Interpreting Carnap
Critical Essays
Published on 14. August 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
323 pages
978-1-009-09687-4 (ISBN)
Description
Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, helped found logical positivism, was one of the originators of the field of philosophy of science, and was a leading contributor to semantics and inductive logic. This volume of new essays, written by leading international experts, places Carnap in his philosophical context and studies his topics, his interests, and the major stages of his thought. The essays reassess Carnap's place in the history of analytic philosophy through his approach to metaphysics, values, politics, epistemology and philosophy of science. They delve into important topics of Carnap's mature thought, namely explication, naturalism, and his defence of analyticity; and they recover the logical and the linguistic components of philosophy and how they unfolded in the syntax-semantics relation, induction, and language-planning. The resulting interpretation of Carnap will be illuminating for both current and future research.
Reviews / Votes
'The roster of contributors is impressive, including many of the best contemporary philosophers working on Carnap.' Greg Frost-Arnold, MetascienceMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 153 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
474 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-009-09687-4 (9781009096874)
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Schweitzer Classification
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Book
02/2024
Cambridge University Press
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E-Book
01/2024
Cambridge University Press
€105.99
Available for download
Persons
Alan Richardson is Professor of Philosophy at University of British Columbia. He is the author of Carnap's Construction of the World (Cambridge, 1998) and is on the editorial board of The Collected Works of Rudolf Carnap (2019). Adam Tamas Tuboly is Leader of the MTA Lendulet Values and Science Research Group, Research Centre for the Humanities in Budapest and research fellow at the ITD, Medical School, University of Pecs. He is co-author (with Christopher Burke) of Otto Neurath in Britain (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
Content
Introduction: Carnap's transformation of the canon Alan Richardson and Adam Tamas Tuboly; Part I. Philosophy in New Dress: 1. Carnap's non-cognitivism: paths and influences Christian Damboeck; 2. Carnap is not against metaphysics Vera Flocke; 3. Interpreting Carnap's construction of the world Chistopher Pincock; 4. Philosophy in a collective spirit as politics in its broadest sense Audrey Yap; Part II. Naturalism and Method: 5. Shades of naturalism: Carnap and Quine Andre W. Carus; 6. On Quine's epistemological objection to Carnap's analyticity Joseph Bentley and Thomas Uebel; 7. Carnapian explication: origins and shifting goals Erich H. Reck; Part III. The Logical and The Linguistic: 8. Carnap's approach to semantics and syntax: relations and tension Pierre Wagner; 9. Carnap on the formality of logic and mathematics Georg Schiemer; 10. The origin and evolution of Carnap's work on probability and induction Sandy Zabell; 11. Metaphysics, tolerance, and language planning: Carnap on international auxiliary languages Basak Array; Part IV. Science and Theories: 12. Carnap on theories and the methods of science Lydia Patton; 13. Carnap on unity of science Bianca Crewe and Alan Richardson; 14. Carnap on determinism and free will Richard Creath; Bibliography; Index.