The Vienna Circle and Logical Empiricism in the First Republic

2015 ◽  
pp. 29-40
Author(s):  
Friedrich Stadler
Keyword(s):  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Logical Empiricism ◽  
First Republic

scholarly journals Points of convergence between logical empiricism and inductive metaphysics: Hans Reichenbach and Erich Becher in comparison

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ansgar Seide
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
External World ◽  
Logical Empiricism ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
Hans Reichenbach

AbstractIn this paper, I take a closer look at Hans Reichenbach’s relation to metaphysics and work out some interesting parallels between his account and that of the proponents of inductive metaphysics, a tradition that emerged in the mid- and late 19th century and the early 20th century in Germany. It is in particular Hans Reichenbach’s conception of the relation between the natural sciences and metaphysics, as displayed in his treatment of the question of the existence of the external world, that shows some very interesting similarities with inductive metaphysics. By a comparison with the position of the inductive metaphysician Erich Becher and his handling of the problem of realism, I work out the parallels between Reichenbach’s program and inductive metaphysics. I come to the conclusion that while there are certainly some respects in which Reichenbach’s logical empiricism is closer to the positions of the representatives of the Vienna Circle, it turns out that with regard to his views on metaphysics there is a greater affinity with the program of inductive metaphysics.

scholarly journals Die linke Ecke des Wiener Kreises

1979 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudolf Lüscher
Keyword(s):  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Logical Empiricism ◽  
Direct Connection ◽  
Politically Active ◽  
Socialist Politics

AbstractBeckermann’s belief in a “direct connection” between Logical Empiricism and socialist politics is unjustified: (I) Logical Empiricism supports - if anything - 'rational', i.e. non-metaphysically grounded political positions, including non-socialist and authoritarian ones. (II) Logical Empiricism offers instruments to anybody willing to talk rationally about politics, but it cannot urge anybody to become politically active. (Ill) The only systematic attempt to develop a politically relevant sociology within the Vienna Circle, i.e. Neurath’s, is at best methodologically inconsistent and at worst pro-authoritarian.

Later Empiricism and Logical Positivism

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Skorupski
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Logical Empiricism ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Radical Empiricism ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Late Modern

The empiricist approaches to mathematics discussed in this article belong to an era of philosophy which we can begin to see as a whole. It stretches from Kant's Critiques of the 1780s to the twentieth-century analytic movements which ended, broadly speaking, in the 1950s—in and largely as a result of the work of Quine. Seeing this period historically is by no means saying that its ideas are dead; it just helps in understanding the ideas. That applies to the two versions of empiricism that were most prominent in this late modern period: the radical empiricism of Mill and the “logical” empiricism associated with the Vienna Circle positivism of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Mill and the logical positivists shared the empiricist doctrine that no informative proposition is a priori.

Schlick, Friedrich Albert Moritz (1882–1936)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Oberdan
Keyword(s):  
General Relativity ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Correspondence Theory ◽  
Logical Empiricism ◽  
Philosophical Thinking ◽  
Correspondence Theory Of Truth ◽  
Philosophical Movement ◽  
Theoretical Science

Moritz Schlick is usually remembered as the leader of the Vienna Circle, a group that flourished from the late 1920s to the mid-1930s, and made an important contribution to the philosophical movement known as ‘logical empiricism’. Yet many of Schlick’s most original contributions to philosophy antedated the hey-day of the Circle, providing the foundations for much of its subsequent development. He started his academic career as a physicist, and his early contributions to philosophy include an influential conventionalist interpretation of general relativity and a new account of the definitions of the basic terms of theoretical science. In the debates that flourished within the Vienna Circle he is famous for his commitment to the Principle of Verifiability and his defence of a correspondence theory of truth. In addition, his works during the final years of the Vienna Circle represent some of the most sober reflections on the problems that vexed the early logical empiricists. Although few of the views identified with logical empiricism currently find favour among philosophers, their approach to philosophy, especially their identification of its central perplexities, still wields enormous influence among contemporary thinkers. Since Schlick contributed significantly to the form logical empiricism assumed during its period of dominance, there can be little doubt that his thought continues to inspire much philosophical thinking today.

Semiotics and Philosophy

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-164
Author(s):  
Nathan Houser ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Logical Empiricism ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Ferdinand De Saussure ◽  
Reflective Thought ◽  
New Period ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
History Of

Semiotics has not been warmly welcomed as an area of research concentration within philosophy, especially not within philosophy in the English empirical tradition. But when we consider that much of the focus of semiotic research is signification, reference, and representation, it seems evident that semiotic questions are as old as reflective thought itself. A look at how these questions have been treated throughout the history of philosophy suggests that Umberto Eco was right in claiming that most major philosophers have grappled with sign theory, if only implicitly. The theory of signs was an active area of research during the Middle Ages and John Locke opened the Modern Age with the recommendation that semiotics should be cultivated. But the philosophers of Modernity embraced a Cartesian separation between mind and body unsupportive of a robust science of signs. When semiotics emerged as a discrete field of research in the writings of Charles S. Peirce and in the semiology of Ferdinand de Saussure, it remained on the fringes of philosophy. Around mid-20th century there was a resurgence of interest in semiotics and a promising attempt was made to merge American pragmatism and semiotics with the logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle. But that effort failed and semiotics was excluded from mainstream philosophy. There is now reason to suppose that philosophy, no longer under the domination of analytic philosophy, may be moving into a new period when a weakening commitment to epistemological nominalism will make room for a return to semiotic realism. Perhaps the time is right to follow Locke’s lead and to reconcile formal semiotics with philosophy—possibly heralding a new paradigm.

scholarly journals Juha Manninen and Friedrich Stadtler (eds.), The Vienna Circle and the Nordic Countries. Networks and Transformations of Logical Empiricism (Vienna: Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook vol.14, Springer, 2010)

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlo Penco
Keyword(s):  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Logical Empiricism ◽  
Nordic Countries

This volume on the Vienna Circle’s influence in the Nordic countries gives a very interesting presentation of an almost forgotten landmark.

Logical positivism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Logical Empiricism ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Scientific Philosophy ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Mathematical Techniques ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
The University

Logical positivism (logical empiricism, neo-positivism) originated in Austria and Germany in the 1920s. Inspired by late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century revolutions in logic, mathematics and mathematical physics, it aimed to create a similarly revolutionary scientific philosophy purged of the endless controversies of traditional metaphysics. Its most important representatives were members of the Vienna Circle who gathered around Moritz Schlick at the University of Vienna (including Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl, Kurt Gödel, Hans Hahn, Karl Menger, Otto Neurath and Friedrich Waismann) and those of the Society for Empirical Philosophy who gathered around Hans Reichenbach at the University of Berlin (including Walter Dubislav, Kurt Grelling and Carl Hempel). Although not officially members of either group, the Austrian philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper were, at least for a time, closely associated with logical positivism. The logical positivist movement reached its apogee in Europe in the years 1928–34, but the rise of National Socialism in 1933 marked the effective end of this phase. Thereafter, however, many of its most important representatives emigrated to the USA. Here logical positivism found a receptive audience among such pragmatically, empirically and logically minded American philosophers as Charles Morris, Ernest Nagel and W.V. Quine. Thus transplanted to the English-speaking world of ‘analytic’ philosophy it exerted a tremendous influence – particularly in philosophy of science and the application of logical and mathematical techniques to philosophical problems more generally. This influence began to wane around 1960, with the rise of a pragmatic form of naturalism due to Quine and a historical-sociological approach to the philosophy of science due mainly to Thomas Kuhn. Both of these later trends, however, developed in explicit reaction to the philosophy of logical positivism and thereby attest to its enduring significance.

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