Autour du Manifeste de Vienne se trouvent reunis des textes fondateurs ecrits autour de 1929. Leurs auteurs: Carnap, Hahn, Neurath, Schlick l'ame du Cercle de Vienne, et Waismann plus proche de Wittgenstein, temoignent d'un courant philosophique constituant aujourd'hui la tradition analytique de source continentale a la fois empiriste et logique. Forme de maniere informelle a Vienne, au coeur de l'Europe, le Cercle reunissait des savants de differentes branches qui voulaient se donner une philosophie susceptible d' unifier leurs vues. Echo aux (...) reves d'unite de la science, cette philosophie en exprime aussi le renversement complet. Veritable Discours de la methode, mais d'esprit anti-cartesien, elle entend reconstruire la science de maniere a evincer la speculation metaphysique, le but etant qu'aucun enonce ne soit laisse a l'exterieur de cette grande architecture de symboles s'il etait pourvu de sens. La declaration de guerre contre la metaphysique est un geste de militance a une epoque riche en differents manifestes. Incomprehensible en dehors du contexte socio-politique viennois de ces annees, elle porte aussi un programme de reconstruction rationnelle qui, au dela du langage de la science, devait toucher tous les secteurs de la vie. Plus complexe qu'il n'y parait, ce programme contient, en reference a Wittgenstein, son prestigieux representant a cote d'Einstein et Russell, une mise en garde contre differentes formes d'irrationalismes, qui est d'actualite. (shrink)

Am Wiener Kreis scheiden sich die Geister, trat er doch mit dem dezidierten Anspruch auf, mit den Mitteln der modernen Logik den metaphysischen Schutt von Jahrtausenden aus dem Weg zu räumen. Statt einer homogenen Bewegung, die sich empiristischen Dogmen verschrieb, erscheint der Wiener Kreis in der philosophischen Forschung jedoch heute als eine heterogene Gruppe von eigenständigen Denkern, die gemeinsam die Grundlagen der modernen Wissenschaftstheorie legten. In jeweils spezifischer Weise setzten sie sich von der philosophischen Tradition ab oder versuchten, einzelne Teile (...) davon in die wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung zu integrieren. Der Band enthält eine repräsentative Auswahl von Aufsätzen der Mitglieder des Wiener Kreises. Sie beschränkt sich mit Ausnahme dreier Frühschriften der Gründer bewußt auf die Jahre des historischen Kreises vom Beginn der Treffen 1924 bis zur Ermordung Schlicks 1936, obwohl einige der Hauptideen erst in den USA ihre volle Wirkung entfalteten und von dort Ende der sechziger Jahre wieder in die deutschsprachige Philosophie zurückwirkten. In ihrer Einleitung skizzieren die Herausgeber die historische Entwicklung des Kreises und erläutern die zentralen thematischen Fragestellungen. Die Anmerkungen identifizieren die internen wie externen Opponenten und erklären den Kontext der zeitgenössischen Wissenschaft. (shrink)

A new direction in philosophy Between 1920 and 1940 logical empiricism reset the direction of philosophy of science and much of the rest of Anglo-American philosophy. It began as a relatively organized movement centered on the Vienna Circle, and like-minded philosophers elsewhere, especially in Berlin. As Europe drifted into the Nazi era, several important figures, especially Carnap and Neurath, also found common ground in their liberal politics and radical social agenda. Together, the logical empiricists set out to reform traditional philosophy (...) with a new set of doctrines more firmly grounded in logic and science. Criticism and decline Because of Nazi persecution, most of the European adherents of logical empiricism moved to the United States in the late 1930s. During the 1940s, many of their most cherished tenets became targets of criticism from outsiders as well as from within their own ranks. Philosophers of science in the late 1950s and 1960s rejected logical empiricism and, starting in the 1970s, presented such alternative programs such as scientific realism with evolutionary epistemology. A resurgence of interest During the early 1980s, philosophers and historians of philosophy began to study logical empiricism as an important movement. Unlike their predecessors in the 1960s-for whom the debate over logical empiricism now seems to have been largely motivated by professional politics-these philosopher no longer have to take positions for or against logical empiricism. The result has been a more balanced view of that movement, its achievements, its failures, and its influence. Hard-to-find core writings now available This collection makes available a selection of the most influential and representative writings of the logical empiricists, important contemporary criticisms of their doctrines, their responses, as well as the recent reappraisals. Introductions to each volume examine the articles in historical context and provide importantbackground information that is vital to a full understanding of the issues discussed. They outline prevalent trends, identifying leading figures and summarize their positions and reasoning, as well as those of opposing thinkers. (shrink)

Cette section contient les recensions que Rudolf Carnap, Moritz Schlick et Hermann Weyl ont données de l’ouvrage de Hugo Dingler : Physik und Hypothese. Versuch einer induktiven Wissenschaftslehre nebst einer kris­tischen Analyse der Fundamente der Relativitätstheorie [Dingler 1921]. Elles sont traduites par Christophe Bouriau en collaboration avec Oliver Sehlaudt et Gerhard Heinzmann.

Cette section contient les recensions que Rudolf Carnap, Moritz Schlick et Hermann Weyl ont données de l’ouvrage de Hugo Dingler : Physik und Hypothese. Versuch einer induktiven Wissenschaftslehre nebst einer kris­tischen Analyse der Fundamente der Relativitätstheorie [Dingler 1921]. Elles sont traduites par Christophe Bouriau en collaboration avec Oliver Sehlaudt et Gerhard Heinzmann.

Rudolf Carnap and W. V. O Quine have long been seen as key figures of analytic philosophy who are opposed to each other, due in no small part to their famed debate over the analytic/synthetic distinction. This volume of new essays assembles for the first time a number of scholars of the history of analytic philosophy who see Carnap and Quine as figures largely sympathetic to each other in their philosophical views. The essays acknowledge the differences which exist, but through (...) their emphasis on Carnap and Quine's shared assumption about how philosophy should be done-that philosophy should be complementary to and continuous with the natural and mathematical sciences-our understanding of how they diverge is also deepened. This volume reshapes our understanding not only of Carnap and Quine, but of the history of analytic philosophy generally. (shrink)

Many commentators now view Quine's ‘Truth by Convention’ as a flawed criticism of Carnap. Gary Ebbs argued recently that Quine never intended Carnap as his target. Quine's criticisms were part of his attempt to work out his own scientific naturalism. I agree that Carnap was not Quine's target but object that Quine's criticisms were wholly internal to his own philosophy. Instead, I argue that C.I. Lewis held the kind of truth‐by‐convention thesis that Quine rejects. This, however, leaves Carnap out of (...) the picture. I then show how Quine came to see the earlier criticisms as also having force against Carnap. (shrink)

Rudolf Carnap is well known for his attack on metaphysics, and W. V. Quine is equally well known for his attack on Carnap’s analytic/synthetic distinction. Receiving far less attention is their basic agreement that a properly scientific approach to philosophy should eliminate the metaphysical excesses of the past. This paper aims to remedy this. It focuses initially on the development of Carnap’s rejection of metaphysics from 1932 to 1950 and the role that analyticity plays. It then turns to Quine, emphasizing (...) his basic agreement with Carnap over the elimination of metaphysics and what this looks like without the analytic/synthetic distinction. (shrink)

In his “Wissenschaftslogik: The Role of Logic in the Philosophy of Science,” Michael Friedman argues that Carnap’s philosophy of science “is fundamentally anti-metaphysical—he aims to use the tools of mathematical logic to dissolve rather [than] solve traditional philosophical problems—and it is precisely this point that is missed by his logically-minded contemporaries such as Hempel and Quine”. In this paper, I take issue with this claim, arguing that Quine, too, is a part of this anti-metaphysical tradition. I begin in section I (...) with Russell’s account of scientific philosophy, focusing on its critique of metaphysics and its reliance on logical constructions. I then argue that each of Carnap and Quine take up this call to scientific philosophizing but that they both find Russell’s account of logic wanting. In section II, I first provide an account of Carnap’s critique of metaphysics and its reliance on developments in logic. This is followed by a discussion of his appeal to the analytic/synthetic distinction so as to improve upon Russell’s account of logic. Section III follows this same structure but focuses on Quine. In the end, though, Quine turns not to the analytic/synthetic distinction but to holism to provide an account of logic suitable to scientific philosophy. Carnap had claimed to be “more Russellian than Russell,” and in this final move by Quine I argue that he is “being more Carnapian than Carnap.” I conclude by showing how, contrary to Friedman’s view, Quine’s rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction does not yield a return to the kind metaphysics that he, Carnap, and Russell all objected to. (shrink)

Routledge is now re-issuing this prestigious series of 204 volumes originally published between 1910 and 1965. The titles include works by key figures such as C.G. Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Otto Rank, James Hillman, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Susan Isaacs. Each volume is available on its own, as part of a themed mini-set, or as part of a specially-priced 204-volume set.

In his “Epistemology Naturalized,” Quine embraces a form of Humeanism. In this paper, I try to work out the significance of this Humeanism. In particular, I argue that it represents an anti-metaphysical position that Quine shares with Carnap. Crucial to my account is that contrary to much contemporary thinking on metaphysics, Carnap, and Quine following him, recognize both an ontological and an epistemological sense of metaphysics. As commentators have frequently acknowledged, Carnap and Quine disagree over rejecting metaphysics in the ontological (...) sense. I will argue, though, that they agree in rejecting metaphysics in their shared epistemological sense of the term. (shrink)

This slender volume contains notes, kept by some of those who were present, of lectures on aesthetics and religious belief, and of conversations with Rush Rhees concerning Freud. The lectures were given informally by Wittgenstein at Cambridge in 1938; the conversations took place between 1942 and 1946. Wittgenstein neither wrote down nor saw the material here presented, but the editor reports that the versions of lecture notes by different students agree to a remarkable extent.Despite the varying authorships and intervals of (...) time during which these Lectures and Conversations took place, the book is a surprisingly integrated whole and not simply a miscellany. What seems to unite its three topics and their treatment is Wittgenstein's examination of the kind of evidence upon which each of the three disciplines have tended to rely—his argument being that 1) Psychoanalysis has tended to rest on insufficient evidence; 2) Aesthetics on the wrong kind of evidence; and 3) Religious Belief on the false notion that it is a matter of evidence when this is not at all the case. (shrink)

Most commentators have overlooked the impact of Russell on Quine, focusing instead on the influence of Carnap. In what follows, I will argue that the early Quine’s engagement with Russell’s logicism was a crucial stage in the development of his philosophy. More specifically, we can see Quine’s naturalism as developing out of a certain strand of Russell’s thought concerning scientific philosophy. In addition to giving us a better sense of the origins of Quine’s philosophy, this reading also shows how his (...) early work, focusing mostly on technical areas of logic, is deeply related to his later and more famous philosophical views. In particular, his reworking of Principia Mathematica can be understood as the technical working-out of his view that the purpose of philosophy is the clarification our conceptual scheme. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that global scientific promises aka “scientific world-conceptions” have an interesting history that should be taken into account also for contemporary debates. I argue that the prototypes of many contemporary philosophical positions concerning the role of science in society can already be found in the philosophy of science of the 1920s and 1930s. First to be mentioned in this respect is the Scientific World-Conception of the Vienna Circle (The Manifesto) that promised to contribute (...) to the realization of an enlightened, rational and science-oriented society and culture. The Manifesto was not the only „scientific world-conception“ that philosophers and scientists put forward in the 1920s. Also the scientific world-conception of the philosopher and physicist Moritz Schlick, and the Weltanschauung of Sigmund Freud deserve to be mentioned. Still other examples of are Carnap’s Scientific Humanism and the project of The International Encyclopedia of Unified Science which was related to American pragmatism as well, as is shown by Charles W. Morris and others. Forgotten for a long time, since the beginning of the 21rst century, at least some of the Viennese projects are reconsidered in a new wave of „socially engaged philosophy of science”. (shrink)

Originally published in 1972, the emphasis of this book is on psychological and cultural understanding of education, in terms of persons and relationships, rather than processes. The book: Deals with issues of continuing relevance for educational thought and practice, such as the education and training of teachers and diminishing the gap between schooling and education. Considers the nature and function of educational research, the conflict between arts and sciences in education and the concept of guidance. Examines teaching in its interpersonal (...) context, and at the revolt of youth and the sexual revolution. Assesses the influence of Freud, Winifred Mercier, William Boyd and Herbert Read. (shrink)

Logical empiricism and pragmatism shared an empiricist orientation, a close interest in the sciences and their methods, and skepticism about propositions which cannot be empirically tested or verified. Both movements came into direct contact in the first half of the 1930s, shortly after the beginning of the so-called public phase of logical empiricism . Around 1930, Schlick and Feigl went to the United States and philosophers in the pragmatist tradition began to pay attention to the new Viennese movement. Only with (...) the rise of this mutual interest did Carnap become acquainted with pragmatism. Contrary to other logical empiricists , there are almost no traces in Carnap’s earlier philosophy of an interest for pragmatism. We will focus here on the historic episode of Carnap’s encounter with pragmatism. This will permit to clear more general claims about the relation of logical empiricism and pragmatism. We can find contradictory claims on this relation in the recent literature on the history of philosophy of science and of analytic philosophy. On the one hand the differences and conflicts between logical empiricism and pragmatism are emphasized and the progressive divergence between these two movements is pointed out.2 On the other hand the literature points out the pragmatic elements in Carnap’s philosophy which facilitated a convergence with pragmatism.3 First, we claim here that in the 1930s it is the convergence between pragmatism and logical empiricism that was prevailing and that it found its expression in Carnap’s support of a “scientific empiricism” as conceived by the pragmatist Charles Morris. The strong impetus for an internationalization of scientific philosophy in the Unity of Science movement placed the project of an alliance of different empiricist movements at the forefront. Secondly we claim that Carnap’s convergence with pragmatism is due to a liberalization of empiricism which took already place in the Vienna Circle, independently of any direct pragmatist influence. With this liberalization of empiricism the convergence with pragmatism became much easier than it would have been with an empiricism as defended in Carnap’s Aufbau. We will show in a first section that Carnap’s encounter with pragmatism was initiated by the pragmatist’s criticism of verificationism and of the empricism of the Aufbau. In a second section we will describe Carnap’s encounter with philosophers of the pragmatist tradition and his attempt to convince them that the pragmatist’s criticism did not apply any more to his new position of the early 1930s . As response some pragmatists proposed models for a convergence of logical empiricism with pragmatism.4 In a final section we will show that in Carnap’s response to the pragmatists, he supported such a convergence. (shrink)

In the late 1930s, a few years before the start of the Second World War, a small number of European philosophers of science emigrated to the United States, escaping the increasingly perilous situation on the continent. Among the first expatriates were Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach, arguably the most influential logical empiricists of their time. In this two-part paper, I reconstruct Carnap’s and Reichenbach’s surprisingly numerous interactions with American academics in the decades before their move in order to explain the (...) impact of their arrival in the late 1930s. This second part traces Reichenbach’s development and focuses on his frequent interactions with American academics throughout the 1930s. I show that Reichenbach was quite ignorant about developments in Anglophone philosophy in the first stages of his career but became increasingly focused on the United States from the late 1920s onwards. I reconstruct Reichenbach’s efforts to find a job across the Atlantic and show that some of his English publications—most notably Experience and Prediction—were attempts to change the American narrative about logical empiricism. Whereas U. S. philosophers identified scientific philosophy with the views of the Vienna Circle, Reichenbach aimed to market his probabilistic philosophy of science as a subtler alternative. (shrink)

Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap and Herbert Feig are the most prominent of the positivists to formulate views on the mind-body problem (aside from Hempel’s one-off treatment in 1935). While their views differed from each other and changed over time they were all committed to some form of scientific physicalism, though a linguistic or conceptual rather than ontological form of it. In focus here are their views during the heyday of logical positivism and its immediate aftermath, though some initial scene-setting of (...) Schlick’s and Carnap’s pre-positivist views will help to understand the final opposing positions of Carnap and Feigl. (shrink)

In the 1920s, Carnap and Schlick both made an important use of definitions in their main publications: Schlick, in his Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre (1918, 2nd ed. 1925) and Carnap in Der logische Aufbau der Welt (1928, mostly written by 1925). In this paper, we first provide an analysis of the kinds of definitions that are distinguished in these books and a few other papers, and we then propose a systematic comparison of Schlick’s and Carnap’s diverging conceptions of definitions in the 1920s, (...) relating them, in both cases, to their respective philosophical projects in the Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre and in Der logische Aufbau der Welt. (shrink)

This paper concerns the issue of whether the so-called left wing of the Vienna Circle (Carnap, Neurath, Frank) can be understood as having provided the blueprint for a bipartite metatheory with a formal-logical part (the “logic of science”) supporting and being supported by a naturalistic-empirical part (the “behavioristics of science”). A claim to this effect was recently met by a counterclaim that there was indeed an attempt made to broaden Carnap’s formalist conception of philosophy by the pragmatist Morris, but (...) that this initiative failed and that Carnap showed no interest in it. To defend the original claim this paper provides an analysis of Carnap and Morris on the subject matter of pragmatics in order to show that and how Carnap adopted Morris’s proposals in so far as they agreed with bipartite metatheory conception. (shrink)

Structure is the connecting link between the early epistemologies of Cassirer, Schlick, and Carnap. However, there are important programmatic differences among Cassirer’s, Schlick’s, and Carnap’s articulations of the structuralistic point of view. Whereas Cassirer hoped to argue in favor of an ‚idealist‘ and Schlick in favor of a ‚realist‘ conception of structure, Carnap thought it possible to remain neutral in this respect. I will argue that Carnap’s approach, though at first sight promising, was doomed to failure precisely because of its (...) base in ‚neutralism‘. In order to distinguish mathematical from physical structures, a certain form of realism is necessarily required. (shrink)

In recent years the works of Friedman, Howard and many others have made obvious what perhaps was always self-evident. Namely, that the philosophy of the logical empiricists was shaped primarily by Einstein and his invention of the theory of relativity, whereas Hilbert and his axiomatic approach to the exact sciences had comparatively little impact on the logical empiricists and their understanding of science — if they had any effect at all. This is in one respect quite astonishing, insofar as Einstein (...) himself confessed 1921 in his famous lecture before the Prussian Academy of Science that “without it [the axiomatic point of view] it would have been impossible for me to propound the theory of relativity”.2 Hence the simple question arises: why didn’t the logical empiricists pay more attention to Hilbert and his axiomatic point of view, than they in fact did? It is an aim of this paper to answer this question and in part to correct this one-sided view in the hypothetical or contra-factual sense that the logical empiricists would have done better, if they had paid somewhat more attention to Hilbert and his axiomatic approach to science. (shrink)