Empiricism at the Crossroads


Book Description

Rather than a monolithic movement of naïve empiricists, the Vienna Circle represented a discussion forum for what were sometimes compatible, sometimes conflicting philosophical approaches to empirical evidence. The Circle’s protocol-sentence debate — here reconstructed and analyzed — provides an exceptional vantage point from which to survey the various options and choices of the participants. Author Thomas Uebel mines the diaries, letters, and notes of the group’s leading philosophers to show how their ideas emerged from real-world arguments, personal relationships, and historical settings.




The Routledge Handbook of Logical Empiricism


Book Description

Logical empiricism is a philosophical movement that flourished in the 1920s and 30s in Central Europe and in the 1940s and 50s in the United States. With its stated ambition to comprehend the revolutionary advances in the empirical and formal sciences of their day and to confront anti-modernist challenges to scientific reason itself, logical empiricism was never uncontroversial. Uniting key thinkers who often disagreed with one another but shared the aim to conceive of philosophy as part of the scientific enterprise, it left a rich and varied legacy that has only begun to be explored relatively recently. The Routledge Handbook of Logical Empiricism is an outstanding reference source to this challenging subject area, and the first collection of its kind. Comprising 41 chapters written by an international and interdisciplinary team of contributors, the Handbook is organized into four clear parts: The Cultural, Scientific and Philosophical Context and the Development of Logical Empiricism Characteristic Theses of and Specific Issues in Logical Empiricism Relations to Philosophical Contemporaries Leading Post-Positivist Criticisms and Legacy Essential reading for students and researchers in the history of twentieth-century philosophy, especially the history of analytical philosophy and the history of philosophy of science, the Handbook will also be of interest to those working in related areas of philosophy influenced by this important movement, including metaphysics and epistemology, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language.




What Does it Mean to be an Empiricist?


Book Description

This book begins with an observation: At the time when empiricism arose and slowly established itself, the word itself had not yet been coined. Hence the central question of this volume: What does it mean to conduct empirical science in early modern Europe? How can we catch the elusive figure of the empiricist? Our answer focuses on the practices established by representative scholars. This approach allows us to demonstrate two things. First, that empiricism is not a monolith but exists in a plurality of forms. Today’s understanding of the empirical sciences was gradually shaped by the exchanges among scholars combining different traditions, world views and experimental settings. Second, the long proclaimed antagonism between empiricism and rationalism is not the whole story. Our case studies show that a very fruitful exchange between both systems of thought occurred. It is a story of integration, appropriation and transformation more than one of mere opposition. We asked twelve authors to explore these fascinating new facets of empiricisms. The plurality of their voices mirrors the multiple faces of the concept itself. Every contribution can be understood as a piece of a much larger puzzle. Together, they help us better understand the emergence of empiricism and the inventiveness of the scientific enterprise.




Empiricism and the Foundations of Psychology


Book Description

Intended for philosophically minded psychologists and psychologically minded philosophers, this book identifies the ways that psychology has hobbled itself by adhering too strictly to empiricism, this being the doctrine that all knowledge is observation-based. In the first part of this two-part work, we show that empiricism is false. In the second part, we identify the psychology-relevant consequences of this fact. Five of these are of special importance: (i) Whereas some psychopathologies (e.g. obsessive-compulsive disorder) corrupt the activity mediated by one's psychological architecture, others (e.g. sociopathy) corrupt that architecture itself. (ii) The basic tenets of psychoanalysis are coherent. (iii) All propositional attitudes are beliefs. (iv) Selves are minds that self-evaluate. And: (v) It is by giving our thoughts a perceptible form that we enable ourselves to evaluate them, and it is by expressing ourselves in language and art that we give our thoughts a perceptible form. (Series A)




Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle


Book Description

This book offers a critical update of current Wittgenstein research on the Tractatus logico-philosophicus (TLP) and its relation to the Vienna Circle. The contributions are written by renowned Wittgenstein scholars, on the occasion of the "Wittgenstein Years" 1921/1922 with a special focus on its origin, reception, and interpretation then and now. The main topic is the mutual relation between Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle (esp. Schlick, Waismann, Carnap, Gödel), but also Russell and Ramsey. In addition, included in this volume are new studies on Wittgenstein's life and work, on the philosophy of the TLP, and on the Wittgenstein family in philosophical and historical context. Furthermore, unpublished documents on Wittgenstein and Waismann from the archives are provided in form of edited and commented primary sources. As per the book series' usual format, a general part of this Yearbook covers a study on Neurath's economy as well as reviews of related publications.




Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences


Book Description

This Encyclopedia offers a fresh, integrated and creative perspective on the formation and foundations of philosophy and science in European modernity. Combining careful contextual reconstruction with arguments from traditional philosophy, the book examines methodological dimensions, breaks down traditional oppositions such as rationalism vs. empiricism, calls attention to gender issues, to ‘insiders and outsiders’, minor figures in philosophy, and underground movements, among many other topics. In addition, and in line with important recent transformations in the fields of history of science and early modern philosophy, the volume recognizes the specificity and significance of early modern science and discusses important developments including issues of historiography (such as historical epistemology), the interplay between the material culture and modes of knowledge, expert knowledge and craft knowledge. This book stands at the crossroads of different disciplines and combines their approaches – particularly the history of science, the history of philosophy, contemporary philosophy of science, and intellectual and cultural history. It brings together over 100 philosophers, historians of science, historians of mathematics, and medicine offering a comprehensive view of early modern philosophy and the sciences. It combines and discusses recent results from two very active fields: early modern philosophy and the history of (early modern) science. Editorial Board EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Dana Jalobeanu University of Bucharest, Romania Charles T. Wolfe Ghent University, Belgium ASSOCIATE EDITORS Delphine Bellis University Nijmegen, The Netherlands Zvi Biener University of Cincinnati, OH, USA Angus Gowland University College London, UK Ruth Hagengruber University of Paderborn, Germany Hiro Hirai Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands Martin Lenz University of Groningen, The Netherlands Gideon Manning CalTech, Pasadena, CA, USA Silvia Manzo University of La Plata, Argentina Enrico Pasini University of Turin, Italy Cesare Pastorino TU Berlin, Germany Lucian Petrescu Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Justin E. H. Smith University de Paris Diderot, France Marius Stan Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA Koen Vermeir CNRS-SPHERE + Université de Paris, France Kirsten Walsh University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada




Edgar Zilsel: Philosopher, Historian, Sociologist


Book Description

This book provides a new all-round perspective on the life and work of Edgar Zilsel (1891-1944) as a philosopher, historian, and sociologist. He was close to the Vienna Circle and has been hitherto almost exclusively referred to in terms of the so-called “Zilsel thesis” on the origins of modern science. Much beyond this “thesis”, Zilsel’s brilliant work provides original insights on a broad number of topics, ranging from the philosophy of probability and statistics to the concept of “genius”, from the issues of scientific laws and theories to the sociological background of science and philosophy, and to the political analysis of the problems of his time. Praised by Herbert Feigl as an “outstanding brilliant mind”, Zilsel, being as a Social-Democrat of Jewish origins, mostly led a life of hardship marked by emigration and coming to a sudden and tragic end by suicide in 1944. The impossibility of an academic career has hindered the reception of Zilsel’s scientific work for a long time. This volume is a contribution to its late reception, providing new insights especially into his work during his years in Vienna; moreover, it shows the heuristic value of Zilsel’s ideas for future scholarly research – in philosophy, history, and sociology.




What is this thing called Philosophy of Language?


Book Description

Philosophy of language explores some of the most abstract yet most fundamental questions in philosophy. The ideas of some of the subject's great founding figures, such as Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell, as well as of more recent figures such as Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam, are central to a great many philosophical debates to this day. In this clear and carefully structured introduction to the subject Gary Kemp explains the following key topics: the basic nature of philosophy of language, its concepts, and its historical development Frege’s theory of sense and reference; Russell's theory of definite descriptions Wittgenstein's Tractatus, Ayer, and the Logical Positivists recent perspectives including Kripke, Kaplan and Putnam; arguments concerning necessity, indexicals, rigid designation and natural kinds The pragmatics of language, including speech-acts, presupposition and conversational implicature Davidson’s theory of language, the ‘principle of charity’, and the indeterminacy of interpretation puzzles surrounding the propositional attitudes (sentences which ascribe beliefs to people) Quine’s naturalism and its consequences for philosophy of language. The challenges presented by the later Wittgenstein Contemporary directions, including contextualism, fictional objects and the phenomenon of slurs This second edition has been thoroughly revised to include new key topics and updated material. Chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary make this an indispensable introduction to those teaching philosophy of language and will be particularly useful for students coming to the subject for the first time.




The Oxford Handbook of The History of Analytic Philosophy


Book Description

During the course of the twentieth century, analytic philosophy developed into the dominant philosophical tradition in the English-speaking world. In the last two decades, it has become increasingly influential in the rest of the world, from continental Europe to Latin America and Asia. At the same time there has been deepening interest in the origins and history of analytic philosophy, as analytic philosophers examine the foundations of their tradition and question many of the assumptions of their predecessors. This has led to greater historical self-consciousness among analytic philosophers and more scholarly work on the historical contexts in which analytic philosophy developed. This historical turn in analytic philosophy has been gathering pace since the 1990s, and the present volume is the most comprehensive collection of essays to date on the history of analytic philosophy. It contains state-of-the-art contributions from many of the leading scholars in the field, all of the contributions specially commissioned. The introductory essays discuss the nature and historiography of analytic philosophy, accompanied by a detailed chronology and bibliography. Part One elucidates the origins of analytic philosophy, with special emphasis on the work of Frege, Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein. Part Two explains the development of analytic philosophy, from Oxford realism and logical positivism to the most recent work in analytic philosophy, and includes essays on ethics, aesthetics, and political philosophy as well as on the areas usually seen as central to analytic philosophy, such as philosophy of language and mind. Part Three explores certain key themes in the history of analytic philosophy.




Models and Theories


Book Description

Models and theories are of central importance in science, and scientists spend substantial amounts of time building, testing, comparing and revising models and theories. It is therefore not surprising that the nature of scientific models and theories has been a widely debated topic within the philosophy of science for many years. The product of two decades of research, this book provides an accessible yet critical introduction to the debates about models and theories within analytical philosophy of science since the 1920s. Roman Frigg surveys and discusses key topics and questions, including: What are theories? What are models? And how do models and theories relate to each other? The linguistic view of theories (also known as the syntactic view of theories), covering different articulations of the view, its use of models, the theory-observation divide and the theory-ladenness of observation, and the meaning of theoretical terms. The model-theoretical view of theories (also known as the semantic view of theories), covering its analysis of the model-world relationship, the internal structure of a theory, and the ontology of models. Scientific representation, discussing analogy, idealisation and different accounts of representation. Modelling in scientific practice, examining how models relate to theories and what models are, classifying different kinds of models, and investigating how robustness analysis, perspectivism, and approaches committed to uncertainty-management deal with multi-model situations. Models and Theories is the first comprehensive book-length treatment of the topic, making it essential reading for advanced undergraduates, researchers, and professional philosophers working in philosophy of science and philosophy of technology. It will also be of interest to philosophically minded readers working in physics, computer sciences and STEM fields more broadly.