"Ist der Mensch in seinem Denken und Handeln ein geistig freies Wesen oder steht er unter dem Zwange einer rein naturgesetzlichen ehernen Notwendigkeit? Auf wenige Fragen ist so viel Scharfsinn gewendet worden als auf diese. Die Idee der Freiheit des menschlichen Willens hat warme Anhänger wie hartnäckige Gegner in reicher Zahl gefunden. Ein und dasselbe Ding wird hier gleich oft für das kostbarste Gut der Menschheit wie für die ärgste Illusion erklärt." Rudolf Steiner (Gröls-Klassiker - Edition Werke der Weltliteratur).

APA PsycNET abstract: This is the first volume of a two-volume work on Probability and Induction. Because the writer holds that probability logic is identical with inductive logic, this work is devoted to philosophical problems concerning the nature of probability and inductive reasoning. The author rejects a statistical frequency basis for probability in favor of a logical relation between two statements or propositions. Probability "is the degree of confirmation of a hypothesis (or conclusion) on the basis of some given evidence (...) (or premises)." Furthermore, all principles and theorems of inductive logic are analytic, and the entire system is to be constructed by means of symbolic logic and semantic methods. This means that the author confines himself to the formalistic procedures of word and symbol systems. The resulting sentence or language structures are presumed to separate off logic from all subjectivist or psychological elements. Despite the abstractionism, the claim is made that if an inductive probability system of logic can be constructed it will have its practical application in mathematical statistics, and in various sciences. 16-page bibliography. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

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 ...

This is identical with the first edition (see 21: 2716) except for the addition of a Supplement containing 5 previously published articles and the bringing of the bibliography (now 73 items) up to date. The 5 added articles present clarifications or modifications of views expressed in the first edition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).

Since its publication fifty years ago, this work has established itself as a classic. It casts the visual process in psychological terms and describes the creative way one's eye organizes visual material according to specific psychological premises. In 1974 this book was revised and expanded, and since then it has continued to burnish Rudolf Arnheim's reputation as a groundbreaking theoretician in the fields of art and psychology.

This volume provides a valuable discussion of Husserl's lifelong project of the critique of science which makes no attempt to conflate the pre-World War I ...

Two chief problems of the theory of knowledge are the question of meaning and the question of verification. The first question asks under what conditions a sentence has meaning, in the sense of cognitive, factual meaning. The second one asks how we get to know something, how we can find out whether a given sentence is true or false. The second question presupposes the first one. Obviously we must understand a sentence, i.e. we must know its meaning, before we can (...) try to find out whether it is true or not. But, from the point of view of empiricism, there is a still closer connection between the two problems. In a certain sense, there is only one answer to the two questions. If we knew what it would be for a given sentence to be found true then we would know what its meaning is. And if for two sentences the conditions under which we would have to take them as true are the same, then they have the same meaning. Thus the meaning of a sentence is in a certain sense identical with the way we determine its truth or falsehood; and a sentence has meaning only if such a determination is possible. (shrink)

Available for the first time in 20 years, here are two important works from the 1920s by the best-known representative of the Vienna Circle.

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

Rudolf Arnheim has been known, since the publication of his groundbreaking _Art and Visual Perception_ in 1974, as an authority on the psychological interpretation of the visual arts. Two anniversary volumes celebrate the landmark anniversaries of his works in 2009. In _The Power of the Center_, Arnheim uses a wealth of examples to consider the factors that determine the overall organization of visual form in works of painting, sculpture, and architecture. _The Dynamics of Architectural Form_ explores the unexpected perceptual (...) consequences of architecture with Arnheim's customary clarity and precision. (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)

A basic system of inductive logic; An axiomatic foundation for the logic of inductive generalization; A survey of inductive systems; On the condition of partial exchangeability; Representation theorems of the de finetti type; De finetti's generalizations of excahngeability; The structure of probabilities defined on first-order languages; A subjectivit's guide to objective chance.

Two chief problems of the theory of knowledge are the question of meaning and the question of verification. The first question asks under what conditions a sentence has meaning, in the sense of cognitive, factual meaning. The second one asks how we get to know something, how we can find out whether a given sentence is true or false. The second question presupposes the first one. Obviously we must understand a sentence, i.e. we must know its meaning, before we can (...) try to find out whether it is true or not. But, from the point of view of empiricism, there is a still closer connection between the two problems. In a certain sense, there is only one answer to the two questions. If we knew what it would be for a given sentence to be found true then we would know what its meaning is. And if for two sentences the conditions under which we would have to take them as true are the same, then they have the same meaning. Thus the meaning of a sentence is in a certain sense identical with the way we determine its truth or falsehood; and a sentence has meaning only if such a determination is possible. (shrink)

In the fall of 1957 the University of California Press expanded Arnheim’s 1933 book _Film_ by four essays and brought that landmark work back into print as _Film as Art._ Now nearly fifty years after that re-edition, the book continues to occupy an important place in the literature of film. Arnheim’s method, provocative in this age of technological wizardry, was to focus on the way art in film was derived from that medium’s early limitations: no sound, no color, no three-dimensional (...) depth. (shrink)

Clear, comprehensive, intermediate introduction to logical languages, applications of symbolic logic to physics, mathematics, biology.

A clarification of Husserl's changing conceptions of imaginary consciousness ( phantasy ) and memory, especially at the level of auto-affective time-consciousness, suggests an interpretation of Freud's concept of the Unconscious. Phenomenology of consciousness can show how it is possible that consciousness can bring to present appearance something unconscious, that is, something foreign or absent to consciousness, without incorporating it into or subordinating it to the conscious present. This phenomenological analysis of Freud's concept of the Unconscious leads to a partial critique (...) of Freud's metapsychological determination of the Unconscious as a simple, internally unperceived representational consciousness. It also suggests an account of how a reproductive inner consciousness can free the subject from the experience of anxiety by allowing for possibilities of self-distanciation and symbolic self-representation that protect the subject from traumatic affection by and through its own instinctual drives. (shrink)

"Groundbreaking when first published in 1969, this book is now of even greater relevance to make the reader aware of the need to educate the visual sense, a ...

Dieses Buch stellt eine neue, von CARNAP entwickelte Theorie der Induktion und Wahrscheinlichkeit dar, die durch die folgenden grund legenden Auffassungen charakterisiert ist. 1. Jedes induktive Schließen, im weiten Sinne des nichtdeduktiven oder nichtdemonstrativen Schlu߭ folgerns, ist ein Schließen auf Grund von Wahrscheinlichkeit. 2. Daher ist die induktive Logik als Theorie von den Prinzipien des induktiven Schließens dasselbe wie Wahrscheinlichkeitslogik. 3. Der Begriff der Wahrscheinlichkeit, der als Grundbegriff der induktiven Logik dienen soll, ist eine logische Relation zwischen zwei Aussagen oder (...) Sätzen, näm lich der Grad der Bestätigung einer Hypothese auf der Grundlage gegebe ner Prämissen. 4. Der sogenannte Häufigkeitsbegriff der Wahrschein lichkeit, wie er in statistischen Untersuchungen verwendet wird, ist zwar an und für sich ein wichtiger wissenschaftlicher Begriff, als Grundbegriff der induktiven Logik jedoch unbrauchbar. 5. Alle Prinzipien und Lehr sätze der induktiven Logik sind analytisch. 6. Daher hängt die Gültig keit des induktiven Schließens nicht von irgendwelchen synthetischen Voraussetzungen ab, wie etwa dem vielumstrittenen Prinzip der Gleich förmigkeit der Welt. Die erste Aufgabe dieses Buches ist die Erörterung der allgemeinen philosophischen Probleme betreffend die Natur der Wahrscheinlichkeit und des induktiven Schließens, die uns zu den eben erwähnten Auffassun gen führen wird. Das zweite Ziel ist der tatsächliche Aufbau eines Systems der induktiven Logik, einer Theorie, die auf den angeführten Prinzipien beruht. Ein besonderes Augenmerk wurde in diesem Buch darauf gelegt, die intuitive philosophische Grundlegung klar von dem technischen Aufbau des Systems der induktiven Logik zu trennen. (shrink)

In the fall of 1957 the University of California Press expanded Arnheim’s 1933 book _Film_ by four essays and brought that landmark work back into print as _Film as Art._ Now nearly fifty years after that re-edition, the book continues to occupy an important place in the literature of film. Arnheim’s method, provocative in this age of technological wizardry, was to focus on the way art in film was derived from that medium’s early limitations: no sound, no color, no three-dimensional (...) depth. (shrink)

Among the various meanings in which the word ‘probability’ is used in everyday language, in the discussion of scientists, and in the theories of probability, there are especially two which must be clearly distinguished. We shall use for them the terms ‘probability1’ and ‘probability2'. Probability1 is a logical concept, a certain logical relation between two sentences ; it is the same as the concept of degree of confirmation. I shall write briefly “c” for “degree of confirmation,” and “c” for “the (...) degree of confirmation of the hypothesis h on the evidence e“; the evidence is usually a report on the results of our observations. On the other hand, probability2 is an empirical concept; it is the relative frequency in the long run of one property with respect to another. The controversy between the so-called logical conception of probability, as represented e.g. by Keynes, and Jeffreys, and others, and the frequency conception, maintained e.g. by v. Mises and Reichenbach, seems to me futile. These two theories deal with two different probability concepts which are both of great importance for science. Therefore, the theories are not incompatible, but rather supplement each other. (shrink)