Abstract
It was through his engagement with the program of logical analysis floated by Russell in 1915 that Carnap began to affect the shape of 20th century philosophy. The program aimed at bringing to philosophy a certain method or attitude, resembling that of the sciences in its focus on progress in solving problems rather than on defense of doctrines. Progress brought with it the doctrinal flux that soon saw the phenomenalism of Carnap’s Logische Aufbau der Welt 1 yield to the physicalism of his Logische Syntax der Sprache 2 and saw his early deductivism give way to the probabilism of his last 25 years, during which his work in semantics fostered a flowering of modal logic.3 He welcomed real progress and its attendant doctrinal flux from whatever source, others no less than himself. The celebrated “Death of Logical Positivism”4 refers to particular doctrines (e.g. phenomenological reductionism) and methods (e.g., syntax) that Carnap and his friends abandoned for reasons rooted in the program itself. Broadcasting out of Europe those of its participants and associates whom it did not kill, Nazi power propagated the movement, which grew and changed rapidly in response to hard challenges.
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Notes
Felix Meiner: Vienna, 1928, Hamburg, 1961. Transl. Rolf George, The Logical Structure of the World, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967.
Julius Springer, Vienna, 1934. Translation by Amethe Smeaton, The Logical Syntax of Language, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1937.
In J. Symbolic Logic 11 (1946) 33–64 Carnap announced soundness proofs for the simplest (S5) system of propositional modal logic and for quantified S5 relative to a semantics in which models are represented by the state descriptions of his Introduction to Semantics (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1942). He left the completeness question open, as did Stig Kanger in Provability in Logic (Stockholm 1957), the first publication proposing relational model theories. In J. Symbolic Logic 24 (1959) Saul Kripke published a completeness proof for quantified S5 (pp. 1–15), and announced results for other systems (pp. 323–324) with proofs appearing in Z. mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik 9 (1963) 67–96, where footnote 2 gives some early history — as do Hintikka and Kripke in Acta Philosophica Fennica 16 (1963) 65–94.
For which many claim reponsibility, starting with Karl Popper. See The Philosophy of Karl Popper, La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1974, vol. 1, pp. 69–71.
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1947, 1956.
Revue International de Philosophie 4 (1950) 20–40.
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1950, 1962.
Der Raum, ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftslehre, Kant-Studien, No. 56, Berlin, 1922.
2 vols., Jena, 1893, 1903.
3 vols., Cambridge, England, 1910–1913; 2nd ed., 1925–1927.
Open Court, Chicago and London, 1915.
The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, P. A. Schilpp (ed.), Open Court, La Salle, Illinois, 1963, p. 13.
Op. cit., p. v.
The title of Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy as abbreviated on the spine and cover of the first edition.
Scientific Method in Philosophy, pp. v-vi. Russell’s emphases.
An example outside physics: the relation 2/5 holds between the grandparent relation and the great-great-great grandparent relation. See Willard van Orman Quine, “Whitehead and modern logic”, The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, P. A. Schilpp (ed.), Northwestern University Press, 1941, p. 161.
Principia Mathematica, vol. 3, p. 233.
See The Structure of Appearance, Cambridge, Mass., 1951: Harvard University Press. Goodman reports (p. vii) beginning work on the project within a year or so of the Aufbau’s publication.
The Logical Structure of the Word, pp. xvi-xvii.
Percy Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics, New York: Macmillan, 1927.
“Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme I”, Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik, 1931.
Summaries in Polish and in German were published in 1931 and 1932. The full paper appeared in German translation much later: “Der Wahrheitsbegriff in den formalisierten Sprachen”, Studia Philosophica 1 (1936) 261–405. Carnap would offer this as prime evidence of the need for an international language. (He had in mind something like Esperanto or Ido, not English.)
The Logical Syntax of Language, p. xiii, Carnap’s emphases.
See The Philosophy of W. V. Quine (ed. L. E. Hahn and P. A. Schilpp), Open Court, La Salle, Illinois, 1986, p. 12.
Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, vol. 1 (Rudolf Carnap and Richard Jeffrey, eds.) 1971, vol. 2 (Richard Jeffrey, ed.) 1980.
First paragraph of “Two dogmas of empiricism”, W. V. Quine, From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1953.
“Quine and the confirmational paradoxes”, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 6, ed. P. French, T. Uehling, Jr. and H. Wettstein, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1981, pp. 425–452.
I collaborated with Carnap as a fellow-traveller — toward a destination closer to Bruno de Finetti’s: see “Reading Probabilismo”, Erkenntnis 31 (1989) 225–37.
See Figure 1 in Ernst Mach, Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen, Jena, 1886; translation by C. M. Williams, Contributions to the Analysis of Sensations, La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1896.
E.g., see sec. 11.9 of G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957;
E.g., see sec. 11.9 of G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention 2nd ed., Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell, 1963).
See “Inductive logic and rational decisions”, Studies in Inductive Logic and Probability, vol. 1 (fn. 25 above).
Aufbau, preface. I thank Frank Döring, Michael Friedman, Saul Kripke, and Michaelis Michael for setting me straight at various points in this paper.
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Jeffrey, R.C. (1991). After Carnap. In: Spohn, W. (eds) Erkenntnis Orientated: A Centennial Volume for Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3490-3_13
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