In the Tractatus Wittgenstein often uses graphic metaphors: a ladder, which is to be thrown away after it has been climbed; pictures with feelers; networks with fine square meshes. Although they are illuminating, it is not always clear in exactly what sense Wittgenstein employs them. In this paper, we will try to eliminate this fuzziness with respect to the concept of scaffolding (Gerüst).

Russell’s initial project in philosophy (1898) was to make mathematics rigorous reducing it to logic. Before August 1900, however, Russell’s logic was nothing but mereology. First, his acquaintance with Peano’s ideas in August 1900 led him to discard the part-whole logic and accept a kind of intensional predicate logic instead. Among other things, the predicate logic helped Russell embrace a technique of treating the paradox of infinite numbers with the help of a singular concept, which he called ‘denoting phrase’. Unfortunately, (...) a new paradox emerged soon: that of classes. The main contention of this paper is that Russell’s new conception only transferred the paradox of infinity from the realm of infinite numbers to that of class-inclusion. Russell’s long-elaborated solution to his paradox developed between 1905 and 1908 was nothing but to set aside of some of the ideas he adopted with his turn of August 1900: (i) With the Theory of Descriptions, he reintroduced the complexes we are acquainted with in logic. In this way, he partly restored the pre-August 1900 mereology of complexes and simples. (ii) The elimination of classes, with the help of the ‘substitutional theory’, and of propositions, by means of the Multiple Relation Theory of Judgment, completed this process. (shrink)

Two concepts of utmost importance for the analytic philosophy of the twentieth century, “sense-data” and “knowledge by acquaintance”, were introduced by Bertrand Russell under the influence of two idealist philosophers: F. H. Bradley and Alexius Meinong. This paper traces the exact history of their introduction. We shall see that between 1896 and 1898, Russell had a fully-elaborated theory of “sense-data”, which he abandoned after his analytic turn of the summer of 1898. Furthermore, following a subsequent turn of August 1900—-after he (...) became acquainted with the works of Peano and later of Frege—-Russell gradually developed another theory of sense-data. With the collaboration of G. E. Moore, Russell reintroduced the term “sense-data” in 1911. Concomitantly with this move, Russell introduced the epistemological term “knowledge by acquaintance”, which came to designate the grasping of sense-data and universals. (shrink)

The present paper has two objectives. First, it explicates the story, initially portrayed by Eckart Förster (2012), that allegedly philosophy started with publishing of Kant’s CPR and ended a quarter century later when Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind appeared. We address the questions in what sense this happened and how is this development to be interpreted? Secondly, we demonstrate that similar radical transition from new, “true” beginning of philosophy to its apparent finishing took place in two other, high profile occasions in (...) the history of Western philosophy, in two key points of its development: in the years 390–365 BC, between the early and the late Plato, and between 1898 and 1922, between Russell and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. These three short-lived, spectacular transitions from philosophy’s alleged start to its alleged ultimate accomplishment give us good reason to speak about a specific 25-years principle in philosophy. In a peculiar way, this principle reveals philosophy’s true nature. (shrink)

Historians of philosophy commonly regard as antipodal Bertrand Russell and Edmund Husserl, the founding fathers of analytic philosophy and phenomenology. This paper, however, establishes that during a formative phase in both of their careers Russell and Husserl shared a range of seminal ideas. In particular, the essay adduces clear cases of family resemblance between Husserl’s and Russell’s philosophy during their middle period, which spanned the years 1905 through 1918. The paper thus challenges the received view of Husserl’s relation to early (...) analytic philosophy and this by pursuing two strategies of exposition. One involves comparing Husserl with Russell, and not, as has been the usual practice, with Frege. The other, which follows the first, foregrounds Husserl’s thinking vis-à-vis Russell’s from 1905 onward, a move that constitutes a break with what has become the standard approach of emphasising the relatedness of Husserl of the Logical Investigations (1900/1) to analytic philosophy. Moreover, this approach discloses two chief grounds of relatedness between the middle Husserl and the middle Russell. One is their shared interest in exploring philosophical “fundamentals”. The second consists of common elements shared by their epistemologies and philosophies of mind. (shrink)

Hermanns Lotze (1817–1881) hat nachweislich einige der bedeutendsten Philosophen des fin de siècle beeinflusst: (i) die britischen „Neo-Hegelianer“; (ii) Husserls Phänomenologie; (iii) Diltheys Philosophie des Lebens; (iv) die Neukantianer; (v) die frühere analytische Philosophie. Das angegebene Ziel seines dreibändigen Mikrokosmos (1856–1864) war „die Reflexion über den Sinn unseres menschlichen Daseins“. Die Aktualität dieser Aufgabe war eine Folge der wissenschaftlichen und industriellen Revolution Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Sie veränderte die Art, wie sich die Menschen das Universum vorstellten. Lotze sah Gefahr in (...) den zahlreichen Versuchen seitens einiger philosophisch interessierter Wissenschaftler in Deutschland, zu beweisen, dass das menschliche Sein nur mechanisch und materialistisch zu verstehen ist. Er machte es sich zur Aufgabe, den Menschen das Gefühl von Heimat in dieser stark veränderten Welt zurückzugeben. Dies erklärt auch, wieso Lotze seine Untersuchung in „völlig populärer Form“ darstellte. Lotzes Mikrokosmos war jedoch nicht nur ein Werk der populären Philosophie. Sie fußt auf fundierten theoretischen Überlegungen. Man kann Lotzes Werk als einen gewagten Versuch betrachten, die sich abzeichnende Spaltung zwischen akademischer und populärer Philosophie zu überwinden. (shrink)

The received view has it that analytic philosophy emerged as a rebellion against the German Idealists (above all Hegel) and their British epigones (the British neo-Hegelians). This at least was Russell’s story: the German Idealism failed to achieve solid results in philosophy. Of course, Frege too sought after solid results. He, however, had a different story to tell. Frege never spoke against Hegel, or Fichte. Similarly to the German Idealists, his sworn enemy was the empiricism (in his case, John Stuart (...) Mill). Genealogically, this stance is not difficult to explain. Frege grew up as a philosopher in the context of the German Idealists. He was a member of Karl Snell’s “Sunday Circle” of university teachers in Jena. The group was influenced with Schelling and the German romanticists. The first Anglophone scholar to point out what Frege's thought owes to nineteenth-century Germany philosophy, Hans Sluga, argued that Frege followed the philosophical-logical tradition originating with Leibniz and Kant which Trendelenburg and Lotze developed significantly. About the same time, a philosophical historian writing in German, Gottfried Gabriel, did much to bring this tradition to light, casting Frege as neo-Kantian. Advancing beyond Sluga and Gabriel, the present paper reveals that through the mediation of Trendelenburg and especially of Lotze many elements of German idealism found their way into Frege's logic and philosophy. (shrink)

The conception of truth-making, albeit in a rudimentary form, could already be discerned in the writings of G. E. Moore and E. Husserl in the early 1900s. A few years later it was more extensively exploited by William James. It was Wittgenstein, however, who gave the concept a precise meaning. In 1913/1914 Wittgenstein advanced a theory of possible worlds, only one of which was real. Every proposition suggests a part of a possible world which does or does not correspond to (...) parts of the real world. In the first case the proposition is true, in the second case false. Moreover, the part of the real world makes the sentence true. This part is a truth-maker, and the sentence is a truth-bearer. Surprisingly enough, Wittgenstein’s concept of truth-making had its family resemblance with William James’s conception of truth. In 1915 Wittgenstein stopped using the concept of truth-making—it was also not men-tioned in the Tractatus. Unfortunately, Russell did not notice this and in 1918 he adopted the concept of truth-making. In the 1930s, it was used by some second generation analytic philosophers (Schlick, Stebbing, and Wisdom). However, it became rather popular among analytic philosophers only in the 1980s. (shrink)

This paper outlines the intellectual biography of Walter Dubislav. Besides being a leading member of the Berlin Group headed by Hans Reichenbach, Dubislav played a defining role as well in the Society for Empirical/Scientific Philosophy in Berlin. A student of David Hilbert, Dubislav applied the method of axiomatic to produce original work in logic and formalist philosophy of mathematics. He also introduced the elements of a formalist philosophy of science and addressed more general problems concerning the substantiation of human knowledge. (...) What set Dubislav apart from the other logical empiricists was his expertise in the history of logic and exact philosophy which enabled him to elucidate and advance the thinking in both disciplines. In the realm of logic proper, Dubislav is best known for his pioneering work in theory of definitions. What is more, he did original work on the so called ‘quasi truth-tables’ which aided Reichenbach in developing his logic of probability. Dubislav also elaborated an influe.. (shrink)

Shortly before G. E. Moore wrote down the formative for the early analytic philosophy lectures on Some Main Problems of Philosophy (1910–1911), he had become acquainted with two books which influenced his thought: (1) a book by Husserl's pupil August Messer and (2) a book by the Greifswald objectivist Dimitri Michaltschew. Central to Michaltschew's book was the concept of the given. In Part I, I argue that Moore elaborated his concept of sense-data in the wake of the Greifswald concept. Carnap (...) did the same when he wrote his Aufbau, the only difference being that he spoke not of sense-data but of Erlebnisse. This means, I argue, that both Moore's sense-data and Carnap'sErlebnisse have little to do with either British empiricists or the neo-Kantians. In Part II, I try to ascertain what made early analytic philosophy different from all those philosophical groups and movements that either exercised influence on it, or were closely related to it: phenomenologists, Greifswald objectivists, Brentanists. For this purpose, I identify the sine qua non practices of the early analytic philosophers: exactness; acceptance of the propositional turn; descriptivism; objectivism. If one of these practices was not explored by a given philosophical school or group, in all probability, it was not truly analytic. (shrink)

Walter Dubislav (1895–1937) was a leading member of the Berlin Group for scientific philosophy. This “sister group” of the more famous Vienna Circle emerged around Hans Reichenbach’s seminars at the University of Berlin in 1927 and 1928. Dubislav was to collaborate with Reichenbach, an association that eventuated in their conjointly conducting university colloquia. Dubislav produced original work in philosophy of mathematics, logic, and science, consequently following David Hilbert’s axiomatic method. This brought him to defend formalism in these disciplines as well (...) as to explore the problems of substantiating (Begründung) human knowledge. Dubislav also developed elements of general philosophy of science. Sadly, the political changes in Germany in 1933 proved ruinous to Dubislav. He published scarcely anything after Hitler came to power and in 1937 committed suicide under tragic circumstances. The intent here is to pass in review Dubislav’s philosophy of logic, mathematics, and science and so to shed light on some seminal yet hitherto largely neglected currents in the history of philosophy of science. (shrink)

Movement sonification can improve motor control in both healthy subjects (e.g., learning or refining a sport skill) and those with sensorimotor deficits (e.g., stroke patients and deafferented individuals). It is not known whether improved motor control and learning from movement sonification are driven by feedback-based real-time (“online”) trajectory adjustments, adjustments to internal models over multiple trials, or both. We searched for evidence of online trajectory adjustments (muscle twitches) in response to movement sonification feedback by comparing the kinematics and error of (...) reaches made with online (i.e., real-time) and terminal sonification feedback. We found that reaches made with online feedback were significantly more jerky than reaches made with terminal feedback, indicating increased muscle twitching (i.e., online trajectory adjustment). Using a between-subject design, we found that online feedback was associated with improved motor learning of a reach path and target over terminal feedback; however, using a within-subjects design, we found that switching participants who had learned with online sonification feedback to terminal feedback was associated with a decrease in error. Thus, our results suggest that, with our task and sonification, movement sonification leads to online trajectory adjustments which improve internal models over multiple trials, but which themselves are not helpful online corrections. (shrink)

What is it that makes someone wise, or one person wiser than another? I argue that wisdom consists in knowledge of how to live well, and that this knowledge of how to live well is constituted by various further kinds of knowledge. One concern for this view is that knowledge is not needed for wisdom but rather some state short of knowledge, such as having rational or justified beliefs about various topics. Another concern is that the emphasis on knowing how (...) to live well fails to do justice to the ancient tradition of ‘theoretical wisdom’. I address both of these concerns in filling out the account. (shrink)

In the mid-seventeenth century a movement of self-styled experimental philosophers emerged in Britain. Originating in the discipline of natural philosophy amongst Fellows of the fledgling Royal Society of London, it soon spread to medicine and by the eighteenth century had impacted moral and political philosophy and even aesthetics. Early modern experimental philosophers gave epistemic priority to observation and experiment over theorising and speculation. They decried the use of hypotheses and system-building without recourse to experiment and, in some quarters, developed a (...) philosophy of experiment. The movement spread to the Netherlands and France in the early eighteenth century and later impacted Germany. Its important role in early modern philosophy was subsequently eclipsed by the widespread adoption of the Kantian historiography of modern philosophy, which emphasised the distinction between rationalism and empiricism and had no place for the historical phenomenon of early modern experimental philosophy. The re-emergence of interest in early modern experimental philosophy roughly coincided with the development of contemporary x-phi and there are some important similarities between the two. (shrink)

Historians of philosophy commonly regard as antipodal Bertrand Russell and Edmund Husserl, the founding fathers of analytic philosophy and phenomenology. This paper, however, establishes that during a formative phase in both of their careers Russell and Husserl shared a range of seminal ideas. In particular, the essay adduces clear cases of family resemblance between Husserl’s and Russell’s philosophy during their middle period, which spanned the years 1905 through 1918. The paper thus challenges the received view of Husserl’s relation to early (...) analytic philosophy and this by pursuing two strategies of exposition. One involves comparing Husserl with Russell, and not, as has been the usual practice, with Frege. The other, which follows the first, foregrounds Husserl’s thinking vis-à-vis Russell’s from 1905 onward, a move that constitutes a break with what has become the standard approach of emphasising the relatedness of Husserl of the Logical Investigations (1900/1) to analytic philosophy. Moreover, this approach discloses two chief grounds of relatedness between the middle Husserl and the middle Russell. One is their shared interest in exploring philosophical “fundamentals”. The second consists of common elements shared by their epistemologies and philosophies of mind. (shrink)

The Berlin Group was an equal partner with the Vienna Circle as a school of scientific philosophy, albeit one that pursued an itinerary of its own. But while the latter presented its defining projects in readily discernible terms and became immediately popular, the Berlin Group, whose project was at least as sig-nificant as that of its Austrian counterpart, remained largely unrecognized. The task of this chapter is to distinguish the Berliners’ work from that of the Vienna Circle and to bring (...) to light its impact in the history of scientific philosophy. (shrink)

The received view has it that Hans Reichenbach and his friends of the Berlin Group worked close together with the more prominent Vienna Circle. In the wake of this view, Reichenbach was often treated as a logical positivist – despite the fact that he decisively opposed it. In this chapter we follow another thread. We shall show the “third man”– besides Reichenbach and Walter Dubislav – of the Berlin Group, Kurt Grelling, as a man who could grasp the academic trends (...) of the time faster than anybody else, who was better informed about logic and philosophy of nature than his two prominent colleagues and thus, could better delineate, although tentatively, central threads of research of the Berlin Group. Grelling did this on several occasions, but most ostensibly in the last years of his life when he was focused on problems of formal ontology. On the basis of this analysis, we shall see that in the early 1920s, Reichenbach too was led by a project in ontology of science that he elaborated together with the psychologist Kurt Lewin. Moreover, Reichenbach’s later philosophy of nature was also shaped by this project. We present this direction of philosophy of science as a “road less travelled” which, however, if revived, can point to a new direction that will more closely connect philosophy and science. (shrink)

When Wittgenstein started writing the Tractatus in June 1915, he was convinced that he was producing a theory. Accordingly, he chose a theoretical style of expressing his thought. Wittgenstein abandoned this stance only at the end of his work of composing the book. He realized that what he is producing in not a theory but a manual for improving our language and thinking. Unfortunately, it was too late to change the architecture and the style of the book: Wittgenstein simply had (...) no time to do that. This drawback makes the Tractatus notoriously difficult to understand and is apparently the major factor that caused the so called “Tractarian Wars”. (shrink)

Husserl’s theory of manifolds was developed for the first time in a very short form in the Prolegomena to his Logical Investigations, §§ 69–70 (pp. 248–53), then repeatedly discussed in Ideas I, §§ 71–2 (pp. 148–53), in Formal and Transcendental Logic, §§ 51–4 (pp. 142–54), and finally in the Crisis, § 9 (pp. 20–60). Husserl never lost sight of it: it was his idée fixe. He discussed this theme over forty years, expressing the same, in principle, ideas on it in (...) different terms and versions. His discussions of it, however, were always cut short and inconclusive, so that he never developed his theory of manifolds in detail. Main claim in this essay is that Husserl’s theory of manifolds is twofold. It is (1) a theory of theories, advanced in the good German tradition of Wissenschaftslehre, launched first by Bernard Bolzano. The latter, in turn, is an offspring of the ancient tradition of mathesis universalis, explored in the modernity by Descartes and Leibniz. Further, (2) the theory of manifolds is also a formal theory of everything. Its objective is to provide a systematic account of how the things in the world (its parts) hang together in wholes of quite different kind. It is to be noted that Husserl explicitly speaks about (1) and only implicitly about (2). In this paper we shall also show that the theory of everything is intrinsically connected with the theory of theories. (shrink)

Lotze’s "Microcosm" was published in three volumes, in 1856, 1858 and 1864, respectively. It was soon one of the most widely read philosophy books of the time. It was translated into French and Russian immediately, into English in 1885/87, and into Italian in 1911/16. The book saw six editions in Germany alone by 1923.

Dieser Versuch einer philosophischen Autobiographie ist hauptsächlich der Geschichte meiner Ideen und Anregungen im Bereich der Philosophie gewidmet. In dieser Zusammenfassung werden vor allem meine philosophischen Begegnungen und Veröffentlichungen besprochen. Es ist weniger die Geschichte meines privaten Lebens, da bei mir privates und berufliches Leben zum großen Teil zusammenfallen.

In this paper we shall open a perspective from which the relatedness between the early analytic philosophy and Husserl’s phenomenology is so close that we can call the two programs with one name: “rigorous philosophy”, or “theory of forms”. Moreover, we shall show that the close relatedness between the two most influential philosophical movements of the 20th century has its roots in their common history. At the end of the paper we shall try to answer the question why being rather (...) related at the beginning, their ways parted in the subsequent years. (shrink)

Gottlob Frege’s conception of works of art has received scant notice in the literature. This is a pity since, as this paper undertakes to reveal, his innovative philosophy of language motivated a theoretically and historically consequential, yet unaccountably marginalized Wittgenstinian line of inquiry in the domain of aesthetics. The element of Frege’s approach that most clearly inspired this development is the idea that only complete sentences articulate thoughts and that what sentences in works of drama and literary art express are (...) ‘mock thoughts’ (Schiengedanken). The early Wittgenstein closely followed Frege’s lead on this theme. One sees this, for example, in the Tractatus, where Wittgenstein announces that only sentential propositions model (‘picture’) states of affairs whereas works of art are objects we perceive sub specie aeternitatis (1961, 83). By the 1930s, however, Wittgenstein began to revise his view beyond his initial Frege-inspired standpoint. He came to insist that works of art can convey thoughts as well, but that thoughts do not model (picture) the world of facts and hence do not convey information about measurable objects and events. Rather, his contention was that aesthetically configured thoughts that artworks communicate impart information about our perspective on reality and reconfigure our view of life. To be more explicit, successful (gelungene) or ‘good’ works of art (ibid.), in Wittgenstein’s view, can supply aesthetically instructive ‘gestures’ that open to living experience promising new ways of being. It is in this respect, he held, that artists ‘have something to teach’ (1980, 36). (shrink)

The present paper considers using Social Networking Sites (SNS) as the primary means of communication . Current situations of communication are often associated with the active use of various SNS - convenient tool for information exchange, as new media, and one of the most widespread ways of self-presentation. The author comes to the conclusion that a SNS (like Facebook) gives no effective means to discern the real face - ego-, personal or actual social identity. However, modern Internet technologies provide us (...) with useful instruments, applied to the social network analysis and semiotic approach, to define the virtual social (or personal) identity that can (or cannot) be the same as the real one. (shrink)

The paper investigates the history of the introduction of what was later called “analytic philosophy” in October 1911–May 1912. Despite the fact that Russell and Wittgenstein were in full agreement in their antipathy towards the old-style philosophy, for example, that of Bergson, each had his own conception of the New Philosophy. For Russell, it meant “examined philosophy”, or philosophy advanced through “scientific restraint and balance” of our theoretical conjectures, and resulted in a series of logically correctly constructed theories. For Wittgenstein, (...) it resulted in syncopated, short logical-philosophical “discoveries”. In the years to come, the two conceptions of “rigorous philosophy” embraced by Russell and Wittgenstein often came in conflict. (shrink)

From 1901 till, at least, 1919, Russell persistently maintained that there are two kinds of logic, between which he sharply discriminated: mathematical logic and philosophical logic. In this paper, we discuss the concept of philosophical logic, as used by Russell. This was only a tentative program that Russell did not clarify in detail, so our task will be to make it explicit. We shall show that there are three (-and-a-half) kinds of Russellian philosophical logic: (i) “pure logic”; (ii) philosophical logic (...) investigating the logical forms of propositions; (iii) philosophical logic exploring the logical forms of facts: in epistemology; and in the external world. In particular, Russell’s program or philosophical logic of the facts of the external world remained less than sketchily outlined. We shall discuss it in some detail in the hope that it can start a new life. (shrink)

Susan Stebbing’s paper “Logical Positivism and Analysis” (March 1933) was unusually critical of Wittgenstein. It put up a sharp opposition between Cambridge analytic philosophy of Moore and Russell and the positivist philosophy of the Vienna Circle to which she included Wittgenstein from 1929–32. Above all, positivists were interested in analyzing language, analytic philosophers in analyzing facts. Moreover, whereas analytic philosophers were engaged in directional analysis which seeks to illuminate the multiplicity of the analyzed facts, positivists aimed at final analysis which (...) “proves” that there are simples. Stebbing’s paper urged Wittgenstein to recast his philosophy and 1933 abandon those components of it that linked him to the Vienna Circle. (shrink)

Despite of the fact that Reichenbach clearly acknowledged his indebtedness to Hilbert, the influence of this leading mathematician of the time on him is grossly neglected. The present paper demonstrates that the decisive years of the development of Reichenbach as a philosopher of science coincide with, and also partly followed the “philosophical” turn of Hilbert’s mathematics after 1917 that was fixed in the so called “Hilbert’s program”. The paper specifically addresses the fact that after 1917, Hilbert saw the axiomatic method (...) as an instrument for providing the foundations not only of mathematics but also of other sciences. In particular, Hilbert’s axiomatic program was closely connected with the theoretical physics and arguably helped Einstein to discover the general theory of relativity. In this context, one can see Reichenbach’s project to axiomatize Einstein’s theory of relativity as a continuation of this project. Under Russell’s influence, after 1914 Hilbert also developed an interest in mathematical logic. Reichenbach experienced similar transition from axiomatics to logic which went together with turn of his interest from Hilbert to Russell. Reichenbach’s rapprochement to Russell also supported the transition of his interests from epistemology to ontology. (shrink)

Unsere These lautet, dass die Geschichte des logischen Empirismus bisher nicht in ihrer ganzen Komplexität dargestellt wurde. Es herrscht das Bild vor, dass vor allem der Wiener Kreis die wissenschaftliche Philosophie seiner Zeit dominiert habe. In Wirklichkeit waren Hans Reichenbach und die Philosophen und Wissenschaftler in seiner Gruppe mehr als nur geistige Verwandte der Wiener logischen Empiristen. Die Berliner Gruppe war ein gleichberechtigter Partner bei der Verbreitung wissenschaftlicher Philosophie im deutschsprachigen Raum um 1930 und schlug dabei durchaus einen individuellen Weg (...) ein. Reichenbach hat daher auch ausdrücklich die Eigenständigkeit der Berliner Gruppe innerhalb des logischen Empirismus verteidigt (Hoffmann 1994, 26). Dabei kämpfte er nicht einfach für Gleichberechtigung mit dem Wiener Kreis. Reichenbach beanspruchte sogar die Priorität der Initiative. (shrink)

Adam Smith is respected as the father of contemporary economics for his work on systemizing classical economics as an independent field of study in The Wealth of Nations. But he was also a significant moral philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment, with its characteristic concern for integrating sentiments and rationality. This article considers Adam Smith as a key moral philosopher of commercial society whose critical reflection upon the particular ethical challenges posed by the new pressures and possibilities of commercial society remains (...) relevant today. The discussion has three parts. First I address the artificial separation between self-interest and morality often attributed to Smith, in which his work on economics is stripped of its ethical context. Second I outline Smith’s ethical approach to economics, focusing on his vigorous but qualified defence of commercial society for its contributions to prosperity, justice, and freedom. Third I outline Smith’s moral philosophy proper as combining a naturalistic account of moral psychology with a virtue ethics based on propriety in commercial society. (shrink)

Between April and November 1912, Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein were engaged in a joint philosophical program. Wittgenstein‘s meeting with Gottlob Frege in December 1912 led, however, to its dissolution – the joint program was abandoned. Section 2 of this paper outlines the key points of that program, identifying what Russell and Wittgenstein each contributed to it. The third section determines precisely those features of their collaborative work that Frege criticized. Finally, building upon the evidence developed in the preceding two (...) sections, section 4 recasts along previously undeveloped lines Wittgenstein‘s logical–philosophical discoveries in the two years following his encounter with Frege in 1912. The paper concludes, in section 5, with an overview of the dramatic consequences the Frege-Wittgenstein critique had for Russell‘s philosophical development. (shrink)

Carl Stumpf (1848–1937) is a key figure in the fin de siècle germanophone philosophy. Unfortunately, after the World War One, the interest towards Stumpf as a philosopher waned. One of the reasons was that already in the 1920s the attention of the mainstream philosophers shifted in direction of the rising rivalry between analytic and continental philosophy. The interest towards Carl Stumpf’s philosophy was revived only in the last twenty years or so. Great service in this provided the Neo-Brentanists. But while (...) the association of Carl Stumpf with Franz Brentano fostered Stumpf studies, it also gave rise of one-sided interpretations of Stumpf as a philosopher. In this way his importance and idiosyncrasy as philosopher remained in shadow. (shrink)

The present paper discusses the radical changes witnessed in the political landscape of the world today. After 25 years of post-Cold World hopes for triumph of liberal democracy, the years between 2014 and 2016 shattered the Western World. The annexation of Crimea by Putin’s Russia came first in March 2014, then in June 2016, the Berxit of Boris Johnson followed and finally in November 1916, came the stunning victory of Donald Trump at the US presidential elections. These developments can be (...) called the illiberal turn in politics and ideology. (shrink)

Many authors believe that the manuscripts Frege wrote in 1924–1925 are not theoretically of interest. They are rather a product of his emotional despair and theoretical dead-end which he reached in the last years of his life. Such is also the judgement of Michael Dummett delivered in his seminal book Frege: Philosophy of Language. According to Dummett, “the few fragmentary writings of Frege’s final period—1919–1925—are not of high quality: they are interesting chiefly as showing that Frege did, at least at (...) the very end of his life, acknowledge the failure of the logicist programme” (Dummett 1981, p. 664). In this paper we will try to show that the widely accepted negative assessment of Frege’s latest writings is due to a lack of understanding of their true idea. In fact, the change in Fre-ge’s mind in the last two or three years of his life was result of long deliberations on a severe tension in his founding intuitions. The change itself made his logico-philosophical project more coherent and, thus, is of utmost theoretical importance. (shrink)

Many historians of analytic philosophy consider the early philosophy of Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein as much more neo-Hegelian as once believed. At the same time, the authors who closely investigate Green, Bradley and Bosanquet find out that these have little in common with Hegel. The thesis advanced in this chapter is that what the British (ill-named) neo-Hegelians brought to the early analytic philosophers were, above all, some ideas of Lotze, not of Hegel. This is true regarding: (i) Lotze’s logical approach (...) to practically all philosophical problems; (ii) his treating of the concepts relation, structure (constructions) and order; (iii) the discussion of the concepts of states of affairs, multiple theory of judgment, general logical form; (iv) some common themes like panpsychism and contemplating the world sub specie aeternitatis. (shrink)

Die Berliner Gruppe um Hans Reichenbach, Kurt Lewin, Walter Dubislav, Alexander Herzberg, Kurt Grelling und Carl Gustav Hempel, die die »Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Philosophie« in Berlin leitete, verstand sich als gleichberechtigter Partner der Wiener Kollegen und schlug durchaus einen eigenständigen Weg zu »einer an der exakten Wissenschaft geschulten Philosophie« (Reichenbach) ein. Im öffentlichen und geistigen Leben der deutschen Hauptstadt spielte sie eine bedeutende Rolle, bevor ihre Mitglieder durch den Nationalsozialismus ins Exil gezwungen wurden. Nach ihrer Emigration haben Reichenbach, Hempel und (...) andere für die Entwicklung der analytischen Philosophie und der modernen Wissenschaftstheorie im angelsächsischen Sprachraum eine bedeutende Rolle gespielt. Der Band fasst erstmals in einer repräsentativen Auswahl die Texte der Berliner Gruppe in einer Anthologie zusammen und zeigt die Bedeutung und die Einheitlichkeit der Gruppe als – neben dem Wiener Kreis – zweitem Entstehungsort exakter Philosophie. (shrink)

Philosophy is deeply rooted in human nature. On the one hand, thinking of an infinite essence of the universe may actualize an infinite essence of humans themselves and thus root them in the Cosmos infinity. On the other hand, to think of infinity is to acquire the power of infinity, i.e., an infinite power. In short, thinking in terms of infinity fills us with infinity. Philosophy allows individuals to overstep the limits of the lived experience, transcends their Selves beyond daily (...) occurrence. Obviously, just this human transcendence into metaphysical reality, into the world of essential relationships ensures a therapeutic effect of philosophy. (shrink)

Karl Popper has often been cast as one of the most solitary figures of twentieth-century philosophy. The received image is of a thinker who developed his scientific philosophy virtually alone and in opposition to a crowd of brilliant members of the Vienna Circle. This paper challenges the received view and undertakes to correctly situate on the map of the history of philosophy Popper’s contribution, in particular, his renowned fallibilist theory of knowledge. The motive for doing so is the conviction that (...) the mainstream perspective on Popper’s philosophy makes him more difficult to understand than might otherwise be the case. The thinker who figures most significantly in the account of Popper developed in these pages is Leonard Nelson. Both a neo-Friesian and neo-Kantian, this philosopher deeply influenced Popper through his student Julius Kraft, who met with Popper on numerous occasions in the mid 1920s. It is in the light of this influence that we understand Popper’s recollection that when he criticized the Vienna Circle in the early 1930s, he looked upon himself “as an unorthodox Kantian”. (shrink)

In parts of his Notebooks, Tractatus and in “Lecture on Ethics”, Wittgenstein advanced a new approach to the problems of the meaning of life. It was developed as a reaction to the explorations on this theme by Bertrand Russell. Wittgenstein’s objective was to treat it with a higher degree of exactness. The present paper shows that he reached exactness by treating themes of philosophical anthropology using the formal method of topology.

Risk Management Strategies and Investment Behaviors are considered important factors in the investing activities of the retail investors. This study seeks to determine the relationship between Risk Management Strategies and Investment Behavior of Generation Z retail investors. The study is a correlational research and purposive sampling was used to select the respondents for this study. Cochran’s formula was utilized to determine the total sample size or total number of respondents. Spearman’s Rank-Order Correlation was employed to assess the significant relationship of (...) Risk Management Strategies and Investment Behaviors. Based on the results, it showed that risk management strategies have a significant relationship with one or more of the investment behaviors. Risk avoidance has a significant relationship with confirmation bias. Risk reduction has a significant relationship with all of the investment behaviors such as overconfidence, loss-aversion, recency bias, and confirmation bias. Risk transfer shows a significant relationship with only loss-aversion and confirmation bias. And lastly, risk acceptance also has a significant relationship with all of the investment behaviors. This study recommends exploring other types of behavioral biases under cognitive bias and emotional bias to determine their correlation with risk management strategies. Also, broadening the sample size, demographic scope, and geographic scope of the study can improve the generalizability of the study and provide a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between investment behavior and risk management strategies. The researchers also recommend to utilize interviews and focus group discussions to gain an in-depth understanding of the underlying values and attitudes concerning investment behavior. (shrink)

The conventional wisdom has it that between 1905 and 1919 Russell was critical to pragmatism. In particular, in two essays written in 1908–9, he sharply attacked the pragmatist theory of truth, emphasizing that truth is not relative to human practice. In fact, however, Russell was much more indebted to the pragmatists, in particular to William James, as usually believed. For example, he borrowed from James two key concepts of his new epistemology: sense-data, and the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and (...) knowledge by description. Reasonable explanation of this is that, historically, Russell’s logical realism and James’s pragmatism have the same roots—the German philosopher Rudolph Hermann Lotze (1817–1881). In this paper we are going to explore the fact that in 1905, under Lotze’s influence, Russell married propositions with beliefs. A few years later this step also made Russell prone to embrace the theory of truth-making that has its roots in James. In contrast to the concept of sense-data and to the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description, however, the understanding that we believe propositions—and not, for example, simply grasp them—was in tension with Russell’s Principle of Extensionality, according to which propositions can be logically connected with other propositions only as truth-functions. The point is that when we judge a mind-relation (for example, a relation of belief) to a proposition, the latter cannot be determined as true or false. The two most talented pupils of Russell, Wittgenstein and Ramsey, severely criticized the central place propositional attitudes play in Russell’s logic. Wittgenstein analyzed “A believes that p” to “ ‘p’ says p” (5.542). Ramsey criticized Russell’s beliefs in propositions the other way round: He stressed that belief is an ambiguous term that can be interpreted for the better in the sense of pragmatism. Prima facie surprisingly, he maintained that his “pragmatism is derived from Mr Russell.” (1927: 51). (shrink)

The task of this paper is to reconstruct Bertrand Russell project for religion without God and dogma. Russell made two attempts in this direction, first in the essay “Free Man’s Worship” (1903), and then, in theoretical form, in the paper “The Essence of Religion” (1912). Russell’s explorations of religious impulses run in parallel with his work on technical philosophy. According to Russell from 1903–12, religion is an important part of human pursuits. However, whereas the ordinary man believes in God, the (...) freeman embraces a religion without fear and dogma. He strives for a union with the universe achieved in contemplation made from many perspectives through “impartiality of vision”. For this reason freemen renounce the Self and the Will. Russell abandoned his project for religion without God mainly because of Wittgenstein’s criticism. In his later writings he continued to criticize the religion of the ordinary man, without to further develop a positive philosophy of religion, though. (shrink)

This paper introduces a novel interpretation of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, a work widely held to be one of the most intricate in the philosophical canon. We understand the Tractatus not as the development of a theory but as the advancement of a new logical symbolism (a new instrument) that enables one to “recognize the formal properties [the logic] of propositions by mere inspection of propositions themselves” (6.122). Moreover, the Tractarian conceptual notation stands to instruct us in a better way to follow (...) the logic of language, and by that token, enhances our ability to think. Upon acquiring the thinking skills that one can develop by working with this symbolism, one can “throw away [this] ladder” (6.54), as it were, and move on. (shrink)

The Berlin Group for scientific philosophy was active between 1928 and 1933 and was closely related to the Vienna Circle. In 1930, the leaders of the two Groups, Hans Reichenbach and Rudolf Carnap, launched the journal Erkenntnis. However, between the Berlin Group and the Vienna Circle, there was not only close relatedness but also significant difference. Above all, while the Berlin Group explored philosophical problems of the actual practice of science, the Vienna Circle, closely following Wittgenstein, was more interested in (...) problems of the language of science. The book includes first discussion ever (in three chapters) on Walter Dubislav’s logic and philosophy. Two chapters are devoted to another author scarcely explored in English, Kurt Grelling, and another one to Paul Oppenheim who became an important figure in the philosophy of science in the USA in the 1940s–1960s. Finally, the book discusses the precursor of the Nord-German tradition of scientific philosophy, Jacob Friedrich Fries. Mehr anzeigen Weniger anzeigen . (shrink)

The task of this essay is to put biological individuals in formal terms. This approach is not directly interested in matters of time (for example, in evolution), but rather in the formal shape of biological objects. So it is different from, but not opposed to, natural science. In his later years, Wittgenstein made similar investigations in psychology and mathematics. Unfortunately, he found no time to make extensive remarks on philosophy of biology. This is what we are going to advance here.

State of affairs (Sachverhalt) is one of the few terms in philosophy, which only came into use for the first time in the twentieth century, mainly via the works of Husserl and Wittgenstein. This makes the task of finding out who introduced this concept into philosophy, and in exactly what sense, of considerable interest. Our thesis is that Lotze introduced the term in 1874 in the sense of the objective content of judgments, which is ipso facto the minimal structured ontological (...) unit. We would argue against authors such as Michael Dummett and Barry Smith, who have tried to prove that Lotze's theory of judgment, and so of states of affairs, was ad-vanced in the wake of psychologism. (shrink)