Matthias Neuber

Phänomenologie, Neukantianismus und logischer Empirismus waren die dominanten Strömungen in der deutschsprachigen theoretischen Philosophie des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts. Die Beziehungen dieser drei philosophischen Positionen untereinander wurden in der philosophiehistorischen Forschung bisher allenfalls in Teilkonstellationen untersucht. Der Band liefert erstmals eine Zusammenschau dieser drei Positionen. Die Autoren gehen in ihren Aufsätzen der Frage auf den Grund, wie die Beziehungen zueinander zu bestimmen sind und zwar unter dem Gesichtspunkt der wissenschaftlichen Philosophie, dem Projekt, das alle drei Protagonisten – Edmund Husserl, Ernst Cassirer und Moritz Schlick – verfolgten und dabei jeweils eine eigene Version entwickelten. Die Aufsätze sind in drei Blöcken zusammengefasst. Der erste Block widmet sich Edmund Husserls Phänomenologie, der zweite Ernst Cassirers Neukantianismus und der dritte dem logischem Empirismus von Moritz Schlick. In ihren Beiträgen stellen die Autoren immer wieder Bezüge zu den jeweils anderen Protagonisten und ihren für die Fragestellung maßgeblichen Schriften her. Der Band richtet sich an Forscher und Studierende, die sich mit der Geschichte der Wissenschaftsphilosophie befassen und die Struktur des Diskurses in der ‚kontinentalen‘ Philosophie des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts nachvollziehen möchten.

It is a common view in cognitive psychology that there is a fundamental difference between what may be called descriptive information, on the one hand, and depictive information, on the other. While the first kind of information is — ideally spoken — non-pictorial and usually equated with the content of a proposition, the second kind of information is pictorial by defmition and accordingly equated with the content of a mental image. Granting the correctness of this distinction, cognitive scientists differ on the role played by mental images in epistemic processes. One faction, represented by the writings of Zenon Pylyshyn, asserts that mental images are merely an epiphenomenon of a more general and abstract processing system, and that they are in principle dispensable since they do not have any truth value.1 Another faction, represented by the writings of Stephen Kosslyn, favors the opposite view, maintaining that mental images are indispensable since they play, in spite of their lack of truth value, a fundamental role in human thinking.2 As Arthur I. Miller has proposed in his book Imagery in Scientific Thought , these two factions may be labeled as the “antiimagist” and the “pro-imagist” view, respectively

Scientific realism is the view that the theoretical entities of science exist. Atoms, forces, electromagnetic fields, and so on, are not merely instruments for organizing observational data but are real and causally effective. This view seems to be hardly compatible with the logical empiricist agenda: As common wisdom has it, logical empiricism is mainly characterized by a strong verification criterion of meaning, i.e., by the project of defining the meaning of theoretical terms by virtue of the meaning of purely observational terms. However, it has been largely ignored by the historians of logical empiricism that there indeed existed a realist faction within the logical empiricist movement

Rudolf Carnap’s role in the debate over scientific realism is fairly unclear. In a certain sense, Carnap must be regarded as the one who rendered the whole issue irrelevant. However, it cannot be ignored that Carnap sometimes spoke of himself as an ‘empirical realist.’ So the question to be answered is: in what sense, if at all, did Carnap play a constructive role in the scientific realism debate. It is the aim of the present paper to tackle this question by investigating the relationship between Carnap’s approach toward the realism issue, on the one hand, and the realist positions defended by his logical empiricist fellows Hans Reichenbach and Eino Kaila, on the other. It will be shown that Carnap agreed with Reichenbach that realism has essentially to do with language, but that he disagreed with him over the significance of probability in defending the scientific realist stance. My point will be that realism is not a ‘problem of language.’ Furthermore, it will be argued that Carnap was correctly criticized by Reichenbach for neglecting the role of probability in science. Nevertheless, what can be learned from Carnap’s approach toward the realism issue is that scientific realism cannot be defended in the way that Reichenbach himself suggested, namely by arguing inductively for the adequacy of the realistic ‘language form.’ Rather, scientific realism can only be defended on the ground that language itself is dependent on the ‘structure of the world.’ And this is exactly the point where, eventually, Kaila will enter the scene

Logical empiricism is commonly seen as a counter-position to scientific realism. In the present paper it is shown that there indeed existed a realist faction within the logical empiricist movement. In particular, I shall point out that at least four types of realistic arguments can be distinguished within this faction: Reichenbach’s ‘probabilistic argument,’ Feigl’s ‘pragmatic argument,’ Hempel’s ‘indispensability argument,’ and Kaila’s ‘invariantist argument.’ All these variations of arguments are intended to prevent the logical empiricist agenda from the shortcomings of radical positivism, instrumentalism, and other forms of scientific antirealism. On the whole, it will be seen that logical empiricism and scientific realism are essentially compatible with each other. Especially Kaila’s invariantist approach to science (and nature) comes quite close to what nowadays is discussed under the label ‘structural realism.’ This, in turn, necessitates a fundamental reevaluation of Kaila’s role in the logical empiricist movement in particular and in twentieth-century philosophy of science in general.

In their early epistemological writings, Cassirer and Schlick represent two different strategies in their revisionist approaches toward the original Kantian doctrine. While Cassirer attempts a revision in the sense of ‚critical idealism‘, Schlick attempts a revision in the sense of ‚critical realism‘. It will be shown that this contrast in programmatic outlook leads to significant divergences, especially in the respective theories of space and the correlated interpretations of Einstein's general theory of relativity. On the whole, it will be argued that Schlick ‚won out over‘ Cassirer in the end, but only by leaving almost completely the boundaries of the original Kantian epistemological project.

This article considers the evolution of Feigl's attempt at establishing a stable form of scientific realism. I will argue that Feigl's work in that area should be appreciated for two reasons: it represents a telling case against the view of there being an unbridgeable ‘analytic-continental divide’ in the context of twentieth-century philosophy; it contradicts the idea that scientific realism is at odds with logical empiricism. It will be shown that Feigl developed his scientific realist position from within the logical empiricists’ Vienna Circle. This, in turn, necessitates a fresh approach toward the contemporary scientific realism debate.