-
2485Zur mathematischen Wissenschaftsphilosophie des Marburger NeukantianismusIn Christian Damböck (ed.), Philosophie und Wissenschaft bei Hermann Cohen, Springer. 2018.
-
2180JTB Epistemology and the Gettier problem in the framework of topological epistemic logicReview of Analytic Philosophy 3 (1). 2023.Abstract. Traditional epistemology of knowledge and belief can be succinctly characterized as JTB-epistemology, i.e., it is characterized by the thesis that knowledge is justified true belief. Since Gettier’s trail-blazing paper of 1963 this account has become under heavy attack. The aim of is paper is to study the Gettier problem and related issues in the framework of topological epistemic logic. It is shown that in the framework of topological epistemic logic Gettier situations necessarily occ…Read more
-
1827Wissenschaftliche Philosophie im Exil: Cassirer und der Wiener Kreis nach 1933Veröffentlichungen des Instituts Wiener Kreis 23. 2016.
-
1545Heyting Mereology as a Framework for Spatial ReasoningAxiomathes 23 (1). 2013.In this paper it is shown that Heyting and Co-Heyting mereological systems provide a convenient conceptual framework for spatial reasoning, in which spatial concepts such as connectedness, interior parts, (exterior) contact, and boundary can be defined in a natural and intuitively appealing way. This fact refutes the wide-spread contention that mereology cannot deal with the more advanced aspects of spatial reasoning and therefore has to be enhanced by further non-mereological concepts to overc…Read more
-
1410Enlightenment and Formal Romanticism - Carnap’s Account of Philosophy as ExplicationVienna Circle Institute Yearbook 14. 2010.Carnap and Twentieth-Century Thought: Explication as En lighten ment is the first book in the English language that seeks to place Carnap's philosophy in a broad cultural, political and intellectual context. According to the author, Carnap synthesized many different cur rents of thought and thereby arrived at a novel philosophical perspective that remains strik ing ly relevant today. Whether the reader agrees with Carus's bold theses on Carnap's place in the landscape of twentieth-century philos…Read more
-
1331Topology as an Issue for History of Philosophy of ScienceIn Hanne Andersen, Dennis Dieks, Wenceslao J. Gonzalez, Thomas Uebel & Gregory Wheeler (eds.), New Challenges to Philosophy of Science, Springer. pp. 423--434. 2013.Since antiquity well into the beginnings of the 20th century geometry was a central topic for philosophy. Since then, however, most philosophers of science, if they took notice of topology at all, considered it as an abstruse subdiscipline of mathematics lacking philosophical interest. Here it is argued that this neglect of topology by philosophy may be conceived of as the sign of a conceptual sea-change in philosophy of science that expelled geometry, and, more generally, mathematics, from the …Read more
-
1317Tools, Objects, and Chimeras: Connes on the Role of Hyperreals in MathematicsFoundations of Science 18 (2): 259-296. 2013.We examine some of Connes’ criticisms of Robinson’s infinitesimals starting in 1995. Connes sought to exploit the Solovay model S as ammunition against non-standard analysis, but the model tends to boomerang, undercutting Connes’ own earlier work in functional analysis. Connes described the hyperreals as both a “virtual theory” and a “chimera”, yet acknowledged that his argument relies on the transfer principle. We analyze Connes’ “dart-throwing” thought experiment, but reach an opposite conclus…Read more
-
1237Scientific Worldviews as Promises of Science and Problems of Philosophy of ScienceCentaurus 59 (3). 2017.The aim of this paper is to show that global scientific promises aka “scientific world-conceptions” have an interesting history that should be taken into account also for contemporary debates. I argue that the prototypes of many contemporary philosophical positions concerning the role of science in society can already be found in the philosophy of science of the 1920s and 1930s. First to be mentioned in this respect is the Scientific World-Conception of the Vienna Circle (The Manifesto) that pro…Read more
-
1231Trope Sheaves. A Topological Ontology of TropesLogic and Logical Philosophy of Science 3 (n/a): 129-150. 1995.In this paper I want to show that topology has a bearing on the theory of tropes. More precisely, I propose a topological ontology of tropes. This is to be understood as follows: trope ontology is a „one-category”-ontology countenancing only one kind of basic entities, to wit, tropes. 1 Hence, individuals, properties, relations, etc. are to be constructed from tropes
-
1211A Virtual Debate in Exile: Cassirer and the Vienna Circle after 1933Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 16. 2012.Ernst Cassirer, 2011, Symbolische Prägnanz, Ausdrucksphänomen und „Wiener Kreis“, Nachgelassene Manuskripte und Texte, vol. 4, ed. Christian Möckel, 478pp., Hamburg, Felix Meiner Verlag
-
1203Toward a Theory of the Pragmatic A Priori. From Carnap to Lewis and BeyondRudolf Carnap and the Legacy of Logical Empiricism 16. 2012.The aim of this paper is make a contribution to the ongoing search for an adequate concept of the a priori element in scientific knowledge. The point of departure is C.I. Lewis’s account of a pragmatic a priori put forward in his "Mind and the World Order" (1929). Recently, Hasok Chang in "Contingent Transcendental Arguments for Metaphysical Principles" (2008) reconsidered Lewis’s pragmatic a priori and proposed to conceive it as the basic ingredient of the dynamics of an embodied scientific rea…Read more
-
1152Zwischen Weisheit und Wissenschaft - Schlicks weites philosophisches SpektrumGrazer Philosophische Studien 80 (1). 2010.
-
1143Mathematical Metaphors in Natorp’s Neo-Kantian Epistemology and Philosophy of ScienceIn Falk Seeger, Johannes Lenard & Michael H. G. Hoffmann (eds.), Activity and Sign. Grounding Mathematical Education, Springer. 2005.A basic thesis of Neokantian epistemology and philosophy of science contends that the knowing subject and the object to be known are only abstractions. What really exists, is the relation between both. For the elucidation of this “knowledge relation ("Erkenntnisrelation") the Neokantians of the Marburg school used a variety of mathematical metaphors. In this con-tribution I reconsider some of these metaphors proposed by Paul Natorp, who was one of the leading members of the Marburg school. It i…Read more
-
1119Topological Aspects of Epistemology and MetaphysicsIn Silvano Zipoli Caiani & Alberto Peruzzi (eds.), Structures Mères: Semantics, Mathematics, and Cognitive Science, Springer. 2020.The aim of this paper is to show that (elementary) topology may be useful for dealing with problems of epistemology and metaphysics. More precisely, I want to show that the introduction of topological structures may elucidate the role of the spatial structures (in a broad sense) that underly logic and cognition. In some detail I’ll deal with “Cassirer’s problem” that may be characterized as an early forrunner of Goodman’s “grue-bleen” problem. On a larger scale, topology turns out to be useful i…Read more
-
1089Werte bei CarnapZeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 62 (2). 2006.Nach gängiger Auffassung nahm das Thema „Werte” in Carnaps Philosophie nur einen geringen Stellenwert ein. In dieser Arbeit soll gezeigt werden, daß diese Einschätzung der Korrektur bedarf: So wird der im „Aufbau“ vorgetragene Entwurf eines Konstitutionssystems mit Werten als der höchsten Schicht des Konstitutionssystems abgeschlossen. Auch die Quasianalyse als allgemeine Konstitutionsmethode steht in enger Beziehung zur Unterscheidung zwischen „Sein“ und „Gelten“, die für den werttheoretisch or…Read more
-
1086Morris’ Pariser Programm einer wissenschaftlichen PhilosophieIn Christian Bonnet & Elisabeth Nemeth (eds.), Zur Wissenschaftsphilosophie in Frankreich und Oesterreich in der ersten Hälfte des 20.Jahrhunderts, Springer. 2016.Abstract: One of the institutional highlights of the encounter between Austrian “wissen¬schaftliche Philosophie” and French “philosophie scientifique” in the first half of the 20th century was the “First International Congress for Unity of Science” that took place 1935 in Paris. In my contribution I deal with an episode of the philosophical mega-event whose protagonist was the American philosopher and semiotician Charles William Morris. At the Paris congress he presented his programme of a comp…Read more
-
999Set Theory, Topology, and the Possibility of Junky WorldsNotre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 55 (1). 2014.A possible world is a junky world if and only if each thing in it is a proper part. The possibility of junky worlds contradicts the principle of general fusion. Bohn (2009) argues for the possibility of junky worlds, Watson (2010) suggests that Bohn‘s arguments are flawed. This paper shows that the arguments of both authors leave much to be desired. First, relying on the classical results of Cantor, Zermelo, Fraenkel, and von Neumann, this paper proves the possibility of junky worlds for certain…Read more
-
991The Vicissitudes of Mathematical Reason in the 20th Century (review)Metascience 21 (2): 295-300. 2011.The vicissitudes of mathematical reason in the 20th century Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-6 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9556-y Authors Thomas Mormann, Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country UPV/EPU, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain, Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.
-
982Wiener wissenschaftliche Weltanschauungen - zwischen Wissenschaft, Philosophie, Politik und "Leben"In Elisabeth Nemeth & Friedrich Stadler (eds.), Die Europäische Wissenschaftsphilosophie Und Das Wiener Erbe, Veröffentlichungen Des Instituts Wiener Kreis Band 18, 105 - 127, Springer. 2013.
-
946Continuous Lattices and Whiteheadian Theory of SpaceLogic and Logical Philosophy 6 (n/a). 1998.In this paper a solution of Whitehead’s problem is presented: Starting with a purely mereological system of regions a topological space is constructed such that the class of regions is isomorphic to the Boolean lattice of regular open sets of that space. This construction may be considered as a generalized completion in analogy to the well-known Dedekind completion of the rational numbers yielding the real numbers . The argument of the paper relies on the theories of continuous lattices and “poi…Read more
-
923A place for pragmatism in the dynamics of reason?Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 43 (1): 27-37. 2012.Abstract. In Dynamics of Reason Michael Friedman proposes a kind of synthesis between the neokantianism of Ernst Cassirer, the logical empiricism of Rudolf Carnap, and the historicism of Thomas Kuhn. Cassirer and Carnap are to take care of the Kantian legacy of modern philosophy of science, encapsulated in the concept of a relativized a priori and the globally rational or continuous evolution of scientific knowledge,while Kuhn´s role is to ensure that the historicist character of scientific know…Read more
-
913Carnap's Aufbau in the Weimar ContextVienna Circle Institute Yearbook 18 115-136. 2016.Quine’s classical classic interpretation succinctly characterized characterizes Carnap’s Aufbau as an attempt “to account for the external world as a logical construct of sense-data....” Consequently, “Russell” was characterized as the most important influence on the Aufbau. Those times have passed. Formulating a comprehensive and balanced interpretation of the Aufbau has turned out to be a difficult task and one that must take into account several disjointed sources. My thesis is that the core …Read more
-
874Between Heidelberg and Marburg: On the Aufbau’s Neokantian Origins and the AP/CP-DivideSapere Aude! 1. 2006.In A Parting of the Ways Michael Friedman proposed to conceive the contemporary divide between analytic philosophy (AP) and continental philosophy (CP) as the outcome of the bifurcation between the Neokantians of Heidelbarg and Marburg. According to Friedman, Carnap can be characterized as the executor of the Marburg school, while Heidegger is to be considered as the heir of the Southwest Neokantianism. In this paper it is argued that Carnap was much closer to the Southwest Neokantianism than us…Read more
-
854From Mathematics to Quantum Mechanics - On the Conceptual Unity of Cassirer’s Philosophy of ScienceIn Sebastian Luft & J. Tyler Friedman (eds.), The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer: A Novel Assessment, De Gruyter. pp. 31-64. 2015.
-
854On the Mereological Structure of Complex States of AffairsSynthese 187 (2): 403-418. 2012.The aim of this paper is to elucidate the mereological structure of complex states of affairs without relying on the problematic notion of structural universals. For this task tools from graph theory, lattice theory, and the theory of relational systems are employed. Our starting point is the mereology of similarity structures. Since similarity structures are structured sets, their mereology can be considered as a generalization of the mereology of sets..
-
849One Hundred Years of Philosophy of Science: The View from MunichVienna Circle Institute Yearbook 15. 2011.These days, a number of philosophers of science indulge in lamenting about a crisis of their discipline. They complain about its loss of relevance, and bemoan the mar gi na lization of their dis cipline in the philosophical community and in the wider academia , Hardcastle and Richardson ). The Munich take on the philosophy of science does not succumb to this temptation. According to it, philosophy of science is well and alive. In Carlos Ulises Moulines’s Die Entwicklung der modernen Wissen schaf…Read more
-
849Infinitesimals as an issue of neo-Kantian philosophy of scienceHopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science (2): 236-280. 2013.We seek to elucidate the philosophical context in which one of the most important conceptual transformations of modern mathematics took place, namely the so-called revolution in rigor in infinitesimal calculus and mathematical analysis. Some of the protagonists of the said revolution were Cauchy, Cantor, Dedekind,and Weierstrass. The dominant current of philosophy in Germany at the time was neo-Kantianism. Among its various currents, the Marburg school (Cohen, Natorp, Cassirer, and others) was t…Read more
-
783Carnap's boundless ocean of unlimited possibilities : between enlightenment and romanticismIn Pierre Wagner (ed.), Carnap's Ideal of Explication and Naturalism, Palgrave-macmillan. 2012.
Ludwig Maximilians Universität, München
Faculty of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science and Study of Religion
PhD, 1995
Donostia-San Sebastián, PV, Spain
PhilPapers Editorships
Rudolf Carnap |