Analytic & pragmatist · 1891–1970
Rudolf Carnap
Vienna Circle’s great system-builder, later in Chicago and Los Angeles
Knowledge of the world can be logically reconstructed from experience, and questions like “do numbers really exist?” are not factual questions but choices of a linguistic framework, to be judged by their usefulness.
Life and thought
Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) studied physics and philosophy at Jena, where he attended Frege’s logic lectures, and served in the First World War. He joined the Vienna Circle in 1926 and became its most systematic thinker, taught in Prague from 1931, and in 1935 emigrated to the United States, teaching at Chicago and later at UCLA.
In The Logical Structure of the World (1928) he tried to show how all our concepts of the world could be built up, by logic alone, from elementary experiences. He later argued that a question such as “do numbers really exist?” is not a question of fact. Asked inside a linguistic framework, such as arithmetic, it is trivial; asked from outside, it is a practical choice of which framework to use, to be judged by its usefulness. In a 1932 essay he held up Heidegger’s sentence “the Nothing itself nothings” as a model of a meaningless pseudo-statement. Quine, who admired him, attacked his distinction between analytic and synthetic truths, and their long exchange shaped mid-century analytic philosophy.
Works
Teachers
1848–1925Gottlob FregeCarnap attended Frege’s logic lectures at Jena before the First World War.Shaped by
1872–1970Bertrand RussellLogician, public intellectual and Nobel laureate; lectured in China 1920–21Shaped
1908–2000W. V. O. QuineQuine called Carnap his greatest teacher after visiting him in Prague in 1933.1926–2016Hilary PutnamHarvard philosopher who launched functionalism, then criticised itArgued against
1889–1976Martin HeideggerCarnap’s 1932 essay held up Heidegger’s “the Nothing itself nothings” as a model of a meaningless pseudo-sentence.Criticised by
1895–1973Max HorkheimerHorkheimer’s 1937 essay “The Latest Attack on Metaphysics” attacked logical positivism.1902–1994Karl PopperPopper rejected the Vienna Circle’s verification criterion of meaning, proposing falsifiability as a test of science, not of meaning.1908–2000W. V. O. Quine“Two Dogmas of Empiricism” is aimed chiefly at Carnap’s analytic–synthetic distinction.Meanwhile, in other traditions
1889–1976Martin HeideggerGerman philosopher of Being, compromised by his Nazi party membership1891–1962Hu ShiMay Fourth reformer who brought pragmatism to China1891–1956B. R. AmbedkarDalit leader, jurist and chief architect of India’s constitution1891–1937Antonio GramsciItalian communist leader who wrote his major work in Mussolini’s prisons1892–1940Walter BenjaminBerlin critic who joined Marxism, messianism and media theory1893–1988Liang ShumingPhilosopher and rural reformer, called “the last Confucian”On the record
Carnap both shaped Quine and was the main target of his critique, so the atlas draws two ties between them.
Quine’s 1932–33 fellowship took him to Prague, where Carnap was teaching; the Stanford Encyclopedia names the Logical Empiricists, “especially Carnap”, as Quine’s strongest influence, and reads “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951) as largely a debate with Carnap. Both ties stand.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Willard Van Orman Quine”
Carnap both shaped Quine and was the main target of his critique, so the atlas draws two ties between them.
Quine’s 1932–33 fellowship took him to Prague, where Carnap was teaching; the Stanford Encyclopedia names the Logical Empiricists, “especially Carnap”, as Quine’s strongest influence, and reads “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951) as largely a debate with Carnap. Both ties stand.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Willard Van Orman Quine”