GAP.6 Carnap Workshop

Location:

Room GAP-R
"Silberlaube"
Free University
Habelschwerdter Allee 45
14195 Berlin-Dahlem

Workshop Program

THURSDAY

14:45 - 15:00

Welcome & Intro

15:00 - 15:30

CP Sandy BERKOVSKI (Bilkent): Carnap's debt to Frege

15:30 - 16:00

CP David STERN (Iowa City): Wittgenstein vs. Carnap on physicalism: a reassessment

16:00 - 16:30

CP Wolfgang KIENZLER (Jena): Carnap on Metalogic

16:30 - 16:45

++ plenary discussion on "Carnap's relation to Frege and Wittgenstein"

16:45 - 17:00

** coffee break

17:00 - 17:30

CP David MCCARTY (Bloomington): Intuitionism and Logical Syntax

17:30 - 18:00

CP Eckehart Köhler (Vienna): Gödel vs. Carnap: Platonistic Intuition vs. Convention

18:00 - 18:15

++ plenary discussion on "Tolerance, relativism, and conventionalism"

18:15 - 18:30

** coffee break

18:30 - 19:30

IL Michael FRIEDMAN (Stanford): Carnap and Quine: 20th-Century Echoes of Kant and Hume

19:30 - 20:30

** RECEPTION at "Ristorante Galileo"(Open Court presents Carnap's "Collected Works")

FRIDAY

09:00 - 09:30

CP Abe STONE(UC Santa Cruz): On the Completion and Generalization of Intuitive Space ...

09:30 - 10:00

CP Pierre WAGNER (Paris): 'Der Raum,' Elements for an Evaluation

10:00 - 10:30

CP Pawel PRZYWARA (Rzeszow): Carnap's and Husserl's Theory of Space

10:30 - 11:00

++ plenary discussion on "Carnap's 'Der Raum'"

11:00 - 11:30

** coffee break

11:30 - 12:00

CP Gary HARDCASTLE(Bloomsburg): Quine's 1934 'Lectures on Carnap'

12:00 - 12:30

CP Lieven DECOCK (Amsterdam): Carnap and Quine on Some Analytic-Synthetic Distinctions

12:30 - 13:00

CP Jean-Louis HUDRY(Edinburgh): Carnap's Pragmatics and the Vindication of Analyticity

13:00 - 13:30

++ plenary discussion on Carnap and the problem of analyticity

13:30 - 15:00

** LUNCH

15:00 - 16:00

IL Richard CREATH (Arizona SU): The Logical and the Analytic

16:00 - 16:15

** coffee break

16:15 - 16:45

CP Thomas E UEBEL (Manchester): Explication and Ramseyfication

16:45 - 17:15

CP Holger ANDREAS (Leipzig): On The Notion of Partial Interpretation

17:15 - 17:45

CP Angelo CEI (Leeds): The Analyticity of Theoretical Terms in Carnap's Later Production

17:45 - 18:15

++ plenary discussion on "Carnap and theoretical terms"

18:15 - 18:30

** coffee break

18:30 - 19:30

IL Steve Awodey (Pittsburgh): "tba"

20:00 -

** CONFERENCE DINNER


SATURDAY

SYMPOSIUM: "On the Banishment and Return of the Philosophy of Science after World War II"
Organizer: Friedrich Stadler (Vienna)
Participants: Hans-Joachim Dahms, Christian Damböck, Christoph Limbeck, Friedrich Stadler


09:00 - 9:30

Friedrich STADLER (Vienna): The forgotten 'Third Vienna Circle' - A Hidden Story of the Survival and Return of Philosophy of Science in the Cold War Period

09:30 - 10:00

Christian DAMBÖCK (Vienna): Wolfgang Stegmüller's Conception of Synthetic A Priori Jugdments in the Light of Carnap and Kripke

10:00 - 10:15

** coffee break **

10:15 - 10:45

Christoph LIMBECK-LILIENAU (Vienna): Carnap's Encounter with Pragmatism

10:45 - 11:15

Hans-Joachim DAHMS (Vienna): Philosophy of Science after Hitler. Its Development in Both German States till the Construction of the Wall (1961)

12:00 -

** LUNCH & EXCURSION (Einstein-Haus, Potsdam)

ADDRESSES AND ABSTRACTS

Steven Awodey (Organizer)
Department of Philosophy
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
USA

Bernd Buldt (Organizer)
Indiana University - Purdue University
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
2101 East Coliseum Blvd., NF 130B
Fort Wayne, IN 46805
USA

THURSDAY


Sandy BERKOVSKI (Bilkent)
Department of Philosophy
FA Building, Bilkent
Ankara 06800
Turkey

Carnap's Debt to Frege
ABSTRACT:
On several occasions Carnap acknowledged Frege's influence on his work. However, one area where he believed that Frege got it all wrong was ontology. According to Carnap, claims of ontology can be either analytic, or else truth-valueless. Since philosophers are interested in those claims which are truth-valueless, the project of philosophical ontology purporting to clarify what exists in the world is ill-defined. One apparent motivation for Carnap's view was the absence of a uniform criterion by which once could arbitrate between ontological disputes. Frege's context principle, interpreted as a principle about reference, supplies such a criterion. In fact Carnap's internal/external and formal/material distinctions inherited some of the key features of the context principle. I then locate the source of Carnap's and Frege's disagreement in conventionalism. I also note that the adoption of the context principle severely reduces the motivation of the nominalist approach in mathematics. I conclude with general remarks on the place of conventionalism in Carnap's philosophy.

David STERN (Iowa City)
Department of Philosophy
269 EPB
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA 52242-1408
USA

Wittgenstein versus Carnap on physicalism: a reassessment
ABSTRACT:
The "standard account" of Wittgenstein's relations with the Vienna Circle is that the early Wittgenstein was a principal source and inspiration for the Circle's positivistic and scientific philosophy, while the later Wittgenstein was deeply opposed to the logical empiricist project of articulating a "scientific conception of the world." However, this telegraphic summary is at best only half-true and at worst deeply misleading. For it prevents us appreciating the fluidity and protean character of their philosophical dialogue. In retrospectively attributing clear-cut positions to Wittgenstein and his interlocutors, it is very easy to read back our current understanding of familiar distinctions into a time when those terms were used in a much more open-ended way.

The paper aims to to provide a broader perspective on this debate, starting from the protagonists' understanding of their respective positions. Too often, the programmatic statements about the nature of their work that are repeated in manifestoes, introductions, and elementary textbooks have occupied center stage in the subsequent secondary literature. Consequently, I focus on a detailed examination of a turning point in their relationship. That turning point is Wittgenstein's charge, in the summer of 1932, that a recently published paper of Carnap's, "Physicalistic Language as the Universal Language of Science", made such extensive and unacknowledged use of Wittgenstein's own ideas that Wittgenstein would, as he put it in a letter to Schlick, "soon be in a situation where my own work shall be considered merely as a reheated version or plagiarism of Carnap's." While the leading parties in this dispute shared a basic commitment to the primacy of physicalistic language, and the view that all significant languages are translatable, there was a remarkable lack of mutual understanding between them, and deep disagreement about the nature of the doctrines they disputed. Three quarters of a century later, we are so much more conscious of the differences that separated them than the points on which they agreed that it takes an effort of historical reconstruction to appreciate why Wittgenstein once feared that his own work would be regarded as a pale shadow of Carnap's.

David C MCCARTY (Bloomington)
Department of Philosophy
Sycamore Hall 026
1033 E. Third St.
Bloomington, IN 47405-7005
USA

Intuition and Logical Syntax
ABSTRACT:
A prevailing doctrine concerning intuitionism is that the language of its practitioners is similar syntactically to but radically distinct semantically from the language of classical mathematicians. With his Logical Syntax of Language and Foundations of Logic and Mathematics, philosopher Rudolf Carnap became one of the chief proponents, if not the originator, of the idea that the statements of intuitionistic mathematicians carry their own nonstandard intuitionistic or constructive meanings, generally distinct from the meanings of statements made by classical mathematicians. According to Carnap, an understanding of intuitionism is most effectively conveyed to the nonintuitionist by providing it with a translation manual. For example, Carnapian doctrine would have it that the statement, made by an intuitionist, that there are no total discontinuous functions of a real variable (a corollary of Brouwer's Continuity Theorem) stands in no direct and immediate contradiction with the statement, made by a classical mathematician, that there are uncountably many such discontinuous functions. We trace this idea back to Carnap's Principle of Tolerance and claims he made on behalf of his notion of pure syntax. From premises independentof intuitionistic mathematics, we argue that the Principle and attendant claims are mistaken, especially Carnap's repeated insistence that, in defining languages and treating them formally, logicians are free, that is, not committed to any mathematical statement that intuitionists would find debatable.

Wolfgang KIENZLER (Jena)
Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
Institut für Philosophie
Zwätzengasse 9
D-07743 Jena
Germany

Carnap on Metalogic and Syntax. Between Wittgenstein and Gödel.
ABSTRACT:
While Carnap attributes the most basic ideas of Logical Syntax in turn to Frege, Wittgenstein, Gödel and Tarski, Steve Awodey has suggested (in his "Carnap's Dream") that actually he used Gödel to get away from Wittgenstein. It is correct that Carnap used some technique from Gödel to define syntax from within the same language (something of which Wittgenstein said that it could not be done). On a more fundamental level, however, Carnap moved towards a more Wittgensteinian view and away from Gödelian Platonism. Even while employing Gödelian "arithmetization" Carnap points out that it is incorrect to say that a proposition of syntax "speaks about" anything. (In the translation of Syntax Carnap weakens his expression to "is concerned with".) This mode of speech is "only figurative" because no analytical sentence has any content. While Carnap did not seem to notice that this observation could have led him to reassess his way of representing the results of Gödels famous incompleteness proofs (questioning any claims as to any p forwarding claims about itself), Gödel on the other hand did realize the fundamental disagreement. This became quite obvious in Gödels attempts from the 1950s attacking Carnap's idea that mathematics was basically nothing but syntax.

Eckehart KÖHLER (Vienna)
University of Vienna
Department of Business Administration
Brünnerstr. 72
A-1210 Vienna

Gödel vs. Carnap: Platonistic Intuition vs. Convention
ABSTRACT:
Carnap's Conventionalism was highly innovative, since Poincaré hadn't wanted to apply it to logic at all. Gödel insightfully recognized an advantage of Conventionalism in its ability to establish a modal difference in theories based on it from those based on sensory observation. Gödel then tied himself into knots to refute Carnap's syntax program. He succeeded, but was paradoxically unable to exhibit the nature of mathematical knowledge and withheld his refutation. If Gödel had only realized that Conventionalism is consistent with Platonistic Intuitionism, he would have saved himself (and Schilpp) much grief. For in fact, conventions constitute evidence for intuitions, rather than evidence against them; borrowing Samuelson's idea of "revealed preference", it is easy to show this. The key issue is the reliability of conventions, which proves objectivity of the intuitions they "reveal". (Boltzmann already proposed stability of belief as a criterion of objectivity.)

Michael FRIEDMAN (Stanford)
Department of Philosophy
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
USA

Carnap and Quine: Twentieth-Century Echoes of Kant and Hume
ABSTRACT:
The famous debate between Carnap and Quine over the analytic/synthetic distinction is one of the defining moments of the twentieth-century analytic tradition in philosophy. This paper examines this debate from an historical point of view, by tracing Carnap's evolution from his early exposure to Kantian ideas at the University of Jena through the development of his mature conception of "the logic of science [Wissenschaftslogik]," and, at the same time, tracing the philosophical interaction between Carnap and Quine from Quine's Carnapian "discipleship" in the early thirties though his decisive break with Carnap in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism." Special attention is given to Quine's intervening Humean-inspired nominalist phase, the importance of which has recently been brought to light by examination of Carnap's notes on the discussions between himself, Quine, and Tarski in 1940-41 and the publication of Quine's lectures on Hume from 1946. The upshot is that Quine's philosophical orientation, from the very beginning, was completely different from Carnap's, and, as a result, Quine never really understood Carnap's position. Since our current understanding of Carnap's position is fundamentally influenced, in turn, by Quine's forceful critique, this paper attempts to foster a better appreciation of Carnap's deeply revolutionary approach by way of contrast with Quine's.

FRIDAY


Thomas E UEBEL (Manchester)
Philosophy
School of Social Science
University of Manchester
GB

Explication and Ramseyfication
ABSTRACT:
This presentation will consider whether Carnap's philosophical programme of explication is threatened by what many theorists consider a misadventure late in his career, namely, his forays into the ramseyfication of scientific theories. In doing so it seeks (i) to highlight one (under-discussed) aspect of the long-running debate about the propriety of employing the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, (ii) to distinguish Carnap's use of Ramsey sentences for expressing the content of the non-observational parts of scientific theories from that of structural realists, and (iii) to present a qualified defense of Carnap's explicationist programme.

The problem at issue is the following. The impossibility to formulate the analytic/synthetic distinction for theoretical statements prompted Carnap to look beyond his arguably defensible criterion of empirical significance published in 1956. Using Ramsey's method of replacing descriptive theoretical terms by variables bound by higher-order quantifiers, Carnap, in publications dating from 1958 to 1966, claimed to be able to give a characterisation of the cognitive content of theoretical terms so as to distinguish synthetic and analytic statements concerning them. Now according to Newman's well-known objection, a ramseyfied theory is trivially satisfied once the empirical constraints set down by its observational part are met. This speaks not only against structural realists but also against Carnap's avowed intention to use ramseyfication to exhibit the cognitive content of theoretical terms and to reestablish the analytic/synthetic distinction for theoretical statements. The question arises how much damage ensues for Carnap's explicationist programme.

Holger ANDREAS (Leipzig)
Scheffelstr. 27
D-04277 Leipzig
Germany

On The Notion of Partial Interpretation
ABSTRACT:
In Carnap´s most elaborated method for the logical analysis of scientific theories, his two-level conception, the semantic properties of theoretical terms are characterized by the doctrine of partial interpretation. This doctrine, though wide spread among adherents of the Received View in philosophy of science, is said to be notoriously unclear. Undoubtedly Carnap has failed to give a clear explanation of the notion of partial interpretation in his first paper on theoretical terms, i. e. The Methodological Charachter of Theoretical Concepts. Nevertheless such an explanation can be derived from remarks in his Foundations of Logic and Mathematics as well as from Beobachtungssprache und theoretische Sprache which is his second paper on theoretical terms. The particular kind of interpretation which confers meaning to the theoretical terms is explained in these writings with the help of an analogy to the introduction of a term by a definition. According to his explanation both kinds of terms, theoretical terms as well as defined terms, are interpreted indirectly. This means that the interpretation is not provided by a designation rule of the meta language, but rather by one or several sentences of the object language. Every indirect interpretation rests on the meaning of primitive terms which are directly interpreted. In the two-level conception of scientific language the observational terms are taken as primitive. A theoretical term is interpreted by sentences called postulates, whereas a defined term is interpreted by a definition. The former are, unlike the latter, not required to have the status of a conservative extension of the language system of primitive terms. It turns out that the partial character of the interpretation of theoretical terms must not be understood as if the postulates were capturing only the observational part of a genuine theoretical meaning which the theoretical terms are supposed to have independently of their connections with the observational terms. The reason for calling the interpretation of a theoretical term partial is rather the fact that the limitation of admissible extensional interpretations of such a term can, in general, be strengthened by setting up further sentences as postulates. By contrast, if the meaning of a term is introduced by a definition, there is one and only one admissible extensional interpretation satisfying the definition with respect to a given interpretation of the primitive terms. There is thus no further limitation of the range of admissible interpretations possible. To sum up, a better understanding of the semantics of theoretical terms can be achieved when the analogy between definitions and postulates is taken into consideration. As a conclusion, the presentation will arrive at a formal account of the truth-value assignment for theoretical sentences.

Angelo CEI (Leeds)
Division of History and Philosophy of Science
University of Leeds
GB

The analyticity of theoretical terms in Carnap later production
ABSTRACT:
Carnap's early production, culminating in the Logical Syntax of Language, has been interpreted as a conventionalist reaction to the crisis of kantianism due to the rise of Relativistic theories and to the problems stemming form the fregean foundational program (Coffa, Friedman, Ricket et al). This reading tends to neglect the role played by his later production. On the other side, a great deal of recent interest has been attracted by Carnap reformulation of Ramsey sentence. Linked to the contemporary debate on structuralism such interest led to read his later position as an early form of structural realism (Maxwell, Psillos, Zahar) in which the structural content of theories is captured via ramseyfication. Accordingly such a structural content not only would allow for a realist interpretation of Carnap understanding of scientific theories but also would be exactly the kind of theoretical content enabling the (structural) realist to address the concerns related to theory change and Pessimistic Meta-Induction.

I find compelling the reading of Carnap's early agenda (Friedman et al) as focused on the role of a priori knowledge and especially on the attempt of reconciling the conception of relativized physical a priori and the fregean notion of absolute analytical truth. Analyticity is the crucial notion of that agenda. Analyticity, on the other hand, is still the main issue of Carnap's later concerns about science. I think that considering the peculiarities of the Carnapian style of ramseyfication, and their relation with his main conceptual concerns any realist view of Carnap can be rejected. Nonetheless, the structuralist solutions remain coherent with that agenda. Carnap's use of Ramseyfication in order to pursue the project of providing explicit definitions for theoretical terms presents, I think, striking similarities with some of the conceptual choices of the Aufbau. In particular, implementing the Ramsey sentences and the Hilbert _-operator, Carnap develops a purely functional characterization of the theoretical terms conceptually very similar to the one resulting by the adoption of the structural definite descriptions in the Aufbau.

Gary HARDCASTLE (Bloomsbury)
Department of Philosophy
Bloomsburg University
Bloomsburg, PA 17815
USA

Quine's 1934 Lectures on Carnap
ABSTRACT:
In November of 1934, over successive Thursdays, the 26-year-old Willard van Orman Quine gave three "Lectures on Carnap" at Harvard University, the ostensive aim of which was a presentation of the "central doctrine" of Carnap's Logische Syntax der Sprache, "that philosophy is syntax." These were among Quine's very first public lectures, and they constituted the American premier of Carnap's logische Syntax program. As such, these lectures are of considerable significance to the history of analytic philosophy. They show, for example, one way Carnap's syntactical program was presented and understood in the 1930s, and indeed they show how Quine, emerging even in 1934 as one of America's brightest logicians, understood that particular project. Moreover, they promise to tell something about how Quine himself was thinking about central philosophical issues-the a priori, analyticity, and philosophy itself-early in his career, before he wrote the papers and books on those topics that established his reputation. This present paper takes up this last topic. My aim is to reconstruct and understand how Quine was thinking about the a priori, analyticity, and philosophy itself in 1934, what he aimed to accomplish in the "Lectures on Carnap," and the considerable extent to which he accomplished that aim. What Quine accomplished, in short, was the outline of a fascinating and original anti-metaphysics, with conventionalism (specifically, implicit definition) at its heart. This was an anti-metaphysics that invited (but, significantly, could not demand) adoption of a particular conception of philosophy.

Lieven DECOCK (Amsterdam)
Faculty of Philosophy
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
The Netherlands

Carnap and Quine on some analytic-synthetic distinctions
ABSTRACT:
I want to analyse the Quine-Carnap discussion on analyticity with regard to logical, mathematical and set-theoretical statements. In recent years, the renewed interest in Carnap's work has shed a new light on the analytic-synthetic debate. If one fully appreciates Carnap's conventionalism, one sees that there was not a metaphysical debate on whether there is an analytic-synthetic distinction, but rather a controversy on the expedience of drawing such a distinction.

However, on this view, there can be no longer a single analytic-synthetic distinction, because several kinds of statements could be regarded as analytic (L-determinate). L-equivalence between extra-logical linguistic predicates has already been heavily debated. The recent consensus states that Quine's rejection of this analytic-synthetic is pragmatically grounded in his linguistic behaviorism. However, Carnap's logical frameworks also contain other kinds of statements, and it is worthwhile to compare both Quine and Carnap's grounds for considering these statements as analytic or not analytic.

First, I will discuss logical statements. I will argue that Quine draws a very sharp distinction between first order logic and set theory, which should be regarded as a (pragmatic) analytic-synthetic distinction (as Quine admits in an interview, see Theoria, 40, 1994, p. 199). In fact, Quine's major worry is whether identity statements are analytic. Second, I will discuss mathematical statements. In Carnap's Foundations of Logic and Mathematics, it is clear that mathematical statements are analytic. For Quine, all mathematical statements are reducible to set-theoretical statements. Third, I discuss the analyticity of set-theoretical statements. For Quine, the membership predicate should be regarded as an interpreted extra-logical predicate. Quine's work in set theory and his later philosophy of set theory naturally lead to the view that set-theoretical statements cannot be analytic. A major complication for the Quine-Carnap comparison is that Carnap has no elaborate reflections on set theory, while the influence of set theory on Quine's views can hardly be underestimated. I conclude with some lessons for the contemporary debate on analyticity.

Jean-Louis HUDRY (Edinburgh)
School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences
University of Edinburgh
David Hume Tower
George Square
Edinburgh EH8 9JX
UK

Carnap's Pragmatics and the Vindication of Analyticity
ABSTRACT:
In his Logische Syntax der Sprache (1934), Carnap claims that philosophy is the logic of science, i.e. "the syntax of the language of science". His position evolves in his Introduction to Semantics (1942), when he asserts that the logic of science is about not only syntax but also semantics, and that philosophy should be understood in a wider sense by including the relation of natural language to experience. Thus, the task of philosophy is "semiotical analysis", and the structure of the language of science includes pragmatics, i.e. the way a thing or person interacts with natural language. In the reprint of Testability and Meaning (1950), Carnap then divides the theory of language (or semiotics) into three parts, namely pragmatics, semantics and syntax, so that pragmatics is distinct from logical analysis. The present paper aims to show that Carnap's pragmatics constitutes a necessary condition for our understanding of analyticity. First, pragmatics must be clearly distinguished from pure semantics; indeed, the formal rules of any constructed language system are devoid of empirical reference, and prevent pragmatics from being relevant. This does not mean that pragmatics has no semantic content; in other words, pragmatics cannot be identified with non-semantic metaphysical doctrines. The in-between view consists in defining pragmatics in terms of descriptive semantics; but Carnap broadens the usual notion of pragmatics by identifying it with not only the theory of extension (meaning, truth) but also the theory of intension (analyticity, synonymy). Intensional pragmatics amounts to generating empirical methods that test hypothetical intensions, i.e. the possible conditions that objects must fulfil in order for a given speaker to accept to apply predicates to them. Analyticity is based on pragmatic considerations, since analytic statements require meaning postulates that have to be accepted by a speaker. Acceptance is a matter of practical decision, which has no cognitive content and is devoid of logical status. As such, Carnap's intentional pragmatics vindicates the concept of analyticity, and completes the pure semantics of natural language.

Richard CREATH (Arizona SU)
Philosophy Department and School of Life Sciences
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-4102
USA

The Logical and the Analytic
ABSTRACT:
It has been pointed out by a number of authors that Carnap's definition in General Syntax of The Logical Syntax of Language of 'logical expression' is defective and that his definition there of 'analytic' presupposes that of 'logical expression'. This paper reviews some of these difficulties and tries to determine the extent, if any, to which they infect the subsequent development of Carnap's notion of analyticity.

Abe STONE (UC Santa Cruz)
University of California Santa Cruz
Cowell Academic Services
1156 High St.
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
USA

On the Completion and Generalization of Intuitive Space in Der Raum: Husserlian and Drieschian Elements
ABSTRACT:
The discussion of intuitive space in §II of Der Raum has three main stages: (1)axioms to determine the infinitesimal structure of space; (2) postulates or demands (Forderungen) which, in conjunction with the axioms, supposedly prescribe a certain type of global structure; and (3) a process by which that first type of global structure is subordinated to another, more "general" type.

Here I focus on some puzzles about Carnap's intended epistemological point in the second and third stages (leaving aside the technical problems which also arise). Since any global structure at all requires that eidetic intuition be supplemented with freely-chosen postulates and/or intuitively unmotivated generalizations, it is unclear, as several authors have pointed out, how and in what sense "intuitive space" as a whole represents a distinctive, a priori contribution to our knowledge. I suggest a way of approaching this issue based on Carnap's sources-in particular, Husserl and Driesch, both of whom he repeatedly claims to be following. The idea of a severely finite realm of possible intuition, which both requires and allows supplementation with an infinite conceptual structure, is central to Husserl's thought, and, I argue, it would be natural for Carnap to rely on it in attempting to reconcile Husserlian eidetic intuition with the general theory of relativity. That this larger conceptual structure owes its details to free postulation is, on the other hand, decidedly un-Husserlian. But here, I claim, Carnap takes his cue from Driesch's view, in the first edition of the Ordnungslehre, that natural actuality is the result of a certain demand for order: we demand such order in natural things and reject as non-actual (hallucinatory, dreamed, etc.) whatever nature-like elements of experience fail to fit into it.

In conclusion I suggest that more radical versions of this particular constellation of ideas provide the key to understanding much of Carnap's later thought.

Pierre WAGNER (Paris)
IHPST
13, rue du four
75006 Paris
France

"Der Raum," Elements for an Evaluation
ABSTRACT:
It has been noted that Carnap's thesis contains the germs of several ideas that were to be developed later in his philosophical career. It may be illuminating, for some of them, to find these germs and state the contrasts with the ideas as they were eventually developed. Here are four examples of questions that might be studied in order to get a better understanding of Carnap's thought in 1921. What I propose is to examine more precisely one or two of them in my paper.

1- In later publications, Carnap explains that in many disputations between philosophers, the latter do not realize that their oppositions reduce to the use of different languages. In the introduction of Der Raum, Carnap also proposes to resolve contradictions, in this case between theses about space. Here, the idea is not that people use different languages but that they confuse different objects: formal space, intuitive space and physical space. How do these different ways of explaining philosophical disputations relate to each other?

2- In later publications as well as in Der Raum, Carnap maintains that any theory of science should recognize the essential use of conventions or free stipulations. But here and there, these conventions are not the same, they do not have the same meaning, and they are not accounted for in the same way.

3- In later publications, Carnap displays different methods for a theory of science, methods like the constitution of concepts or, later, logical syntax. Der Raum is also a contribution to the theory of science, with a specific method, which is not made explicit. How should it be characterized?

4- In Der Raum, Carnap makes an essential use of logic, though the method of logical analysis is not recognized as such. It is probably not sufficient to refer to Russell's Principles of Mathematics or to the Principia Mathematica in order to account for logic as it appears and is used here. What is Carnap's notion of logic in 1921, and how would it evolve in the following years?

Pawel PRZYWARA (Rzeszow)
Adjunct Chair of Journalism and Public Relations
The University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszów
ul. H. Sucharskiego 2
35 225 Rzeszów
Poland

Husserl's and Carnap's Theories of Space
ABSTRACT:
Usually we do not connect theoretical approaches that of Edmund Husserl and of Rudolf Carnap. The fact of writing by Carnap some of his early works under the strong influence of the founder of phenomenological school is still not well-known.

In the paper, at the beginning I arrange some terminological questions concerning space and then having described shortly Husserlian theory of space (including especially theory of perceiving of space by a subject), I show Carnapian different and changeable attempts to explain problems of structure of space(s) and of structure of our spatial experience(s) (from his dissertation called Der Raum to Der Logische Aufbau der Welt). Then I try to gather all the terminological and methodological similarities between Carnapian and Husserlian approaches. My general thesis is following: Carnapian early works are logistic criticism of Husserlian phenomenology of space.

André CARUS (Chicago)

Carnap's Approach to Ethics
ABSTRACT:
In his most explicit formulation of a general approach to normative statements, published in 1963, Carnap articulates a logic of values or 'optatives' strikingly similar to that previously set forth in greater detail by Richard Hare (1952). Unlike Carnap's exposition, Hare's has been the subject of much discussion and debate, over a long period. It is worth investigating, therefore, whether Carnap's formulation is subject to the same criticisms that have seemed persuasive against Hare, or whether it is in some respects more robust.

SATURDAY


Friedrich STADLER - SYMPOSIUM ORGANIZER (Vienna)
Carnap Stegmüller Project (CSP)
c/o Institute Vienna Circle / Department of Contemporary History
Spitalgasse 2-4, Hof 1
A-1090 Vienna
Austria

On the Banishment and Return of the Philosophy of Science after World War II
ABSTRACT:
In recent decades, analytic philosophy and philosophy of science has become a paradigm for research and teaching in philosophy, also in the German speaking world. With the forced emigration (principally to the USA and UK) of the Vienna, Berlin and Prague Circles, representatives of Logical Empiricism disappeared almost entirely from Germany and Austria. None of them returned after the war.

This symposium has as its goal the reconstruction of some aspects of the transformation and long delayed return of philosophy of science to the places of its Central European origins. The focal point of investigation is directed at some philosophers of science, who were mainly responsible for its transfer, transformation and retroactive development: Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, Wolfgang Stegmüller and the members of a Viennese post-war discussion circle around Viktor Kraft, with Paul Feyerabend and the US Visiting Professor Arthur Pap. Feigl was the first member of the Vienna Circle to emigrate (in 1931) to the USA and to introduce Logical Empiricism into American academia. Through his contacts to European scholars after the war, he - together with Carnap - was of greatest importance for introducing philosophy of science in Austria and Germany. In parallel, the Viennese group around Kraft (the "Third Vienna Circle") was another attempt to revive the banished philosophy of science in the country of its origin. In the context of a hostile atmosphere Kraft tried to re-establish lost contacts and to close the gap to international developments. Another proponent of the Kraft Circle, Wolfgang Stegmüller, could not gain a Chair in Austria, but in Munich, where he founded a school of philosophy of science in close contact with Carnap and Feigl, that has continued to be influential down to the present day.

The symposium is part of the international research project "The Banishment and Return of the Philosophy of Science: Rudolf Carnap and Wolfgang Stegmüller", funded by the Austrian Research Fund (FWF) and directed by the organizer: http://www.univie.ac.at/ivc/stegmueller

Friedrich STADLER (Vienna)
University of Vienna, Institute Vienna Circle
c/o Department of Contemporary History
University Campus, Spitalgasse 2, Hof 1
A-1090 Wien/Vienna, Austria

The Forgotten "Third Vienna Circle" - A Hidden Story of the Survival and Return of Philosophy of Science in the Cold War Period

Christian DAMBÖCK (Vienna)
Carnap Stegmüller Project (CSP)
c/o Institute Vienna Circle / Department of Contemporary History
Spitalgasse 2-4, Hof 1
A-1090 Vienna, Austria

Wolfgang Stegmüller's Conception of Synthetic A Priori Judgments in the Light of Carnap and Kripke
ABSTRACT:
In his less well known paper 'Der Begriff des synthetischen Urteils a priori und die moderne Logik' (1954), Wolfgang Stegmüller presents an interesting account for synthetic a priori judgments. Stegmüller identifies a judgment as synthetic a priori if it is necessarily true but not analytic: "? so sind die synthetisch-apriorischen Sätze von den rein logischen dadurch unterschieden, daß sie nicht in 'allen möglichen Welten' gelten, sondern nur in bestimmten" (p.555).

This conception is of historical interest for two reasons. First, it is an astonishing fact that no one of the Vienna Circle philosophers tried to present a formal definition of the notion of synthetic a priori, although this notion turns out to be the core of all metaphysics in a postkantian era and therefore appears to be the most straightforward enemy for a twentieth century anti-metaphysician.

The second point of interest in Stegmüller's arguments has to do with Kripke's semantic conception of modality. It is obvious that Stegmüller's proposal is formally related to the conception of a 'possible-worlds-semantics' for S5 (compare Kripke's 'A Completeness Theorem in Modal Logic' (1959)). Given this constellation we gain an interesting perspective on Kripke's more philosophical conclusions in 'Naming and Necessity'. Ultimately, Stegmüller's semantic reading of metaphysics indicates some shortcomings in the Kripkean (rather strictly metaphysical) worldview.

Hans-Joachim DAHMS (Berlin and Vienna)
Carnap Stegmüller Project (CSP)
c/o Institute Vienna Circle / Department of Contemporary History
Spitalgasse 2-4, Hof 1
A-1090 Vienna, Austria

Philosophy of Science after Hitler. Its Development in Both German States till the Construction of the Wall (1961)

Christoph LIMBECK-LILIENAU (Vienna)
Carnap Stegmüller Project (CSP)
c/o Institute Vienna Circle / Department of Contemporary History
Spitalgasse 2-4, Hof 1
A-1090 Vienna, Austria

Carnap´s Encounter with Pragmatism

 

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