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Rudolf Carnap
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Western Philosophy
20th-century philosophy
Rudolf Carnap
Name: Rudolf Carnap
Birth:May 18,1891(1891-05-18)
Death:November 14,1970 (aged 79)
School/tradition:Analytic
Main interests:Logic,Epistemology,Philosophy of Science,Semantics
Notable ideas:Physicalism,Phenomenalism,Analytic-synthetic distinction,Modal Logic,Constructed language,Conceptual Schemes,Logical Positivism
Influences:Gottlob Frege,Immanuel Kant,Albert Einstein
Influenced:W. V. O. Quine,David Lewis,Nelson Goodman,David Kaplan,Analytic philosophy
Rudolf Carnap (May 18,1891,Ronsdorf,Germany –September 14,1970,Santa Monica, California) was an influentialphilosopher who was active in central Europe before 1935 and in theUnited States thereafter. He was a leading member of theVienna Circle and a prominent advocate oflogical positivism.
Contents
[hide]
1 Life2 See also3 Selected publications4 Other sources5 Quotations6 External links
[edit] Life
Carnap was born in a north German family that had been humble until his parents‘ generation. He began his formal education at the BarmenGymnasium. From 1910 to 1914, he attended theUniversity of Jena, intending to write a thesis in physics. But he also carefully studiedKant‘sCritique of Pure Reason in a course taught byBruno Bauch, and was one of very few students to takeFrege‘s courses inmathematical logic. After serving in the German army duringWW I for three years, he was given permission to study physics at theUniversity of Berlin, 1917-18, whereAlbert Einstein was a newly appointed professor. Carnap then attended theUniversity of Freiburg, where he wrote a thesis setting out anaxiomatic theory ofspace andtime. The physics department said it was too philosophical, andBruno Bauch of the philosophy department said it was pure physics. Carnap then wrote another thesis, under Bauch‘s supervision, on the theory of space from a more orthodoxKantian point of view, published as Carnap (1922).
In 1921, Carnap wrote a fateful letter toBertrand Russell, who responded by copying out by hand long passages from hisPrincipia Mathematica for Carnap‘s benefit, as neither Carnap nor Freiburg could afford a copy of this epochal work. In 1924 and 1925, he attended seminars led byEdmund Husserl, the founder ofphenomenology, and continued to write on physics from alogical positivist perspective.
Carnap discovered a kindred spirit when he metHans Reichenbach at a 1923 conference. Reichenbach introduced Carnap toMoritz Schlick, a professor at theUniversity of Vienna who offered Carnap a position in his department, which Carnap took up in 1926. Carnap thereupon joined an informal group of Viennese intellectuals that came to be called theVienna Circle, led byMoritz Schlick and includingHans Hahn,Friedrich Waismann,Otto Neurath, andHerbert Feigl, with occasional appearances by Hahn‘s studentKurt Gödel. WhenWittgenstein visited Vienna, Carnap would meet with him. He (with Hahn and Neurath) wrote the 1929 manifesto of the Circle, and (withHans Reichenbach) founded the philosophy journalErkenntnis.
In 1928, Carnap published two important books:
The Logical Structure of the World (German: "Der logische Aufbau der Welt"), in which he developed a rigorous formal version of empiricism, defining all scientific terms in phenomenalistic terms. The formal system of the Aufbau (as the work is commonly called) was grounded in a single primitive dyadic predicate, which is satisfied if two individuals "resemble" each other. The Aufbau was greatly influenced byPrincipia Mathematica, and warrants comparison with themereotopological metaphysicsA. N. Whitehead developed over 1916-29. It appears, however, that Carnap soon became somewhat disenchanted with this book. In particular, he did not authorize an English translation until 1967. Pseudoproblems in Philosophy asserted that many philosophical questions were meaningless, i.e., the way they were posed amounted to an abuse of language. An operational implication of this radical stance was taken to be the elimination ofmetaphysics from responsible human discourse. This is the notorious position for which Carnap was best known for many years.
In February 1930 Tarski lectured in Vienna, and in November 1930 Carnap visited Warsaw. On these occasions he learned much about Tarski‘smodel theoretic approach tosemantics. In 1931, Carnap was appointed Professor at the German languageUniversity of Prague. There he wrote the book that was to make him the most famouslogical positivist and member of the Vienna Circle, his Logical Syntax of Language (Carnap 1934). In this work, Carnap advanced his Principle of Tolerance, according to which there is no such thing as a "true" or "correct" logic or language. One is free to adopt whatever form of language is useful for one‘s purposes. In 1933,Willard Quine met Carnap in Prague and discussed the latter‘s work at some length. Thus began the lifelong mutual respect these two men shared, one that survived Quine‘s eventual forceful disagreements with a number of Carnap‘s philosophical conclusions.
Carnap, under no illusions about what theThird Reich was about to unleash on Europe, and whosesocialist andpacifist convictions made him a marked man, emigrated to theUnited States in 1935 and became anaturalized citizen in 1941. Meanwhile back in Vienna,Moritz Schlick was assassinated in 1936. From 1936 to 1952, Carnap was a professor of philosophy at theUniversity of Chicago. Thanks in part to Quine‘s good offices, Carnap spent the years 1939-41 at Harvard, where he was reunited with Tarski. Carnap (1963) later expressed some irritation about his time at Chicago, where he andCharles W. Morris were the only members of the department committed to the primacy of science and logic. (Their Chicago colleagues included Richard McKeon,Mortimer Adler,Charles Hartshorne, and Manley Thompson.) Carnap‘s years at Chicago were nonetheless highly productive ones. He wrote books onsemantics (Carnap 1942, 1943, 1956),modal logic, coming very close in Carnap (1956) to the now-standardpossible worlds semantics for that logicSaul Kripke proposed starting in 1959, and on the philosophical foundations ofprobability andinduction (Carnap 1950, 1952).
After a stint at theInstitute for Advanced Study at Princeton, he joined the philosophy department atUCLA in 1954,Hans Reichenbach having died the previous year. He had earlier declined an offer of a similar position at theUniversity of California, because taking up that position required that he sign aMcCarthy-era loyalty oath, a practice to which he was opposed on principle. While at UCLA, he wrote on scientific knowledge, theanalytic -synthetic dichotomy, and theverification principle. His writings onthermodynamics and on the foundations ofprobability andinduction, were published posthumously as Carnap (1971, 1977, 1980).
Carnap taught himselfEsperanto when he was a mere fourteen years of age, and remained very sympathetic to it (Carnap 1963). He later attended aWorld Congress of Esperanto and employed the language while traveling.
Carnap had four children by his first marriage, which ended in divorce in 1929. His second wife committed suicide in 1964.
[edit] See also
Logical positivismVienna CirclePhilosophy of ScienceSkeptic
[edit] Selected publications
1922. Der Raum: Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftslehre, Kant-Studien, Ergänzungshefte, no. 56. His Ph.D. thesis. 1926. Physikalische Begriffsbildung. Karlsruhe: Braun. 1928. Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie (Pseudoproblems of Philosophy). Berlin: Weltkreis-Verlag. 1928. Der Logische Aufbau der Welt. Leipzig: Felix Meiner Verlag. English translation by Rolf A. George, 1967. The Logical Structure of the World. Pseudoproblems in Philosophy. University of California Press. 1929. Abriss der Logistik, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Relationstheorie und ihrer Anwendungen. Springer. 1934. Logische Syntax der Sprache. English translation 1937, The Logical Syntax of Language. Kegan Paul. 1996 (1935). Philosophy and Logical Syntax. Bristol UK: Thoemmes.Excerpt. 1939, Foundations of Logic and Mathematics in International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol. I, no. 3. University of Chicago Press. 1942. Introduction to Semantics. Harvard Uni. Press. 1943. Formalization of Logic. Harvard Uni. Press. 1956 (1947). Meaning and Necessity: a Study in Semantics and Modal Logic. University of Chicago Press. 1950. Logical Foundations of Probability. University of Chicago Press.Pp. 3-15 online. 1950. "Empiricism, Semantics, Ontology", Revue Internationale de Philosophie 4: 20-40. 1952. The Continuum of Inductive Methods. University of Chicago Press. 1958. Introduction to Symbolic Logic with Applications. Dover. 1963, "Intellectual Autobiography" in Schilpp (1963: 1-84). 1966. Philosophical Foundations of Physics. Martin Gardner, ed. Basic Books.Online excerpt. 1971. Studies in inductive logic and probability, Vol. 1. University of California Press. 1977. Two essays on entropy. Shimony, Abner, ed. University of California Press. 1980. Studies in inductive logic and probability, Vol. 2. Jeffrey, R. C., ed. University of California Press.
Online bibliography. Under construction, with no entries dated later than 1937. Most of Carnap‘s publications from 1940 onwards can be tracked via the web-based Philosopher‘s Index, to which most academic libraries subscribe.
[edit] Other sources
Ivor Grattan-Guinness, 2000. In Search of Mathematical Roots. Princeton Uni. Press.Willard Quine, 1985. The Time of My Life: An Autobiography. MIT Press. Richardson, Alan W., 1998. Carnap‘s construction of the world : the Aufbau and the emergence of logical empiricism. Cambridge Uni. Press. Schilpp, P. A., ed., 1963. The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap. LaSalle IL: Open Court. Spohn, Wolfgang, ed., 1991. Erkenntnis Orientated: A Centennial Volume for Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach. Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1991. Logic, Language, and the Structure of Scientific Theories: Proceedings of the Carnap-Reichenbach Centennial, University of Konstanz, 21-24 May 1991. University of Pittsburgh Press.
[edit] Quotations
"In science there are no ‘depths‘; there is surface everywhere." (From the 1929 Vienna Circle manifesto.) WhenWittgenstein scolded him for having books about theparanormal in his library, Carnap replied: "But Ludwig, it is only an empirical question." "It is not our business to set up prohibitions, but to arrive at conventions… In logic there are no morals. Everyone is at liberty to build up his own logic, i.e. his own language, as he wishes. All that is required of him is that, if he wishes to discuss it, he must state his methods clearly, and give syntactical rules instead of philosophical arguments." The Logical Syntax of Language, §17 (1937)
[edit] External links
Rudolf Carnap Webpage and Directory of Internet ResourcesRudolf Carnap Collection at the University of Pittsburgh. Homepage of theCollected Works of Rudolf Carnap. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:Rudolf Carnap by Mauro Murzi.Precis of Carnap‘s philosophy.

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Categories:1891 births |1970 deaths |20th century philosophers |German-language philosophers |Analytic philosophers |Philosophers of language |Logicians |Metaphysicians |Naturalized citizens of the United States |Vienna Circle
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