In acht auf deutsch und zwei auf englisch geschriebenen Aufsätzen werden Themen aus der Forschungstätigkeit, dem Leben und der Lehre des Autors behandelt: das Schicksal eines Wiener Emigranten, die angloamerikanische und die österreichische Philosophie und manche ihrer hervorragenden Gestalten. Die Schriften sind autobiographisch, historisch und kritisch und vermitteln vor allem geistesgeschichtliche und kulturhistorische Aspekte unseres Jahrhunderts.

Stanley Cavell, einer der originellsten und provokantesten Denker der amerikanischen Gegenwartsphilosophie, findet in den letzten Jahren immer größere internationale Aufmerksamkeit. Gemessen am Mainstream der analytischen Philosophie ist er ein recht atypischer Autor; er setzt sich nicht nur mit Wittgenstein, Austin und Kant, sondern auch mit Nietzsche, Heidegger und Derrida auseinander und diskutiert das Phantastische der Philosophie. Er interpretiert Dichter wie Shakespeare und Beckett, schreibt aber auch brillante Studien über Fotografie und Film. Die Überfülle der Themen und das Nebeneinanderbestehen werden dem (...) orthodoxen analytischen Philosopen ungewöhnlich, ja suspekt vorkommen..." (Davide Sparti) Der vorliegende Band bietet einen repräsentativen Querschnittdurch Stanley Cavells philosophische und kunsttheoretische Essays. (shrink)

Von der offenen Ablehnung Bertrand Russells bis zur positiven Einschätzung durch Arthur Danto hat Nietzsche emen schlechten Ruf als Phüosoph in der Analytischen Tradition gehabt. Im Wiener Kreis, der eine nicht wegzudenkende Rolle in der Geschichte der Analytischen Phüosophie spielt, wurde Nietzsche jedoch schon immer zutiefst respektiert als jemand,durch dessen Werk Rolle und Funktion der Analyse historisch verständlich wird. Dies güt vor allem für Moritz Schlick und Rudolf Carnap, aber auch für Ludwig Wittgenstein und für Otto Neurath, Ludwig von (...) Mises und Kari Popper. Sie alle nehmen Nietzsche als Denker ernst, ohne sich ihm mit analytischem Begriffsinventar zu nähern. (shrink)

English summary: The articles in this small volume endeavor, in different approaches and emphases, to determine the value and the location of the topic of religion in a secular age against the backdrop of contemporary debates in philosophy of religion. The replicas attached critically give their view. German description: Das Thema Religion findet seit geraumer Zeit ein besonderes Interesse in philosophischen Debatten. Die religionsphilosophische Verortung und die nahere Bestimmung der Religionsthematik in der Moderne war auch Schwerpunkt einer Ringvorlesung, die im (...) Rahmen der Forschungsplattform Religion und Transformation in modernen europaischen Gesellschaften im Studienjahr 2011/2012 an der Universitat Wien stattgefunden hat. Die uberarbeiteten religionsphilosophischen Beitrage zu dieser Ringvorlesung sind in diesem Band gesammelt; Mitglieder der Katholisch-Theologischen Fakultat der Universitat Wien (die auch der genannten Forschungsplattform angehorten) haben dazu jeweils eine Replik verfasst. (shrink)

Im Materialismusstreit der 1850er Jahre prallen die oft provokativ vorgetragenen Positionen des naturwissenschaftlich-weltanschaulichen Materialismus (vor allem Carl Vogts, Jacob Moleschotts und Ludwig Büchners) auf Positionen (insbesondere diejenige Rudolf Wagners), die die Naturwissenschaften mit den traditionellen religiösen Überzeugungen – etwa von der Unsterblichkeit der Seele, von der Gültigkeit der biblischen Weltchronologie oder von der Abstammung der Menschheit von einem einzigen Elternpaar – bruchlos verbinden zu können glauben. Mit den wissenschaftlichen Überzeugungen verbinden sich zudem politische Optionen. Jenseits aller lautstarken Polemik werden (...) in diesem Streit die Erklärungskompetenzen der Religion, der Philosophie und der Naturwissenschaften neu gegeneinander abgegrenzt – wobei der Philosophie (in ihren Vertretern I. H. Fichte und F. A. Lange) eine vermittelnde Rolle zufällt. (shrink)

Barry Smith has written a book about an important topic in philosophy and its recent history, concerning the legacy of Franz Brentano. “The Legacy of Franz Brentano” is also its subtitle, a subtitle much more revealing of its contents than its title: Austrian Philosophy. That title makes one expect either a general picture of philosophy in Austria, past and/or present, or an account of what Rudolf Haller has called Austrian Philosophy, a term that refers to its golden age, to (...) a tradition whose main characteristics are, according to Haller, empiricism, proximity to science, and a concern with language. Smith includes these properties in his characterization of the legacy of Brentano, and adds quite appropriately for that legacy “a concern with ontological structure” and “an overriding interest in the relation of macro-phenomena ... to ... micro-phenomena which underlie or are associated with them”. Smith is quite aware that this addition does not hold for the tradition of Austrian philosophy, since he opposes it to a German tradition, and delineates the former “by means of a list beginning with Bolzano, Mach and Meinong, and ending with Wittgenstein, Neurath, and Popper”. (shrink)

Gegenstandes des Aufsatzes ist die gegenseitige Beeinflussung und Bezugnahme von Rudolf Carnap und Kurt Gödel in ihren jeweiligen Selbstzeugnissen während der 20er- bis 40er-Jahre des 20. Jahrhunderts. Der Vergleicht bestätigt die bisherige Forschung, der zufolge Carnap auf Gödels Arbeiten der Jahre 1930 und 1931 einigen Einfluss hatte. Er zeigt darüber hinaus, dass die beiden sich größtenteils als mathematische Logiker wahrgenommen und rezipiert haben. Nach allem, was wir bisher wissen, bleibt das so hinsichtlich Carnaps Wertschätzung für Gödels Denken. Gödel (...) wendet sich hingegen Carnap ab 1934 auch als einem philosophischen Denker zu, dessen Philosophie eine gewisse Nähe zu der von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz aufweist, aber anders als letztere, von Gödel kritisch gesehen wird. (shrink)

According to a common opinion, the word ‘semantics’ , derived from the Greek word semantikos , appeared for the first time, at least in modern times, in the book Essai de semantique, science de significations by M. J. A. Bréal . However, Quine says in his lectures on Carnap:As used by C. S. Peirce, “semantic” is the study of the modes of denotation of signs: whether a sign denotes its object through causal or symptomatic connection, or through imagery, or through (...) arbitrary convention and so on. This sense of semantic, namely a theory of meaning, is used also in empirical philology: empirical semantic is the study of historical changes of meanings of words.1For Bréal, semantics was a branch of general linguistics. In particular, semantics was occupied with so-called lexical meaning and its changes through time. Thus, semantics in this sense belonged to what was called “the diachronic treatment of language”. This tradition is fairly alive in contemporary linguistic theory. Quine’s description of the word ‘semantic’ in Peirce corresponds, which Quine explicitly states, to its use in philology. However, some linguists ascribe a more theoretical role to lingustic semantics. Karl Bühler is an example. In his Sprachtheorie he says that a theory of semantic functions of language is a part of theory of language.2 This account is to be found also among philosophers. It is also rather obvious that Peirce did not limit his semantic only to empirical studies. Linguists also use the word ‘semasiology’ instead of ‘semantics’; Bühler proposed the term ‘sematology’ for a general theory of symbols. (shrink)

Schlusslogische Letztbegründung is a collection of essays in honor of Kurt Walter Zeidler. Mr. Zeidler is a distinguished Kant- and Neo-Kantian-scholar who has reconstructed Kant's concept of transcendental logic in connection with the logic of the concept of Hegel and the logic of symbolization of Peirce. (cf. Zeidler: Grundriss der transzendentalen Logik, 3rd ed., Wien 2017) He has most notably inquired intensively into the relation of transcendental logic to philosophy of science (cf. Zeidler: Prolegomena zur Wissenschaftstheorie, Wien 2000) and (...) to phenomenology (cf. Zeidler: Vermittlungen. Zum antiken und neueren Idealismus, Wien 2016). He has also published several studies on Neo-Kantianism (cf. Zeidler: Provokationen. Zu Problemen des Neukantianismus, Wien 2018). This is refelected in the collection of essays by distinguished scholars who discuss and critically examine Zeidler's work. It includes contributions by Steinar Mathisen (Oslo), Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik (Vienna), Werner Flach (Lichtenau), Thomas Knoppe (Straberg), Geert Edel (Wyk/Föhr), Martin Bunte (Münster), Reinhard Hiltscher (Dresden), Walter Tydecks (Bensheim), Christian Krijnen (Amsterdam), Hartwig Wiedebach (Zürich), Max Gottschlich (Linz), Thomas Sören Hoffmann (Hagen), Rudolf Meer (Kaliningrad), Hans-Jürgen Müller (Frankfurt am Main), Robert König (Vienna), Ulrich Blau (Marburg), Karen Gloy (Luzern/Munich), Reinhold Breil (Aachen), Erhard Oeser (Vienna), Hans-Dieter Klein (Vienna), Hans Martin Dober (Tübingen), Kurt Walter Zeidler (Vienna) and Lois Marie Rendl (Vienna). (shrink)

The philosopher Rudolf Carnap, although not himself an originator of mathematical advances in logic, was much involved in the development of the subject. He was the most important and deepest philosopher of the Vienna Circle of logical positivists, or, to use the label Carnap later preferred, logical empiricists. It was Carnap who gave the most fully developed and sophisticated form to the linguistic doctrine of logical and mathematical truth: the view that the truths of mathematics and logic do not (...) describe some Platonistic realm, but rather are artifacts of the way we establish a language in which to speak of the factual, empirical world, fallouts of the representational capacity of language. Carnap was also the thinker who, after Russell, most emphasized the importance of modern logic, and the distinctive advances it enables in the foundations of mathematics, to contemporary philosophy. It was through Carnap's urgings, abetted by Hans Hahn, once Carnap arrived in Vienna as Privatdozent in philosophy in 1926, that the Vienna Circle began to take logic seriously and that positivist philosophy began to grapple with the question of how an account of mathematics compatible with empiricism can be given.A particular facet of Carnap's influence is not widely appreciated: it was Carnap who introduced Kurt Gödel to logic, in the serious sense. Although Gödel seems to have attended a course of Schlick's on philosophy of mathematics in 1925–26, his second year at the University, he did not at that time pursue logic further, nor did the seminar leave much of a trace on him. In the early summer of 1928, however, Carnap gave two lectures to the Circle which Gödel attended, or so I surmise. At these occasions, Carnap presented material from his manuscript treatise, Untersuchungen zur allgemeinen Axiomatik, that is, “Investigations into general axiomatics”, which dealt with questions of consistency, completeness and categoricity. Carnap later circulated this material to various people including Gödel. (shrink)

This book provides detailed transcriptions of two notebooks written by Kurt Gödel in Vienna in 1937/38 in the nearly forgotten Gabelsberger shorthand system. The first of these notebooks, simply entitled as the Protokoll-book, contains notes on conversations Gödel had with people like Rudolf Carnap, Rose Rand, Friedrich Waismann, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, and many others who were—at least to some degree—connected to the Vienna Circle. It also covers detailed descriptions of the regular meetings organized by Edgar Zilsel. The second notebook (...) includes notes on a series of lectures given at the Vienna Psychological Institute, which was led by Karl Bühler at the time. Both notebooks are part of Gödel’s huge Nachlass kept at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, which consists of literally thousands of stenographic pages covering logic and the foundations of mathematics, philosophy, physics, and theology. The now transcribed and commented notes reveal a very personal side of Gödel which has—to a large extent—been unknown to a mainly scientific-oriented audience. The book is of interest to people wanting to learn about Gödel’s personal background in Vienna in the late 1930s as well as his keen interest in philosophy, psychology, and parapsychology. (shrink)

Modern science, based on the laws of physics, claims validity for all events in space and time. However, it also reveals its own limitations, such as the indeterminacy of quantum physics, the limits of decidability, and, presumably, limits of decodability of the mind-brain relationship. At the philosophical level, these intrinsic limitations allow for different interpretations of the relation between human cognition and the natural order. In particular, modern science may be logically consistent with religious as well as agnostic views of (...) humans and the universe. These points are exemplified through the transcript of a discussion between Kurt Gödel and Rudolf Carnap that took place in 1940. Gödel, discoverer of mathematical undecidability, took a proreligious view; Carnap, one of the founders of analytical philosophy, an antireligious view. By the time of the discussion, Carnap had liberalized his ideas on theoretical concepts of science: he believed that observational terms do not suffice for an exhaustive definition of theoretical concepts. Then, responded Gödel, one should formulate a theory or metatheory that is consistent with scientific rationality, yet also encompasses theology. Carnap considered such theories unproductive. The controversy remained unresolved, but its emphasis shifted from rationality to wisdom, not only in the Gödel-Carnap discussion but also in our time. -/- . (shrink)

Nietzsche, the Godfather of Fascism? What can Nietzsche have in common with this murderous ideology? Frequently described as the "radical aristocrat" of the spirit, Nietzsche abhorred mass culture and strove to cultivate an Übermensch endowed with exceptional mental qualities. What can such a thinker have in common with the fascistic manipulation of the masses for chauvinistic goals that crushed the autonomy of the individual? The question that lies at the heart of this collection is how Nietzsche came to acquire the (...) deadly "honor" of being considered the philosopher of the Third Reich and whether such claims had any justification. Does it make any sense to hold him in some way responsible for the horrors of Auschwitz? The editors present a range of views that attempt to do justice to the ambiguity and richness of Nietzsche's thought. First-rate contributions by a variety of distinguished philosophers and historians explore in depth Nietzsche's attitudes toward Jews, Judaism, Christianity, anti-Semitism, and National Socialism. They interrogate Nietzsche's writings for fascist and anti-Semitic proclivities and consider how they were read by fascists who claimed Nietzsche as their intellectual godfather. There is much that is disturbingly antiegalitarian and antidemocratic in Nietzsche, and his writings on Jews are open to differing interpretations. Yet his emphasis on individualism and contempt for German nationalism and anti-Semitism put him at stark odds with Nazi ideology. The Nietzsche that emerges here is a tragic prophet of the spiritual vacuum that produced the twentieth century's totalitarian movements, the thinker who best diagnosed the pathologies of fin-de-siècle European culture. Nietzsche dared to look into the abyss of modern nihilism. This book tells us what he found. The contributors are Menahem Brinker, Daniel W. Conway, Stanley Corngold, Kurt Rudolf Fischer, Jacob Golomb, Robert C. Holub, Berel Lang, Wolfgang Müller-Lauter, Alexander Nehamas, David Ohana, Roderick Stackelberg, Mario Sznajder, Geoffrey Waite, Robert S. Wistrich, and Yirmiyahu Yovel. (shrink)

Rudolf Carnap's 1930s philosophy of logic, including his adherence to the principle of tolerance, is discussed. What theses did Carnap commit himself to, exactly? I argue that while Carnap did commit himself to a certain multitude thesis—there are different logics of different languages, and the choice between these languages is merely a matter of expediency—there is no evidence that he rejected a language-transcendent notion of fact, contrary to what Warren Goldfarb and Thomas Ricketts have prominently argued. (In fact, it (...) is obscure just what Goldfarb and Ricketts claim about Carnap). Toward the end I critically discuss Michael Friedman's suggestion that Carnap believed in a relative a priori. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically examine Kurt Gödel’s argument against the syntactic interpretation of mathematics. While the main aim is to analyze the argument, I also wish to underscore the relevance of the original elements of Gödel’s philosophical thought. The paper consists of four parts. In the first part, I introduce the reader to Gödel’s philosophy. In the second part, I reconstruct the formalist stance in the philosophy of mathematics, which is the object of Gödel’s criticism. In the third (...) part, I sketch his argument against the syntactic interpretation of mathematics. Finally, I discuss some controversies regarding the argument. (shrink)

This Open Access volume is based on the 'Early Carnap in Context’ workshop that took place in Konstanz in 2017 and looks at Rudolf Carnap’s philosophy, documented in his recently released diaries, from a combination of historical, cultural and philosophical perspectives. It enables further evaluation of the diaries and traces newly found interrelationships and their systematic definition. From a cultural and historical point of view, Logical Empiricism and Carnap’s pivotal opus, The Logical Structure of the World, did not evolve (...) in a vacuum. This applies equally in a history of philosophy context as well as under consideration of contemporary historical and cultural influences such as the socio-cultural setting in Vienna and Prague, the correlation between Logical Empiricism and Bauhaus modernism, the connection to the Life Reform Movement or the Youth Movement with its own life philosophy. Pursuing Carnap’s progression on a micro level of history and referring the results back to Carnap’s philosophy is now facilitated by recent access to his Diaries from 1908–1935. These shorthand records, reading lists, travel reports and notes constitute a valuable source for the research of networks and social movements which left their mark on him. (shrink)

In broadest terms, this thesis is concerned to answer the question of whether the view that arithmetic is analytic can be maintained consistently. Lest there be much suspense, I will conclude that it can. Those who disagree claim that accounts which defend the analyticity of arithmetic are either unable to give a satisfactory account of the foundations of mathematics due to the incompleteness theorems, or, if steps are taken to mitigate incompleteness, then the view loses the ability to account for (...) the applicability of mathematics in the sciences. I will show that this criticism is not successful against every view whereby arithmetic is analytic by showing that the brand of "conventionalism" about mathematics that Rudolf Carnap advocated in the 1930s, especially in Logical Syntax of Language, does not suffer from these difficulties. There, Carnap develops an account of logic and mathematics that ensures the analyticity of both. It is based on his famous "Principle of Tolerance", and so the major focus of this thesis will to defend this principle from certain criticisms that have arisen in the 80 years since the book was published. I claim that these criticisms all share certain misunderstandings of the principle, and, because my diagnosis of the critiques is that they misunderstand Carnap, the defense I will give is of a primarily historical and exegetical nature. Again speaking broadly, the defense will be split into two parts: one primarily historical and the other argumentative. The historical section concerns the development of Carnap's views on logic and mathematics, from their beginnings in Frege's lectures up through the publication of Logical Syntax. Though this material is well-trod ground, it is necessary background for the second part. In part two we shift gears, and leave aside the historical development of Carnap's views to examine a certain family of critiques of it. We focus on the version due to Kurt Gödel, but also explore four others found in the literature. In the final chapter, I develop a reading of Carnap's Principle - the `wide' reading. It is one whereby there are no antecedent constraints on the construction of linguistic frameworks. I argue that this reading of the principle resolves the purported problems. Though this thesis is not a vindication of Carnap's view of logic and mathematics tout court, it does show that the view has more plausibility than is commonly thought. (shrink)

Kurt Gödel criticizes Rudolf Carnap's conventionalism on the grounds that it relies on an empiricist admissibility condition, which, if applied, runs afoul of his second incompleteness theorem. Thomas Ricketts and Michael Friedman respond to Gödel's critique by denying that Carnap is committed to Gödel's admissibility criterion; in effect, they are denying that Carnap is committed to any empirical constraint in the application of his principle of tolerance. I argue in response that Carnap is indeed committed to an empirical (...) requirement vis‐à‐vis tolerance, a fact that becomes clear upon closer scrutiny of Carnap's relevant writings. *Received July 2009; revised January 2010. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Saskatchewan, 9 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, SK S7N 5A5, Canada; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

This article introduces the theory of cognitive spacetime. This account allows us to go beyond the space–time dichotomy that is commonly employed in psychology and cognitive science. Linguistic analysis and experimental review is provided to support the notion that what is commonly referred to as spatial cognition (or mental space) in the cognitive sciences always contains time, and that what is commonly referred to as temporal cognition (or mental time) always contains space. For “spatial cognition” the term object-spatiotemporal cognition (or (...) object spacetime) and for “temporal cognition” the term event-spatiotemporal cognition (or event spacetime) is introduced. In order to exemplify the virtue of the new spacetime account (with its two subdomains, object spacetime and event spacetime) with a specific example, it is investigated how this new notion can substantially refine our understanding of space–time conceptual metaphor. A new conceptual-metaphor spacetime typology for cognitive processing underlying fictive motion and non-fictive motion is also proposed. Implications of the new spacetime account are discussed for metaphorically mapped mental perspective, metaphorically mapped embodiment, and cognitive science in general. Finally, specific reasons are given why the current proposal of cognitive spacetime cannot be equated with the concept of spacetime in modern physics. (shrink)

One important achievement Rudolf Carnap claimed for his book, The Logical Syntax of Language, was that it effected a synthesis of two seemingly antithetical philosophies of mathematics, logicism and formalism. Reconciling these widely divergent conceptions had been a goal of Carnap’s for several years. But in the years in which Carnap’s synthesis evolved, important intellectual developments influenced the direction of his efforts and, ultimately, the final outcome. These developments were, first of all, the epoch-making theorems proved by Kurt (...) Gödel, which required the abandonment of several theses central to the aims of logicism and formalism. Of far greater significance, in the present context, are the changes in Carnap’s own philosophical outlook, brought about not only by Gödel’s theorems but concurrent discussions within the Vienna Circle as well as his own researches. Consequently, the exact sense in which Carnap attempted the synthesis of logicism and formalism in the Logical Syntax requires careful examination. In what follows below, the evolution of Carnap’s synthesis will be traced, from the first reconciliation he proposed , through the synthesis that appeared with the publication of The Logical Syntax of Language. The aim is to determine which modifications of Carnap’s synthesis were required by Gödel’s theorems, and which were motivated by changes in his own thinking. Although the characteristic theses of both logicism and formalism required profound modifications because of Gödel’s theorems, the philosophical impulses that originally fueled their programs retained much of their former virulence. But the changes in Carnap’s thought that ocurred in the years he was developing his synthesis especially affected his appreciation of the philosophical motivations underwriting the logicist approach, so that much of the philosophical insight that inspired it is lost, and Carnap’s combination of logicism and formalism is a putative synthesis at best. (shrink)

An in-depth history of the linguistic turn in analytic philosophy, from a leading philosopher of language This is the second of five volumes of a definitive history of analytic philosophy from the invention of modern logic in 1879 to the end of the twentieth century. Scott Soames, a leading philosopher of language and historian of analytic philosophy, provides the fullest and most detailed account of the analytic tradition yet published, one that is unmatched in its chronological range, topics covered, and (...) depth of treatment. Focusing on the major milestones and distinguishing them from detours, Soames gives a seminal account of where the analytic tradition has been and where it appears to be heading. Volume 2 provides an intensive account of the new vision in analytical philosophy initiated by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, its assimilation by the Vienna Circle of Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap, and the subsequent flowering of logical empiricism. With this “linguistic turn,” philosophical analysis became philosophy itself, and the discipline’s stated aim was transformed from advancing philosophical theories to formalizing, systematizing, and unifying science. In addition to exploring the successes and failures of philosophers who pursued this vision, the book describes how the philosophically minded logicians Kurt Gödel, Alfred Tarski, Alonzo Church, and Alan Turing discovered the scope and limits of logic and developed the mathematical theory of computation that ushered in the digital era. The book’s account of this pivotal period closes with a searching examination of the struggle to preserve ethical normativity in a scientific age. (shrink)

Peter Achinstein gives in his papers [1] and [2] interesting analyses of some problems of inductive logic and of some approaches I have proposed. I shall discuss here some of these problems in order to clarify my present position. My comments will mainly concern the variety of instances, and only briefly the analogy influence, and the inductive methods for a coordinate language.