Chapter INTRODUCTION: OTTO NEURATH, THE VIENNA CIRCLE AND THE PROTOCOL SENTENCE DEBATE Everybody familiar with contemporary analytical philosophy is likely ...

Ernst Mach and Wilhelm Jerusalem may be considered exponents of a homegrown European version of pragmatism. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the strongly social orientation Jerusalem gave to his. Particular attention will be paid to some of his predecessors to exhibit the relevance of a pioneering but largely forgotten type of social science for the development of his version of European pragmatism. Broadly speaking, considerations from Völkerpsychologie played the role for the development of Jerusalem’s views that (...) considerations from the history of science played for the views of Mach. Of particular interest to us here is how these broadly sociological ideas fed into Jerusalem’s philosophy and his understanding and appreciation of pragmatism. (shrink)

Ernst Mach’s positivism, it is argued in this paper, may be regarded as a version of pragmatist philosophy of science. Already James’s biographer Perry detected such tendencies in Mach and this is confirmed here by close attention to Mach’s early works, esp. History and Root of the Principle of the Conservation of Energy and The Science of Mechanics. Both Mach’s principle of the economy of thought and his principle of scientific significance are shown to bear out his pragmatism. A (...) similar conclusion is shown to hold for the philosophy of Wilhelm Jerusalem already long before he became the translator of James’s Pragmatism into German. But while Jerusalem early on relied perhaps even more than Mach on evolutionary theory for promptings of pragmatist insights, he soon too linked them, as Mach had all along, to broadly sociological observations concerning the condition of human cognition. (shrink)

Verificationism has had a bad press for many years. The view that the meaning of our words is bound up with the discernible difference it would make if what we say, think or write were true or false, nowadays is scorned as “positivist” though it was shared by eminent empiricists and pragmatists. This paper seeks to sort through some of the complexities of what is often portrayed as an unduly simplistic conception. I begin with an overview of its main logical (...) empiricist varieties before considering which aspects of it fall victim to which of the three major types of objection that have been raised against it. I will conclude that what is left standing is a modest proposal that seems worth further investigation. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

the ready availability of wittgenstein's previously unpublished writings from his so-called middle period of 1929 to 1936 has greatly enriched our understanding of the development of his thought. For obvious reasons, however, it has had little effect on the interpretation of Wittgenstein's contemporaries. At the time, few, even amongst those who had by then taken note of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, were apprised of the new avenues Wittgenstein's thought had begun to take. One such rare exception was Moritz Schlick, the nominal (...) head of the Vienna Circle and an eminent philosopher of science. Even before Wittgenstein's return to... (shrink)

The question of the political potential possessed by the philosophies of the Vienna Circle is complex for more than one reason. It is so partly due to the politically heterogeneous membership of the Circle, partly due to the difficult if not extreme political circumstances under which they had to operate, and partly due to the variable meanings of the parameter "political," some of which are and some of which are not compatible with, in turn, variable versions of the doctrine of (...) the value-neutrality of science. For instance, philosophies of science may steadfastly be standing guard against pseudo-scientific nonsense being paraded as worthy of credence in public discourse, this concern for intellectual hygene... (shrink)

Discussions of the relation between pragmatism and logical empiricism tend to focus on the period when the logical empiricists found themselves in exile, mostly in the United States, and then attempt to gauge the actual extent of their convergence. My concern lies with the period before that and the question whether pragmatism had an earlier influence on the development of logical empiricism, especially on the thought of the former members of the “first” Vienna Circle. I argue for a substantially qualified (...) affirmative answer. (shrink)

Carnap’s lectures at the 1935 Paris Congress for the Unity of Science marked the beginning of his mature metaphilosophy. This paper considers what role remained for epistemology once it was “purified” of all psychological elements as Carnap there demanded. It is argued that while this did mean the end of traditional epistemology, room was found for nontraditional versions in the course of the further development of Carnap’s logic of science.

hilosophy of history and history of philosophy of science make for an interesting case of “mutual containment”: the former is an object of inquiry for the latter, and the latter is subject to the demands of the former. This article discusses a seminal turn in past philosophy of history with an eye to the practice of historians of philosophy of science. The narrative turn by Danto and Mink represents both a liberation for historians and a new challenge to the objectivity (...) of their findings. I will claim that good sense can be made of “working historical veins of possibility” (contrary to how the phrase was originally intended) and that already Danto and Mink provided materials (although they did not quite advertise them as such) to assuage fears of a constructivist free-for-all. (shrink)

This paper responds to the generous comments by Alexander Klein and Cheryl Misak on my “American Pragmatism and the Vienna Circle: The Early Years”. First, besides offering some clarification of my original thesis, I argue that Jerusalem was not liable to the anti-Spencerian criticisms by James that Klein adduces in the course of defending James against the charge of psychologism. Then I investigate the impact of Wittgenstein’s Ramsey-derived pragmatism, importantly foregrounded by Misak, on the Vienna Circle and argue that it (...) was mainly limited to Schlick but not recognized as pragmatist, also leaving unaffected the impact of James’s pragmatism on Frank, Hahn and Neurath specified in my original paper. That said, Klein’s and Misak’s comments add significantly to our understanding of long-neglected transatlantic philosophical connections in the early twentieth century. (shrink)

I examine the thesis that Otto Neurath anticipated the programme of naturalised epistemology already at the time of the Vienna Circle and consider the relation between Neurath's proposals and those of two contemporary theorists whose research programmes he would thus have broadly anticipated. The thesis is confirmed by reference to Neurath's own writings. The connection between Neurath's programme and the programmes of his two successors considered here, however, is found to be highly indirect in one case and nonexistent in the (...) other — despite their undeniable overlap. (shrink)

In this chapter Neurath’s controversial contributions to the socialist calculation debate are confronted with the criticism of two well-known opponents, Ludwig von Mises and Max Weber. Each side’s arguments are considered at a certain level of abstraction so as to allow what are lasting points of significance in Neurath’s proposals to shine through more clearly. It is argued that while these points are closely interwoven in their presentation with his schemes for marketless socialism, they are conceptually independent of them. Suitably (...) so, they have proven influential in just this independent capacity. (shrink)

The topic of the philosophical relationship between Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle is of considerable interest both to interpreters of the work of Wittgenstein and of the Circle. Answers to questions concerning the nature and extent of the influences between them have long been thought to inform the systematic understanding of the philosophies involved. Importantly, the knowledge of the relation between Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle has an interesting history of its own, reflecting in part the perceived relative standing (...) of the two parties; each of whom, after all, prescribed a radical reorientation of philosophy as traditionally practiced. This chapter presents the historical facts against which the philosophical relations between Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle have to be assessed and gives an overview of the Circle's reception of Wittgenstein's philosophy. Important corollaries follow for the assessment of the Circle's Tractatus reception. (shrink)

This paper responds to a recent criticism of Uebel's analysis of Neurath's protocol statements and proposes some independent amendments.

The response given to C.G. Hempel’s well-known challenge by Arthur Danto in his Analytical Philosophy of History of 1965 – that deductive-nomological and narrative explanations are logically compatible yet employ incommensurable schemata – is here investigated from a historical perspective. It is shown that the developmental trajectory that emerges from an analysis of Danto’s previous writings – including not only a forgotten paper of 1958 but also his PhD dissertation of 1952 – contains distinctive step-changes with publications of 1953 and (...) 1956 still prior to that of 1958–59 which enabled his subsequent discovery of narrative sentences. It is also argued that Danto’s developmental trajectory runs contrary to that presumed by some prominent commentators. Analytical History of Philosophy was not the midpoint of his ascent from mainstream philosopher of science to high priest of postmodern aesthetics, but represents a reasoned retreat from his early historical idealism. (shrink)

This volume offers a very welcome in-depth look at a particular group of the philosophers associated with the Berlin Society for Empirical Philosophy . The editors stress that these two groupings differ and call only the former the “Berlin Group for scientific philosophy” : Hans Reichenbach, Walter Dubislav, Kurt Grelling, Paul Oppenheim and Carl Gustav Hempel. Parts I and II provide introductions and historical context for the group as a whole and Parts III–VI consider highly specific aspects of the work (...) of its members but for two overview papers on Grelling and Hempel . To appreciate the volume best, it may be helpful to distinguish between the straightforward historical investigations and the more revisionist historiographical contributions, the latter much smaller in number but prominently placed by one of the editors. While the former will be applauded unreser .. (shrink)

This paper investigates how the doctrine of the epistemological given—long associated with empiricism and positivism and also informing Carnap’s first major work in 1928—was challenged and overcome by Neurath and Carnap in subsequent years. Particular attention is paid to the controversial issue of how precisely the dialectic between Neurath and Carnap played out: whether Neurath’s argumentation correctly engaged with Carnap’s actual positions, whether Carnap’s change of positions in turn fully engaged with Neurath’s challenge, and what all this may tell us (...) about the compatibility of their philosophical projects. (shrink)

Is there anything new that can be learnt about Carnap and his philosophy from recent findings about Carnap’s participation in the production of the Circle’s inofficial manifesto of 1929, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis? “More than one might think”, is my answer. To be sure, what there is to be learnt is not something radically new, but that is still enough to make a difference in an ongoing dispute over whether Carnap’s philosophy was of a purely academic nature. What there (...) is to be learnt is enough to contradict the quite common picture of Carnap as quietist.1 Instead, Carnap emerges as an activist and his philosophy as part of his activism. Accordingly, the thesis to be defended here is that throughout his life, though perhaps most strongly so during his Vienna Circle period, Carnap intended his philosophy to make a difference to everyday life: it was to be political in the broadest sense. (shrink)

This paper discusses Moore’s chapter on Carnap in The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics. Even though different conceptions of metaphysics are defended by Moore and attacked by Carnap, common ground can be established on which to discuss Moore’s dismissal of Carnap. After correcting some infelicities in the characterization given of Carnap’s position, the paper sets out to show how Carnap can respond to Moore’s challenge and argues that Moore has failed to establish that Carnap’s philosophy is self-contradictory in conception or bound (...) to be fruitless in practice. (shrink)

The Vienna Circle was, as the research of recent decades made abundantly clear, far from a homogeneous group of philosophers (nor an always harmonious one). This can be shown with regard to the way different general philosophical and cultural influences affected the views of different members, but also with regard to the way in which the doctrines of specific philosophers closely associated with the origin of logical empiricism were received. Wittgenstein is a case in point. This paper sets out, with (...) the help of a few indicative examples, how the critical reception of the Tractatus by Hans Hahn, Philipp Frank and Otto Neurath—former members of an informal pre-World War 1 discussion group, the so-called first Vienna Circle—and by Rudolf Carnap reflected their pre-existent theoretical interests. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus contributed to their developing philosophy but was far from its foundation, contrary to what has often been presumed about the relation of Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle. (shrink)

In einem Vortrag am Ende seiner in diesem Band untersuchten Schaffensperiode beschrieb Carnap die bisherige Entwicklung der wissenschaftlichen Philosophie und skizzierte den nächsten Schritt. Gegenstand des gegenwärtigen Aufsatzes ist die Darstellung dieser weiteren Entwicklung. Besprochen werden die Probleme, die die vormalige Erkenntnistheorie bei der “Reinigung” von metaphysischen Schlacken und unangemessenen Psychologismen zu überwinden hatte, und Carnaps Lösung, die rein logische Untersuchungen mit empirischer Wissenschaftstheorie arbeitsteilig verband und somit unterschiedlichen Ansprüchen zu genügen suchte.

An outstanding reference source to this challenging subject area, and the first collection of its kind. Essential reading for students and researchers in the history of the philosophy, the history of analytical philosophy and twentieth-century philosophy.

The development of Carnap’s views on knowledge of other minds from 1928 to about 1935 is tracked here in order to clear up a widespread misunderstanding. Early on and well into the 30s their failure is undeniable but it has been badly misdiagnosed. I argue that Carnap was not only not a logical behaviorist but also aimed for a largely non-reductive approach to mental state ascriptions in principle already in Scheinprobleme. The reason for the failure of his anti-reductionist ambition and (...) what it took to overcome it are then investigated in some detail. In the process, it will be shown, Carnap anticipated, in a limited fashion, certain moves familiar from the Wittgensteinian tradition, albeit with the difference that he attempted to naturalize mind talk. (shrink)

Otto Neurath presents a very different picture from that of the standard logical positivist: not only with his mature theory of science, but also with his intellectual development. Given Neurath’s contribution to “the” philosophy of the Vienna Circle, the roots of logical empiricism must accordingly be located not only where they have long been recognized to lie, namely in the stunning advances of physical science and logic and mathematics in the late 19th and early 20th century, but also in the (...) comparatively less satisfying state of social science at the time. Neurath’s non-reductively naturalistic theory of science may be understood as much as a response to the state of early 20th century social science as, say, Carnap’s logically oriented rational reconstructionism may be understood as a response to the advances of the then new physics and new logic. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 63 Heft: 3 Seiten: 602-609.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Overview of Twentieth‐century Analytic Philosophy of Social Science Behind the Scenes of Prepostpositivist Analytic Philosophy of Social Science Conclusion Notes.

This response considers the question whether empiricists are condemned to silence about the epistemic agency their theories attribute or presuppose. It is argued that, unlike Reichenbach or Carnap, Neurath allowed for and indeed provided specifications of the role of epistemic agency in scientific inquiry. If this is correct, it underscores once more the need to distinguish between the various strands of logical positivism which show different strengths and weaknesses.

“I urge that we turn Kuhn on his head and demonstrate that a paradigm is nothing more than an arrested social development.” Notwithstanding the long debate to which The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has given rise since its publication in 1962, this quote from Steve Fuller’s assessment of its author’s legacy suggests an original if controversial project: may a better understanding of science arise from the ashes of idealist historicism! Yet rather than furnish the Marx to Kuhn’s Hegel, Fuller but (...) manages a pastiche of Proudhon, as it were, which calls for another inversion of titles as rejoinder in turn. There can be no doubt that some very important issues are raised in this book, but just as this reader’s expectations were dashed in its course, so the issues end.up curiously diminished; given the significance of the subject matter, it is of interest to find out why. (shrink)

It is one of the distinctive claims of Neurath, though not of the Vienna Circle generally, that the Vienna Circle's philosophy was not really German philosophy at all. The relation is, if Neurath is to be trusted, anything but straight-forward. To understand it, not only must some effort be expended on specifying Neurath's claim, but also on delineating the different party-lines within the Vienna Circle.