From Frege and Russell to Carnap: Logic and Logicism in the 1920s
نویسنده
چکیده
Rudolf Carnap was a remarkably productive thinker and writer, making contributions on a variety of philosophical topics. As a result, he is a different philosopher for different audiences: For the general public (insofar as it knows him), he is the author of Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie (1928a), Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung (Hahn, Neurath & Carnap 1929), and "Überwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache" (1932), thus a prototypical positivist and anti-metaphysician; for philosophers of science he is the author of "Testability and Meaning" (1936-37), Logical Foundations of Probability (1950a), and Philosophical Foundations of Physics (1966), so a main contributor to the conceptual foundations of science and inductive logic; for philosophers of language, in turn, he is the author of Introduction to Semantics (1942), Meaning and Necessity (1947), and "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology" (1950b), an early and main supporter of Tarskian semantics, as well as a pioneer in the study of intensional and modal logic; for historians of analytic philosophy, finally, he is the author of Der Raum (1922a), Der logische Aufbau der Welt (1928b), and Logische Syntax der Sprache (1934), someone initially influenced by neo-Kantianism, then enthusiastically embracing the new logicalconstructionist approach of Russell, and instrumental in establishing scientific or analytic philosophy as a separate school, first in Vienna and then in the US. In this paper I want to draw attention to yet another side of Carnap: I want to talk about Carnap the logician, where "logic" is meant in the narrow sense of deductive and mathematical logic. In this area, too, he published a number of writings over the years: from Abriss der Logistik (1929a), through Foundations of Logic and Mathematics (1939) and Formalization of Logic (1943), to Einführung in die symbolische Logik (1954). Moreover, several of the texts mentioned above are directly connected with deductive logic as well, especially Logische Syntax der Sprache and Introduction to Semantics. Neverthe-
منابع مشابه
Developments in Logic: Carnap, Gödel, and Tarski
Analytic philosophy and modern logic are intimately connected, both historically and systematically. Thinkers such as Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein were major contributors to the early development of both; and the fruitful use of modern logic in addressing philosophical problems was, and still is, definitive for large parts of the analytic tradition. More specifically, Frege's analysis of th...
متن کاملThe Incompleteness Theorem, Volume 53, Number 4
414 NOTICES OF THE AMS VOLUME 53, NUMBER 4 I n September 1930 in Königsberg, on the third day of a symposium devoted to the foundations of mathematics, the young Kurt Gödel launched his bombshell announcing his incompleteness theorem. At that time, there were three recognized “schools” on the foundations of mathematics: the logicism based on the work of Frege, Russell, and Whitehead that saw ma...
متن کامل- 1 - Carnap and Modern Logic 1 Erich
A distinguishing feature of analytic philosophy, or at least of one central strand in it, is the use of modern logic for the purpose of clarifying and solving philosophical problems. The most prominent figure in this tradition was Bertrand Russell; and second only to Russell was Rudolf Carnap. Directly and strongly influenced by Russell, Carnap passed on this influence to legions of later philo...
متن کاملLogicism and the Development of Computer Science* Contents 1. Introduction 2. Philosophy of Mathematics in the Foundational Period 3. Logicism and Computer Science 4. How Computer Science Has Affected Logic 5. a Criticism of Logicism by Wittgenstein and Its Significance
This paper argues for the thesis that ideas originating in the philosophy of mathematics have proved very helpful for the development of computer science. In particular, logicism, the view that mathematics can be reduced to logic, was developed by Frege and Russell, long before computers were invented, and yet many of the ideas of logicism have been central to computer science. The paper attemp...
متن کاملRussell’s Logicism
Logicism is typically de ned as the thesis that mathematics reduces to, or is an extension of, logic. Exactly what “reduces” means here is not always made entirely clear. (More de nite articulations of logicism are explored in section 5 below.) While something like this thesis had been articulated by others (e.g., Dedekind 1888 and arguably Leibniz 1666), logicism only became a widespread subje...
متن کامل