Rudolf Carnap: Biography Of This Analytical Philosopher

Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) was a German philosopher who pioneered logical positivism, empiricism and symbolic logic. He is recognized as one of the greatest exponents of the philosophy of science of the early 20th century, since among other things he contributed to the consolidation of a paradigm of scientific rigor within philosophy.

Next we will see the biography of Rudolf Carnap including some of the most important aspects of his life and work.

Rudolf Carnap: biography of a philosopher of science

Rudolf Carnap was born on May 18, 1891 in Ronsdorf, a municipality located in northwest Germany. From the year 1910 to the year 1914 He was trained in philosophy and traditional logic, as well as mathematics at the University of Jena.

In this institution he worked together with Gottlob Frege, who was recognized as the greatest exponent of mathematical logic of the 19th century. At the same university, but in 1921 He graduated as a doctor with research on the concept of space which he divided into three types: formal space, physical space and intuitive space.

From this he began to develop significantly as a philosopher of science and discussed the theories of symbolic logic and physics; at which time he also addressed issues related to time and causality.

The Vienna Circle and logical empiricism

At the intellectual dawn of 20th century Vienna, there was a small group of philosophers and mathematicians who They met to discuss some topics related to philosophy and science This group was known as the Vienna Circle, and its founder, the logical empiricist Moritz Schlick, had invited Carnap to work alongside them, within the circle and also at the University of Vienna.

Part of the work of the Vienna circle was to create a scientific perspective of the world, where it was possible to apply the precision of the exact sciences in philosophical reflections and theories. In contrast to the traditional logic approach, which studies the principles of proof and verification of inferences using a language without strict formalization; Rudolf Carnap defended the principles of symbolic logic or mathematical logic The latter translates and systematizes, through a formalist language, intuitive notions of mathematics such as sets, numbers, algorithms, among others.

Through the concept of the stability criterion, Carnap and other philosophers of logical empiricism rejected the more speculative traditions of theology and metaphysics, not so much because they considered them false but because they do not make meaningful claims in logical and formalistic terms. Furthermore, they considered that many of the philosophical questions had no real meaning, and that they were posed by rhetoric and excessive language.

Carnap’s logical empiricism in Germany and the United States

From here he made different connections with philosophers of science from the empiricist tradition who worked in Germany, and finally, in 1930 he created a special forum for the development of a new scientific philosophy, called Erkenntniss.

Through the influence of German empiricism, Carnap maintained that first-order terms and statements were reducible to those of the second order. through a principle known as the reducibility principle

Accordingly, all concepts used to describe empirical facts are completely definable by terms that refer exclusively to aspects of immediate experience. Thus, all empirical statements are susceptible to becoming statements about immediate experiences.

In his period within the circle and the University of Vienna, Carnap developed a more liberal approach to empiricism, from which he defended that the concepts of empirical science are not completely definable in purely experiential terms; but that, at least, can be defined by “reduction statements” and “observation statements.” The latter can serve to confirm an empirical statement, although not so much to offer a strict proof of existence or refutation.

Finally he worked as a professor and researcher at the University of Prague, but given the conflictive political context prior to the Second World War, Carnap went to the United States, where he became nationalized in 1941. In this country he worked as a professor at the University of Chicago, as a researcher at Harvard and later at UCLA. Through new influences and interests, Carnap continued to theorize about semantics, the principle of verification, probability, induction and philosophy of language

Outstanding works

Rudolf Carnap’s most important publication, which among other things established him as one of the most important logical positivists of the 20th century it was the book Logical language syntaxfrom the year 1934. He argued that there is no logic or true language, beyond the specific objectives that are pursued when we use it.

Other of Rudolf Carnap’s most important works are The Logische Aufbau der Welt (The logical structure of the world), and Pseudoproblems of philosophyboth from the year 1928. Among the most recent and also notable works are Two essays on entropy, 1977; two volumes of Studies in inductive logic and probability, from 1971 and 1980 respectively; and Metalogical1995.