The Cambridge Companion To Carnap

This book explores the major themes of Carnap's philosophy and discusses his relationship with the Vienna Circle.

Publisher Description

If there is a movement or school that epitomizes analytic philosophy in the middle of the twentieth century, it is logical empiricism. Logical empiricists created a scientifically and technically informed philosophy of science, established mathematical logic as a topic in and tool for philosophy, and initiated the project of formal semantics. Accounts of analytic philosophy written in the middle of the twentieth century gave logical empiricism a central place in the project. The second wave of interpretative accounts was constructed to show how philosophy should progress, or had progressed, beyond logical empiricism. The essays survey the formative stages of logical empiricism in central Europe and its acculturation in North America, discussing its main topics, and achievements and failures, in different areas of philosophy of science, and assessing its influence on philosophy, past, present, and future.

Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) was unquestionably one of the most important philosophers of all time. He trained as a mathematician, and his work in philosophy started as an attempt to provide an explanation of the truths of arithmetic, but in the course of this attempt he not only founded modern logic but also had to address fundamental questions in the philosophy of language and philosophical logic. Frege is generally seen (along with Russell and Wittgenstein) as one of the fathers of the analytic method, which dominated philosophy in English-speaking countries for most of the twentieth century. His work is studied today not just for its historical importance but also because many of his ideas are still seen as relevant to current debates in the philosophies of logic, language, mathematics and the mind. The Cambridge Companion to Frege provides a route into this lively area of research.

The volume provides clear and comprehensive coverage of the main methodological debates and approaches within philosophy. The book gives equal weight to analytical and continental approaches, and pays attention to approaches that are often overlooked.

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) is widely regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. Born in Germany and later a US citizen, he was a founder of the philosophical movement known as Logical Empiricism. He was strongly influenced by a number of different philosophical traditions (including the legacies of both Kant and Husserl), and also by the German Youth Movement, the First World War (in which he was wounded and decorated), and radical socialism. This book places his central ideas in a broad cultural, political and intellectual context, showing how he synthesised many different currents of thought to achieve a philosophical perspective that remains strikingly relevant in the twenty-first century. Its rich account of a philosopher's response to his times will appeal to all who are interested in the development of philosophy in the twentieth century.

The most convenient and accessible guide to Gadamer currently available.

This is one of the most comprehensive collections of critical essays to be published on the philosophy of Karl Popper.

Featuring twenty-two chapters written by leading international scholars, this major publication covers all the key figures and movements from Frege to Derrida and philosophy of language to feminist philosophy.

Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) was the most important philosopher of the movement known as logical empiricism or logical positivism, still the basis of much modern analytic philosophy. It was long thought that this movement had been destroyed by the polemics of Quine, Popper, and Kuhn. But recently, leading philosophers have been re-appraising this verdict. It is no longer universally agreed that Quine or Popper "won" their disputes with Carnap, and some have now been arguing that Kuhn's ideas are--as Carnap himself thought--perfectly compatible with logical empiricism. This volume presents the latest contributions to this discussion from both sides, and adds a number of new voices, who look at Carnap from a more international point of view -- bringing out, for instance, the roots of his thought in Continental neo-Kantianism and Dilthey's Lebensphilosophie, and stressing his deep commitment to political and cultural change. Carnap grew up in Jena, and in his student days was an active member there of the utopian "Sera Group", part of the German youth movement. At the same time, he was one of Frege's few students, and was deeply influenced by him.