Carnap, Rudolf (1891–1970)

Author(s):  
Bruce Elder

Rudolf Carnap was a German-American philosopher, and was widely regarded as one of most important of the 20th century. Politically engaged and inclined toward utopianism, Carnap was a leading member of the Vienna Circle and a staunch advocate of the unity of science thesis, which held that the various physical sciences—physics, astronomy, chemistry, and biology—could be unified into a single overarching theory. He worked across numerous fields, including the foundations of probability, modal theory, inductive logic, and semantics. His principal philosophical method was logical analysis, the final goal of which, he explained, is to analyze all assertions of science and everyday life alike, to identify the method of verification for each proposition. This method is grounded in the anti-metaphysical verificationist principle, according to which a statement is meaningful only if a method of verifying it is available. Carnap himself was well aware that his philosophy shared in the same spirit as modernist art. In his preface to Die Logische Aufbau der Welt (1928) Carnap claims that there is "an inner kinship" between the attitude on which his philosophical work is founded, "and the intellectual attitude which presently manifests itself in entirely different walks of life; we feel this orientation in artistic movements."

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ansgar Seide

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.


Author(s):  
Marina S. Chvanova ◽  
Irina A. Kiselyova

We examine the formation of the concept of “value orientations”, “professional value orientations of students”. The classification is presented taking into account the following profes-sional value orientations: “professional and personal”, “professional and group”, “social and pro-fessional”. Professional value orientations are analyzed taking into account their importance, with subdivision into instrumental and terminal ones. We consider the development of professional value orientations in a historical and logical sequence with a change of stages, with characteristic features, taking into account the presented classification. The following periods are considered: the second half of the 19th – early 20th century, 20–40s of the 20th century, 50–60s of the 20th century, 60–80s of the 20th century, 80–90s of the 20th century, 21th century. The characteristic features of the stage, the means of influencing the value orientations of young people, are analyzed, which made it possible to identify the transformation of professional value orientations over time, including in the context of Internet socialization.


1985 ◽  
Vol 17 (51) ◽  
pp. 71-96
Author(s):  
Javier Echeverría

One of the main deficiencies of the twentieth century philosophy of science, in spite of evident achievements in the logical analysis and reconstruction of scientific theories, is the separation between formal sciences and those sciences with empirical contents. This distinction derives from Carnap and it was generally admitted by the Vienna Circle since the publication of “Formalwissenschaft und Realwissenschaft” in Erkenntnis in 1935. Later philosophy of science, in spite of other criticism of the neopositivist programme, has maintained this separation. It can be claimed that Realwissenschaften, physics in particular, have determined the development of later philosophy of science. Analyses of scientific theories most of the time refer to physical theories, and occasionally to biological ones. There is still a lot to be done in the field of mathematics and logic, in order to analyse and reconstruct their theories. But even if this task is undertaken, and some progress has been done lately, there is still a lot of work to do before a general theory of science can be proposed which transcends such a division between formal and empirical sciences, let alone the human or social sciences. This paper is intended as a contribution to supersede the first dichotomy between formal and physical sciences. One of the main problems in order to make some progress along these lines is that since its origins logical positivism had a deficient theory of knowledge, and the same happened with analytical philosophy developed immediately afterwards. This paper thus criticises examples of such a type of theory of knowledge, as expressed in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, and Russell’s Philosophy of Logical Atomism. The core argument is as follows: these theorizations are inadequate for scientific knowledge; this type of knowledge, particularly the notion of ‘sign’ cannot be adapted to the simple scheme proposed in those works. The criticism here undertaken is developed from a rationalist point of view, in a sense which is closer to Leibniz and Saussure, than to recent philosophers fascinated with the word ‘reason’. Some new proposals are put forward, necessarily provisional, which justify the term, which in turn could be perfectly substituted by another, of Semiology of Science.


Xihmai ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (18) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Fournier Garcí­a ◽  
Bridget M. Zavala Moynahan

Resumen A lo largo del Camino Real los habitantes usaron la cultura material - incluyendo objetos de uso cotidiano destinados a la preparación, almacenamiento y servicio de alimentos- para construir y reafirmar aspectos identitarios. En este ensayo, derivado de nuestras investigaciones concluidas en 2013, consideramos patrones de consumo de estos objetos desde el siglo XVIII hasta inicios del XX reflejados en inventarios de bienes de la época y contextos arqueológicos de la Nueva Vizcaya colonial (hoy Durango y Chihuahua). Contrastamos entre las vajillas que emplearon las personas con alto poder adquisitivo y los de uso entre el común de la gente, según los registros documentales y los contextos arqueológicos con diversas funciones y temporalidades registrados en el valle del Rí­o Sextí­n, Durango.   Palabras clave: Nueva Vizcaya, Camino Real, consumo cotidiano, haciendas, identidad Abstract   The residents along the Royal Road used material culture, including everyday life objects related to the preparation, storage and serving of foods, to construct and reaffirm aspects of their social identity and status. In this article, based on our research finished in 2013, we consider their consumption as reflected in 18th to 20th century documents and archaeological contexts from southern New Biscay (modern-day Durango and Chihuahua). We compare ceramic goods used by individuals with high economic standing with those employed by commoners, as registered in historical sources and data from archaeological sites with diverse functions and temporalities, recorded in the Sextí­n valley, Durango. Keywords: New Biscay, Royal Road, everyday life consumption, haciendas, identity


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-92
Author(s):  
José Edilson Amorim

ResumoA partir de uma crônica de Bráulio Tavares, este artigo reflete sobre cenas da precariedade de ontem e de hoje. A primeira cena está em Lima Barreto, em Recordações do escrivão Isaías Caminha, ao referir a Revolta da Vacina no Rio de Janeiro do século XX, comparada às manifestações de 2013 e 2014 no país; a segunda é a espetacularização da mídia sobre as manifestações de rua em 2013 e 2014, e sobre o processo de impedimento do mandato presidencial de Dilma Rousseff em 2015; a terceira é uma cena da vida cotidiana de uma moça de Brasília em outubro de 2014. As três situações revelam o mundo da classe trabalhadora e seu desamparo em meio ao espetáculo midiático.Palavras-chave: Trabalho. Mídia. Política. Espetáculo. AbstractFrom a chronicle by Bráulio Tavares, this paper reflects about scenes of the precariousness of yesterday and today. The first scene is in Lima Barreto’s novel Recordações do escrivão Isaías Caminha (Memories of the scrivener Isaías Caminha), when referring to the Vaccine Revolt in the Rio de Janeiro of the 20th century, compared to the manifestations of 2013 and 2014 in Brazil; the second is about the media spectacularization of the street manifestations between 2013 e 2014 in Brazil, and also on Dilma Rousseff's impeachment process in 2015; the third one is from the everyday life of a girl from Brasília in October of 2014. All those three situations reveal the world of the working class and its helplessness in the face of the media spectacularization.Keywords: Work. Media. Politics. Spectacle.


2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-41
Author(s):  
Oszkár Gorcsa

The World War can be justifiably called the great seminal catastrophe of the 20th century, because the war that should have ended every further war, just disseminated the seeds of another cataclysm. From this point of view it is comprehensible why lots of historians deal with the named period. Numerous monographies and articles that deal with the destructing and stimulating eff ect of the Great War have seen the light of day. However, the mentioned works usually have serious defi cenceis, as most of them deal only with the battlefi elds, and a small proportion deals with the question of everyday life and hinterland, and the ordeals of the POWs are superfi cially described. In case of Hungary, the more serious researches related to POWs only started at the time of the centenary. This is why we can still read in some Serbian literatures about the people annihilating endeavors of the „huns” of Austria–Hungary. My choice of subject was therefore justified by the reasons outlined above. In my presentation I expound on briefly introducing the situations in the austro–hungarian POW camps. Furthermore, the presentation depicts in detail the everyday life, the medical and general treatment, clothing supply, the question of the minimal wages and working time of the prisoner labour forces. Lastly, I am depicting the problem of escapes and issues dealing POWs marriage and citizenship requests.


Author(s):  
Sabine Vogt

Whenever we meet an unknown person, our first judgment, even unwillingly and often subconsciously, starts from his or her external appearance. Since character can be properly recognized only from words and deeds observed over some time, at first sight we have to rely on what we immediately can see. This physiognomical first approach to each other is as old as humankind, and, though it has never been able to be proved a proper science, in everyday life we all believe in and use physioculture. The earliest extant written work on the subject is the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise Physiognomonica. The author of its first part, in discussing the methodology of the art, refers to Aristotle, who develops the logical foundation of physiognomical inference: as an enthymeme, a syllogism from signs. Yet, concentrating solely on the formal logical analysis, Aristotle does not touch the central point of physiognomics; it C. S. Peirce’s discovery of the triadic relation of the sign that was able to shed new light on this central problem and to see physiognomics as a process of semiosis. Thus, Aristotle founded the formal logical basis, from which modern semiotics developed new approaches to physiognomics, taking them in account in several strands of their research.


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