Jan WoleĔski Kazimierz Twardowski and the Development of Philosophy of Science in Poland Kazimierz Twardowski studied with Brentano and followed his style of doing philosophy, in particular, the thesis that the method of philosophy is  ...

The article shows how two domains of Neurath’s broad and multifaceted work are related to each other: the concepts and methods he wanted to implement in political economics, on the one hand, and the methods of visualization that he and his interdisciplinary team developed at the Social and Economic Museum of Vienna, on the other. Some of Neurath’s suggestions in both domains are surprisingly modern even today.

This book provides a new all-round perspective on the life and work of Edgar Zilsel (1891-1944) as a philosopher, historian, and sociologist. He was close to the Vienna Circle and has been hitherto almost exclusively referred to in terms of the so-called “Zilsel thesis” on the origins of modern science. Much beyond this “thesis”, Zilsel’s brilliant work provides original insights on a broad number of topics, ranging from the philosophy of probability and statistics to the concept of “genius”, from the (...) issues of scientific laws and theories to the sociological background of science and philosophy, and to the political analysis of the problems of his time. Praised by Herbert Feigl as an “outstanding brilliant mind”, Zilsel, being as a Social-Democrat of Jewish origins, mostly led a life of hardship marked by emigration and coming to a sudden and tragic end by suicide in 1944. The impossibility of an academic career has hindered the reception of Zilsel’s scientific work for a long time. This volume is a contribution to its late reception, providing new insights especially into his work during his years in Vienna; moreover, it shows the heuristic value of Zilsel’s ideas for future Scholar research – in philosophy, history, and sociology. -/- (ISSN: 0929-6328). (shrink)

Eines der zentralen Anliegen des "Wiener Kreises" ist heute aktueller denn je. Es bestand darin sichtbar zu machen, wie ganz unterschiedliche, weit auseinanderliegende Bereiche wissenschaftlicher Theoriebildung miteinander in Zusammenhang gebracht werden können. Genannt sei hier Otto Neurath, als Motor der ganzen Sache. Die "Encyclopedia of United Science" sollte eine Vorstellung davon vermitteln, wie moderne Wissenschaften ihre Erkenntnisansprüche formulieren und überprüfen. Sie knüpfte ausdrücklich an die Enzyklopädisten der französischen Aufklärung an. Die in diesem Band zusammengefassten Beiträge durchleuchten das Aufklärungskonzept, das der (...) Enzyklopädie der Logischen Empiristen zugrunde liegt. (shrink)

Philipp Frank"s book Relativity – a richer truth1 shows something we do not find very often after World War 2: a philosopher of science acting as a public intellectual. Taking part in the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, Philipp Frank intervened in the public debate about the causes of Nazism and how to defend democracy and liberalism against totalitarian ideas and politics. Could philosophy of science contribute to such a struggle? Philipp Frank thought it could, he even thought that (...) Philosophy of Science should play a crucial role in it. It"s obvious that this position should be of some interest for philosophers in Austria and Europe today. Of course, any serious analysis of Frank"s position would have to take the whole historical constellation into account. Between the beginning of the conference in 1940 and the publication of the book in 1951 the historical situation had dramatically changed. And therefore one has to distinguish several political dimensions in Frank"s arguments. Let me just make a short remark on the plurality of political perspectives Frank"s discourse opened up. Philipp Frank defined the role science should play in democracy not only in contrast to the role of science as it was conceived by totalitarian governments. Of course he criticised the Nazis" and Soviets" �philosophies of science� several times. But he also made very clear that in the 40ies and 50ies not even the majority of scholars and university teachers in the US supported the specific view of science which Frank thought was so important to the advancement of democracy. His rather critical comments on the teaching of science in the post war / cold war period show what he thought the really important political impact of science was. As far as I can see, these comments did not loose their significance. (shrink)

Otto Neurath (1882-1945) was a highly unorthodox thinker both in philosophy and economics. The contributions to this sparkling new book conclude that Neurath touched on many of the most critical problems of economic theory during its formative years as a modern discipline. His economics provide insights into the foundational problems of modern economics and should encourage contemporary economic theorists to critically reflect their own hidden presumptions.

Why concern oneself with Otto Neurath’s economic thought in its historical context? Could anything be more out of fashion than a theory proposing a centrally managed planned economy? Than the views of a theorist whose ideas on in-kind economic planning drove the notion of economic planning to its utmost extreme ? Indeed, Neurath’s ideas appeared too radical and utopian even for the social democrats of the 1920s. So why give even a second thought to them today? Would it not be (...) better to follow the advice a colleague gave me in the 1980s and to pass over Neurath’s “youthful sins” silently so as not to tarnish the reputation that – finally, after a lengthy delay – has been accredited to Neurath for his impressive philosophical achievements within the framework of logical empiricism?In the years since the 1980s, however, Neurath’s economic writings have attracted much more interest than anyone would previously have suspected. Today we are aware of the fact that Neurath formulated ideas at an unexpectedly early stage that are currently relevant in ecological economy, social choice theory and developmental economy. And that his reflections vis-à-vis “associational socialism” could provide interesting impulses for a new theory of socialism. Viewed from this perspective, Neurath’s status is secure as a precursor of theoretical developments and debates that are in full swing today. But is that enough? After all, if the role of the precursor is an endearing one, isn’t it also quite thankless? For even in the areas in which Neurath can be regarded as a precursor, the relevant questions are posed today with far greater precision and with reference to current facts – so why should anyone concern oneself with a precursor whose fundamental assumptions differ so greatly from those of the overwhelming majority of economists working today? (shrink)

Die Wissenschaftsphilosophie des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts ist reichhaltiger und differenzierter in ihren Standpunkten als lange vermutet. Die Autoren zeigen das anhand der nur teilweise erforschten Interaktion zwischen den Wissenschaftsphilosophen des deutschen und französischen Sprachraums. Das Buch liefert neue Erkenntnisse zur Rolle der Philosophiekongresse in Prag 1934 und Paris 1937 sowie zur Bedeutung einzelner Akteure wie Marcel Boll, der die Rezeption des Logischen Empirismus in Frankreich beförderte. Die Spuren, die Ernst Mach, aber auch der weniger bekannte deutsche Physiologe und Hirnforscher Ewald (...) Hering in der französischen Wissenschaftsphilosophie hinterliessen, verfolgen die Autoren bis hin zu den Ideen Jean Piagets. Im Mittelpunkt des Buchs stehen Philosophen aus Frankreich, Deutschland und Österreich und ihre Leistung, die Wissenschaften nicht nur erkenntnistheoretisch und logisch durchleuchtet, sondern auch erkannt zu haben, dass ihre theoretische Struktur nur dann vollständig erfasst werden kann, wenn ihre praktische Dimension mit einbezogen wird. Dafür steht Henri Poincaré, der die tragende Rolle der Konventionen für die Theoriebildung in der Mathematik herausstellte. Sichtbar wird der Bezug zur Praxis auch in Moritz Schlicks Überlegungen zu einer auf Empirie basierenden Ethik oder in der Arbeit Otto Neuraths, der eine aus den modernen Wissenschaften gewonnene Konzeption menschlichen Erkennens für das Projekt der gesellschaftlichen Aufklärung fruchtbar machen wollte. (shrink)

The Selected Works of Arne Naess, ed. by Harold Glasser and Alan Drengson in cooperation with the author, Dordrecht: Springer 2005. 10 volumes. On January 12, 2009 Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess passed away at the age of 96. He was still actively involved in putting together the edition of the Selected Writings of Arne Naess . He worte an introduction to the writings which is printed at the beginning of each volume together with the extensive introduction by the editor Harold (...) Glasser. At first sight this seems strangely repetitive and superfluous but on closer scrutiny it certainly makes sense. In view of the large breadth of philosophical themes that are presented in the volumes it is quite likely that the readers interested in the writings will come from different areas. A number of these writings make high demands on the reader who is expected to be relatively versed in logical analysis and in the work and thought of Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Gandhi, Husserl, Carnap or even Sextus Empiricus. The reader who is interested in one of these heterogenous fields is encouraged by both introductory texts to reflect on a specific theme against the backdrop of the philosophers’s entire oeuvre – and that’s a good thing. (shrink)

Eine plarmiäßig gestaltete Naturalwütschaft setzt an die Stelle der abstrakten Eiiüieit des Geldes und des Marktes eine konkrete Einheitlichkeit, die das Ergebnis von Beratungen und Entscheidungen ist. Da diese Eiiüieitlichkeit nicht auf ein Prinzip (das Geld) zurückgeführt werden kann, wüd in üir das "naturale Wesen aller Leistungen" einerseits und die Abhängigkeit der Wirtschaftsordnung von Machtverhältnissen andrerseits sichtbar. Ebenso soll die Eirüieitswissenschaft an die Stelle der abstrakten Eirüieit des phüosophischen Systems eine lebendige Verknüpfung des historisch gegebenen wissenschaftlichen Wissens setzen und es (...) so als Ergebnis "schöpferischer Tat" sichtbar und verfügbar machen. (shrink)

Eine plarmiäßig gestaltete Naturalwütschaft setzt an die Stelle der abstrakten Eiiüieit des Geldes und des Marktes eine konkrete Einheitlichkeit, die das Ergebnis von Beratungen und Entscheidungen ist. Da diese Eiiüieitlichkeit nicht auf ein Prinzip (das Geld) zurückgeführt werden kann, wüd in üir das "naturale Wesen aller Leistungen" einerseits und die Abhängigkeit der Wirtschaftsordnung von Machtverhältnissen andrerseits sichtbar. Ebenso soll die Eirüieitswissenschaft an die Stelle der abstrakten Eirüieit des phüosophischen Systems eine lebendige Verknüpfung des historisch gegebenen wissenschaftlichen Wissens setzen und es (...) so als Ergebnis "schöpferischer Tat" sichtbar und verfügbar machen. (shrink)

Der Band "Die europäische Wissenschaftsphilosophie und das Wiener Erbe" beschäftigt sich mit der Wissenschaftsphilosophie europäischer Prägung und ihren spezifischen Eigenschaften und enthält Beiträge aus theoretischer wie auch aus historischer Perspektive. Dabei werden auch die genuin Wiener Wurzeln und Einflüsse der Wissenschaftsphilosophie behandelt. Wenn man den europäischen Gesichtspunkt um die Geschichte und den gegenwärtigen Stand der Wissenschaftsphilosophie nach der transatlantischen Interaktion und Transformation, die „Rückkehr“ nach Europa nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg erweitert, so stellt sich die Frage danach, ob es auch in (...) der heutigen Wissenschaftsphilosophie europäische Charakteristika gibt. Auch die Rolle und Funktion des Wiener Kreises des Logischen Empirismus wie auch sein Einfluss auf die gegenwärtige Wissenschaftsphilosophie wird hier behandelt. Dementsprechend wird das Thema sowohl systematisch-formal als auch genetisch-historisch behandelt. (shrink)

In this paper I would like to discuss some normative aspects of Otto Neurath’s concept of scientific knowledge. I will take some reflections of Pierre Bourdieu, a sociologist known for his harsh criticism of “philosophers” as a point of reference. I have decided to employ his “non-philosophical” perspective because of its convergence with the very tradition to which the Institute Vienna Circle has aligned itself. That tradition derived the form and power of its beginnings from the unbiased attitude, the impartiality (...) of its intellectual and scientific standpoint. This impartial attitude was all but naive I wish to claim; it was the result of a conscious effort to liberate the philosophical vision from the sediments of a history of perception and thought that had reached its end in the 19th century.1 Of course, that that history had come to its end was felt by many scientists, philosophers and artists at the beginning of this century. What distinguished the Vienna Circle was that its members reacted with new insights into the nature of knowledge, indeed with the attempt to develop the impartiality of the scientific point of view. What had been in the foreground up to that time receded into the background for those versed in modern formal logic and empirical science. The disciplinary boundaries, most notably those between the natural sciences and the humanities became blurred. What we know became so complex and rich that traditional forms of classification were revealed as inadequate. For Neurath “Unified Science” was the name for future forms of classification and “encyclopedia” the name for the “orchestration” of the individual sciences. What remained of “philosophy” focussed on the logical analysis of language and — long neglected — the historical and practical aspects of science. Taking these general developments as my background here I want to defend the thesis that working on the “impartiality” of the scientist’s point of view can be seen as a contribution to and work on the normative dimensions of knowledge. In the case of the Vienna Circle and Otto Neurath such a contribution has nothing to do with developing a scientific conception of ethics or rationality.2 Rather it represents an attempt to analyze the scientific approach to reality and to reinforce the social effects of this approach by making it more precise. Viewed in this context Neurath’s project of a “scientific world conception” coincides with some perspectives whose topicality cannot be overestimated, Pierre Bourdieu’s epistemological reflections on sociology among them. (shrink)

Initially it seems surprising that Edgar Zilsel’s work has found as little response among philosophers as it has. After all, his contributions to the Vienna Circle’s debates about probability and protocol statements were published in Erkenntnis. Already his doctoral dissertation dealt with a central problem of modern philosophy of science—the status of statistical laws in physics—and revealed a remarkably knowledgeable mathematician, physicist and philosopher. Yet the way in which Zilsel raised the issues, namely via Leibniz, Spinoza and Kant, was not (...) easy to accept for many of the later logical empiricists. Zilsel stuck with what in his dissertation he had called the “problem of application” and held that it needed to be solved even once the framework of logical empiricism had been accepted. By contrast, Richard von Mises and Otto Neurath considered it a pseudo-problem. Zilsel’s views are difficult to categorise and nowadays even difficult to understand. Just as Mises and Neurath were puzzled by the problem of application, so contemporary readers are likely to be puzzled by Zilsel’s search for “historical laws”. What were they supposed to be and why did Zilsel think it so important to discover them? (shrink)

The present book aims at clarifying which of Neurath’s ideas remain of relevance today and how these are interrelated. The method chosen is to elucidate their biographical and general historical background and to put them into the framework of the academic and political controversies of their time. This contextual approach yields results that are not just of antiquarian interest. It also enables the reconstruction of the theoretical thrust and continuing practical relevance of a thinker whose ideas were obscured by the (...) catastrophes of the twentieth century. Neurath wanted to demonstrate by his own work in economics that scientific thinking always offers a number of different alternatives and that one must proceed towards applications in full awareness of this fact. In this respect, Neurath’s thought is unusually demanding.With perplexity in political and intellectual life becoming ever more widespread as the twenty-first century progresses, it strikes us as very useful to step back and reconstruct a type of thinking in the social sciences that goes back to the discussion on the big conflicts of the twentieth century but which does not accept as inescapable the intellectual alternatives seemingly cemented in these conflicts.The book is structured so that it first addresses the question why the study of Neurath’s contributions to economics in the context of his time is a worthwhile endeavour today. After all, the overwhelming majority of today’s economists regard his contributions as out-dated and largely irrelevant for the continuing development of their discipline. (shrink)

Der Logische Empirismus hat in der intellektuellen Welt Frankreichs fast keine Spuren hinterlassen, obwohl die Gruppe sich bei zwei Kongressen 1935 und 1937 der intellektuellen Ôffentlichkeit in Paris prasentierte. Otto Neurath, prominentes Mitglied des «Wiener Kreises », bereitete die Auftritte der Logischen Empiristen in Paris vor. In seiner umfangreichen Korrespondenz manifestieren sich zahlreiche Spannungen sowohl innerhalb der Gruppe ais auch mit ihren Kooperationspartnem in Paris. Der Physiker Philipp Frank war mit der wissenschaftlichen Landschaft in Frankreich viel besser vertraut ais Neurath. (...) Er hat Neurath schon damais darauf aufmerksam gemacht, dass die Rolle Louis Rougiers ais « Botschafter » des Empirismus für die Rezeption in Frankreich problematisch sein konnte. Er driingte Neurath, die Verbindung mit anderen Wissenschaftlem und Philosophen, vor allem mit Henri Berr und dem Centre de synthèse zu verstlirken. (shrink)

What is an image? How can we describe the experience of looking at images, and how do they become meaningful to us? In what sense are images like or unlike propositions? Participants of the 33rd International Wittgenstein Symposium--philosophers as well as historians of art, science, and literature--provide many stimulating answers. Some of the contributions are dedicated to Wittgenstein’s thoughts on images while others testify to the important role notions coined or inspired by Wittgenstein--“seeing as”, “picture games” and the dichotomy of (...) “saying and showing”--play in the field of picture theory today. This first volume of the Proceedings of the 2010 conference addresses readers interested in the history and theory of images, and in the philosophy of Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Using St. Thomas Aquinas's natural law philosophy and Divine Exemplar argument to prompt new discussion of ethical questions that lawyers and judges should confront, the author delivers a complete occupational profile for the professional conduct of judges and lawyers. This text challenges current beliefs and suggests a return to the "roots" of the system, in which reason, virtue, and justice guide the law and its practice.

Already in his 1913 Ideen I, Husserl claimed that there are two types of intuition: experiencing, that is, sense, intuition and ideal intuition. The former provides us with contingent facts, whereas the latter provides essences. Commenting on this dichotomy in his own book-length work, Appearance and Sense, published in 1914, Shpet believed Husserl had overlooked an important and distinct type of phenomenon that we call “social” and thereby omitted a corresponding third type of intuition that reveals the social function or (...) purpose of a thing. This oversight on Husserl’s part led him to claim that an “I,” or ego, stood behind or possessed the human individual’s consciousness. Husserl failed to notice that we can and do meaningfully speak of a social consciousness that, as such, belongs to no single individual. Apart from the “evidence” of ordinary language, Husserl’s strict dichotomy leaves unaddressed how we can proceed from external appearances to their understanding, which cognitively is always in terms of concepts, traditionally called “universals.” That is, we frame our experiences and express them verbally, the words employed being meaningful to us and hopefully to “the other.” Realizing the problem of transiting from the intuition of the contingent to that of the ideal, Shpet in early 1917 downplayed the difference, preferring to call them different degrees of seeing with different conscious attitudes. He called the conscious “seeing” associated with an understanding of words “intelligible intuition.” With an interest in historical methodology predating his acquaintance with phenomenology, Shpet recognized that the only tool available to the historian is the words appearing on documents, which serve as signs. How we understand these signs forms the study of hermeneutics, which functions as the epistemology of history. However, the fear remains that if we conceive the understanding of signs and “intelligible intuition” subjectively, we lapse into a psychologism. We must not forget the social origin of language, that language is no more the possession of an individual than is consciousness. The sense of words is established in an intersubjective context. Thus, Shpet turned to a study of language much as he had previously turned to consciousness and saw neither as subjective. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 203 Seiten: 53-78.

Most of us create and use a panoply of non-sentential representations throughout our ordinary lives: we regularly use maps to navigate, charts to keep track of complex patterns of data, and diagrams to visualize logical and causal relations among states of affairs. But philosophers typically pay little attention to such representations, focusing almost exclusively on language instead. In particular, when theorizing about the mind, many philosophers assume that there is a very tight mapping between language and thought. Some analyze utterances (...) as the outer vocalizations of inner thoughts (e.g. Grice 1957, Devitt 2005), while others treat thought as a form of inner speech (e.g. Sellars 1956/1997, Carruthers 2002). But even philosophers who take no stand on the relative priority of language and thought still tend to individuate mental states in terms of the sentences we use to ascribe them. Indeed, Dummett (1993) claims that it is constitutive of analytic philosophy that it approaches the mind by way of language. In many ways, this linguistic model is salutary. Our thoughts are often intimately intertwined with their linguistic expression, and public language does provide a comparatively tractable proxy for, and a window into, the messier realm of thought. However, an exclusive focus on thought as it is expressed in language threatens to leave other sorts of thought unexplained, or even to blind us to their possibility. In particular, many cognitive ethologists and psychologists find it useful to talk about humans, chimpanzees, birds, rats, and even bees as employing cognitive maps. We need to make sense of this way of talking about minds as well as more familiar sentential descriptions. In what follows, I investigate the theoretical and practical possibility of non-sentential thought. Ultimately, I am most interested in the contours of distinctively human thought: what forms does human thought take, and how do those different forms interact? How does human thought compare with that of other animals? In this essay, however, I focus on a narrower and more basic theoretical question: could thought occur in maps? Many philosophers are convinced that in some important sense, thought per se must be language-like.. (shrink)

Does thought precede language, or the other way around? How does having a language affect our thoughts? Who has a language, and who can think? These questions have traditionally been addressed by philosophers, especially by rationalists concerned to identify the essential difference between humans and other animals. More recently, theorists in cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and developmental psychology have been asking these questions in more empirically grounded ways. At its best, this confluence of philosophy and science promises to blend the (...) respective strengths of each discipline, bringing abstract theory to bear on reality in a principled and focused way. At its worst, it risks degenerating into a war of words, with each side employing key expressions in its own idiosyncratic way – or worse, contaminating empirical research with a priori dogmas inherited from outmoded philosophical worldviews. In Baboon Metaphysics (2007), Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth offer an analysis of baboon cognition that promises to exemplify the very best interaction of philosophical theory and empirical research. They argue that baboons have a language of thought: a language-like representational medium, which supports the sophisticated cognitive abilities required to negotiate their complex social environment. This claim is intended to be surprising in its own right, and also to shed light on the evolution of spoken language. Because our own ancestors likely lived in a similarly complex social environment, Cheney and Seyfarth propose that the earliest humans also developed language first as a cognitive medium, and that spoken language evolved as a means to express those thoughts. There are two potential difficulties here. First, ‘Language of Thought’ (LOT) is a term of art, with much associated theoretical baggage and often comparatively little careful exposition. Thus, evaluating the claim requires getting clearer about just what LOT implies in this context.. (shrink)

Traditional theories of sarcasm treat it as a case of a speaker's meaning the opposite of what she says. Recently, 'expressivists' have argued that sarcasm is not a type of speaker meaning at all, but merely the expression of a dissociative attitude toward an evoked thought or perspective. I argue that we should analyze sarcasm in terms of meaning inversion, as the traditional theory does; but that we need to construe 'meaning' more broadly, to include illocutionary force and evaluative attitudes (...) as well as propositional content. I distinguish four subclasses of sarcasm, individuated in terms of the target of inversion. Three of these classes raise serious challenges for a standard implicature analysis. (shrink)

Gerechtigkeit ist ein ebenso bedeutsames wie umstrittenes Ideal menschlichen Umgangs.

Metaphors are powerful communicative tools because they produce ”framing effects’. These effects are especially palpable when the metaphor is an insult that denigrates the hearer or someone he cares about. In such cases, just comprehending the metaphor produces a kind of ”complicity’ that cannot easily be undone by denying the speaker’s claim. Several theorists have taken this to show that metaphors are engaged in a different line of work from ordinary communication. Against this, I argue that metaphorical insults are rhetorically (...) powerful because they combine perspectives, presupposition, and pragmatics in the service of speech acts with assertoric force. (shrink)

Recently, philosophers have discovered that they have a lot to learn from, or at least to ponder about, fiction. Many metaphysicians are attracted to fiction as a model for our talk about purported objects and properties, such as numbers, morality, and possible worlds, without embracing a robust Platonist ontology. In addition, a growing group of philosophers of mind are interested in the implications of our engagement with fiction for our understanding of the mind and emotions: If I don’t believe that (...) Anna Karenina exists, can I really pity her, or hope or desire that she extricate herself from her tragic situation? And why is there no “morality fiction,” analogous to science fiction? I suspect that philosophers have been especially comfortable thinking about fiction because it seems, at least prima facie, to employ the imagination in a way that conforms to a standard model of the mind. Specifically, contemporary philosophers tend to think of imagination as a form of mental pretense. Mental pretense can take two main forms: a cognitive attitude of supposing a set of propositions to be true (make-believe) or else an experiential state of imaging a scenario as if it were before one (imaging). Much of our pretense intertwines the cognitive and experiential modalities, of course. But both share a crucial common feature: all of one’s imaginative effort is invested in pretending that certain contents obtain. In this sense, we can understand imagination as the “offline” simulation of actual beliefs and perceptions (and perhaps other attitudes as well), where we analyze these in the normal way, as states individuated by their attitude and representational content. While I share the burgeoning interest in fiction, I want to suggest that we also have a lot to learn from poetry, and in particular from poetic metaphor. I will argue.. (shrink)