Rudolf Carnap: biography of this analytical philosopher

This German thinker was one of the main representatives of the Vienna Circle.

Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) was a German philosopher who pioneered logical positivism, empiricism and symbolic logic. He is recognized as one of the greatest exponents of the philosophy of science of the early twentieth century, since among other things he contributed to the consolidation of a paradigm of scientific rigor within philosophy.

We will now take a look at the biography of Rudolf we will see the biography of Rudolf Carnapincluding some of the most important aspects of his life and work.

Rudolf Carnap: biography of a philosopher of science.

Rudolf Carnap was born on May 18, 1891 in Ronsdorf, a municipality located in northwestern Germany. From 1910 to 1914 he studied philosophy and traditional logic, as well as mathematics.at the University of Jena.

In that institution he worked together with Gottlob Frege, who was recognized as the greatest exponent of mathematical logic in the 19th century. At the same university, but in 1921, he received his Ph. he graduated as a doctor with a research on the concept of space, which he divided into three types: the first type, the second type, the third type and the third type.which he divided into three types: formal space, physical space and intuitive space.

From this he began to develop in an important way as a philosopher of science and discusses the theories of symbolic logic and physics, at which time he also addressed issues related to time and causality.

The Vienna circle and logical empiricism

In the intellectual dawn of twentieth century Vienna, there was a small group of philosophers and mathematicians who met to discuss some topics related to time and causality. met to discuss some topics related to philosophy and science.. This group was known as the Vienna circle, and its founder, the logical empiricist Moritz Schlick, had invited Carnap to work with them, within the circle and also at the University of Vienna.

Part of the work of the Vienna circle was to create a scientific perspective on the world, where it would be possible to apply the precision of the exact sciences to philosophical reflections and theories. In contrast to the approach of traditional logic, which studies the principles of the demonstration and verification of inferences by means of a language without strict formalization, Rudolf Carnap defended the principles of symbolic logic, or mathematical logic. The latter translates and systematizes, through a formalist language, intuitive notions of mathematics such as sets, numbers, algorithms, among others.

Through the concept of the criterion of stability, Carnap and other philosophers of logical empiricism rejected the more speculative traditions of theology and metaphysics, not so much because they were false as because they did not make meaningful claims in logical and formalistic terms. Moreover, they considered that many of the philosophical questions had no real meaning, and that they were posed by rhetoric and excessive language.

• You may be interested in "How are Psychology and Philosophy similar?"

Carnap's logical empiricism in Germany and the United States.

From here he made various connections with philosophers of science in the empiricist tradition working in Germany, and finally, in the year 1930 creates a special forum for the development of a new scientific philosophy, called Erkenntniss.

Through the influence of German empiricism, Carnap held that first-order terms and statements were reducible to second-order ones through a principle known as the principle of reducibility..

According to this, all concepts used to describe empirical facts are completely definable by terms that refer exclusively to aspects of immediate experience. Then, all empirical statements are susceptible of being converted into statements about immediate experience.

In his period within the circle and the University of Vienna, Carnap developed a more liberal approach to empiricism. a more liberal approach to empiricismfrom which he argued that the concepts of empirical science are not completely definable by purely experiential terms; but that they can at least be defined by "statements of reduction" and "statements of observation". The latter can serve to confirm an empirical statement, although not so much to offer a strict proof of existence or refutation.

Finally, he worked as a professor and researcher at the University of Prague, but due to the conflictive political context prior to the Second World War, Carnap went to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1941. In this country he worked as a professor at the University of Chicago, as a researcher at Harvard and later at UCLA. Through new influences and interests, Carnap continued his theorizing about semantics, the verification principle, probability, induction and philosophy of language..

Notable works

Rudolf Carnap's most important publication, which, among other things, established him as one of the most important one of the most important logical positivists of the 20th century, was the bookwas the book Logical Syntax of Languageof 1934. He argued that there is no such thing as logic or true language, beyond the concrete objectives pursued when we use it.

Other of Rudolf Carnap's most important works are Des Logische Aufbau der Welt (The Logical Structure of the World), and Pseudoproblems of Philosophyboth from 1928. Among the most recent and also outstanding works are Two Essays on Entropyof 1977; two volumes of Studies in Inductive Logic and Probabilityof 1971 and 1980 respectively; and Metallogogyof 1995.

Bibliographical references:

• Duignan, B. & Hempel, C. (2018). Rudolf Carnap. Retrieved July 23, 2018. Available at https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rudolf-Carnap.
• Arthur, P. (1963). The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap. Retrieved July 23, 2018. Available at http://fitelson.org/confirmation/carnap_schilpp_volume.pdf.