Rudolf Carnap

1891-1970 · German-American · Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Language, Logic, Empiricism

In logic, there are no morals.

Rudolf Carnap arrived in Vienna already shaped by one encounter: Gottlob Frege's lectures at Jena, which convinced him that mathematical logic was philosophy's sharpest tool. There he joined a circle — Schlick, Neurath, Gödel among them — intent on clearing philosophy of metaphysical fog and placing knowledge on empirical and logical foundations.

Topics Rudolf Carnap addresses

• the constitution system
• the principle of tolerance
• logical syntax of language
• the elimination of metaphysics
• the verifiability principle
• internal vs external questions
• the analytic/synthetic distinction
• testability and meaning
• protocol sentences
• quasi-analysis
• meaning postulates
• intension and extension
• explication
• degree of confirmation
• inductive logic
• the continuum of inductive methods
• L-truth
• semantics vs syntax
• pseudo-problems in philosophy
• linguistic frameworks
• the unity of science
• physicalism
• rational reconstruction
• confirmation theory

Converse with Rudolf Carnap on Symposium. Every reply is grounded in Rudolf Carnap's own writing and cites the page it came from. The corpus is public-domain text.