In the years before the Second World War, Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach emigrated to the United States, escaping the quickly deteriorating political situation on the continent. Once in the U. S., the two significantly changed the American philosophical climate. This two-part paper reconstructs 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. Building on archival material of several key players and (...) institutions, I take some first steps toward answering the question why logical empiricism became so successful in the United States after the War. This first part reconstructs Carnap’s development between 1923, when he first visited New York, and 1936, when he was offered a position at the University of Chicago. I describe Carnap’s first substantive contacts with American philosophers as well as the events leading up to his decision to emigrate. In addition, I argue that some of Carnap’s work from the mid-1930s—in particular “Testability and Meaning”—can be better understood if we take into account his attempts to correct the American narrative about logical positivism and his increasingly desperate efforts to find a position in the United States. (shrink)

I outline the theoretical framework of, and three research programs within American speculative philosophy of science during the period 1900-1931. One program applies verificationism to research in psychology, one investigates the methodology of research programs, and one analyses scientific explanation and other scientific concepts. The primary sources for my outline are works by Morris Raphael Cohen, Grace Andrus de Laguna, Theodore de Laguna, Edgar Arthur Singer Jr., Harold Robert Smart, and Marie Collins Swabey. I also use my outline to provide (...) a partial comparison of American speculative philosophy of science and 1930s logical positivism. My comparison suggests that logical positivism was a proposal for substantially narrowing down and winding back American philosophy of science and was based on positions that were already problematized in the American context. -/- . (shrink)

This paper reconstructs the American reception of logical positivism in the early 1930s. I argue that Moritz Schlick (who had visiting positions at Stanford and Berkeley between 1929 and 1932) and Herbert Feigl (who visited Harvard in the 1930-31 academic year) played a crucial role in promoting the *Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung*, years before members of the Vienna Circle, the Berlin Group, and the Lvov-Warsaw school would seek refuge in the United States. Building on archive material from the Wiener Kreis Archiv, the (...) Harvard University Archives, and the Herbert Feigl Papers, as well as a large number of publications in American philosophy journals from the early 1930s, I reconstruct the subtle transformation of the American philosophical landscape in the years immediately preceding the European exodus. I argue that (1) American philosophical discussions about meaning and significance and (2) internal dynamics in the Vienna Circle between 1929 and 1931 significantly impacted the way in which US philosophers came to perceive logical positivism. (shrink)

Susanne K. Langer is best known as a philosopher of culture and student of Ernst Cassirer. In this chapter, however, I argue that this standard picture ignores her contributions to the development of analytic philosophy in the 1920s and 1930s. I reconstruct the reception of Langer’s first book *The Practice of Philosophy*—arguably the first sustained defense of analytic philosophy by an American philosopher—and describe how prominent European philosophers of science such as Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap, and Herbert Feigl viewed her (...) as one of the most important allies in the United States. In the second half of this chapter, I turn to Langer’s best-selling *Philosophy in a New Key* and reconstruct her attempts to broaden the scope of the, by then, rapidly growing U.S. analytic movement. I argue that her book anticipated various developments in analytic philosophy but was largely ignored by her former colleagues. I end the chapter by offering some clues as to why New Key did not incite the same laudatory responses from analytic philosophers as her earlier work. (shrink)

Discussions of the relation between pragmatism and logical empiricism tend to focus on the period when the logical empiricists found themselves in exile, mostly in the United States, and then attempt to gauge the actual extent of their convergence. My concern lies with the period before that and the question whether pragmatism had an earlier influence on the development of logical empiricism, especially on the thought of the former members of the “first” Vienna Circle. I argue for a substantially qualified (...) affirmative answer. (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)

Carnap and Quine first met in the 1932-33 academic year, when the latter, fresh out of graduate school, visited the key centers of mathematical logic in Europe. In the months that Carnap was finishing his Logische Syntax der Sprache, Quine spent five weeks in Prague, where they discussed the manuscript “as it issued from Ina Carnap’s typewriter”. The philosophical friendship that emerged in these weeks would have a tremendous impact on the course of analytic philosophy. Not only did the meetings (...) effectively turn Quine into Carnap's disciple, they also paved the way for their seminal debates about meaning, language, and ontology---the very discussions that would change the course of analytic philosophy in the decades after the Second World War. -/- Yet surprisingly little is known about these first meetings. Although Quine has often acknowledged the impact of his Prague visit, there appears to be little information about these first encounters, except for the fact that the Quines “were overwhelmed by the kindness of the Carnaps” and that it was Quine’s “most notable experience of being intellectually fired by a living teacher”. Neither their correspondence nor their autobiographies offer a detailed account of these meetings. In this paper, I shed new light on Carnap’s and Quine’s first encounters by examining a set of previously unexplored material from their personal and academic archives. Why did Quine decide to visit Carnap? What did they discuss? And in what ways did the meetings affect Quine’s philosophical development? In what follows, I address these questions by means of a detailed reconstruction of Quine’s year in Europe based on a range of letters, notes, and reports from the early 1930s. (shrink)

Moritz Schlick’s work shaped Logical Empiricism and thereby an important part of philosophy in the first half of the 20th century. A continuous thread that runs through his work is a philosophical diagnosis of the ‘great errors in philosophy’: philosophers assume that there is intuitive knowledge/knowledge by acquaintance. Yet acquaintance, it is not knowledge, but an evaluative attitude. In this paper I will reconstruct Schlick’s arguments for this conclusion in the light of his early practical philosophy and his reading of (...) Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Idea. Having the historical roots of Schlick’s position in view will put us in a position to explore and question its presuppositions. (shrink)

Considerable unclarity exists in the literature concerning the origin and authorship of Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis, the Vienna Circle’s manifesto of 1929 and on the extent of and the reasons for the mixed reception it received in the Circle itself. This paper reconsiders these matters on the light of so far insufªciently consulted documents.

Do the terms “logical positivism” and “logical empiricism” mark a philosophically real and significant distinction? There is, of course, no doubt that the first term designates the group of philosophers known as the Vienna Circle, headed by Moritz Schlick and including Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, Philipp Frank, Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, Friedrich Waismann and others. What is debatable, however, is whether the name “logical positivism” correctly distinguishes their doctrines from related ones called “logical empiricism” that emerged from the Berlin Society (...) for Scientific Philosophy around Hans Reichenbach which included Walter Dubislav, Kurt Grelling, Kurt Lewin and a young Carl Gustav Hempel.1 The .. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Eino Kaila's thought occupies a curious position within the logical empiricist movement. Along with Hans Reichenbach, Herbert Feigl, and the early Moritz Schlick, Kaila advocates a realist approach towards science and the project of a “scientific world conception”. This realist approach was chiefly directed at both Kantianism and Poincaréan conventionalism. The case in point was the theory of measurement. According to Kaila, the foundations of physical reality are characterized by the existence of invariant systems of relations, which he called structures. (...) In a certain sense, these invariant structures, he maintained, are constituted in the act of measuring. By “constitution”, however, Kaila meant neither the dependency of the objects of measurement on a priori concepts (or Kantian categories) nor their being effected by conventional stipulations in a Poincaréan sense. He held that invariant structures are, quite literally, real: they exist prior to and independently of our theoretical capacity. By executing measurements, invariant structures are detected and objectively determinable by laws of nature. (shrink)

This article considers the evolution of Feigl's attempt at establishing a stable form of scientific realism. I will argue that Feigl's work in that area should be appreciated for two reasons: it represents a telling case against the view of there being an unbridgeable ‘analytic-continental divide’ in the context of twentieth-century philosophy; it contradicts the idea that scientific realism is at odds with logical empiricism. It will be shown that Feigl developed his scientific realist position from within the logical empiricists’ (...) Vienna Circle. This, in turn, necessitates a fresh approach toward the contemporary scientific realism debate. (shrink)

Ernest Nagel played a key role in bridging the gap between American philosophy and logical empiricism. He introduced European philosophy of science to the American philosophical community but also remained faithful to the naturalism of his teachers. This paper aims to shed new light on Nagel’s intermediating endeavors by reconstructing his philosophical development in the late 1920s and 1930s. This is a decisive period in Nagel’s career because it is the phase in which he first formulated the principles of his (...) naturalism and spent a year in Europe to visit the key centers of logical empiricism. Building on a range of published and unpublished papers, notes, and correspondence—including hundreds of pages of letters to his close friend Sidney Hook—I reconstruct Nagel’s philosophical development, focusing especially on the philosophical influence of John Dewey, Morris R. Cohen, Rudolf Carnap, and Hans Reichenbach. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is make a contribution to the ongoing search for an adequate concept of the a priori element in scientific knowledge. The point of departure is C.I. Lewis’s account of a pragmatic a priori put forward in his "Mind and the World Order" (1929). Recently, Hasok Chang in "Contingent Transcendental Arguments for Metaphysical Principles" (2008) reconsidered Lewis’s pragmatic a priori and proposed to conceive it as the basic ingredient of the dynamics of an embodied scientific reason. (...) The present paper intends to further elaborate Chang’s account by relating it with some conceptual tools from cognitive semantics and certain ideas that first emerged in the context of the category-theoretical foundations of mathematics. (shrink)

A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth, and Logic had been responsible for introducing the Vienna Circle’s ideas, developed within a Germanophone framework, to an Anglophone readership. Inevitably, this migration from one context to another resulted in the alteration of some of the concepts being transmitted. Such alterations have served to facilitate a number of false impressions of Logical Empiricism from which recent scholarship still tries to recover. In this paper, I will attempt to point to the ways in which LTL has (...) helped to foster the various mistaken stereotypes about Logical Empiricism which were combined into the received view. I will begin by examining Ayer’s all too brief presentation of an Anglocentric lineage for his ideas. This lineage, as we shall see, simply omits the major 19th century Germanophone influences on the rise of analytic philosophy. The Germanophone ideas he presents are selectively introduced into an Anglophone context, and directed towards various concerns that arose within that context. I will focus on the differences between Carnap’s version of the overcoming of metaphysics, and Ayer’s reconfiguration into what he calls the elimination of metaphysics. Having discussed the above, I will very briefly outline the consequences that Ayer’s radicalisation of the Vienna Circle’s doctrines had on the subsequent Anglophone reception of Logical Empiricism. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct Charles L. Stevenson’s metaethical view. Since his metaethical view is a form of emotivism, I will start by explaining what the core claims of emotivism are. I will then explore and comment on the specific claims of Stevenson’s proposal. Last, I will offer an overview of the objections that have traditionally been raised against emotivism.

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 this article, I seek to shed new light on a lesser-known stage of the development of Hans Reichenbach’s thought, namely his research, output and teaching activities at Istanbul University. I argue that the experience of Turkish exile was decisive in the elaboration of Reichenbach’s probability theory of meaning and knowledge. His work Experience and Prediction, produced while in Istanbul, should therefore be put in its Turkish context of elaboration and reception. To this end, I will take into consideration not (...) only Reichenbach’s efforts to popularize and extend the Berlin Group’s program of scientific philosophy in Turkey and throughout Europe in the 1930s, but also the forgotten work of Reichenbach’s students—most of them women—at Istanbul University. (shrink)

This paper describes the scientific practices of the anatomists from the Société Anatomique de Paris (1803–1873) who were collecting anatomical and pathological specimens in Nineteenth-Century Paris and which led to the building of the anatomy and pathology Musée Dupuytren (1835–2016). The framework introduced by Robert Kohler to describe collecting sciences (2007) is useful as a tool to identify the set of diverse practices within pathological anatomy in nineteenth-century Paris. However, I will argue that anatomy and pathology collecting had specific features (...) compared to most collecting sciences. Two main collecting practices could be distinguished: first, “finding” anatomical specimens and second, keeping these specimens. The first kind of practices were at least rhetorically and explicitly motivated by Auguste Comte’s positive philosophy. But “finding” an anatomy or pathology specimen could not be completely compared to finding an object or making a simple observation, as dissecting as well as some experimental practices were also involved. Heterogeneous practices thus coexisted within collecting in anatomy and pathology. Epistemological as well as pragmatic tensions arose. On top of Kohler’s framework, I introduce Sabina Leonelli’s concept of “data journey” to offer a narrative of the diversity of collecting practices involved in the Société Anatomique de Paris and the Musée Dupuytren. I use the concept to analyse how this diversity of practices impacted knowledge production. (shrink)

In this paper, I look at Susan Stebbing’s articles and reviews that critically engage logical positivism. These appeared before the publication of A.J. Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic and helped shape the early British reception of logical positivism. I highlight Stebbing’s adoption of G.E. Moore’s tripartite distinction between knowing a proposition, understanding it, and giving an analysis of it and, in light of this distinction, her focus on whether the principle of verifiability can ground a plausible account of communication. Stebbing (...) thinks not, and I reconstruct her reasons, as well as her own account of communication. In doing this, I relate her criticisms to her rejection of methodological solipsism and her dissatisfaction with the logical positivist treatment of statements about other minds and the past. I also argue that Stebbing’s work provides a bridge to later criticisms of logical positivism from ordinary language philosophers. Foregrounding Stebbing’s engagement with logical positivism, especially her focus on communication, paints a fuller picture of how the logical positivists came to be part of analytic philosophy despite having different concerns than many of the British philosophers engaging their work. (shrink)

Contemporary discussions about operational definition often hark back to Stanley Smith Stevens’ classic papers on psychological operationism (1935ab). Still, he was far from the only psychologist to call for conceptual hygiene. Some of Stevens’ direct colleagues at Harvard---most notably B. F. Skinner and E. G. Boring---were also actively applying Bridgman’s conceptual strictures to the study of mind and behavior. In this paper, I shed new light on the history of operationism by reconstructing the Harvard debates about operational definition in the (...) years before Stevens published his seminal articles. Building on a large set of archival evidence from the Harvard University Archives, I argue that we can get a more complete understanding of Stevens’ contributions if we better grasp the operationisms of his former teachers and direct colleagues at Harvard’s Department of Philosophy and Psychology. (shrink)

The ArgumentWhen we actually perform an experiment, we do many different things simultaneously – some belonging to the realm of theory, some to the realms of methodology and technique; however, a great deal of what happens is expressible in terms of socially determined images of knowledge or in terms of concepts of reflectivity – second-order concepts – namely thoughts about thoughts.The emergence of experiment as a second-order concept in late antiquity exemplifies the historical development of second-order concepts; it is shown (...) to be rooted in the Sophists' cunning reason and is followed up in the work of Ptolemy, Copernicus and Galileo.Then, by way of epistemological explication, the three levels of representation of an experiment are shown to be analogous to Baxandall's three levels of representation of a picture.Finally it is shown that such an interpretation only makes sense in terms of two-tier thinking: realism, inside a conceptual framework which is chosen or arrived at, relativistically. (shrink)

Between World War I and World War II, the students of Columbia University's John Dewey and Frederick J. E. Woodbridge built up a school of philosophical naturalism sharply critical of claims to value-neutrality. In the 1930s and 1940s, the second-generation Columbia naturalists and their students who later joined the department reacted with dismay to the arrival on American shores of logical empiricism and other analytic modes of philosophy. These figures undermined their colleague Ernest Nagel's attempt to build an alliance with (...) the logical empiricists, accusing them of ignoring the scholar's primary role as a public critic. After the war, the prestige of analytic approaches and a tendency to label philosophies either???analytic??? or???Continental??? eclipsed the Columbia philosophers??? normatively inflected naturalism. Yet in their efforts to resist logical empiricism, the Columbia naturalists helped to construct a sturdy, canonical portrait of???American philosophy??? that proponents still hold up as a third way between analytic and Continental approaches. (shrink)

Hans Reichenbach’s position in the debate over scientific realism is remarkable. On the one hand, he endorsed the programmatic premises of logical empiricism; on the other, he explicitly employed a realist approach to conceptions such as reference, causality, and inference to the best explanation. How could that work out? It will be shown in the present paper that in Reichenbach’s view scientific realism is not, as frequently assumed, opposed to logical empiricism but rather to logical positivism. A distinction without a (...) difference? Not at all, at least for Reichenbach. As is well known, his particular—probabilistic—variant of logical empiricism was intended to circumvent what he considered the shortcomings of the Vienna Circle’s verificationist approach to the language of science. In Experience and Prediction, Reichenbach became most explicit in this regard. However, I shall argue that his position remained notoriously unstable in the end. It oscillated between a full-fledged scientific realist reading and an eminently pragmatist reading. Nevertheless, Reichenbach’s contribution proved instrumental in preparing subsequent efforts at reconciling logical empiricism and scientific realism. (shrink)

The verifiability principle was the characteristic claim of a group of thinkers who called themselves the Vienna Circle and who formed the philosophical movement now known as logical positivism. The verifiability principle is an empiricist criterion of meaning which declares that only statements that are verifiable by —i.e., logically deducible from— observational statements are cognitively meaningful. -/- This essay is a short introduction to the philosophical movement of logical positivism and its formulation of the verifiability principle. Its primary aim is (...) to provide students of philosophy with an accessible first overview of this philosophical movement. -/- After pointing out some aspects of the philosophical background of logical positivism (section 1), I will comment on the reasoning that lead these authors to formulate the verifiability principle (section 2), and I will analyse the debate about how to understand observational language and how observational statements (the so-called ‘protocol statements’) are verified (section 3). I will also comment on the two main consequences of accepting the verifiability principle: the conception of philosophy as the task of logical analysis and the project of unified science (section 4), and I will explain the different views on ethical language defended by logical positivists (section 5). I will end this essay by identifying the main problems of the verifiability principle and I will explain the core ideas of Carnap’s confirmability criterion, which attempts to resolve these problems (section 6 and 7). (shrink)

As the ideological constructor of the destruction of colonised peoples and knowledge, Western philosophy must bear its burden for complicity. Decoloniality is amid the discourses of critique contra modernity and its denigration of the colonised. In the South African academy, for instance, much support has been validly rendered to decoloniality, consequently those employing “Western” frameworks should be challenged to constant re-evaluation. Here, the virtues and vices of decoloniality will not be considered. Rather a discernment will be undertaken of the “epistemic (...) worth” of conducting – specifically mediaeval and Western – philosophical research amid calls for the decentring of Western epistemological dominance, within the tradition of Saint Thomas Aquinas in the decolonial milieu. The argument is proffered – from multifold perspectives – that Aquinas, as both pre-modern and pre-colonial, does have relevance to the decolonial academic climate. The case is defended that Arabic philosophers importantly influenced Aquinas’ work, thus, demonstrating his openness to non-Western thought. Furthermore, from an epistemological perspective, it is contended that Aquinas’ placing of the subject at the focal point of adequations to truth by credencing the situatedness of the perceiver, deconstructs modern objectivity, which in itself has caused considerable damage to non-Western epistemologies. Aquinas’ epistemic relevance in this context, it is argued, may contribute to a median between demonstrable science and the multi-layered context of the epistemic subject. (shrink)

Carnap’s work was instrumental to the liberalization of empiricism in the 1930s that transformed the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle to what came to be known as logical empiricism. A central feature of this liberalization was the deployment of the Principle of Tolerance, originally introduced in logic, but now invoked in an epistemological context in “Testability and Meaning”. Immediately afterwards, starting with Foundations of Logic and Mathematics, Carnap embraced semantics and turned to interpretation to guide the choice of a (...) theoretical language for science. The first thesis of this paper is that recourse to an intended interpretation led to a partial retrenchment of the conventionalism implied by the Principle of Tolerance. It required that the choice of a language be based on abstraction from a context; this procedure later became a component of the process of explication that was distinctive to Carnap’s mature views. The interpretive origin of formal systems also ensured their likely syntactic consistency, an issue on which Carnap was strongly criticized by figures such as Beth and Gödel. The second thesis of this paper is that this reliance on an intended interpretation enabled constructed formal systems to be relevant to the development of empirical science. (shrink)