The Logical Structure of the World and Pseudoproblems in Philosophy

by Rudolf Carnap, Rolf A. George (Translator)

Available for the first time in 20 years, here are two important works from the 1920s by the best-known representative of the Vienna Circle. In The Logical Structure of the World, Carnap adopts the position of “methodological solipsism” and shows that it is possible to describe the world from the immediate data of experience. In his Pseudoproblems in Philosophy, he asserts that many philosophical problems are meaningless.

Genres: Philosophy, Logic, Nonfiction, Metaphysics, Science, Reference, Classics

364 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1928

About the author

Rudolf Carnap, a German-born philosopher and naturalized U.S. citizen, was a leading exponent of logical positivism and was one of the major philosophers of the twentieth century. He made significant contributions to philosophy of science, philosophy of language, the theory of probability, inductive logic and modal logic. He rejected metaphysics as meaningless because metaphysical statements cannot be proved or disproved by experience. He asserted that many philosophical problems are indeed pseudo-problems, the outcome of a misuse of language.

Read more : http://www.iep.utm.edu/carnap/

Reviews

[Michal Lipták · Rating 3 out of 5]

With hindsight it's a heroic failure, of course. But I'm intrigued in how closely aligned this so-called analytical philosophy was with so-called continental philosophy at the inception of divide. Carnap here is heavily indebted to Husserl, to the point that Verena Mayer accuses Carnap of plagiarising (then still unpublished) Ideen II, the lectures related to which Carnap was attending at the time. Although an entertaining claim, it's overblown, but you see the point.

Indeed, Carnap himself references Husserl at crucial points. Carnap selects "autopsychological basis", that is, "my experiences" as lowest constructional stratum, as starting point. He proclaims to apply ἐποχή in this case, thereby ensuring that autopsychological basis doesn't lay undue claims - this is indeed very similar to Husserl's approach to transcendental subjectivity. Carnap's differentiating between my body as vantage point and my body as object brings Husserl's famous distinction of Leib and Körper to mind. And both share crucial belief that there are regularities in a way we think, form judgments, and therefore contingencies related to "my" or "your experiences" can be somehow neutralized. In short, both try to show how science is possible.

The differences are likewise crucial, though. Husserl's approach is regressive - he descends to some low stratum (for example, natural attitude in Ideen I, pure passive perception in Analysen, which were developed in Logik, and so on) and then retraces his steps back to the higher meaning formations, which are usually predicative judgments, but can involve cultural objects such as in Phenomenological Psychology. Carnap's approach is progressive - he isolates within autopsychological realm certain basis relations and, as he announces in the title, construes higher meaning formations out of them. Before that, he completely formalizes the lowest constructional basis, strips it of any content so that, indeed, concepts literally are things (there is strong reminiscence of "atomic facts" of Tractatus here). This groundwork operation is the most thrilling here. However, when he comes to upper levels - cultural objects, values, and even intersubjectivity - he's still implicitly bound by common notions which he otherwise professes to eschew, and the constructional process offers only trivial insights, with only vague promise of providing thorough constructional account "in principle".

The difference finally comes to relief in the latter part, where Carnap basically criticizes Husserl for notions of "self" and "intentionality". While "my body" is a vantage point in constructional account, once such account is finished there's no room for self, or transcendental self, or anything like that. More painfully for Husserl, there's not reason to think "intentionality" is an irreducible relation, at the basis it's just relation between certain types of objects, but still reducible to basic relations.

This is actually central point of contention - whether we can, as Carnap hopes, get completely disembodied, disembedded, eschewing even our vantage point - or, as Husserl claims, we can't. If latter is true, it doesn't follow that free-for-all subjectivism is introduced to wreak havoc in sciences, it only means that there's ultimately some amount of contingency we won't ever get rid off, that investigations are ultimately endless. Husserl subscribes to this view, but for him this doesn't make science impossible, he precisely tries to prove that science is indeed possible under such conditions.

Carnap is correct that this point of contention involves, indeed, metaphysical questions. But there are good reasons to reject Carnap's approach. First reason concerns the fruits of each approach - now, some 100 years later, we know that whenever positivism encountered, for example, cultural objects or values, it referred us to infinite to-do list of sciences, waiting for complete brainscan disclosing "basic relations", and so on - while phenomenology continued to provide valuable, novel insights. Secondly, this project of logical positivism normatively asks too much - it asks nothing less than getting rid of language as medium. Rather than understanding language as mediating experiences, Carnap wants to present it as duplicating experiences - that is, he actually wants to imagine language as that Borgesian map which is the territory. Carnap ends the main text with Wittgenstein's prescriptive quote: Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen. And we know that Wittgenstein later turned into investigating language as medium for good reasons (although results vary, I'd suggest some inspiration from phenomenology which had it right earlier would have helped). Carnap remained stuck in his view, which is indeed heroic, but wrong. Phenomenological approach is actually more modest and more thorough - not prescribing anything such drastic, but approaching language as it is. That doesn't mean mediating errors, incorrect use of terminology, and so on - on contrary, phenomenology aspires to radical clarification. But in the end the fact that language is mediation, not reflection or duplication, remains as something that cannot be eschewed - and that's only different way of saying that intentionality is irreducible.

Nonetheless, I can imagine Carnap having some kind of renaissance in age of computers, since indeed the construction of lowest strata is the most thrilling part here - one finds nothing such painstaking in Husserl. It seems that Reza Negarestani tries to do something like that in Intelligence and Spirit, although a friend I trust is not thrilled by the result. But it also seems that current AI is not operating with simple additive computation, endless chains of endless sentences, and that it is modelled already on more complex way of thinking - and, for example, in On the Existence of Digital Objects, Yuk Hui once again finds Husserl a much better guide. And so Carnap still seems more like historically-conditioned utopian dream. One may want to keep it in mind for a following decade, though.

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Aufbau is pioneering as a logical explication of science based on relations and structure. Part 5 is still particularly lively and thought provoking.

[Tim Landström · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is exemplary of how philosophy should be done. Extremely clear and well written, with large parts dedicated to defining concepts and giving examples of how these are to be used. I think it’s so well written in fact, that even someone with minimal background in philosophy would be able to understand it due to its clarity and explicitness.

The goal of the book is to give an outline of a constructional system. To show that from certain basic elements (Carnap suggests “elementary experiences”) and certain basic relations (“recognition of similarity”) together with logic, all objects of science can be “constructed”. That is, be given a definition that consists only of these basic elements and relations. It follows from this, that all statements of science can be transformed into statements consisting only of the “given”.

The outline of the constructional system given in the book (with an autopsychological basis) is only a suggestion, and one of several possible systems (using different basic elements and relations, with their own advantages and shortcomings). The point is not to provide one true or complete constructional system, but merely to show that such a system is in principle possible. And that a reduction of all scientific statements into statements about basic elements and relations can in theory be done (even if doing so in practice might be extremely cumbersome).

The book also includes “Pseudoproblems in philosophy” which is an exposition of some standard talking points of logical positivism. Such as verificationism and the meaninglessness of many philosophical problems.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Obviously Carnap and his fellow positivists aren't exactly philosophically fashionable these days, but he's definitely worth a read! So much of contemporary metaphysics is set up in opposition to him that it's healthy to get a sense of his arguments on his own terms.

[Andrew Noselli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review to come, starting to work on it tomorrow, I hope....

[Thomas Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a lot like a bad version of Hegel's Greater Logic, but still quite interesting.

The problem with the (philosophical-constitutional) text is that it's beginning is spurious at best. It starts with the concept of "relation" without really giving adequate speculative definitions of said concept (though one can see in in giving relationality preeminence there is a forerunner here to Heidegger's later philosophy and Deleuze's as well).

Because of this, I believe, problems immediately arise in that Carnap gives an explanadum of "relation" through a specific instance of it: in this case a phenomenological holism whose conditions are given but, in turn, whose conditions are never explained in of themselves.

So what the concept of "relation" actually means per se remains far too ambiguous, even at the end of the constitutional system.

Then his attempt to explain this founding presupposition in terms of the system that has been generated from it is, frankly, completely nonsensical.

It's a shame that Carnap wrote the moronic "Elimination" article after this because despite my grievances there is still a lot to like here. Oh well.

[Steven Ericsson-Zenith · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting and profound study.

[Walter Mansolelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Acho que posso ler esse livro mais umas três vezes e ainda não vou entender metade. Mas é incrível mesmo assim.

[0:50 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fixing some of my ratings. This man was truly ahead of his time.