Available for the first time in 20 years, here is the Rudolf Carnap's famous principle of tolerance by which everyone is free to mix and match the rules of ...

Das Ziel: Konstitutionssystem der Begriffe Das Ziel der vorliegenden Untersuchungen ist die Aufstellung eines erkenntnismäßig-logischen Systems der ...

Perhaps the most important work of philosophy written in the twentieth century, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus first appeared in 1921 and was the only philosophical work that Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) published during his lifetime. Written in short, carefully numbered paragraphs of extreme compression and brilliance, it immediately convinced many of its readers and captivated the imagination of all. Its chief influence, at first, was on the Logical Positivists of the 1920s and 30s, but many other philosophers were stimulated by its philosophy (...) of language, finding attractive, if ultimately unsatisfactory, its view that propositions were pictures of reality. Perhaps most of all, Wittgenstein himself, after his return to philosophy in the late 1920s, was fascinated by its vision of an inexpressible, crystalline world of logical relationships. The posthumous publication of other writings has, therefore, only served to reawaken interest in the Tractatus and to illuminate its more neglected aspects. David Pears and Brian McGuinness revised their translation in the light of Wittgenstein's own suggestions and comments in his correspondence with C.K. Ogden about the first translation. In addition, this edition contains the introduction by Bertrand Russell which appeared in the original English translation. (shrink)

Not only can the influence of Gottlob Frege be found in contemporary work in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, and the philosophy of language, but his projects—and the very terminology he employed in pursuing those projects—are still current in contemporary philosophy. This is undoubtedly why it seems so reasonable to assume that we can read Frege' s writings as if he were one of us, speaking to our philosophical concerns in our language. In Joan Weiner's view, however, Frege's words can (...) be accurately interpreted only if we set that assumption aside. Weiner here offers a challenging new approach to the philosophy of this central figure in analytic philosophy. Weiner finds in Frege's corpus, from Begriffsschrift on, a unified project of remarkable ambition to which each of the writings in that corpus makes a distinct contribution—a project whose motivation she brings to life through a careful reading of his Foundations of Arithmetic. The Frege that Weiner brings into clear view is very different from the familiar figure. Far from having originated one of the standard positions on the nature of reference, Frege turns out not to have had positive doctrines on anything like what contemporary philosophers mean by "reference." Far from having served as a standard-bearer for those who take the realists' side of contemporary disputes with anti-realists, Frege turns out to have had no stake in either side of the controversy. Through Weiner's lens, Frege emerges as a thinker who has principled reasons for challenging the very assumptions and motivations that animate philosophers to dispute these doctrines. This lucidly written and accessible book will generate controversy among all readers with an interest in epistemology, philosophy of language, history of philosophy, and the philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

'My endeavour in these pages is to explain the main features of the method of philosophizing which we, the Vienna Circle, use, and by using try to develop further. It is the method of the logical analysis of science, or more precisely, of the syntactical analysis of scientific language.... The purpose of the book -- as of the lectures -- is to give a first impression of our method and of the direction of our questions and investigations to those who (...) are not yet acquainted with them.' -- From the Preface. (shrink)

Philosophers often divide Carnap's work into syntactic, semantic, and later periods, but this disguises the importance of his early syntactical writing. In Logical Syntax Carnap is a thoroughgoing conventionalist and pragmatist. Once we see that, it is easier to see as well that these views were retained throughout the rest of his life, that the breaks between periods are not as important as the continuities, and that our understanding of such Carnapian notions as analyticity and probability needs reevaluation.

The purpose of this paper is to undermine Paul Feyerabend's claim, which is crucial to the success of his analysis of Positivism, that the Pragmatic Theory of Observation was first developed by Rudolf Carnap in his early discussions of protocol sentences. Rather, it will be argued that Carnap's conception of protocols was founded on considerations drawn from his conception of language so that Carnap's reasons for endorsing certain aspects of the Pragmatic Theory are nothing like Feyerabend's. Moreover, Carnap never approved (...) the final conclusion of the Pragmatic Theory, that observational reports are distinguished by their causes. These historical conclusions provide the basis for arguing that, despite Feyerabend's critique, Carnap's later views (in "The Methodological Character of Theoretical Concepts") clearly countenance theoretical influences on observational statements. (shrink)