3Nd Tilps History of Analytic Philosophy Workshop

3 nd TiLPS History of Analytic Philosophy Workshop Yemima Ben-Menahem (Shalem), Objectivity and the Variety of Language: Quine, Putnam, Davidson Quine has developed two arguments that point to the obstacles facing an objective understanding of the language-world relation: the indeterminacy of translation and the inscrutability of reference, or, as it is also called ontological relativity. This paper begins with a brief examination of these arguments, both in terms of their connections to earlier epistemic positions and in terms of their evolution in Quine's writings. It then moves to explore Putnam's and Davidson's responses to the challenge and inspiration of Quine. Davidson affirms his agreement with Quine's theses in many places, and Putnam advanced a number of model-theoretic arguments that reinforce Quine's critique of an objective reference relation. The paper argues, however, that despite these apparent similarities and avowals of consent, there are highly significant differences between the three philosophers on the question of the word-world relation and its objectivity. Moreover, the paper seeks to show that while Quine, Putnam, and Davidson could all be said to respond to the skeptical arguments they have encountered with a kind of pragmatist anti-skeptical stance, their routes to this pragmatist stance were rather diverse. Joan Bertran San-Millan (ASCR, Prague) Frege and Peano on Axiomatisation and Formalisation In contemporary historical studies Peano is usually linked with the logical tradition pioneered by Frege. I shall question this association. Specifically, I shall defend, on the one hand, that Frege's and Peano's axiomatisations of logic relied of divergent notions of calculus; and, on the other, that they developed different notions of formalisation that resulted from incompatible approaches to logic. Cleber Correa (São Paolo/MCMP) Carnap and Neo-Quineans on Ontological Questions Carnap and Quine are two relevant names for contemporary metaontology. According to the received view, Carnap and his successors hold a dismissive perspective according to which ontological disputes are trivial and unsubstantial. Neo-Quineans, in turn, are often portrayed as holding the opposite view. I offer reasons to think that the contrast between Carnap’s stance and Neo-Quineans’ is not as clear as described above. I argue, first, that the scope of Carnap’s dismissivism excludes what Neo-Quineans are not dismissive about. Second, I argue that Carnap’s strategy for answering practical questions agrees with a relevant aspect of Neo- Quineans’ method for ontology: the balancing of theoretical virtues. Fons Dewulf (Ghent) Leo Apostel and Rudolf Carnap: The Development of Logical Empiricism in Post-War Europe In this paper I uncover the afterlife of Rudolf Carnap’s views on ethics in Europe after the Second World War. To that end I discuss the institutional struggle of the Belgian philosopher, Leo Apostel (1925-1995), who aimed to found a politically engaged, logical empiricist inspired program at Ghent University between 1959 and 1965. Uncovering Apostel’s attempt, I claim, is interesting because it not only sheds new light on Carnap’s ethical position, but also on the reception of logical empiricist philosophy in post-war Europe. Joshua Eisenthal (Pittsburgh) A New Role for Ontology: The Expressive Resources of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus On its surface, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus seems to contain a bold and speculative ontological theory. Although a number of commentators deny that the Tractatus relies on such an ontological theory, a major challenge for such commentators is to offer an alternative interpretation of Wittgenstein’s “simple objects”. To address this challenge, I argue that it is necessary to appreciate the extent of the influence of Heinrich Hertz. I argue that Hertz’s notorious hypothesis of “hidden masses” exemplifies a particular logical role for the introduction of unfamiliar ontological entities, and that this in turn leads to a logical interpretation of Wittgenstein’s simple objects. Jim Hutchinson (Bloomington) Frege on the Generality of Logic Frege claims that the laws of logic are characterized by their “generality,” and he seems to have a kind of normative generality in mind. But what exactly does this generality amount to? I argue that we can only understand it by connecting what Frege says about generality with his thinking about truth, judgement, and science more generally. For him, the laws of logic as those that appear in every one of the scientific systems whose construction is the ultimate aim of science, and in which all truths have a place. Junyeol Kim (Connecticut) Frege on Logic qua the Science of Truth Frege takes logic as the science of truth throughout his career. However, the mature Frege makes remarks which seem to go against the idea that logic is the science of truth. This paper shows that the tension we find in the mature Frege’s comments on the relationship between logic and truth can be explained away by accepting that truth is an object. Frege explicitly claims that truth is the True, which is an object. There is a substantive sense in which logic is the science of the True for the mature Frege. His seemingly problematic comments on logic and truth go hand in hand with the conception of logic as the science of the True. Daniel Kuby (Konstanz) On the Benefits of the Cold War: The Case of Paul Feyerabend and the Third Vienna Circle Paul Feyerabend’s formative years in post-war Vienna (1946-1955) raise an interesting conundrum: On one side, primary sources (like his dissertation 1951) indicate that his intellectual formation occurred on the background of scientific philosophy and, in particular, Logical Empiricism. On the other hand, virtually all historical evidence attests that by the mid 1930s the philosophical landscape in Europe had been purged from most scientifically oriented philosophy. In this talk I offer a solution to this puzzle by giving a socio-historical account of the (brief) re- emergence of Logical Empiricism in post-war Vienna due to upcoming Cold War. Benjamin Marschall (Cambridge) Carnap’s Internal Platonism In his Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology, Carnap famously argued that we can do anything a mathematical Platonist does – quantify over numbers, hold them to be mind-independent, claim that numerals refer to mathematical objects – without committing ourselves to any dubious metaphysics. I will develop a new argument showing that this internal Platonism is unstable, by combining Beth’s argument from non-standard models (Beth 1963) with Gödel’s consistency objection (Gödel 1995a). F. A. Muller (Rotterdam) Wittgenstein on Russell’s Paradox in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus The last sentences of 3.333 of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922): This at once clear if instead of `�(��) ', we write (∃�) ∶ � �� . �� = ��′ (1) Herewith Russell's paradox vanishes. Remarkably, all commentators and interpreters of Wittgenstein's Tractatus smoothly glide over these last two sentences of 3.333, in particular they all fail to answer the question: How does the formal expression expresses Russell's Paradox? We shall inquire into whether Russell and Wittgenstein ever corresponded about the issue under investigation, whether Wittgenstein corresponded with others about (1), and whether there is anything to be found about it in the Nachlass. (Spoiler Alert! The result of this inquiry will probably be disappointing.) We further argue: (i) that (1) cannot be understood as an expression of Russell's paradox; and: (ii) that it can be understood as an expression of Russell's paradox if and only if (1) is adapted. For (ii), several adaptations and interpretations of (1) will be explored. Matthias Neuber (Tübingen) What We Talk About When We Talk About THIS Being Blue: C. I. Lewis and R. W. Sellars on the Object of Perception There is currently some reawakened interest in the relationship between American pragmatism and American critical realism. Both currents shared many aspects, but there were also significant differences. One of these differences pertains to the object of perception or, more precisely, to the question of what we talk about when we talk about this, for example, being blue. By re-addressing that question, some light can be shed on the historical development of analytic philosophy in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. My case in point are the respective positions of C. I. Lewis and R. W. Sellars. I shall point out that Sellars’s view has more to recommend it because it better explains the actual mechanism of perception. Nathan Oseroff (King’s College) Correcting Three Popular Philosophic Myths Concerning Popper’s Solution to the Problem of Demarcation Here are three popular philosophical myths: (1) Falsifiability, Karl Popper’s demarcation criterion, sets out the boundaries of the natural sciences from non- science. (2) The criterion explicitly applies solely to single universal theories. (3) It is is his sole criterion. I demonstrate that (1)-(3) directly contradict Popper’s writings on demarcation. In reality: (1*) Popper’s demarcation problem is to determine if there are necessary and sufficient conditions for drawing conventional borders between what epistemic communities classify as ‘empirical’ and ‘non-empirical’. (2*) The criterion of falsifiability explicitly only applies to large sets of statements. (3*) Popper set forward a second criterion of demarcation that classifies individual statements as either ‘empirical’ or ‘non-empirical’ if they increase the empirical content of a theoretical system by entailing one ‘basic statement’ not entailed by the theoretical system alone. Flavia Padovani (Drexel) What the Young Reichenbach Might Have Said to Carnap and Quine about the Analytic- Synthetic Distinction Hans Reichenbach was, together with Carnap, one of the founding fathers of Logical Empiricism. Although many of his writings (especially the earliest ones) consider the possibility of a priori knowledge, Reichenbach never directly participated in the debate between Quine and Carnap about the analytic-synthetic distinction.

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