Erkenntnis orientated – Rudolf Carnap

Overview

Erkenntnis Orientated: A Centennial Volume for Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach is an edited collection of essays assembled on behalf of the journal Erkenntnis to mark the centenary of the births of Rudolf Carnap (born 18 May 1891) and Hans Reichenbach (born 26 September 1891). Although library records sometimes list Carnap among the volume’s “authors,” the book is not a work by Carnap: it is a commemorative anthology edited by Wolfgang Spohn, consisting of contributions by various philosophers and historians of philosophy. The essays were gathered from Erkenntnis (volume 35, issues 1–3) and presented as a tribute to the two thinkers and to the philosophical movement they helped to shape.

The editor’s preface explains the rationale for the volume. Carnap and Reichenbach are described as two of the greatest philosophers of the century and as eminent representatives of what the preface calls perhaps the most powerful contemporary philosophical movement; the two men also founded the journal Erkenntnis, which provides the occasion for the collection. The preface acknowledges that the basic philosophical theses of the two men may not currently enjoy especially high standing, but argues that their impact survives in numerous detailed problems and in lively fields of research pursued both within philosophy and in neighbouring disciplines. What the editor singles out as still exemplary is less any particular doctrine than “their way of philosophizing, their conception of how to do philosophy.”

The contributions are written in English and German and are distributed between Reichenbach’s philosophy, Carnap’s philosophy, and the history of the journal and its intellectual milieu.

Reichenbach

Several essays are devoted directly to Reichenbach. The volume opens with a personal remembrance, “Hans Reichenbach Remembered.” A historical piece in German, “Die vergessene Rezension der ‘allgemeinen Erkenntnislehre’ Moritz Schlicks durch Hans Reichenbach — Ein Stück Philosophiegeschichte,” recovers and discusses a forgotten review by Reichenbach of Moritz Schlick’s Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, treating it as a fragment of the history of philosophy.

A cluster of papers addresses Reichenbach’s work in the philosophy of physics and in causation. “The Space Problem in the New Quantum Mechanics” is followed by a commentary, “The Causal Relation as the Most Fundamental Fact of the World. Comments on Hans Reichenbach’s Paper: The Space Problem in the New Quantum Mechanics,” which engages with the preceding paper’s treatment of causation. Further essays examine “Reichenbach’s Metaphysical Picture,” the notion of “Equivalent Descriptions,” and Reichenbach’s treatment of induction: “Hans Reichenbach’s Vindication of Induction” and “Reichenbach, Induction, and Discovery.” Related papers on causation and probability include “Causal Inference,” “Causation and the Direction of Time,” and “How to Hunt Quantum Causes.” A paper on “Creation as a Pseudo-Explanation in Current Physical Cosmology” extends the volume’s concern with explanation and cosmology.

Carnap

The Carnap-related essays begin with “After Carnap,” which considers Carnap’s philosophical legacy. “Making Sense of Carnap’s ‘Aufbau’” is devoted to Der logische Aufbau der Welt, while “Die Konstruktion der Erfahrungswelt: Carnap und Husserl” compares Carnap and Husserl on the construction of the world of experience. “Carnap und der Physikalismus” treats Carnap’s physicalism. “Carnap, the Universality of Language and Extremality Axioms” addresses questions of linguistic universality and extremality axioms in Carnap’s programme.

Other contributions engage with Carnapian themes in logic and confirmation. “A Theory about Logical Theories of ‘Expressions of the Form “The So and So”, where “The” is in the Singular’” concerns definite descriptions and the logic of singular terms. “Every Dogma Has Its Day” takes up the fate of empiricist dogmas, and “Relevant Deduction: From Solving Paradoxes Towards a General Theory” develops a general account of relevant deduction out of the solution of paradoxes. “Carnapian Inductive Logic for Markov Chains” applies Carnapian inductive logic to Markov chains.

History of the journal

The collection closes with “Zur Geschichte der ‘Erkenntnis’,” a contribution on the history of the journal that gives the volume its title and institutional focus.

Taken together, the essays do not form a biography of either philosopher. They are philosophical and historical studies of problems, doctrines, and episodes associated with Carnap and Reichenbach — induction and probability, causation and the direction of time, quantum mechanics and cosmology, logical construction and physicalism, definite descriptions and deductive logic — together with recollections and archival-historical work on the two men and on the journal they founded.

The volume’s centre of gravity is not the exposition of a single doctrine but the reconstruction of a research tradition. Carnap and Reichenbach appear as interlocutors whose programmes overlap on logic, probability, and the foundations of physics while diverging over metaphysics, physicalism, and the status of logical construction. The essays on induction and causation are not antiquarian: they connect Reichenbach’s vindication of induction and his causal theory to later debates about causal inference, the direction of time, and quantum explanation. Similarly, the Carnap essays treat the Aufbau, physicalism, linguistic universality, and inductive logic as live options, not merely historical positions.

The collection’s significance lies in its double character as historical recovery and systematic philosophy. It shows logical empiricism as a set of ongoing problems rather than a closed school, and it gives the journal Erkenntnis an institutional role in that transmission: the journal appears as the medium through which the movement organized itself and through which its questions were carried forward. The closing history of Erkenntnis thus complements the systematic essays, making the volume as much about the conditions and channels of philosophical work as about the doctrines of its two central figures.