Frege’s philosophy of mind? The conception of subjectivity in Frege

Frege’s decisive and well-known critique of psychologism does not exclude, but rather presupposes, a certain peculiar conception of subjectivity.

Joseph Petzoldt e a sistematização da filosofia de Ernst Mach

A afirmação de Ernst Mach de que os objetos são feixes de sensação foi (e ainda é) amplamente interpretada em um sentido fenomenalístico, como se ele estivesse afirmando que as experiências perceptivas são a única realidade. O artigo irá reconstruir o sistema filosófico do aluno de Mach, Joseph Petzoldt, para propor uma interpretação diferente da obra de Mach, que a coloque no contexto mais amplo da polêmica contra o neokantismo generalizado da época.

Introducing Geltung

Introducing our new journal, Geltung.

Coincidences and Konstatierungen. Aspects of Methodological Creativity in Schlick's Science-Oriented Philosophizing

Moritz Schlick (1882–1936)—the integrating figure of the Vienna Circle—is an inspiring thinker who philosophizes in the immediate vicinity of contemporary physics in particular and other empirical sciences including psychology as well as ethics. In the context of interpreting Einstein’s (general) theory of relativity he wrote his „Space and time in contemporary physics, an introduction to the theory of relativity and gravitation“ [“Raum und Zeit in der gegenwärtigen Physik: zur Einführung in das Verständnis der Relativitäts- und Gravitations­theorie”]—first published in 1917. Schlick developed his conception of space-time coincidences of events. For the second edition he added the new chapter “X. Relations to Philosophy” using coincidences methodologically to connect terms which belong to different spaces of meaning. Starting in 1934—in the context of the debate on protocol sentences mainly with Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap—he offered his approach of Konstatierungen[1] to answer the question: “What is to be regarded as our fundament of knowledge?” I will shortly discuss Schlick’s term coincidence, move on to Konstatierungen and show some interrelations between them. I will argue for the methodological creativity in Schlick’s science-oriented philosophizing by explicating the inner structure of Konstatierungen within my 2-dimensional language of analysis. Finally, I will compare Schlick’s Konstatierungen with Kant’s synthetic a priori judgments and Frege’s thoughts as interrelated cases of two-dimensionally structured intermediate cases.

On the Empiricism of Logical Empiricism

This paper warns against misunderstanding the logical empiricists’ take on the concepts of experience and empiricism. Far from expressing traditionalist way-of-ideas conceptions, these concepts were themselves rethought and refashioned to accord with their overall aim of making contemporary philosophy of science fit for purpose. To this end, this paper disarms the supposed counter-examples of Schlick’s foundationalism and Carnap’s Aufbau and exemplifies the aimed for understanding by examples of the physialist theorising of Carnap and Neurath.

Continental Roots of Analytic Philosophy - Carnap and Frege as Examples

For a long time controversies between analytic and continental philosophy have dominated the discussion. However, the distinction itself is already problematic in two different aspects. First, both characterizations are, in comparison, somehow asymmetrical, since “analytic” is a methodological determination, whereas continental is a “geographical” one. Second, the geographic classification in question, according to which analytic philosophers should be assigned to the Anglo-Saxon region, does not obtain. Analytic philosophers such as Frege, Wittgenstein and Carnap not only came from the continent, but also experienced their essential intellectual influences there (Frege and Carnap in Jena, Wittgenstein in Vienna). In the following I would like to demonstrate my assertion by taking Frege and Carnap as examples and showing their continental roots.