Neurath Contra Schlick. On the Discussion of Truth in the Vienna Circle

Abstract

My remarks concern the discussion of the problem of truth and the basis of knowledge, which took place in the years 1934/5 between members of the Vienna Circle in the journals Erkenntnis and Analysis. In his essay ‘On the Foundation of Knowledge’ (1934) Schlick criticised the theory of protocol sentences held by Neurath and Carnap, which for him amounted to an indefensible coherence theory of truth and an indefensible conventionalism concerning the empirical base. He pleaded for an absolutely certain foundation of empirical knowledge, his ‘constatations’, by means of which a comparison and agreement of knowledge and reality became possible.

Notes

First published as ‘Neurath kontra Schlick. Zur Wahrheitsdiskussion im Wiener Kreis’, in Wittgenstein, der Wiener Kreis und der kritische Rationalismus. Akten des 3. Internationalen Wittgenstein-Symposiums, 19789, Hrsg. H. Berghel, A. Hübner, E. Köhler, Schriftenreihe der Wittgenstein-Gesellschaft Bd. 3, © 1979, Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, Wien. Translated with kind permission of Verlag Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky and the author by T. E. Uebel.