Carnap's ideal of explication has become a key concept in analytic philosophy and the basis of a method of analysis which may be considered as an alternative to various forms of naturalism, including Quine's conception of a naturalized epistemology. More recently, new light has been shed on this aspect of the classical Carnap-Quine debate by contemporary philosophers. Whereas Michael Friedman articulated a notion of relativized a priori which owes much to Carnap's internal/external distinction, André Carus attempted to restate Carnap's ideal (...) of explication in a way that bridges the gap between conceptual engineering and naturalism. On the other hand, Mark Wilson argued that concepts develop in unpredictable ways and cannot be planned in the way classical analytic philosophy has assumed from Frege and Russell onwards. This book consists of a series of defences as well as critiques of Carnap's programme, setting it in its historical context, discussing specific cases of explications, and enriching the on-going debate on conceptual engineering and naturalism in analytic philosophy.Carnap's ideal of explication has become a key concept in analytic philosophy and the basis of a method of analysis which may be considered as an alternative to various forms of naturalism, including Quine's conception of a naturalized epistemology. More recently, new light has been shed on this aspect of the classical Carnap-Quine debate by contemporary philosophers. Whereas Michael Friedman articulated a notion of relativized a priori which owes much to Carnap's internal/external distinction, André Carus attempted to restate Carnap's ideal of explication in a way that bridges the gap between conceptual engineering and naturalism. On the other hand, Mark Wilson argued that concepts develop in unpredictable ways and cannot be planned in the way classical analytic philosophy has assumed from Frege and Russell onwards. This book consists of a series of defences as well as critiques of Carnap's programme, setting it in its historical context, discussing specific cases of explications, and enriching the on-going debate on conceptual engineering and naturalism in analytic philosophy. (shrink)

This volumes aim is to provide an introduction to Carnaps book from a historical and philosophical perspective, each chapter focusing on one specific issue. The book will be of interest not only to Carnap scholars but to all those interested in the history of analytical philosophy.

The first theory of confirmation that Carnap developed in detail is to be found in "Testability and Meaning". In this paper, he addressed the issue of a definition of empiricism, several years after abandoning the quest for a unique and universal logical framework supposed to be the basis of a clear distinction between the meaningful sentences of science and the pseudo-sentences of metaphysics. The principle of tolerance (according to which everyone is free to build up his own form of language (...) as he wishes) had been adopted near the end of 1932, at a time when it was already obvious to Carnap that a strictly verificationist criterion of meaning was inadequate. He therefore considered a variety of empiricisms and a variety of choices for the language of science. As Carnap put it, "there are many different possibilities in framing an empiricist language" and, correspondingly, several degrees of liberalization of the criterion of meaning. It was in this context that Carnap provided both a logical (syntactical) and an empirical analysis of confirmation (and of testing), before distinguishing requirements of different strengths which served the purpose of defining several versions of empiricism. (shrink)

Many papers have been devoted to the semantic turn Carnap took in the late 1930s after Tarski had explained to him his method for defining truth and his work on the establishment of scientific semantics. Commentators have often argued that the major turn in Carnap’s approach to languages had already been taken in the Logical Syntax of Language, but they have usually assumed that Carnap was happy to subsequently follow Tarski and adopt Tarskian semantics. In this paper, it is argued (...) that this assumption needs to be qualified and that Carnap was actually far from following Tarski when he decided to complement his syntactic method with a semantic one. Carnap and Tarski had different goals, divergent programs, and dissenting views on truth and semantics. After exploring several possible methods for the explication of logical concepts such as L-truth and L-implication, Carnap opted for definitions based on concepts he had found in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Waismann’s work on a logical interpretation of probability. Carnap’s reasons for taking a semantic turn are to be understood in the context of his principle of tolerance. He first hoped he could use Tarski’s technique to recover in the semantic setting the completeness result he had tried to establish in the Logical Syntax. His eventual adoption of non-Tarskian semantics can be accounted for by his program of a logical analysis of science—including empirical science—and his ambition to elaborate a unified logical framework for deductive, inductive, and modal logic, and for explicating analyticity. (shrink)

In the 1920s, Carnap and Schlick both made an important use of definitions in their main publications: Schlick, in his Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre (1918, 2nd ed. 1925) and Carnap in Der logische Aufbau der Welt (1928, mostly written by 1925). In this paper, we first provide an analysis of the kinds of definitions that are distinguished in these books and a few other papers, and we then propose a systematic comparison of Schlick’s and Carnap’s diverging conceptions of definitions in the 1920s, (...) relating them, in both cases, to their respective philosophical projects in the Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre and in Der logische Aufbau der Welt. (shrink)

L’idée d’organiser à Paris un congrès international de philosophie scientifique « fut émise pour la première fois au cours d’une conversation à Berlin, en juillet 1932, entre Hans Reichenbach et Louis Rougier ». Dans une lettre du 6 août 1932 adressée à Reichenbach, Rougier mentionne déjà des contacts avec le ministère des Affaires étrangères pour obtenir des subventions et le 6 novembre de la même année, il propose à Reichenbach de tenir la manifestation en 1934 [voir Padovani 2006, 239-–240...

Like other members of the Vienna Circle, Carnap criticized traditional philosophy for its lack of clarity and precision, as is well-know from such papers as "The elimination of metaphysics through the logical analysis of language" (1932) and many other writings. In 'The Logical Syntax of Language' (1934), while still entertaining the idea that, in some sense, metaphysics is nonsense, Carnap's critique of philosophy is based on different grounds and aimed at different authors. In this book, his critique of philosophy actually (...) takes the form of an attempt at a reconstruction of philosophy on a new basis. I shall try to examine this attempt and to show why it fails. I shall also try to show how Carnap's thought evolved on this point in later writings, in particular in "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology" (1950). (shrink)

Bien que Carnap soit surtout connu pour son appartenance à l’empirisme logique, qui rejette le synthétique a priori et la métaphysique kantienne en général, sa thèse sur l’espace (1922) fut rédigée dans le double contexte des multiples variétés du néokantisme et d’une réflexion mathématique, physique et philosophique sur le concept d’espace. Dans cette thèse et dans le mémoire de 1920 sur la géométrie, il s’efforce de surmonter les difficultés soulevées par le concept d’espace en en distinguant plusieurs significations et plusieurs (...) sortes. Ce faisant, il défend une position originale qui emprunte aux différentes formes du néokantisme de l’époque sans se réduire pour autant à aucune d’elles. (shrink)

Le cognitivisme, conçu comme une théorie computationnelle de l'esprit, s'inspire du traitement informatique des données. Cet article examine les thèses principales du cognitivisme, ainsi que ses origines dans les travaux de Turing, les débats qu'il suscite, et les difficultés qu'il soulève. Le cognitivisme n'est, en définitive, que l'une des conceptions philosophiques possibles à l'intérieur du cercle des sciences cognitives. Cognitivism is a comptutational theory of mind which originates from computer science and data processing. This paper examines the main tenets of (...) cognitivism, its fountain-head in Turing's work, the issues it raises, and the quandaries it is up against. Finally, cognitivism is but one of the sundry philosophical theories of mind upon which cognitive sciences may be grounded. (shrink)

Quels rapports, depuis les commencements, les philosophes ontils noués avec la science? Il ne s'agit pas ici de dresser l'inventaire des problèmes philosophiques que soulèvent les sciences ou la science, ni d'évaluer les réponses qui y furent apportées, mais, à l'inverse, de s'interroger sur les manières multiples dont les philosophes se sont représenté la science - état d'un sujet connaissant ou activité savante - système d'énoncés ou méthode de recherche, voire ensemble de disciplines constituées - et les problèmes afférents à (...) chacune de ces représentations. A l'exhaustivité historique, il a été préféré le questionnement philosophique. L'ouvrage se déploie à partir de quatre grandes problématiques : " La science "? (Platon ; Descartes, Newton ; Leibniz ; L'Encyclopédie ; Carnap) ; Critiques et limites de la science (empirisme et scepticisme anglais ; Kant ; Bergson, Brunschvicg ; Heidegger ; Wittgenstein) ; Science et naturalisme (Aristote ; Mach ; Bolzano ; Husserl ; Quine) Science, histoire et société (Comte ; Durkheim ; l'école de Francfort ; Bachelard, Canguilhem, Foucault ; logique de la science et révolutions scientifiques). (shrink)

Translation into French of Rudolf Carnap's Testability and Meaning (1936-1937): Carnap, Rudolf. "Testability and meaning." Philosophy of science 3.4 (1936): 419-471 and Carnap, Rudolf. "Testability and meaning—continued." Philosophy of science 4.1 (1937): 1-40. Introduction by Pierre Wagner; translation by Yann Benétreau-Dupin and Delphine Chapuis-Schmitz. Testabilité et signification est un classique de la philosophie des sciences dont aucune traduction n’avait jusqu’alors été offerte au public francophone. L’auteur y expose sa célèbre analyse des termes dispositionnels (« soluble dans l’eau », « fragile (...) », etc.) en montrant quelles difficultés soulève leur définition. Carnap livre également ici ses réflexions sur la nature de l’empirisme et sur le rapport du langage à la philosophie, offrant ainsi, dans ce texte, l’une des premières expositions du problème contemporain de la confirmation, soigneusement distinguée de la vérification et du test. Historiquement, l’ouvrage est aussi marqué par un mouvement de transition : celle de la langue allemande à l’anglais d’adoption (il s’agit du premier texte d’envergure que Carnap rédige en anglais), celle de l’émigration de son auteur, de Prague à Chicago, celle d’une pensée d’origine européenne venue, sur le chemin de l’exil, à la rencontre de la philosophie américaine. (shrink)

Some common notions about analytic philosophy - that it is uniformly anti-metaphysical or indifferent to the history of philosophy - are clearly misconceived. However the impression that analytic philosophers are essentially linguistic philosophers is not entirely false and hence less easy to refute.

Dans l'un des rares textes de Wittgenstein où il est question des machines de Turing, l'auteur écrit que celles-ci « sont les hommes, qui calculent ». L'étrangeté apparente de l'aphorisme disparaît si l'on dissipe certaines confusions fréquentes relatives aux machines de Turing. Une fois éclairci le sens littéral de ce passage des Remarques sur la philosophie de la psychologie, on peut s'interroger sur ce que Wittgenstein veut dire, dans le § 1096. Comme souvent chez l'auteur, on peut lire dans ce (...) paragraphe une remarque grammaticale qui vise à éclaircir une difficulté philosophique : la possibilité de définir ce qu'est un calcul. (shrink)