Volume 1, Issue 4: Background Work on Logical Empiricism: New Volumes on Cohen and Bühler
Background Work on Logical Empiricism: New Volumes on Cohen and Bühler
Christian Damböck (ed.), Philosophie und Wissenschaft bei Hermann Cohen/Philosophy and Science in Hermann Cohen. Veröffentlichungen des Instituts Wiener Kreis, vol. 28. Dordrecht: Springer, 2018, pp. viii + 247. Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-58022-7. €87,46.
Janette Friedrich (ed.), Karl Bühlers Krise der Psychologie: Positionen, Bezüge und Kontroversen im Wien der 1920e/30er Jahre. Veröffentlichungen des Instituts Wiener Kreis, vol. 26. Dordrecht: Springer, 2018. pp. x + 204. Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-58082-1. €87,46
“Cohen and logical empiricism? Is it a meaningful question to ask?” opens Massimo Ferrari (p. 161.) his contribution to Christian Damböck’s recently edited volume on Philosophie und Wissenschaft bei Hermann Cohen/Philosophy and Science in Hermann Cohen. But we might generalize the issue and raise the question whether a book on Hermann Cohen has any place at all in the Vienna Circle Institute’s Veröffentlichungen des Instituts Wiener Kreis series. The same applies to Karl Bühler who gets a volume as well in the series, edited by Janette Friedrich under the title Karl Bühlers Krise der Psychologie: Positionen, Bezüge und Kontroversen im Wien der 1920e/30er Jahre. The answer is in both cases a definite “yes”. But why is that? This review aims to shed some light on the context of Cohen and Bühler and their relation to logical empiricism in general.
When discussing a philosophical movement, we have to be careful where to draw the boundaries: it is quite possible that insiders and outsiders use different categories to delineate their subjects. For example, Karl Popper was often represented by outsiders as a member of the Vienna Circle, thus of logical empiricism as well, but neither Popper nor members of the Circle accepted this. The same warning goes for representing the influences on a philosophical movement. Otto Neurath is known for constructing a loosely connected line of Austrian philosophy that led to the Circle (or to the better part of the Circle); thus he emphasized the role of Ernst Mach, Richard Avenarius, and the general anti-Kantian attitude of Viennese philosophers. Nonetheless, other members like Rudolf Carnap tried to emphasize the mathematical-logical influence of Bertrand Russell.
While presumably most of us have a definite view on who influenced whom in the Circle, this problem shows to us at least that we should be cautious in attributing direct influence line. Even if Neurath has exaggerated in constructing an appealing narrative for the Circle’s past, it is also known that Carnap was not unerring at all regarding his memory, furthermore, his intentions to present his own philosophical background were often biased in the politically and scholarly sensitive web of academic philosophers. While we never see any reference to Kant or neo-Kantians by the late Carnap, and his famous intellectual biography is tendentiously silent on the continental roots of his thinking (like that of Dilthey, Husserl, and Kantians), thanks to J. Alberto Coffa, Michael Friedman, Alan Richardson, and others we are aware now of his deep and fruitful neo-Kantian education and influence.
But neo-Kantianism is a complex issue with a lot of internal approaches, teacher-student lines, arguments, notions, and even indirect influences. Thus the more detail we see there, the clearer picture could we get about the indebtedness of logical empiricism to neo-Kantianism. Such stratification is done by Thomas Mormann (pp. 101-133) in Damböck’s volume. His paper draws a line between mathematical and logical scientific philosophies (Wissenschaftsphilosophie) of neo-Kantianism and logical empiricism and shows that the Marburg School of neo-Kantianism was not just kind of pioneer regarding, but also went into being forgotten in the forthcoming decades of the twentieth century.
Such stratification about logical empiricism and its context is an important task to maintain. As logical empiricism (or logical positivism, or neo-positivism – choose your own version) was often depicted as an extremely ahistorical movement that only tried to eliminate the problems and conceptions of traditional philosophy, it is quite ironic that they turned out to be one of the most important movements who tried to provide subtle and delicate answers to the problems that were raised by neo-Kantian philosophers.
Even though Hermann Cohen is not the usual suspect in this context (one might think rather about Ernst Cassirer, Heinrich Rickert or Bruno Bauch), his role in initiating and developing the renewed interest in Kant’s (scientific) philosophy is hard to overestimate, thus it was just time to consider his philosophy with an eye on logical empiricism as well. Cohen (1842-1918) was not just a philosopher, but also one of Germany’s most influential and known Jewish intellectual in his time. Through his practical and religious writings, he was able to bring philosophy to a wider audience. Nonetheless, from the viewpoint of academic history of philosophy, his works on scientific philosophy in the fashion of Kant and his interpretations and commentaries on Kant made him a central figure around the turn of the twentieth century. In the first chapter of PWHC, Nicholas F. Stang (pp. 13-40) investigates Cohen’s influence in the Kantian context, that is, how Cohen and Cohen’s Kant were recognized that time. As he shows, Cohen’s Kant was dropped from the canon quickly for various reasons. Nonetheless, Stang provides such a reinterpretation of Kant and Cohen’s Kant-book (Kants Theorie der Erfahrung) that at least partially rehabilitates Cohen and his philosophical vision.
As an intermediate text, Jean Seidengart’s paper (pp. 145-160) focuses on the relation of logical empiricism to neo-Kantianism through the interpretation of Einstein’s theory of relativity. After a very short intermezzo-like discussion of Cohen, Seidengart turns to Reichenbach and Cassirer. The chapter is a really helpful introduction and summary of the debate, which is a bit critical with Reichenbach’s interpretation of Kant. You should indeed read it if you want a good and focused overview of logical empiricists’ debt to Kant and neo-Kantianism. The same applies to Ferrari’s paper (pp. 161-175), which is about the variants of neo-Kantianism from Cohen to Carnap and Reichenbach (with a grain of Schlick), focusing on the transcendental method.
We are led through the philosophical connections between neo-Kantianism and logical empiricism via relativity and the a priori by Marco Giovanelli. He claims that the “Kantian and neo-Kantian tradition is again back in the recent discourse of scientific philosophy” (pp. 177-178). The point of this obvious note is that since Michael Friedman’s groundbreaking, detailed and almost systematic work on neo-Kantian philosophy of science and its relation to logical empiricism, the topic indeed gained enormous interest from scholars. Nonetheless, against “Friedman’s authority” (p. 178), Giovanelli – through the mediatory role of Alfred Coppel Elsbach, a Holland mathematician – traces the sources of Reichenbach’s distinction back to Cohen who held a “genuine form of the relative a priori” (ibid.).
The most detailed discussion of the historical and philosophical relation is done by the Cohen-expert Geert Edel who treats in details neo-Kantianism and Cohen’s place in the movement. His chapter reveals important influence-lines to the Vienna Circle, especially to its most traditional philosopher, Moritz Schlick. Edel discusses Schlick’s first programmatic paper from his 1911 Kiel-time, “The Present Task of Philosophy” and interprets it in the context of Cohen-motivated neo-Kantian problem-sets. It is very instructive to see how traditional problems were shaped by the core authors of logical empiricism before they reached their maturity in Vienna.
Besides Kant’s philosophy, Cohen wrote important texts on epistemologically conceived logic as well. It is known that Rudolf Carnap read some works of Cohen, though he never referred to them explicitly, and thus Cohen’s influence on him might be indirect at all if any. Nonetheless, given Cohen’s general role in neo-Kantianism and his importance in developing what Christian Damböck (2017) called “German empiricism” – a certain direction of thought from the mid-1800s until the 1930s, a line at which Carnap takes an important place – Cohen’s role in forming the background for logical empiricism should not be underrated after all.Thus Damböck’s volume might be a work about the necessary extension of the historical canon that is required to get a fuller picture of logical empiricism. This is taken up by Pierfrancesco Fiorato (pp. 227-247), who discusses the boundaries of science, knowledge, with a hint of arts and Carnap’s agenda in his Aufbau.
But there are other papers that are less focused on logical empiricism and thus gives a more throughout inquiry about Cohen’s works. The volume thus starts with a paper by Ursula Renz (pp. 1-12) about the notion of philosophy (and its relation to science) in the works of Cohen. Gregory B. Moynahan (pp. 41-75) investigates, for example, the role of psychology in connection to Cohen’s later work, especially in the light of Cassirer’s student notes. Lois Marie Rendl’s (pp. 135-144) subject is the notion of experience and the method of scientific philosophy in Cohen. A detailed account is given there, again with a few hints towards the Circle. Francesca Biagioli’s (pp. 77-100) paper concerns how Cohen and Helmholtz tried to initiate a theory of measurement after Kant’s philosophy of geometry. She traces the lines of influences between these scholars and after their papers, especially how focusing on the arithmetic side of Helmholtz’s work set back the elaboration of measurement-theory itself. While Biagioli describes the context of the debate (with an eye on Husserl and Cassirer, among others), the end of the paper could have been tied more directly to logical empiricism by discussing a bit Ernest Nagel’s theory of measurement.
Besides the fact that logical empiricists came from a quite complex philosophical milieu (as Damböck’s volume shows this nicely), there is another curiosity about them: even though the Vienna Circle (and its Berliner counterpart too) was an interdisciplinary approach to scientific and philosophical issues, this is not always reflected in the contemporary literature. It is true, of course, that physics, logic, mathematics, and sometimes the social sciences are treated regularly (perhaps the last has still some bad pedigree due to the often Marxist and too sociological overtones of the 1930s); they indicate already how the members of the famous Thursday-night group crossed easily the institutional borders and thematic fields. Nonetheless, there are many other issues that are not treated equally: among those fields, one finds ethics, history of philosophy, linguistics, and psychology.
Though the volume is not especially about Karl Bühler’s relation to the Vienna Circle, some historical facts should be emphasized right at the beginnings, motivating thus everyone – who is interested in the history of early analytic philosophy and logical empiricism – to engage with this fascinating volume.
After Carnap has finished his notorious The Logical Structure of the World in 1928, he started to argue against metaphysics from a logical point of view, and though he engaged in various debates about physicalism, he started his next enormous project on the logical syntax of language – at least this is the usual and general story. This is actually true, but those ‘various debates’ that were just mentioned did not get enough attention besides noting the discussions with Schlick and Neurath on protocol sentences and the unity of science. And Carnap indeed had bigger hopes and wider discussions.
Carnap wrote to Neurath on September 30, 1930 that his paper on psychology that he presented to Bühler in his own circle is almost ready (Carnap to Schlick, 1930. 09. 30. RC 029-30-02.). Presumably, he refers to his lecture on May 28, 1930, entitled “Psychology in the Framework of Unified Science,” where he talked about the physical language as ‘total language and the behavioristic principle.’ Though he talked after the lecture with Karl and Charlotte Bühler, and Egon Brunswik, the discussion followed in the next week (June 6, 1930) led this time by Bühler and Paul Lazarsfeld. Besides Bühler, Carnap had regular discussions with Lazarsfeld, Hans Zeisel, and Brunswik about Gestalt psychology and behaviorism. Besides Bühler’s own circle, Carnap met him frequently at Heinrich Gomperz Circle. Thus, according to the diaries and correspondence of Carnap, he had much more personal discussions with psychologists, than with physicists or perhaps even with mathematicians. (The number of fellow logicians was never beaten, of course.) Some of these discussions and criticisms have been recently discussed in detail by Uljana Feest (2017).
Bühler had a lasting influence on some members of the Circle – or at least he influenced its inner dynamic for a while. One of the peripheral members, Gustav Bergmann (1993, 199-200) wrote later in a memoir-letter to Otto Neurath that “the later Circle was of a completely different sort. […] From the original radical, rationalistic outlook there was nothing remaining […]; mathematicians, physicists and the absent members of the old Circle were replaced, in growing numbers, by the pupils of Mr. and Mrs. [Karl and Charlotte] Bühler.” As Waismann and Schlick were highly interested in psychology, and as Carnap, Neurath, Frank, and Hahn either left Vienna or died around 1934, the initial orientation of the Circle towards physics, mathematics, and a scientifically conceived life-conception was replaced by a certain loosely Wittgensteinian-psychological direction. But only a little is known about this phase, and unfortunately, the present volume does not provide any clue about these events.
All of this shall give some clue about the connections between psychology and the Vienna Circle, and thus orients us towards the significance of having a volume on Bühler in the Vienna Circle Institute’s series. Janette Friedrich’s edited volume on Karl Bühlers ‘Krise der Psychologie’: Positionen, Bezüge und Kontroversen im Wien der 1920er/30er Jahreis exactly such a volume, taken broadly, that could help us in addressing these issues.
Nonetheless, the volume is much more like a contribution to Bühler (as its title suggests) and his context in the psychological life of Vienna. The only direct chapter on Bühler and the Vienna Circle is delivered by Hans-Joachim Dahms. He discusses the internal mechanisms behind the professor-appointments in the 1920s. There were three so-called Lehrstuhlat the Faculty of Philosophy in Vienna since the second half of the nineteenth century, one about philosophy, one related to psychology and one more historical. Important and well-recognized scholars occupied those chairs, such as Robert Zimmermann, Friedrich Jodl, Franz Brentano, Ernst Mach, and Ludwig Boltzmann. Strangely, in the early 1920s, all the three chairs became empty, and the directors of the University experienced a hard time in finding the perfect candidates. (Some of them were Germans like Natorp, Rickert, and Husserl, some of them were Austrians like Meinong, Reininger and Höfler, some of them died unexpectedly, some of them were undesired neo-Kantians.) Dahms used the regular faculty-meeting protocols to reconstruct the debates around whom to invite for the philosophy chair. Among the files, various problems emerged regarding nationality, religion, and even the candidates’ attitude towards philosophy. In one of the notes (made by Natorp about the candidates) we read that Schlick was an able scholar who knows a lot about the exact sciences but not very original in pure philosophy (p. 16). But as the procedure behind the scenes fell back often to socio-political issues, Dahms is able to raise skeptical notes about the so-called Austrian line of philosophy as well.
Though Carnap’s name comes up here and there in the volume as a reference to some philosophical disputes concerning the language of psychology, the volume has not much to do with logical empiricism. Nonetheless, there are several longer pieces about interesting issues, that might be relevant to Vienna Circle scholars too, as they discuss such topics that have some relevance for the history of philosophy of science in general, or relevant through potential personal connections. In the second chapter, for example, Maria Czwik (pp. 33-59) brings up films as a field of research and method in the Psychology Institute. While it is unknown to the reviewer whether Neurath had any connections to or knowledge about this research in Vienna, it might be still instructive to see how they developed there as Neurath became involved in the film-business after he arrived in England.
There are papers about the philosophical background of Bühler (Guillaume Fréchette and Achim Eschbach), but most of them conceive the internal development and struggles of Bühler that led finally to his ‘crises of psychology’ in 1927. Most of these chapters either discuss a certain notion such as medium (Martin Wieser), or the methodological issues of psychology (the tension between being a natural or human science, see Janette Friedrich, Thomas Slunecko and Gerhard Benetka), or rarely mentioned topics such as aesthetics (Helmut Leder). The third chapter, being quite a curiosity is Markus Stumpf’s paper about the library of the Bühlers and its political context in the 1930s. Recently Friedrich Stadler (2019) has published a similar paper about the philosophical significance of Neurath’s scientific library; perhaps a new line of research emerges soon when all the manuscripts, diaries and correspondences have been investigated and scholars turn towards personal libraries to find further confirmations for their theses or further data to move on in new directions in their research.
The editions have the usual cover of the series, this time without many typos, but it is still somehow disturbing that some chapters have bibliographies at the end of the chapter, while others don’t; they contain the bibliographical references in the footnotes. Obviously not a big deal, but end-references are much easier to search. A bigger problem is the lack of abstracts at the beginning of the chapters; though some of them start with a clear and definite thesis and description, others have a long introduction without a well-defined purpose. Otherwise, the volumes are well edited, the contributors are well-chosen, just like their topics, which are always restricted to the given subject of the respected volumes.
All in all, both Damböck’s and Friedrich’s volumes are important contributions to the recent literature on logical empiricism, though they could be read on their own rights as recent works on Cohen and Bühler. Besides the English chapters, the German ones worth the effort as well – recent history of analytic philosophy is still too much restricted regarding its secondary sources. All the chapters present fruitful conceptions and insightful arguments in their stores, thus they are highly recommended.
Adam Tamas Tuboly
Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute of Philosophy, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Supported by the MTA BTK Lendület Morals and Science Research Group.
References
· Feest, U. 2017. “Physicalism, Introspection, and Psychophysics: The Carnap/Duncker Exchange." In Adams, A., Biener, Z., Feest; U. & Sullivan, J. (eds.), Oppure Si Mouve: Doing History and Philosophy of Sciencewith Peter Machamer. Dordrecht: Springer, 113-125.
· Stadler, F. 2019. “A Viennese Library in Exile: Otto Neurath and the Heritage of Central Europen Culture in the Anglo-Saxon World.” In Cat, J. and Tuboly, A. T. (eds.), Neurath Reconsidered: New Sources and Perspectives. Cham: Springer. 23-44.
· Damböck, Ch. 2017. Deutscher Empirismus. Studien zur Philosophie im deutschsprachigen Raum 1830-1930. Dordrecht: Springer.
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