. Stanford: CSLI, 2010.
(Paolo Palmieri) ..........................................................................................187
The Significance of the Hypothetical in the Natural Sciences.
Ed. by Michael Heidelberger and Gregor Schiemann. Berlin:
De Gruyter, 2009. (Miles MacLeod) ..........................................................190
Karl von Meyenn (ed.), Eine Entdeckung von ganz außerordentlicher
Tragweite. Schrödingers Briefwechsel zur Wellenmechanik
und zum Katzenparadox. Springer-Verlag: Berlin Heidelberg 2011.
(Wolfgang L. Reiter) ..................................................................................194
Activities of the Institute Vienna Circle ............................................................197
Index of Names .................................................................................................201
e
diTorial
Rudolf Carnap was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth cen-
tury, and he came to worldwide fame during his time in Vienna, 1926–31, as a core
member of the Vienna Circle. So the eight papers in this volume, all on Carnap
and all given at a conference in Vienna, represent a homecoming of sorts. But the
papers do not confine themselves to Carnap alone or to his time in Vienna. They
explore his history and motivation, his interaction with other philosophers in both
Europe and America, various aspects of his work on logic and philosophy of sci-
ence, and even his political engagement.
The conference at which these papers were presented, “Rudolf Carnap and
the Legacy of Logical Empiricism”, was held on the 28th and 29th of June, 2010
at the University of Vienna, under the auspices of the Institute Vienna Circle. The
meeting was organized jointly by Friedrich Stadler for the Institute and by Richard
Zach on behalf of the Collected Works of Rudolf Carnap, forthcoming from the
Open Court Publishing Company.
Carnap wanted philosophy to be scientific, that is, a progressive, coopera-
tive venture. But as Michael Friedman shows the ideal of a scientific philosophy
appeared long before Carnap and continues to inspire many philosophers even
today. Logic was central to Carnap’s vision of a scientific philosophy, and Georg
Schiemer explores one of Carnap’s large-scale logic projects, the Untersuchungen
zur allgemeinen Axiomatik. This work was set aside in the 1930s and published
only well after Carnap’s death. Schiemer is able to show that the work is subtle and
gives important clues to Carnap’s thinking in logic. Philosophy of science was also
central to Carnap’s vision of philosophy. Matthias Neuber explores the scientific
realism defended by Hans Reichenbach and Eino Kaila and Carnap’s resistance
to it. Richard Creath examines the related issue of Carnap’s proposal for endow-
ing theoretical terms with meaning by tying theories to their Ramsey sentences.
Christian Damböck examines another empirical tradition, “German” empiricism,
especially as exemplified by Wilhelm Dilthey, and assesses its influence on Car-
nap’s view in the Aufbau.
Christoph Limbeck-Lilienau and Thomas Mormann, in their separate papers,
explore the relations between Carnap and American pragmatism. They approach
this topic differently, but each shows that this relation is both complex and illu-
minating. Finally, Thomas Uebel examines the political dimension of the Vienna
Circle and particularly of Carnap within it. Uebel shows that logic and philosophy
of science were from the beginning conceived of as part of a larger project that
was indeed political in the broadest sense. Taken together, the papers show the rich
variety of Carnap’s concerns and his place within important intellectual traditions
that shape our thinking even today.
vii
v iii Editorial
Thanks go to the organizers of the conference, Friedrich Stadler and Richard
Zach, to the host institutions, the Institute Vienna Circle and the University of
Vienna, to the conference participants, and to the production team at the Institute.
Richard Creath
Tempe, Arizona, July 7, 2011
Michael FriedMan
S P h
cientiFic hiloSoPhy FroM elMholtz to
c Q
arnaP and uine
The concept of a “scientific philosophy” (wissenschaftliche Philosophie) first de-
veloped in the mid nineteenth century, as a reaction against what was viewed as the
excessively speculative and metaphysical character of post-Kantian German ideal-
ism. One of the primary intellectual models of this movement was a celebrated
address by Hermann von Helmholtz, “Über das Sehen des Menschen,” delivered
at the dedication of a monument to Kant at Königsberg in 1855. Helmholtz begins
by asking, on behalf of the audience, why a natural scientist like himself is speak-
ing in honor of a philosopher. This question only arises, he says, because of the
current deplorable climate of enmity and mutual distrust between the two fields – a
climate which is due, in Helmholtz’s opinion, to the entirely speculative system of
Naturphilosophie that Schelling and Hegel have erected wholly independent of,
and even in open hostility towards, the actual positive results of the natural sci-
ences. What Helmholtz is now recommending, however, is a return to the close
cooperation between the two fields exemplified in the work of Kant, who himself
made significant contributions to natural science (in his nebular hypothesis put
forward in 1755), and, in general, “stood in relation to the natural sciences together
with the natural scientists on precisely the same fundamental principles.”1 And it
was this recommendation that was enthusiastically embraced within the emerging
“back to Kant!” movement, where it led to the idea that all metaphysics should be
replaced by the new discipline of “epistemology” or “theory of knowledge” (Erk-
enntnistheorie), so that philosophy itself would now become “scientific.”
What is the nature of this new scientific philosophy that is now being ex-
plicitly opposed to Naturphilosophie in particular and post-Kantian idealism in
general? What relation is philosophy now supposed to bear to the sciences, and
what does it mean for philosophy to become scientific in this way? What exactly
is being recommended when we are told that philosophy should stand “in relation
to the natural sciences together with the natural scientists on precisely the same
fundamental principles”?
For Helmholtz himself this means that philosophy – that is, epistemology or
the theory of knowledge – should work in cooperation with the latest psycho-
physiological research in inquiring into the nature of the representations of our
senses, and the relationship between these representations and the actual world to
which they correspond. And it is for this reason that the body of his 1855 address
1 See Helmholtz (1865/1903, vol. I, p. 88).
R. Creath (ed.), Rudolf Carnap and the Legacy of Logical Empiricism, 1
Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 16, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-3929-1_1,
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012