Notwithstanding the recent prominence of the term “problem” in the humanities, few scholars have analysed its history. This essay tries to partially fill that lack, principally covering the period from late modernity through to the 1960s, in order to understand the role that the term plays in “Continental” philosophy, with special emphasis on the writings of Gilles Deleuze. This analysis focuses on the strategies employed by different agents to define “philosophical” problems, or “philosophical” ways of posing problems. The term, originally (...) used in antiquity by knowledge-producers located in an autonomous position, implied an idea of cognition oscillating between production and reproduction. Once the term escaped the context of geometry, it was involved in symbolic struggles that radicalized during modernity. The Kantians placed “philosophy” in a supposedly neutral position of science treating “the problem of all the problems” and invented a new genre, the “history of philosophy,” focusing on the analysis of “philosophical problems.” This approach had great institutional success in the German and French universities and clashed, during the twentieth century, with another usage of philosophy as a practice of “dissolution of problems,” developed in the United Kingdom and the Austro-Habsburg Empire. (shrink)

Abstract: Brentano’s conception of scientific philosophy had a strong influence on his students and on the intellectual atmosphere of Vienna in the late nineteenth century. The aim of this article is to expose Brentano’s conception and to contrast his views with that of two traditions he is said to have considerably influenced: phenomenology and analytic philosophy. I will shed light on the question of how and to what extent Brentano’s conception of philosophy as a rigorous science has had an impact (...) on these two traditions. The discussion will show that both took their liberties in the interpretation of the thesis, a move that allowed them to liberate themselves from Brentano’s inheritance and to fully develop their own philosophical positions. (shrink)

In 1920, Eugen Steinach and Paul Kammerer reported experiments showing that exposure to high temperatures altered the structure of the gonad and produced hyper-sexuality in "heat rats," presumably as a result of the increased production of sex hormones. Using Steinach's evidence that the gonad is a double gland with distinct sexual and generative functions, they used their findings to explain "racial" differences in the sexuality of indigenous tropical peoples and Europeans. The authors also reported that heat induced anatomical changes in (...) the interstitial cells of the gonad were inherited by the heat rats' descendants. Kammerer used this finding to link endocrinology to his long-standing interest in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. The heat rats supported his hypothesis that the interstitial cells of the double gland were the mechanism of somatic induction in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. The Steinach-Kammerer collaboration, Kammerer's use of Steinach's "puberty gland" to explain somatic induction, and his endocrine analysis of symbiosis reveal Paul Kammerer's late career attempt to integrate endocrinology and genetics with the political ideals of Austrian socialism. With them he developed a bioethics that challenged the growing reliance on race in eugenics and instead promoted cooperation over competition in evolution. I relate his attempt to the controversies surrounding the interstitial cells, to the status of extra-nuclear theories of heredity, and to Kammerer's commitment to Austromarxist social reforms during the interwar period. (shrink)

In this article, I aim to show the substantial ways in which Edgar Zilsel can be considered to have been a politically engaged philosopher of science and provide a reconstruction of his philosophical work in the time before his forced emigration to the United States. In line with Monika Wulz and with my own reconstruction of the Vienna Circle’s political engagement, I reject Oliver Schlaudt’s 2018 thesis according to which Zilsel cannot be considered a politically engaged philosopher of science. My (...) reconstruction of Zilsel’s political engagement as a philosopher of science is based on his German-language writings (1916–32). I reconstruct Zilsel’s early philosophy of science insofar as it is relevant to his political commitment and show how Zilsel drew on his epistemological concept of “rationalization” to engage in public debate. I deal with Zilsel’s Marxism and his work as a teacher and scholar in the context of “Red Vienna.” In light of this evidence, I conclude that any conception of “politically engaged philosopher of science” that implies Zilsel was not entails an unreasonable conclusion and must, therefore, be reconsidered. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss Otto Neurath’s philosophy in the context of Vienna Circle modernism. Following recent scholarship, the discussion considers as a starting point Neurath’s participation at the fourth International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM IV). However, the image of Neurath’s modernism that results from this perspective is incomplete because it tends to overlook the importance of scientific utopianism in Neurath’s thought. Scientific utopianism is a methodology proposed by Neurath for the social sciences in technological contexts, in which scientists (...) elaborate and develop plans (utopias) for the transformation of society, thus contributing to an informed societal debate. Decisions are nevertheless kept outside the domain of scientific activity. I claim that recognizing the centrality of scientific utopianism in Neurath’s philosophy is fundamental to understand Neurath’s modernism. This interpretation highlights the affinities of Neurath’s philosophy of the social sciences with the modern utopianism of H. G. Wells. Both authors consider that there can be no ultimate solution to social problems but that a plural and constant debate of proposals is fundamental for the improvement of society. Therefore, Neurath’s modernism connects his philosophy of science to the literary utopian tradition. (shrink)

This paper investigates the strange case of an argument that was directed against a positivist verification principle. We find an early occurrence of the argument in a talk by the phenomenologist Roman Ingarden at the 1934 International Congress of Philosophy in Prague, where Carnap and Neurath were present and contributed short rejoinders. We discuss the underlying presuppositons of the argument, and we evaluate whether the attempts by Carnap (especially) actually succeed in answering this argument. We think they don’t, and offer (...) instead a few sociological thoughts about why the argument seems to have disappeared from the profession’s evaluaton of the positivist criterion of verifiability. (shrink)

An underappreciated fact in the history of analytic philosophy is that American pragmatism had an early and strong influence on the Vienna Circle. The path of that influence goes from Charles Peirce to Frank Ramsey to Ludwig Wittgenstein to Moritz Schlick. That path is traced in this paper, and along the way some standard understandings of Ramsey and Wittgenstein, especially, are radically altered.

In this paper I investigate how intellectual problems concerning an epistemology of history and a historical view of knowledge played a role in the network of logical empiricist philosophers between 1930 and 1945. Specifically, I focus on the practical efforts of Hans Reichenbach and Otto Neurath to incorporate these intellectual stakes concerning history. I argue that Reichenbach was mainly concerned with creating more institutional space for scientific philosophy. Consequently, he was interested in determining his relation to historically oriented philosophy on (...) the practical level only. Otto Neurath, I claim, was interested in promoting an intellectual incorporation of an epistemology of history and a historical view of knowledge into the Unity of Science movement. His attempts, however, largely failed. I conclude that the intellectual stakes concerning history did have an effect within the network of logical empiricist philosophers, but that, by 1945 these stakes were entirely dissolved. The displacement of the network to the United States removed Reichenbach’s practical problems, while Neurath was unable to persuade enough actors before his death. (shrink)