Empirism Logic Si Pragmatism

Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook
SamiPihlstrm
FriedrichStadler
NielsWeidtmann Editors
Logical
Empiricism
and
Pragmatism
Institute Vienna Circle, University of Vienna

Vienna Circle Society, Society for the Advancement
of Scientific World Conceptions
Volume 19
Series Editor
Friedrich Stadler, Univ. of Vienna, Inst. Vienna Circle, Vienna, Austria
Advisory Editorial Board
Jacques Bouveresse, Collge de France, Paris, France
Martin Carrier, University of Bielefeld, Germany
Nancy Cartwright, Durham University, UK
Richard Creath, Arizona State University, USA
Massimo Ferrari, University of Torino, Italy
Michael Friedman, Stanford University, USA
Maria Carla Galavotti, University of Bologna, Italy
Peter Galison, Harvard University, USA
Malachi Hacohen, Duke University, USA
Rainer Hegselmann, University of Bayreuth, Germany
Michael Heidelberger, University of Tbingen, Germany
Don Howard, University of Notre Dame, USA
Paul Hoyningen-Huene, University of Hanover, Germany
Clemens Jabloner, Hans-Kelsen-Institut, Vienna, Austria
Anne J. Kox, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Martin Kusch, University of Vienna, Austria
James G. Lennox, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Thomas Mormann, University of Donostia/San Sebastin, Spain
Edgar Morscher, University of Salzburg, Austria
Kevin Mulligan, Universit de Genve, Switzerland
Elisabeth Nemeth, University of Vienna, Austria
Julian Nida-Rmelin, University of Munich, Germany
Ilkka Niiniluoto, University of Helsinki, Finland
Otto Pfersmann, Universit Paris I Panthon Sorbonne, France
Mikls Rdei, London School of Economics, UK
Alan Richardson, University of British Columbia, CDN
Gerhard Schurz, University of Dsseldorf, Germany
Hans Sluga, University of California at Berkeley, USA
Elliott Sober, University of Wisconsin, USA
Antonia Soulez, Universit de Paris 8, France
Wolfgang Spohn, University of Konstanz, Germany
Michael Stltzner, University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA
Thomas E. Uebel, University of Manchester, UK
Pierre Wagner, Universit de Paris 1, Sorbonne, France
C. Kenneth Waters, University of Calgary, Canada
Gereon Wolters, University of Konstanz, Germany
Anton Zeilinger, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria
Honorary Consulting Editors
Robert S. Cohen, Boston, USA
Wilhelm K. Essler, Frankfurt/M., Germany
Adolf Grnbaum, Pittsburgh, USA
Gerald Holton, Cambridge, MA, USA
Allan S. Janik, Innsbruck, Austria
Andreas Kamlah, Osnabrck, Germany
Eckehart Khler, Vienna, Austria
Juha Manninen, Helsinki, Finland
Brian McGuinness, Siena, Italy
Erhard Oeser, Vienna, Austria
Peter Schuster, Vienna Austria
Jan ebestk, Paris, France
Karl Sigmund, Vienna, Austria
Christian Thiel, Erlangen, Germany
Jan Woleski, Cracow, Poland
Review Editor
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More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/6669

Sami Pihlstrm Friedrich Stadler
Niels Weidtmann
Editors
Logical Empiricism
and Pragmatism
Editors
Sami Pihlstrm Friedrich Stadler
Faculty of Theology Institute Vienna Circle
University of Helsinki University of Vienna
Helsinki, Finland Vienna, Austria
Niels Weidtmann
Forum Scientiarum
Universitt Tbingen
Tbingen, Germany
ISSN 0929-6328 ISSN 2215-1818(electronic)

ISBN 978-3-319-50729-3ISBN 978-3-319-50730-9(eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50730-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017932275
Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017

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Editorial
This volume contains most of the papers presented at the international conference
on Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism, held at the University of Vienna,
November 79, 2013. This conference was an activity of the triliteral cooperation
project Science, Culture, and Society organized by the Helsinki Collegium for
Advanced Studies (University of Helsinki), the Forum Scientiarum (University of
Tbingen), and the Institute Vienna Circle (University of Vienna), with four confer-
ences in all three locations.
http://helsinki.fi/science-culture-society/index.html
According to its mission statement, this cooperative project:
Seeks to critically reassess science and the humanities in their respective endeavors to
explain, but also to understand the causes, conditions and consequences of artistic, ethical,
and religious phenomena in our current European cultures. The revived idea of a scientific
philosophy is expected to deliver the required means for realizing this aim. The collabora-
tive research project thereby addresses the huge tension that has grown between public and
private worldviews due to the increasing implicitness with which science is commonly
accepted to be the exclusive measure of successful social engineering while, on the other
hand, religious beliefs, moral convictions and motivations, and artistic experiences still are
most highly valued in a private sphere. This tension threatens to burst the coherence of
European cultures also because science has developed schemes to explain art and religion
by its own means in the last decade or two. Philosophy can play a decisive role in analyzing
the relationship between science, art, ethics and religion and help to set up a dialogue
between these different cultural phenomena. However, we suggest that to do so it has to go
beyond the Kantian distinction of art, ethics, religion, and science and face the challenge
posed by recent empirical approaches to these fields. It is the central starting point of the
present project that this step may be taken with recourse to scientific philosophy as it has
been developed in quite different measures in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu-
ries, i.e. neo-Kantianism, logical empiricism, phenomenology, and pragmatism.
This volume deals with the relation of European Logical Empiricism and North-
American pragmatism from various points of view systematically and historically.
In general, the articles manifest a strong interaction between these two main philo-
sophical currents, on the one hand, but also independent developments, on the other,
since the end of the nineteenth century.
v
vi Editorial
This is only one reason for the remarkable convergence of the Vienna Circle in
exile and the US (neo-) pragmatism from the 1930s onward, which was anticipated
by the early reception of Ernst Mach in the US with William James and the journal
The Monist. Therefore, we may speak of a mostly undervalued but flourishing trans-
atlantic interaction in philosophy and philosophy of science covering at least three
generations and several European countries and bridging the absolute gap between
continental and analytic tradition. In addition, the complexity of both philo-
sophical traditions and their origins show a pluralist image of this relation and inter-
action with an obvious family resemblance. The contributions document the
common features and differences of these two path-breaking traditions of modern
philosophy since the beginning of their mutual communication in the hope of
opening new research questions and perspectives for further investigations.
As usual in all Yearbooks of the Institute Vienna Circle, also these conference
proceedings are complemented by a general part, this time with the 21st Vienna
Circle Lecture of Ilkka Niiniluoto on Eino Kaila and the Vienna Circle, a report
on a finished research project on logical empiricism in Berlin and Vienna by Gnther
Sandner and Christian Pape, and a review section on recent related publications like
the biography of Otto Neurath.
Many thanks go to Sami Pihlstrm (Helsinki), Niels Weidtmann, Michael
Heidelberger, and Matthias Neuber (Tbingen) for the pleasing cooperation within
our network, as well as to all speakers and authors of this proceedings, and Robert
Kaller from the Institute Vienna Circle for his editorial work.
Institute Vienna Circle FriedrichStadler

University of Vienna
Vienna, August 2016
Contents
Part ILogical Empiricism and Pragmatism

rnst Mach andPragmatism TheCase ofMachs
E
Popular Scientific Lectures (1895) 3
Friedrich Stadler
illiam James andtheVienna Circle 15
W
Massimo Ferrari
lassical Pragmatism andMetaphysics: James andPeirce
C
onScientific Determinism 43
Donata Romizi
eyond Realism andAntirealism? TheStrange Case
B
ofDeweys Instrumentalism 67
Giovanni Rubeis
merican Pragmatism, Central-European Pragmatism
A
andtheFirst Vienna Circle 83
Thomas Uebel
On Rational Restraints ofOntology 103
Heikki J. Koskinen
Feigl, Sellars, andtheIdea ofaPure Pragmatics 125
Matthias Neuber
On theViennese Background ofHarvard Neopragmatism 139
Sami Pihlstrm
he Ghost ofPragmatism. Some Historical Remarks
T
ontheDebate ontheFoundations ofProbability 167
Maria Carla Galavotti
vii
viii Contents
Part IIGeneral Part

ino Kaila and The Vienna Circle 185
E
Ilkka Niiniluoto
Review Essay: Two books on the Berlin Group
of Logical Empiricists 201
Gnther Sandner
Report/Documentaion From Late Enlightenment to
Logical Empiricism: The Berlin Society of Empirical/Scientific
Philosophy and the Ernst Mach Association in Vienna 209
Gnther Sandner and Christian Pape
Reviews 225
Index 241
Part I
Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism
Ernst Mach andPragmatism TheCase
ofMachs Popular Scientific Lectures (1895)
FriedrichStadler
I.The relation of Logical Empiricism and North-American Pragmatism has been

increasingly investigated in the last decade.1 This seems reasonable enough given
the various personal and scholarly exchanges between the Vienna Circle and Berlin
Group with pragmatist philosophers after World War I leading up to the transfer and
transformation of Logical Empiricism caused by the rise of National Socialism.
Already in the Vienna Circle manifesto (1929) we read a sympathetic reference to
William James,2 and Moritz Schlick himself reported in the journal Erkenntnis on
the scientific world conception in North America praising John Deweys pragma-
tism, whose empiricism is compared with Ernst Machs heritage. Accordingly,
amongst the members of the editorial board of the journal Philosophy of Science,
founded in 1934, we find the names of Rudolf Carnap, Herbert Feigl. M.R.Cohen
and P.W.Bridgman, and the Unity of Science movement was pioneered by Neurath,
Carnap and Charles Morris, with contributions by John Dewey and Ernest Nagel.
In this context, Richard M.Martin had characterized Carnap (in On Carnap and
the Origins of Systematic Pragmatics) on the road Toward a Systematic Pragmatics
(1959).
1
On Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism: Gary Hardcastle and Alan W. Richardson (Eds.),
Logical Empiricism in North America. Minneapolis-London: University of Minnesota Press 2003;
Alan Richardson and Thomas Uebel (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Logical Empiricism.
Cambridge University Press 2007; George Reisch, How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of
Science: To the Icy Slopes of Logic. Cambridge University Press 2005; Friedrich Stadler (Hrsg.),
Vertreibung, Transformation und Rckkehr der Wissenschaftstheorie. Am Beispiel von Rudolf
Carnap und Wolfgang Stegmller. Mnster: LIT Verlag 2010.
2
Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis. Hrsg. Vom Verein Ernst Mach (Wien1929).
Reprint with Translations in English, French, Spanish, and Italian. Ed by Friedrich Stadler and
Thomas E.Uebel. Wien-New York: Springer 2012, p.9.
F. Stadler (*)
Institute Vienna Circle, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
e-mail: friedrich.stadler@univie.ac.at
Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 3

S. Pihlstrm et al. (eds.), Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism, Vienna Circle
Institute Yearbook 19, DOI10.1007/978-3-319-50730-9_1
4 F. Stadler
The prestigious book series Library of Living Philosophers presents volumes

on Carnap, Dewey, C.I.Lewis, Quine, with contributions by former Vienna Circle
members. In his historical review of Logical Empiricism, Philipp Frank summa-
rized the following3:
In the United States there was a natural common ground, the work of the American prag-
matists, in particular C.S.Peirce. Charles Morris has cultivated esp. the ties between prag-
matism and the Central European positivism. He coined for the result of the very close
cooperation of these groups the name logical empiricism, which seems to me to denote the
salient point better than any other name. E.Nagel and W.V.Quine came to Vienna and
Prague, as Morris had done, to make personal contact with Schlick, Carnap, and the
other workers in this field.
In addition, Felix Kaufmann had approached John Dewey after his emigration in
the U.S. with a rewritten new edition of his Methodology of the Social Sciences
(1936) book under the impression of neo-pragmatist philosophy.4
Herbert Feigl, the first member of the Vienna Circle, who emigrated in 1931 to
North-America and founded the famous Minnesota Center for Philosophy of
Science in Minneapolis referred several times to Dewey, Perry, C.I. Lewis as allied
philosophers in the formation of analytic philosophy and philosophy of science. The
mathematician Richard von Mises was in favor of Peirce, James, Dewey, and pre-
sented Bridgman as an scientist in fully agreement with Mach.5 The writings of
Gerald Holton, Philipp Franks former assistant, emphasize the significant family
resemblance between Logical Empiricism and U.S. pragmatism beginning with an
account of Ernst Mach in America (1988), in which he presents James, J.Loeb,
B.F.Skinner, Quine, and Ph. Frank as subsequent followers.6 This analysis is con-
firmed by a special issue of the Deutsche Zeitschrift fr Philosophie (1996/44) deal-
ing with the development from logical Empiricism to neo-pragmatism.7
Given this topical research field, the investigations on Mach and pragmatism are
rather at the beginning, even though with an increasing tendency.8 Nevertheless,
3
Philipp Frank, Modern Science and its Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1949,
p.48.
4
Felix Kaufmanns Theory and Method in the Social Sciences. Ed.by Robert S.Cohen and Ingeborg
Helling. Dordrecht: Springer 2014.
5
Richard von Mises, Positivism. A Study in Human Understanding. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press 1951 (1968), p.360 f.
6
Gerald Holton, From Vienna Circle to Harvard Square: The Americanization of a European
World Conception, in: Friedrich Stadler (Ed.), Scientific Philosophy: Origins and Developments.
Dordrecht-Boston-London: Kluwer 1993, pp.4774; On the Vienna Circle in Exile. An Eyewitness
Report, in: Werner de Pauli-Schimanovich etal. (Eds.), The Foundational Debate. Complexity
and Constructivity in Mathematics and Physics. Dordrecht-Boston-London: Kluwer 1995,
pp.269292.
7
Deutsche Zeitschrift fr Philosophie 5/1996: Schwerpunkt: Vom Logischen Empirismus zum
Neopragmatismus?, S. 776853.
8
Ernst Mach Centenary Conference in Vienna 2016, June 1518, 2016: http://mach16.univie.ac.at
One section was dedicated to the relation of Mach and Pragmatism, with papers by Erik Banks,
Pietro Gori, Maria Valente, Thomas Uebel and others. Related earlier publications: Gary Hatfield,
Sense data and the Philosophy of Mind: Russell, James and Mach, in: Principia 6, 2002,
Ernst Mach andPragmatism TheCase ofMachs Popular Scientific Lectures (1895) 5
there were already earlier sources on this remarkable intellectual history of influ-
ence, impact, and exchange.
This appears in C.B. Weinbergs Machs Empirio-Pragmatism in Physical
Science (1937), and R.B.Perry, in his The Thought and Character of William James
(1948), quotes:
Although, Ernst Mach was an important forerunner of pragmatism, while Georg Simmel
and Wilhelm Ostwald were greeted by James as allies, pragmatism gained only a slight
foothold in Germany, and that mainly in Austria. (...) Mach, it is true, has recently been
canonized and made the father of a new school of philosophy in Vienna. But this Mach
redivivus is the positivistic and not the pragmatistic Mach. The substitution of logistics for
ethics and metaphysics, as proposed by Machs latest disciples, is profoundly alien to
James in temperament as well as in doctrine.
As one more reference, Robert E.Butts, in Pragmatism in Theories of Induction

in the Victorian Era: Herschel, Whewell, Mach and Mill (1987) refers to Mach on
inductive method and the principle of economy of thought between abstraction and
imagination as follows9:
It seems to me best to count Mach on the side of the pragmatists and the instrumentalists.
To absorb his ideas about economy into realist pictures of science is to forget his celebrated
criticisms of appeals to the thing-in-itself, which set him firmly against any form of meta-
physical realism.
II.Ernst Machs Popular Scientific Lectures (PSL) were published first in English
in 1895 (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co.), before they appeared in German in
1896 with the Leipzig publishing house Johann Ambrosius Barth as Populr-
Wissenschaftliche Vorlesungen.10 This anthology is one of the six main books by the
scientist, physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach (18381916)11 bringing together a
selection made by Mach himself from his many popular lectures and writings. As
such, they are representative of his efforts to disseminate his ideas ever since becom-
ing professor of mathematics and physics at the University of Graz (18641867),
and especially during his tenure at the University of Prague where he held the chair
pp.203230; Erik C.Banks, Realistic Empiricism. Rediscovering the Empiricism of Mach, James,
and Russell. Neutral Monism Reconsidered. Cambridge University Press 2014; John D.Norton,
A Material Dissolution of the Problem of Induction, in: Synthese, 191/2014, pp.671690. (with
a reference to Machs Popular Scientific Lectures, arguing for an non-hierarchical empiricism,
with inductive inferences based on facts).
9
Robert E.Butts, Pragmatism in Theories of Induction in the Victorian Era: Herschel, Whewell,
Mach and Mill, in: Pragmatik. Handbuch des pragmatischen Denkens. Hrsg. von Herbert
Stachowiak. Band II.Hamburg: Meiner 1987, p.48.
10
Ernst Mach, Populr-Wissenschaftliche Vorlesungen. Neudruck der 5. vermehrten und durchge-
sehenen Auflage von 1923. Mit einer Einleitung hrsg. Von Elisabeth Nemeth und Friedrich Stadler.
Berlin: xenomoi 2014. (= Ernst-Mach-Studienausgabe, Band 4). For further references: PWV
11
In addition to Analyse der Empfindungen, Erkenntnis und Irrtum, Die Mechanik in ihrer
Entwicklung, Die Prinzipien der Wrmelehre, Die Prinzipien der physikalischen Optik. Meanwhile
five volumes have appeared in the ongoing study edition of Ernst Machs works with xenomoi
Verlag (Berlin).
6 F. Stadler
for experimental physics (18641867).12 Pleasingly, the inaugural lecture of Mach

On the Part Played by Accident in Invention and Discovery for the chair of phi-
losophy at the University of Vienna in 1895 is also included in this volume.13
It has to be emphasized that the first edition of PSL appeared in English, the year
when Mach received the call to the chair for philosophy, in particular history and
philosophy of inductive sciences at the University of Vienna. It contains twelve
essays translated by Thomas J. McCormack14 (who had also translated Machs
Mechanics). This was a project that had been initiated by the German-American
author and editor Paul Carus (18521919) who had met Mach personally in 1888
and corresponded with him from that time on.15 Together with Edward C.Hegeler,
Carus founded a publishing house that edited the journals The Open Court and The
Monist,16 in which the strong intellectual exchange between Mach and Carus
became manifest. There are some 130 letters of Mach with Hegeler and Carus, who
himself published critically on Professor Machs Philosophy (1906) in the The
Monist, where Mach had expressed his views already in 1890.
Consequently, most of Machs books and additional articles were translated into
English since the end of the nineteenth century.17 All of the articles included in the
PSL had first been published in these above mentioned two journals18 and Carus
12
On Machs life and work: John T. Blackmore, Ernst Mach. His Life, Work, and Influence.
Berkeley-Los Angeles-New York 1972; Friedrich Stadler, Vom Positivismus zur Wissenschaftlichen
Weltauffassung. Wien-Mnchen: Lcker 1982; Gereon Wolters, Mach I, Mach II, Einstein und
die Relativittstheorie. Eine Flschung und ihre Folgen. Berlin-New York: De Gruyter 1987.
Rudolf Haller und Friedrich Stadler (Hrsg.), Ernst Mach Werk und Wirkung. Wien: Hlder-
Pichler-Tempsky 1988.
13
German version: ber den Einfluss zuflliger Umstnde auf die Entwicklung von Erfindungen
und Entdeckungen.
14
On the High School teacher, translator, and editor: Elisabeth Carus, Thomas J.McCormack ,
in: The Open Court. November 1932 (Vol. 46, No. 918), pp.729732.
15
Joachim Thiele, Wissenschaftliche Kommunikation. Die Korrespondenz Ernst Machs. Kastellaun:
Henn Verlag 1978, pp.177185.
16
Mach corresponded with both between 1888 and 1915 (about 130 letters). In 1888 Hegeler
founded the journal The Monist in La Salle, Illinois, which was subsequently under the editorial
direction of Paul Carus (18901919), Mary Hegeler Carus (19191936). The still existing journal
after a long break since 1962, ed. By Eugene Freeman, John Hospers and currently Barry Smith.
17
English translations of books by Mach: The Science of Mechanics, 1893. (6 editions); Popular
Scientific Lectures, 1895. (4 editions); The Analysis of Sensations, 1897. (4 editions); History and
Root of the Principle of the Conservation of Energy, 1911; Space and Geometry in the Light of
Physiological, Psychological and Physical Inquiry, 1906; The Principles of Physical Optics, 1926.
(2 editions); Theory of Heat,1902. (3 editions)
English translations of articles by Mach: Philosophical Magazine 186566: 2; The Open
Court. A Weekly Journal devoted to the Religion of Science (Chicago): 21; The Monist. A Quaterly
Magazine Devoted to the Philosophy of Science (Chicago): 11; Source: Mach, Knowledge and
Error (Dordrecht: Reidel 1976) p.370ff.
18
Numerous articles by Mach have been translated into English and published. In The Open Court)
21 articles appeared; in The Monist. A Quarterly Magazine Devoted to the Philosophy of Science
(Chicago) we find 11 articles. The first English publications of Mach were already in 18651866in
himself wrote approvingly about Machs philosophy in the Monist. As early as 1890
Mach had noted optimistically:
The time seems ripe for the overthrow of all metaphysical philosophies. I contribute this
article to your magazine in the confidence that America is the place where new views will
be most fully developed.19
Four more articles were already added to the second English edition of PSL in
1897 and this edition also expanded through the addition of an essay on the phe-
nomena of flying projectiles. The subsequent English editions from 1910 and 1943
are reprints of the third edition. In the meantime the PSL are also freely accessible
in the Internet20 and are available as paperback versions (Nabu Press 2010 and
Cambridge University Press 2014).21
The first German-language edition of the PSL of 1896 originally comprised 15
lectures, to which further ones were subsequently added: the second edition (1897)
with the same 15 lectures, the third edition (1903) with 19, the fourth edition (1910)
with 26 and finally the fifth edition (1923) with 33 lectures in keeping with the
authors last will. In 1987, another German printed edition appeared as a reprint of
the 5th edition (Leipzig 1923), featuring an introduction by Adolf Hohenester and a
preface by Friedrich Herneck as volume 5 in a series edited by Karl Acham:
Klassische Studien zur sozialwissenschaftlichen Theorie, Weltanschauungslehre
und Wissenschaftsforschung (Vienna-Cologne-Graz: Bhlau).22 The last German
edition of the Populr-Wissenschaftliche Vorlesungen was published in 2014 as
volume 4 of the Ernst Mach Studienausgabe (see Fn. 10).
the Philosophical Magazine (London). In this context, the following book is relevant: Floyd
Ratcliff, Mach Bands: Quantitative Studies on Neural Networks in the Retina (San Francisco
1965), which includes six texts by Mach on the subject.
19
Paul Carus, Professor Machs Philosophy, in: The Monist, 16/3, 1906, pp. 331356; Ernst
Mach, in: The Monist 1890, quoted after Gerald Holton, Science and Anti-Science. Harvard Univ.
Press 1993, p.5.
20
The Project Gutenberg EBook. Produced by Anna Hall, Albert Lszlo and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.
21
The first reprint described Mach as follows: The Austrian scientist Ernst Mach (18381916)
carried out work of importance in many fields of enquiry, including physics, physiology, psychol-
ogy and philosophy. Many significant thinkers, such as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell,
benefited from engaging with his ideas. Mach delivered the twelve lectures collected here between
1864 and 1894. This English translation by Thomas J. McCormack (18651932) appeared in
1895. Mach tackles a range of topics in an engaging style, demonstrating his abilities as both a
researcher and a communicator. In the realm of the physical sciences, he discusses electrostatics,
the conservation of energy, and the speed of light. He also addresses physiological matters, seek-
ing to explain aspects of the hearing system and why humans have two eyes. In the final four lec-
tures, he deals with the nature of scientific study. The Science of Mechanics (1893), Machs
historical and philosophical account, is also reissued in this series.
22
With an appendix, title sheet and dedication of the first two lectures published in Graz in 1865
and Albert Einsteins obituary on Mach (in: Physikalische Zeitschrift 7/1916).
8 F. Stadler
Machs preface to the first English edition in 1895 provides a nice background
information on his motivations at the time and his goals for this collection of arti-
cles, which he also articulated in the first German edition in 189623:
Popular lectures, owing to the knowledge they presuppose, and the time they occupy, can
afford only a modicum of instruction. They must select for this purpose easy subjects, and
restrict themselves to the exposition of the simplest and the most essential points.
Nevertheless, by an appropriate choice of the matter, the charm and the poetry of research
can be conveyed by them. It is only necessary to set forth the attractive and alluring features
of a problem, and to show what broad domains of fact can be illuminated by the light from
solution of a single and ofttimes unobstrusive point.
Furthermore, such lectures can exercise a favorable influence by showing the substan-
tial sameness of scientific and every-day thought.
What is really significant about his wording here are the allusions to the poetry
of research as well as to the connection of everyday life and science, a theme that
runs like a red thread throughout Machs life work all the way to his last publication
Kultur und Mechanik (Culture and Mechnics, Stuttgart: W. Spemann 1915).24
Moreover, it also reflects Machs lifelong striving for the popularization of scientific
knowledge, which was manifested, for instance, in his involvement in organizing
university lectures for the public and in his conviction that scientific knowledge
played a role in promoting an enlightened-humanist mindset.25 In the foreword to
the fourth, expanded edition before he became professor emeritus following a stroke
in 1898 he wrote that he had not lost the inclination to engage with the public on
questions of general interest.26
III.The history of the PSL clearly shows the early international orientation and
the recognition of Ernst Machs work in the Anglo-Saxon world, in particular his
rather pronounced interest in American pragmatism as the dedications of the book
suggest27: the first edition is dedicated to Professor William James with sympathy
and esteem, and after the latters death in 1910, a further edition was dedicated to
the memory of William James, with whom he had corresponded since the latters
visit to Prague in 1882 until 1909.28 Mach thanked James when he received his
23
The English translation of the striking expressions Romantik and Poesie was charm and
poetry. See on this issue also Rudolf Haller, Poetische Phantasie und Sparsamkeit Ernst Mach
als Wissenschaftstheoretiker, in: Haller/Stadler, Ernst Mach, op.cit., pp.342355.
24
Reprint: Frankfurt/M.: Westhafen Verlag 2015.
25
Hans Altenhuber, Universitre Volksbildung in sterreich 18951937. Vienna 1995. Mach was
an adamant supporter of university lectures for the general public. He was a member of the com-
mittee that organized these lectures and later as a parliamentarian he backed increased subsidies
for this institution.
26
Mach, PWV, p. XVI.
27
For pertinent information on the historical background and on pragmatism I would like to thank
my colleagues Christoph Limbeck-Lilienau (Institute Vienna Circle) and Bastian Stoppelkamp
(Institut fr Philosophie).
28
Thiele, Wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz, S. 168ff. In a letter to his wife James described his
visit with Mach in Prague: As for Prague, veni, vidi, vici. I went there with much trepidation to
do my social-scientific duty I heard Hering give a poor lecture, and Mach a beautiful one
Mach came to my hotel and I spent four hours walking and supping with him at this club, an
Pragmatism book and expressed an intellectual affinity to pragmatism without ever

having used this term himself.29 Several years earlier James had written the follow-
ing about pragmatism in Europe:
Thus has arisen the Pragmatism of Pearson in England, of Mach in Austria, and of the
somewhat more reluctant Poincar in France, all of whom say that our sciences are but
Denkmittel true in no other sense than of yielding a conceptual shorthand, economical
for our descriptions.30
And in 1905 James wrote to Mach: your Erkenntnis & Irrtum fills me with joy
and when Im able to get to it I shall devour it greedily.31 So it hardly comes as a
surprise that James, in his Principles of Psychology (1890), Pragmatism (1907),
The Meaning of Truth (1909), Some Problems of Philosophy (1911) made numerous
positive references to Mach; the common ground seemed to be the neutral monism,
by way of empiricism and the theory of elements (Elementenlehre).32 Even before
the PSL appeared in German, Mach was already an internationally renowned figure
among scholars in the English-speaking world and he was able to attain an interna-
tional reputation, which has received little notice in connection with the emergence
and development of American pragmatism. This is all the more surprising given the
fact that his main works were translated into English immediately after appearing
and then were reprinted in several editions.33 Moreover, Charles Sanders Peirce and
Mach also published together in the Monist and John Dewey referred approvingly
to Machs theory of research. Mach, in turn, made several references to James work
in his Analyse der Empfindungen (Analysis of Sensations), especially in chapter
XIV,34 and in his book Erkenntnis und Irrtum (Knowledge and Error) (2nd edition.
1906) the convergences regarding psychological issues and themes were reiterated.35
This topic deserves a more detailed account:
unforgettable conversation. I dont think anyone ever gave me so strong and impression of pure
intellectual genius. He apparently has read everything and thought about everything, and has an
absolute simplicity of manner and winningness of smile. The Letters of William James, ed. by his
son Henry James. Boston 1920. Cited after Hiebert, Introduction, in: Ernst Mach, Knowledge
and Error. Sketches on the Psychology of Enquiry. Dordrecht-Boston: Reidel 1976,
p. XIII.
29
Mach to James, June 28, 1907. In passing he also asks James for his consent to the translation of
the book by his friend Wilhelm Jerusalem.
30
William James, Collected Essays and Reviews. Longmans, Green and Co 1920, p.449 f.
31
James to Mach, 9 August 1905, cit. From Thiele, Wissenschaftliche Kommunikation, loc.cit,
p.175.Further appraisals but also critical comments can be found in James comments on Machs
books in the James papers at Houghton Library, Harvard University.
32
This is confirmed by the James biographer R.B.Perry, The Thought and Character of William
James (Oxford University Press 1935/1936), I p.586 f. and II, p.462.
33
Cf. the detailed overview in Mach, Knowledge and Error, loc.cit., pp.370ff.
34
With regard to the idea of concepts of labor-saving instruments, the late Prof. William James
directed in conversation my attention to points of agreements between my writings and his essay
on The Sentiment of Rationality
35
Ernst Mach, Knowledge and Error. Sketches on the Psychology of Enquiry. With an Introduction
by Erwin N.Hiebert. Dordrecht-Boston: Reidel 1976.
10 F. Stadler
Both Charles Sanders Peirce and Ernst Mach hat published a lot of articles in The
Monist 18901913.36 Peirce praised in the unpublished manuscript Pragmatism,
Experimentalism and Mach37 on the one side Mach for his verificationism but criti-
cized his exaggerated principle of economy, on the other. Already in his review of
Machs Mechanics Peirce had distanced himself of an alleged phenomenalism
and sensationalism. Again, in the Collected Papers (CP 7.220) we find Peirces
ambivalent judgment on Mach38:
The whole service of logic to science, whatever the nature of its services to individuals may
be, is of the nature of an economy. So much truth, and more than this I concede to the
doctrine of Ernst Mach, although I cannot approve of the extreme length to which he carries
the theory of economy.
This is a significant statement, although some years earlier Peirce had classified
Machs nominalism as a counterpart to his own realism.39
36
Mach and Peirce in The Monist (18901913):
1890 Mach The Analysis of Sensations: Antimetaphysical, Peirce The Architecture of

Theories
1891 Mach Some Questions of Psycho-Physics: Sensations and the Elements of Reality
(Dewey The Present Position of Logical Theory)
1892 Mach Facts and Mental Symbols, Peirce The Doctrine of Necessity Examined, The
Law of Mind, Mans Glassy Essence
1893 Peirce Evolutionary Love, [Dewey The Superstition of Necessity], Peirce Response
to the Necessitarians
1894 Mach On the Principle of the Conservation of Energy
1896 Mach On the Part Played by Accident in Invention and Discovery, On the Stereoscopic
Application of Roentgens Rays, Peirce The Regenerated Logic
1897 Peirce The Logic of Relatives, Mach On Sensations of Orientation
1898 [Dewey Evolution and Ethics ]
1901 Mach On Physiological As Distinct from Geometrical Space
1902 Mach On the Psychological and Natural Development of Geometry
1903 Mach Space and Geometry from the Point of View of Physical Inquiry
1905 Peirce What Pragmatism Is (Vol. 15, No. 2), Issues of Pragmatism
1906 Peirce Mr. Petersons Proposed Discussion, Prolegomena to an Apology for
Pragmaticism Mach (and Paul Carus) A Letter from Professor Mach
1908 Peirce Some Amazing Mazes. First Curiosity, Peirce Some Amazing Mazes (Conclusion)
1909 Peirce Some Amazing Mazes. Second Curiosity
1912 Mach Inventors I Have Met
1913 Mach Psychic and Organic Life
37
Peirce, Manuscript 332. Peirce Archives. Richard S.Robin, Annotated Catalogue of the Papers
of Charles S.Peirce. (Thanks to Bastian Stoppelkamp for this reference and further information
based on his unpublished manuscript on Ernst Mach und Pragmatismus. Wien 2016). Cf. the
Peirce edition project: http://www.peirce.iupui.edu/
38
Peirce, Collected Papers. 8 Volumes in an electronic version: https://colorysemiotica.files.word-
press.com/2014/08/peirce-collectedpapers.pdf , 7.220
39
Peirce, Collected Papers, IV, 4.1
The mutual appreciation of James and Mach can be drawn from their personal
acquaintance in 1882 followed by their correspondence up to 190940: Mach thanked
James for receiving his Pragmatism book, expressing the close similarity with the
pragmatist thinking, although as already mentioned he did never employ just
that term. By the way, he refers to the intention of his friend Wilhelm Jerusalem to
translate this book into German.41 Wilhelm Jerusalem (18541923), professor for
philosophy and pedagogy at the University of Vienna and a pioneer of sociology of
knowledge, in his translation of Jamess Pragmatismus (1908), emphasized the
common features of Mach and James, esp. with regard to the pragmatic views on
concepts, the practical function of general concepts and natural laws with the con-
clusion that Machs methodology is close to the pragmatism of James.
Against this background, it is not surprising that James made several positive
references to Machs publications42:
In the Principles of Psychology (1890) we find the quote of Machs Analysis of
Sensations on feeling of innervation and attention, sensation of space, time and
motion, and probability. In Pragmatism (1907) James writes on the concept of logic
and the pragmatic view of truth43:
Just now, if I understand the matter rightly, we are witnessing a curious reversion to the
common-sense way of looking at physical nature, in the philosophy of science favored by
such men as Mach, Ostwald and Duhem. According to these teachers no hypothesis is truer
than any other in the sense of being a more literal copy of reality. They are all but ways of
talking on our part, to be compared solely from the point of view of their use.
Both argue against ontological entities, and in The Meaning of Truth (1909)
James formulates: Mach and his school, Hertz and Ostwald must be classified as
humanists. Here, humanism is presented as a broader conception of pragmatism, to
which Mach could have agreed. Another accordance appears in James Some
Problems of Philosophy (1911)44:
Many physicists now think that the concepts of matter, mass, atom, ether, inertia,
force etc. are not so much duplicates of hidden realities in nature as mental instruments to
handle nature by after-substitution of their scheme. They are considered like the kilogram
or the imperial yard, artifacts, not revelations. The literature here is copious: J.B. Stallo
(). Mach, Ostwald, Pearson, Duhem, Milhaud, Le Roy, Wilbois, H.Poincare, are other
critics of a similar sort.
40
Thiele, Wissenschaftliche Kommunikation, op.cit. There is also a lot of annotations in Machs
books in the James archive in Harvard (Houghton Library).
41
Mach to James, June 28, 1907.
42
There are a lot of still unanalyzed annotations in Machs books in the archives of James in
Harvards Houghton Library.
43
James, Pragmatism A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907), Lecture V: Pragmatism
and Common Sense.
44
James, Some Problems of Philosophy. A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy (1911),
p.90.
12 F. Stadler
The biographer of James concludes in this regard as follows45:

There were three German philosophers of his time to whom James was especially indebted,
G.T.Fechner, Hermann Lotze, and Ernst Mach. James reckoned among his allies the exper-
imental scientist who offered a pragmatic interpretation of their own technique. Among
these he frequently named Ernst Mach, Karl Pearson, Wilhelm Ostwald, and Henri
Poincar. From Mach James had learned something of what he knew about the history of
science, and he had readily accepted his view of the biological and economic function of
scientific concepts.
It seems that a general common frame for this interaction can be seen in Machs
and Jamess variant of neutral monism via experience and the doctrine of ele-
ments. Reversely, Mach cited James several times in his Analysis of Sensations,
e.g., in the chapter on the Influence of the Preceding Investigations on our
Conception of Physics46:
I have partly discussed the questions considered in this chapter, before (see my History and
Root of the Principle of Conservation of Energy, translated by P.E.B.Jourdain, Chicago,
Opencourt Publishing Co., 1911, and also the essay on The Economical Nature of
Physical Inquiry, first published in 1882, and now in my Popular Scientific Lectures,
Chicago, 1894, and see my Mechanik and Wrmelehre). With regard to the idea of concepts
of labor-saving instruments, the late Prof. W.James directed in conversation my attention
to points of agreements between my writings and his essay on The Sentiment of Rationality
(Mind, Vol.IV., p.317, July 1879). This essay, written with refreshing vigor and impartiality,
will be pursued by everyone with pleasure and profit.
Also in Knowledge and Error (1906, 2nd edition) one can find further agree-
ments with James on psychological problems and questions (e.g., sensation of time)
with Principles of Psychology.
As compared to James, the reception of Mach by Dewey is rather sporadic and
cautious: In The Concept of the Neutral in Recent Epistemology (19161917,
p.51) the anti-Kantian Dewey wrote47:
In present language, in itself any experience is neutral. Consequently neutrality is not a
matter of a peculiar stuff or distinctive element. This position seems to me as sound as
appeal to the hypothetical experience of the new born babe is trivial or misleading. Such
purity as the latter possesses is something to outgrow as rapidly as the baby in fact does
outgrow it. It is not something to which to appeal as philosophically enlightening, much less
as a philosophical norm or standard. I venture to add that the contemporary conception of
neutral entities as in themselves a particular kind of being seems to be derivable from a
combination of this notion of James (which, as he pointed out, was influenced by Mach)
with one obtained by an excursion of Mnsterberg into the epistemology of psychology.
IV.The last German edition of PSL authorized by Mach is based on the fifth edi-
tion of 1923, which was published posthumously by Machs son Ludwig, as the
reader can glean from the last preface. Compared to the former English and German
editions, the last publication was considerably expanded. In comparison to the
English edition already the first German edition of 1896 was expanded to include
45
Perry, The Thought and Character of William James 1936, op.cit, I p.586 f., II, p.462.
46
Mach, The Analysis of Sensations and the Relation of the Physical to the Psychical. New York:
Dover, 1959, p. 310.
47
Dewey, The Concept of the Neutral in Recent Epistemology, in: The Journal of Philosophy,
Psychology and Scientific Methods. (19161917), p.51.
four essays in addition to 12 lectures: A Contribution to the History of Acoustics,

Remarks on the Theory of Spatial Vision, and On the Part Played by Accident in
Invention and Discovery. The second German edition of 1897 remained unchanged,
whereas the third edition of 1903 included a further four articles: On Scientific
Applications of Photography and Stereoscopy; Some Remarks on the Scientific
Applications of Photography; On Some Phenomena Attending the Flight of
Projectiles; On Sensations of Orientation. The two former as new additions and the
two latter were already included in the third English edition. The fourth edition of
1910 included already 26 articles, with a further seven articles added after the third
edition: Description and Explanation; A Cinematographic Curiosity; The Physical
and Psychical View on Life; On the Physiological Understanding of Concepts; Are
Imaginations and Thoughts Inherited?; Life and Cognition, A Consideration on
Time and Space. The fifth edition of 1923 comprises 33 articles with seven illustra-
tions, to which Mach added seven more articles: Mostly Inventors and Discoverers;
The Paradoxical, the Miraculous, the Ghostlike; Psychic Activities, especially
Imagination with Humans and Animals; Psychic and Organic Life; Sensory
Elements Scientific Concepts; On the Connection between Physics and Psychology;
Some Comparative Sketches regarding the Psychology of Humans and Animals. As
appears, a continuous growth of this collection of writings can be noted since the
first edition, which reflects Machs strong identification with this publication project
(he also expressly stipulated further additions for the edition that was published
after his death in 1923). Nevertheless, most of the articles had previously appeared
in journals or smaller independent publications.48
The anthology of PWV is truly a masterpiece of the dissemination of scientific
ideas without any moralizing or simplifying. The modest style is appealing in that it
avoids trivialities and stands out as an impressive piece of scientific prose, which
has become very rare today. The book stands in the tradition of a science-friendly
enlightenment thought, which can also be found in Hermann Helmholtz (on whose
music theory Mach wrote an article in 1866) and Ludwig Boltzmann.49 To be sure,
the anthology also reflects the context of the time, while also revealing an approach
to the sciences that places emphasis on the historical-genetic perspective and
enriches the social role of research between the everyday world and the professional
world even from todays perspective. In this sense this book can rightly be described
as a manifesto for a so-called Public Understanding of Science and Humanities50
48
A list of references can be found in Mach, Populrwissenschaftliche Vorlesungen 1987, op.cit.
S.XL ff.
49
Cf. Ludwig Boltzmann, Populre Schriften. Leipzig: Barth 1905; Hermann v. Helmholtz,
Vortrge und Reden. Braunschweig: Vieweg 1884; Populre wissenschaftliche Vortrge.
Braunschweig: Vieweg 1871.
50
Michael Matthews, Ernst Mach and Contemporary Science Education Reforms, in: Ibid. (Ed.),
History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching: Selected Readings. Toronto 1991; Manfred Euler,
Revitalizing Ernst Machs Popular Scientific Lectures, in: Science and Education 2007, 16/6,
pp.603611.
14 F. Stadler
and Mach can be appreciated as a pioneer for a didactics of the natural sciences and
an integrated history and philosophy of science.51
If we try to summarize the relation of Mach and pragmatism with reference to his
PSL, we have to conclude that pragmatic philosophy was already present in Austria
and Germany in parallel, but not explicitly under this notion and American label. It
was certainly reinforced by Mach and Jerusalem und mutually fostered by the
German speaking and American proponents. In this context R.B.Perrys character-
ization of the mutual relations (1935/36) seems one sided and not representative.
Mach had already claimed pragmatic positions in epistemology and methodology
before his reading of Peirce and direct encounter with James. But this story is to be
reconstructed as an international and interdisciplinary project avoiding whig histo-
ries and school historiographies, hopefully based on new primary sources like
the huge correspondence of the proponents to be edited.52
51
Adolf Hohenester, Ernst Mach als Didaktiker, Lehrbuch- und Lehrplanverfasser, in: Haller/
Stadler, Ernst Mach, loc.cit., pp.138166; Friedrich Stadler, History and Philosophy of Science.
Zwischen Deskription und Konstruktion, in: Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 3/2012, 217
238. Abridged English version in: Maria Carla Galavotti et al. (Eds.), New Directions in the
Philosophy of Science. Cham-Heidelberg-New York-Dordrecht-London: Springer 2014,
pp.747768.
52
Klaus Hentschel (Stuttgart) is preparing an electronic edition project of Machs correspondence
at the German Academy Leopoldina (Halle/S.).
William James andtheVienna Circle
MassimoFerrari
Abstract William James was welcomed in Vienna with much more interest and
sympathy than in Germany. Ernst Mach knew Jamess work fairly well and they
corresponded for many years. Thanks to the German translation of is book on
Pragmatism provided by Wilhelm Jerusalem, within the First Vienna Circle
James work was read and appreciated during the first decade of the twentieth cen-
tury. Philipp Frank, Otto Neurath, and Hans Hahn established a pragmatist tendency
that would emerge more and more during the further development of Logical
Empiricism, and that would eventually result in a convergence with Jamess concep-
tion of truth, method of knowledge, and more generally of philosophy of science.
The Pragmatic Oil
In 1933 Hans Hahn one of the leading figures of the Vienna Circle stressed in his
essay Logic, Mathematics, and Knowledge of Nature that the great problem of
truth required a new solution, which was different from the usual one. According to
Hahn, the concept of truth has nothing to do with the old metaphysical view of cor-
respondence between mind and reality (adaequatio rei et intellectus), but it is only
conceivable as the confirmation (Bewhrung) of propositions. We side Hahn
pointed out with the pragmatist conception [of truth]. Truth has thus no longer an
absolute character and it becomes rather a relativized, human truth. Only in this way
truth can be really applicable and as Hahn suggested useful for human knowl-
edge.1 Hahn argued furthermore that inasmuch scientific theories are compelled to
formulate predictions, the truth of the theory we are dealing with is determined by
means of its verification or falsification. In opposition to the metaphysician, who
claims that a theory is true or false per se, in Hahns mind the pragmatist rightly
defends the view that the truth of a theory depends on the circumstances that make
1
(Hahn 1988, p.169). Hahn refers explicitly to William Jamess book on Pragmatism and to John
Deweys Studies in Logical Theories.
M. Ferrari (*)
Dipartimento di Filosofia e Scienze dellEducazione, Universit degli Studi di Torino,
Via S.Ottavio 20, 1024 Torino, Italy
e-mail: massimo.ferrari@unito.it

16 M. Ferrari
it true or false. Hahn suggested therefore that pragmatists dont state, for instance,
that Newtons theory of gravity has been always false, but that this theory was falsi-
fied by the theory of relativity on the basis of a series of predictions which contrast
with it.2
Hahns defence of a pragmatist theory of truth did not represent a novelty within
the Vienna Circle. On the contrary, it was both a well known and, to some extent,
shared view from the very beginning of the history of Logical Empiricism. Indeed
at the Vienna Station as Alberto Coffa would say Pragmatism and, in particular,
its mentor William James entered the scene long before the publication of the
famous Manifesto of Scientific World-Conception.3 More precisely, the so-
called First Vienna Circle was acquainted with some of the main arguments in
favour of the pragmatist account both of knowledge and of truth just arrived from
the other side of the Atlantic.4 As recalled by Philipp Frank, since 1907 Hans Hahn,
Otto Neurath, Richard von Mises, and Frank himself had lively discussed in a coffee
house of the old Vienna about the main aspects of the scientific thought emerging
from recent novelties occurred in logic, mathematics, and natural sciences. Henri
Poincars conventionalism was one of the most considered issues and, as Frank
stated, it seemed highly plausible that one has to distinguish between what is logi-
cally possible and what is helpful in empirical science. In other words, logic needs
a drop of pragmatic oil.5 Franks recollections suggested therefore that in the early
days of the Vienna Circle the pragmatic oil was a crucial topic for the young sup-
porters of a new conception of science. According to Frank, starting from these
discussions within the First Vienna Circle several years later some members of the
Circle became aware of the great affinities with the pragmatist movement flourished
beyond Atlantic in the United States.6 In Franks opinion, the main goal of the
new concept of truth endorsed both by Pragmatism and Logical Empiricism was
rooted in a natural common ground.7
Yet it is worthwhile, before going back to the First Vienna Circle as well as to
the early Logical Empiricism, to insist once more on the influence of Jamess
Pragmatism on the members of the left swing of the Circle, namely not only
Hahn, but also Frank, and Neurath. Especially in the first half of the 1930s they
stressed repeatedly the pragmatist features of the Viennese movement a topic that
seems heretofore to be neglected by recent scholarship. It is highly remarkable that
in the late description of his early intellectual development Neurath referred to
Mach, Duhem, and Poincar, but also to Pragmatism, and in particular to James as
to the inspiring authors of the history of the Vienna Circle.8 As we shall see below,
2
Id., p.170.
3
See the new edition of the pamphlet available in (Stadler and Uebel 2012).
4
On the First Vienna Circle see (Haller 1982, 1985, 1993, pp.4560) and, above all, (Uebel
2000).
5
(Frank 1949a, p.11).
6
Id., p.33.
7
Id., p. p.48.
8
(Neurath 1981, vol. 2, p.697, 842) and (Neurath 1983, pp.213217).
William James andtheVienna Circle 17
Neuraths anti-foundationalism, his fallibilism as well as his criticism toward

Descartess radical doubt and, finally, his historical view of the growth of knowl-
edge would remain partly obscure without considering, so to speak, the pragmatist
blood which flowed in his epistemological veins, although more in the sense of
James than in the sense of Peirce (who was surely less familiar to Neurath than
James).9 To be sure, Neurath was aware, in agreement with Ernst Machs assess-
ment of the eminent American Pragmatist, that Jamess philosophy involved a kind
of metaphysics of experience, quite close to Bergson and unfortunately oriented in
a speculative direction, aiming at combining Bergsons intuitionism with Peirces
puzzling philosophical thought.10 Jamess radical empiricism appeared to Neurath
rather a standpoint which was plainly compromised with the attempt to get some-
thing as the substance of reality, promoting in this way the marriage to a very
Bergsonian attitude, which is foreign to empiricism.11 This was undoubtedly the
main criticism that Neurath and the other members of the First Vienna Circle could
raise toward Jamess late philosophical development, for its being apt in their
mind to a metaphysics tied to a religious tendency which rests on the insight of a
pluralistic universe. Notwithstanding, in an article written in the year of his death,
Neurath placed once again James together with Mach, Poincar, Duhem, Russell,
and others, within the family album of Logical Empiricism, in order to emphasize
precisely his being influenced by Jamess Pragmatism.12 Hence, it seems plausi-
ble to see in these latter concise stances Neurath made both on James and Pragmatism
in general an appreciation which clearly contrasts with the main paradigm con-
cerning the early, controversial reception of Pragmatism in Germany at the turn of
the twentieth century.13 After the emigration of Logical Empiricism in the United
States Neuraths late collaboration with John Dewey and Charles Morris to the quite
ambitious project of the Encyclopedia of Unified Science represents, in this sense,
the best proof of the profound relationship between the American tradition of
Pragmatism and the scientific philosophy escaped from German speaking
countries.
It is understandable Neurath wrote in 1937 that in a country in which Peirce, James,
Dewey and others have created a general atmosphere that is empiricist in many respects, the
attempts of the Vienna Circle and related groups are given a friendly welcome. The very
fertile American manner of thinking successfully combines with the European in this field,
and important results may probably be expected from such cooperation.14
9
On Neuraths Pragmatism, though without any reference to James, see (Mormann 1999), who
stresses only the affinities between Neurath and Peirce.
10
(Neurath 1981, vol. 2, p.940, footnote 20). Neurath referred likely to A Pluralistic Universe,
where James insisted on the affinity between Peirces tychism and Bergsons volution cratrice
(James 1977, p.153).
11
(Neurath 1983, pp.234235).
12
Id., p.230).
13
On this topic, which will be analysed more precisely below, see above all (Joas 1992, pp.114
145), (Ferrari 2006), (Uebel 2014).
14
(Neurath 1983, p.190).
18 M. Ferrari
For his part, Frank emphasized even more explicitly than Neurath and quite simi-
larly to Hahn the connection with Jamess Pragmatism. First of all, Frank had no
doubt that one of the more influential books of the Vienna Circle, i.e. Rudolf
Carnaps Der logische Aufbau der Welt, showed an unexpected affinity with James
concerning the criterion of empirical significance.
When I read this book Franck recollected it reminded me strongly of William Jamess
pragmatic requirement, that the meaning of any statement is given by its cash value, that
is by what it means as a direction to human behaviour. I wrote immediately to Carnap,
What you advocate is pragmatism. This was as astonishing to him as it had been to me.
We noticed that our group, which lived in an environment of idealistic philosophy, had
eventually reached conclusions by which we could find kindred spirits beyond the Atlantic
in the United States.15
Although is not clear whether in 1928 Carnap was willing to acknowledge both
a kind of sympathy for Pragmatism (especially for Jamess) and Franks remarks on
this issue, it is undeniable that Frank pointed out a very important aspect.16 Not
accidentally, on the occasion of the First Congress for the theory of exact sciences
hold in Prague (September 1929),17 Frank praised the attack against the truth con-
cept of the school philosophy made by James, who didnt conceive truth as a
faithful copy of reality, but rather as a system of principles that allow to change
our experiences according to our wishes.18 By stressing Jamess essential agree-
ment with Mach, Frank quoted also a few passages of Bergsons introduction to the
French translation of Pragmatism published in 1911; and Frank added:
The physicist in his own scientific activity has never employed any other concept of truth
than that of pragmatism. The agreement of thoughts with their object, as the school phi-
losophy requires, cannot be established by any concrete experiment. In practice we encoun-
ter only experiences, never an object; hence nothing can be compared with an object.
Actually, the physicist compares only experiences with other experiences (Erlebnisse). He
tests the truth of a theory through what one is accustomed to call agreements
(bereinstimmungen) [] This procedure, which the physicist is accustomed to use in his
work, has been made by Mach and James into a general conception of the criteria of truth.19
15
(Frank 1949a, p.33).
16
In the Aufbau Carnap refers only once to James, remembering that Russells Analysis of Mind
was close to James in the refusal of any dualism between physical and psychical domains. Carnap
was in agreement with this view, which he found deeply discussed already by the Neo-Kantian
Paul Natorp in his Allgemeine Psychologie (Carnap 1928, 162). On Carnap, Pragmatism and the
principle of verification see (Richardson 2003), (Richardson 2007) and (Limbeck-Lilienau 2012).
Thomas Uebel rightly considers ambiguous Franks retrospective interpretation of Carnaps
Aufbau (see Uebel 2015, pp.78).
17
See (Stadler 1997, pp.376379), where is documented the role the Congress played in diffusing
the scientific world-conception.
18
(Frank 1949a, p.101).
19
(Frank 1949a, p.102). Franks reference to Bergson represents a very interesting point, which
can contribute to rethink a monolithic view of the Vienna Circle. Moreover, Frank quoted Bergsons
introduction to Pragmatism in another page of his essay (p.95) and, more precisely, the passage
where Bergson wrote: [James] does not deny that reality is independent, at least from what that
we say or think of it. Nonetheless, truth can refer only to our statements about reality and it seems
therefore to James that truth has been created through our statement dealing with it. We create truth
Franks statements appear even more strengthened by reading his book on the
law of causality of 1932, where he underlines once again the convergences with
James.20 To be sure, Frank was perfectly aware that James was quite similar to Mach
in his extreme neglecting both the logical structure of scientific theories and the role
played by formal logic in the advancement of human knowledge.21 Nevertheless, the
transatlantic truth (according to Bertrand Russells provocative definition)22 had
breached the view of some logical empiricists, leaving a notable mark in Hahns,
Neuraths and Franks intellectual development until the beginning of the 1930s.
These hidden convergences cast once more a new light on the extent to which, long
before the dramatic emigration of Logical Empiricism to the United States,
American Pragmatism was already at home in Vienna. Accordingly, the subsequent
encounter in the United States between the Viennese supporters of the Scientific
World-Conception, and pragmatist philosophers (such as Dewey and Morris), usu-
ally depicted by the protagonists themselves only as a later, though decisive event
for Logical Empiricism, needs to be called into question by revisiting both its ori-
gins from an historical point of view and, more precisely, Jamess early reception
within the Vienna Circle.23
James, Mach, andothers
The members of the Vienna Circle considered William James as the most influential
spokesman of Pragmatism, and in any case more influential than the nearly unknown
Charles S. Peirce or, at least until the 1930s, than the less famous John Dewey.
Notwithstanding, his reputation in the capital of Kakania dated several years
before both the beginnings of Franks, Hahns, and Neuraths intellectual adven-
tures and the publication in 1929 of the pamphlet on the Scientific World-
Conception (where James is quoted too, but only incidentally and with some
in order to use reality, like we create mechanical apparatus aiming at using natural forces. In my
opinion one can summarize the substantial feature of the pragmatist conception of truth in these
terms: whereas according to other theories a new truth is a discovery, for Pragmatism it is an
invention (Bergson 2013, p.247). However, Franks conception of agreements is clearly con-
nected with Jamess one, who in Pragmatism actually said: To agree in the widest sense with a
reality, can only mean to be guided either straight up to it or into its surroundings, or to be put into
such working touch with is as to handle either it or something connected with it better than dis-
agreed (James 1975a, p.102).
20
(Frank 1998, pp.127, 195196, 281 note 1, 336 note 14, pp.284285 note 4).
21
(Frank 1949a, p.102, b, p.81).
22
In 1908 Russell had published in the Albany Review a very critical essay entitled Transatlantic
Truth (Russell 1966, pp. 112130). At the same time George E. Moore had examined James
book in an extensive and polemical paper appeared in the Proceeding of the Aristotelian Society
(Moore 1922, pp.97146).
23
We refer for instance to (Morris 1963, p.87). With regard to the relationship between Logical
Empiricism and American philosophy recent very innovative inquiries have changed the common
view: see above all (Hardcastle and Richardson 2003), (Reisch 2005), (Uebel 2014, 2015).
20 M. Ferrari
caution).24 More precisely, the story goes back to the last two decades of the nine-
teenth century. At that time James was known and praised in the German speaking
countries as the great psychologist, whose most eminent and famous interlocutor
was undoubtedly Ernst Mach.25 Their intellectual exchange needs however to be
situated in the more general framework of Jamess relationship with the philosophi-
cal and psychological culture in Germany, especially considering the increasing
progress of scientific psychology, from Hermann Lotze onward, to which James
ascribed decisive inspirations in order to realize the project of a scientific analysis
of the mind.26 In this context James established fruitful contacts with Gustav
Fechner, Wilhelm Wundt, Carl Stumpf, and Ernst Mach, getting also in touch with
some of them.27 During his long journey throughout Europe between August 1882
and March 1883, James had the opportunity to visit Mach and Stumpf in Prague,
both teaching at the local German University.28 Stumpf was tightly connected with
the School of Franz Brentano, where the Principles of Psychology became in a short
time a standard work, at least until Edmund Husserls early foundation of phenom-
enology. For his part, James especially appreciated Stumpfs contributions both to
philosophical and psychological investigations, and he was an admirer of his
Tonpsychologie.29 The correspondence between James and Stumpf testify to the
importance of their intellectual dialogue,30 but at the same time it shows how deeply
the further reception of James in Germany was hindered by his philosophical turn
toward Pragmatism. Indeed in 1907 Stumpf was quite disappointed by the publica-
tion of Jamess Pragmatism; immediately he wrote to James claiming that his the-
ory of knowledge was simply impossible.31 As we shall see, this was the same
reaction Mach would have expressed later by reading the manifesto of James prag-
matist philosophy. Yet, Machs attitude toward Pragmatism requires a closer analy-
sis within the context of his early relationship with the American philosopher and
psychologist.
Nearly 25years earlier, once back from his visit to Mach in Prague, in a letter to
Stumpf James described Machs lecture as a kind of artistic masterpiece.32 Such an
unforgettable event, as well as Jamess own impression as he informed his wife on
November 2, 1882 of the meeting with a pure intellectual genius, represent the
best document of the enormous importance James accorded to his relationship with
24
(Stadler and Uebel 2012, p.78): in a certain sense James belongs to the group too (that is to the
group of the leading thinkers of the anti-metaphysical and scientific trends).
25
(Myers 1986, pp.569570; Thiele 1978, p.168176).
26
(Poggi 2001, pp.259260). See also (Hookway 2009).
27
(Perry 1936, vol. I, p. 586).
28
(Stumpf 1924, p.216, 1927, p.209).
29
(James 1890, vol. II, p.282).
30
(Perry 1936, vol. II, p.101, 173204, 342346, 741746).
31
Id., vol. II, p.744. See furthermore (Stumpf 1924, p.237): Every positivistic theory of truth,
including Pragmatism, go around in circles. Economy and usefulness are just worthy of consider-
ation only as maxims of thought.
32
(Perry 1936, vol. II, p. 60).
Mach.33 James took notes on Machs Analyse der Empfindungen, and praised espe-
cially his history of mechanics, admiring Machs famous criticism of Newtons con-
ception of space, time, and causality.34 Moreover, James quoted Mach several times
in the Principles of Psychology emphasizing his kinship with Machs psychological
and physiological studies collected in the Beitrge zur Analyse der Empfindungen
according to James, nothing but a wonderfully original book.35 The perception
both of space and time, the question of ocular rotation, the feelings connected to
innervation as well as to perception of movement: these were some of the issues at
the stake in James scientific dialogue with Mach. For his part, Mach high
esteemed the Principles of Psychology, which he dealt with in many passages of
the second edition of his Beitrge.36
By contrast, the intellectual relationship between James and Mach seems to be
more intricate for what concerns their insights, both from the epistemological and
philosophical standpoint. To be sure, they agreed on finding the meaning of ideas
in the sensations that may be expected from their realization,37 but also on consid-
ering the central role played by functional relations within scientific knowledge: an
aspect appreciated by James as a typical and unique feature of Machs philosophy
of science.38 Furthermore Mach showed a great interest in Jamess essay on The
Sentiment of Rationality, finding in it a confirmation of his own ideas about the
concepts as economic tools.39 There were nonetheless some relevant differences
regarding both Machs own empiricism and the theory of elements which consti-
tute the core of his interpretation of human knowledge. Jamess radical empiricism
pivoting on the idea of a pure experience revealed actually a remarkable diver-
gence from Mach, since James attributed to experience a rich variety of evaluations,
interests, and feelings not solely limited to the field of elements (such as colours
or tactile sensations). Moreover, he disagreed at least after the publication of the
Principles of Psychology with the description of mental phenomena in terms of
physical or physiological facts, as shown, for instance, by some marginal notes
James took on the third edition (1903) of Machs Beitrge zur Analyse der
Empfindungen.40
Appointed since 1895 at the Viennese chair in Philosophy of Inductive Sciences,
Mach continued notwithstanding to look at James with the greatest sympathy. Yet
the beginning of the pragmatist adventure in the early years of the twentieth century
33
(Blackmore 1972, pp.7677; Thiele 1978, p.169).
34
(Holton 1993, p.51).
35
(James 1890, vol. II, p.509 note).
36
Id., vol. I, p.449 note, 616, 635; vol. II, p.247, 258, 511513. See also (Mach 1922, p.118, 122,
141144). On Mach and James we refer furthermore to (Kleinpeter 1911/1912).
37
(Holton 1993, p.50).
38
(Blackmore 1972, p.127; Thiele 1978, p.171). See also (James 1979, p.104): [] science has
[] for its sole task the listing of the elements and the describing in the simplest possible terms in
functional relations.
39
(Mach 1922, p.253 note 1; Perry 1936, vol. I, p.588; Thiele 1978, p.174).
40
(Perry, 1936, vol. II, pp.389390; Blackmore 1972, pp.127128).
22 M. Ferrari
led to further disagreements in the dialogue between the Habsburg capital and the
Harvard Square. Despite the many affinities between Mach and the new philosophy
of Pragmatism that emerged in Jamess famous lectures delivered in 19061907, he
was sceptical toward Machs phenomenalism, which seemed to him more a sort of
useful point of view in order to formulate scientific purposes, than a philosophical
insight as such.41 Moreover, James was persuaded that Machs endorsement of the
new pragmatist philosophy was indeed a little aloof, although Mach had declared
after the reading of Jamess book that he felt himself quite close to American
Pragmatism. Mach was nonetheless disappointed with some of Jamess later devel-
opment of Pragmatism and he remained, in short, more interested into the psycho-
logical insights of his American colleague than into his philosophical ideas. In 1911
Mach wrote to Anton Thomsen that Jamess psychological investigations still repre-
sented his most important achievement remarking by contrast that he considered the
philosophy of Pragmatism essentially unsatisfactory.42 Moreover, Machs radical
Enlightenment could not accept that Jamess new way of thinking came even to
the rehabilitation of God as a useful entity for human life, providing thereby a place
for faith and for a kind of spiritualism. In Machs sight this was a philosophical
weakness, which contrasted both with the scientific spirit and the richness of empir-
ical data that were several years earlier at the very basis of Jamess Principles of
Psychology: to be sure, Mach urged, the best book on psychology ever published
until present times.43
ilhelm Jerusalem: TheViennese Supporter ofJames

W
Pragmatism
William James: a very good psychologist, but unfortunately a very bad philosopher.
This critical judgement about the most famous founder of American Pragmatism
rapidly became a widespread tpos within the German-speaking philosophical
community. Many different thinkers shared indeed a fundamental bias on what was
considered rightly or wrongly, explicitly or implicitly a fearful bacillus pro-
duced by the Americanism.44 The inventory of documents regarding the almost
unequivocal dissenting reception of Pragmatism in Germany in the first decade of
the twentieth century is very impressive.45 The typical reaction was the attempt to
show in particular the nature of Jamess assault to the the essence of German
mind. In short, the contrast sharp and irreconcilable was not only between two
philosophies, but between two Weltanschaungen, or rather two civilities and cul-
41
(Perry 1936, vol. II, p.536).
42
(Blackmore and Hentschel 1985, p.86).
43
Id., pp.6263. On this topic we refer also to (Santucci 1992, p.121).
44
(Marcuse 1994, p.9).
45
A more detailed overview is available in (Ferrari 2006).
tures. England as Gnther Jacoby said is the country of gentlemen; Germany

of personalities.46 So it became nearly a communis opinio that Pragmatism was
essentially an authentic expression of American culture, of the land of dollars.47
Beyond these, in a broader sense, ideological stances on Pragmatism, there was
a specific philosophical background for the rejection of Jamess theory of truth.
Jamess account was strongly influenced by a psychological standpoint, in so far he
conceived truth as the outcome of a process rooted also in mental, emotional (for
instance the sentiment of rationality or satisfaction), and not only logical or episte-
mological aspects. This was in fully disagreement with a great part of German phi-
losophy engaged in the vigorous criticism of psychologism, considered as the
legacy both of twentieth- century positivism, and of a misleading foundation of
logic.48 One can here remind, for instance, Edmund Husserls remarks in his famous
essay Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft (1911), where he stated that Pragmatism
was nothing else than relativism (and, as such, an enemy of philosophy as rigor-
ous science, as strenge Wissenschaft).49 Not differently, Heinrich Rickert claimed,
in his article from 1912 Lebenswerte und Kulturwerte, that Pragmatism was a kind
of extreme degeneration of Nietzsches thought: In the logic of these business-
men, who are looking for profit even in the scientific research, we can perceive only
a caricature of the biologism endorsed by Nietzsche.50 The interpretation scheme
that joined together Pragmatism and the spirit of the yankee worldview, setting them
up in the more general conflict between (American) technique and (German) mind,
found therefore its academic justification in the framework of a perspective all cen-
tred on absolute values, on the timeless third reign within which they had their
own home. According to this perspective, Wilhelm Windelband blamed for his
part the ridicule inversion of ends and means underlying Jamess Pragmatism,
which expresses an individualism that testified to both the crisis and the decline of
intellectual culture.51 To refer to another eminent philosopher which deserves to
be mentioned, one can finally bear in mind the name of Georg Simmel, who in 1918
denoted Pragmatism as the more hasty and limited and moreover American
branching of the trend towards life typical of contemporary philosophy.52
46
See (Jacoby 1912b, p.217) and (Jacoby 1912a). Note that in 1909 Jacoby had delivered an aca-
demic lecture on Pragmatism, discussing in a quite balanced way the concept of truth (especially
in Jamess version). At this time, Jacoby still hoped that the American new way of thinking could
renovate German philosophy, forcing it to re-examine itself and to find the way to its renewal
(Jacoby 1909). Afterwards however, Jacoby who was personally in touch with James and also
held some conferences in the United States attended to be the herald of the typical reaction of
German culture with respect to the new American philosophy.
47
(Gutberlet 1908).
48
See (Bordogna 2008, pp.155187). In what concerns in general the dispute about psychologism
see (Kusch 1995).
49
(Husserl 1987, p.10).
50
(Rickert 1999, p. 46). See also (Rickert 1922, p. 25) for the very critical characterization of
James as a Lebensphilosoph quite close to Bergson.
51
(Windelband 1920, p.203).
52
(Simmel 1987, p.162).
24 M. Ferrari
Nonetheless, in the German-speaking world there were also some exceptions.53

It is precisely thanks to one of these exceptions that James arrived at the Vienna
Station, where he was for sure better welcomed than in Heidelberg or in Berlin. The
protagonist of this almost unknown chapter of the story we are telling is Wilhelm
Jerusalem, who had studied classical philology in Prague and was since 1891
Privatdozent at the University of Vienna.54 Jerusalem belonged to Machs circle,
and is a quite forgotten character of the Viennese cultural milieu, although Mach
himself quoted Jerusalem in Erkenntnis und Irrtum stressing their strict affinity
on the basis of their common commitment to evolutionism.55 For his part, Jerusalem
was well-aware of being deeply indebted to Mach and, in particular, to his biologic-
economical conception of knowldege, which represented for Jerusalem the source
of extremely precious methodological discoveries. Jerusalems relationship with
Mach was thus very close, especially after Machs arrival in Vienna in 1895.56
Jerusalem had published in 1888 an handbook of psychology (Lehrbuch der
empirischen Psychologie, later published with the modified title Lehrbuch der
Psychologie), which enjoyed an increasing success (the fifth, revised and enlarged
edition appeared in 1912). Yet Jerusalems own philosophical perspective was
essentially elaborated in his book of 1895 devoted to the function of judgement,
which Mach highly appreciated.57 Jerusalem endorsed both a naturalistic view and
a wholesale psychologism with regard to the nature of knowledge. According to
him, the psychology of the act of judgement is the basis and the preliminary condi-
tion of any theoretical philosophy.58 Jerusalems extensive analysis of Kant and
Brentano, his inquiries into the relationship between language and judgement, his
criticism towards any idealistic philosophy based on the function of a priori mental
activities and, finally, the attempt to gain from this arguments even a general world-
conception all this highlights very well Jerusalems point of view and his commit-
ment to a psychology of knowledge that rests on biological assumptions. For this
reason, Edmund Husserl wrote an extremely critical review of Jerusalems book,
53
See (Stein 1908, pp. 3375), who sympathetically labelled the philosophy of Peirce, James,
Schiller, and Dewey as Neo-Positivism. Interesting enough, a scientist as Wilhelm Ostwald
wrote a review of Jamess book on Pragmatism stressing its unexpected refreshing effect
(Ostwald 1908). It is worthy to be remembered also the name of an Austrian follower of Mach,
Hans Kleinpeter, who pointed out both the relationship between Mach and James and the role posi-
tively played by Nietzsche as a forerunner of Pragmatism (Kleinpeter 1911/1912, esp. p. 405),
(Kleinpeter 1913a, pp.249253). See furthermore (Kleinpeter 1913b) and (Kleinpeter 1912/1913).
54
On Jerusalems life and work see especially his collected essay (Jerusalem 1925) as well as
(Jerusalem 1924) and (Eckstein 1935).
55
(Mach 1905, p. IX). See also (Eckstein 1935, p.47).
56
(Jerusalem 1916). On Jerusalems biological view of knowledge see (Kleinpeter 1913a,
pp.239240).
57
See (Jerusalem 1895) and (Mach 1922, pp. 259260 note 2). In his handbook of psychology
Jerusalem had already presented his biological view of the life of the soul, according to the
principle that regarding all the psychical processes one has to inquiry into the importance they
take on in order to conserve the life of the individual (Jerusalem 1912, p. V).
58
(Jerusalem 1895, p.2).
rejecting his main ideas and stressing the bewildering naivety of his irreparable
psychologism.59
Jerusalem was in fully disagreement with Husserl and, in general, with the ideal-
ism he believed was becoming more and more dominant at the very beginning of the
twentieth century. Carrying on his philosophical controversy, Jerusalem published
in 1905 The Critical Idealism and the Pure Logic, which provides a good survey of
Jerusalems critical attitude against both the German contemporary philosophy and
the aprioristic idealism, to which he opposed once again the biological oriented
psychologism that Husserl, Rickert, and some other Neo-Kantian philosophers had
hardly dismissed. According to Jerusalem, the definition of true and false had to be
revised: they can only mean what is useful or prejudicial in biological sense. He
shared in this respect the standpoint already proposed as he suggested by
Nietzsche and Simmel. Jerusalem argued therefore that judgement could be defined
as the mental tool by means of which we acquire a kind of certainty contrasting the
changeable world of experience. In doing so Jerusalem seemed even to anticipate
John Deweys conception of logical instruments as something capable to satisfy the
quest for certainty posed by human beings both in everyday and scientific life.60
Therefore it is not hard to understand why Ferdinand C.Schiller wrote a very
positive review of Jerusalems book, suggesting that he had elaborated the same
idea promoted by the pragmatist movement in order to clarify the place of psychi-
cal acts within the procedures of knowledge.61 Schillers acknowledgement was
for sure very significant, and pushed Jerusalem in getting in touch with the philoso-
phy just arrived from the other side of Atlantic. Moreover, Jerusalem was since 1898
already in touch with James, though he had no occasion to meet him personally.62
Their correspondence presents however an interesting overview of the intellectual
exchange between the American philosopher and his Viennese partner, who planned
at this time even a German translation of the Principles of Psychology that unfortu-
nately never came out. For his part, James showed a great admiration for Jerusalems
psychological studies,63 and he sent promptly to him, in June 1907, the lectures
about Pragmatism. A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking he had delivered in
the previous winter. This amazing book represented, in Jerusalems opinion, the
philosophy of the future; therefore he welcomed it not only with enthusiasm
because its pragmatic conception, but considering Jamess masterpiece worthy to
be translated into German a project that Jerusalem immediately undertook.64
At the end of 1907 Jerusalem accomplished his excellent German translation of
Pragmatism, providing it with an illuminating introduction. First of all Jerusalem
59
(Husserl 1979, pp.216224). See furthermore (Blackmore etal. 2001, pp.211235).
60
(Jerusalem 1905, pp.146, 162168).
61
(Schiller 1906, p. 391). On Schillers psychology of cognition see (Bordogna 2008,
pp.169171).
62
(Jerusalem 1910).
63
(James 2002, p. 273). See furthermore Jamess reference to Jerusalems Einleitung in die
Philosophie in (James 1979, p.104, footnote 12).
64
(James 2003, p.381).
26 M. Ferrari
expressed the hope that Jamess contribution could be appreciated in Germany in

order to renew the old philosophical spirit. In the second place he underlined that
Pragmatism was not a system, but a method which had its centre of gravity in the
refusal of A priori, the sacred place for many German philosophers. Finally,
Jerusalem claimed that it was possible to realize a convergence between Pragmatism
and sociology. In his opinion, the pragmatist view of truth had nothing to do with
the yankee spirit of dollar pursuit, but needed to be integrated into the historical
investigations on the growth of knowledge, more precisely into a sociology of
knowledge devoted to consider truth as a social condensation.65
In Jerusalems eyes, Jamess Pragmatism was a kind of general intellectual
premise for the reformation of contemporary philosophy. In a paper from 1908 out-
lining, so to speak, the missed road of German reception of Pragmatism, Jerusalem
confirmed therefore his struggle against Apriorism and presented James as the irre-
placeable ally in order to offer an alternative to Kants theory of knowledge.
Furthermore, he strongly insisted by emphasizing the biologic roots of human
mind on James and Machs kinships, drawing in this way an ideal axis between
Vienna and the United States, and aiming at overcoming the encumbering defensive
wall of the German Geist.66 Moreover, Jerusalems translation of James was pub-
lished in the same year of the III International Congress of Philosophy occurred at
Heidelberg in the first week of September 1908. The European quarrel on pragma-
tism started just there, in the section of the Congress devoted to the discussion of
Ferdinand Schillers talk about the pragmatic theory of truth. The critical reaction of
the German philosophical establishment towards the yankee philosophy just
arrived in Europe was extremely unfavourable and the discussion both on Schillers
and Armstrongs lectures was, according to the Congress report, very lively.67 It is
noteworthy, however, that the sole participants to the Congress that agreed with the
pragmatic method in philosophy were the Italian Giovanni Vailati and Jerusalem,
the outsider philosopher coming from Vienna.68 During the debate, Jerusalem was
quite isolated and asserted himself in defending the pragmatist theory of truth, the
main object of the hard reactions of the supporters of German Apriorism. For his
part, Jerusalem repeated once again the arguments in favour of evolutionism and,
above all, he criticized the hidden metaphysics typical of any form of aprioristic
philosophy.69 Jerusalem seemed thereby to anticipate some passages devoted to
reject Kants conception of A priori of the later Manifesto of Scientific World-
Conception.70 In sum, whereas the most part of German philosophers attending the
65
(Jerusalem 1908a, p. V, VIIIIX). We refer also to (Jerusalem 1909b) and (Jerusalem 1924,
pp. 7576). His sociology of knowledge has been recently extensively examined by (Uebel
2012).
66
(Jerusalem 1908b).
67
(Elsenhans 1909, pp.711740).
68
Vailatis contribution to European debate about Pragmatism is analysed in (Ferrari 2010).
69
See (Elsenhans 1909, p.91, 728, 806814). In October 1908 Jerusalem wrote also a very inter-
esting report of the Congress (Jerusalem 1908c).
70
(Stadler and Uebel 2012, p.83).
Congress rejected the American spirit of Pragmatism as the typical view of busi-
nessmen, Machs follower and Privatdozent at the Vienna University fought by con-
trast for the transatlantic truth, attributing to Pragmatism a relevance which
exerted later a more remarkable influence on the development of the Vienna Circle
than usually assumed.
James, Vienna, andPhilosophy ofScience
It might be a mere coincidence that Jamess Pragmatism appeared in the same year
of the first meetings among Frank, Neurath, and Hahn. But it reveals more likely
that in the smoky coffee house of the old Vienna the new way of thinking was
indeed much discussed. After all, on January 24, 1908 Jerusalem delivered a lecture
on James at the Viennese Philosophical Society, which regularly organized meet-
ings attended by Frank, Neurath, Hahn, Sthr, Jodl, Gomperz, and other philoso-
phers.71 It is not difficult to suppose that on this occasion Jerusalem repeated what
he had already said in his Preface to Jamess Pragmatism, giving in this way a fur-
ther motivation in order to take seriously James, not only in Germany, but first of all
in Vienna.72 The history of the relationship between Pragmatism and Logical
Empiricism, we can argue, starts precisely in this year. We can imagine this little
group of friends discussing the legacy of Mach, the novelty of Poincars conven-
tionalism as well as of Duhems holism. The book of James laid on the table and by
opening it one could read some very stimulating passages worthy to be reminded.
First and foremost, James appeared not only as the advocate of the will to
believe or the philosopher devoted both to religious experience and faith that was
surely not appreciated by Frank and his friends. He was also the thinker who
invited similarly to Neurath or Frank to abandon the bad a priori reasons, []
fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins.73 Therefore,
Kant needed for James a deep revision from the perspective of an evolutionistic
interpretation of A priori forms, that were not born James said as fulminated
before nature began, because they gradually form themselves in natures
presence.74 Moreover, given the fact that the trail of the human serpent is thus over
everything,75 it seemed unavoidable, according to James, to recognize that our
mental forms or categories developed through a process not only of adaptation,
71
Further and detailed information about the Viennese Philosophical Society are available in
(Uebel 2000, pp.138142) and (Blackmore etal. 2001, pp.277314).
72
It seems almost sure that the lecture delivered at the Philosophical Society coincides with the
article that Jerusalem published in the Deutsche Literaturzeitung in January 1908 (see Jerusalem
1908b). Few later, in the Einleitung in die Philosophie, Jerusalem repeated his evaluation of
Pragmatism in fully similar terms (Jerusalem 1909a, pp.8487).
73
(James 1975a, p.31).
74
Id., p.120. On James Kantianism see (Carlson 1997) and (Kuklick 1977, pp.273274).
75
(James 1975a, p.37).
28 M. Ferrari
but also by means of a spontaneous act of human intellect made it possible to refer
to the facts of experience speaking our mother-tongue. With these categories in
our hand James argued , we make our plans and plot together, and connect all the
remoter parts of experience with what lies before our eyes.76 According to the lan-
guage of the Pragmatist philosopher, this means that what we say about reality []
depends on the perspective into which we throw it, since our impressions are orga-
nized on the base of a preconception of what impressions there may possibly be.77
Secondly, and despite the widespread image of the prophet of the primacy of
arbitrary will, James was a philosopher well acquainted with contemporary philoso-
phy of science. Mach, Duhem, Poincar, Jevon, Stallo, Pearson, and even Russells
Principles of Mathematics were discussed and quoted in many of his pages from the
first decade of the new century.78 In particular, James claimed in Pragmatism that
teachers such as Mach and Duhem believed rightly that no hypothesis is truer
than any other in the sense of being more literal copy of reality. They are all but
ways of talking on our part, to be compared solely from the point of view of their
use.79 Jamess acquaintance with the main philosophers of science of his time
emerges very clearly not only from some at first glance random remarks as the ones
just quoted, but also from a more general perspective that can be considered as a
kind of holism concerning the nature of knowledge as well as the plastic [] pro-
cess of truths growth. This process preserves the older stock of truths with a
minimum of modification, combining discontinuity with continuity in order to
mediate as today a contemporary philosopher of science would say between old
and new paradigms.80 Jamess very metaphorical way of expressing philosophical
ideas does not divert the attention of the reader of Pragmatism from the epistemo-
logical core he sketches in a manner quite similar, in particular, to Duhems account
of scientific knowledge.
Our minds James claimed grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we
let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as
many of our old prejudices and beliefs. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The nov-
elty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass, but it is also tinged by what absorbs it [] New
truths thus are resultants of new experiences and of old truths combined mutually modify-
ing one another.81
James was thus deeply interested into the rapid changes in scientific thought
since the second half of nineteenth century. So, in his essay Humanism and Truth of
76
Id., p.88.
77
Id., pp.118119.
78
See especially (James 1979, pp.9193), where James takes in account and criticizes Russells
solution of Zenos paradox expounded in The Principles of Mathematics. Note by the way that
James bases his criticisms on Charles Reonuviers so-called principle of number.
79
(James 1975a, p.93).
80
Id., p.35.
81
Id., p.83. It would be highly interesting to compare this passage with some of Duhems main
thesis concerning the relationship between physical theory and experiment (see Duhem 1974,
pp.183190).
1904, James highlighted very well the extent to which the pragmatist philosophy
was deeply connected with the recent transformations in exact sciences. According
to James, the enormously rapid multiplication of theories and the increasing
development of so many geometries, so many logics, so many physical and chemi-
cal hypotheses had offered a further proof of the human character of scientific
truths other, put in other words, of their being a human device and not a literal
transcript has dawned upon us. Scientific laws James suggested appeared thus
as conceptual shorthand, whereas our mind has become tolerant of symbol
instead of reproduction, of approximation instead of exactness, of plasticity instead
of rigor.82
In Vienna it was thus clear from the beginning, and in opposition to the suspects
nourished by the academic philosophers in the neighbouring Germany, that James
was foreign to a supposed unscientific yankee way of both thinking and conceptu-
alizing truth. Beyond the usual interpretation of Jamess famous, but easily misun-
derstood statements about truth as something useful and reducible to cash value, in
the Viennese milieu it was possible (thanks also to Jerusalems contribution to a
better comprehension of Jamess Pragmatism) to grasp the veritable core of prag-
matist account of truth as opposed to the correspondence theory. James was indeed
aware that truth signifies by no means the simple duplication by the mind of a
ready-made and given reality; on the contrary, James explained the fundamental
character of truth as something which happens to an idea (or to a linguistic sen-
tence), losing in this way any character of stagnant property.83 On the one hand,
truth understood as process corresponds thus to its verification or, as James said,
truth is only a collective name for verification-processes. On the other hand, sci-
entific truth has to be compatible with previous truths and with the new evidences
experience exhibits.84 According to James, truth is something essentially bound up
with the way in which one moment in our experience may lead us towards other
moments which it will be worth while to have been led to.85
We may finally note that for Neurath, Frank and for the other young supporters
of the scientific world-conception the pragmatist method had a great significance in
the struggle against metaphysics they were involved in on Machs side. As James
said in his book, we have a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise
might be interminable, showing that it is astonishing to see how many philosophi-
cal disputes collapse into insignificance the moment you subject them to this simple
test of tracing a concrete consequence.86 Discussing at the table of the coffee house
the future members of the Wiener Kreis found probably suitable what James, fol-
lowing Peirces famous pragmatic maxim, had stated concerning the fact that many
82
(James 1975b, p.206).
83
(James 1975a, p.93, 97).
84
Id., p.104.
85
Id., p.98.
86
Id., p.28, 30.
30 M. Ferrari
philosophical disputes collapse into insignificance the moment you subject them to
this simple test of tracing a concrete consequence.87
Now, it was thanks both to Jerusalems translation of Pragmatism and to his
pragmatist propaganda that Frank and the other Viennese friends became early
acquainted with the more attractive features of Jamess epistemological thought. As
Neurath will remind later, Jerusalem was therefore not only a typical representative
of the anti-Kantian main stream of Austrian philosophy and of the Vienna Circle in
particular, but also the Hapsburg forerunner of a pragmatist conception.88 Hence,
one shouldnt forget that Pragmatism, and especially the account James had pro-
vided (Peirce, as already noted, was quite unknown),89 could agree with Franks
idea of the necessity to enlarge Machs heritage90 crossing the new boundaries of
contemporary philosophy of science, i.e. Duhems holism, Poincar conventional-
ism, and Abel Reys new positivism. According to Franks recollections, as
enthusiastic students of contemporary science our group rejected Kants doctrine
that the forms of experience provided by the human mind were unchangeable.91
The required revision of Kantianism was thus possible by means of Poincars con-
ventionalism, which Frank presented as a kind of Kant freed of the remnants of
medieval scholasticism and anointed with the oil of modern science.92 On the other
hand, Frank emphasized nonetheless that Kants theory of knowledge was still valid
in so far it assumed that the recording of observations is not a purely passive act but
that a great deal of mental activity is necessary in order to formulate general state-
ments about sense observation.93
What is interesting here is the fact that this kind of relativization of A priori
proposed by Frank and resting on Poincars conventionalism was not at all incom-
patible with Jamess philosophy. On the contrary, the pragmatic method seemed to
be in agreement with such as a relativization inspired, to some extent, also by
Jamess image of the trail of the human serpent being over everything. In
Franks opinion, this was presumably a good manner to combine Mach with Kant,
Poincar with modern science, by envisioning a philosophy of science beyond
87
Id., p.30. On Mach, James, Peirce and the maxim of scientific theorizing see (Uebel 2014,
p. 637). Uebel maintains elsewhere that Mach had paved the way to the First Vienna Circle
agreement with Peirces and Jamess maxim (Uebel 2015, p.11). This statement is right, but it
seems to me that Uebel underestimates here (and more in general in his reconstruction of the early
reception of Pragmatism in Vienna) the originality of Jamess philosophical insights, to which
Frank and his friends were particularly receptive, albeit they were of course pretty influenced by
Machs heritage.
88
(Neurath 1981, vol. II, p.692, 742).
89
In his report of the Congress in Heidelberg Jerusalem too made only a very short reference to the
American logician and mathematician Charles Peirce. Jerusalem summarized thereby the prag-
matic maxim first formulated by Peirce and fully neglected in the last twenty years, but now
rediscovered thank to James Pragmatism (Jerusalem 1908c, p.56).
90
(Haller 1993, p.141).
91
(Frank 1949a, p.8).
92
Id., p.8.
93
Id., p.7.
Jerusalems both questionable psychologism and biological approach to knowledge.

Note moreover that Frank was a former pupil of Ludwig Boltzmann and his doc-
toral thesis in physics defended in Vienna dated just 1906. Boltzmann was not far
from a sort of pragmatist tendency and in his reflections on the epistemological
status of scientific knowledge he had insisted, not accidentally, on the fact that the
only true deductions are those leading to practical success.94 Both Boltzmanns
legacy and Poincars conventionalism offered to Frank a remarkable mean in order
to revise the iron necessity of Kantian A priori denounced by James too. No wonder
also that Franks early contribution published in 1907 was devoted to the classic
problem of causality, that Frank approached by adopting the standpoint of a radical
conventionalism. His solution consisted in emphasizing that this principle is neither
an empirical one, nor any A priori principle in Kants sense. By contrast, like all
scientific principles causality is only a matter of definition or more precisely as
Poincar had suggested of a mere disguised definition, that can be considered as
a free creation of human imagination.95 Frank argued therefore that this way of
thinking confirmed strikingly the main idea of critical idealism: experience only
serves to fill in a framework which man brings along with him as a part of his
nature. The only, substantial difference consisted in the fact that the old philoso-
phers considered this framework as a necessary outgrowth of human organiza-
tion, whereas the modern philosophy of nature sees in it just a free creation.96
The question posed by Franks radical conventionalism was discussed also by
Albert Einstein, who sent a letter to him (presumably lost)97 disputing the view of
causality as a fully conventional principle. This principle, Einstein suggested,
required an important delimitation, by considering that the principle of simplicity of
nature lying at the core of any physical theory is empirically tested and can be in no
way reduced to a pure convention. Poincars conventionalism, Frank acknowl-
edged for his part, needed thereby both qualifications and, according to a meta-
phor we have reminded above, a substantial correction through a drop of pragmatic
oil.98 In other words, we are witness to a development in Franks early intellectual
road, henceforth oriented by a kind of instrumentalism aiming at a pragmatization
of conventionalism,99 whose final outcome was Franks closer commitment to
Jamess Pragmatism.
94
(Boltzmann 1905, p.395). See also (Uebel 2000, p.164).
95
(Frank 1949a, pp.5758).
96
Id., p.58. Interesting enough, in the German original text Frank said menschlicher Willkr
(that is: free will) instead of creation of human imagination (Frank 1907, p.448). Do this testify
to Jamess influence on Franks early conventionalism?
97
This letter is not included in (Einstein 1993). Anyway, Einstein wrote later a quite positive evalu-
ation of Franks intellectual activity, not only as physicist, but also as author of very original essay
concerning epistemology. These words are entailed in the report Einstein prepared in March 1912
at the occasion of his succession as professor of physics at the University of Prague. Einstein
moved to Berlin and it was just Frank that in the same year arrived in Prague (Id., p.470).
98
(Frank 1949a, p.11).
99
(Uebel 2000, p.234).
32 M. Ferrari
This particular kind of anti-foundationalist pragmatism became gradually an

influential trend within the lively group of the First Vienna Circle.100 While Frank
referred to Poincar bearing in mind an evolutionistic view of Kant Apriorism, the
young Neurath was deeply attracted by Duhems holism, which was well known in
the Viennese milieu thanks to Friedrich Adlers German translation of The Aim and
Structure of Physical Theory (Adler was very close to Mach) appeared in 1908,101 in
the same year of the publication of Jerusalems edition of James. Actually, Neurath
never quoted James in his early writings, while he mentioned Poincar, Mach, and
above all Duhem as the centre of his greatest interest.102 Nonetheless three main
topics show that the young Neurath, in the framework of Duehms holism he
endorsed, undertook a careful reading of Pragmatism, finding in James a new kind
of thinker, close to a renewed epistemological perspective.103
To begin with, Neuraths early criticism against foundationalism developed in
1913in his essay The Lost Wanders of Descartes and the Auxiliary Motive repre-
sents the first attempt to refuse the pseudo-rationalism. It is here a matter, to some
extent, of a pragmatist point of view, resting on the clearly formulated insight into
the essential provisional nature of our cognitive means. At the core of this perspec-
tive lays the auxiliary motive, that Neurath believed Descartes had wrongly con-
fined to the field of moral, but that constitutes indeed the very substantial character
of knowledge in the light of an unavoidable fallibilism.104 Moreover, also Neurath
similarly to James was convinced that the bad a priori reasons were to be dis-
missed, and that one had to abandon at the same time the widespread, but unfounded
pretension of rationalism. According to rationalism it would be possible in meta-
phorical terms to find a solid and unchangeable support to everyone who proceed
through the forest without being already familiar with the path he walks on, namely
with what the rationalist would call the method.105 Secondly, Neurath recurred sys-
tematically to Duhems holism, maintaining that the correctness of each statement
concerning reality is related to that of all others; hence, for Neurath theories are
in general and this long before Quine empirically underdeterminated; they can-
not be considered simply built by means of the scarce data that we posses about the
world, because in this way we would miss both the wide range of underlying
hypothesis, and the variety of possible theories not necessarily tied to a unique set
of data.106 This was, as we have already stressed, a topic James had dealt with in his
100
(Uebel 1999, p.257).
101
See (Howard 1990) and (Blackmore etal. 2001, pp.2959).
102
Actually, Neurath published in 1909 a short review of the German translation of Jamess book,
complaining solely that James does not says precisely what praxis means according to his opin-
ion (Neurath 1909, p.139).
103
A short mention of Neuraths relationship to James via Jeruslem can be found in (Cartwright
etal. 1996, p.94 note 10).
104
(Neurath 1983, p. 3, 4, 78). On the auxiliary motive see (Mormann 1996) and (Stlzner
1996).
105
(Neurath 1983, pp.1011).
106
Id., p.3, 25).
Pragmatism, when he had reminded the contribution of teachers such as Mach

Duhem, and Poincar, emphasizing that no hypothesis is truer than any other in the
sense of being more literal copy of reality.107 On the other hand, from the early
moments of the First Vienna Circle Neurath had pointed out that facts are in no
way neutral data, because they always represent the result of a selection founded
upon an infinite number of systems of hypothesis.
Even if one sifts out a system that coincides with reality in certain points and now investi-
gates whether there al facts in experience that can be related to the remaining qualities of
this system, one has to remember that an infinite number of systems can be indicated which
are applicable in the part that can be interpreted empirically but exclude each other in the
part so far eludes empirical interpretations.108
For a Pragmatist philosopher receptive to Duhems epistemology, this means

and Neurath was surely familiar with this insight that what we say about reality
[] depends on the perspective into which we throw it, so that and we refer again
to Jamess aforementioned statement our impressions are organized on the basis
of a preconception of what impressions there may possibly be.109
We do not know, conversely, how James would have responded to Neuraths
famous metaphor of the sailors that have to rebuild their ship during the navigation
on the open sea. This metaphor, that Neurath had for the first time partially formu-
lated in 1921 by criticising Spenglers Decline of the West, embraced indeed the
essential features of Neuraths own vision both of knowledge and historical devel-
opment of science in terms of holism, anti-foundationalism and, broadly speaking,
of a pragmatist theory of truth as the process thanks to which truth happens.110 As
we shall see below, the metaphor we are dealing with became a kind of leitmotif
adopted by Neurath especially during the later debate at the Vienna Circle about
protocol statements, physicalism, and the encyclopaedia of unified science main
topics that James evidently could not even foresee. Nevertheless, it seems plausible
to believe that James would have been willing to acknowledge the great importance
of Neuraths insights, including him among those who as Mach, Poincar, Pearson,
Duhem, and others had driven in the name of human arbitrariness [] divine
necessity from scientific logic.111 Once arrived at the Vienna Station, and thanks to
the travel Jerusalem offered him, James would have gladly got in Neuraths boat.
107
(James 1975a, p.93).
108
(Neurath 1983, p.25).
109
(James 1975a, pp.118119).
110
Interestingly enough, in his review of Spenglers apocalyptic book Neurath emphasized
Duhems holistic account of scientific theories as follows: Duhem has strongly underlined that
every statement concerning whatever event is imbued with any kind of hypothesis, which at the
bottom arise from our world-conception. We are like sailors Neurath added that have to rebuild
their ship in open sea, without to begin head to tail. When a timber is removed, it has immediately
to be replaced by a new one, and in the meanwhile all the rest is used as frame. So, thanks both to
the trifling old timbers and pieces of wood, the ship can be entirely remarked but only through a
gradual reconstruction (Neurath 1981, vol. I, p.184).
111
(James 1975a, p.34).
34 M. Ferrari
A Sequel totheStory
The story we have told is not the only one dealing with Pragmatism and Logical
Empiricism. It also deserves to mention that while Frank, Neurath, and Hahn were
debating on holism, conventionalism, and Pragmatism, in the neighbouring
Germany the young Moritz Schlick rejected in his Habilitationsschrift of 1910
devoted to The Nature of Truth in Modern Logic James theory of truth.112 Schlick
found Jamess account of truth unacceptable for two main reasons. On the one hand,
we can surely maintain that all true judgements have to be verified, but this does not
mean, conversely, that all the judgements that are (or can be) verified are true. On
the other hand, Jamess definition attributes to truth in general a property unchar-
acteristic of it either in everyday or scientific language, namely that of mutability.113
From this point of view, the pragmatist conception of truth is false (or even unsci-
entific), because it confuses the essence of truth both with the criteria of its verifi-
cation and its practical consequences.114 Hence Schlick declared without hesitation
that he differed sharply from pragmatism,115 claiming by contrast that truth is the
one-to-one coordination of judgements with states-of-affairs. This insight will
be the core of Schlicks main work too, i.e. the Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre from
1918, where he emphasizes once again his disagreement with Jamess Pragmatism,
suggesting at the same time as he already did in 1910 that the great merit of
Pragmatism consists exactly in considering the process of verification as the
only way of recognizing the univocal nature, and thus the truth, of the judgement.116
During his early philosophical apprenticeship Schlick was indeed inclined,
above all thanks to his readings of Simmel and Nietzsche, to conceive truth in terms
of usefulness of a judgement, although at that time he had no acquaintance with
Pragmatism.117 Thereafter Schlick would have nonetheless modified his opinion,
presumably under the influence of Gustav Strring, who was his teacher when he
was studying philosophy in Zurich between 1907 and 1909, and working on the
Habilitationsschrift that allowed him to become Privatdozent at the University of
Rostock in 1911.118 In September 1908 Strring had attended the International
Congress of Philosophy at Heidelberg, stepping-in the lively discussion about
Pragmatism. In particular, he contended to Josiah Royces lecture the radical sepa-
ration of the psychological and the logical question about truth, emphasizing the
112
(Schlick 1979, vol. I, pp.41103).
113
Id., vol. I, pp.6465.
114
Id., vol. I, p.67.
115
(Schlick 1979, vol. I, p.88).
116
(Schlick 1979, vol. I, p.96) and (Schlick 2009 p.428).
117
We refer to Schlicks some autobiographical notes available at the Wiener-Kreis-Archiv im
Rijksarchief in Nord-Holland/Amsterdam, Inv. Nr. 082C2b, pp.1516. According to Schlick him-
self his pragmatist notes go back to Winter 19041905.
118
For more details I allow myself to refer to (Ferrari 2013).
crucial difference between the criteria of truth and its logical nature.119 It is plausible
that Strrings standpoint on this issue was quite influential on the intellectual
development of the young Schlick, who abandoned indeed his previous agreement
with an utilitarian view of truth and devoted himself rather to an inquiry into its
essence. It is moreover of some relevance that many years later Schlick at that
time at the top of his intellectual activity in Vienna wrote a short article on
Jerusalem (who was died in 1925), which was published on July 22, 1928in the
Neue Freie Presse. According to Schlick, it was undeniable that Jerusalem deserved
credit for having inaugurated the reception of American Pragmatism, especially by
means of the translation of Jamess famous book (albeit Schlick, we may note, read
the original English edition for his paper from 1910). Schlick underlined in this
sense the importance of the International Congress in Heidelberg, when the discus-
sion about Pragmatism contributed to an empiricist awakening of minds, which
had been surely very advantageous, although Schlick maintained lapidary the
pragmatist theory of truth became very soon outdated.120 Its evident that in
Schlicks case the pragmatist seed spread by Jerusalem in the First Vienna Circle did
not take any root.
Jerusalem would not have shared this evaluation, like probably Frank, Neurath,
and Hahn indeed. One can even contend that the inner tension within the Vienna
Circle between Schlicks devotion to Wittgenstein and the physicalism professed by
Carnap and Neurath was originated, to some extent, precisely by the first reception
of Pragmatism Jerusalem had promoted in Germany and, what is more important, in
Vienna. The later history of Logical Empiricism especially with regard to the
protocol sentences debate shows quite well how this inner tension, or even this
crucial break, was connected to the way in which Pragmatism in general had been
positively welcomed or sharply rejected: a point which would require to be recon-
sidered, completing thereby the very accurate studies on this topic already available
to scholarship.121 First and foremost it is worthy to point out that in one of the most
important contributions to this debate Neuraths paper Protocol statements the
echo of James Pragmatism is still present, at least as a sort of philosophical back-
ground. In 1932, in his reply to Carnaps famous article on physicalistic language,
Neurath stressed indeed that the construction of such a language could only be
performed beginning from both the common language and the vague terms typically
belonging to it: What is first given us is our historical ordinary language with a
multitude of imprecise, unanalysed terms [Ballungen].122 And it is precisely in this
context that Neurath formulates the celebrated metaphor of the ship and the sailors,
stressing at once that protocol statements are always revisable, and thus that they
can not be considered as a noli me tangere, as irreplaceable starting points.
119
See (Elsenhans 1909, p.92, 729).
120
(Schlick 2008, p.140).
121
We refer in particular to (Uebel 1992) and (Oberdan 1993).
122
(Neurath 1983, p.91).
36 M. Ferrari
There is no way to establish fully secured, neat protocol statements as starting points of the
sciences. There is no tabula rasa. We are like sailors who have to rebuild their ship on the
open sea, without ever being able to dismantle it in dry-dock and reconstruct it from the best
components. Only metaphysics can disappear without trace. Imprecise verbal clusters
(Ballungen) are somehow always part of the ship. If imprecision is diminished at one place,
it may well re-appear at another place to a stronger degree.123
Surprisingly enough, Neuraths own naturalism, fallibilism, and anti-

foundationalist account of knowledge, which are in recent times fully at right
revaluated,124 show a very interesting affinity with the defence both of common
sense and ordinary language formulated by Jamess in his book on Pragmatism.
James stated that common sense represents the first, more consolidate stage of
thought.125 In this sense our ways of thinking are simply the heritage of remote
ancestors, which have been able to preserve themselves throughout the experience
of all subsequent time.126 This means that ordinary knowledge, as well as scientific
knowledge, are rooted in common sense, but nevertheless they break at the same
time with this first stage and grow up establishing a stable relationship with the
language of our ancestors we still speak. No language is truer than another;
there is no definitive, unchangeable language. The image of knowledge James offers
in his lectures on Pragmatism is therefore not far from Neuraths own conception,
at least for what concern Jamess mentioned conviction that new truths [] are
resultants of new experiences and of old truths combined mutually modifying one
another.127
We are dealing with an image of the growth of knowledge which is surely dif-
ferent from Neuraths project of physicalism, but that seems nonetheless to consti-
tute to some extent a fruitful presupposition. For this reason one can maintain that
Jamess hidden influence on Neurath can be found also in the course of his contro-
versy with Schlick in 1934. Neuraths criticism responded first of all to the concept
of truth as mere coherence Schlick had ascribed to him in his essay On the
Foundation of Knowledge128; and secondly, Neurath posed into question Schlicks
own theory of truth as correspondence between linguistic statements and reality.
These objections against Schlicks position within the protocol sentences debate
constitute an highlighting document of the evident rift between the left Vienna
Circle largely represented by Neuraths naturalism and the Wittgensteinian wing
represented by Schlick. Without considering closely the many features of this
debate, it is worthy to remark that the question of truth plays actually a substantial
role. According to Neurath, Schlicks essential mistake consists in claiming that the
truth of a statement can be ascertained by means of its comparison with reality. By
123
(Neurath 1983, p.92).
124
One of the first appraisals of Neuraths outstanding, but for long time forgotten contribution to
philosophy of science is available in the essays collected by (Uebel 1991).
125
(James 1975a, p.92).
126
Id., p.83.
127
Ibid.
128
(Schlick 1979, vol. 2, pp.370387).
contrast, for Schlick it is the extra-linguistic reality that could warrant the veritable
foundation of knowledge, which rests on atomic statements or verifications
(Konstatierungen) never subjected to revision, and that represent on the contrary the
unavoidable basis both of knowledge and certainty of truth. Against such a stand-
point Neurath opposed a kind of linguistic pluralism as well as an intra-linguistic
conception so to speak of truth: Schlicks accusation obviously rests on the fact
that he speaks of the one reality that can be described only by one of several irrec-
oncilable systems of statements, whereas we stress that this formulation does not
occur within scientific language, but that the task is to select one among several
possibilities.129 Therefore, as Neurath suggested, there is no doubt about the fact
that the truth of a protocol statement [is] determined by the totality of
statements.130 Accordingly, Neurath argues finally that here too, we have a meta-
physical endeavour to put the unambiguity of atomic statements or affirmations
(Konstatierungen) as the eternal unambiguous reality against the fluctuations of
humanly paltry science.131 Schlick was also charged by Neurath with a fall into
metaphysics, and Neurath rejected therefore both this dangerous consequence and
the wrong view of truth as univocal correspondence with some specific states of
affairs: Thus for us striving after knowledge of reality is reduced to striving to
establish agreement between the statements of science and as many protocol state-
ments as many protocol as possible. But this is very much; in this rests empiricism.132
Neuraths plea for this kind of empiricism shows, quite similarly to Hahn, an
undeniable pragmatist feature, namely in the sense of James own conception of
truth. The mentioned passages from Pragmatism which define truth as something
which happens to an idea (or to a linguistic sentence), no longer as stagnant
property of something,133 can be considered, broadly speaking, as an indirect
argument in favour of Neuraths commitment to the heritage of James that seems
also to emerge from Neuraths criticism both toward Schlick and correspondentism.
Last but not least, in 1935 Neurath contended in his review of Karl Poppers Logik
der Forschung that Poppers pseudo-rationalism consisted in the presumption to
have found the correct method of scientific inquiry in order to sacrifice for (or to
chose in favour of) another theory once for all. By contrast, according to Neurath,
and in agreement both with Duhems holism and Jamess pragmatism, a theory can
be confirmed or shaked (erschttert) without eliminating the whole encyclopae-
dia the theory at issue belongs to: Negative results can shake his confidence [i.e.
the confidence of the scientist] in an encyclopedia, but not reduce it automatically
to zero so to speak through the application of certain rules.134 But James himself
had argued something like that, in particular in that very stimulating page where the
American pragmatist, as we saw, emphasized how the process of truths growth
129
(Neurath 1983, p.106).
130
Id., p.106.
131
Id., p.107.
132
Id., p.109.
133
(James 1975a, p.93, 97).
134
(Neurath 1983, p.124).
38 M. Ferrari
preserves the older stock of truths with a minimum of modification.135 All this is
a matter of great importance for Neuraths epistemology, especially when we con-
sider his commitment to Duhems holism, not accidentally evocated by James too
and this must be kept in mind once again in his Pragmatism.136
Hence, James seems to be more representative within the Viennese context than
in Germany, where he was never appreciated either as a philosopher as such, or as a
philosopher aiming at embedding in his theory of truth and knowledge the more
recent outcomes of philosophy of science. This story appears surely to be a little
surprising, but not by chance it goes on far beyond Vienna and Neurath, showing
how far Pragmatism and Logical Empiricism were indeed travel companions from
Europe to United States. Despite his naturalism, an eminent analytic philosopher as
Quinehas acknowledged that, according to James and Pragmatism, a scientific the-
ory rightly appears as a human product, aiming surely at a substantial agreement
with the facts, but being anyway more invented than discovered, insofar it is not
exclusively determined by means of mere data of experience.137 Yet, Quines con-
nection with James is not so unexpected as it seems to be at the first glance. In par-
ticular, one shouldnt forget that Neurath himself had a great merit in having
exported in the United States both his own Duhemian holism and his naturalism,
more precisely in their Viennese version spiced with a drop of pragmatic oil.138
Moreover, after Hilary Putnams rediscovery of Jamess theory of truth,139 the author
of Pragmatism appears no longer as a guest attending by chance a meeting during
which one speaks about issues having nothing to do with him. Recalling Giovanni
Papinis metaphor that James quoted sympathetically,140 also the Viennese Hotel
had innumerable chambers and each of them offered the possibility to meet a sup-
porter of the scientific world-conception engaged in developing his own thesis. As
the case of Schlick shows clearly, not all the Viennese protagonists went through the
pragmatist corridor. Yet, the passage was highly frequented by all who had read
James, sharing at once the insights endorsed by a forerunner whose name was
Wilhelm Jerusalem. To be sure, they all had lively talked about the new way of
thinking in a coffee house of the old Vienna in the early years of the twentieth
century, when the long story of Pragmatism and Logical Empiricism had actually
begun.
135
(James 1975a, p.35).
136
See (James 1975a, p.34, 93).
137
(Quine 1981, p.33).
138
On Quine and James see (Nevo 1995). Quines connection with Pragmatism is also analysed by
(Godfrey-Smith 2014).
139
See (Putnam 1992) and (Putnam 1997).
140
(James 1975a, p.32).
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Classical Pragmatism andMetaphysics: James
andPeirce onScientific Determinism
DonataRomizi
Abstract The present paper has two main aims. The first one is philosophical: I
show how a question (scientific determinism), which would have been labelled as
nonsensical according to the Vienna Circles Scientific World Conception, was
very much of interest for William James and Charles Peirce, who were deeply
involved in scientific practice. The second aim is a historico-philosophical one: I
reconstruct James and Peirces positions on scientific determinism and relate them
to a particular French anti-deterministic tradition (Renouvier, Boutroux, Bergson,
Poincar).
Introduction
The present paper has two main aims. The first one is philosophical and is related to
the general topic of this volume (Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism): I would like
to draw attention to the fact that the issue of classical scientific determinism,1 despite
being metaphysical and thereby nonsensical according to the Vienna Circles
scientific world conception, bothered philosophers, like William James and
Charles Peirce, who were deeply involved in scientific practice. At the end of the
paper I shall raise the question of why it was so and what this fact may suggest about
the relationship between science and metaphysics.
1
There are many possible formulations of scientific determinism (I have tried to develop a sort of
classification system of the different forms of determinism in: Romizi 2013, Ch. 1). By classical
scientific determinism I refer here to the well-known formulation by Laplace, comprised in his A
Philosophical Essay on Probability, originally published in French in 1814: We may regard the
present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which
at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items
of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis,
it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and
those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like
the past would be present before its eyes (Laplace 1951[1814], p.4).
D. Romizi (*)
Universitt Wien, Vienna, Austria
e-mail: donata.romizi@univie.ac.at

44 D. Romizi
The second main aim of this paper is historico-philosophical: in the time span
between the late 1870s and by the turn of 1900 James (18421910) and Peirce
(18391914) contributed repeatedly to the ongoing discussions about scientific
determinism. In this paper I give a general overview of their positions based mainly
on primary sources and I embed them into the broader context of the history of the
concept of scientific determinism, dedicating special attention to their relationship
with a particular French anti-deterministic tradition (Renouvier, Poincar, Boutroux
and Bergson).
ontextualization: Scientific Determinism intheLate

C
Nineteenth Century. AFrench Anti-deterministic Tradition
According to Ian Hacking, the explicit2 concept of scientific determinism started to

appear sporadically in the first half of the ninenteenth century and became estab-
lished in Europe between 1854 and 1872.3 Elsewhere (Romizi 2013) I have argued
that there had been two main reasons for the emergence of an explicit concept of
scientific determinism in the second half of the ninenteenth century. The first one
was the successful application of the deterministic paradigm of physics to sociol-
ogy, history, physiology and psychology in the course of the ninenteenth century:
the attempt, to an impressive extent successful, to extend the domain of validity of
(implicit) scientific determinism to the realm of human mind, will, behaviour and
society infused scientific determinism with ethical implications and provoked pub-
lic and emotionally charged discussions. It was within these discussions that a label
was eventually needed for what we retrospectively call scientific determinism
which thus became explicit. The second reason why the concept of scientific deter-
minism emerged explicitly in the second half of the ninenteenth century, according
to my reconstruction (Romizi 2013, Part C), is that natural scientists in the course of
the ninenteenth century became public men, science was increasingly popularized,
and scientific issues were increasingly related to life-issues, to worldview-questions,
and even to politics. In such a context the problem of the validityor of the domain
of validityof determinism attracted interest far beyond the restricted circles of
2
By explicit concept I mean a concept identifiable by its actual name (scientific determinism,
or at least determinism in the scientific meaning of the word) and indicating a precise philosophi-
cal position publicly discussed as such. An implicit concept of scientific determinism may be
assumed to be much older. For instance, Cassirer (1956, Ch. 1) holds classical rationalism as
already implying scientific determinism (Cassirer 1956, Ch. 1), while Hacking considers authors
as Holbach and La Mettrie as propounding versions of modern determinism (Hacking 1983,
p.461).
3
Cf. Hacking (1983, 1990, Ch. 18). 1854 is the year of publication of the first of Renouviers
Essais de Critique gnrale (I will expand on this below). 1872 is the year in which De Bois-
Reymond gave his famous talk about The Limits of Our Knowledge of Nature (ber die Grenzen
der Natuerkenntnis). On the relevance of this talk for the history of the concept of scientific deter-
minism cf. also Cassirer (1956, Ch. 1).
Classical Pragmatism andMetaphysics: James andPeirce onScientific Determinism 45
philosophers and scientists. Again, in such a public discussion both supporters and
opponents of scientific determinism needed a label to designate the standpoint we
call so today.
Since scientific determinism was often considered both by its supporters and by
its opponents as the essential feature of science, the debates about its validity were
often intertwined with those about the scientific status of disciplines other than
physics (which, as an allegedly fully-deterministic science, functioned as a model),
with those about the range of validity of science tout court, and with those about the
legitimacy and opportunity of a scientific world-conception in competition with, for
example, a religious one. Moreover, these debates mostly involved also the problem
of free will (or ethical determinism), since scientific determinism, once applied to
human will and behaviour, seemed to deny it.
In the context of the origins and the early development of scientific determinism
French authors played a pivotal role, both among the supporters (beside Laplace, I
think for example, of Adolphe Quetelet4 and Claude Bernard) and among the oppo-
nents of scientific determinism. Here I would like to point briefly to what might be
called a French anti-deterministic tradition,5 and in particular to some of its anti-
deterministic arguments, which are to be found again in James and Peirces
philosophy.
As already mentioned, Hacking emphasizes the year 1854 as a relevant point of
reference for the emergence of the explicit concept of scientific determinism. This
was the year in which the first of Charles Renouviers Essais de Critique gnrale
was published.6 In his Essais de Critique gnrale and in many of his articles for the
philosophical journal La Critique philosophique (founded by himself and his friend
Franois Pillon) Charles Renouvier (18151903) refers to the concept of dtermin-
isme, but the meaning of this word still oscillates between ethical and scientific
determinism. Much of Renouviers philosophical efforts have been in fact devoted
to the defence of free will,7 and his interest in scientific determinism seems to have
been conditional on this issue. Here I shall try to focus mainly on Renouviers
4
Quetelet was in fact a Belgian French-speaking author, but he had close contacts to the French
scientific community and his work shows certain continuity with the tradition of the French math-
matique sociale.
5
Indeed, if we intend the term tradition sensu stricto not every French author who supported
arguments against scientific determinism can be said to belong to the same tradition. In this paper
I use the expression French anti-deterministic tradition simply to recall the fact that many anti-
deterministic arguments have been developed by French authors (in the second half of the nine-
teenth century); among them, I consider here only those which have a close relationship with
James and Peirces standpoints on the issue of determinism.
6
Charles Renouviers extensive philosophical work, which is often just mentioned en passant as a
French version of Kantianism (even if Renouvier in fact criticized important aspects of Kants
philosophy), has been quite neglected by the recent philosophical literature. Perhaps this is going
to change after two important articles by Warren Schmaus (2007, 2011) andconcerning espe-
cially the relationship between Renouvier and the classical pragmatism of James and Peircea
new research project going on about Idealism and Pragmatism (http://idealismandpragmatism.
org/website accessed on April 2nd 2014).
7
Cf. Schmaus (2011), esp. 3 and 4.
46 D. Romizi
concept of scientific determinism8 and on some related arguments by Renouvier

which are to be found in a similar form in James and Peirce.
In his first Essai9 Renouvier not only criticizes quite in detail Laplaces theory of
probability,10 but he also mentions Laplaces dterminisme as a common assump-
tion of natural scientists which he rejects as uselessa quite pragmatic predicate,
indeed.11 The rejection of scientific determinism plays an important role also within
the broader context of Renouviers comprehensive criticism of Comtes positivistic
philosophy: Renouvier not only rejects Comtes illegitimate induction according
to which all phenomena, including social and psychological ones, will be shown to
follow the same deterministic laws as physical phenomena; but also, he criticizes
Comtes ignorance with respect to the role played by probability and statistics in
science.12
In his works Renouvier deals extensively with the dilemma of determinism vs.
free will: this is presented, on the one hand, as a sort of Kantian antinomy, i.e. as a
question which cannot really be answered.13 On the other hand, as Gunn writes, we
are presented with a system of antinomies apparently insoluble.14 In fact, espe-
cially in the second of his Essais, Renouvier offers an entire series of arguments in
8
It may be appropriate in this context to remind that Renouvier was not just a Kantian or idealist
philosopher, but that he had studied mathematics and engineering at the cole Polytechnique,
where he had also worked under the direction of Comte (for an overview of Renouviers life and
work see Gunn (1932a, b)).
9
The first Essai was published in 1854 with the title Analyse gnrale de la Connaissance: Bornes
de la connaissance. The second Essai, which I will mention below, was published in 1859 with the
title Lhomme: la raison, la passion, la libert. La certitude, la probabilit morale. Renouvier will
publish a revised and enlarged version of both Essais with new, different titles in 1875. In the fol-
lowing I will refer to the first editions.
10
Renouvier (1854) devotes the entire XXXVIII (Du ncessaire, du possible, du probable
Mesure de la probabilitPrpositions modales) to the illustration of his views on probability,
pointing to the relationship between this topic and the question of free will (cf. p.247: La question
que nous venons de traiter se lie intimement au problme fameux du libre arbitre et du dtermin-
isme.). Renouvier expands then on the issue of probability in the Appendix IX (p.587 f.), where
he comes to his criticism towards Laplaces conception of probability in conjunction with his
determinism (see in particular p.589).
11
Cf. Renouvier (1854), p.589: here Renouvier declares Laplacian determinism to be une profes-
sion de foi dans la ncessit, qui me semble a moins inutile, et par consquent arbitraire (ibidem,
p.589). See also the third of the arguments in favour of free will which Renouvier presents in the
second of his Essais: Renouvier (1859), p.608. Renouvier (1854, pp.58990) also offers an inter-
esting criticism of the concept of causality and of the principle of sufficient reason.
12
Cf. Schmaus (2011), pp.7778.
13
At the end of the already mentioned Appendix IX Renouvier (1854, p.595) argues: nai-je con-
clu qu une sorte de parit logique et exprimentale entre la thse du ncessaire et lantithse du
contingent []. See also the fourth of the arguments in favour of free will which Renouvier
presents in the second of his Essais: Renouvier (1875), p.608.
14
Gunn (1932b), p.191; my emphasis. Gunn (ibidem, pp.191192) makes clear how Renouvier
does in fact endeavour to cut the Gordian-knot of the antinomies.
defence of free will and against determinism.15 The crucial point to be considered is
that the solution of the antinomies, from Renouviers perspective, cannot be
expected to derive from theoretical considerations or experimental results, but rather
is reached through a decision. In fact, Renouvier supported a voluntaristic theory of
knowledge: he emphasized how theories and statements, including scientific ones,
can be justified and demonstrated only to a certain degree, and never completely; as
a consequence, any belief in them requires a supplemental decision by the will.16
This applies, of course, also to the belief in determinism: but then determinism can-
not be true, since in the very moment in which we declare it as being true we are
making use of our freedom, and thus (according to Renouvier) we are denying it.17
In general it may be argued that Renouviers rejection of scientific determinism
(which he regarded as incompatible with free will) follows from Renouviers affir-
mation of the primate of practical reason and action:
The practical reason must lay down its own basis and that of all true reason; for reason is
not divided against itself; reason is not something apart from man; it is man, and man is
never other than practical, i.e. acting.18
This primate of action explains both Renouviers already mentioned rejection of

scientific determinism on the basis of epistemological voluntarism and a further
argument of Renouviers in favour of free will: we cannot dispense with the concept
of free will if we want to make sense of human acts and behaviour, or of concepts
like those of responsibility, regret, duty and reproach.19The admission of determin-
ism would render nonsensical just as the most important realm of human morality
and action.20
15
Cf. Renouvier (1859), p.607f, where the author presents a Rcapitulation des Preuves de la
Libert.
16
Cf. esp. Renouvier (1859), Ch. XVII. On Renouviers voluntaristic theory of knowledge cf.
Gunn (1932b), esp. p.193 and 198, and Schmaus (2011), esp. 4. Gunn (1932a, p.50) may also
suggest that there was a religious side to Renouviers voluntarism: referring to Renouviers hostil-
ity toward the Roman Catholic Church and to his aggressive Protestantism, Gunn notices:
Certitude is, he [Renouvier] held, the fruit of intelligence, heart, and will, consequently it can
never come about by the coercion of authority (my emphasis).
17
To see how, in Renouviers philosophy, the affirmation of free will logically follows from his
theory of knowledge, cf. the very beginning of his Rcapitulation des Preuves de la Libert
(Renouvier 1859, p.607 f.). Here Renouvier also notices ironically how it is precisely on liberty
which depends cet ordre spculatif o les philosophes ont travaill vainement saffranchir de
leur franc arbitre (Ibidem., p.607).
18
This is Gunns English translation of an important passage from Renouviers Psychologieratio-
nelle (cit. in: Gunn 1932b, p. 196). The same passage is translated and put in the context of
Renouviers criticism of Kant by Schmaus (2011), p.85.
19
As Renouvier puts it, la croyance lambiguit des futurs est une condition de lexercice moral
de la conscience (Renouvier 1859, p.610).
20
Cf. esp. the second part of Renouviers Rcapitulation des Preuves de la Libert (Renouvier
1859, p.607 f.), starting from his 6th argument in favour of free will: Les consequences morales
de lhypothse de la ncessit, dans la vie humaine, ne sont point de nature tre appliques et
pratiques, quoi quon fasse. Elles amneraient une perturbation complte de la conscience et de
ses rapports. Cf. also Schmaus (2011), esp. pp.8081 (on the concept of moral induction) and
pp.8788.
48 D. Romizi
A voluntaristic argument against scientific determinism very similar to

Renouviers one will be later put forward also by Henri Poincar (18541912), in an
article entitled Sur la valeur objective de la science (Poincar 1902a, 286):
Les lois exprimentales ne sont quapproche, et si quelques-unes nous apparaissent
comme exactes, cest que nous les avons artificiellement transformes en ce que jai appel
plus haut un principe. Cette transformation, nous lavons faite librement, et comme le
caprice qui nous a dtermins la faire est quelque chose dminemment contingent, nous
avons communiqu cette contingence la loi elle-mme. Cest en ce sens que nous avons
le droit de dire que le dterminisme suppose la libert, puisque cest librement que nous
devenons dterministes.
Poincars concept of exactness plays here the same role as Renouviers concept
of certitude: the voluntaristic claim is then that we cannot reach them without a free
act or decision of the will. But this means that determinism comes to rest upon a free
act or decision, thus contradicting itself.
Poincar is not usually considered as an exponent of an anti-deterministic posi-
tion. In fact, even in the very same article I have just mentioned he insists on the
impossibility to prove that scientific determinism fails.21 However, this impossibil-
ity was admitted by Renouvier as well, who for this reason spoke of an antinomy.
As already mentioned, Renouvier gave then his antinomy an anti-deterministic
solution by referring to practice, and this applies in general also with respect to
Poincars position. In fact, his fundamental work as a mathematical physicist on
the three body problem22 made clear just how distant the Laplacian ideal of perfect
predictability is from real scientific practice. Whenever we consider a system with
more than two bodies interacting with each other our prediction of the future devel-
opment of the state of the system will be affected by a degree of approximation
which increases with time. In many cases our knowledge of the state of the system
deteriorates very quickly. In light of these precise scientific results of his, it is no
wonder if Poincar emphasized repeatedly the approximate and incomplete charac-
ter of scientific laws. Sure enough, Poincar reduced chance (le hazard, or le ph-
nomne fortuit) to a great amount of complexity and instability (non-linearity)and
in this sense he seems to have endorsed an epistemic, rather than ontological, con-
cept of chance.23 But it may also be argued that Poincar endorsed a concept of
objective chance, since he regarded it as having an intersubjective character and
conceived of objectivity as intersubjectivity.24 Moreover, Poincar held that chance
21
Cf. Poincar (1902a), pp.282285.
22
Poincar (1890) and (18921897). On Poincars work on the three body problem cf. Barrow-
Green (1997).
23
Cf. the chapter on Le hasard in Poincars Science et mthode (Poincar 1920 [1908]). An
English translation of this chapter will be published in 1912in The Monist (Poincar 1912), the
same journal in which Peirceas we will see belowhad developed his polemic against deter-
minism in the 1890s.
24
We have sought to define chance, and now it is proper to put a question. Has chance [] objec-
tivity?; [] if it retains an objective character, it is because all men have approximately the same
senses, the power of their instruments is limited, and besides they use it only exceptionally
(Poincar 1912, p.47 and 49 respectively). Cf. also Poincar (1902a), p.288: Ce que nous garantit
lobjectivit du monde dans lequel nous vivons, cest que ce monde nous est commun avec dautres
tres pensants.
is something other than the name we give our ignorance (Poincar 1912, 33) and
recognized the importance of probability calculus in dealing with fortuitous phe-
nomena (Poincar 1912) and within scientific practice in general (Poincar 1902b,
Ch. XI). For these reasons I would count Poincar among the exponents of the
French anti-deterministic tradition.25
But the French ninenteenth century philosopher best known for his anti-
deterministic arguments is probably Poincars brother-in-law,26 mile Boutroux
(18451921), author of a renowned book on the contingency of the laws of nature
(De la contingence des lois de la nature, 187427) and of a later work on the concept
of law of nature (De lide de loinaturelledans la science et la philosophie contem-
poraines, 1895b). Boutrouxs palette of anti-deterministic arguments covers almost
the entire spectrum of the main ninenteenth century arguments against determin-
ism.28 Here I would like to mention briefly only those which are relevant for the
following discussion of James and Peirces views.
Boutroux sees scientific determinism as a product of rationalism and as resulting
from a deductivistic standpoint, which he criticizes in favour of an appraisal of
observation, experiment and sense data.29 He recommends not to mistake formal
categories of the intellect, and especially deterministic relationships, for real prop-
erties of the world.30 Determinism is the product of a rationalist perspective which
neglects many aspects of reality and focuses in particular on quantities: however,
25
The French authors I discuss in this section are only some amongst several French authors who
held anti-deterministic standpoints. One could also mention, for example, the mathematician
Joseph Valentin Boussinesq, as well as his mentor and friend Saint-Venant: they developed an anti-
deterministic line of argument which was taken very seriously in the 1870s (cf. Romizi 2013,
6.b). Later in the nineteenth Century and at the time around 1900 other French authors defended
free will against determinism also on religious grounds (cf. Nye 1976 and 1979):among them were
Maurice Blondel, student of Boutrouxs, and Edouard Le Roy, who will inherit Bergsons chair for
Philosophy: however, they focused rather on ethical than on scientific determinism.
26
On the relationship between Boutrouxs and Poincars philosophical work cf. Nye (1979),
p.117 f.
27
The book (Boutroux 1895a [1874]) is a revised and enlarged version of Boutrouxs PhD thesis,
which was originally planned as a work on Determinism in its connections with the physical and
the moral sciences. Cf. Heidelberger (2009), footnote 9.
28
Cf. Romizi (2013), pp.264270. On Boutrouxs philosophy, with particular regard to his concept
of a contingency of the laws of nature, cf. Boelitz (1907), Nye (1979, pp. 112117) and esp.
Heidelberger (2009).
29
This is clear already from the Introduction (Boutroux 1895a [1874], pp.15), where Boutroux
associates determinism with la doctrine qui place dans lentendement le point de vue suprme de
la connaissance and complains that this doctrine ne rend pas un compte suffisant de la ncessit
absolue de lobservation et de lexprimentation dans les sciences positives (Ibidem, pp.45). Cf.
also Ibidem, p.133 (Lors mme que la science a pu prendre la forme dductive, il ne sensuit pas
que les conclusions en soient objectivement ncessaires).
30
Cf. for example Boutroux (1895a [1874]), p. 60: La certitude singulire que prsentent les
mathmatiques comme sciences abstraite ne nous autorise pas regarder les abstractions math-
matiques elles-mmes, sous leur forme rigide et monotone, comme limage exacte de la ralit.
Cf. also p.23: Ainsi la science a pour objet une forme purement abstraite et extrieure, qui ne
prjuge pas la nature intime de ltre.
50 D. Romizi
according to Boutroux, quantities grasp only a limited aspect of the qualities which
experience revealsthus, the validity of determinism must be restricted.31 According
to Boutroux, if we adopt an empirical standpoint, observation will show characters
of reality which are not compatible with scientific determinism: indeterminacy,
changeability, variety, individuality:
Tout ce que est possde des qualits et participe, ce titre mme, de lindtermination et de
la variabilit radicales qui sont de lessence de la qualit. Ainsi, le principe de la perma-
nence absolue de la quantit ne sapplique pas exactement aux choses relles: celles-ci ont
un fonds de vie et de changement qui ne spuise jamais.32
Variety, individuality, indeterminacy, and changeability increase, according to

Boutroux, the more one ascends in the hierarchy of the different worlds which char-
acterizes his emergentism: from the inorganic world to the world of the organisms,
from this one to the world of the intellect and the will. Consequently, from
Boutrouxs standpoint, it is clear that the will is not reducible to the body and the
living body is not reducible to inorganic bodies governed by deterministic laws.33
Correspondingly, Boutroux dedicates the whole seventh chapter of his book on the
contingency of the laws of nature to a relativization (which does not mean confuta-
tion or depreciation) of the results of experimental physiology and psychology,
which, from Boutrouxs standpoint, cannot affirm the validity of the deterministic
laws governing matter beyond the physical world, i.e. in the realm of consciousness,
thought and the will.34
The attempt to extend the validity of scientific determinism to consciousness and
thought was rejected also by Henri Bergson, who studied with Boutroux between
1878 and 1881.35 Like Boutroux, Bergson defended, against any rationalistic and
31
Cf. Boutroux (1895a [1874]), p. 136: [] la ncessit ne peut consister que dans le rapport
quantitatif de lantcdent consquent. Or la quantit ne se conoit que comme mesure de la
qualit, comme subordonne la qualit [].
32
Boutroux (1895a [1874]), p.60. Cf. also Ibidem, p.25: Le progrs de lobservation rvle de
plus en plus la richesse de proprits, la varit, lindividualit, la vie, l o les apparences ne
montraient que des masses uniformes et indistinctes.
33
Cf. Boutroux (1895a [1874]), pp.132133: On peut distinguer dans lunivers plusieurs mondes,
qui forment comme des tages superposs les uns aux les autres. Ce sont, au-dessus du monde de
la pure ncessit, de la quantit sans qualit, qui est identique au nant, le monde des causes, le
monde des notions, le monde mathmatique, le monde physique, le monde vivant, et enfin le
monde pensant. Chacun de ces mondes semble dabord dpendre troitement des mondes infri-
eurs, comme dune fatalit externe, et tenir deux son existence et ses lois. [] Cependant, si lon
soumet un examen comparatif les concepts des principales formes de ltre, on voit quil est
impossible de rattacher les formes suprieures aux formes infrieures par un lien de ncessit.
34
Boutrouxs anti-reductionism is both ontological and epistemological, that is, it also means a
pluralistic standpoint with respect to different sciences: cf. Heidelberger (2009), 3, The Disunity
of Science.
35
Cf. the section on Le dterminisme physique in his Essai sur les donnesimmdiates de la
conscience (Bergson 1963a [1889]), where he shows a notable acquaintance with the scientific
theories of his days (both of the natural and of the social sciences). With respect to scientific deter-
minism he points out that taking an abstract principle of mechanics as if it were a universal law is
uneerreurdordrepsychologique (Ibidem, p.102).
mathematical standpoint, immediate experience as a source of knowledge (cf. esp.

Bergson 1963a [1889]). Like Boutroux, he emphasized concepts as freedom, indi-
viduality and spontaneity as opposed to determinism. Finally, he also supported a
kind of emergentism: in his famous work Lvolution cratrice (Bergson 1963b
[1907]), he claims that nature and natural laws evolve in a way which brings about
always something new and irreducible to the pastthus, something unpredictable.
The argumentative line which rejects determinism by appealing to the irreducibility
of present and future (new phenomena, new laws etc.) to the past had been sup-
ported for the first time probably by Theodore Fechner,36 it was shared also by
Boutroux and is to be found in Peirce as well, as we shall see below. It suggests the
idea of an openness of the future, which makes room for somethingas Peirce
would say really sui generis and new.
It is a well-known fact that William James andmainly through himCharles
S.Peirce had contacts with Renouvier, Boutroux and Bergson.37 Here I shall not
expand on the issue of the personal relationships among these authors, or on the
question of their more or less mutual influences: in the next two sections I shall
rather focus on James and Peirces development of anti-deterministic lines of argu-
ments similar to those considered in this section.
William James onScientific Determinism
Charles Renouviers anti-deterministic philosophy had on the young William James

such an impact, that one may almost speak of a spiritual healing. In 1869 a
depressed James was persuaded that we are Nature through and through, that we
are wholly conditioned, that not a wiggle of our will happens save as the result of
36
Cf. esp. Fechner (1849) and the corresponding analysis of Heidelberger (1992), in particular at
p. 331. In the summer of 1908 James recommended Bergson to read Fechners Zend-Avesta:
[Fechner] seems to me of the real race of prophets, and I cannot help thinking that you, in particu-
lar, if not already acquainted with this book, would find it very stimulating and suggestive. At the
beginning of the following year Bergson replied that he had not had the time to read it yet (cf. the
correspondence between the two in Perry (1936), vol. II, pp.627629).
37
James had much contact with Europe, where he received part of his education: it was as a student
that he, in the late 1860s, began to deal enthusiastically with Renouviers philosophy. He then
started a correspondence with the 27 years older Renouvier, which will continue until Renouviers
death. The two met personally for the first time in 1880in Avignon, during one of James European
trips. During their long friendship James and Renouvier exchanged ideas, reviewed and translated
each others works, often mentioned each other in their works, and James delivered articles for
Renouviers journal La Critique philosophique. Their relationship is very well documented in
Perry (1936), Ch. XLI, XLII (especially devoted to their exchange of views on freedom and deter-
minism), and XLIII.With Boutroux and Bergson James developed a philosophical exchange and a
close friendship later in his life (after James death, Boutroux would publish an intellectual biog-
raphy of his friend). On James relationship with Boutroux and Bergson cf. Perry (1936), Ch.
LXXXIII-LXXXVI (which contain also part of their correspondence), Girel (2003) and Sachs
(2013), pp.1725.
52 D. Romizi
physical laws.38 A year later, an enthusiastic adhesion to Renouviers voluntaristic

line of argument against determinism is recorded by James together with his recov-
ery from depression.39It is no wonder, thus, that James, in his earliest letter to
Renouvier, confesses that he owes it to Renouviers philosophy, if he now possesses
for the first time an intelligible and reasonable conception of freedom, and that it
is through Renouviers philosophy that he is beginning to experience a rebirth of
the moral life.40
James appreciated Renouviers empiricism, from which the recognition of the
dubiousness of knowledge in wide theoretical matters followed. From this recogni-
tion followed in turn, as already mentioned, Renouviers epistemological volun-
tarism, which James famous will to believe is akin to.41 Furthermore, James
would publicly share Renouviers anti-deterministic argument from epistemologi-
cal voluntarism to the postulation of free-will:
In every wide theoretical conclusion we must seem more or less arbitrarily to choose our
side. But if our choice is truly free, then the only possible way of getting at that truth is
by the exercise of the freedom which it implies.42
Noteworthy is the fact that James, in the dedication of his Some Problems of
Philosophy (published posthumously in 1911) to Renouvier, retrospectively empha-
sizes pluralism as the character of Renouviers philosophy which made the deci-
sive impression on him in the 1870s.43 And we know precisely from the
correspondence with Renouvier that James thought, at least in the early 1880s, that
indeterminism and pluralism are the same thing.44
How should this statement be interpreted?
38
Cit. in Perry (1936), vol. I, p.654.
39
Cf. Perry (1936), vol. I, p.658.
40
Cit. in Perry (1936), vol. I, p.662. The letter, from Cambridge (Massachusetts), is dated Nov. 2,
1872.
41
Cf. James (1927c [1896]).
42
James statement, published in 1876, is quoted in Perry (1936), vol. I, p.658. In a later review of
Renouviers third Essai James has become more cautious but still accepts the essence of
Renouviers argument: if free-will be admitted at all into the Universe, it must be left as a legiti-
mate methodological factor in the construction of philosophy. For philosophies are acts. Whether
men admit or deny the fact, passion always plays some part in making them reject or hold to sys-
tems, and volition, whether predestinate or unpredestinate, always will play a part in deciding
when to encourage and when to suppress ones doubt. [] The question of universal predestina-
tion [] is theoretically insoluble. But if our wills be ever free from antecedent determination,
what is more fit than that they should have a voice in acknowledging that truth, which by acting
they create? We may, then, without shame postulate our freedom [] (James 1893, p.214).
43
Cf. James (1916 [1911]), dedication: He [Charles Renouvier] was one of the greatest of philo-
sophic characters, and but for the decisive impression made on me in the seventies by his masterly
advocacy of pluralism, I might never have got free from the monistic superstition under which I
had grown up. [].
44
This is mentioned by Renouvier in a letter to James dated Dec 28, 1882 and reported in Perry
(1936), vol. I, p.688f: To me your expression that indeterminism and pluralism are the same thing
is very profound. (Ibidem, p.689).
Long before his defence of an ontological pluralism in his A Pluralistic Universe

(1928 [1909]), James emphasized in many of his writings a pluralism of perspec-
tives, depending on the variety of the aims of human thought and action. This kind
of pragmatist perspectivismas we may call itbecomes, in the context of
James philosophy, a main line of argument against scientific determinism. In The
Sentiment of Rationality (1879)45 James conceives of determinism as the result of
theoretic rationality, which is the label under which he comprises both science and
philosophy insofar as they both tend to banish uncertainty from the future.46 This
would be the reason of the resistance which science and philosophy offer against,
for instance, miracles and free will, which imply uncertainty to some degree.47
However, theoretical thinking and its abstract concepts can only grasp a part of real-
ity and cannot exhaust its richness. This was also Boutrouxs general criticism
against determinism, as already mentioned. In fact, in the last years of his life and
work James would emphasize his convergence with Boutroux and Bergson regard-
ing the criticism of intellectualism48: with this term James means the kind of radi-
cal rationalism which pretends to reduce reality to abstract and universal concepts,
or--vice versa--which pretends that abstract concepts would provide the true and
exhaustive knowledge of reality.49 Against this position all three philosophers
Boutroux, James and Bergsondeveloped, in different ways, a philosophy of
immediate experience and action.50
In The Sentiment of Rationality James connects the criticism of intellectual-
ism with his own kind of pragmatist perspectivism, and argues:
45
James (1927a [1879]). By the way, Renouvier wrote to James in a letter dated Aug. 21, 1879: As
to the Sentiment of Rationality, I have just finished a translation of it to which I have given all the
attention and the care I am capable of I count myself very fortunate to publish this fine piece of
work in French, the more so because while we both have the same stock of ideas, make the same
critical applications and reach the same general conclusion, your version of criticisme is presented
with a startling originality [] (cit. in Perry 1936, vol. I, p.669).
46
James (1927a [1879]), p.77.
47
The wrath of science against miracles, of certain philosophers against the doctrine of free-will,
has precisely the same root, dislike to admit any ultimate factor in things which may rout our
prevision or upset the stability of our outlook (James 1927a [1879]), p.80.
48
Cf. James (1928 [1909]), Lecture VI: Bergson and his Critique of Intellectualism.
49
Cf. James (1928 [1909]), p.237: Reality must be one and unalterable. Concepts, being them-
selves fixities, agree best with this fixed nature of truth, so that for any knowledge of ours to be
quite true it must be knowledge by universal concepts rather than by particular experiences, for
these notoriously are mutable and corruptible. This is the tradition known as rationalism in phi-
losophy, and what I have called intellectualism is only the extreme application of it.
50
Cf. Perry (1936), vol. II, p.567: In an article entitled A Great French Philosopher at Harvard,
which he wrote for the Nation, James gave Boutroux credit for being the leader de jure of the
reaction against the abstract, and in favour of the concrete point of view in philosophy, explaining
that Boutroux was the historic precursor of the movement which was represented in its more stri-
dent and revolutionary phases by Bergson and himself. The most important features of prag-
matism and Bergsonism, he said, find clear expression in La Contingence des lois de la nature,
published by Boutroux over forty years before.
54 D. Romizi
No abstract concept can be a valid substitute for a concrete reality except with reference to
a particular interest in the conceiver. The interest of theoretic rationality [] is but one of a
thousand human purposes. When others rear their heads, it must pack up its little bundle and
retire till its turn recurs.51
Theoretic rationality aims at prevision, certainty and determinacy, and it comes

to a representation of reality which is coherent with this aims. But there are other,
different aims, and theoretic rationality should not choose some part of the world
to interpret the whole by.52
Besides theoretic rationality there are, in James views, other kinds of rational-
ityas he would explain some years later in his article on The Dilemma of
Determinism (1884). Here he mentions, for example, a moral, a mechanical and
a logical rationality.53 This pluralism, again, becomes the starting point of an anti-
deterministic line of argument. First, according to James, advocates of scientific
determinism do not speak from a perspective which should be privileged because of
its alleged objectivity, in contrast with an alleged purely subjective and emotional
root of the belief in free will: to recognize this is for James a necessary condition to
start discussing about determinism at all.54 Secondly, moral rationality, requires,
from James point of view, the rejection of determinism in favour of free will. In
fact, James defends an argument very similar to Renouviers claim according to
which we cannot dispense with the assumption of free will if we want to be able to
make sense of acts and behaviour. James summarizes his argument as follows:
I cannot understand the willingness to act [] without the belief that acts are really good
and bad. I cannot understand the belief that an act is bad, without regret it at its happening.
I cannot understand regret without the admission of real, genuine possibilities in the world.55
Thus, James did not rest content with the idea of a pluralism of perspectives or
rationalities, none of which should be privileged. He did, in fact, privilege one: the
ethical onewhich implies, in his view, the rejection of scientific determinism as
condition sine qua non for the admission of free will.
51
James (1927a [1879]), p.70.
52
Cf. the title of the 4th of the subtitles by means of which James summarizes the contents of his
Lecture I in James (1928 [1909]): The process of Philosophizing: Philosophers choose some part
of the world to interpret the whole by.
53
James (1927b [1884]), p.147.
54
Cf. James (1927b [1884]), pp.147148: [] if anyone pretends that while freedom and variety
are, in the first instance, subjective demands, necessity and uniformity are something altogether
different, I do not see how we can debate at all.
55
James (1927b [1884]), p.175. An even subtler version of this argument appears already in 1882
precisely in a letter to Renouvier: I believe more and more that free will, if accepted at all, must
be accepted as a postulate in justification of our moral judgment that certain things already done
might have been better done. This implies that something different was possible in their place. The
determinist, who calls this judgment false, cannot consistently mean that so far as it actually was
rendered, a truer judgment could have been in its place (James, cit. in Perry 1936, p.682). I shall
not go into more detail with respect of James argument in favour of ethical determinism, since my
main focus here is scientific determinism.
James priorities affected also his conception of psychology. As I have already

mentioned, one of the reasons why scientific determinism became explicit and
fiercely debated in the second half of the ninenteenth century was the successful
application of the deterministic paradigm of physics to human mind and behaviour.
This was due in particular to the development of experimental physiology and psy-
chology: thus, it is noteworthy that James, as a professor of Anatomy and Physiology
(187376), and later of Psychology, taught the first American course on experimen-
tal psychology, in 1875. This discipline was the main source of worries for the
advocates of free will. However, already in 1878, in his article Some Remarks on
Spencers Definition of Mind as Correspondence, James made clear that he would
not commit to any mechanistic or deterministic conception of mind.56 Later, in his
Principles of Psychology (1890) James admits that Psychology as empirical science
cannot develop any concept of mind which could solve the problem of the incom-
patibility between mechanical determinism and free will.57 But he would not remain
agnostic with respect to the problem of determinism. In his Psychology: A Briefer
Course (1892)we find a further instance of his pragmatist perspectivism as a start-
ing point for relativizing, and then basically rejecting, the validity of scientific
determinism:
Let psychology frankly admit that for her scientific purposes determinism may be claimed,
and no one can find fault. If, then, it turns out later that the claim has only a relative purpose,
and may be crossed by counter-claims, the readjustment can be made. Now ethics makes a
counter-claim; and the present writer, for one, has no hesitation in regarding her claim as
the stronger, and in assuming that our wills are free. For him, then, the deterministic
assumption of psychology is merely provisional and methodological.58
The already mentioned article on The Dilemma of Determinism (1884) pres-

ents one of the earliest occurrences of the dichotomy determinism vs. indetermin-
ism in the sense of scientific determinism and indeterminism. James defines the
two concepts as follows:
[Determinism] professes that those parts of the universe already laid down absolutely
appoint and decree what the other parts shall be. []
Indeterminism, on the contrary, says that the parts have a certain amount of loose play
on one another, so that the laying down of one of them does not necessarily determine what
the others shall be.59
If we compare these definitions with James defence of pluralism in his A

Pluralistic Universe, published a year before his death, we come to understand why
56
Vgl. James James (1920a [1878]). This article got the appreciation of Renouvier, who in a letter
to James dated May 14, 1878, writes: I have received your Remarks on [Spencers] Definition of
Mind As Correspondence, and have read them with the most lively interest. As regard the ques-
tion of Spencer, the point of your attack is very well chosen, and your arguments striking (cit.
in Perry (1936), vol. I, p.667).
57
James (1998 [1890]), vol. 2, p.572 f.
58
James (1984 [1892]), p.395.
59
James (1927b [1884]), pp.150151.
56 D. Romizi
James supported the view according to which indeterminism and pluralism are the
same thing:
What pluralists say is that a universe really connected loosely [] is possible, and that for
certain reasons it is the hypothesis to be preferred.60
In the light of the aforementioned evidence we also know that these reasons were
for James especially those of moral rationality. If we finally add to the picture the
definitions of empiricism and rationalism that James gives in the very same book,
an axis empiricism-pluralism-indeterminism emerges, which James opposes to
the axis rationalism-monism-determinism:
Reduced to their most pregnant difference, empiricism means the habit of explaining wholes
by parts, and rationalism means the habit of explaining parts by wholes. Rationalism thus
preserves affinities with monism, since wholeness goes with union, while empiricism
inclines to pluralistic views.61
In sum, indeed James (like Renouvier) held the dilemma determinism vs. inde-
terminism to be theoretically insoluble; and he admitted that scientists and philoso-
phers may decide to assume the validity of determinism while trying to banish
uncertainty. However, an empiricist standpoint would suggest to stick to the parts
as the starting point of our explanations and to be cautious in postulating a fully
connected whole beyond them. Moreover, precisely because the dilemma deter-
minism vs. indeterminism is theoretically insoluble we have to decide what to
believeand from a pragmatist point of view the criteria for this decision would be
our aims and the practical consequences of our commitment to determinism or to
indeterminism. From this perspective, according to James, we have good reasons
for preferring indeterminism: James holds indeterminism to be a necessary condi-
tion for admitting free will, and, in turn, it is only by admitting free will that moral
rationality can account for human behaviour and acts. Since moral rationality, or
practical reason, has the primacy over theoretical thinking within James philoso-
phy (as it follows even from his epistemological voluntarism alone), it is clear, from
his point of view, that we should believe in indeterminism.
Charles S.Peirce onScientific Determinism
The position we are rescuing is Tychismwrote James to Bergson on June 13,

1907.62 The term was borrowed from his friend Charles Peirce,63 who had defended
the correspondent indeterministic (Tyche is the ancient Greek term for chance)
60
James (1928 [1909]), p.76. Pape (2002, p.14) suggests that the category of real possibility
must play a decisive role within a philosophy based on the concept of action. This issue implies of
course, from a logical point of view, further reflections on modality.
61
James (1928 [1909]), pp.78.
62
Quoted in Perry (1936), vol. II, p.619.
63
Even if- as it is well-known- there were important differences between James and Peirces
conception of pragmatism (an issue that cannot be further inquired in the context of this paper), it
philosophy already in the 1890s, in the journal The Monist. In a series of articles
published between 1891 and 1893in this journal, Peirce developed his indetermin-
istic Cosmogonic Philosophy against the doctrine of necessity and provoked
a debate in which also Paul Carusas editor of the journaland John Dewey
became involved. An article by Peirce in 1891, where he drafts an evolutionary and
indeterministic Cosmogonic Philosophy started the series (Peirce 1891). In a sec-
ond article published in the following year, Peirce puts forward a circumstantial
attack on the doctrine of necessityas he calls scientific determinism (Peirce
1892).64 This article provoked a reply by Carus (1892a, b) in defence of determin-
ism. In two following articles Peirce (1893a, b) continued to develop his Tychism
and replied in turn to Carus objections. Finally, also Dewey (1893) intervened in
the debate: in his article the concepts of necessity and chance are analysed
mainly from a purely epistemic (and not metaphysical) point of view.
Peirce focused on scientific determinism rather than on the problem of free will.
However, Carus addressed the problem in a way which made clear the ethical impli-
cations of the debate: he put it as a matter of conflicting world-conceptions, he
stated that the problem was of great consequence in practical life; finally, he
even referred to necessity and chance as to two different ideas of God from which
we derive our rules of conduct. According to him, if we take our standpoint with
respect to the question of scientific determinism seriously, we shall as a matter of
consistency have to [endorse correspondent] views of ethics also.65
The entire debate is characterized by a high degree of complexity and by very
detailed arguments and counterarguments. Here I shall only try to reconstruct sys-
tematically and briefly Peirces main line of argumentwhich is a very difficult
task in itself, since his analyses are very circumstantial and sometimes quite
obscure.66
seems that precisely on the issue of determinism the two reached a considerable agreement: see
Bernstein (2011), pp.5456.
64
In the same year, but in another article, Peirce explained in a footnote that Renouvier appeared to
share his opinion regarding the existence of absolute chance in the universe (cf. Peirce 2010
[1892], p.165). I thank David Wagner for having pointed out this to me. To him I also owe the
information according to which Peirce came to know of Renouvier through James in 1891, while
his first drafts of Tychism date back to an earlier time. Thus, it seems that Peirce did not develop
the very idea of Tychism under the influence of Renouvier. However, after 1891 Peirce had cer-
tainly an intellectual exchange with Renouvier. It is not clear whether Peirce had personal contacts
also with Boutroux and Bergson, but it is likely that they knew about each others philosophy
through James. Hacking (1990, p. 157) argues that We must not discount the importance of
Renouvier for Peirce, and he comments on their relationship emphasizing two main differences:
first, Renouvier left the antinomy determinism vs. indeterminism open and to be solved only by
transcendental analysis, while Peirce had a firm one-sided thesis. Secondly, other than Renouvier
(and James), Peirce was rightly very cautious in connecting his anti-determinism with free
will.
65
Carus (1892a), p.560 and 582.
66
Cf. for instance Peirce (1892), p.335: But I must leave undeveloped the chief of my reasons, and
I can only adumbrate it. The hypothesis of chance-spontaneity is one whose inevitable conse-
quences are capable of being traced out with mathematical precision into considerable detail.
58 D. Romizi
To begin with, we can identify Peirces pars destruens, that is, his main argu-
ments against scientific determinism or, as he calls it, the doctrine of necessity.
Particularly interesting is the way in which Peirce let a certain tautological character
of determinism emerge. Referring to Democritus as to the first advocate of scientific
determinism, he remarks:
[H]aving restricted his attention to a field where no influence other than mechanical con-
strain could possibly come before his notice, he [Democritus] straightaway jumped to the
conclusion that throughout the universe that was the sole principle of action.67
As Boutroux had already pointed out, scientific determinism is valid only after
we have reduced reality to some propertiestypically the quantifiable ones. Of
course it is part of scientific modelling to restrict the attention to those properties of
reality which are measurable and which recur in a way which allows us to predict:
however, we should not forget afterwards how many aspects of reality we have
excluded. We should notusing James wordschoose some part of the world to
interpret the whole by. It is no wonder that we end up with a deterministic image
of the world if we have bracketed off all indeterministic properties.
Peirce also rejects the classical Kantian idea according to which scientific deter-
minism is a necessary presupposition of science. Peirce just does not share the clas-
sical, rationalistic and deductivistic conception of science which for a long time had
supported scientific determinism (Cf. Romizi 2013, Ch. 2). He endorses a modern,
empiricist and probabilistic conception of science instead:
Considering [] that the conclusions of science make no pretense to being more than prob-
able, and considering that a probable inference can at most only suppose something to be
most frequently, or otherwise approximately, true, but never that anything is precisely true
without exception throughout the universe, we see how far this proposition [i.e. the doctrine
of necessity] in truth is from being so postulated.
Porter and Hacking have convincingly argued that Peirces probabilism rooted in
his long professional activity as a measurer at the Coast and Geodetic Survey, which
made him familiar with the statistical methods of error theory and with the probabi-
listic nature of measurement results.68
Much of this I have done and find the consequences to agree with observed facts to an extent which
seems to me remarkable. But the matter and the methods of reasoning are novel, and I have no right
to promise that other mathematicians shall find my deductions as satisfactory as I myself do, so
that the strongest reason for my belief must for the present remain a private reason of my own
[].
67
Peirce (1892), S. 321.
68
Cf. Porter (1986), p.220, Hacking (1990), pp.202203, andon Peirces work at the Coast and
Geodetic Surveyalso Pape (2002), p.41.The following passage by Peirce supports, for example,
Hackings and Porters hypothesis: For the essence of the necessitarian position is that certain
continuous quantities have certain exact values. Now, how can observation determine the value of
such a quantity with a probable error absolutely nil? To one who is behind the scenes, and knows
that the most refined comparisons of masses, lengths, and angles, far surpassing in precision
all other measurements, yet fall behind the accuracy of bank-accounts, and that the ordinary
Finally, according to Peirce, scientific determinism does not receive support a

posteriori eitheron the contrary:
Those observations which are generally adduced in favor of mechanical causation simply
prove that there is an element of regularity in nature, and have no bearing whatever upon the
question of whether such regularity is exact and universal, or not. Nay, in regard to this
exactitude, all observation is directly opposed to it; [] Try to verify any law of nature, and
you will find that the more precise your observations, the more certain they will be to show
irregular departures from the law. We are accustomed to ascribe these, and I do not say
wrongly, to errors of observation; yet we cannot usually account for such errors in any
antecedently probable way.
This last sentence, which is not very clear, I interpret as follows: before we have
collected the data (antecedently) we cannot give any explanation of the irregulari-
ties that will emerge after we have collected the data. If we, a posteriori, reduce
these irregularities to errors of observation we are implicitly assuming the validity
of determinism (for this reason we call them errors): but this means begging the
question.69
These seem to be the main arguments of Peirces pars destruens, that is, against
scientific determinism. Peirces pars construens corresponds to his indeterministic
cosmogonic philosophy. One can identify a sort of bridge between these two parts,
which is a general abductive argument. In fact, Peirces general argumentative strat-
egy against determinism and in favour of indeterminism seems to be an abductive
one: Peirce believed that there is a set of facts which the determinist cannot explain
and which his indeterministic cosmogonic philosophy can explain instead.
These facts are,70 first, growth and increasing complexity.71 The determinist is
committed to the law of conservation of matter and energy and to the reversibility
of phenomena: for Peirce it isas he saysan immediate corollary that growth is
not explicable by those laws.72 Secondly, the determinist cannot give a satisfactory
account of variety and spontaneity either, by which Peirce means the really sui
generis and new73: Exact law writes Peirce (1891, 165)obviously never can
produce heterogeneity out of homogeneity. A third phenomenon which determin-
ism cannot explain is irregularity: according to Peirce, determinism excludes real
determinations of physical constants, such as appear from month to month in the journals, are
about on a par with an upholsterers measurements of carpets and curtains, the idea of mathemati-
cal exactitude being demonstrated in a laboratory will appear simply ridiculous (Peirce 1892,
p.328).
69
Cosculluela (1992, p.744) seems to share this interpretation.
70
The following list is based mainly on Peirce (1892), pp. 333334 and Peirce (1893b),
pp.561 f.
71
Question any science which deals with the course of time. Consider the life of an individual
animal or plant, or of a mind. Glance at the history of states, of institutions, of language, of ideas.
Examine the successions of forms shown by paleontology, the history of the globe as set forth in
geology, of what the astronomer is able to make out concerning the changes of stellar systems.
Everywhere the main fact is growth and increasing complexity (Peirce 1892, p.333).
72
Cf. Peirce (1893b), pp.56264, for the detailed argument.
73
Peirce (1892), p.334). Cf. also Peirce (1891), p.174.
60 D. Romizi
deviations from laws by definition.74 It is striking that all the phenomena mentioned
by now are the same phenomena which Boutroux and Bergson (growth, variety,
spontaneity), as well as Poincar (complexity, irregularity) were pointing to in the
same period (between the 1870s and the first decade of the twentieth century).
However, according to Peirce, determinism does not even explain the existence
of laws, since it simply postulates their existence and their absolute character.
Peirce, instead, requires an explanation of natural laws, of their origin, of their prop-
erties, of some surprising similarities among them: these things he writescall
for explanation; yet no explanation of them can be given, if the laws are fundamen-
tally original and absolute.75 Here lies, to my mind, a crucial insight by Peirce, as
well as a crucial point in his abductive line of argument: it is preferable, or more
plausible, to explain the emergence of regularity and laws out of irregularity that to
explain irregularity after having postulated absolute laws.
As an explanation of the emergence of laws out of irregularity Peirce offers his
indeterministic cosmogonic philosophy, which of course is also meant to explain
the other facts (growth, variety, etc.), which scientific determinism, according to
Peirce, cannot explain. The summary of Peirces indeterministic cosmogonic phi-
losophy sounds admittedly a bit oracular: Chance is First, Law is Second, the ten-
dency to take habits is Third. Mind is First, Matter is Second, Evolution is Third.76
Here I shall leave aside the second series (mind, matter, evolution) the analysis of
which would lead us to issues far beyond the scope of this articleand try to briefly
explain the first one, instead.
Chance is First: while determinism postulates laws as fundamental, Peirce pos-
tulates a primordial chaos.77 Needless to say, Peirces cosmogonic philosophy
implies the rejection of the classical epistemic conception of chance as a product
of ignorance:
74
The following passage makes clear Peirces conception of irregularity and seems to corrobo-
rate again Porters and Hackings thesis according to which Peirce spoke in the light of his experi-
ence as a measurer at the Coast and Geodetic Survey: Just as, when we attempt to verify any
physical law, we find our observations cannot be precisely satisfied by it, and rightly attribute the
discrepancy to errors of observation, so we must suppose far more minute discrepancies to exist
owing to the imperfect cogency of the law itself, to a certain swerving of the facts from any definite
formula (Peirce 1891, p.165).
75
Peirce (1893b), pp.564565. Beside (1) growth and complexity, (2) variety and spontaneity, (3)
irregularity, and (4) the existence of laws, there is a fifth ensemble of phenomena which determin-
ism cannot explain, while indeterminism, according to Peirce, does: (5) mind, consciousness and
feeling. Peirce tends to identify determinism with materialism and mechanism, and he argues that
from this standpoint it is impossible to explain these phenomena: that a certain mechanism will
feel is a hypothesis absolutely irreducible to reason (Peirce 1891, p.170). In the context of this
article I shall leave aside the issue of Peirces idealism, since it would require an article in itself. I
can only mention again the new research project going on about Idealism and Pragmatism (http://
idealismandpragmatism.org/website accessed on April 2nd 2014), which will certainly provide
new insights on the topic.
76
Cf. Peirce (1891), p.175.
77
Cf. Peirce (1891), p.176: [] in the beginning, infinitely remote, there was a chaos of
unpersonalised feeling, which being without connection or regularity would properly be without
existence.
[] chance [] is not the mere creature of our ignorance. It is that diversity and variety of
things and events which law does not prevent. Such is that real chance upon which the
kinetical theory of gases, and the doctrines of political economy, depend. To say that it is
not absolute is to say that it, this diversity, this specificalness, can be explained as a
consequence of law. But this is [] logically absurd.78
According to Peirce, chance is real, while determinism is based on abstract or

ideal constructions which only have a formal character. In rejecting Carus aprioris-
tic and formalistic line of argument in favour of determinism,79 Peirce employs a
similar argumentative strategy as Boutroux and James: he restricts the validity of
determinism to the formal aspects of reality80 and points to the fact thatas he
says there is all the difference between the ideal and the real.81
According to Peirces indeterministic cosmology, it is from a real, primordial
chaos that a regularity would arise, following an evolutionary pattern: the germ of
a generalising tendency would emerge from pure arbitrariness (Law is Second),
and then, as a third step in Peirces cosmogony, a tendency to habit would be
started; and from this with the other principles of evolution all the regularities of the
universe would be evolved (Peirce 1891, 176). Note that, despite the emergence of
these regularities, an element of pure chance survives and will remain until the
world becomes an absolutely perfect, rational, and symmetrical system [] in the
infinitely distant future (Ibidem).
Admittedly, Peirces narrative sounds like a mythological, certainly metaphysi-
cal, cosmogony. But his concept of an evolution from chaos to regularity strongly
reminds the frequentist account of the emergence of statistical laws from stochastic
systems. The assumption of the chance character of single events as a starting point
to explain the emergence of statistical regularities in the long run is a typical feature
78
Peirce (1893b), p.560. Noteworthy in this passage is the identification of diversity and variety
with chance: it becomes almost tautological, then, to say that Peirces indeterministic cosmology
explains diversity and variety. In fact, rather than to explain them, Peirce just postulates their exis-
tence, together with the existence of chance, as primordial: in this respect, he does not explain
irregularity better than the determinist explains regularity. Probably Peirce found deviations from
law self-evident, while the exact and universal validity of law does not seem to be so.
79
Carus argued that scientific determinism has the same validity of (valid) mathematical proposi-
tions and of the principle of sufficient reason (cf. esp. Carus 1892a, p.568 and VII, as well as
Carus 1892b, pp.7778).
80
Cf. for example Peirce (1893b), p. 534 (my emphasis): [] the propositions of arithmetic,
which Dr. Carus usually adduces as examples of formal law (15), are, in fact, only corollaries
from definitions. They are certain only as applied to ideal construction []. And also: Dr. Carus
argues that whatever is unequivocally determinate is necessary. [] But the expression used, ein-
deutig bestimmt, merely expresses a mathematical determination, and therefore no real necessity
ensues (Peirce 1893b, p.537). Anyway, Peirce regarded even analytical propositions as not being
perfectly certain: Deduction is really a matter of perception and of experimentation, just as
induction and hypothetic inference are; only, the perception and experimentation are concerned
with imaginary objects instead of with real ones. The operations of perception and of experimenta-
tion are subject to error, and therefore it is only in a Pickwickian sense that mathematical reasoning
can be said to be perfectly certain. (Peirce 1892, p.534).
81
Peirce (1892), p.536. Cf. also p.558: Forms may indulge in whatever eccentricities they please
in the world of dreams, without responsibility; but when they attempt that kind of thing in the
world of real existence, they must expect to have their conduct inquired into.
62 D. Romizi
of frequentism, as an empirical interpretation of probability.82 While a full-fledged

and systematic version of frequentism would be developed only in 1919 by the
mathematician and engineer Richard von Mises (1919a, 1919b), authors like
the physicist and psychologist Theodor Fechner (in the second half of the
ninenteenth century) and the physicist Franz Serafin Exner(in the first decade of the
twentieth century) had thought already earlier of real chance as a condition of
possibility of laws.83 Peirces Tychism was evidently a quite eccentric elaboration
of ideas which were spreading among scientists between the late nineteenth and the
early twentieth century together with the recognition of the fundamental role of
probability within scientific practice.
Closing Remarks: Pragmatism, Metaphysics andScience
At the end of this historical-philosophical reconstruction it is appropriate to recall

the philosophical problem mentioned at the beginning of this paper and related to
the very general issue considered in this volume, Logical Empiricism and
Pragmatism. From the standpoint of Logical Empiricism, and in particular accord-
ing to the Vienna Circles scientific world-conception,84 the problem of scientific
determinism would certainly be classified as metaphysics and, to this effect, as
meaningless. Classical scientific determinism is namely a theory about the world
(considered as a whole), and, as such, it would elude the requirement of verifiability,
and therefore of meaningfulness.85
Moreover, from the standpoint of Logical Empiricism, philosophies like those of
Boutrouxs and Bergsons were highly suspected of irrationalism,86 and a theory
like Peirces Tychism wasusing Carnaps termshardly acceptable.87
82
Cf. Gillies (2000), Ch. 5.
83
Cf. Fechner s Kollektivmalehre, published posthumous in 1897, and Exner (1990), esp.
pp.1316. On Fechners theory of probability, cf. Heidelberger (1987) and (1992), 7.4 and 7.5.
On Exners indeterminism cf. Stltzner (1999).
84
With the scientific world-conception and the rejection of metaphysics entailed in it I have dealt
elsewhere: cf. Romizi (2012), esp. Section 2.
85
On the rejection of theories about the world as metaphysical and meaningless on the base of the
scientific world-conception cf. Romizi (2012), p.215.
86
Cf., for instance, Edgar Zilsels comments on Boutrouxs and Bergsons philosophy in his Das
Anwendungsproblem (Zilsel 1916), p.145. Here he complains that Boutroux and Bergson would
disdain rationality, which, for Bergson, would even be the radical evil. On the contrary, Perry
(1936, vol. 2, p.602) argues that both James and Bergson agree [] in assigning a cognitive role
both to concepts and to immediate experience. Most interestingly, Perry (Ibidem) presents James
and Bergson as dealing with a philosophical problem which corresponds exactly to the problem
Zilsel deals with in his Anwendungsproblem, the application problem: according to Perry, Both
philosophers [i.e. James and Bergson] recognize the problem of accounting for the fact that con-
cepts somehow work for even though concepts do, unless properly supplemented, misrepresent
reality, it is nevertheless inherent in the nature of reality that it should be misrepresentable in pre-
cisely this manner.
87
Cf. Pasquinelli (1979), p.50.
Still, as we have seen, most arguments against scientific determinism put

forward (well before the indeterministic turn of quantum mechanics) by Renouvier,
Boutroux, Poincar and Bergson, as well as by James and Peirce, were not just a
metaphysical or irrationalistic reaction against science. They were rooted, at least in
part, in an empiricist attitude, which emphasized the value of experience, observa-
tion and practice against a deductivist, rationalistic and theoretical standpoint.
Laplacian determinism, insofar as it affirms predictability in terms of calculability,
bears essentially on mathematics, so that its alleged material and universal truth is
conditional upon the assumption that mathematical models represent reality in a
univocal and exhaustive way. However, some of the arguments I have considered in
the previous section draw the attention to the fact that mathematical models are the
result of just one possible perspective on reality and offer a selective representation
of it (which is implicit in the very concept of model). Such a perspective does
indeed work to a certain extent and fits specific aims, but cannot be taken as exhaus-
tive with respect to reality and experiencewhich are much more complex, rich
and irregular. As soon as we renounce to assume a priori the absolute validity of
theoretical or mathematical models and we ascribe epistemological priority to expe-
rience and scientific practice instead, we are faced with approximation, uncertainty,
complexity, irregularity and probability, as well as with qualitative aspects of reality
that can hardly be entirely forced into the formal, mathematical deterministic
scheme.
But of course, from the standpoint of Logical Empiricism the very concept of a
reality in itself should be rejected as a metaphysical one, since we cannot meaning-
fully express the alleged knowledge of a reality taken to be independent of our
knowing it. From a verificationist point of view there is no meaningful way to dis-
tinguish statements referring to reality as we (intersubjectively) know it and state-
ments referring to reality in itself.
Notice, however, that all of the authors I have dealt with in the previous sections
perfectly recognized that the dilemma determinism vs. indeterminism is in prin-
ciple theoretically insoluble, or, in other words, that neither scientific determinism
nor indeterminism is verifiable. Why bothering, then? Does the pragmatist way of
dealing with scientific determinism give us any hint about the function that meta-
physics could have with respect to science?
The key insight for answering this question lies in the fact that a pragmatist atti-
tudelike that of Renouvier (man is never other than practical, i.e. acting), James
and Peircesuggests to conceive of science not only as a set of theories, but also as
a practice. The pragmatist attitude points to the fact that science is an activity
directed towards specific aims or towards the fulfilment of a certain ideal of knowl-
edge. I would call it a dynamical conception of science. Insofar as science is char-
acterized by this goal-directedness, it cannot simplyso to saysticks to the
verified or verifiable facts: scientists must possess an idea of how reality is, or at
least an ideal of how scientific theories should look like, in order to decide what to
search for and in what direction their theories should be developed. The case of
quantum mechanics has shown in the meanwhile that scientists could either rest
content with an indeterministic theory or decide to try hard towards reaching a
64 D. Romizi
deterministic one, depending on their (speculative, metaphysical) idea of how real-

ity is or on their ideal of how a true physical theory should look like. As to the role
of the concept of reality in itself: believing that there is a reality which goes beyond
our knowledge (as it is available at the moment) appears to be a main motor to go on
with scientific inquiries. Imagining how this reality could be, for example assuming
it to be fundamentally deterministic or indeterministic, can certainly influence the
direction of future research.
In his Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results, James formulates what
he calls Peirces principle as follows:
To develop a thoughts meaning we need only determine what conduct it is fitted to pro-
duce; that conduct is for us its sole significance.88
From a pragmatist point of view the meaning of a thought is strictly related to its
practical consequences. Some metaphysical conceptslike determinism and inde-
terminismappears to have consequences not only for practical life in general, but
also, specifically, for scientific practice. Thus, from a pragmatist standpoint not all
metaphysics can be regarded as meaningless.
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Beyond Realism andAntirealism? TheStrange
Case ofDeweys Instrumentalism
GiovanniRubeis
Abstract The following article aims to shed a light on the role of instrumentalism
in John Deweys epistemology as well as philosophy of science. Its basic conclusion
is that Dewey can be considered an unorthodox realist, following the terminology
by Godfrey-Smith, and that his instrumentalist position can be interpreted as a
problem-solving approach (Laudan) to science. The connection to Logical
Empiricism lies in Hans Reichenbachs analysis of Dewyan instrumentalism.
The attempt to evaluate Deweys instrumentalism in the context of the realism-

antirealism-debate is complicated by two factors. First, Dewey never wrote a book
or an essay solely for the purpose of explaining instrumentalism.1 His remarks on
the topic are scattered over several of his works. In the following, I will try to collect
the elements of Deweys instrumentalism from various sources and synthesize them
as good as possible.2 Second, the background of Deweys position was the debate
between realism and idealism and although there is an obvious similarity between
that discourse and our contemporary realism-antirealism-debate, there are certain
characteristics separating one from the other.3 If we look at contemporary antirealist
approaches, ranging from van Fraassen to social constructivism, we may find that
antirealism covers a bigger variety of positions than idealism did. The second
problem is far too extensive to be treated here in an appropriate fashion. So, for the
sake of the argument, I will follow the assumption that both discourses can be seen
as equivalent.
1
One could see such an attempt in the essay Development of American Pragmatism (see Tuggle
1997: 37ff.), but although this essay is an important source it cannot be seen as a monograph on
instrumentalism.
2
Given the limited space of this article, I cannot examine the characteristics of Deweys instrumen-
talism in the different periods of his thought. For a genetic account to Deweys philosophy see
Tuggle 1997 and Shook 2000.
3
In treating the realism-antirealism-debate as the contemporary version of the debate between real-
ism and idealism, Hildebrand (2003: 2f; 6) does not see a problem.
G. Rubeis (*)
Institute of the History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany
e-mail: giovanni.rubeis@uni-ulm.de

68 G. Rubeis
This paper mainly focuses on the place of Deweys instrumentalism in the debate
between realism and antirealism. Although I attempt to clarify the issue at least to
some extent, I make no claim to completeness regarding this strange case. Important
aspects like the comparison between Deweys approach and the type of instrumen-
talism that is advocated by Hempel, Nagel, Feigel or Frank and concerns the logical
structure of scientific theories, cannot be dealt with here. This paper covers just one
specific aspect and there is still much research to do in this ongoing debate.
eichenbach: Dewyan Instrumentalism fromaPositivist Point

R
ofView
In his article for Deweys Schilpp-Volume, Hans Reichenbach gives an account of

Dewyan philosophy of science from the viewpoint of the logical positivist. He starts
by distinguishing two types of philosophical systems (Reichenbach 21971: 159):
First, other-world philosophies, which regard the world of human experience as
ontologically inferior to a transcendental world from which it derives its values and
its knowledge, of which Platonism is the obvious example. Second, this-world
philosophies or immanence systems which are based on the assumption that the
world of our experience is self-sufficient, meaning that there is no need for any
transcendence whatsoever to grant the truth of our knowledge and values. According
to Reichenbach, materialism, empiricism and sensualism belong to this second type
of philosophical systems.
Reichenbach refers to Deweys philosophy as an immanence system in a strong
sense, calling it a life affirming philosophy (Reichenbach 21971: 160). In this
aspect of immanence he sees a common feature of both Positivism and Pragmatism.
Even more important is the combination of empiricism and logic regarding method-
ology, shared by both. Reichenbach claims that the logical analysis of this physical
world in terms of the world as it is originally given (Reichenbach 21971: 160f) to
which he refers as nominalism (ibid.), marks an important progress of classical
empiricism (Reichenbach 21971: 161). Based on nominalism, Dewey develops a
verificationist position according to which any meaningful proposition has to be
verified by experience (Reichenbach 21971: 174).4 It seems that from the viewpoint
of a positivist, there is nothing wrong with a position defending empirical verifica-
tion. When it comes to the kind of reductionism included in the verificationist
method however, positivists and pragmatists hold different views. Whereas positiv-
ism reduces objects of our every-day experience to sense data, pragmatism regards
sense data themselves as abstractions, not as basic, irreducible elements of inquiry
(Reichenbach 21971: 161f). According to pragmatists like Dewey, we never experi-
ence qualities like color, temperature etc. detached from the object. Its the objects
which constitute the realm of experience. As Reichenbach puts it: The basis of all
See Savery 21971: 501, who shares this view.

4
Beyond Realism andAntirealism? TheStrange Case ofDeweys Instrumentalism 69
knowledge is the world of concrete things around us (Reichenbach 21971: 162). He

claims that this view can be seen as the background of Deweys nonrealistic inter-
pretation of scientific concepts (Reichenbach 21971: 164) which leads to the inter-
pretation of the scientific object as instrumentality of multiplied controls and uses
of the real things of everyday experience. In other words, instrumentalism and
anti-realism are closely linked in Dewey.
Alternate Readings ofDewyan Instrumentalism
Reichenbachs article can be seen as the locus classicus for the anti-realist interpre-
tation of Dewyan instrumentalism. To him, ascribing a non-realist position to Dewey
seemed little more than stating the obvious (Godfrey-Smith 2002: 7). Deweys
fierce reply however, also contained in the Schilpp-Volume, shows that he abso-
lutely opposed to being labeled as an anti-realist (Dewey 21971: 535ff). This opened
the door for various ways of interpreting his position.5
In recent years, Deweys instrumentalism has been of great interest mainly in the
context of the ongoing realism-antirealism-debate. John R.Shooks elaborate study
(Shook 2000) is of major importance in this respect. Shook refutes the common
understanding of Dewey as either being beyond realism and antirealism or being
some kind of realist and holds that his naturalistic empiricism is an attempt to rees-
tablish idealism.6 In Shooks view, Dewey reconstructed idealism to ensure the
centrality of human social experience (Shook 2000: 5). Hence instrumentalism is
to be considered as a result of Deweys functionalist psychology, motivated by prac-
tical questions of moral conduct (ibid.).
There is another very important contribution to the problem of instrumentalism
in Dewey I will refer to. In a short paper, Peter Godfrey-Smith tries to untie the knot
by asserting that Deweys philosophy of science is an unorthodox form of realism
(Godfrey-Smith 2002: 7). In his analysis, Godfrey-Smith claims to have solved the
problem with Deweyan instrumentalism, holding that the main misunderstanding
concerns the relation of theory and practice in Dewey (Godfrey-Smith 2002: 7). It
is a common assumption that in his naturalist approach, Dewey treats theoretical
questions (e.g. theory-choice) as practical problems. From this point of view theory-
choice depends on the specific problem to be solved. A theory is accepted if it is
capable of solving the problem. As a result, Dewey could hardly claim to be a realist
even in a weak sense because following this approach, theories tell us nothing about
the structure of nature. Godfrey-Smith refutes this interpretation, stating that the
term instrumentalism does not refer to the function or aim of theories and neither
5
Even within the Schilpp-Volume, alternate readings can be found, e.g. Parodi 21971, who regards
Deweys philosophy of science as a powerful realism (Parodi 21971: 238).
6
Shook (2000: 245) calls Dewey a weak realist at most, following the terminology of Michael
Devitt (see Devitt 1984). At any rate, he cannot be seen as a scientific realist, says Shook, because
he denies the mind-independent existence of unobservable entities (Shook 2000: 251).
70 G. Rubeis
of science as a whole, but is to be understood in a methodological sense (ibid.).

Referring to a quote from Experience and Nature the proper objects of science
are nature in its instrumental characters (LW 1: 111) he claims that instrumental-
ism describes the method specific to modern science which aims at structural rela-
tions between objects in nature instead of exploring the nature of the object
(Godfrey-Smith 2002: 8). Only in this sense can Deweys notion of science be
called instrumentalist (ibid.).
The title of this essay alludes to David L. Hildebrands important book about
Dewey and the Neo-Pragmatists (Hildebrand 2003) where he gives a full scale his-
torical account of the debate concerning Deweys instrumentalism (chapters
William James and the Vienna Circle and Classical Pragmatism and Metaphysics:
James and Peirce on Scientific Determinism). His conclusion: Deweys move is
not to embrace either realism or idealism but to undercut them by describing a
vision of knowledge and reality that most adequately expresses experience as it is
lived (Hildebrand 2003: 86). According to Hildebrand, there is no problem of real-
ism in Dewey (Hildebrand 2003: 5; 86). His philosophy has to be considered as an
attempt to avoid some of the classical dualisms like realism/idealism or mind/body
by dissolving rather than solving the problems in question (Hildebrand 2003: 38).
Other commentators have put this into question. Sami Pihlstrm (2007: 2) argues
that in the Dewyan perspective, realism is problematic in three respects: Regarding
scientific realism (theories as well as entities), regarding cultural values and regard-
ing Deweys naturalism. Although I will focus on the first as well as on the third
aspect in the following, it will become clear that the value-aspect can never be fully
neglected when talking about Dewyan pragmatism in general and his instrumental-
ism in particular.
The best way to shed a light on this strange case of instrumentalism is of course
to let Dewey speak for himself. In the essay The Development of American
Pragmatism, he gives a very concise definition:
Instrumentalism is an attempt to establish a precise logical theory of concepts, of judgments
and of inferences in their various forms, by considering primarily how thought functions in
the experimental determinations of future consequence (LW 2: 14).
He adds that this theory of the general forms of conception and reasoning has
psychological implications and is directed against a certain tradition in epistemol-
ogy, namely the idealism in the neo-Kantian approach (ibid.).
In another important essay, Propositions, Warranted Assertibility and Truth,
Dewey replies to certain misreadings of his position. He states that the instrumen-
tality of a proposition as means of attaining a grounded belief has to be distin-
guished from the instrumentality of a belief as means of reaching certain desired
results (LW 14: 175).
In order to learn more about instrumentalism, we have to examine Deweys the-
ory of knowledge. Since many commentators like Hildebrand and Pihlstrm (as
shown above), Shook (2000: 262) and Godfrey-Smith (2002: 2) consider Deweys
epistemological naturalism as crucial to the understanding of instrumentalism, I
want to take it as a starting point for my analysis.
Naturalist Empiricism
The naturalist approach is based on what Dewey calls a situation, meaning the
context in which experience takes place7 (LW 4: 178). He states that the concept of
the situation can be seen as analogous to the field concept in physics, meaning that
the theory in question is constituted by the subject matter and not vice versa (Dewey
2
1971: 544). Dewey emphasizes the importance of the situation concept for his the-
ory of experience and knowledge more than once in passages like the following:
From one angle, almost everything I have written is a commentary on the fact that
situations are immediate in their direct occurrence, and mediating and mediated in
the temporal continuum constituting life-experience (Dewey 21971: 546).
The basic setting of the situation consists of an organism embedded in a certain
environment, which is confronted with some kind of uncertainty, the latter being
defined as an event or a phenomenon about which the organism does not possess
any knowledge. There are various kinds of possible responses depending on the
complexity of the organism. Simple organisms react immediately to the given
uncertainty; their response is direct. The more complex the organism, the more
complex the environment it interacts with and the more complex the situation.
In the degree that responses take place in the doubtful as8 the doubtful, they acquire mental
quality. If they are such as to have a directed tendency to change the precarious and prob-
lematic into the secure and resolved, they are intellectual as well as mental. Acts are then
relatively more instrumental and less consummatory or final; even the latter are haunted by
a sense of what may issue from them (LW 4: 179).
A human being can react either directly, i.e. by emotion and volition, or indi-
rectly, i.e. by intelligence (LW 4: 180). As an intelligent being, man is able to reflect
on the given circumstances instead of reacting immediately. Intelligence allows
humans to conduct an inquiry, which is defined as finding out something about
obstacles and resources (LW 4: 178). Thus a situation is turned into a problem:
The risky character that pervades a situation as a whole is translated into an object
of inquiry that locates what the trouble is, and hence facilitates projection of meth-
ods and means of dealing with it (ibid.).
According to Deweys naturalist empiricism, experiences result from an interac-
tion between organism and environment (Dewey 21971: 544). In this naturalist
approach (which is non-reductionist, as he emphasizes; Dewey 21971: 580), knowl-
edge and practice are not separated from each other, but are conceived as a contin-
uum: Thinking is objectively discoverable as that mode of serial responsive
behavior to a problematic situation in which transition to the relatively settled and
clear is effected (LW 4: 181). The inquiry is an instrument for transforming situa-
tions of uncertainty into knowledge (LW 4: 193). In Deweys view, traditional
accounts, especially empiricism, tend to treat perceptions as knowledge which
causes the problem of a twofold knowledge: knowledge as perception of data and
Nissen (1966:14) defines it as the contextual whole of experience.

7
Emphasis in the original, as in all following quotations.

8
72 G. Rubeis
knowledge as a result of a logical operation, i.e. inference (MW 6: 108). Hence the
gap between cognition and perception, which motivates the distinction between the
object as a mental presentation and the material object. Since inference is the most
valid source of evident knowledge according to Dewey, we are dealing with a supe-
rior and an inferior type of knowledge here (MW 6: 108f.). To eliminate the
cognition-perception-dualism, Dewey demands to reserve the term knowledge for
the result of inference. Although perceptions can be treated as knowledge in a cer-
tain inquiry for practical purposes (MW 6: 110), they are nevertheless natural
events and not knowledge in themselves. In order to avoid any confusion concern-
ing the nature of knowledge, he suggests to distinguish between knowledge as the
outcome of special inquiries (undertaken because of the presence of problems) and
intelligence as the product and expression of cumulative funding of the meanings
reached in these special cases (Dewey 21971: 521).
The naturalist approach is to be understood as a middle path between two ways
of dealing with the subject matter of inquiry: An atomistic position that focuses on
singular objects or data, neglecting relations between them on the one hand and
what he calls absolutistic block monism on the other hand, the latter defined as a
tendency to overcome plurality and individuality (Dewey 21971: 544). Furthermore,
the combination of atomistic pluralism and Platonic a priori realism, an
approach ascribed to Russell, has to be avoided (ibid.).
Two conclusions can be derived from this:
First, knowledge is to be considered a natural process. Both aspects of this
expression are of importance here: Natural means that knowledge is not something
supernatural or otherworldly. Following this, it is a fatal mistake of traditional epis-
temology to separate the mind from the world of objects. Small wonder, says Dewey,
that by doing so the subjective knowledge of the objective world becomes a problem
(MW 6: 18). If we consider knowledge as a natural process, the problem vanishes.
Process describes the character of knowledge as an activity over time. Knowledge
is not something we gain instantaneously or directly (MW 6: 121).
Furthermore, knowledge is not separated from action but a kind of action itself.
Active knowledge means overcoming doubt by transforming situations of uncer-
tainty into settled ones (LW 4: 181; 183; 193).
Dewey refers to these conclusions in his essay Brief Studies in Realism as two
of the most important principles of pragmatism. Summarizing them, he states that
knowing is something that happens to things in the natural course of their career,
not the sudden introduction of a unique non-natural type of relation, adding that
in this natural continuity, things in becoming known undergo a specific and detect-
able qualitative change (MW 6:121). This is not at all directed against realism, on
the contrary. One must not read Dewey as an absolute idealist who claims that think-
ing about an object means generating or even changing it. Inquiry, as a cognitive
process does not change its object, but alters the meaning of concepts.9 Knowing is
9
Shook (2000: 238) illustrates that by referring to Darwins journey on the Beagle: The animals
and plants Darwin observed did not change because he thought of them in a new manner. What did
change however, were some of our concepts like species for example.
a modification of the object of knowledge, but not of the object itself (Dewey 21971:
547). On the other hand Dewey refuses the nominalist position in a strong sense
ascribed to him by Reichenbach (21971: 160f). The inquiry Dewey has in mind is
concerned with the subject matter in the context of a specific problem and not with
the true-falsity of propositions (LW 14: 177). The propositions in question, broad
generalizations of imprecise nature at first, are to be modified and improved gradu-
ally in a kind of trial-and-error-procedure (fumbling), using empirical data as
touchstone (LW 14: 177f). They are means, instrumentalities, since they are the
operational agencies by which beliefs that have adequate grounds for acceptance,
are reached as end of inquiry (LW 14: 175).
Following Dewey, the nature as well as the level of precision of each proposition
is determined by the specific problem it is applied to, whereas thinkers like Russell
act on the assumption of absolute principles of simplicity or definiteness universally
valid for all propositions (LW 14: 178). The very core of Deweys conception is the
approach following which the inquiry aims for the main constituents of a specific
problem. It is crucial to note that the data involved are not given in the sense of
being detached or pre-existent to the inquiry. Its the inquiry that determines the
relevant data, relative to the problem to be solved (LW 14: 181). In this sense, data
are rather taken than given (MW 6: 346). As the inquiry progresses in terms of an
ongoing interplay of data collection and inferring, various possibilities of solving
the problem in question emerge which can be understood as different ways of inter-
preting the meaning of the data (LW 14: 181).
The distinction between true and false conclusions is determined by the character of the
operational procedures through which propositions about data and propositions about infer-
ential elements (meanings, ideas, hypotheses) are instituted. At all events, I can not imagine
that one who says that such things as hammers, looms, chemical processes like dyeing,
reduction of ores, when used as means, are marked by properties of fitness and efficacy (and
the opposite) rather than by the properties of truth-falsity, will be thought to be saying any-
thing that is not commonplace (LW 14: 176).
Authors like Mary Hesse, Nancy Cartwright, Ian Hacking or Karin Knorr-Cetina
have emphasized this constructivist, productive aspect of scientific research10 in
recent years, often, especially and explicitly in Hackings case, by referring to
Dewey. According to this position, the work of a scientist does not consist in observ-
ing phenomena and reporting about their observations, as many philosophers of
science have taken for granted (Hacking 1983: 173). Referring to Deweys criticism
in The Quest for Certainty,11 Hacking calls it the spectator theory of knowledge
(Hacking 1983: 130). What scientists actually do is rather to create phenomena in
order to learn something about nature (Hacking 1983: 220). As Hacking puts it:
Science is said to have two aims: theory and experiment. Theories try to say how the world
is. Experiment and subsequent technology change the world. We represent and we inter-
vene. We represent in order to intervene, and we intervene in the light of representations
(Hacking 1983: 31).
10
See Hesse 1963a, b, 1974, 1980; Cartwright 1984; Hacking 1983, Knorr-Cetina 1984.
11
See LW 4, especially chapter IV.
74 G. Rubeis
That means the real problem is not, as philosophers of science have discussed it
during most of twentieth century, how to form observational sentences, i.e. a con-
ceptual problem, but a problem of practice. Concerning experiments, the question
to make things work is more important than how to talk about the results. Therefore,
according to Hacking, the researcher needs the uncanny ability to pick out what is
odd, wrong, instructive or distorted in the antics of ones equipment (Hacking
1983: 230). His prime concern is to modify the instruments in order to get better
results or merely results at all.
The constructivist, practice-oriented aspect of scientific research implies that sci-
ence does not depict the world but reconstructs it from selected data (Bhme 1992:
64). Science is a productive enterprise (Knorr-Cetina 1984: 21f) and the knowledge
it creates is to be considered primarily as constructive rather than descriptive (Knorr-
Cetina 1984: 23). The structural properties of the study object are constituted by
scientific method, norms of discourse and scientific language, all of which deter-
mine what is to be considered as a phenomenon, as natural etc. (Bhme 1978: 266f).
That means that the research process is to be understood in terms of selecting cer-
tain properties, features and characteristics of a phenomenon while others are to be
singled out (Knorr-Cetina 1984: 26). Modeling means to adopt the phenomenon to
the structural requirements of model-building in order to be able to handle it
(Cartwright 1984: 152). A scientific model is far more than a formal system depict-
ing a certain phenomenon; it is an interpretation of that phenomenon (Hesse 1963a:
12). In science as well as in the humanities, hermenutical models and interpretative
constructs are used to conceptualize reality (Knorr-Cetina 1984: 247).
Beyond Realism andAntirealism?
Although to a certain extent, it can be said that Dewey undercuts the classical dual-
ism of realism and idealism (Shook 2000: 234; Hildebrand 2003: 86), his position
clearly remains a realist approach. By introducing the two principles mentioned
above, Dewey explicitly wants to safe what he calls nave realism. As soon as we
start to neglect the natural character of the knowledge process, e.g. by treating per-
ceptions as mental phenomena or as knowledge instead of natural events (presenta-
tive realism), we take the first step towards idealism (MW 6: 105). If we accept
nave realism instead, the classical problem of realism versus idealism vanishes,
because we eliminate one of the most notorious presumptions in epistemology, what
Dewey calls the ubiquity of the knowledge relation (MW 6: 111). He illustrates
the absurdness of that presumption to a nave realist by a somewhat culinary thought
experiment:
Imagine a situation like the following: The sole relation an organism bears to things is that
of eater; the sole relation the environment bears to the organism is that of food, that is,
things-to-eat. This relation, then, is exhaustive. It defines, or identifies, each term in relation
to the other. But this means that there are not, as respects organism and environment, two
terms at all. Eater-of-food and food-being-eaten are two names for one and the same
s ituation. Could there be imagined a greater absurdity than to set to work to discuss the
relation of eater to food, of organism to the environment, or to argue as to whether one
modifies the other or not? Given the premise, the statements in such a discussion could have
only a verbal difference from one another (MW 6:115).
That means that concerning the problem of eatology, foodists would face
eaterists like presentative realists are opposed to idealists in epistemology (ibid.).
What Dewey wants to tell us is that the knowledge relation is bound to specific situ-
ations. The fact that we can treat a certain individual, a certain object and a certain
natural process as the knower, the known and as knowledge tells us nothing about
the nature of each of them. The aspect of knowledge is only one mode of relation
between us and our environment. Dewey replaces the ontological distinction
between the internal, i.e. mental character of knowledge and its external object by
the purely functional distinction between organism and environment (Shook 2000:
244). Since both are part of a natural continuum, there is no ontological difference
and hence no epistemological problem. The ubiquity of the knowledge relation is
problematic only to the philosopher whereas the plain man, the agent of common
sense, is aware of the various modes of relations between him and his environment.
He [the plain man; G.R.] is in the attitude of a liker or a hater, a doer or an apprecia-
tor. When he takes the attitude of a knower, he begins to inquire (MW 6: 108).
The plain man, interested in common practice and welfare, treats the objects
and natural processes he is confronted with as the materials, the tools and obsta-
cles in his social practice (MW 6: 18). Dewey wants to show that the object is not
only an epistemological phenomenon, but exists in a much broader context as a
term and factor in established social practice (MW 6: 20). The way we experience
the objects in our environment is not determined by these objects themselves, but by
the social practice in which theses object are involved (MW6: 19f.). Deweys case
against any strong version of realism is based on his refutation of the presentational-
ist approach. Since inquiry means the transformation of a situation of uncertainty
into a settled one, the gaining of knowledge is to be understood in terms of an active
process. He emphazises the processual character of knowledge, which is not some
entity, a ready-made to be found somewhere, neither in the mind nor in the outside
world (MW 6: 139). There is no predetermined order of truth in nature to be discov-
ered by science (MW 10: 186). His argument against any kind of reality-in-itself to
be discovered by philosophy or science earned him the accusation of idealism,
which was far from being his intention (Shook 2000: 228). On the contrary, he
strongly agrees with the realists in refuting the idealist principle according to which
knowledge of an object is only possible because there is a relation between the
object and the mind prior to experience (MW 6: 138). According to Dewey, objects
do exist prior to our knowledge of them and independent of our mind (ibid.; MW 3:
167). He is not arguing against realism as such, he is arguing against epistemologi-
cal realism (Shook 2000: 233).
This becomes evident when we look again at the way Dewey characterizes expe-
rience. The organism interacts with its environment by actively selecting data which
it then uses in order to adapt and modify its behavior (Hildebrand 2003: 25). In
other words, there is an aspect of teleology in Deweys theory of experience (Tiles
76 G. Rubeis
2010: 105). Models of the world around us serve a certain purpose; in order to
understand them, one has to know to exactly what end they are designed. Hildebrand
(2003: 38ff.) points to the important fact that Dewey understands data as taken,
rather than given in a certain knowledge situation.12 Brute data, as Dewey calls
them, receive their significance and meaning in respect to the purpose of the inquiry
(MW 6: 346). This is directed against the traditional empiricist understanding of
data as fixed entities (Hildebrand 2003: 40). Keep in mind that according to Dewey,
the only kind of evident knowledge results from inference and that perceptions are
the elements of knowledge, but not knowledge themselves. The real question, then,
is how we can manipulate the basic elements of a knowledge situation so it allows
us to derive certain conclusions: Control of the conditions of inference the only
type of knowledge detectable in direct existence so as to guide it toward better
conclusions (MW 6: 110).13
This is Deweys instrumentalism in nuce. Does that mean that realism is not a
problem in Dewey, like Hildebrand declares? I would say that the question of real-
ism is not that unproblematic, but at least reality is. Dewey himself states that from
a pragmatist point of view, a theory of reality is neither possible nor needed (MW
10: 39). However he is well aware of the gap between everyday experience and
scientific explanation, which becomes clear when he discusses a classical problem
in epistemology. Referring to the notorious question, whether the table we see
before us as a solid object or whether the specific combination of molecules at a
certain point in space-time is the real table, Dewey explains that there is no onto-
logical difference between the two of them. In our every-day practice, we refer to
the table as a definite but restricted set of uses, whereas the scientific explanation,
by abstracting from specific contexts of use, is even more useful and instrumental
(MW 10: 190). It waits like a servant, idle for a time, but ready to be called upon
as special occasion arises (ibid.). The scientific object is neither a rival to nor a
doppelganger of the object of every-day experience. Both epistemological accounts
of the table are equally real and there is no ontological difference between them
(Dewey 21971: 537). In order to illustrate his position, Dewey introduces another
thought experiment by asking whether a person capable of perceiving atoms would
actually experience the very entities described by physics (Dewey 21971: 538). His
answer is yes, if this person possesses some basic knowledge of physics and no if he
doesnt, because in this case, he would perceive the physical objects, i.e. aggregates
of atoms, like a regular person perceives rocks etc. (ibid.). In other words, it is not
just the thing as perceived, but the thing as and when it is placed in an extensive
ideational or theoretical context within which it exercises a special office that con-
stitutes a distinctively physical scientific object (ibid.).
The context of the experience situation as well as its nature as a practical prob-
lem is crucial to our understanding of the object. In his reply to Reichenbach, Dewey
12
According to Sathaye (1972: 84), Dewey considers the situation as given, but not the data.
13
See also the similar phrase in Logic: Inquiry is the controlled or directed transformation of an
indeterminate situation into one that is so determinate in its constituent distinctions and relations
as to convert the elements of the original situation into a unified whole (LW 12: 108).
emphasizes this basic assumption. Reichenbach wants to show that scientific objects
or, more generally, objects known by inference rather than every-day experience, do
have a certain corrective function (Reichenbach 21972: 164f). His examples are the
stick (Reichenbach 21972: 164ff) or the oar in the water (Reichenbach 21972: 168f)
that appears bent due to the refraction of light. In these cases, says Reichenbach, it
is obvious that the inferred object (the straight stick/oar) is the real object, whereas
the object of every-day experience is a delusion. Dewey argues that in this example,
a problem only exists when we assume a spectator theory of knowledge, whereas
the oarsman, who may be irritated at first, overcomes this situation of uncertainty by
practice: he adapts his behavior to the given situation (Dewey 21972: 539), which
means that although the oar appears to be bent, the oarsman soon finds out that it
can be used in a regular manner. In order to turn the situation of uncertainty into a
settled one, he does not need to turn to scientific speculation or the construction of
an object in itself apart from the object he is faced with. According to Dewey, the
role of science is quite different from Reichenbachs interpretation. What science
does is not to correct the thing of ordinary experience by substituting another thing
but to explain the former (ibid.). He assumes that confusion and misunderstanding
concerning this point may be caused by the word real, which should possibly be
substituted by existential, but even so, the main difference between Reichenbachs
position and his own account would not disappear. It is crucial to him that there is
no need to decide whether the scientific object has to be understood as existential
or operational, because the fact that an object is used in an operation determines
its status as an existential object (Dewey 21971: 578).
Furthermore, there is no need for constructing a dichotomy of thing in itself and
the phenomenon. Another example given by Reichenbach is taken up by Dewey to
make the point. Reichenbach claims that the difference between subjective interpre-
tation and objective knowledge can be shown by the simple example of a speedom-
eter needle, which, although it usually indicates the speed of a vehicle, can be
manipulated by a magnet so it indicates something although the vehicle stands still
(Reichenbach 21971: 169ff.). Following Reichenbach, we can distinct the subjective
judgment the vehicle is in motion at a certain speed from the objective truth the
vehicle stands still. In Deweys view, this a case where a certain behavior (interpret-
ing the amplitude of the needle as indicating movement) has become obsolete or
inadequate because the conditions to which this behavior was adapted no longer
exist (Dewey 21971: 540). That means that we can explain the error in question
without having to refer to any dualistic conception of subjective versus objective
knowledge (ibid.).
At this point, a crucial question concerning the role of science arises. If science
does not show us the objects as themselves, the real objects, what does it tell us
about truth then? It is no surprise that the very concept of an absolute truth is prob-
lematic to Dewey. As we have seen, he opposes to the position according to which
there is some kind of predetermined order in nature waiting to be found by scientific
inquiry (MW 6: 139; MW 10: 186). In many of his works, he refers to the outcome
of inquiry as knowledge, a position which he slightly corrects in his later period. In
Logic-The Theory of Inquiry, he suggests the term warranted assertibility as being
78 G. Rubeis
more precise and less problematic than knowledge (LW 12: 16), a position he
emphasizes again later in his essay Propositions, Warranted Assertibility and
Truth. Replying to Russells critique that warranted assertibility is just a substitute
for the concept of truth, Dewey states that although he does not object to this in
general, certain specifications are necessary to prevent misunderstandings (LW 14:
168f). Theories, hypotheses and ideas in an inquiry aim for the conditions under
which we reach warranted assertibility about particular matters of fact (LW 14:
169). Defined in this manner, knowledge, or warranted assertion as the result of
inquiry is an alternative to the concept of an absolute, self-evident truth rather than
a substitute (LW 14: 171). Only in this respect, referring to the consequences of
applying a theory to a given problem, we can talk about truth (LW 14: 171f).
For according to my view (if I may take it as a sample of the instrumentalists view), while
to infer something is necessary if a warranted assertion is to be arrived at, this inferred
somewhat never appears as such in the latter; that is, in knowledge. The inferred material
has to be checked and tested. The means of testing, required to give an inferential element
any claim whatsoever to be knowledge instead of conjecture, are the data provided by
observation-and only by observation (LW 14: 173).
Dewey holds that his position can be described as a correspondence theory, as

long as correspondence is understood as what he calls answering: The applica-
tion of a certain theory, idea or proposition leads to a certain result as a key answers
to conditions imposed by a lock, a solution answers the requirements of a prob-
lem (LW 14: 179). Following this approach, Deweys scientific instrumentalism
comes down to a simple concluding statement: What a scientist asks of his hypoth-
eses is that they be fruitful in giving direction to his observations and reasonings
(Dewey 21971: 576).
Instrumentalism: Realism or Antirealism?
In order to answer the question whether Deweys instrumentalism goes beyond real-
ism and antirealism, I find it necessary to distinct between ontological realism/anti-
realism and epistemological realism/antirealism. Ontological realism claims the
mind-independent existence of things. Epistemological realism claims that our
knowledge, our scientific models and theories, tell us something about reality itself.
Antirealism on the other hand refutes that there is such a thing as a world or a
reality independent of our mind and hence experience as well as science are noth-
ing more than our ways of experiencing or constructing reality.
In ontological terms, there seems to be no question here. As mentioned before,
Dewey never doubts the very existence of objects prior to our knowledge. Given the
naturalist approach, it seems that we are dealing with a clearly realist position. The
setting of the situation requires an organism as well as the environment that
organism is interacting with, which implies that there is a certain structure that is not
only anterior to the individual organisms experience but also shapes and modifies
its behavior as well as its thinking. Concerning the epistemological question, the
case of Deweys instrumentalism is more complicated. It could be argued that

regarding the naturalist model of knowledge and experience as an active process of
selecting data, Deweys position has to be considered constructivist, especially
when he defines instrumentalism as a notion of thought as the ability of recon-
structing the present stage of things instead of knowing it (LW 2: 18).14
Both assumptions however neglect the crucial point of Dewyan philosophy, i.e.
his rethinking the theory-practice relation. In this respect, it is true that the organism
gains knowledge of a world independent of its mind but that is not the end of the
story. In modifying its behavior as an indirect response to the environment, the
organism also modifies that environment by transforming a problematic situation of
uncertainty into a settled one. The fact that Dewey regards theory and practice,
knowing and acting as a continuum, leads to an interpretation of the relation between
organism and environment as a permanent mutual process. So there is no ontologi-
cal realism in a strong sense because the organism is permanently modifying its
environment as well as it is modified by it. Neither is there a constructivism in the
full sense because the point is not the cognitive construction of a reality structure by
selecting data from a given pool; it is the active aspect of the organisms response to
its environment or in case of humans, the social practice that has to be considered as
constructivist. There cannot be a final, eternal, or monolithic truth because knowl-
edge and reality itself are always in the making. In my view, this can be illustrated
by analogy to the uncertainty principle. To Dewey, the question whether science
tells us something about reality itself is simply futile because as soon as we turn to
the world around us in terms of an inquiry, we transform and modify that world.
Inquiry does not only mean observing objects, it means interacting with them.
Science can never show us the thing-itself because in becoming an object of our
inquiry, it stops being for itself, not because of some purely cognitive knowledge-
relation but because of the fact that knowledge is the result of a process of active
transformation.
Instrumentalism: Method or Theory?
The question remains whether instrumentalism refers to a specific method or

whether it describes a theory and if the latter, what kind of theory? Godfrey-Smith
(2002: 8) insists on the position that instrumentalism is a method and does not
express a certain view about the aims of science. Surely, he is right in claiming that
Dewey does not understand science as designed solely for the purpose of improving
the state of living or the common good. However, Godfrey-Smith oversimplifies
things by defining instrumentalism as purely methodological. Given the assumption
that there is continuity between individual experience and science in Deweys phi-
losophy, it follows that both practices can be considered as ways of problem-solving
Given those two possible interpretations, it is not surprising that Sathaye (1972: 82f.) identifies a
14
correspondence theory of truth as well as aspects of a coherence theory of truth in Dewey.

80 G. Rubeis
(R.A.Putnam 2010: 34). Knowledge is not an end in itself for an individual organ-
ism. It serves but one purpose: survival. In a less dramatic formulation it can be said
that according to Dewey knowing only occurs in a problematic situation as a means
of settling it (Shook 2000: 258). Although science may not be considered as a means
of survival, it shares the problem-solving aspect with individual knowledge.
Other commentators define instrumentalism as a theory of meaning and truth
(Tuggle 1997: 38f.) or as a theory of intelligent conduct (Guinlock 1984: ix)
rather than a method. These accounts become even more compelling when we take
one of the main goals of Deweys philosophy into consideration. His approach can
be seen as an attempt to get rid of at least three interconnected dualisms as some of
the most fundamental problems in philosophy: the dualisms of theory and practice,
of mind and body and of cognition and the material world (Dewey 21971: 524). In
his view, these interwoven dualisms form the framework of classical philosophy and
at the same time can be considered as the source of its stagnation compared to ever
progressing science. Dewey wants to overcome this situation by assuming that there
are no discontinuities in reality (Shook 2000: 240). Mind and body cannot be sepa-
rated any more than cognition and the material world. If we understand this funda-
mental ontological as well as epistemological fact, if we consider the continuity of
organism, natural processes and environment in the situation, it is easy to see that
we cannot separate theory from practice either. Therefore, the most convincing
account seems to be understanding instrumentalism as a method of overcoming the
theory-practice dualism (Sathaye 1972: 10) rather than a scientific method, a sort of
meta-method, which implies a theory of knowledge.
In my view, Deweyan instrumentalism is best understood as a problem-solving
approach as developed by Larry Laudan. Given the fact that scientific research is
necessarily purposive and practice oriented, aiming for non-transcendent imma-
nent goals rather than struggling with transcendental properties, science is an
enterprise of problem-solving (Laudan 1981: 145). This approach can be applied to
Deweys position without contradicting the above claim according to which science
is not simply a means to improve the state of living, because in that basic formula-
tion, it says nothing about any specific aims of science whatsoever. It simply claims
that science is basically a problem-solving enterprise rather than a quest for cer-
tainty or truth, a view which is, I think, strongly corroborated by Deweys own
statements. To Dewey, the real problem does not concern the ontological implica-
tions of scientific inquiry, but its practical consequences. One may not forget that his
main goal is the solution of the fact-value-problem by eliminating the strict distinc-
tion between theory and practice (R.A.Putnam 2010: 34ff.). He aims at the possible
modifications of values, beliefs, and social practices that result from scientific
research (MW 10: 201f.).
To know is the characteristically human enterprise a thing for men, not for gods or beasts.
And since the good of humanity has ever to be secured anew in an untried and precarious
future, knowing is not the condescension of reduplicating a nature that already is, but is the
turning of that nature to account in behalf of consequences. And objective truth is the free
outworking of nature so interpreted into an intercourse more secure, more varied and more
free (MW 6: 68).
Conclusion
As a result, I would agree with Godfrey-Smith in considering Dewey an unorthodox

realist. He is a realist because he does not question the existence of a reality inde-
pendent of the human mind. His position is unorthodox because he assumes that
human action permanently modifies reality by transforming uncertainty to certainty.
Does this make Deweys instrumentalism less problematic or complicated? I do not
think so, but maybe we can see things a little bit clearer now. At least it seems that I
am not the only one to admit that despite all efforts, we are still dealing with a
strange case here: What is pragmatism? Perhaps I can save time for some readers
by giving the answer: no one really knows. (Hildebrand 2003: ix).
Bibliography
Deweys Works
All citations refer to the Southern Illinois University edition of The Collected Works of John
Dewey, 18821953, 37 Vols., under the general editorship of Jo Ann Boydston.
The Middle Works (MW), 18991924
Vol. 6, 19101911: Journal articles, Book Reviews and miscellany published in the 19101911
period, and How We Think, ed. by Jo Ann Boydston, with an introduction by H.S.Thayer and
V.A.Thayer, Carbondale 1978.
Vol. 10, 19161917: Journal articles, essays and miscellany published in the 19161917 period,
ed. by Jo Ann Boydston, with an introduction by Lewis E Hahn, Carbondale 1980.
The Later Works (LW), 19251953
Vol. 1, 1925: Experience and Nature, ed. by Jo Ann Boydston, with an introduction by Sidney
Hook, Carbondale 1981.
Vol. 2, 19251927: Essays, Reviews and Miscellany, and The Public and its Problems, ed. by Jo
Ann Boydston, with an introduction by John Guinlock, Carbondale 1984.
Vol. 4, 1929: The Quest for Certainty, ed. by Jo Ann Boydston, with an introduction by Stephen
Toulmin, Carbondale 1984.
Vol. 10, 1938: Logic The Theory of Inquiry, ed. by Jo Ann Boydston, with an introduction by
Ernest Nagel, Carbondale 1986.
Vol. 14, 193941: Essays, Reviews and Miscellany, ed. by Jo Ann Boydston, with an introduction
by R.W. Sleeper, Carbondale 1988.
Essays
The Problem of Truth, in: MW 6, 1268.

Brief Studies in Realism, in: MW 6, 103122.
The Short-Cut to Realism Examined, in: MW 6, 138142.
The Development of American Pragmatism, in: LW 2, 321.
Propositions, Warranted Assertibility and Truth, in: LW 14, 168188.
Dewey 21971 Experience, Knowledge and Value: A Rejoinder, in: Schilpp 21971, 517608
(quoted as Dewey 21971).
82 G. Rubeis
Further Sources
Bhme, Gernot. (Hg.). 1978. Alternativen in der Wissenschaft Alternativen zur Wissenschaft? In
Bhme 1993, 257277.
. (Hg.). 1992. Die Bildung des wissenschaftlichen Gegenstandes. In Bhme 1993, 5064.
. (Hg.). 1993. Am Ende des Baconschen Zeitalters. Frankfurt/Main: Studien zur
Wissenschaftsentwicklung.
Cartwright, Nancy. 1984. How the Laws of Physics Lie. Oxford [u.a.]: Clarendon Press.
Cochran, Molly, ed. 2010. The Cambridge Companion to Dewey. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Devitt, Michael. 1984. Realism and Truth. Oxford: Blackwell.
Godfrey-Smith, Peter. 2002. Dewey on Naturalism, Realism and Science. Philosophy of Science
69(September 2002): 111.
Guinlock, John. 1984. Introduction. In LW 2, ixxxxvi.
Hacking, Ian, ed. 1981. Scientific Revolutions. Oxford: Oxford Readings in Philosophy.
. (ed.). 1983. Representing and Intervening. Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of
Natural Science. Cambridge [u.a.]: Cambridge University Press.
Hesse, Mary. (ed.). 1963a. Models and Analogies in Science. London/New York: Springer.
. (ed.). 1963b. The Function of Models: A Dialogue. In Hesse 1963a, 862.
. (ed.). 1974. The Structure of Scientific Inference. London: University of California Press.
. (ed.). 1980. Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science. Brighton:
Indiana University Press.
Hildebrand, David L. 2003. Beyond Realism and Antirealism: John Dewey and the Neopragmatists.
Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
Knorr-Cetina, Karin. 1984 Die Fabrikation von Erkenntnis. Zur Anthropologie der
Naturwissenschaft. Vorwort von Rom Harr, revidierte und erweiterte Fassung, Frankfurt/
Main.
Laudan, Larry. 1981. A Problem-Solving Approach to Scientific Progress. In Hacking 1981,
144155.
Nissen, Lowell. 1966. John Deweys Theory of Inquiry and Truth. The Hague: Paris.
Parodi, Dominique. 21971. Knowledge and Action in Deweys Philosophy. Trans. W.Gieseke. In
Schilpp 21971, 229242.
Pihlstrm, Sami. 2007. The Realism Issue from a Dewyan Perspective. Paper presented at a Dewey
conference in Szeged, Hungary, May 2007. http://www.helsinki.fi/teoreettinenfilosofia/henki-
losto/Pihlstrom/Pihlstrom_Deweyonrealismandidealism.pdf; 18.9.2013.
Putnam, Ruth Anna. 2010. Deweys Epistemology. In Cochran 2010, 3454.
Reichenbach, Hans. 21971. Deweys Theory of Science. In Schilpp 21971, 159192.
Sathaye, Shriniwas G. 1972. Instrumentalism: A Methodological Exposition of the Philosophy of
John Dewey. Bombay: Popular Prakashan.
Savery, William. 21971. The Significance of Deweys Philosophy. In Schilpp 21971, 481513.
Schilpp, Paul Arthur, ed. 1971. The Philosophy of John Dewey, The Library of Living Philosophers,
vol. 1. La Salle: Open Court.
Shook, John R. 2000. Deweys Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality. Nashville: Vanderbilt
University Press.
Tiles, J.E. 2010. Practice in Deweys Experimental Empiricism. In Cochran 2010, 101122.
Tuggle, Melvin. 1997. The Evolution of John Deweys Conception of Philosophy and His Notion
of Truth. Lanham: University Press of America.
American Pragmatism, Central-European
Pragmatism andtheFirst Vienna Circle
ThomasUebel
Introduction
In this paper I wish to bring together two investigations undertaken elsewhere.

These are, first, a study of the reception that American pragmatism found among
members of the Vienna Circle prior to the process of internationalization of logical
empiricism that had set in by the time of the 8th International Congress of Philosophy
in Prague in September 1934; and, second, a study of some of the ideas and doc-
trines arrived at by some of the few Central European philosopher-scientists with
whom American pragmatism had found an at least partially sympathetic reception
prior to World War I.1 The result of the first study was that it was not until late in the
1920sbut still before 1934that selected aspects of American pragmatism were
explicitly endorsed by certain members even though some similarity in outlook
already seems to have been discerned by them in the years before World War I.The
result of the second study was that to the very limited extent that there was a positive
reception of American pragmatism by German or Austrian philosophers and scien-
tists before World War I it was one that sprang from the recognition on their part that
pragmatism agreed with conclusions they had arrived at independently. The thesis I
wish to present for consideration here is that the early sympathies for pragmatism
on the part of some Vienna Circle members were based to a large extent on their
appreciation of the work of these Central European philosopher-scientists rather
than merely the then prominent key text of pragmatism. One question looms large
and will be addressed in due course: what caused the members in question to delay
1
See Uebel (2015) and (2014): the order of publication of the two reversed their order of composi-
tion. For a comprehensive study of Carnaps later relations with pragmatism and pragmatists see
Limbeck-Lilienau (2000), for Carnaps own pragmatism, see Richardson (2007).
T. Uebel (*)
Philosophy, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
e-mail: thomas.uebel@manchester.ac.uk

84 T. Uebel
their (partial) endorsement of pragmatism for so long? On this count too we will
find the Central Europeans to be implicated.
Two clarifications before we begin. The members of the Vienna Circle in ques-
tion were Philipp Frank, Hans Hahn and Otto Neurath, who as more or less fresh
PhDs in physics, mathematics and political economy, respectively, belonged to a
discussion group that met between 1907 and about 1910 to discuss philosophical
and related matters in a Vienna coffeehouse. Rudolf Haller dubbed this the first
Vienna Circle partly on account of thematic continuities and partly on account of
the impetus they were said to have given the formation of the later Circle around
Schlick.2 In anticipation of later considerations, it may be noted these former mem-
bers of the first Vienna Circle later formed three quarters of what, with the addition
of Carnap, was called the left wing of the Vienna Circle.3
One important restriction concerns the type of American pragmatism that is at
issue in this paper.4 As it is the Central European reception up to about 1930 that
concerns us, it is William Jamess Pragmatism that is relevant. Published in the
USA in early 1907, a German translation by the Viennese pedagogue and philoso-
pher Wilhelm Jerusalem was published already at the end of the same year (though
carrying the imprint 1908). In September of 1908 pragmatism was a much and often
critically discussed topic at the Third International Congress for Philosophy in
Heidelberg, with lectures by Josiah Royce, F.C.S. Schiller, A.C. Armstrong and
Jerusalem discussing and defending some form of pragmatism.5 Even though one
notable mention was made in the extended discussion by Paul Carus of Charles
Sanders Peirces significant differences with James, Peirce remained largely
neglected in the German and Austrian discussions until the publication of his
Collected Papers in the 1930s; Dewey too was noted mainly as a psychologist and
educationalist.6 Such an one-sidedness of the initial reception of American pragma-
tism in Germany and Austria may well be lamentableespecially given the publi-
cation in 1923 of a first selection of Peirces essays in Chance, Love and Logic7but
it must be factored into our assessment as it made it virtually impossible to distin-
guish idiosyncracies of Jamess philosophy from more general tenets of the pragma-
tist movement. 8
2
See Haller (1985), Stadler (1997/2001, 4) and Uebel (2000).
3
See the introductory section of Uebel (2004) for discussion of the nomenclature.
4
Also presupposed as a known fact here is that the reception of American pragmatism in
Germanophone philosophy tended to be a highly critical if not hostile.
5
It may also be noted that Jerusalem gave a talk on pragmatism in January 1908 to the Philosophical
Society of the University of Vienna, in which the members of the first Vienna Circle were active.
6
See Carus in Elsenhans (1909, 737); for an exception to the neglect of Peirce see Stein (1908).
More on this matter in Uebel (2014).
7
See Peirce (1923). Misak (2016) points out its strong influence on Ramsey and argues for a transmission
of pragmatist themes from him to Wittgenstein ca. 1929. How far this impetus is then transmitted
still further to other philosophers before the second third of the 1930s remains debatable (see
Uebel 2016), so consideration of this line of influence is neglected here.
8
In later works from the time of his American exile urging the active convergence of logical
empiricism and pragmatism Frank made frequent references to Peirce and James and related their
American Pragmatism, Central-European Pragmatism andtheFirst Vienna Circle 85
The First Vienna Circle andAmerican Pragmatism
On several retrospective occasions Neurath mentioned James alongside others as an

early influence on Vienna Circle philosophy, albeit in very general terms.9 Frank
was more specific when he wrote in the Introduction to his first collection of
translated essays:
At that time there was prevalent a strong aversion toward weaving into the philosophy of
science any considerations of a moral, religious, or political nature. Hence it was not
realized that American pragmatism was a related movement, although at about this time a
group of sociologists in Vienna came out in support of it. (1941, 7)
Here Frank would seem to deny pragmatism any influence on the first Vienna
Circle while also dismissing what he called the ivory-tower attitude of the positiv-
ism of those days (ibid.). That eight years laterin the Introduction to his
expanded second collection of translated essayshe wrote of the same groups
high degree of our interest in the cultural background of philosophic theories
(1949a, 12) suggests that the ivory-tower attitude mentioned in 1941 was a
highly specific blind-spot. What Frank criticized was that for all their interest in
moral and political issues as such they still expected philosophy of science to remain
untouched by themand he cited as an example his own early interest in Drieschs
vitalism (which later became part of the loose assemblage of ideas serving as the
ideology of German National Socialism).
But what does this tell us about the influence of American pragmatism pre-World
War I? Note that Frank denied only that they recognized it as a related move-
mentjust as that, in other words, as what in the time of his American exile he
always chose to characterize it as: brothers-in-arms. This suggests that they did not
regard American pragmatism as a philosophy of science but as a Weltanschauung.
Considering the version of pragmatism available to them at the time, we must con-
cede that they were right: it was a Weltanschauung that James presented over long
stretches in Pragmatism! So Franks account allows that the members of the first
Circle knew about pragmatism, possible even felt sympathy for certain aspects, but
considered it irrelevant for their work in philosophy of science strictly speaking.
Neurath published a brief summary, in October 1909, of James Pragmatism in
Jerusalems German translation as part of a review of the book series in which it
appeared (the Philosophisch-soziologische Bcherei, edited by Rudolf Eisler)
that gives little away.
With Jamess Pragmatism the German audience is introduced to a system that strongly
emphasizes the connection between thought and action. The translator, Professor Wilhelm
Jerusalem, serves in a way as a representative of this doctrine among the German philoso-
pragmatist views of meaning and truth to the Circles verificationist strategy. So, e.g., in (1949a,
3233) and (1950, 3233).
9
See Neurath (1936/1981, 697), (1941/1983, 217), (1946/1983, 230231).
86 T. Uebel
phers. He bases his considerations to a still higher degree on biological theories than James.
The basic idea of Jamess book is the following. Given two theories for the same subject
matter, we need to determine whether their practical applications bring about different
results. (It is unclear, however, what precisely James means by practice.) If no difference
results, then according to James it does not matter what theory we hold. For James theories
are tools for mastering reality; those are true that perform this service better. Based on
lectures this book is very easy to read. (1909, 139, trans. TU)
It seems notable that Neurath commented on the unclarity of Jamess talk of

practical consequences. His awareness of problematical aspects of Jamess work
is also documented by a passing remark on the contemporary fashion of the
urban intelligentsia to appreciate the philosophies Bergson and James as ones that
oppose the rationalism of the previous period (1914/1998, 351). Striking, by con-
trast, is what appears to be Neuraths embrace of certain pragmatist ideas in his
1913 lecture to the Philosophical Society at the University of Vienna, The Lost
Wanderers of Descartes and the Auxiliary Motive. There Neurath claimed against
Descartes that the differences between thinking and action are only of degree, not
kind and rejected his view that only in the practical field could [we] not dispense
with provisional rules (1913a/1983, 23). The fallibilist epistemological holism
and the model of decision-making under uncertainty that Neurath developed and
contrasted with pseudorationalism there is clearly of a pragmatist cast.10 Neurath
expressly rejected the idea that a thinker could wipe clean the slate and begin anew
from scratch on a basis of certainty: the tasks ahead pressed us forward to make
decisions, not only in daily life and action but also in theoretical thought, without
the assurance of any supposedly superior insight. While the term pragmatism was
never mentioned in this paper, to his audience in Viennasome of whom reportedly
were scandalised by Neuraths talk11the relevance to previous debates about
pragmatism would no doubt have been clear. A certain convergence on epistemo-
logical matters between the young Neurath and pragmatism cannot be denied.12
(Fittingly, Neuraths first employment of the simile so beloved by Quineof the
sailors having to repair their boat at seafalls into the same year.)13
Frank was less forthcoming. To be sure, pragmatisms reputed voluntarism14
fitted well with the radical conventionalism in his early paper on causality which
Frank once characterized as representative for his early views that he later withdrew
from.15 Again, though, Frank mentioned the pragmatism so popular in America
for the first time only in a review the mid-1910s (1915, 47), namely of Hans
10
There is an obvious parallel here with Peirces view that thought is essentially an action (1878).
Whether Neurath had read Peirces How to Make Our Ideas Clearif he did it is most likely to
have been the French versionseems impossible to determine. Neurath makes no mention of
Peirce or his paper, but neither does he mention any other author or work of pragmatism.
11
See (Uebel 2000, 283).
12
On this see also Ferrari (in this volume).
13
See Neurath (1913b/1998, 215216).
14
See Stein (1908), one of the first serious discussions of pragmatism in German apart from
Jerusalems. See also Stebbing (1914).
15
See Frank (1941, 8) and compare his (1907/1949b, 58]).
Kleinpeters Der Phnomenalismus. Eine naturwissenschaftliche Weltanschauung

(1913) which sought to establish an affinity between Nietzsches thought and
pragmatism.
While none of these comments and parallelseven less so Hahns then silence
on the matteramount to an endorsement of pragmatism, some sympathy with
selected aspects of its doctrine seems to be detectable, at least by Neurath, though
not, as Frank noted, its recognition as a related movement.
The Endorsement ofPragmatism inSchlicks Vienna Circle
Consider now the rather different stance adopted by Frank, Neurath and Hahn in the
late 1920s and early 1930s. Lets begin with the big picture drawn by Frank of the
history of the development of logical empiricism in his first retrospective account:
The movement developed through the cooperation of Central-European positivism
with some groups representing American pragmatism. The European movement
had its origin in the ideas of the Austrian physicist Ernst Mach. (1941, 6) The
period of cooperation meant here is that following the Prague conference in 1934
which Carnap once marked as the beginning of his own cooperation with American
pragmatists.16 Now notably, for Frank, a significant milestone on the way was his
own opening address to the Congress of German Mathematicians and Physicists in
Prague in September 1929. (This was a very large gathering for which Frank was
the local organizer and to which he had managed to attach the much smaller First
Conference for the Epistemology of the Exact Sciences at which the Vienna Circle
and the Berlin Society for Empirical Philosophy introduced themselves to the aca-
demic public.)
About this lecture and the philosophy he presented Frank noted:
Here we find the synthesis of positivism and the new logic explicitly represented. It is also
interesting that since the rigorously logical formulation of the positivistic ideas, their con-
nection with American pragmatism has become clearly revealed; in this essay this connec-
tion is distinctly emphasized. The growing awareness of this congeniality was accompanied
by a growing emphasis upon the fact that scientific theories are influenced by the social and
political atmosphere. The ivory-tower attitude of the pre-war positivism had begun to crum-
ble. (1941, 10)
This confirms that the ivory-tower attitude Frank criticized in their earlier
selves had consisted in the neglect of the influence of the socio-political context of
science upon its philosophy. His emphasis in that 1929 lecture on the connection
with pragmatism possessed a double meaning: not only the theoretical one of
stressing their growing awareness of congeniality with pragmatism, but also the
political one of making common cause with its attack on the metaphysical pseudo-
depths of academic philosophy which at the time were widely upheld in right-wing
popular and learned discourse as the distinctive virtue of the German mind.
16
See Carnap (1963, 860).
88 T. Uebel
To see what, for Frank, prompted this recognition of congeniality we must turn
to Franks second retrospective account where the rigorously logical formulation
of the positivist ideas that facilitated the recognition of the relevance of pragma-
tism was further specified. It consisted of two steps: first, the development of
Schlicks conception of cognition aiming at truth understood as the unique coordi-
nation of a symbol system with the facts and, second, its adoption by Carnap. Of
particular importance for us here is the second step.17
Schlick and Reichenbach had identified true cognition with a system of symbols that
indicated the world of facts uniquely. Carnap offered an example of such a system [in the
Aufbau]. Carnap introduced as the elementary concepts of his system immediate sense
impressions and the relations of similarity and diversity between them. The world is to be
described by statements that may contain any symbols, provided that from them statements
can be logically derived that contain nothing but assertions about the similarity and diver-
sity between sense impressions. The meaning of a statement in science would be the sum
of all statements about similarity and diversity between sense impressions that can be
derived logically from the statement in question. When I read this book it reminded me
strongly of William James pragmatic requirement that the meaning of any statement is
given by its cash value, that is, by what it means as a direction for human behavior. I wrote
immediately to Carnap, What you advocate is pragmatism. This was as astonishing to him
as it had been to me. (1949a, 33)18
Franks narrative is clear.19 It was not until 1928 that the affinity between prag-
matisms conception of meaning and the views developed in the Vienna Circle
became plain, for only then did Frank and some his colleagues appreciate the rele-
vance of pragmatism for the philosophy of science the Circle was developing.
What brought on this recognition was appreciation of the similarity between
what James had called the cash-value of a true proposition (1907/1991, 88) and a
certain reading of Carnaps Aufbau. Already in 1909 Neurath had asked what practi-
cal consequences James may have had in mind. Now Frank was ready to interpret
what James had referred to as Peirces principle:
To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, then, we need only consider what
conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involvewhat sensation we are to
expect from it, and what reactions we must prepare. Our conception of these effects,
whether immediate or remote, is then for us the whole of our conception of the object, so
far as that conception has positive significance at all. (1907/1991, 2324)
Note that James referred to sensations alongside reactions. In a similar fash-

ion, Franks pragmatist reading of the Aufbau stresses that the significance of a
statement in science would be the sum of all statements about similarity and diver-
sity between sense impressions that can be derived logically from the statement in
question, such that the reduction of the cognitive contents involved serves
17
For the first step see the description in Frank (1949a, 2930) For some remarks about Franks not
unproblematical rendition of Schlicks theory and related matters, see Uebel (2015, 5 and 8).
18
Frank simplified matters: Carnap worked with definite structure descriptions unlike like Schlick
who used implicit definitions; moreover, his basic elements were not sense impressions but unana-
lysed experiences from which sense data were constructed by the process of quasi-analysis.
19
For the removal of some further interpretive difficulties here, see Uebel (2015, 56).
justificatory epistemological purposes (and not merely reconstructive constitutive

ones). Franks pragmatist reading of the Aufbau emphasized its verificationist-
positivist aspects. It was the introduction of a verificationist criterion of meaningful-
ness that prompted the recognition of their affinity with pragmatism, in particular
Carnaps criterion as used implicitly already in the later sections of the Aufbau and
made explicit in Carnaps Scheinprobleme of the same year. Most notably, this was
still over a year before Wittgenstein transmitted his verificationist conception of
meaning to the Circle via Schlick and Waismann.20
In his 1929 address at the Prague congress Frank stressed the close relationship
between the truth concept of the modern logical movement and that of pragma-
tism, having explicated Carnaps criticism of metaphysics as employing unconsti-
tutable or non-constructable concepts that fail to provide a specifiable relation
between concrete experiences (19291930/1949b, 112). Frank rendered this
charge precise by employing Schlicks notion of truth as unique coordination,
understood as the unequivocal assignment of a system of symbols to experiences
(ibid., 106).21 (Schlick himself recognized no particular affinity with pragmatism.)22
A later monograph by Frank from the same period begins with reflections about the
nature and purpose of the instrument science (1932a, title of Ch. 1, Sect.1)
reflecting James declaration that theories ... become instruments, not answers to
enigmas in which we can rest. (1907 /1991, 26). Frank thus foregrounded a double
affinity with pragmatism.
Both of these points find expression also in the writings of Neurath and Hahn.
Neuraths own paper at the smaller 1929 Prague conference contains the eminently
pragmatist-sounding credo: Our thinking is a tool, it depends on social and histori-
cal conditions. ... We cannot act as prosecutor and defendant at the same time and in
addition sit on the judges bench. We confront our present thinking with our earlier
thinking, but we have no possibility of taking a judges stand on a point outside.
20
See Carnap (1928a/2003, Part V) and especially (1928b/2003, 7): A statement p is said to have
factual content, if experiences which would support p or the contradictory of p are at least
conceivable, and if their characteristics can be indicated. Contrast Wittgenstein on 22 December
1929: the sense of a proposition is its verification. Unlike Carnaps, Wittgensteins verificationism
was strict, demanding conclusive verification (albeit in principle, not on every occasion of use): if
I can never verify the sense of a proposition completely, then I cannot have meant anything by
the proposition either. Then the proposition signifies nothing whatsoever. (In McGuinness
1967/1979, 47; cf. 79 (of 2 January 1930)).
21
Whether this explicatory choice was a happy one is questionable, of course, given Schlicks
opposition to the pragmatist conception of truth. Note that Frank here spoke of the correlation of
symbols and experiences instead of one of statements and facts as he did, more correctly, in his
retrospective (1949a, 33). It would appear that Frank here gave a problematical positivistic reinter-
pretation of Schlicks original conception, perhaps encouraged by the verificationist reading of the
Aufbau.
22
See Schlick (19101911, 5) for his principled opposition early on and his critical remarks on
Franks paper in a Circle meeting on 5 February 1931 (reproduced in Stadler 1997/2001, 246).
90 T. Uebel
(1930 [1983, 46]) Here pragmatisms anti-correspondentism and instrumentalism

appear intimately connected.23
Hahn alsoalbeit not until some public lectures in 1932gave public expres-
sion to his allegiance to the pragmatist conception, namely its conception of truth.
The truth of a statement consists in its confirmation. Of course, this robs truth of its
absolute, eternal character, it becomes relativized, humanized, but the concept of
truth becomes applicable! (1933/1987, 43, trans. altered) And he quoted James:
(That counts as true) what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part
of life best and combines with the collectivity of experiences demands, nothing
being omitted (1933/1987, 282, fn. 18, trans. altered).24
Hahn, like Frank and Neurath, can be accused of conflating accounts of what
truth is with criteria by which it is detected.25 But their phrasings also suggest that
they were interested to oppose what the pragmatist conception opposed, in Hahns
words, the old metaphysical conception such that truth consists in the correspon-
dence of what a statement says with a world of true being (1933/1987, 42).26 What
mattered to them was that all of the sciences knew only one criterion of truth:
confirmation (ibid, 44). The point was to determine what can be counted as true,
to operationalize itas in Hahns quotation from Deweys Studies in Logical
Theory: That which can safely be taken for granted as a basis for further action is
regarded as real and true. (Quoted ibid.)
Now these endorsements of pragmatism were not endorsements tout court either,
but only partial ones. Would it be correct to say, nevertheless, that what Frank, Hahn
and Neurath adopted from pragmatism was its instrumentalism vis--vis theories
and its anti-correspondentism vis--vis truth? Before we can answer this question,
we must consider what may account for the long delay in officially acknowledging
pragmatisms congeniality despite the apparent early, if limited, sympathies for it.
And we must ask what role still other, more readily acknowledged influences
played in related respects. Only then can we begin to get the full measure of the
role pragmatism played in the development of the philosophy of the members of the
first Vienna Circle.
23
It may also be noted that Neurath suggested more extensive mentions of pragmatism in the
Circles inofficial manifesto than the brief remark about James (Carnap, Hahn, Neurath 1929/1973,
301), but that Carnap vetoed it; see Uebel (2015, 2).
24
The first bracketed part of the quotation is Hahns introduction (his brackets) to the rest taken
from James himself (1907/1991, 38).
25
For more on Hahns, Franks and Neurathsand Carnaps and Schlicksproblematical pre-
Tarski statements about truth, see Uebel (2015, 10).
26
Compare Franks criticism of the conception of cognition as the finding of a truth that was hid-
den behind the appearances and could be discovered there by the power of reason, which the
trained philosopher was supposed to possess (1949a, 30).
he Problematic Nature ofSome Pragmatist

T
Anti-aprioricisms
We already noted that for the members of the first Vienna Circle pragmatism was
not an unproblematic doctrine. Being promoted as a Weltanschauung was only one
aspect of this. To see another, consider the ideas of the spokesperson for pragmatism
in Vienna, Wilhelm Jerusalem.27
Certain aspects of Jerusalems views were problematic for future members of the
Vienna Circle whether or not they appreciated his pragmatism. Schlicks Gedenkrede
for Jerusalem, for instance, noted Jerusalems attempt to answer several of the
questions of logic and epistemology on a psychological, later even sociological
basis, which barred him from doing full justice to them (1928/2008, 140). Jerusalem
occupied a particularly exposed position in the turn-of-the-century German debates
about the ground of the validity of laws with his version of psychologism.28 For him,
the validity of logic was ultimately of empirical origin, the laws of logic represent-
ing merely evolutionarily beneficient dispositions of human thought. His Der kri-
tische Idealismus und die reine Logik (1905), published only three years before his
translation of Jamess Pragmatism, was a sharp polemic against the apriorist oppo-
nents of this view, as was his own lecture at the 1908 Heidelberg Congress where he
characterized his evolutionist position as follows.
Even the most universal propositions of logic and mathematics are regarded only as sedi-
mentations, as condensations of earlier experience. The evolutionist sees in these proposi-
tions the adaptation of thoughts to facts and to each other (Mach), he finds in these valuable
tools from the point of view of the economy of thought. (1909, 809).
Though logically independent from pragmatism when that is viewed as centred

on Peirces principle, at the time Jerusalems psychologistic position also played
into the reception of pragmatism on account of the Jamess own thorough-going
anti-aprioricism.29
Whether James was committed to psychologism was not widely discussed but
Jerusalems position was taken to be representative. In Pragmatism James only
claimed that the form and order of those bodies of truth known as logics, geom-
etries, or arithmetics is flagrantly man-made and that mathematics and logic
themselves are fermenting with human rearrangements (1907 /1991, 108 and 112).
This is not decisive, but since Jerusalem argued along similar lines to press his psy-
chologistic conclusions, and James gave no grounds to argue against these in
27
For examples of Jerusalems advocacy of pragmatism see his (1908a), (1910) and (1913).
28
On the variety of psychologisms alleged and defended in this dispute, see Kusch (1995, Chs.
34).
29
According to Jerusalems own account, the psychologism in his (1905) played an important role
in his introduction to pragmatism, for it prompted F.C.S.Schiller in a review to comment on his
proximity to pragmatism which in turn led Jerusalem to inquire about this movement with James
(with whom he had been in correspondence previously)which led to his translation of Jamess
book (1922, 60 / 1925, 3233).
92 T. Uebel
Pragmatism, it was not an unreasonable conclusion to associate pragmatism and

psychologism.30 Certainly what F.C.S.Schiller wrote in the Preface to his second
collection of essays fully legitimates still wider conclusions: Various forms of
psychologism, proceeding from the same considerations as those which have
inspired the Anglo-American pragmatisms, disturb the older conceptions of logic.
Among them Prof. Jerusalems Der Kritische Idealismus und die reine Logik is
particularly noteworthy. (1907, xii).31 Note then that until a different alternative to
apriorist rationalism became available, pragmatisms anti-apriorism was stuck with
psychologism.
For theorists attracted by Russellian logicismprimarily Hahn but also Frank
and Neurath in the first Vienna Circle32this marked a serious deficiency of prag-
matism when it was considered for its suitability as a philosophy of science. While
for Russell at the time logic was still the science of relations between propositions,
not yet as in 1919 that of relations between objects in general, the logician Gregorius
Itelsonan early mentor of Neurathsalready had proposed something similar to
the later Russellian conception, namely that logic should be conceived as the the-
ory of objects in general in discussion with Couturat at the Second International
Congress of Philosophy in Geneva, September 1904.33 Both conceptions stressed
the mind-independence of logic. Needless to say, the epistemology of Russells
logicism or Itelsons universal calculus was not an unproblematically settled matter,
but given their influence it is safe to assume that for Hahn, Frank and Neurath their
views trumped the psychologistic alternative.
To be sure, Jerusalems psychologism was not without some redeeming features.
Tied into the psychologism debate were also other issues on which Jerusalems
opponents by no means stood on as firm a ground as on the former. Not untypically,
these opponents conceptions of the a priori nature of the validity of logical laws
went hand in hand with a certain conception, first, of their truth pertaining to a dis-
tinct ontological realm, and, second, of the timelessness of the human reason that
discerned these laws. That Jerusalems and the pragmatists naturalistic approach to
human cognition can be accused of failing to take proper account of the difference
between questions of the origin and the validity of logical thought does not invali-
date as unwarranted their opposition to apriorist rationalism. Yet at the time their
assault on metaphysical speculation and their evolutionary deflation of philosophi-
cal categories was all too easily deflected by reference to these failings and sym-
pathisers of pragmatism who were not attracted by psychologistic shortcuts were
30
That this widely shared perception of James was wrong has recently been argued convincingly
by Klein (2016)albeit largely by reference to works that most Europeans would have found
unavailable.
31
Again recall that Peirce and Dewey hardly figured in these German discussions of pragmatism.
32
For details on their pre-World War I study of Russell, see Uebel (2000, 70).
33
See Russell (1903, 1013) and (1919, 169) and Itelson as reportedla science des objects en
generalin Couturat and Rauh (1904, 1038) and in Neurath and Hahn (1909/1981, 5 fn). On the
relatively little-known Itelson see Freudenthal and Karachentsev (2011).
confronted once again by the problem that had beset empiricism all along: how to
account for logic and arithmetic and our knowledge of it.
Of course, to this problem the Vienna Circle around Schlick had a ready answer
unlike the first Circle before World War I.Following Wittgenstein who had intro-
duced the idea that the laws and propositions of logic are purely tautological, the
Vienna Circle had a distinct advantage over both parties of the psychologism dis-
pute: their own apriorism required no more than the grasp of linguistic rules.34 Now
the pragmatist sympathies of some of its members no longer faced the objection that
the earlier generation of pragmatists was faced with. The previously perceived con-
flict of doctrines now was resolved and affirmation of their pragmatist sympathies
became possibleonce the further affinity between Peirces principle and their
early verificationism was recognised.35
Pragmatisms perceived psychologism, however, cannot be held solely respon-
sible for the long delay between early sympathy for and public endorsement of other
of its features on part of the members of the first Circle, however.36 And that is just
as well given that Machs own psychologistic affliction did not prevent the former
members of the first Circle to align themselves broadly (that is, again, with reserva-
tions) with his philosophy of science. The difference clearly was that Mach offered
precisely this: a philosophy of science. Unlike James, he had laid the foundation,
when properly supplemented by the work of the Poincar and Duhem, for their
project for a philosophy of science that was adequate to the scientific changes the
then new twentieth century had brought.
Central European Pragmatism
Lets turn now to the grounds on which Mach was led to his also only partial agree-
ment with pragmatism (which he affirmed mainly in personal communication).37 It
seems significant that it sprang from the recognition on his part that pragmatism
34
For Wittgenstein, tautologies lack sense and do not represent any possible situations for they
admit all possible situations (1922, Prop. 4.461, 4.462, orig. emphasis). Necessary truths were
logical truths which held in every possible case and were true in virtue of their logical form alone
(ibid., Prop. 6.113), irrespective of the content of their propositional arguments. Wittgensteins
conception of the tautologous nature of logic constituted the first of two significant breaks with the
logicist tradition. Against Frege and Russells universalist conception (he does note seem to have
known about Itelson) Wittgenstein held that all theories that make a proposition of logic appear to
have content are false. (Ibid., Prop. 6.111)
35
That the Circles pragmatism, as it were, did not face the old dilemma any longer is insinuated
obliquely by Frank (19291930/1949a, 1035). It also fits into this picture that Hahns lecture at
the same Prague conference concentrated on spelling out the advantages and consequences of the
conception of logic as tautological (see Hahn 1930).
36
In later years Frank also complained about pragmatisms insufficient appreciation of the value
of logic and systematicity in science (1932b, 151).
37
See, e.g., extracts from the correspondence with James in Perry (1936) and Thiele (1978) and his expres-
sion of reservations to the Danish physicist Anton Thomson in Blackmore and Hentschel (1985, 85).
94 T. Uebel
agreed with conclusions that he had arrived at independently (and earlier). Indeed,
it can be argued that it was his interaction with Mach since his visit to Prague in
1882 that played a very important role for Jamess pragmatism.
Jamess biographer Ralph Barton Perry wrote tellingly about the early interac-
tion between them: From Mach, James had learned something of what he knew
about the history of science, and he had readily accepted his view of the biological
and economic function of scientific concepts. That was in the early days. (1936,
463) Perrys judgement is borne out by the consideration the more philosophical
chapters of Machs main historical works, The Science of Mechanics of 1883 and
related essays, Principles of the Theory of Heat of 1896, his later Knowledge and
Error (Erkenntnis und Irrtum) of 1905, and, of course, his first major work, History
and Root of the Principle of the Conservation of Energy.
What in the course of this paper we have come to learn as the instrumentalism
towards scientific theory that Frank seemed to imbibe from James, alreadycan be
found in Mach:
If all individual factsall the individual phenomena knowledge of which we desirewere
immediately accessible to us, a science would never have arisen. Because the mental power,
the memory, of the individual is limited, the material must be arranged. [a] law has not
in the least more real value than the aggregate of the individual facts. Its value for us lies
merely in the convenience of its use: it has an economical value. (1872/1911, 5455)
Science operated within a practical context where it was constrained by whats

thinkable and doable with the resources at hand. But as has often been remarked,
economies can be effected in different ways. Mach was concerned therefore to
stress that arriving by analysis at simpler elements must not be misunderstood as a
different kind of achievement than it was.
Besides this collection of as many facts as possible in a synoptical form, natural science has
yet another problem which is also economical in nature. It has to resolve the more compli-
cated facts into as few and as simple ones as possible. This we call explaining. These sim-
plest facts, to which we reduce the more complicated ones, are always unintelligible in
themselves, that is to say, they are not further resolvable. Now it is only, on the one hand,
an economical question, and, on the other, a question of taste, at what unintelligibilities we
stop. People usually deceive themselves in thinking that they have reduced the unintelligi-
ble to the intelligible. Understanding consists in analysis alone; and people usually reduce
uncommon unintelligibilities to common ones. They always get, finally, to propositions
which must follow from intuition and, therefore, are not further intelligible. (Ibid., 5556)
Here Machs philosophical deflationism is plainly in evidence. Analysis pro-

vided understanding alright, but this understanding exhibited neither the depth nor
the certainty and irrevisability which apriorist metaphysicians sought to endow their
own intuitions with. He concluded:
In the investigation of nature, we always and alone have to do with the finding of the best
and the simplest rules for the derivation of the phenomena from one another. One funda-
mental fact is not at all more intelligible than another: the choice of fundamental facts is a
matter of convenience, history and custom. (Ibid., 57)
With this anti-realism Mach early on distinguished his own position from that of
most contemporaries, including that of his later friend and admirer Jerusalem.
(Unlike Mach, Jerusalem was also not repelled by Jamess metaphysics even though
he did not endorse it.)
By the time of Jamess visit Mach had further broadened the horizon of his
historical-
critical inquiries and deepened them. As he put in The Science of
Mechanics: In the reproduction of facts in thought, we never reproduce the facts in
full, but only that side of them which is important to us, moved to this directly or
indirectly by a practical interest. Our reproductions are invariably abstractions.
(1883/1960, 578579). It was the evolutionary origin of this interest-relativity that
Mach began to stress. What moved him was not the cultural particularism that else-
where inspired some of his contemporaries to revive German idealism under the
heading of historicism. Rather he found it helpful and restraining to look upon
every-day thinking and science in general, as a biological and organic phenomenon,
in which logical thinking assumed the position of an ideal limiting case (ibid.,
593). To better understand the development of science and its epistemology, he now
sought to consider the growth of natural knowledge in the light of the theory of
evolution. For knowledge, too, is a product of organic nature. (1884/1943, 217). In
a later summary: Scientific thought arises out of ordinary thought, and so com-
pletes the continuous series of biological development that begins with the first
simple manifestation of life. (1905/1976, 1, trans. altered).
Note that Mach discerned the principle of the economy of thought in nearly all
aspects of scientific inquiry and always traced it back to its ultimately evolutionary
context.
It is the object of science to replace, or save, experiences, by the reproduction and anticipa-
tion of facts in thought. Memory is handier than experience and often answers to the same
purpose. This economical office of science, which fills its whole life, is apparent at first
glance; and with its full recognition all mysticism in science disappears. Science is com-
municated by instruction, in order that one man may profit by the experience of another and
be spared the trouble of accumulating it for himself; and thus to spare posterity, the experi-
ences of whole generations are stored up in libraries. (1883/1960, 577, orig. emphasis)
Whatever the practical purposes of inquiry may be that set the parameters of
convenience now, all cognition arose originally as means to survival. Being evolu-
tionary in origin the principle of economy of thought extended to the material means
of representation as much as to its content: Language is itself an economical con-
trivance. (Ibid., 578) In terms of content the principle could be traced throughout
the development of science, both in specific doctrines and general features of theory
formation like the determination of laws of nature.38 In the details of science, its
economical character is still more apparent. For instance, in nature there is no law
of refraction, only different cases of refraction. The law of refraction is a concise
compendious rule, devised by us for the mental reconstruction of a fact (Ibid.,
582; cf. 1882/1943, 193; 1884/1943, 231; 1896/1986, 357) In sum: Science itself
may be regarded as a minimal problem, consisting of the completest possible
38
Fittingly, Mach also gave an evolutionary-economical rendition of Humes critique of the idea of
causation as necessary connection in (1883/1960, 581) and a related dissolution of the nominal-
ism-realism dispute in (1896/1986, 383).
96 T. Uebel
representation of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought. (1883/1960,

586) James, who studied Machs Science of Mechanics closely in the years after his
visit to Prague39, undoubtedly made this reasoning his own.
Mach summarized his methodological views in Principles of the Theory of Heat
(a copy of the second edition which he sent to James in 1900 and which James read
two years later):40
The character and course of development of science becomes more intelligible if we keep
in mind the fact that science has sprung from the needs of practical life, from provision for
the future, from techniques. The investigator strives for the removal of intellectual dis-
comfort; he seeks a releasing thought. The technician wishes to overcome a practical dis-
comfort; he seeks a releasing construction. Any other distinction between discovery and
invention can scarcely be made. (1896/1986, p.407)
The extent to which Machs positivism was pragmatism as far as scientific

methodology was concerned can hardly be rendered plainer. Jamess pragmatism
had little to add here.
he First Vienna Circle, Viennese Empiricism

T
andPragmatism
I asked earlier whether Frank, Hahn and Neurath adopted their instrumentalism vis-
-vis theories and their anti-correspondentism vis--vis truth from pragmatism. It
should be clear now that their original sources for these views were more local ones,
with Mach very prominent amongst them. Another was Ludwig Boltzmann, who
agreed with Machs disdain of metaphysics, calling it a spiritual migraine, and
wrote very much in a pragmatist spirit:
What leads to correct deeds is true. That is why I do not regard technological achievements
as unimportant by-products of natural science but as logical proofs. Had we not attained
these practical achievements, we should not know how to infer. Only those inferences are
correct that lead to practical success. (1905/1974, 192)
Boltzmanns pragmatic evolutionism represents a convergence with pragmatism

avant la lettre, albeit only partial as in the case of Mach. (In Vienna in the early
1900s, incidentally, Mach and Boltzmann were not considered philosophical oppo-
nents on accountof the dispute about atomism.)41
Instrumentalism is part and parcel of Machs principle of the economy of thought
and anti-correspondentism is expressed in his criticism of mere auxiliary conceptions
39
See Holton (1992/1993, 11).
40
See the letter from James to Mach of 17 June 1902in (Thiele 1978, 171).
41
Frank once remembered that strange as it was, in Vienna the physicists were all followers of
Mach and followers of Boltzmann. It wasnt the case that the people would hold against
Boltzmanns theory of atoms any antipathy because of Mach. And I dont even think Mach had any
antipathy. (1962, 6).
in science. Both also are consequences of Boltzmanns picture theory of scientific

representation.42
All our ideas and concepts are only internal mental pictures, or, if spoken, combinations of
sounds. The task of our thinking is to so use and combine them that by their means we
always most readily hit upon the correct actions and guide others likewise. The concep-
tual signs that we form thus exist only within us, we cannot measure external phenomena
by the standard of our ideas. (1899/1974, 104)
Given that Frank, Hahn and Neurath grew up in this very intellectual milieu
and that Frank and Hahn even studied with Boltzmann while both Frank and Neurath
from early on evidenced their critical appreciation of Machwe need not be sur-
prised to find sympathies for both instrumentalism and anti-correspondentism in
their intellectual make-up from the beginning.
Above we also noted that a crucial milestone for their appreciation of pragma-
tism was the recognition that Carnaps early verificationism converged with what
James called Peirces principle. In this connection too we must note the predis-
posing role played by Mach. Note that as part of his general naturalistic approach
Mach formulated a maxim for scientific reasoning that has a good claim of being
placed next to Peirces principle.
The function of science, as we take it, is to replace experience. Thus, on the one hand, sci-
ence must remain in the province of experience, but, on the other, must hasten beyond it,
constantly expecting confirmation, constantly expecting the reverse. Where neither confir-
mation nor refutation is possible, science is not concerned. (1883/1960, 586587, emphasis
added)
Peirces own principle was:

Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the
object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of those effects is the whole of our
conception of the object. (Peirce 1878/1992, 132)
Jamess paraphrase of the principle having been quoted earlier already (3) we
can readily declare that Machs maxim for scientific theorizing agrees with Peirce
and James that only differences that make a discernible difference matter for only
they can make a difference to how we deal with the challenges to our survival or,
less dramatically, our welfare.43
42
See, e.g., Mach: Our theories are abstractions, which, while placing in relief what is important
in certain determinate cases, neglect almost necessarily, or even disguise, what is important in
other cases. (1892 /1943, 186).
43
In the course of introducing Peirces principle, James noted also that he found a few years ago
that Ostwald, the famous Leipzig chemist had been making perfectly distinct use of the principle
of pragmatism in his lectures on the philosophy of science, though he had not called it by that
name. All realities influence our practice, he wrote to me, and their influence is their meaning for
us. I am accustomed to put questions to my classes in this way: In what respects would the world
be different if this alternative or that were true? If I can find nothing that would become different,
then the alternative has no sense. (1907/1991, 24) One paragraph earlier James noted that the
principle of Peirce, the principle of pragmatism, lay entirely unnoticed by any one for twenty
years until I brought it forward again and made a special application of it to religion. By that
98 T. Uebel
Now Carnaps early verificationism represented what Frank had called the rig-
orously logical formulation of the positivist ideas (1941, 10). To understand the
positivist ideas that Frank took to be so rigorously formulated by Carnap to
amount to no more than Machian phenomenalism would be to short-change the
sophistication both of Mach and his first Circle readers. Machs dictum in The
Science of Mechanics, of which his first Circle readers were well aware, stresses the
epistemological, not the ontological point of positivism. It was this epistemological
point that was salient for Frank when he stated in his 1929 Prague Congress address
that Carnaps Aufbau made the most determined attempt to give a rigorous logical
formulation of the doctrines of Mach (192930/1949b, 110). And it was this epis-
temological aspect of the Aufbau and of Scheinprobleme, as we saw, that Frank
associated with pragmatism.
Conclusion
Franks, Hahns and Neuraths endorsements of pragmatism in the later 1920s and
early 1930s stressed its instrumentalism vis--vis theories and its anti-
correspondentism vis--vis truth. Both doctrines can also be traced back to Mach
and Boltzmann whose writings were very well known to Frank, Hahn and Neurath.
Clearly then, their adoption of these doctrines was not prompted only by the study
of James or other American pragmatists but they were already predisposed in this
direction by their long familiarity with, as it were, the Central-European pragma-
tists. Indeed, that predisposition even helps explain their partial sympathies for
James during the early formative phase of their philosophy of science. When later
on, with their own position more fully formed, they celebrated these ideas in prag-
matism they also celebrated old friends in new surroundingsbut that made the
celebrations no less sincere. Moreover, given the near blanket rejection that
American pragmatism had received from German philosophers ever since the 3rd
International Congress of Philosophy in Heidelberg in 1908, Franks very public
embrace of it at the 1929 Prague congress on behalf of the then newly-christened
Vienna Circle was itself a politicummoreover, it was intended and received as one
such!44 It had a polemical point against the German school philosophy which the
assembled physicists and mathematicians instinctively felt aligned withbut,
again, this did not make the Circles new and at that stage still only projected trans-
atlantic alliance any less sincere.45
date (1898) the times seemed ripe for its reception. Readers will note that Machs dictum long
preceded Jamess revitalization of Peirces principle.
44
Consider Franks report of how his wife Hania, who was present at his 1929 Prague address,
described the audiences reaction: It was weird to listen. It seemed to me as if the words fell into
the audience like drops into a well so deep that one cannot hear the drops striking bottom.
Everything seemed to vanish without a trace. (1949a, 40).
45
I wish to thank the participants for critical and constructive comments on my presentation, espe-
cially Hans-Joachim Dahms and Christoph Limbeck-Lilienau, and Cheryl Misak and Alexander
Klein for more recent discussions of these matters.
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On Rational Restraints ofOntology
HeikkiJ.Koskinen
Abstract In this paper, my aim is to construe a pragmatic and rationally responsi-

ble account of ontological theorizing. The account is pragmatic in the sense that it
is compatible with philosophical naturalism and does not involve commitments to
substantial and controversial doctrines like global realism or metaphysical essen-
tialism. The account is rationally responsible in the sense that it incorporates a vari-
ety of rational restraints on ontological theorizing. I begin with a problematization
of general metaphysics or ontology, and then suggest that by looking at different
conceptions of rationality, we can build various types of rational restraints into our
methodological picture of ontological theorizing. These restraints are based on (i)
logical or argumentative rationality; (ii) trust in sense experience or scientific exper-
iments; and (iii) the ability to organize our sensations by means of concepts. To put
the three conceptions of rationality to actual work, and to demonstrate their struc-
tural roles, a specific context of ontological theorizing is needed. As an illustrative
example of how the relevant conceptions of rationality can be seen to provide ratio-
nal restraints of ontological theorizing, I use Quines analysis of mass terms.
Keywords Ontology Rationality Scientific philosophy Quine Pragmatism
The Armchair Problem
In terms of tradition as well as theory, that is, considered both historically and sys-
tematically, it seems appropriate to characterize metaphysics as a highly general
discipline, far removed from the senses and empirical observations. This is already
An earlier version presented at Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism, Institute Vienna Circle, 89
November 2013.
H.J. Koskinen (*)
Faculty of Theology, Centre of Excellence Reason and Religious Recognition
(Academy of Finland), University of Helsinki, Vuorikatu 3, P.O. Box 4,
FI-00014 Helsinki, Finland
e-mail: heikki.j.koskinen@kolumbus.fi

104 H.J. Koskinen
recognized by Aristotle in Metaphysics, where he1 states that the most general things
are the hardest for men to know, because they are furthest from the senses. In a more
recent estimation, Quine2 seems somewhat to agree when he writes that existential
quantifications of the philosophical sort belong to an inclusive theory of nature,
although they are situated way out at the end, farthest from observable fact.3 General
metaphysics or ontology can indeed be seen as philosophys unique contribution to
the study of categorizing, and this uniqueness is based precisely on the generality
and fundamentality of the ontological categories of being.4
Supposing that metaphysics thus does operate on a high level of generality, far
removed from the senses and observable facts, some sort of pure thought or a
priori reasoning might then seem to suggest itself as a natural method for the disci-
pline. There is, however, an inherent and notorious problematics built into such a
methodological assumption. In Fixation of Belief, C.S. Peirce5 famously criti-
cized the a priori method, whose most perfect example he took to be found in the
history of metaphysical philosophy.6 The problem with the a priori method accord-
ing to him was that metaphysical systems have not rested upon any observed facts,
at least not to any great degree. Moreover, Peirce saw fundamental metaphysical
propositions as something adopted merely because they seemed agreeable to rea-
son. Indeed, he took the very essence of the a priori method to be to think as one
is inclined to think. This makes inquiry into something similar to the development
of taste and a matter of fashion.7 The method was accordingly taken by Peirce to
resemble that by which conceptions of art have been brought to maturity.
Surprisingly or not, depending on ones point of view, within theoretical philoso-
phy, the last few decades have witnessed a remarkably growing research interest in
ontology and analytic metaphysics. Especially during recent years, this develop-
ment has also been closely connected with issues involving the very nature and
methodology of the discipline. Notable publications in the area include e.g.
Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, edited by Chalmers,
Manley, and Wasserman,8 a volume which is to a large extent based on themes origi-
nating with Carnap and Quine. Another one is Philosophical Methodology: The
1
Met.I.1, 982a, 2425.
2
Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. NewYork: Columbia University Press 1969, p.98.
3
On various aspects in which the Quinean and the Aristotelian conceptions of metaphysics specifi-
cally do not agree, see e.g. Jonathan Schaffer, On What Grounds What, in: David J.Chalmers/
David Manley/Ryan Wasserman (Eds.), Metametaphysics. New Essays on the Foundations of
Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2009, pp.347383.
4
Cf. Jan Westerhoff, Ontological Categories. Their Nature and Significance. Oxford: Oxford
University Press 2005, p.1.
5
The Fixation of Belief, in: Christian J. W. Kloesei (Ed.), Writings of Charles S. Peirce. A
Chronological Edition, Volume 3, 18721878. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1986,
pp.242257.
6
Ibid., p.252.
7
Ibid., p.253.
8
David J.Chalmers/David Manley/Ryan Wasserman (Eds.), Metametaphysics. New Essays on the
Foundations of Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2009.
Armchair or the Laboratory?, edited by Matthew C.Haug.9 He10 takes the single
question unifying the disparate currents of this surge of interest in philosophical
methodology to be whether philosophical questions can successfully be answered
from the armchair. Such a unifying question, however, conceals a multitude of
different aspects, approaches, and background assumptions.
If accepted uncritically, an aprioristic approach to metaphysics or ontology could
lead to what Jonathan Lowe11 has fittingly described as the impossible rationalist
dream of being able to determine the fundamental structure of reality wholly a pri-
ori and with absolute certainty. Lowes characterization of a degenerate metaphysi-
cal project actually incorporates a whole bundle of problematic features which
might collectively be called The Armchair Problem. The predicament involves at
least four discernible aspects: first, the problem of responsibly restraining forms of
a priori speculation; second, the problem of combining metaphysical speculation
with empirical considerations from the spheres of everyday experience and scien-
tific theory; third, the problem of absolute certainty; and fourth, the problem of
global realism related with the notion of determining the fundamental structure of
reality. Within the confines of the present paper, my main focus will be on the first
two sub-problems, although I shall comment also on the last two.12
Logical empiricism or positivism famously propagated its own radical vision,
according to which there was no empirical connection between metaphysics and
science at all, and all metaphysical speculation was simply nonsense.13 Carnap14
placed metaphysics in the same category with art, as (merely) expressive language.
Quine,15 on the other hand, thought that the positivists were mistaken when they
despaired of evidence in cases of existence statements in the philosophical or
metaphysical vein, and tried accordingly to draw up boundaries that would exclude
such sentences as meaningless. On Quines view, we can have reasons, and essentially
9
Matthew C.Haug (Ed.), Philosophical Methodology. The Armchair or the Laboratory? London:
Routledge 2014.
10
On p.1 of Matthew C.Haug, Introduction. Debates about Methods: From Linguistic Philosophy
to Philosophical Naturalism, in Matthew C. Haug (Ed.), Philosophical Methodology. The
Armchair or the Laboratory? London: Routledge 2014, pp.126.
11
The Possibility of Metaphysics. Substance, Identity, and Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press
1998, p.26.
12
According to Quine, a good scientific theory is under tension from two opposing forces: the drive
for evidence and the drive for system. If either of these drives were unchecked by the other, it
would issue in something unworthy of the name of scientific theory: in the one case, a mere record
of observations, and in the other a myth without foundation. See W.V. Quine, Theories and Things.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1981, p.31.
13
Cf. Otto Neurath/Hans Hahn/Rudolf Carnap, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener
Kreis, English Translation in: Marie Neurath/Robert S.Cohen (Eds.), Otto Neurath. Empiricism
and Sociology. Dordrecht: Reidel 1973 (orig. 1929), pp.299318; Rudolf Carnap, The Elimination
of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language, in: A.J. Ayer (Ed.), Logical Positivism.
Glencoe: Free Press 1959 (orig. 1932), pp.6081.
14
Rudolf Carnap, Philosophy and Logical Syntax. Bristol: Thoemmes Press 1996 (orig. 1935),
p.32.
15
Quine, Ontological Relativity, loc. cit., p.97.
106 H.J. Koskinen
scientific ones at that, for including or excluding certain entities in the range of
values of our variables. As I hope to show in the following, there are reasons to think
that we should take our cue from this general Quinean optimism regarding the rela-
tionship between ontology and rationality.
One way of trying to tackle the Armchair Problem would be to divide the task of
ontology, as Lowe16 does, into two parts, one of which is wholly a priori, and
another which admits empirical elements. Within the Lowean version of the divi-
sion, the a priori part is understood to explore the realm of metaphysical possibili-
ties and real essences, seeking to establish what kinds of things could exist and
co-exist to make up a single possible world. The empirically conditioned part then
seeks to establish, on the basis of empirical evidence and scientific theories, what
kinds of things do exist in this actual world. In this scenario, the empirically condi-
tioned part is seen to depend on the wholly a priori one, and both are sensibly con-
ceived as subject to fallibilism.17
I take the Lowean solution to include important ingredients of wisdom. However,
I also wish to try out a slightly different intellectual strategy in constructing a prag-
matic account of ontological theorizing which is, contra Lowe,18 compatible with
philosophical naturalism, and not inherently committed to substantial and contro-
versial doctrines like global realism or metaphysical essentialism. It would seem to
me that compatibility with naturalism as well as the avoidance of an outright com-
mitment to realism or essentialism are something that a pragmatist might also
desire, and quite rightly so. My alternative way of trying to grapple with the
Armchair Problem is to focus on the overarching notion of rationality. The basic
idea is that if rationality can be understood in a multifaceted way which goes beyond
the purely a priori, then we can also build various types of rational restraints into
our picture of ontological theorizing, including empirical ones. This should provide
us with the fundamentals for dealing with the Armchair Problem. Moreover, by
discerning different conceptions of rationality, and observing some of the ways in
which these play their respective roles in the actual practice of ontology, we can
come to see different ways in which general metaphysics is, or at least can be, a
rational and scientific discipline.
16
E. J. Lowe, The Four-Category Ontology. A Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science.
Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006, p.4.
17
Ibid., p. 5; cf. Andrea Bottani, Reason and Metaphysics, in: Maria Cristina Amoretti/Nicla
Vassallo (Eds.), Reason and Rationality. Frankfurt: Ontos 2012. Of course, fallibilism is also a
scientific attitude associated with the tradition of pragmatism.
18
Lowe, The Possibility of Metaphysics, loc. cit., pp.45; E.J. Lowe, A Survey of Metaphysics.
Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002, pp.57; E.J. Lowe, Metaphysical Knowledge, in: Haug
(Ed.), Philosophical Methodology, loc. cit., pp.130132; cf. Antonella Corradini/Sergio Galvan/
Jonathan E.Lowe (Eds.), Analytic Philosophy Without Naturalism. London: Routledge 2006.
Rational Restraints andOntological Context
In recent research literature focused on reason, at least nine different uses of the
concept of rationality have been discerned.19 Because of this variety, it might con-
vincingly be argued that there is no one single concept or essence of rationality that
could be detected in either philosophical or everyday contexts.20 However, in most
uses of the concept, the general idea of control (of thought, observations, actions,
passions, etc.) can be found,21 and this is just what we need for disciplining the
Armchair. To counter the vague intuitions and uncontrolled speculations that made
the Vienna Circle, Peirce, and Hume before them so anxious, we need epistemic
order, theoretical discipline, and effective forms of justification for our ontological
categories, judgements and frameworks. This will also give credibility to ontology
as a form of scientific philosophy.
Three distinct conceptions of rationality can then be deemed especially impor-
tant for our present purposes. The first of these is logical or argumentative rational-
ity, connected e.g. with formal systems tracing patterns of valid inference. The
second one is trust in sense experience or scientific experiments, pointing towards
the observational sphere of the empirical. And the third one is the ability to organize
ones sensations by means of concepts, which acts as a kind of go-between, mould-
ing the empirical input into a conceptual form utilizable by the deductive machinery
of logic. These three conceptions can effectively act as different types of controls or
rational restraints for epistemically responsible ontological theorizing. For con-
structive ontological projects, they also provide important foundational tools for
systematicity.
To put the three general conceptions of rationality to actual work, we need a
specific context of ontological theorizing which demonstrates their structural roles.
I propose to use an example which arguably goes back all the way to the pre-
Socratics, and Aristotles discussion of matter and form.22 Mark Steen23 concludes
his recent entry on the metaphysics of mass expressions in the Stanford Encyclopedia
19
Cf. Leila Haaparanta, Introduction, in: Leila Haaparanta (Ed.), Rearticulations of Reason.
Recent Currents. Acta Philosophica Fennica 88. Helsinki: The Philosophical Society of Finland
2010, pp.78. These include: (1) logical or argumentative rationality; (2) the ability of critical
evaluation independently of authorities; (3) the ability to organize ones sensations by means of
concepts; (4) trust in sense experience or scientific experiments; (5) trust in modern science and
technology; (6) ones actions being guided by practical syllogism; (7) ones ability to control ones
volitional and emotional impulses; (8) prudence or practical wisdom; and (9) striving for certain
goals, such as wisdom or happiness.
20
Cf. p.333 of Leila Haaparanta, Can Hope Have Reasons?, in: sa Carlson (Ed.), Philosophical
Aspects on Emotions. Stockholm: Thales 2005, pp.327340.
21
Ibid.
22
Cf. Henry Laycock, Words without Objects. Semantics, Ontology, and Logic for Non-Singularity.
Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006, p. ix.
23
Mark Steen, The Metaphysics of Mass Expressions, in: Edward N.Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition).
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/metaphysics-massexpress/.
108 H.J. Koskinen
of Philosophy by assessing that the category of Stuff seems to be where the cate-
gory Event was thirty or so years ago: It is an important ontological category
which remains poorly understood. He also estimates that in the absence of consen-
sus on the referents of mass expressions, controversy about stuff is bound to con-
tinue. Intuitively, mass terms like water refer to stuff, while count terms like
wombat refer to objects or things. Moreover, amounts of stuff can be measured,
while objects or things can be counted, quantified over, and individuated. The cat-
egorial distinction between objects and stuff is fundamental for ontology, seman-
tics, and epistemology.
Although the classification of common nouns as mass or count dates back to
Otto Jespersens The Philosophy of Grammar from 1924,24 contemporary philo-
sophical interest in mass terms is mainly traceable to Quines25 discussion of the
topic in his Word and Object.26 In this work, Quine presented his analysis of mass
terms which was later criticized on account of its nonuniform treatment and its
unwanted logical consequences. Partly in connection with these critiques, different
theoretical approaches have then been developed. These are variously based on
mereology, sets, pluralities, and versions of stuff ontologies.27
My present intentions, however, are not directed at contributing to the theoretical
advancement of the semantics of mass terms or the ontology of stuff per se, but
rather, at using Quines analysis of mass terms as an illustrative example or a case-
study of how the relevant conceptions of rationality can be seen to provide prag-
matic restraints of ontological theorizing. And when I say pragmatic here, I mean
to emphasize the actual practices related with ontological theorizing. For the mak-
ing of observations, the defining and using of concepts, and the constructing of
arguments clearly are something that we do: they are different types of actions and
practices in themselves. They also have various kinds of effects on and practical
consequences for a wider realm of concrete experience. Therefore, I am inclined to
think that any strict demarcation line between theory and practice is going to be
extremely difficult to maintain, especially in our highly technologized society
where, for example, theoretical questions about the nature of numbers, relations,
and so on, have eventually lead to the appearance of the ubiquitous computer.28 To
the extent that pragmatism can be seen as committed to, or founded upon a sup-
posed distinction between theory and practice, I therefore suggest that we turn
24
See pp. 188211 of Otto Jespersen, The Philosophy of Grammar. London: George Allen &
Unwin 1924.
25
See pp.90124 of W.V. Quine, Word and Object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1960.
26
See p.454 of Michael Lockwood, Review of Mass Terms. Some Philosophical Problems, in:
Mind, New Series 90, 359, pp.454457; p.170 of Jeffry Pelletier, Mass Terms, in: Edward Craig
(Ed.), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Volume 6. London: Routledge 1998,
pp.168170.
27
Steen, The Metaphysics of Mass Expressions, loc. cit.; cf. also Francis Jeffry Pelletier, On
Some Proposals for the Semantics of Mass Terms, in: Journal of Philosophical Logic 3,
pp.87108.
28
Cf. Martin Davis, The Universal Computer. The Road from Leibniz to Turing. NewYork: Norton
2000.
p ragmatism on itself, and revise the doctrine by blurring this very distinction. The
result could count as another version of a more thorough pragmatism.29
Trust inSense Experience andScientific Experiments
Thus far, I have problematized ontological theorizing as conducted from the arm-
chair, chosen general types of rational restraints that could be used in dealing with
aspects of the Armchair Problem, and specified an ontological context in which the
general restraints could be seen to operate. It is now time to take some steps towards
explicating the details. In terms of expositional order, we have various options, but
let us start by dealing with the second aspect of the Armchair Problem of combining
metaphysical speculation with empirical considerations first, using trust in sense
experience or scientific experiments as our relevant notion of rationality. The speci-
fied question then becomes: How does trust in sense experience or scientific experi-
ments function as a theoretical constraint in the context of Quines analysis of mass
terms?
It would seem that there are at least two basic ways in which empirical consider-
ations can restrain metaphysical speculation and ontological theorizing. First of all,
trust in sense experience and scientific experiments can be interpreted as a require-
ment for a bottom-up epistemological story of how we get from sense experience to
theoretical discourse, and to the heights of general metaphysics or ontology. We
might call this requirement the Empiricist Epistemology Restraint. Quines influ-
ential vision of the ontogenesis30 or the roots of reference31 is precisely such a story
of how we get from stimulus to science,32 ascending from the level of empirical
observation to more and more general concepts, eventually reaching the highest
categories of being. Independently of Quine, it should be observed that although
general ontological categories like stuff, objects, properties, relations, states of
affairs, and possible worlds are in some sense highly theoretical, they are also
clearly operational already on the level of everyday experience, where we talk and
think quite fluently about various objects, their different properties, relations with
other objects, possibilities, necessities, and so on. In a sense, these categories also
have clear pragmatic consequences for our concrete actions, as when e.g. x decides
to do y because she thinks that z is a real possibility. Ontology, thus, can also have
its beginnings in the most mundane and commonplace conceptual surroundings.
29
Cf. Quine, From a Logical Point of View, loc. cit., p.46: Carnap, Lewis and others take a prag-
matic stand on the question of choosing between language forms, scientific frameworks; but their
pragmatism leaves off at the imagined boundary between the analytic and the synthetic. In repudi-
ating such a boundary I espouse a more thorough pragmatism. [italics mine].
30
Quine, Word and Object, loc. cit., Ch. III.
31
W.V. Quine, The Roots of Reference. La Salle: Open Court 1974.
32
Cf. W.V. Quine, From Stimulus to Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1995.
110 H.J. Koskinen
Secondly, once we have reached the heights of ontological theorizing, trust in

sense experience and scientific experiments can be interpreted as a general require-
ment for consistency with the results of scientific experiments, accepted empirical
data and established theories from the spheres of the various special sciences. We
might call this requirement the Naturalistic Consistency Restraint. Within his
overall position, Quine certainly intends the Empiricist Epistemology Restraint to
be in line with the Naturalistic Consistency Restraint. The whole point of Quines33
naturalized epistemology is to look to special sciences like psychology and
cognitive science for answers to the genuine epistemological issues that remain in
his revised conception of the theory of knowledge. On the other hand, among the
special sciences relevant for the Naturalistic Consistency Restraint and ontology,
physics clearly holds a special place for Quine. This becomes apparent, for example,
in the way in which he34 develops his official ontology of physical objects and sets,
arguing for the indispensability of the latter for serious scientific theorizing about
the former.
When talking about trust in sense experience and scientific experiments as a
rational restraint in connection with Quine, one might be swiftly reminded of the
fact that his famous doctrines like the indeterminacy of translation and the inscruta-
bility of reference35 seem to be based on exactly the opposite idea of the empirical
slack to be found in our language and theories. However, Quine also does have a
constructive bottom-up story to tell, and important aspects of the story become
clearly visible already in his paper Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis, or IOH
for short, from 1950.36 IOH is central for the Empiricist Epistemology Restraint in
general and for the analysis of mass terms in particular. In the paper, Quine tries to
show how we get off from the empirical ground towards a pragmatically structured
conceptual framework of spatiotemporally extended physical objects, and far
beyond. As the title indicates, the notion of identity is crucial for getting from pure
ostension to the hypostasizing of objects. Identity also plays an important part in the
generated contrast between singular terms and general terms. This dual distinction,
in turn, constitutes a conceptual prerequisite for Quines ontological analysis of
mass terms.
The relevant IOH thought experiment utilizes a river as an example of a four-
dimensional physical object extended both spatially and temporally. How is it, then,
that we are supposed to postulate or introduce into our discourse a river on the basis
of a mere series of pure ostensions, when we are not yet even in possession of
the concept river itself? Quine starts from momentary objects or things, which
supposedly are something that can be directly pointed to. Transforming Quines
original example to a different spatiotemporal context, these are entities like a: a
momentary stage of the river Spey in Scotland on the 24th of August 2013, b: a
momentary stage of the Spey 2days later, and c: a momentary stage, at this same
33
Quine, Ontological Relativity, loc. cit., pp.6990.
34
Cf. e.g. Quine, Word and Object, loc. cit., p.233ff.
35
Cf. Quine, ibid., pp.7279; Ontological Relativity, loc. cit., pp.3035.
36
In: Quine, From a Logical Point of View, loc. cit., pp.6579.
latter date of the same multiplicity of water molecules which were in the river at the
time of a. Let us suppose that part of c is in the North Sea, while other parts remain
scattered in diverse distilleries of the Speyside area. Thus a, b, and c are three dis-
tinct objects which are variously related. We might say that a and b stand in the
relation of river kinship, and that a and c stand in the relation of water kinship.
According to Quine,37 the introduction of rivers as single entities consists sub-
stantially in reading identity in place of river kinship. We would be wrong to say that
a and b are identical, because they are merely river-kindred. But if we were to point
to a, and then wait on the Speyside for 2days before pointing to b and affirming the
identity of the objects pointed to, we would thereby show that our pointing was
intended as a pointing to a single river which included both a and b. The imputation
of identity is essential to fixing the reference of the ostension.38 If we pointed to a
and 2days later to b, saying each time This is the Spey, then the indexical word
this used in such a manner must have referred neither to a nor to b, but beyond
them to something more inclusive, identical in the two cases.39 From the learners
point of view, a tendency to favour what Quine40 calls the most natural groupings is
required. With the help of this tendency, after repeated pointings, the learner can
project a correct general hypothesis as to what further momentary objects we would
also be willing to include. Because the various pointings provide an inductive
ground from which the learner is to guess the intended reach of the object, in the
recipe of spatiotemporal integration via conceptualisation, induction needs to be
added to the ingredients of identity, ostension and hypostasis.
From spatiotemporal particulars, Quine turns to the ostensive explanation of
general terms, and notes41 that the difference would seem to be merely that the
spread concerned here is a conceptual one or a generality rather than a spatiotempo-
ral one. Quine first plays down this difference by considering the general term red
as an example, arguing that a theory of universals as concrete works for red, because
it can be treated as the largest red thing in the universe, i.e., the scattered total thing
whose parts are all the red things.42 However, he then argues that a general equating
of universals to particulars breaks down, by using an example of geometrical shapes.
The gist of the reductio type of argument is that if we try to apply the same approach
that seems to work for red to geometrical shapes, we shall intolerably end up with a
situation where different shapes like square and triangle count as identical.43 This
leads to a recognition of two different types of association: that of concrete parts in
a concrete whole, and that of concrete instances in an abstract universal.44 In effect,
37
Ibid., p.66.
38
Ibid.
39
Ibid., p.67.
40
Ibid., p.68.
41
Ibid., p.69.
42
Cf. ibid., p.72.
43
Ibid., p.73.
44
Ibid., p.74.
112 H.J. Koskinen
we also come to recognize two senses of is, namely that of identity, as in This is
the Spey, and that of predication, as in This is square.45
The difference between the ostension of spatiotemporally extended objects on
the one hand and irreducible universals on the other is that in pointing to a, b, and
so on, saying each time This is the Spey, identity of the indicated object is under-
stood from one occasion to the next, whereas in pointing to various particulars,
saying each time This is square, there is no imputation of identity from one occa-
sion to the other.46 At best, what is supposed to be identical from one pointing to
another is an attribute of squareness, which is shared by the indicated objects. But
actually, Quine47 says, there is no need to suppose such entities as attributes in our
ostensive clarification of square at this point at all. What suffices is that we clarify
our use of the words is square, and that the listener learn when to expect us to
apply them to an object, and when not. The two different senses of is are inti-
mately related with the contrast between general terms and singular terms. The
ostensions which introduce a general term differ from those which introduce a sin-
gular term in that the former do not impute identity of indicated object between
occasions of pointing. The general term also does not, or need not, purport to be a
name in turn of a separate entity of any sort, whereas the singular term does.48
Quine49 thinks it clearest to view the postulation of abstract entities as a further
step which follows after the introduction of the corresponding general terms. When
This is square or x is square is already introduced, then we can derive the attri-
bute squareness, or what according to Quine comes to much the same thing, the
class of squares. What is crucially important in this further step is the new funda-
mental class of, or -ness operator. Quine places much importance on the tradi-
tional distinction between general terms and abstract singular terms because of the
associated ontological point: use of the former does not in itself commit us to the
admission of the corresponding abstract entity into our ontology, whereas use of the
latter does.50 Here the deep logical and metaphysical roots of the Quinean dictum
no entity without identity become clearly discernible.
Once a collection of ostensively acquired basic terms is at hand, we may intro-
duce additional terms by discursive explanation, paraphrasing them into complexes
of terms already in use. Unlike ostension, discursive explanation can be used for
45
Cf. Leila Haaparanta, On Freges Concept of Being, in: Simo Knuuttila/Jaakko Hintikka
(Eds.), The Logic of Being, Dordrecht: Reidel 1986, pp. 269289; E. J. Lowe, More Kinds of
Being. A Further Study of Individuation, Identity, and the Logic of Sortal Terms. West Sussex:
Wiley-Blackwell 2009, pp.34.
46
Quine, From a Logical Point of View, loc. cit., pp.7475.
47
Ibid., p.75.
48
Ibid.; cf. Heikki J. Koskinen, Quine, Predication, and the Categories of Being, in: Leila
Haaparanta/Heikki J.Koskinen (Eds.), Categories of Being, loc. cit., pp.338357.
49
From a Logical Point of View, loc. cit., p.76.
50
Quine ibid. suspects that failure to observe the significant distinction between general terms and
abstract singular terms is why our intellects have originally been seduced by abstract entities. In
addition, he ibid., p.77 mentions purely syntactic reasons for handling a general term like a proper
name; cf. e.g. Quine, Ontological Relativity, loc. cit., pp.1415.
defining new general terms like shape applicable to abstract entities. Applying the
-ness or class of operator to such abstract general terms, we can get second-level
abstract singular terms purporting to name such entities as the attribute of being a
shape or the class of all shapes. This procedure can then be applied for the next
level, and so on, taking us eventually to the highest generality levels characteristic
of ontology that we started with. We do not have to accept all the details of the
Quinean account51 to appreciate the way in which his story of the ontogenesis of
reference can be seen as a response to the Empiricist Epistemology Restraint. The
bottom-up epistemological story is an attempt to answer the empirical accountabil-
ity requirement in this sense.
Having ascended to the heights of ontological theorizing, the Naturalistic
Consistency Restraint can then be seen to present a general requirement for compat-
ibility with the results of scientific experiments, accepted empirical data and estab-
lished theories from the spheres of the various special sciences. D.C. Williams,52
Quines contemporary in Harvard, stated that metaphysics is the thoroughly empiri-
cal science. Every item of experience must be evidence for or against any hypothe-
sis of speculative cosmology, and every experienced object must be an exemplar
and test case for the categories of analytic ontology.53 Due to the generality of ontol-
ogy, however, this is no straightforward matter. As Quine54 himself points out, no
experiment may be expected to settle an ontological issue. Systematicity, coher-
ence, and simplicity may be appealed to, but since the general categories of ontol-
ogy both transcend and unite the spheres of everyday experience and the various
special sciences, it is not clear at all what the Naturalistic Consistency Restraint
implies in specific cases. This is a matter of further philosophical debate, which
needs to be conducted in a careful case by case manner.
In terms of the semantics of mass terms, it might be useful to consider some
input from empirical experiments and theories of psychology or neuroscience.55 In
terms of stuff ontology, on the other hand, relevant empirical input might be obtain-
able from the field of chemistry and the surrounding philosophical discussion.56 A
reflective equilibrium based on multidisciplinary interaction is clearly something
51
One problematic feature has to do with the way in which Quine talks about specifying objects of
indeterminate spatiotemporal spread. One might argue that the very specification of (at least physi-
cal or concrete) objects presupposes their determinate spatiotemporal limits. Cf. Quine, From a
Logical Point of View, loc. cit., p.68.
52
On p.3 of On the Elements of Being I & II, in: The Review of Metaphysics 7, 1953, pp.318
& 171192.
53
Ibid.
54
Word and Object, loc. cit., p.276.
55
Cf. e.g. Sara Mondini/Alessandro Angrilli/Patrizia Bisiacchi/Chiara Spinorelli/Katia Marinelli/
Carlo Semenza, Mass and Count Nouns Activate Different Brain Regions: An ERP Study on
Early Components, in: Neuroscience Letters 430, 1, 2008, pp. 4853; E. K. Warrington/S. J.
Crutch, The Semantic Organization of Mass Nouns and the Representational Locus of the Mass/
Count Distinction, in: Brain and Language 95, 2005, pp.9091.
56
Cf. e.g. Jaap van Brakel, The Chemistry of Substances and the Philosophy of Mass Terms, in:
Synthese 69, 1986, pp. 291324; Dean W. Zimmerman, Theories of Masses and Problems of
114 H.J. Koskinen
that the Naturalistic Consistency Restraint requires. Although, as Quine57 puts it, the
question of what there is is a shared concern of philosophy and most other non-
fiction genres, what distinguishes between the ontological philosophers concern
and all the rest, however, is the breadth of the formers categories. These are related
with a quest of ultimate categories, a limning of the most general traits of reality.58
In discussions concerning philosophical naturalism and scientific philosophy, this is
an important point to keep in mind, because it enables philosophy to retain its dis-
tinct role among scientific disciplines.59
Organization ofSensations by Means ofConcepts
In a supposed contrast between the armchair and the laboratory,60 the relationship
between ontological theorizing and our best empirical theories is readily problema-
tized. However, another major aspect of the Armchair Problem concerns the prob-
lem of responsibly restraining forms of a priori speculation which is an activity
more easily conducted from the confines of the armchair. These restraints need to be
applied on at least two different intellectual fronts, namely, on what might in
Quinean61 terms be called the conceptual and the doctrinal side. The former has to
do with the concepts we use, and the latter with the proofs or arguments that we
employ. In this section, my focus will be on the conceptual front.
What kind of rational restraints could then be applied on the conceptual side of
ontology? Again, it would seem that there are at least two different ways in which
conceptual considerations can act as theoretical restraints. First of all, there is a
semantic responsibility to make our concepts or ideas as clear as possible.62 This
could be called the Conceptual Clarity Restraint. Secondly, our concepts can be
restrained by the requirement that they should be as useful as possible for the pur-
pose at hand. This could be called the Pragmatic Utility Restraint. Unsurprisingly,
these two restraints are connected, because for systematic purposes characteristic of
ontological theorizing, the clarity of concepts also contributes to their usefulness.
Usefulness for the purpose at hand, on the other hand, is arguably a pragmatic
Constitution, in: The Philosophical Review 104, 1, 1995, pp. 53110; Paul Needham,
Macroscopic Mixtures, in: The Journal of Philosophy 104, 1, 2007, pp.2652.
57
58
Ibid., p.161.
59
Cf. Lowe, The Possibility of Metaphysics, loc. cit., pp.174189; Jorge J.E. Gracia, Metaphysics
and Its Task. The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge. Albany: The State University
of NewYork Press 1999, pp.131158; Heikki J.Koskinen, From a Metaphilosophical Point of
View. A Study of W.V. Quines Philosophical Naturalism. Acta Philosophica Fennica 74. Helsinki:
The Philosophical Society of Finland 2004.
60
Cf. Haug, Philosophical Methodology, loc. cit.
61
Cf. Quine, Ontological Relativity, loc. cit., p.69ff.
62
Cf. Charles Sanders Peirce, How to Make Our Ideas Clear, in: Christian J.W. Kloesei (Ed.),
Writings of Charles S.Peirce, loc. cit., pp.257276.
notion which is healthily oblivious to the suspect dichotomy between theory and
practice. The purpose at hand can be a theoretical one, and if the pragmatic utility
of ontological concepts is judged in terms of the success of their practical applica-
tion, then the relevant practices may also be theoretical ones. Irrespective of ones
view of the categorial framework itself, as an illustrative example, one might think
of the way in which Lowe63 argues for the usefulness of his four-category ontology
in dealing with dispositional versus occurrent predication.
In the Quinean story of mass terms and stuff ontology, the ability to organize
ones sensations by means of concepts begins with occasion sentences. These are
sentences commanding assent or dissent only if queried after an appropriate prompt-
ing stimulation,64 variably from occasion to occasion.65 In terms of both infantile
learning and the first steps of radical translation, Mama, Red, and Water count
as useful examples. For the child, the mother, red, and water are all of a type; each
is just a history of sporadic encounter, a scattered portion of what goes on.66
Occasion sentences belonging to this first phase of language learning are archaic,
primitive, and indecisive in relation to the sophisticated dichotomy between singu-
lar and general. As we saw earlier, the distinction between singular and general
terms is closely related with the notion of identity. With occasion sentences and
mass terms, we still remain on a pre-individuative phase in the evolution of our
conceptual scheme. It is only when individuation emerges that the mother becomes
integrated into a cohesive spatiotemporal convexity, while water remains scattered
in space-time. With the advent of individuation, the two terms part company.67 The
category of mass terms remains an archaic survival of the first phase of language
learning.68
What we have termed the Conceptual Clarity Restraint may be seen to operate in
the way in which Quine clarifies the distinction between singular and general terms.
Initially, individuation is the one feature that distinguishes singular from general, or
Fido from dog.69 From a syntactic perspective, if a term admits the definite and
indefinite article and the plural ending, then normally under our perfected adult
usage it is a general term. A singular term like mama admits only the singular
grammatical form and no article.70 From a semantic point of view, the distinction
between singular and general terms seems to be that a singular term names or pur-
ports to name just one object, while a general term is true of each severally, of any
number of objects.71 Actually, however, Quine72 says, the difference of being true of
63
The Four-Category Ontology, loc. cit., pp.121140.
64
Quine, Word and Object, loc. cit., p.36.
65
Quine, Roots of Reference, loc. cit., p.39.
66
67
Quine, Ontological Relativity, loc. cit., p.10.
68
69
Quine, Roots of Reference, loc. cit., p.85.
70
71
Ibid., p.91.
72
Ibid., p.95.
116 H.J. Koskinen
just one object and of many is not what matters to the distinction between singular
and general. There are counterexamples like Pegasus. This is a derived term
learned by description, and it counts as a singular term though true of nothing.
Another counterexample is provided by natural satellite of the earth. This in turn
is compounded of learned parts, and counts as a general term although true of just
one object.
One could vaguely say that Pegasus is singular in that it purports to refer to just
one object, while natural satellite of the earth is general in that its singularity of
reference is not something purported in the term itself.73 However, Quine takes such
talk of purport to be only a picturesque way of alluding to distinctive grammatical
roles that singular and general terms play in sentences. And it is precisely by their
grammatical roles that singular and general terms are properly to be distinguished.
The basic combination in which singular and general terms find their contrasting
roles is that of predication. An example would be Mama is a woman, or more
schematically, a is an F, where a represents a singular term and F a general
term. Predication joins a general term and a singular term to form a sentence that is
true or false according as the general term is true or false of the object, if any, to
which the singular term refers.74
In connection with mass terms, the organization of sensations by means of con-
cepts leads Quine75 to notice an ambivalence with respect to the dichotomy between
singular and general terms. This ambivalence becomes strikingly apparent precisely
in predication, where the mass term behaves in two different ways. Sometimes the
mass term enters predication after is, like a general term in adjectival form, and
sometimes before is, like a singular term. Examples of such cases are sentences
like That puddle is water versus Water is fluid. The way in which Quine tries to
solve the observed ambivalence is to explicitly give the mass term both of these
roles. According to him,76 the simplest plan seems to be to treat it accordingly, as a
general term in its occurrences after is, and as a singular term in its occurrences
before is. This decision leads to what has in subsequent literature been called
Quines dual analysis of mass terms.77
According to the dual analysis,78 a mass term in predicative position may be
viewed as a general term which is true of each portion of the stuff in question,
excluding only the parts too small to count. Thus, water, for example, in the role
of a general term is true of each part of the worlds water, down to single molecules,
73
Ibid., pp.9596.
74
Ibid., p.96. Later on, Quine ibid., p.199 writes: But the fact is that general and singular terms,
abstract or concrete, are not to be known only by their role in predication. There is also the use of
singular terms as antecedents of it, and the use of general terms after articles and under pluraliza-
tion. Predication is but part of a pattern of interlocking uses wherein the status of a word as general
or singular term consists. Cf. Quine, Roots of Reference, loc. cit., p.84.
75
76
Ibid.
77
Cf. e.g. Pelletier, Mass Terms, loc. cit., p.170.
78
but not to atoms. A mass term in subject position, on the other hand, is not taken to
differ from a singular term like mama, unless the scattered stuff that it names be
denied the status of a single sprawling object. Quine79 sees no reason to boggle at
water as a single though scattered object, the aqueous part of the world. This is not
conceived as a particularly curious case either, because as Quine points out, even the
tightest object, short of an elementary particle, has a scattered substructure when the
physical facts are in. It might be thought that since mass terms before the copula
have been assimilated to singular terms by appeal to scattered objects, we could also
treat mass terms as singular terms equally after the copula by reconstruing is in
such contexts as the mereological notion is a part of. Quine80 notes, however, that
this version fails because there are e.g. parts of water that are too small to count as
water themselves. A further difficulty has to do with the fact that the criterion of
what counts as too small is not the same for water, sugar, furniture, and so on. The
best strategy, Quine concludes, is to acquiesce in a certain protean character on the
part of mass terms, treating them as singular in the subject and general in the
predicate.
Quine does recognize that the primitive category of mass terms is ill fitting the
sophisticated dichotomy into general and singular. But he81 nevertheless insists
that the philosophical mind sees its way to pressing this archaic category into the
dichotomy.82 The motivation is pragmatic, and has to do with the organization and
simplicity sought by science.83 Indeed, to get back to IOH, we may observe that the
whole tone of the paper is conspicuously pragmatic, as Quine84 talks about identifi-
cation determining our subject matter,85 positing of processes or objects,86 survival
value of practices,87 benefits of formal simplicity of subject matter,88 relativity to a
discourse,89 conceptual convenience,90 a pragmatically acceptable conceptual
scheme,91 and finally, about conceptual frameworks into whose absolute correctness
79
Ibid.
80
Ibid., p.99.
81
Ontological Relativity, loc. cit., p.10.
82
This brings to mind Quines similarly resolute talk of regimentation in Word and Object, loc.
cit., pp.157161, and of the Procrustean bed of predicate logic, into which all of austere science
is taken to pliantly submit in W.V. Quine, Quiddities. An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1987, p.158. For critical evaluations of some implica-
tions, see e.g. Lowe, The Four-Category Ontology, loc. cit., pp.5265; Laycock, Words without
Objects, loc. cit.
83
Cf. e.g. Quine, Roots of Reference, loc. cit., pp.8889.
84
From a Logical Point of View, loc. cit., pp.6579.
85
Ibid., p.65.
86
Ibid., p.67.
87
Ibid., p.69.
88
Ibid., p.70.
89
Ibid., p.71.
90
Ibid., p.78.
91
Ibid., p.79.
118 H.J. Koskinen
as mirrors of reality it is meaningless to inquire into.92 Accordingly, Quine also

concludes the paper by suggesting instead of a realistic standard of correspon-
dence to reality a pragmatic standard for appraising basic changes of conceptual
schemes.
A central principle in IOH proposed by Quine93 towards the purpose of achieving
a pragmatically acceptable conceptual scheme is the maxim of the identification of
indiscernibles. The maxim states that objects indistinguishable from one another
within the terms of a given discourse should be construed as identical for that dis-
course. As in our earlier river example, the references to the original objects should
be reconstrued for purposes of the discourse as referring to other and fewer objects,
in such a way that indistinguishable originals give way each to the same new object.
Thus we get from various momentary river stages a, b, and so on, to the single river
Spey. Locally, this constitutes an application of Ockhams Razor. In a more global
perspective, however, a new entity has simply been added to the old ones. The Spey
is a convenient and pragmatic addition to our ontology because of the contexts in
which it does effect economy.94 The example constitutes yet another illustrative case
of pragmatically organizing ones sensations by means of concepts.
Logical or Argumentative Rationality
Of the three central notions of rationality acting as different types of controls or

restraints for responsible ontological theorizing, logical or argumentative rational-
ity was mentioned first. In Quinean terms,95 logic and logical structure is what binds
the web of belief together. The arrangement of our beliefs is crucial for any fields
including ontologys counting as science. According to Quine,96 nearly any body
of knowledge that is sufficiently organized to exhibit appropriate evidential rela-
tionships among its constituent claims has at least some call to be seen as scientific.
As Quine97 puts it: What makes for science is system, whatever the subject. And
what makes for system is the judicious application of logic. Thus, science is a fruit
of rational investigation. Logical structure is relevant for the coherence and consis-
tency of theorizing, for seeing what follows from what, and how, as well as for con-
necting our theoretical enterprises with the empirical sphere of observations.98
92
Ibid.
93
Ibid., p.71.
94
Cf. ibid., p.70.
95
Cf. W.V. Quine/J.S. Ullian, The Web of Belief. Second Edition. NewYork: McGraw-Hill 1978.
96
Cf. ibid.
97
Ibid.
98
Cf. e.g. W.V. Quine, The Methods of Logic. Fourth Edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press 1982, p.3. Quine ibid. writes: It is only by way of the relations of one statement to another
that the statements in the interior of the system can figure at all in the prediction of experience, and
can be found deserving revision when prediction fails.
Because of all this, logical or argumentative rationality can be seen as a structurally

central notion of rationality that binds trust in sense experience or scientific experi-
ments and the ability to organize ones sensations by means of concepts into a uni-
fied whole.
For Quine,99 the supreme paradigm of logical or argumentative rationality is the
privileged canonical notation of first-order predicate logic with identity. In the logi-
cal structure of implications charted by this formal system of logic, the bound vari-
ables of quantification constitute crucial nodes. They are also, I dare say, essential
for Quines methodology of ontology, where to be is to be the value of a [bound]
variable.100 In connection with the Naturalistic Consistency Restraint and physics,
it was already noted earlier that in his official scientific ontology, Quine argues for
the indispensability of sets because they are needed in mathematical reasoning
about physical objects. What this means in terms of the canonical notation is that at
some point, we cannot avoid quantifying over sets, or accepting them as values of
our bound variables, and thus making an explicit ontological commitment to their
existence. This indispensability reasoning, too, seems to function in its way as an
illustration of systematically combining empirical, conceptual, and argumentative
notions of rationality.
As a continuation of this Quinean methodological tradition of ontology, we
might think of Donald Davidsons101 way of arguing for the systematic benefits of
explicitly quantifying over events in contexts of certain types of entailment relations
between action sentences, and thus of accepting for pragmatic reasons the category
of events into our official ontology. As another example of methodological continu-
ity in the Quinean pragmatic tradition of ontology, we could mention David
Lewiss102 argumentation for the systematic virtues of quantifying over possible
worlds. As far as entailment relations between sentences go, however, in addition to
arguing for the introduction of certain types of entities, argumentative rationality
can also be used in making negative or eliminative points about specific analyses.
And this has also been the case with Quines dual analysis of mass terms. Without
entering into further argumentation or ensuing adjustments and technical discus-
sions, we can have a look at some of this critique for our own purposes purely as an
example of how logical or argumentative rationality can function as a restraint in an
ontological context.
First of all, it might be argued, as Tyler Burge103 has done, that Quines theory is
unsatisfactory because it is incomplete. The dual analysis does not seem to cover
mass terms which occur neither before nor after the copula.104 Considering the sen-
tence Phil threw snow on Bill, it would seem natural and intuitive to extend
Quines theory to handle snow in this sentence as a singular term. Ignoring the
99
See e.g. Word and Object, loc. cit.
100
Cf. Quine, From a Logical Point of View, loc. cit., p.15; The Ways of Paradox, loc. cit., p.199.
101
Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1980, pp.105180.
102
On the Plurality of Worlds. Malden: Blackwell 1986.
103
Truth and Mass Terms, in: The Journal of Philosophy 69, 10, 1972, pp.263282.
104
Ibid., p.266.
120 H.J. Koskinen
aspect of tense, the sentence might then be roughly105 formalized as Threw-on (p,
s, b). However, the problem with this formalization is that unless Bill is what
Burge106 calls the diabolical supersnowballer, the analysis will make the sentence
come out false even if Phil did throw snow on Bill. In Quines analysis, snow as a
singular term refers to all the scattered snow in the world, which is supposed to
constitute a single sprawling object. This is not something that Phil is likely to be
throwing around. Whether snow might be paraphrased in other ways or not,
Burges107 point is that any account that hinges on the appearance of a copula in the
sentence to be analysed will inevitably be incomplete.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, logical or argumentative rationality can
be applied directly in a deductive context to argue for a problematic feature of
Quines dual analysis of mass terms. The basic idea is that the account has unwanted
consequences for formalizing intuitively valid deductions. Let us think of the fol-
lowing argument in English: This puddle is water, water is wet, ergo This puddle is
wet.108 Translating natural into artificial language, let us use the predicate F as a
translation of is water, the predicate G as a translation of is wet, the individual
constant t as a translation of this puddle, and finally, the individual constant w
as a translation of water. The whole argument would then be translated as Ft, Gw
Gt, which is obviously not deducible. This unintuitive result arguably constitutes
a reductio ad absurdum against the dual analysis.109
For our present illustrative purposes, these two cases of negative argumentation
serve as examples of tracing the consequences of given technical assumptions or
ontological analyses. We may of course also work in the other direction as well, and
track down various presuppositions built into a given solution or technical sugges-
tion. In this way, ontological theories and analyses are restrained by their logical
connections with other assumptions within the web of belief. In terms of logical or
argumentative rationality, and in connection with Quines canonical notation, it
might seem natural to think primarily about deductive procedures and relationships.
But to keep in line with the demands of the Naturalistic Consistency Restraint, the
central role of statistical and inductive inference must also be duly recognized. This
is something enforced upon us by the nature of empirical knowledge and the
Quinean picture of organization of sensations by means of concepts in general, and
by our advanced physical theory in particular. So, in view of our characterization of
the rational restraints of ontological theorizing, instead of speaking exclusively
about deductive argumentation, we should call the relevant constraint the
Argumentative Traceability Restraint. This covers both deductive and inductive
inferences, and nicely emphasizes our (at bottom ethical) responsibility of provid-
ing and keeping track of reasons and justifications for our views.
105
In ibid. n4, Burge notes that actually the formalization of the verb is defective, as is that of the
proper names, but he decides to leave these matters aside.
106
Ibid.
107
Ibid.
108
Pelletier, On Some Proposals for the Semantics of Mass Nouns, loc. cit., p.88.
109
Cf. ibid.
It is customary to distinguish not only between deductive and inductive infer-

ence, but also between demonstrative and dialectical reasoning. In terms of onto-
logical theorizing, the latter distinction comes into play as a methodological
suggestion or a kind of restraint on the style of rationality, according to which we
should not proceed in a demonstrative manner in the sense that we would take our
ontological premises, or in Peircean110 terms, the fundamental propositions of our
systems of metaphysical philosophy, as evident and necessary truths from which we
can then infallibly proceed via deductive chains of argumentation. Instead, we
should adopt a more dialectical and hypothetical attitude, accepting our ontological
premises as starting points for further discussion, elaboration, and possibly even
eventual refutation. This Dialectical Contextuality Restraint, as we might call it,
keeps our minds open, and guides us away from what Russell111 called the dog-
matic assurance which closes the mind against speculation. It also effectively
keeps the scientific spirit of fallibilism alive, and nurtures a pragmatic attitude
spiced with an appropriate amount of Carnapian tolerance with respect to ontologi-
cal frameworks. Quine exhibits this, when he112 suggests that in the question of what
ontology actually to adopt, the obvious counsel is tolerance and an experimental
spirit.
Conclusions
To get back to our original Armchair Problem with its various aspects, we can pull
our strings together now, and see what kind of methodological picture we have
ended up with. After having distinguished empirical, conceptual and argumentative
forms of rationality and further restraints within these,113 and after having utilized
Quines analysis of mass terms as an illustrative example, we should now be able to
address the Armchair Problem in a more informed manner to produce a plausible
pragmatic account of ontology as a form of scientific philosophy.
The first aspect concerned the problem of responsibly restraining forms of a
priori speculation. Logical or argumentative rationality was seen to have a central
role here, as well as in binding the other forms of rationality together into a unified
whole. When restrained by logical or argumentative principles, our a priori specula-
tions cannot proceed merely in terms of free association, or however one is inclined
110
The Fixation of Belief, loc. cit., p.252.
111
Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy. Fifteenth Impression. Oxford: Oxford University
Press 1989 (orig. 1912), pp.9394.
112
113
Together, they amount to the following: Empirical Rationality: (RR1a) The Empiricist
Epistemology Restraint, (RR1b) The Naturalistic Consistency Restraint; Conceptual Rationality:
(RR2a) The Conceptual Clarity Restraint, (RR2b) The Pragmatic Utility Restraint; Argumentative
Rationality: (RR3a) The Argumentative Traceability Restraint, (RR3b) The Dialectical
Contextuality Restraint.
122 H.J. Koskinen
to think, as in Peirces114 critique. Logic gives a rigorous structure to our thought,

and also introduces intellectual responsibility to our theoretical discourse. Of
course, it may be a pragmatic and discourse-related matter to what extent any given
lines of argumentation are actually formalized within some system of logic. The
choice of logical system is also a further pragmatic issue. Lowe115 for example,
argues that what he calls Frege-Russell logic, i.e., the modern first-order predicate
logic with identity which Quine relies on, is inadequate to the representational
requirements of his Aristotelian four-category ontology. Lowes own suggestion is
a sortal logic whose syntactic remedies are seen to avoid the distortions supposedly
imposed by the Frege-Russell logic. It should of course be noted that even in trying
to argue for the benefits of one logical system over another, one needs to rely on
some overarching notion of rationality that is shared by the parties of the relevant
discussion. This is a fundamental pragmatic prerequisite of rational dialogue,
whether the topic concerns frameworks of ontology or systems of logic.116
Conceptual rationality was seen to constitute another important restraint on a
priori speculation, and hence, on the first aspect of the Armchair Problem. The
Conceptual Clarity Restraint imposes a responsibility of defining ones concepts as
clearly and explicitly as possible, whereas the Pragmatic Utility Restraint operates
with respect to the requirement that our concepts should be as useful as possible for
the purpose at hand. With the conceptual and doctrinal constraints in place, that is,
once our conceptual and argumentative forms of rationality have been specified as
restraints, we may be said to proceed in a responsible scientific manner in theorizing
about ontological concepts, judgements, and frameworks. To apply the Carnapian
principle of tolerance117 to recognizably un-Carnapian ground, we might say that,
apart from the requirement to provide arguments and definitions, in ontology, there
are no morals. Everyone is at liberty to build up her own ontological framework as
she wishes. All that is required of her is that, if she wishes to discuss it, she must
state her concepts and arguments clearly.118
In addition to the problem of responsibly restraining forms of a priori specula-
tion, aspects of the Armchair Problem also include the problem of combining meta-
physical speculation with empirical considerations. Having gone through the
Quinean examples, we have seen how the Empiricist Epistemology Restraint and
the Naturalistic Consistency Restraint can operate. Quines story of how we ascend
from empirical observations to the heights of ontology is a useful suggestion of how
metaphysical knowledge can be compatible with our status as a kind of natural
114
The Fixation of Belief, loc. cit.
115
The Four-Category Ontology, loc. cit., pp.5265.
116
The point here is not simply to assume a shared form of rationality, but rather to point out that if
there is to be any meaningful dialogue at all between differing parties, then some form of shared
rationality has to provide a basis for the dialogue.
117
Cf. Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language. London: Paul Kegan, Trubner Trench &
Co. 1937, p.52.
118
Cf. Peirce, How to Make Our Ideas Clear, loc. cit.
creature. Pace Lowe,119 there is no need to suppose any intrinsic advantageousness

of metaphysical knowledge to animals with our particular biological capacities and
needs. Neither does it follow120 from our empirical restraints that there would be no
question that metaphysics is equipped to answer which is not properly in the domain
of some natural science.
As far as the third aspect of the Armchair Problem, or the problem of absolute
certainty is concerned, there is no need whatsoever to build such an assumption into
our methodological picture of ontological theorizing. On the contrary, we can
emphasize the healthy scientific attitude of fallibilism across the board. We can and
do get all kinds of things wrong in the empirical, conceptual, and argumentative
spheres of rationality. A pragmatic view of ontology as practised by us humans
should definitely recognize this as a basic feature of the whole intellectual
enterprise.
The fourth and final aspect of the Armchair Problem is then related with the
problem of global realism121 and the associated notion of determining the funda-
mental structure of reality. This issue seems to be relevant especially in connection
with combining ontological theorizing with empirical considerations. However, I
would suggest that we can have the kind of picture presented so far of ontological
theorizing without any need to commit ourselves to global realism. Instead, we may
acquire whatever benefits there are to be acquired from our methodological view,
and treat the commitment to realism as a further issue to be argued for or against in
a different context altogether. In terms of use and practice, the assumption of a sub-
stantial and controversial thesis like global realism is an unnecessary burden for a
pragmatic conception of ontology. The same applies, and perhaps even to a stronger
degree, to metaphysical essentialism. In the way I have described above with the
help of Quine, it is arguably quite possible to engage in scientific theorizing about
categorial frameworks of ontology without having to buy either global realism or
metaphysical essentialism as parts of the initial package. We would do much better
to follow Quine122 in adopting a tolerant attitude and a pragmatic standard for evalu-
ating the conceptual schemes of ontological frameworks.
119
Metaphysical Knowledge, loc. cit., p.131.
120
Cf. ibid.
121
Cf. William P. Alston, A Sensible Metaphysical Realism. Milwaukee: Marquette University
Press 2001, p.8; Ilkka Niiniluoto, Critical Scientific Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press
1999, pp.2141.
122
Feigl, Sellars, andtheIdea ofaPure
Pragmatics
MatthiasNeuber
Introduction
In the Personal Postscript to his seminal essay Existential Hypothesis, Herbert

Feigl declares:
In a series of brilliant essays, Wilfrid Sellars has outlined a new version of a realistic epis-
temology on the basis of pure syntax, semantics and pragmatics. What I had only dimly
perceived, particularly in connection with the distinction between evidential base and fac-
tual reference [] has since been independently and much more systematically elaborated
by Wilfrid Sellars. In my estimation, he holds greater promise than any other contemporary
thinker for doing justice to, and to provide a new synthesis of, the justifiable claims of real-
ism and positivism, as well as of rationalism and empiricism. (Feigl 1950a, p.60)
Sellars himself, in his Autobiographical Reflections, reported 25 years later:

The relevant fact is that Feigl and I shared a common purpose: to formulate a scientifically
oriented, naturalistic realism which would save the Appearances. He was familiar with the
general outline of my fathers [Roy Wood Sellars] Critical Realism and Evolutionary
Naturalism, and when an opening occurred in the University of Iowa Department where he
had been teaching since 1931, he suggested that I be invited for an interview. We hit it off
immediately, although the seriousness with which I took such ideas as causal necessity,
synthetic a priori knowledge, intentionality, ethical intuitionism, the problem of universals,
etc., etc., must have jarred his empiricist sensibilities. Even when I made it clear that my
aim was to map these structures into a naturalistic, even a materialistic, metaphysics, he felt,
as many have, that I was going around Robin Hoods barn. (Sellars 1975, p.282)
Obviously, the relation between Feigls and Sellarss views was a special one.
Astonishing enough, there is hardly any literature on this issue. But this does not
mean that the issue is not worth exploring. On the contrary, by examining the
relation between Feigls and Sellarss views significant light will be shed on a
M. Neuber (*)
Philosophisches Seminar, Universitt Tbingen, Bursagasse 1, 72070 Tbingen, Germany
e-mail: matthias.neuber@uni-tuebingen.de

126 M. Neuber
remarkable episode in mid-twentieth-century analytical philosophy and philosophy

of science.
What I will attempt in the following is to determine to what extent Feigl might
have been inspired by Sellarss idea of a pure pragmatics. It will be shown that
this idea played an essential role in Feigls defense of what he called semantic real-
ism, but that Feigl in the last analysis did not succeed in fully exploiting the poten-
tial of Sellarss ingenious conception. Nevertheless, it can be argued that Feigl, by
taking seriously the idea of a pure pragmatics, enriched the debate over realism in a
constructive and fruitful way.
Feigl onSemantic Realism
So let us first have a look at Feigls approach toward the realism issue. The first
contribution to be mentioned in this connection is his Sense and Nonsense in
Scientific Realism from 1936. In this short paper (based on a talk given at the 1935
International Congress for the Unity of Science in Paris), Feigl attempts to show
that a cautious empirical realism can be upheld against the various forms of
antirealism within the philosophy of science. In his 1943 programmatic essay
Logical Empiricism, Feigl argues more offensively in that direction, attacking the
reductive fallacies of a narrowminded positivism ([1943] 1949, p.4) as well as the
seductive fallacies of metaphysics (ibid.). In constructive terms, Feigl in that
essay conceived of the real as part of the spatio-temporal-causal system, thereby
implying that real is that which is located in space-time and is a link in the
chains of causal relations (ibid., p. 16). Consequently, atoms and forces are
ontologically on the same footing as rocks and trees. And Feigl specifies: As long
as we do not forget that existential assumptions must be in principle capable of test,
though most of these are indirect, we remain within the range of the factually-
meaningful. (ibid.)
It was in Existential Hypotheses that Feigl elaborated this point to a consider-
able extent. The essential clue of this paper was a principled distinction between
two meanings of meaning (see Feigl 1950a, pp.4849). Thus, according to radi-
cal empiricism, Feigl claimed, meaning is understood to consist in epistemic
reduction, that is, in the translatability of theoretical statements into statements
about observable events. Consequently, theoretical statements such as Electrons
have spin are supposed to be reducible to sentences concerning the respective
observational data, e.g. sentences describing tracks in a Wilson cloud chamber.
Feigl rejected this radical empiricist account of meaning and argued for another as
he thought: more commonsensical conception of meaning. According to the
latter, meaning had to be conceived of as factual reference. Consequently, theo-
retical statements were invested with surplus meaning (ibid., p.51), or, to put it
more precisely, the theoretical terms they contained were supposed to refer to
independently existing unobservable entities (like, for instance, electrons). Feigl
called the position associated with this theory of meaning Semantic Realism
(ibid., p.50) and explained: The factual reference of not directly verifiable state-
ments is to be construed in such a manner that it is semantically perfectly on a par
with the factual reference of directly verifiable statements. The difference between
the two may be dealt with in pure pragmatics []. (ibid., pp.4950) Feigl, in this
very passage, refers the reader to three writings by Sellars (namely Sellars 1947a, b
and [1948] 1949), thereby indicating that he does not intend to go into the details of
this construct of a pure pragmatics. However, he at least comments on the system-
atic background for introducing it. Feigl writes:
It should be noted that the apparatus of pure semantics, as it has been elaborated by Tarski
[see Tarski 1944] and Carnap [see Carnap 1942], would by itself in this issue [the language-
world relation] not yield any but trivial results. Whether a descriptive term of the object
language has a designatum, obviously depends upon the presence of a translation-equiv-
alent in the corresponding metalanguage. If our metalanguage is rich enough to contain
translations of such terms as the magnetic field of the earth then this term has a designa-
tum. Only when we impose the requirements of pure pragmatics do we attain the desired
scope of genuinely designating terms. (Feigl 1950a, p.50)
Thus the systematic weight of pure pragmatics can hardly be overestimated. It fur-
nishes semantic realism with the necessary link of theoretical terms to what Feigl
calls their evidential base (ibid.). To be sure, the referential relation as such could
be explicated within a purely semantic framework (Pegasus refers to Pegasus, if
our meta-language is rich enough). However, in order to make sure that theoreti-
cal terms really have factual reference, something more is needed, namely their
connection with the observational evidential base.
This at least is Feigls view, and his motivation is still the same as the one
expressed in Logical Empiricism: to establish a position that resists both the
reductive fallacies of radical positivism as well as the seductive fallacies of
speculative metaphysics. Or, in Feigls own words:
The semantic conception of reference does not justify (demonstrate) realism. It merely
explicates what a cautious empirical realism can legitimately mean by reference, inde-
pendent existence, etc. If we handle our concepts responsibly, we can avoid metaphysical
perplexities. No concrete existential hypothesis of ordinary life or of science is factually
meaningful unless it is confirmable. The essential requirement of empiricism is thus safe-
guarded. But the very adoption of the confirmability criterion (in preference to the narrower
verifiability criterion) allows as much realism as we are ever likely to warrant. (ibid., p.51)
Thus, by way of weakening the positivist criterion of verifiability in favor of con-

firmability, Feigl thinks to be able to reach a form of logical empiricism which is
strong enough to integrate the central features of a realist approach to science and
scientific theory construction.1 Pure pragmatics must be located in this program-
matic context.
However, given the alleged importance of the idea of a pure pragmatics, Feigl says
astonishingly little about its details. As Ernest Nagel correctly observed, Feigls
account of the nature of pure pragmatics is regrettable meager (Nagel 1950, p.178).
1
For an extended discussion of Feigls attempt at a reconciliation of realism and empiricism, see
Neuber 2011.
128 M. Neuber
So what else can be said about this issue? The best plan seems to be, in the first
instance, to take a closer look at Sellarss original articulation of the idea of a pure
pragmatics. Afterwards, it will be possible to readdress Feigls appropriation of this
Sellarsian conception in a more substantive manner.
Sellars ontheIdea ofaPure Pragmatics
So what exactly was Sellarss idea? First of all, it must be seen that philosophy, for
Sellars, was the formal theory of languages (Sellars 1947a, p.181). This is what
he states in his essay Pure Pragmatics and Epistemology which appeared in the
1947 volume of Philosophy of Science. As Sellars points out at the very beginning,
the formalist approach he takes is directed against psychologism (and all other
factualistic accounts). While the former is concerned with meta-linguistic rule
systems, the latter confines the perspective to empirical facts of language use
(or symbol-behavior). According to Sellars, this demarcation of formalism from
psychologism amounts to a distinction between deducibility as norm and infer-
ence as fact (ibid., p.182) Furthermore, Sellars distinguishes between three areas
of philosophical analysis: pure syntax, pure semantics, and pure pragmatics. These
three areas are pure insofar as they belong to the study of meta-linguistic rule
systems. Thus pure syntax deals with the formal structure of calculi (which,
according to Sellars, are opposed to empirical languages), while pure semantics
strives for a formal analysis of the concepts of meaning and truth. The task of pure
pragmatics, on the other hand, consists in the formal analysis of concepts such as
verifiable, confirmable, verified, confirmed, meaningful, etc. Astonishing
enough, Sellars sees here a close connection both to Kant and to Carnaps project in
the Der logische Aufbau der Welt (1928). Sellars writes:
[I]t is in pure pragmatics [] that the lingering ghost of nave realism (as a philosophical
perspective) is finally exorcized, and Kants Copernican revolution receives its non-
psychologistic fruition. [] The mention of Kant is intended to suggest that the linguistic
tools shaped in pure pragmatics will make possible, indeed necessitate, a return to the
Aufbau stage of Logical Empiricism, but with a conception of Aufbau which is as much
richer than that of the early thirties, as the psychologism of Kant is richer than that of
Hume. (ibid., p.185)
Given that pure pragmatics is concerned with purely formal aspects of meta-
linguistic rule systems, a thorough formalization of the entire logical empiricist
conception seems immediately to follow. And indeed, according to Sellars, the
thesis of empiricism is a formal rather than a factual truth (ibid.).2
How, then, is pure pragmatics built up? Its basic machinery rests on the assump-
tion that a pure pragmatics embraces a formal calculus consisting of symbol tokens,
2
There is little doubt that someone like Otto Neurath (himself a self-declared defender of the logi-
cal empiricist idea) would not have accepted this purely formalist point of view; but this would be
a discussion for another day.
rules, and the designation relation in a meta-language. The essential elements are
the following (see ibid., pp.186200):
(a) token rule: If (in a given meta-language) sentence p designates state of affair
p, and state of affair p is a token of sentence q, then all the meta-linguistic
predicates which apply to q apply also to p.3
(b) P-restrictions: conformation rules which specify how expressions are to be
combined to form larger units by setting down restrictions on which (relational
and non-relational) predicates can combine with the same individual constants
to participate in sentences.
(c) the predicate coex: a (irreflexive, symmetrical, and transitive) relation being
modeled on the common-sense expression is-present-to-consciousness-along-
with (or, in short, is co-experienced with), to the effect that p coex q has as
its factual correlate (is true of) aRb, so that (sentence) p is true of state of
affair a and (sentence) q is true of state of affair b.
(d) the meaning base of a language: a world story formulated in that language, to
the effect that with the help of coex the predicate verifiable sentence can
be put as follows: p is a verifiable sentence in world story W, if p (the desig-
natum of p in W) stands in the coex-relation to a state of affairs (sensory
event) which is a token of p, or, in more complex terms, if W includes a
sentence q and a sentence r such that q designates r coex p, and r is a token
of p.
Technical details aside, two things should be noted. First, in Sellarss view, the
coex-relation according to which, as he writes at another place, a verified sen-
tence is one a token of which is co-experienced with its designation (1947b,
p. 650) forms the essential element of the realism allegedly implied by pure
pragmatics. Second, for Sellars, it is the (purely formal!) conformation rules by
which the meaning of empirical languages is ultimately determined. It is for this
reason that he thinks semantics is dependent on or, more cautiously, must be supple-
mented by pragmatics (see ibid., p.184). At any rate, what he is obviously striving
for is some sort of coherence theory of meaning.4
Both points can be made clearer by examining Sellarss paper Realism and the
New Way of Words, which appeared in 1948in Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research. In that paper, Sellars stresses the normative aspect of pure pragmatics (or
formal epistemology) and, at the same time, completely exempts the concept of
experience from any empirical (especially psychological) connotation. Sellars
writes:
3
Or, as Sellars writes at another place: [T]oken is a meta-linguistic predicate, and is used prop-
erly when it is said that the state of affairs designated by one expression in a language is a token of
another (perhaps the same) expression in the language. (Sellars [1948] 1949, p.440).
4
At one place, he explicitly declares: Not that coherence is the definition of truth. The point is
rather that the Idealistic conception of coherence has its contribution to make to the theory of
meaning, confirmation, and truth. (Sellars [1948] 1949, p.443).
130 M. Neuber
The New Nominalism takes means or designates to be a purely formal term, that is to
say, a term which as little stands for a feature of the world as implies or and. It has noth-
ing to do with psychological acts, intuitions, or, indeed, with experience of any kind. It
refers to no psychological act, intuition or transaction of any sort. (Sellars [1948] 1949,
p.431)
By way of an important supplementary explicative remark, Sellars continues:

If this is the case, then the limitations of meaning can no more be settled by an appeal to
experience, than can the limitations of (mathematical) addition or logical deducibility. To
say this, however, is not to say that experience imposes no limitations on the meaning of
empirically meaningful language, so that we have magically been saved from a solipsistic
account of such language. It is merely to say that if epistemology has anything to say about
the relation of meaning to experience, then the term experience as used by the epistemolo-
gist must belong to the same frame as meaning and implication. Experience in this use
must be contrasted with experience as a term of empirical psychology, just as we have
already contrasted language as an epistemological term with language as an expression
in socio-psychological-historical linguistics. Our discussion will lead us to the conception
of a type of meta-language in which a family of expressions among which are experience
and meaningful supplement customary semantical and syntactical predicates in such a
way that the theory of such meta-languages is the pure, a priori, in short non-empirical,
theory of empirically meaningful languages. (ibid., pp.43132)
Thus Sellarss coherentism in the theory of meaning is the direct outcome of this
purely formalist (apriorist) approach toward the concept of experience. It might be
wondered how such a conception should lead to any form of realism.
This brings us to the second point, namely to Sellarss claim that realism and
pure pragmatics come, as it were, in a package. The key to an adequate understand-
ing of this claim is, I contend, the following principle of ontological indifference:
The pure theory of empirical languages as formally defined systems which are about worlds
in which they are used, has no place for THE world; but only for the world designated by
the story which is the meaning base of a language. A given set of conformation rules defines
a family of empirical languages, or, which is the same thing, a family of possible worlds
which have the same laws. An understanding of the completely non-factual character of
epistemological statements rests on the insight that not even the predicates verified and
confirmed have an intrinsic tie with any single world, with the REAL world. They are
purely formal predicates and no properly constructed world-story stands in a privileged
position with respect to them. This principle of indifference could be discarded only if
something akin to an ontological argument could be formulated in the pure theory of empir-
ical languages; if it could be shown, for example, that only one set of conformation rules is
possible which enables a story to be constructed in the language form of which they are the
rules; and if only one story could be constructed in that language form. (Sellars [1948]
1949, p. 443)
It is highly plausible to assume that Sellars saw no way of how his principle of indif-
ference be effectively discarded.5 And it is extremely interesting to observe that he,
5
Thus in Pure Pragmatics and Epistemology, Sellars writes: [W]hat can be clarified is the
notion of one item in a world being in a formal sense about another item in the same world, which
in turn has some direct or indirect relation to the same world. It is a matter of the same world as,
and not of the world tout court. (Sellars 1947a, p.201). Moreover, in Realism and the New Way
of Words, Sellars introduces the fictional character of an omniscient being (called Jones) that
at least to a certain extent, anticipated ideas later advanced by Hilary Putnam (1977)
and Nelson Goodman (1978). Especially Putnams internal realism (and the cor-
responding model-theoretic argument) is pretty close to Sellarss pluralist, story-
relative conception. However, to investigate this fully would require a detailed
study that is beyond the scope of this paper.6
So what exactly is entailed by the severely relativized, non-metaphysical, account
of realism that goes along with Sellarss idea of a pure pragmatics? The essential
point is that, according to Sellars, a distinction must be drawn between verification
and confirmation (not to be confused with conformation!).7 While verifiable sen-
tences are basic in the sense of being co-experienced with their designata (sensory
events), confirmable sentences are merely indirectly tied to the coex-basis, but nev-
ertheless are meaningful. That is, according to Sellars the coex-relation should be
interpreted as liberally as possible. Or, in his own words: The concept of an empiri-
cally meaningful language rests on that of a verification base, but by no means
presupposes that every sentence in the story which is its meaning base is to be found
in that verification base. (Sellars [1948] 1949, p.447). Since it is a theorem of
pure pragmatics (ibid.) that a meaningful language be defined in terms of confor-
mation rules, the borderline between realistic and non-realistic languages is rep-
resented by the respective arrangement of predicates. Predicates which appear in
the verification base of a story Sellars calls datum predicates, those that do not he
calls non-datum predicates. Accordingly, non-realistic languages are those in
which all sentences are verified sentences and all predicates are datum-predicates;
whereas realistic languages are those in which some sentences are merely confirmed
and some predicates are non-datum predicates. As Sellars points out at the very end
of Realism and the New Way of Words, his preference is with realistic
languages:
Formally, all languages and worlds are on an equal footing. This is indeed a principle of
indifference. On the other hand, a reconstruction of the pragmatics of common sense and
the scientific outlook points to conformation rules requiring a story to contain sentences
which are confirmed but not verified. In this sense the ideal of our language is a realistic
language; and this is the place of Realism in the New Way of Words. (Sellars [1948] 1949,
p.456)
So much for Sellarss idea of a pure pragmatics. Is it an attractive idea? As we saw

in the previous section, Feigl thought it was. However, there were other opinions.
has, by definition, knowledge of THE (one and only) world, but which according to Sellars serves
only as an illustrative contrast to the only relevant common empirical language user.
6
Let it be noted, though, that Sellarss conception of a world story bears strong similarities
with Kasimir Ajdukiewiczs notion of a world-perspective. Ajdukiewicz had introduced this
notion in an article for the journal Erkenntnis in 1939 and Sellars had translated that article for
the volume Readings in Philosophical Analysis, which he and Feigl published in 1949 (see
Ajdukiewicz 1949).
7
It is pretty clear that Sellars takes his bearings here from the logical empiricist agenda in its post-
verificationist (liberalized) stage. See, in this connection, Carnap (1936/37) and especially Hempel
(1950). See further the reconstruction in Uebel 2007, ch. 10.
132 M. Neuber
In the view of Ernest Nagel, for example, Sellarss entire formalist conception was
doomed to failure. In a devastating review of Sellarss papers, Nagel demurred:
The present reviewer is far from certain that he has grasped the general intent of these
papers []. It is [] puzzling how, if coex is specified only with respect to some of its
formal properties, either it or the definitions based on it are any more relevant for clarifying
the issues of epistemology than is any other arbitrarily constructed abstract calculus. On the
other hand, if a meaning is associated with coex which does make its use clearly relevant
for handling philosophic problems, it is by no means obvious that psychological and other
factual considerations can be swept aside. Moreover, in the absence of explicit reasons for
the assumption that the verified sentences must entail the remaining true statements of
language, both the assumption and the problem to which it gives rise in Dr. Sellarss hands
appear as entirely arbitrary and gratuitous (Nagel 1948, p.223)
It might have been objections like this that led Sellars to a change of view in the
course of the 1950s. Suffice it to note that Sellars began to take psychology more
seriously and that he explicitly criticized Carnap for being too formalist, that is, too
much devoted to the technical elaboration of lemmas and corrolaries (Sellars
1963, p. 468) in his approach to reconstructing languages (for the details of this
critique, see Carus 2004). After all, Sellars gave up the idea of a pure pragmatics
(and subsequently became the famous Sellars being the celebrated author of
highly influential writings in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of
mind).
Feigls Broadening ofPerspective (and anAlternative toIt)
Coming back to Feigl, the first thing to notice is that, for him, the idea of a pure
pragmatics remained mandatory (and fully valid) even after Sellarss abandonment
of it. Yet the problem is that Feigl, as already indicated, never became very explicit
about the detailed reasons for his adoption of that Sellarsian idea. To be sure, in
Existential Hypotheses he stressed the need of pure pragmatics for the establish-
ment of nomological relationships between theoretical concepts and their observa-
tional evidence base (see Feigl 1950a, p.50). But he never went as far as to examine
the respective technical details. In reaction to critiques by, among others, Nagel,
Carl G. Hempel, and Philipp Frank, Feigl merely repeated his indebtedness to
Sellars. I readily conclude, he admitted, that pure pragmatics has not been devel-
oped to the extent that its indispensability or fruitfulness is as obvious as is (to my
mind at any rate) the value of pure syntax and pure semantics. (Feigl 1950b, p.192)
And he immediately added: Fortunately, I can here again refer to the articles by
Wilfred Sellars (listed in the biography of my essay) in which the basic ideas of pure
pragmatics are set forth. (ibid.)
Moreover, Feigl reaffirmed the significance of pure pragmatics for the justifica-
tion of semantic realism. By installing pure pragmatics, Feigl maintained, a viable
alternative to Hans Reichenbachs attempt at a probabilistic justification of the real-
istic point of view (see Reichenbach 1938) was available. Feigl argued that
[t]he customary probabilistic realism in trying to justify transcendent hypotheses on the

basis of experimental findings has put the cart before the horse. Only after the introduction
of the realistic frame can we legitimately argue inductively either from the theory to the
outcome of as yet unperformed experiments; or vice versa from the results of experiments
to specific postulates of the theory. But the presupposed introduction of the realistic frame,
i.e., the semantic-realistic interpretation of the theory, is a step that can be justified only
instrumentally: It furnishes the very possibility of a theory that is inductively fruitful. (Feigl
1950b, p.195)
Accordingly, semantic realism is dependent on a foregoing decision concerning the

choice of a language form. It is, in other words, justifiable only in terms of pragmat-
ics, and it is for exactly this reason that Feigl, in his 1954 paper Scientific Method
without Metaphysical Presuppositions, makes recourse to the relative or prag-
matic a priori (Feigl [1954] 1981, p.97) thereby referring the reader to the works
of C.I. Lewis, Victor Lenzen, Arthur Pap, and not surprisingly Sellars.
Now what is striking is that by invoking Sellarsian pure pragmatics, Feigl com-
pletely ignores the formal dimension in Sellarss original conception. This in turn
involves a broadening of perspective insofar as the pragmatic level of formally
reconstructing languages turns into a pragmatist justification of the realistic lan-
guage form. What is thereby intended is a coherent pragmatization of the scientific
realist position, which in turn shall guarantee the compatibility of the logical empiri-
cist with the scientific realist agenda (see in this connection also Neuber 2014a).
Yet, Sellars himself was rather skeptical about the attempt of turning pragmatics
into pragmatism:
Are you saying that, after all, the pragmatist has the last word?, I shall be asked. In a sense
this is true. But the pragmatist must take the bitter along with the sweet; for the last word
is not a philosophical proposition. Philosophy is pure formalism; pure theory of language.
The recommendation of formalisms for their utility is not philosophy. (Sellars 1947a,
p.202)
Since Feigl thought that the realistic language form could be justified only instru-
mentally (and thus in terms of utility), he would, according to Sellarss standard, not
have counted as a philosopher.
Fortunately, a second, more charitable interpretation is available. As has been
pointed out in section Feigl on semantic realism, Feigls semantic realism is com-
mitted to the factual reference of theoretical concepts (like, for instance, electron).
Understood that way, they have the status of, to quote it again, genuinely designat-
ing terms (Feigl 1950a, p.50). Now in order to be empirically meaningful, theo-
retical concepts must in some way be connected to the observational evidence base.
And this is where for Feigl the idea of a pure pragmatics initially comes into
play. Its broadening application to the question of choosing the proper language
form is derivative from this primary understanding and thus, I dare say, less
important.
That being clarified, it still needs to be considered how the integration of pure
pragmatics into a realistic understanding of science can be accomplished. Note that
it is the context of verification, or better still, confirmation, where the machinery of
pure pragmatics is located to work. In the ideal case, the criterion of confirmability
134 M. Neuber
is met by measurement statements, which in turn are quantified, i.e., based on the
(non-arbitrary) assignment of numerals to objects or events. These objects or events
might be observable or unobservable, the crucial point is that measurement state-
ments always include indexicals such as here, now, that, etc.8 But how, it might
be asked, can indexicals and their use in scientific measurement by adequately
analyzed? A possible answer is: by pure pragmatics.
And indeed, there is a passage in the 1967 Postscript to Feigls seminal The
Mental and the Physical (published first in 1957) where Feigl argues in exactly
that direction. The passage begins as follows:
A rigorous explication of the role of indexical terms should be provided in the semiotic
(metalinguistic) discipline of pure pragmatics. But if this is going to be analogous to the
explications of pure syntax and pure semantics, it will have to be formulated in an intersub-
jectively intelligible metalanguage; and hence again the existential uniqueness will be
relegated to the limbo of emotive significance and supplanted by the neutral sober and
colorless objective characterization. (Feigl 1967, p.147)
The mentioned existential uniqueness has to do with the fact that indexicals are
always speaker-relative. At the meta-level of pure pragmatics their use will be
described in an objective way. Nevertheless, in actual practice, their egocentric
character cannot be circumvented. Feigl explicates:
Now, while I think that a world description ( la Minkowski) can be given that is
necessarily devoid of indexical terms, such a world description can neither be fully
understood nor practically used without being linked with the help of indexical
terms to the experience of a sentient and sapient (i.e., human) being. This becomes
evident if the Minkowski representation is viewed as a map of all there is in space-
time. If I am to find the picture of myself-at-a-given-time on this map, I would have
to scrutinize it in its (possibly) infinite extent in order to find just that particular skein
(or segment of the set) of world lines which uniquely characterizes me-at-that-time.
[] In actual practice I would, of course, point to that small region of the map. This
is one way of illustrating the use of indexical terms []. (ibid.)
Interestingly enough, this explication comes very close to what Feigls academic
teacher Moritz Schlick, in his General Theory of Knowledge, called the method of
coincidences (see Schlick [1918] 1974, 31).9 This method served for Schlick
8
It might be objected that there are many cases in which indexicals do not occur. Take, for exam-
ple, the measurement statement The temperature rises from 24, 37 C to 29, 53 C in the bomb
calorimeter. Here, we find no explicit use of indexicals. However, implicitly it is this specific
bomb calorimeter in which at a specific point of time now at a specific place here the temperature
rises from 25, 37 C to 29, 53 C.
9
In his seminal Space and Time in Contemporary Physics, Schlick characterized this method as
follows: In order to fix a point in space, one must somehow, directly or indirectly, point to it [],
that is, one establishes a spatio-temporal coincidence of two otherwise separate elements. And it
now turns out that these coincidences always occur in agreement for all intuitive spaces of different
senses and all individuals; precisely so is an objective point, independent of individual experi-
ences and valid for all, thereby defined. (Schlick [1917] 1979, pp.26263) For an excellent dis-
cussion of Schlicks method of coincidences (and its Einsteinian scientific context), see Howard
1999.
as the basis of all theory of measurement.10 In Feigls hands, it turned into an

essentially linguistic theory of getting linked to reality. Thus in The Mental and
the Physical, he paralleled measurability and indexicality as follows:
It seems to me that what holds of indexical (or egocentric) particulars holds mutatis
mutandis analogously of indexical (egocentric) universals. I cannot even begin to get a
public language going unless I understand the private (egocentric) language whose predi-
cates (monadic, dyadic, etc.) designate experiential qualities or relations. I must be able to
know (by acquaintance) some phenomenal qualities and relations (redness, between-
ness, etc.) in order to hook (i.e.) connect my private language to the intersubjective lan-
guage of science. To the extent that, for example, pointer readings belong to the confirming
or disconfirming evidential data of physics, I must be able to recognize the position of a
pointer on a scale when I see it. In my proposed reconstruction it is my private impres-
sion, e.g., the shapes and colors in my visual field, which constitute ultimate data of
observation. (ibid., pp.14748)
All of this presupposes a peculiar (both Russellian- and Schlickian-inspired)

facet of Feigls famous double-language theory (for the details of this theory, see
Stubenberg 1997, Heidelberger 2003, Neuber 2014b). Accordingly, it must be seen
that it is qualia or raw feels (Feigl 1967, p.80) that are, for Feigl, the epistemo-
logically basic reality. On this conception, we have privileged access to this basic
reality, so that (as Feigl points out in the Postscript to The Mental and the
Physical) the egocentric account (ibid., p.155) must be regarded as the most
immediate mode of getting into contact with reality, whereas all scientific accounts
[] deal with Being only indirectly and structurally (ibid.; see also Feigl [1971]
1981, p.351). At the same time, though, Feigl sees no problem in describing mental
states by intersubjective scientific (neurophysiological) terms. Privacy, Feigl
writes, is capable of public (intersubjective) description, and the objects of inter-
subjective science can be evidenced by data of private experience (Feigl 1967,
p.81). After all, Feigl is convinced of the indispensability of a subjectivistically
understood conception of immediate (first person) experience (Feigl [1971] 1981,
p.353), which, on the one hand, entails a clear rejection of Ludwig Wittgensteins
arguments against the possibility of a private language (see ibid., p.355), and, on
the other hand, marks a significant contrast to the strategy of explaining away the
phenomenal properties of mental states (see, in this connection, Stubenberg 1997,
pp.13536). The possible objection that Feigl, by epistemologically privileging
qualia, runs into the trap of panpsychism can be countered by the argument that all
reality is, in fact, at bottom qualitative (Stubenberg 1997, p.143). Thus, not only
mental states, but also the diverse physical magnitudes (like mass, pressure, gravi-
tational field intensity, etc.) are distinguishable only by their qualitative peculiarities
(see Feigl 1967, pp.4344: see also Schlick [1918] 1974, pp.283285). But this
does not imply that all reality is, like panpsychism would have it, intrinsically psy-
chic. The point is that qualia (raw feels) are, for Feigl, epistemologically privileged
as compared to ordinary objects and the entities posited by science. Reference to
ones own immediate experience Feigl (in an overtly Schlickian manner) writes,
See Schlick [1918] 1974, p. 275: [A]ll measurement, from the most primitive to the most
10
sophisticated, rests on the observation of spatio-temporal coincidences.

136 M. Neuber
is the (epistemological) prototype of all designation to objects, properties or rela-

tions by the words of our language ([1971] 1981, p.355).
One might wonder if this both indexicality- and first person-focused perspective
is the adequate medium to account for the factual reference of theoretical terms. If
it all, a constructivist conception seems to recommend itself as a fitting frame. But
then we would end up with a consistent empiricist rather than a hybrid realist-
empiricist approach to science and scientific theory construction. Bas van Fraassens
constructive empiricism (see van Fraassen 1980) seems to be the closest and most
natural ally, all the more so as, in more recent writings, van Fraassen has repeatedly
stressed the significance of indexicals in their function as our primary link to
reality (van Fraassen 2008, p.257). However, as is well known, van Fraassen, in
his view of science, is not committed to the factual reference of theoretical terms
(although, to be sure, he does not deny it). A merely instrumental interpretation of
their use would suffice, in order to save the phenomena, i.e., to make sure that the
theories in which they are embedded are empirically adequate (van Fraassen
1980, p.12). Consequently, the assumption of the factual reference of theoretical
terms is rather endangered than secured by putting indexicality in the focus.
I do not intend to go into the details of this discussion. At any rate, a comprehen-
sive analysis of indexical terms and their significance for science (and scientific
measurement) still remains a desideratum. Important groundbreaking work con-
cerning their formal analysis can be found in the writings of David Kaplan (see esp.
Kaplan 1989). A reconstruction within the philosophy of science was prepared by
Sellars and intended by Feigl. On the whole, the idea of a pure pragmatics waits to
be reconsidered.11
References
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Analysis, ed. H.Feigl and W.Sellars, 182188. NewYork: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Carnap, Rudolf. 1928. Der Logische aufbau der Welt. Berlin: Bernary.
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H.Feigl and W.Sellars, 326. NewYork: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
. 1950a. Existential Hypotheses. Philosophy of Science 17: 3562.
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. 1967. The Mental and the Physical: The Essay and a Postscript. Minneapolis:
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11
Thanks to Thomas Uebel for a very helpful comment concerning the main idea of this paper.
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Selected Writings, 19291974, ed. R.S.Cohen, 351365. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Goodman, Nelson. 1978. Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett.
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. 2014b. Herbert Feigl. In ed. E.Zalta, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.
stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/feigl.
Putnam, Hilary. 1977. Realism and Reason. Proceedings and Addresses of the American
Philosophical Association 50: 483498.
Reichenbach, Hans. 1938. Experience and Prediction: An Analysis of the Foundations and the
Structure of Knowledge. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
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Press.
On theViennese Background ofHarvard
Neopragmatism
SamiPihlstrm
Abstract The Americanization of originally European analytic philosophy, begin-

ning with the rise of Nazism in Europe before WWII, has aptly been described as a
move from the Vienna Circle to Harvard Square (Holton 1993). Not only logical
empiricism but also later developments of analytic philosophy have had interesting
links with the American tradition of pragmatism. This paper examines the
Viennese logicalempiricist background of neopragmatism, drawing attention to
the ways in which, for instance, some of Hilary Putnams ideas can be traced back
to Rudolf Carnaps logical empiricism. It will be suggested that Morton Whites
holistic pragmatism ought to be taken more seriously in the contemporary develop-
ments of pragmatism in (post-)analytic philosophy.
I ntroduction: The Encounter BetweenPragmatism

andLogical Empiricism
The Americanization of originally European analytic philosophy, beginning with

the rise of Nazism in Europe before WWII, has aptly been described as a move
from the Vienna Circle to Harvard Square (Holton 1993). There are, indeed, sig-
nificant links between the Viennese-based (and more generally European) logical
empiricism1 and the American tradition of pragmatism; these links, furthermore,
can also be argued to have been influential, albeit often implicitly, in the emergence
of what is today known as neopragmatism.2 In the United States, C.I. Lewis,
1
I will speak of logical empiricism instead of logical positivism, unless there is some philo-
sophical or historical reason to be more specific about the terminology. By logical empiricism I
understand the somewhat broader set of ideas and the slightly more inclusive philosophical
approach that survived the collapse of the Vienna Circle (and thus the collapse of logical positivism
in a strict sense). The Finnish philosopher Eino Kaila may in fact have been the first to coin the
term, logical empiricism (der logische Empirismus). Unlike some others associated with the
Vienna Circle, he was careful to call his view logical empiricism, never logical positivism.
2
For the distinction between neopragmatism and new pragmatism (which need not have any
explicit relation to the historical tradition of pragmatism), see Misak (2007).
S. Pihlstrm (*)
Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
e-mail: sami.pihlstrom@helsinki.fi

140 S. Pihlstrm
Ernest Nagel, and W.V.Quine, among others, were important mediators between
these philosophical schools; accordingly, the Columbia and Harvard philosophy
departments were instrumental in the development of this very special dialogue
between two key orientations of twentieth century philosophy.3 Another mediating
figure some decades earlier between pragmatism and early analytic philosophy
was Frank Ramsey, who could have changed the history of twentieth century phi-
losophy by developing a synthesis of these philosophies, had he lived longer.4
Charles Morriss pragmatic empiricism was yet another milestone between
Vienna and America; Morris argued for the complementarity and even convergence
of pragmatism and logical empiricism throughout the 1930s, and he returned to the
topic in his contribution to the Library of Living Philosophers volume on Rudolf
Carnap in the 1960s (see Morris 1937, 1938, 1963; cf. Carnap 1963). But the dia-
logue between pragmatism and logical empiricism was not restricted to the work of
such bridge-builders as Morris and Nagel who have later become somewhat margin-
alized. Even the giants of the two movements themselves entered into a fruitful
dialogue in the early 1930s. The mutual visits across the Atlantic in the beginning
of the 1930s and the preparations for the 1934 International Congress for Philosophy
in Prague (see Limbeck-Lilienau 2012), as well as Carnaps and John Deweys
exchange of views on meaning and the nature of philosophical problems in
Philosophy of Science in 1934 are examples of this (cf. Shook 1998, 462), as is
Hans Reichenbachs (1939) criticism of Deweys instrumentalist philosophy of sci-
ence from the point of view of what he regarded as a more realistic understanding
of science. In the late 1930s, Dewey also contributed to the International
Encyclopedia of Unified Science, a project launched by the Vienna Circle
philosophers.5
Leading scholars of the history of logical empiricism, such as Thomas Uebel
(1992, 1996, 2007) and Alan Richardson (1998), have investigated the relations
3
For a recent study on Lewis and the pragmatic a priori, see Jrvilehto (2011); for detailed
examinations of the concept of the a priori in logical empiricism, see Friedman (2007) and
Mormann (2012). For discussions of Quines problematic place in the pragmatist tradition, see
Koskinen and Pihlstrm (2006) and Sinclair (2013). In this paper, because of my focus on neoprag-
matism, I will have to mostly ignore both Lewis and Quine. By no means can I hope to aim at any
kind of exhaustiveness in my treatment of pragmatism and logical empiricism; I will merely be
able to offer some perspectives on the matter, informed by the development of neopragmatism.
4
For instance, Ramseys 1927 essay, Facts and Propositions, articulates a pragmatic understand-
ing of the meaning of a proposition in terms of the conduct that would result from asserting the
proposition. This is, clearly, a position reminiscent of Charles Peirces and William Jamess views.
5
For more details and exact references (including archival documentation based on Carnaps,
Schlicks, Neuraths and others papers and correspondence), see Limbeck-Lilienau (2012). For
Deweys Encyclopedia contributions, see his (1938) and (1939). Already some years later Dewey
was, however, critical of the project and his own involvement in it. For an examination of Deweys
criticism, see da Cunha (2012).
between logical empiricism and twentieth century naturalism and pragmatism in

great detail, drawing attention, for instance, to how Quinean that is, naturalistic
and anti-foundationalist some of Otto Neuraths views were already decades
before the emergence of Quines philosophy (see also Richardson and Uebel 2007).
As Richard Creath (2007, 335) points out, Quines caricature of Carnaps conven-
tionalism as something allegedly entirely different from the more pragmatic natu-
ralism Quine himself advanced has unfortunately been endlessly repeated by
others. Gradually this picture has become more nuanced, to the extent that it is
almost a commonplace today to appreciate the many common ideas shared not only
by Quine and Carnap but generally by pragmatism and logical empiricism.
Therefore, as Cheryl Misak (2013, chap. 9) also argues, the thesis that pragmatism,
which had flourished in the United States from William Jamess popular philosophy
in the early 1900s until Deweys late work between the world wars, was eclipsed
by logical empiricism (and later by analytic philosophy) is problematic, if not out-
right mistaken. Not only does the pragmatic maxim, which urges us to examine the
meaning of our concepts in terms of the potential practical consequences of their
objects,6 resemble the logical empiricists verificationist theory of meaning, accord-
ing to which the meaning of a sentence is reducible to its method of verification (and
only empirically verifiable sentences are meaningful); also the resolute rejection of
unempirical metaphysical speculation, as well as the link between scientific prog-
ress and social progress, can be regarded as points of contact between the two tradi-
tions. Clearly both the pragmatists and the logical empiricists, at least after the
Vienna Circle philosophers arrival in the United States, understood this. As Misak
concludes: The similarities between pragmatism and logical empiricism were
there (and where recognized) from the beginning. (Ibid., 175.)
Furthermore, there seems to be a growing consensus about the fact that it was the
internal self-critical development rather than any external pressure of logical
empiricism, especially following key Vienna Circle members emigration from
Europe in the 1930s, that led to positions relatively close to the naturalistic, fallibil-
istic pragmatism that had been developed by Dewey, Nagel, Lewis, and Morris.
Hence, the explicit contacts between the two traditions that were established in the
1930s may not have played any crucial role in this rapprochement.7 The Vienna
Circle thinkers might have arrived at their somewhat more relaxed stance in com-
parison to the strict verificationism many of them had advocated in the 1920s and
early 1930s even if they had never directly encountered Dewey and the other
pragmatists.
6
On the pragmatic maxim and its different versions and applications, see, e.g., Pihlstrm (ed.)
(2011b), and Burke (2013).
7
See especially Limbeck-Lilienau (2012). The international philosophy congress in Prague in
1934 was a crucial step in the emergence of the mutual recognition of pragmatism and logical
empiricism, but as Limbeck-Lilineau concludes, neither the [logical empiricists] liberalization of
the meaning criterion, nor the introduction of dispositional concepts was initiated through the
contact with pragmatism (107).
142 S. Pihlstrm
Given this state-of-the-art in the scholarship on the history of pragmatism and

logical empiricism, there is little I can add to the historical picture of this dialogue;
I hope, however, to provide a distinctive perspective on the topic by taking seriously
not just the relations between logical empiricism and pragmatism but especially
between these two and neopragmatism,8 as well as Ludwig Wittgensteins relevance
to both pragmatism and neopragmatism. My focus will, then, be on the philosophi-
cal background of neopragmatism rather than on the pragmatist tradition as a whole
(or logical empiricism as such, for that matter). My investigation is not intended to
throw much new historical light on logical empiricism and its relations to
pragmatism, but I do hope that it will philosophically illuminate the ways in which
neopragmatism grows out of the pragmatism logical empiricism dialogue. I will
not consider the above-mentioned mediators (e.g., Nagel, Lewis, or Morris) in any
detail; my main focus in the early sections of the paper will be on the leading neo-
pragmatist Hilary Putnams residual Carnapianism (as I will call it) as well as on
some related themes in Wittgenstein scholarship that may be open to pragmatist
reconsideration.
I will, in particular, critically discuss the status of metaphysics in pragmatism
and neopragmatism. This is an important theme in contemporary pragmatism schol-
arship not only because of its intrinsic interest but also because metaphysics has
forcefully returned to the center of mainstream analytic philosophy, and pragmatists
need to reflect on their ways of reacting to such developments. While metaphysics
may not seem to survive Putnams broadly Carnapian criticisms of metaphysical
realism, Putnams own account of objectivity without objects (to be revisited
below) can be applied to, for instance, metaphysical topics that no lesser a figure
than Immanuel Kant found absolutely central to the very pursuit of metaphysics
(viz., the soul, freedom, and God) instead of being applicable only to the issues in,
say, the philosophy of mathematics and ethics to which Putnam himself applies the
idea. Indeed, it can be shown that while neopragmatism has successfully moved
beyond several logical-empiricist doctrines, such as the dichotomies between the
analytic and synthetic as well as between fact and value (not to forget neopragma-
tists general rejection of the scientism we often associate with logical empiricism),
neopragmatism still remains committed to other important logical-empiricist ideas,
especially the critique of metaphysics. This is still rather clearly manifested, e.g., in
Putnams Carnapian-like rejection of metaphysical realism as well as his reluctance
to formulate his views on the fact-value entanglement in metaphysical terms (cf.,
e.g., Pihlstrm 2010).9
8
In fact Charles Morris used the term neopragmatism already in 1928. (I owe this piece of infor-
mation to Christoph Limbeck-Lilienau.) According to him, pragmatism was already then, before
its explicit encounters with logical empiricism, living a second phase, after the early phase of
Peirces and Jamess works.
9
Richard Rortys another key neopragmatists more postmodern critique of metaphysics is,
of course, very different from the logical empiricists (and from Putnams), but he shares with
Carnap et al. the conviction that in some sense metaphysics fails to make sense.
After the sections on Putnam and Carnap, I will show how Morton Whites
another somewhat neglected philosopher integrating logical empiricism with prag-
matism holistic pragmatism can help us in adopting a truly pragmatist approach to
metaphysics (though it also has its residual elements of logical empiricism). In par-
ticular, Whites holistic pragmatism crucially contributes to developing an overall
view capable of integrating metaphysical and anti-metaphysical ideas and beliefs,
just like it enables us to regard factual and normative beliefs as empirically testable
within the same holistic totality. In a sense, then, holistic pragmatism points to a
way to move on from the dialogue between logical empiricism and (neo)pragma-
tism or so I will argue.
inguistic Frameworks andConceptual Relativity: Carnap

L
andPutnam
Let us turn more closely to the encounter pragmatism had with logical empiricism
by recapitulating some familiar points about Carnaps doctrine of linguistic frame-
works. This discussion will illuminate the role of logical empiricism as a source of
insights for neopragmatism especially because of the inspiration Putnam drew from
logical empiricism, most notably his greatest teachers Carnap and Reichenbach.
Even though Putnam mostly worked with Carnap on inductive logic instead of, say,
the realism issue, this background is rather obvious when we consider the striking
similarity between Putnams (1981, 1990) internal realism (his basic position in
the 1980s) and Carnaps (1950) theory of linguistic frameworks and internal vs.
external questions of existence.10
Putnams late collection of essays, Philosophy in an Age of Science (2012), con-
tains his most recent substantial attempts to deal with his relation to his logical
empiricist teachers, especially in relation to the realism issue. That book in fact
makes it clear that he has continued to struggle with his logical empiricist heritage
until this day; therefore, it is worth examining here. In particular, Putnams desire to
avoid metaphysics when developing pragmatism, when developing his theory of
10
Among Putnams many critics, Kenneth Westphal (2003) is particularly explicit in his criticism
of this residual Carnapian element in Putnams internal realist position. Putnam, of course, is not
the only neopragmatist whose Carnapian or quasi-Carnapian ideas would be worth examining. For
example, if we broaden our concept of neopragmatism to include Thomas Kuhns (1970) and other
post-positivist thinkers new philosophy of science just think of Kuhns account of the prac-
tice-embeddedness of normal-scientific research within a paradigm we may certainly appreciate
the analogy between the Kuhnian paradigm and the Carnapian linguistic framework. Such analo-
gies have been suggested by Friedman (e.g., 2001, 2003). Richardson (2007, 356) also notes that
paradigms and linguistic frameworks play analogous roles as conditions of scientific knowledge.
See further Pihlstrm and Siitonen (2005) and Pihlstrm (2008) and (2012b). In this essay, I will
largely have to set aside the Kantian dimensions of pragmatism, even though that topic is also
clearly relevant to the reappraisal of neopragmatism in relation to logical empiricism (cf. also
Pihlstrm 2003 and (ed.) 2011b).
144 S. Pihlstrm
the fact-value entanglement, in the philosophy of religion, and in other contexts

can still be seen as a remnant of logical empiricism. The new book demonstrates
that Putnam, although he has now turned (back) to a form of metaphysical realism
and abandoned his former internal realism, continues to defend what he already in
the 1980s called conceptual relativity. This idea was the core of his internal or prag-
matic realism: there is no single privileged way the world is, no definite set of
objects the world consists of, no fundamental Gods-Eye View on reality, but a
plurality of possible conceptualizations of the world that is, a plurality of linguis-
tic frameworks we can use to categorize reality and to identify objects whose exis-
tence we are committed to. Hence, arguably, Putnam still joins Carnap at a very
basic level, though rejecting many of Carnaps more detailed views, such as the
methodological solipsism of the 1928 Aufbau (Carnap 1967). Let us therefore
explore some continuities and discontinuities between Putnams views in the early
1980s (that is, the peak of his internal realism) and today (that is, in his 2012 volume
collecting his recent work on realism and other topics).11
While Putnams internal realism was often regarded as a form of realism just by
name and was in fact seen as involving a strong commitment to anti-realism, espe-
cially due to Putnams flirtation with the kind of semantic anti-realism and verifica-
tionism defended by Michael Dummett (and, of course, already by the logical
empiricists), Putnam himself insisted early on and continues to insist that what
he called, and still calls, conceptual relativity is fully compatible with realism in
metaphysics (Putnam 2012, 56; see also 101102). Hence, it is possible to be a
realist even if one follows Putnam in maintaining that there is no fundamental meta-
physical fact of the matter as to whether, say, mereological sums ought to be
included in our ontology of the small Carnapian world of three individuals (x1,
x2, x3).12 A version of this kind of conceptual relativity can be found already in clas-
sical pragmatism, especially in Jamess pragmatic pluralism (e.g., James 1907,
chap. 6; see also Pihlstrm 2008, 2013).13 While James does not operate with lin-
guistic frameworks he was, after all, a pre-linguistic-turn philosopher his views
11
I cannot here even summarize Putnams opposition between metaphysical and internal realism in
the way it was elaborated in his famous writings in the 1980s and early 1990s; I hope this material
is relatively familiar to my readers, as this complex philosophical debate largely shaped the discus-
sion of realism for decades. For more details, see, e.g., Pihlstrm (1996) and (with later reflections)
(2009). My focusing on Putnams 2012 book here is also motivated by the fact that he there says
various new things about his relation to metaphysics that seem to play an important role in the
development of his views on realism.
12
Putnam discusses this example in many places, including Putnam (1987), (1990), and (2004).
See also Pihlstrm (1996). It would require a long story to explain how this conceptual relativity
differs from Quines (1969) ontological relativity, according to which ontology is relative to
theory or translation. No interpretation of Quine can be offered in this essay, so I must skip that
exercise here. On Putnams criticism of Quine, see, e.g., Putnam (1994) and Koskinen and
Pihlstrm (2006).
13
Putnam, however, distinguishes between conceptual relativity, which involves equivalent or
mutually intertranslatable conceptual schemes, and the more general phenomenon of conceptual
pluralism, which has no such involvement but recognizes that the world has many levels of form
irreducible to each other or to any single privileged form. See, e.g., Putnam (2012), 6465. Another
on the relativity of objects to humanly constructed perspectives guided by human

needs and interests is clearly a precursor of both the Carnapian linguistification of
ontology and the Putnamian doctrine of conceptual relativity.
Paying due attention to Putnams Carnapian ideas, we may ask when neoprag-
matism emerged. (I am not concerned with the term neopragmatism but with the
emergence of some of the distinctive ideas we associate with it.) There is no trivial
answer. Presumably it emerged only in the 1980s when Putnam was busily defend-
ing internal realism and noted its connection with pragmatism (and even pointed
out, in his 1987 volume The Many Faces of Realism and elsewhere, that he should
have called internal realism pragmatic realism)? Or perhaps, rather, it emerged in
1979 when Richard Rorty published Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and
shocked his analytic readers by regarding Dewey as one of the most important
thinkers of the twentieth century?14 Or already in 1951 when Quine in Two Dogmas
of Empiricism exclaimed that our ontological postulations are, where rational,
pragmatic, and claimed to represent a more thorough pragmatism than Carnap?15
There is hardly any philosophical or historical need to agree about the exact tim-
ing of the birth of neopragmatism. One possible answer, however, is that neoprag-
matism emerged already in 1934 (avant la lettre) when Carnap formulated his
famous Toleranzprinzip in Logische Syntax der Sprache.16 According to this prin-
ciple of tolerance, there is no morality in logic: In der Logik gibt es keine Moral.
Jeder mag seine Logik, d.h. seine Sprachform, aufbauen wie er will. Nur muss er,
wenn er mit uns diskutieren will, deutlich angeben, wie er es machen will, synktak-
tische Bestimmungen geben anstatt philosophischer Errterungen. (Carnap 1934,
45.) We can, then, freely choose our language, provided that we offer syntactic rules
and definitions for its expressions. Later Carnap turned more to semantics, modify-
ing his earlier very restrictive conception of philosophy as the logical syntax of
science, but the fundamental idea of tolerating different linguistic frameworks serv-
ing different purposes survived the changes in the details of his position. This basic
view was, as is well known, elaborated by Carnap in his 1950 essay, Semantics,
Empiricism, and Ontology famously criticized by Quine in Two Dogmas but
the idea of a plurality of languages through which we categorize reality was there
already in 1934. In a sense it was at work already in 1928in Der logische Aufbau
der Welt, in which Carnap had suggested that both phenomenalist and physicalist
point of comparison here would be Goodmans (1978) controversial theory of worldmaking,

which postulates a plurality of world versions.
14
In addition to Quine, Rorty is another major philosopher that must be more or less neglected in
this essay. See Pihlstrm (1996) for my (already somewhat dated) critical exploration of Rortys
neopragmatism. For critical comparisons of Putnams and Rortys views on realism, truth, and
religion, see Pihlstrm (2004) and (2013), chap. 3.
15
Two Dogmas is available in Quine (1953a); for the famous more thorough pragmatism
quote, see 46. An examination of Quines and Carnaps complex relation would obviously be
beyond the scope of this article. For their correspondence, see Creath (1990). See also, for useful
examinations of Quines relation to Carnap, Neurath, and other leading logical empiricists,
Isaacson (2004, especially 229249), as well as Creath (2007).
16
Or perhaps we could say that it emerged already in 1928 when Morris used the term (cf. above).
146 S. Pihlstrm
that is, autopsychological and heteropsychological (or eigenpsychische and fremd-

psychische) starting points for the construction of scientific language (and, hence,
for the logical construction of the world) are possible, though the phenomenalist
one should be preferred (see Carnap 1967; cf. Richardson 1998).
It is in fact easy to characterize Carnaps position as a form of neopragmatism
by using the terminology he adopts in the 1950 paper. There Carnap distinguishes
between internal existence questions that are posed within a linguistic framework,
concerning the existence of certain entities within that framework, and external
ones, which concern the adoption of the framework itself. (See Carnap 1950, 209
210.) The external questions lack theoretical significance; only internal questions
can be answered by means of empirical, scientific research. External questions are
resolved only practically; choosing one linguistic framework instead of another is a
matter of effectiveness, fruitfulness, and simplicity, among other things not an
empirical or theoretical matter (ibid., 210212, 219). In particular, the problem of
the reality of the world of things is, metaphysically understood, a mere pseudo-
problem (just like Carnap had already argued in the Aufbau and other early works):
To be real in the scientific sense means to be an element of the framework; hence this con-
cept cannot be meaningfully applied to the framework itself. Those who raise the question
of the reality of the thing world itself have perhaps in mind not a theoretical question as
their formulation seems to suggest, but rather a practical question, a matter of a practical
decision concerning the structure of our language. We have to make the choice whether or
not to accept and use the forms of expression for the framework in question. (Ibid.,
210211.)
As in 1934, Carnap in 1950 maintains a tolerant view on the plurality of linguis-

tic frameworks. We should, he tells us, grant to those who work in any special field
of investigation the freedom to use any form of expression which seems useful to
them, as the work in that field will sooner or later lead to the elimination of those
forms which have no useful function (ibid., 228). The paper concludes with a
famous rule: Let us be cautious in making assertions and critical in examining
them, but tolerant in permitting linguistic forms. (Ibid.)
This is essentially the view that Putnam rediscovered and defended in the 1980s
when arguing that the world possesses no ready-made ontological structure of its
own but can be sliced up differently by using different conceptual schemes or
frameworks and to which he still, after having returned to metaphysical realism,
at least to some extent adheres. It does not seem to me that Putnams criticisms of,
for instance, Carnaps methodological solipsism (as expressed in the Aufbau) have
in any essential way departed from the basic idea of there being a plurality of lin-
guistic frameworks or conceptual schemes, perspectives, traditions, paradigms
(you name it) through which we language-users categorize reality, frameworks
whose critical comparison is a pragmatic matter undecidable by empirical and/or
theoretical grounds. Moreover, the attempt to arrive at an empirical or theoretical
answer to an external question of existence in an absolute sense, say, to the question
whether there really are such things as numbers or tables, verges on

meaninglessness.17
In this sense Putnam, even today, to some extent still remains a Carnapian even
after his realism has become considerably stronger as a result of his rejection of
internal realism and its epistemic theory of truth that, arguably, was practically
indistinguishable from the logical empiricists verificationism.18 It is undeniable
that Quines (1969) later ontological relativity, which gave up the Carnapian distinc-
tion between internal and external existence questions, also crucially shaped
Putnams approach to the realism issue. According to Quine and (perhaps) also
Putnam, all existence questions have a pragmatic dimension; thus, the division
between internal and external questions collapses together with the analytic/syn-
thetic distinction. Yet, Putnams many criticisms of Quine make it clear that he
never followed Quines attack on Carnap to the very end, that is, to the final repudia-
tion of the key Carnapian distinction even though he does seem to agree with
Quine (and Wittgenstein) rather than Carnap when saying that [w]hat Carnap is
trying to do in Semantics, Empiricism and Ontology, it would seem to both Quine
and Wittgenstein, is to find an external standpoint from which to condemn external
questions as meaningless (Putnam 2012, 345). Thus, while Quine (who has often
been described as the killer of logical positivism) remained, according to Putnam,
the greatest logical positivist (see Putnam 1990), we may say that Putnam himself
remains faithful to some of the fundamental principles of logical empiricism until
this day.
Even though Putnam does not strictly speaking subscribe to Carnapian criteria of
meaning or to the view that external questions of existence are literally meaningless,
it is, I believe, legitimate to conclude that whenever Putnam defends a position close
to, say, Jamess or Deweys pragmatism (or pragmatic pluralism), he does this, as
we may say, in (and not despite) his Carnapian mode. His relatively few remarks on
Jamess and Deweys views on science also presuppose the more recent discussions
of scientific realism and its empiricist alternatives that were not available to the
pragmatist classics themselves; hence, even those remarks presuppose the context
of logical empiricism.19 Neopragmatism more generally at least Putnams and
Rortys is primarily a language-oriented form of pragmatism in contrast to the
more experience-based classical pragmatism (cf. Hildebrand 2003). All of this also
17
Putnam (1995, 6973) does contrast Carnaps methodologically solipsist and verificationist
empiricism to the classical pragmatists cooperative and interactionist view of inquiry; this kind of
criticism of Carnaps spectator conception of observation is continued, e.g., by Burke (2013,
6872). This does not remove Putnams and Carnaps fundamental agreement regarding realism,
conceptual relativity, and metaphysics, however.
18
One might perhaps apply the pragmatic maxim to find out what, if any, the key difference
between Vienna Circle verificationism and Putnams 1980s Harvard verificationism was. These
might come up as practically identical positions.
19
For instance, I am not quite sure if it is appropriate to call James and Dewey fictionalists about
theoretical entities (Putnam 2012, 93). For a discussion of the pragmatist tradition from the point
of view of the question of scientific realism, see Pihlstrm (2008).
148 S. Pihlstrm
indicates how strongly Carnapian (rather than, say, Deweyan) Putnams neo-
pragmatist position on realism vs. antirealism is.20
However, we can, and should, also take seriously the Kantian elements of
Putnamian (neo-)pragmatism, and derivatively of logical empiricism, even though
this cannot be done in the present paper in any detail. It would as I have suggested
elsewhere (e.g., Pihlstrm 2009) be perfectly possible for Putnam to admit that
our ontologies are humanly constructed in a transcendental sense while the objects
and processes of the world we postulate within such ontological theorizing remain
empirically (and, hence, factually, causally, and otherwise) independent of us and
our theories. Thus, empirical ontological commitments internal to our frameworks
have, and need, an extra-human standard (viz., the way things are, when seen
through that framework), while the adoption of the framework itself is a kind of
transcendental constitutive activity only pragmatically decidable or criticizable.
This idea, when further developed, would come close to C.I.Lewiss (1923) prag-
matic a priori. Kantian apriorism, and particularly transcendental idealism, how-
ever, are not anything that Putnam would ever be willing to embrace. Putnam has
pointed out repeatedly that we should not confuse making up our notions with
making up real systems in the world, unless we want to slide into idealism,
which is a bad thing to slide into (Putnam 2012, 64). Now, of course this is itself
a Carnapian distinction, echoing the external vs. internal contrast all over again.21 It
is, arguably, a distinction that the classical pragmatists already cast a critical eye on
while preserving (in my view) it in a pragmatic form. Something like the transcen-
dental vs. empirical distinction must be made in order for Putnams own realism-
with-conceptual-relativity to succeed.22
20
In addition to Putnam, Huw Price (2011) is another neopragmatist developing partly Carnapian
views even today, defending a Carnapian pluralism of linguistic frameworks. He compares
Carnaps (1950) pluralism about ontological commitment to what would today be called global
irrealism (Price 2011, 284) and contrasts Carnapian pluralism with Quinean monism, reminding
us that a pragmatic or functional pluralism provides motivation for Carnaps logico-syntactical
pluralism (ibid., 289). Quines objections to Carnap can, according to Price, be to a large extent
defused when we note that the one and the same existential quantifier can be employed in the
service of different functional, pragmatic or linguistic ends (ibid., 291) which, in effect, is what
Putnam has argued when claiming that words like exist or there is have a plurality of different
uses (e.g., in Putnam 2004). Indeed, Price (2011, 292, n8) perceptively points out that his
Carnapian view comes close to Putnams pragmatic pluralism. While Prices historical com-
ments on Carnap vs. Quine (vs. Putnam) are in my view appropriate, I do not think we need to
follow him into the final conclusion that metaphysics remains where Carnap left it (ibid., 303),
nor to his proposal to integrate pragmatic functional pluralism and metaphysical deflationism
(ibid.). This is because there is another more Kantian strategy for revising (and reviving) prag-
matist metaphysics (cf. Pihlstrm 2009), though that, of course, is an entirely different story not to
be told here.
21
Kant (1781/1787) himself would not recommend confusing the two, either, because the things in
themselves, in his view, clearly are not made up.
22
A similar claim could be made about Philip Kitchers (2013) admirable proposal which comes
close to Putnams recent views to integrate realism (especially scientific realism) with pragmatic
pluralism and the interest-relativity of our world-categorization (see especially Kitcher on Carnap
Here, various philosophers work on the pragmatically relativized a priori from

Lewis to Michael Friedman et al. is highly relevant to the emergence of neoprag-
matism. Similarly, the discussions by classical pragmatists themselves, Dewey in
particular, concerning the independence vs. dependence of the objects of inquiry
from processes of inquiry are reinterpretable along these transcendental lines (cf.
Pihlstrm 2008). We might say that the objects of scientific inquiry are, at least
generally, empirically independent of inquiry and inquirers while being transcen-
dentally dependent on inquiry because transcendentally constituted through the pro-
cesses of inquiry (along with the construction of relevant linguistic frameworks and/
or conceptual schemes, to put it in more logical-empiricst terms). Putnam, however,
would presumably regard this way of speaking as bad idealism.
More generally, Putnams anti-metaphysical (indeed, logical-empiricist) back-
ground manifests itself, for instance, in his reluctance to accept any genuine meta-
physics of values indeed, his account of the fact-value entanglement (see Putnam
2002, 2004) seems to be purely linguistic or conceptual, partly epistemic but
certainly non-metaphysical as well as in his resolutely non-metaphysical philoso-
phy of religion indebted to the Wittgensteinian tradition in that field.23 This is what
Putnams Carnapianism comes down to: a deep-seated avoidance or even fear of
metaphysics even in areas like ethics and religion where he clearly has already
moved very far away from Carnaps and most logical empiricists views. Even if
pragmatically needed, metaphysics is to be avoided. Curiously, Putnams Carnapian
anti-metaphysics and Levinasian post-onto-theological approach to moral value
(cf. Putnam 2004) join hands in his campaign for ethics without ontology. Putnam
does not, then, seem to be sufficiently receptive to the pragmatist idea (arguably at
work in William James, among others) that metaphysics should not be a priori dis-
missed but should itself be pragmatically elaborated and examined; its true practice-
involving core ought to be traced out by employing the pragmatic maxim in an
ethically engaging way (as suggested in Pihlstrm 2009).
Pragmatist andNeopragmatist (Anti-)Metaphysics
Why are Putnams twists and turns regarding realism and metaphysics interesting
and important? The reason I have invoked Putnam (in relation to Carnap) here is
that this specific case may tell us something more general about the ways in which
pragmatism and neopragmatism have reacted to the question concerning the status
of metaphysics within philosophy a question that logical empiricism, of course,
and the Caterpillar in ibid., chap. 8). The in my view essential transcendental dimension is miss-
ing from the otherwise very balanced and carefully worked-out position.
23
See Pihlstrm (2013) for some reflections on neopragmatist philosophy of religion, including
Putnams. Note that Putnam nowhere seems to comment on the classical pragmatists relations to
the Vienna Circle and logical empiricism, except for what he says in his 1995 volume on
Wittgenstein as a kind of pragmatist.
150 S. Pihlstrm
focused on as well. These issues are at the center of any inquiry into the relations
between pragmatism and logical empiricism.
Logical empiricism generally, of course, was a strongly anti-metaphysical move-
ment. In A.J.Ayers memorable phrase, no statement which refers to a reality
transcending the limits of all possible sense-experience can possibly have any literal
significance (Ayer 1936, 46). Philosophy must be sharply distinguished from age-
old metaphysical speculation (ibid., 55 ff.); metaphysics can only have poetic, aes-
thetic, moral, emotive, or expressive value instead of any cognitive value (ibid.,
5961). In particular, Ayer argues that the problem of realism vs. idealism, meta-
physically construed, is fictitious, devoid of any cognitive or theoretical content
(ibid., 5455, 182193). In a similar vein, Moritz Schlick, the leading Vienna Circle
figure, rejected the realism issue as meaningless metaphysics: The denial of the
existence of a transcendent external world would be just as much a metaphysical
proposition as its assertion; the consistent empiricist does not therefore deny the
transcendent, but declares both its denial and its affirmation to be equally devoid of
meaning. (Schlick 193233, 54.) And we can easily find a host of similar state-
ments from Carnaps writings and, by extension, even from Putnams.
We already noted that one clear indication of Putnams logical-empiricist back-
ground influences is the desire to avoid any commitment to metaphysics, epito-
mized in his residual Carnapianism regarding internal and external questions.24
However, one of the challenges for pragmatism today, in its dialogue with other
philosophical approaches, is to contribute in its own specific ways to the kind of
discussions emerging within analytic metaphysics. Despite the strongly anti-
metaphysical beginnings of what is today known as analytic philosophy, contempo-
rary analytic philosophy is not only tolerant of but even largely dominated by
metaphysics. A viable form of pragmatism today can hardly avoid taking such
metaphysical approaches into account. Not all metaphysical theorizing is sheer
unempirical speculation. On the other hand, in seeking legitimate forms of meta-
physics, or inquiring into the possibility of metaphysics in contemporary philoso-
phy, we do need to take seriously the kind of criticism of metaphysics that both
logical empiricism and pragmatism engaged in. This leads to a tension between
24
However, we must be careful here. When Putnam (2012, 487488) tells us that he cannot inhabit
the intellectual world of philosophers like Hegel, Spinoza, or Leibniz, he does not mean that such
philosophers wrote meaningless sentences; to suggest that they just wrote nonsense is a hang-
over from the mistaken idea that we should just say no to metaphysics (ibid., 488). Cf. also the
above-quoted passage in which Putnam says one can be a realist in metaphysics while accepting
conceptual relativity (ibid., 56). So Putnams rejection of metaphysics is not total; he has, better
than some others, recovered from the logical empiricist hangover. However, pace Putnam, I
would suggest that one can find certain views unintelligible (cf. ibid., 490), or some intellectual
worlds uninhabitable, as a result of transcendental reflection on human capacities and incapacities,
specifically as manifested in ones own case. Such reflection may, for instance, lead us to a deeper
understanding of why one, when faced with, say, an eliminativist physicalist position, [hasnt] got
these thoughts or anything that hangs together with them (Putnam, ibid., quoting Wittgensteins
Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, a work he finds
important in his writings on religion as well).
metaphysics and the criticism of (or even rejection of) metaphysics in contemporary
neopragmatist philosophy.25
Let me briefly illustrate this neopragmatist tension between metaphysics and
anti-metaphysics by drawing attention to a notion we may call, using Putnamian
language, objectivity without objects. An example drawn from special meta-
physics (rather than general metaphysics) may help us in cashing out the prag-
matic yet metaphysical relevance of this idea. This is of course only one possible
way in which metaphysics could be saved in pragmatism.
As I have suggested on earlier occasions, when developing a (Jamesian) pragma-
tist account of metaphysics, especially the famous Kantian metaphysical transcen-
dental ideas that for Kant constitute the proper subject matter of metaphysics, viz.,
God, freedom, and the soul as a pragmatically reinterpreted version of what Kant
in the Second Critique called the postulates of practical reason26 we arguably
may make a pragmatically legitimate commitment, from within our practices them-
selves (especially ethical practices), to a certain kind of reinterpreted transcendence.
We employ these transcendental ideas in a certain objectively normative and
guiding role. The legitimacy or, perhaps, moral necessity of such a commitment
might even be defended by means of a kind of practice-involving, hence natural-
ized, transcendental argument: as James argued though, of course, not explicitly
transcendentally it might be necessary for an individual to embrace a metaphysi-
cal postulation of theism, if s/he seeks to maintain a morally strenuous mood in
life.27 However, we cannot employ this account of theistic metaphysics and its legit-
imacy to develop a theory of any theological objects, because in the Kantian context
only properly transcendental conditions, such as the categories of the understanding
(e.g., causality) and the forms of pure intuition (space and time), are necessary con-
ditions for the possibility of the objects of experience in the sense that all empirical
objects must conform to them; transcendent and/or theological ideas, such as the
metaphysically pregnant ideas of God, freedom, and the immortal soul, do not play
such an objectifying and experience-enabling role, even if they can be argued to
play a transcendental role as enablers of full moral commitment. More precisely,
while the categories, in Kant, can be regarded as normative requirements of object-
hood, this cannot be said about the postulates of practical reason, even if their status
is also based on a transcendental argument.
Hence, even though there can be a certain kind of pragmatic objectivity in ethics,
metaphysics, and theology based on the demands of our practices or so my (real
or imagined) Jamesian pragmatist would argue there cannot be any theological
objectivity in the sense of any legitimate rational postulation of theological objects,
25
Cf. Pihlstrm (2009) and (2013). For a richer array of investigations of the fate of metaphysics
today, see Haaparanta and Koskinen (2012).
26
I propose this Kantian-like re-reading of James in Pihlstrm (2013) and in a preliminary way
already in Pihlstrm (2009), chap. 7; the details must be skipped here. No reading of Kant can, for
obvious reasons, be provided here.
27
On Jamess pragmatist philosophy of religion and the relation between ethical and metaphysical
standpoints, see, in addition to Pihlstrm (2013, chap. 4), also Rydenfelt and Pihlstrm (2013).
152 S. Pihlstrm
understood as an analogy to the postulation of, say, theoretical objects in science

serving the purpose of explaining observable phenomena. Now, we may see this
(Jamesian) pragmatist understanding of theological objectivity, analogous to the
Kantian postulates, as a version (or extension) of what Putnam (2002, 2004) calls
objectivity without objects. The examples Putnam himself provides primarily
come from mathematics and ethics. We can, and should, understand the objectivity
of these quite different practices and the related fact-value entanglement in eth-
ics as not requiring the postulation of any mysterious transcendent objects out
there, whether mathematical (numbers, functions) or ethical (values, moral facts).
As Putnam has argued for a long time, there is no need to think of moral objectivity
as needing any ontological commitments to queer objects, contra error theorists
like J.L.Mackie (1977) (see Putnam 1981, 1990; cf. Pihlstrm 2005). We should
now, I submit, understand whatever moral objectivity, or theological objectiv-
ity, there is available to the pragmatist along similar lines. The relevant kind of
objectivity lies in our practices of engagement and commitment themselves, in our
habits of action embodying certain ways of thinking about ourselves and the world
in terms of transcendence-involving notions such as God, freedom, and the soul.28
This conception of pragmatic objectivity in metaphysics and theology (and, anal-
ogously, in ethics) is compatible not only with certain views on religion as a practice
or form of life derived from the later Wittgensteins writings, but also with a tran-
scendental position we find in the early Wittgenstein: God does not appear in the
world; immortality is timelessness, or life in the present moment, instead of any
infinite extension of temporal existence; and my will cannot change the facts of the
world but steps into the world from the outside (see Wittgenstein 1921, 6.5 ff.).
Accordingly, God is not an object of any kind, nothing no thing whatsoever that
could appear in the world. Nor can the subjects freedom or possible (Kantian-
like) immortality be conceptualized along such objectifying lines. The subject that
philosophy deals with the metaphysical or transcendental subject is a limit of
the world rather than any object in the world (ibid., 5.64).
28
In addition to the realism issue, Putnams philosophy of religion is worth briefly taking up here
because of its strong Wittgensteinian influences. Going back to the Viennese background of
Wittgenstein (in the sense of Janik and Toulmin 1973) instead of the Vienna Circle proper is there-
fore the crucial move at this point. While neither Putnam nor other neopragmatists have shared the
Vienna Circles condemnation of the entire theism vs. atheism debate as a piece of speculative
metaphysics recall that Carnap, among others, regarded both theism and atheism as equally
meaningless metaphysics Putnams pragmatist attitude to religion can again be reconnected with
his Carnapian, logically empiricist heritage. Embracing a religious way of thinking is a matter of
choosing a certain linguistic framework, or what Wittgenstein called a language-game (though
Wittgenstein never simply spoke about religion as a language-game); as Carnap argued, such
choices can only be pragmatically justified. Religious beliefs do not mirror a pre-existing reality
but are anchored in human beings decisions to use certain ways of speaking, or their growing into
certain ways of speaking. This, clearly, is more a Wittgensteinian than a Carnapian conception of
religion, but it does bear some resemblance to the anti-metaphysical, logical empiricist view on
religion as merely poetic language serving purposes quite different from literal, scientific
language.
It is from these remarks that the early Wittgensteins peculiar form of solipsism
emerges. In a sense, for the solipsistic subject of the Tractatus, all the objects in the
world are mine. But this transcendental solipsism no more sacrifices the objectiv-
ity of those objects than the transcendental idealism of Kants First Critique, which
is compatible with empirical realism.29 This idea is not as foreign to pragmatism as
it might seem, either; on the contrary, as soon as pragmatism is reconnected with its
Kantian background, something like a Wittgensteinian conception of subjectivity,
objectivity, and the world can also, in a rearticulated form, be seen as the core posi-
tion of a transcendental-pragmatic account of objectivity and subjectivity.
Paradoxically (though this cannot be demonstrated here), a pragmatic, naturalized
view of the empirical self is fully compatible and may even require the idea of a
transcendental subject, and even transcendental idealism.
Even this brief discussion of pragmatic objectivity (without objects) should
lead us to reconsider the prospects of metaphysics in the pragmatist tradition, espe-
cially in relation to the logical-empiricist dimensions of pragmatism and
neopragmatism. At this point, however, a somewhat more extensive excursus to
Wittgensteinian aspects of (neo)pragmatism or, conversely, some strikingly prag-
matist themes in Wittgenstein scholarship is needed in order to shed more light on
the metaphysics vs. anti-metaphysics tension I have spoken about. Indeed,
Wittgenstein is a major part of the Viennese background of neopragmatism.
Wittgenstein and(Neo)Pragmatism
Although I just speculated about neopragmatisms possible emergence in relation to

the Carnapian principle of tolerance, it could be argued that neopragmatism
emerged, instead of 1934, already in 192930 when Ludwig Wittgenstein returned
to work on philosophical problems after the decade he had, following the publica-
tion of the Tractatus, spent as a school teacher in rural Austria. Hence, the Viennese
background of neopragmatism could, arguably, be even more important when we
consider Wittgensteins influence on the emergence of neopragmatism.30 However,
(re)connecting Wittgenstein and pragmatism does not force us to embrace the con-
troversial resolute reading of Wittgenstein a reading to which Putnam has also
shown considerable sympathy if not complete acceptance.31 One question con-
29
For further elucidation, historical and systematic, see Pihlstrm (2004).
30
Note also that Putnam, in one of his many writings on Wittgenstein, brings the later Wittgenstein
precisely into the context of discussion shaped by Carnaps and Reichenbachs logical empiricism,
more specifically by their discussions of the phenomenalist (egocentric, methodologically solip-
sist) language and usual language (or thing language); this is exactly where, he argues,
Wittgensteins treatment of private language and public language becomes urgently relevant (see
Putnam 2012, 349353).
31
Cf. the several essays on Wittgenstein in Putnam (2012). The matter is briefly discussed in my
paper on Wittgenstein and pragmatism (Pihlstrm 2012a; cf. also below). In this section, I am bor-
rowing some paragraphs from that essay.
154 S. Pihlstrm
tinuing to explore Putnams views as a kind of metonymy of neopragmatism gener-

ally is this: could the tension between Wittgenstein and the mainstream of analytic
philosophy that grew out of logical empiricism be analogous to a tension observable
within Putnams neopragmatism between deconstructive (therapeutic) and con-
structive (systematic, theoretical) philosophy? That is, within Putnam and perhaps
neopragmatism more generally we may find a tension between Wittgensteinian
approaches, on the one hand, and Carnapian and Quinean ones, on the other.
Let us therefore briefly consider Wittgensteins relation to pragmatism, even
though, historically, there is little to be added to the existing scholarship on the rela-
tion between Wittgensteins philosophy and the pragmatist tradition. Russell
Goodmans Wittgenstein and William James (2002) tells us most that is worth tell-
ing about this issue, at least insofar as we are concerned with Wittgensteins relation
to James. There are, however, a number of both historical and systematic issues in
contemporary Wittgenstein scholarship that could be fruitfully re-examined from a
pragmatist perspective. For example, several noted scholars (including James
Conant, Cora Diamond, and Rupert Read) have suggested that Wittgensteins
philosophy is completely different from any traditional attempts to philosophize in
terms of theses and arguments. Those are to be rejected as little more than remnants
of dogmatic ways of doing philosophy. Instead of engaging with theses and argu-
ments, philosophy should be therapeutical and deconstructive, liberating us from
assumptions that lead us to philosophical pseudo-problems. The so-called New
Wittgensteinians, taking seriously Wittgensteins encouragement to drop the lad-
der toward the end of the Tractatus and his proposal in the Investigations to lead
philosophical thought to peace, advance this therapeutic-deconstructive
program.
From a pragmatist point of view, we can perceive a misleading dichotomous
opposition between implausible extremes at work here (see also Putnam 2012, 350).
To defend a conception of philosophy as a systematic, argumentative practice
employing theses and arguments supporting those theses is not to be a dogmatic
believer in any particular philosophical system. As a brief illustration, I would like
to suggest that, despite his criticism of traditional ways of doing philosophy,
Wittgenstein employs pragmatic versions of transcendental arguments (e.g., the
private language argument) in favor of certain philosophical conceptions (e.g., the
view that our language is necessarily public). The private language argument can be
regarded as transcendental because the fact that language is public is, as a result of
this argument, claimed to be a necessary condition for the very possibility of lin-
guistic meaning. A private language would not be a language at all; as Wittgenstein
notes, rules cannot be followed privately. Similarly, it could be argued on the basis
of Wittgensteins On Certainty that, necessarily, there must be agreement about
certain apparently empirical matters (hinges, e.g., our basic conviction about the
earth having existed for a long time and not just for, say, 5 min) in order for mean-
ingful use of language to be possible at all.32 I am not making any claims about the
32
For a pragmatic approach to On Certainty (Wittgenstein 1969), see Moyal-Sharrock (2003) and
(2004), as well as my critical discussion of her interpretation (Pihlstrm 2012a).
success of these or any other Wittgensteinian arguments, but it seems to me clear

that Wittgenstein can be plausibly read as employing a pragmatized transcenden-
tal method of examining the necessary practice-embedded conditions for the pos-
sibility of something (e.g., meaningful language) whose actuality we take as given
(cf. Pihlstrm 2003).33
Analogously, the pragmatists and neopragmatists themselves can also be reinter-
preted as philosophers presenting and evaluating such transcendental arguments (or,
more broadly, transcendental considerations and inquiries), even though neoprag-
matists like Rorty have tried to depict not only Wittgenstein but also James and
Dewey in a deconstructive manner, as some kind of precursors of both Wittgensteinian
therapy and Derridean deconstruction (and postmodernism generally), which, ironi-
cally enough, may not be very far from the Carnapian deconstruction of all alleg-
edly nonsensical metaphysics. For a pragmatist, there is no reason at all to resort to
any unpragmatic dichotomy between transcendental philosophical theory and phi-
losophy as a therapeutically relevant practical activity eliminating unnecessary con-
fusions. Rather, philosophical theorizing itself is, inevitably, a practice-embedded
human activity with aims ultimately related to our well-being.
A healthy pragmatism should, then, instead of relying on an essentialist dichot-
omy between post-philosophical therapy and systematic argumentation, insist on
the compatibility and deep complementarity of deconstruction and reconstruction.
The deconstruction of philosophical problems and ideas should always be followed
by a reconstruction. This is in effect what Dewey argued in Reconstruction in
Philosophy (1920); as Putnam later put it in Renewing Philosophy (1992), decon-
struction without reconstruction is irresponsibility. The crude dichotomy between
therapeutic and systematic philosophy is completely unpragmatic, as it assumes an
essentialistic conception of the proper way of doing philosophy, without letting the
richness of different philosophical aims, methods, and conceptions flourish. It
thinks before looking, to use a Wittgensteinian phrase; or, to adopt a Peircean
expression, it blocks the road of inquiry. Our philosophical inquiries often need both
deconstruction and reconstruction; therefore, to one-sidedly restrict proper philoso-
phizing to only one of these impedes philosophical understanding.
33
Putnam (2012, 563564), among many others, opposes this transcendental reading of the private
language argument, referring to James Conant as one of those who successfully explain it away as
a misreading of Wittgenstein. In this discussion in the context of his insightful engagement with
Cavell Putnam in my view fails to acknowledge the transcendental nature of his own line of
thought (attributed to Cavell): [] skepticism universalized, skepticism that refuses to acknowl-
edge any human community, is, to the extent that it is possible, a posture that negates not only its
own intelligibility but also the very existence of a speaking and thinking subject, negates the skep-
tics own existence and the worlds (ibid., 564). I also remain unconvinced by Putnams claim that
Wittgenstein in the Tractatus would have shown transcendental idealism (which Kant had argued
to make empirical realism possible) to be unintelligible nonsense (ibid., 342). Putnams defla-
tionary reading of the supposed solipsism of the Tractatus, as he appropriately labels it, of
course goes well together with his stubborn refusal to ever acknowledge transcendental idealism
as a background of his own pragmatic or internal realism (cf. also Putnam 2006, responding to my
contrary suggestions in Pihlstrm 2006).
156 S. Pihlstrm
Moreover, to raise an issue closely connected with the systematic vs. therapeutic
conceptions of philosophy, both Wittgenstein and the pragmatists no less than the
logical empiricists have been regarded as radically anti-metaphysical thinkers. For
instance, Rorty repeatedly pictures both in this fashion, and more recent neoprag-
matists like Huw Price (share this negative attitude to metaphysics) share this nega-
tive attitude to metaphysics. However, as I have argued earlier (e.g., Pihlstrm
2009) but wont be able to argue in detail here this is a fundamental misrepre-
sentation of pragmatism. The pragmatists and, perhaps analogously, Wittgenstein
can be seen as offering us a new kind of metaphysics, one based not on the futile
attempt to climb above our forms of life into a Gods-Eye View but on human prac-
tices and especially our practice-embedded ethical standpoints and considerations.
Engaging in metaphysics is a way of interpreting our human being-in-the-world,
which cannot be separated from ethical values (or other values, including aesthetic
ones, for that matter). This general idea is also closely related to the pragmatist
rejection of the fact-value dichotomy.34
This is, of course, not at all to say that either pragmatists or Wittgenstein would
not engage in the criticism of metaphysics. Obviously, they did and do, just like the
logical empiricists did. These philosophers both heavily criticize not only specific
metaphysical ideas (e.g., Cartesian assumptions in the philosophy of mind or the
picture of meanings as mental or abstract entities untouched by the practices of
language-use) but also, and more importantly, the very conception of metaphysics
based on traditional pre-Kantian metaphysical realism (transcendental realism), just
as Kant himself did throughout his critique of reason. However, they need not leave
the matter at that point but can offer a reconstructed or, as we might say, post-
Kantian pragmatic, naturalized yet in a sense transcendental way of doing meta-
physics in terms of, and on the basis of, human experiential practices (forms of life,
language-games). Pace (say) Price, this is continuing metaphysics in a pragmatist
key instead of abandoning metaphysics altogether. Pragmatism and Wittgensteinian
explorations of fundamental, yet revisable and fallible, features of our forms of life
here converge into what we may describe as a pragmatic philosophical anthropol-
ogy, which, transcendentally interpreted yet pragmatically naturalized, is itself a
form of metaphysics. Alternatively, we could speak about the topography or, with
a more evolutionary and dynamic emphasis the natural history of our forms of life
(knowing that Wittgenstein himself was fond of both metaphors).
Moreover, the kind of pragmatism that Wittgenstein and philosophers like James
share is deeply pluralistic (cf. again Price 2011, chaps. 2 and 10). Both James and
Wittgenstein insist on the contextuality and pragmatic circumstantiality of human
meanings, thought, and experience; we never encounter the world as it is in itself but
always within one or another context that is, a practice or a form of life.
Furthermore, as there is no super-context or -practice over and above all others,
there is no single correct way of using language or interpreting experience, no privi-
leged representations in the sense of the ideal language isomorphic to the structure
of the world that Wittgenstein imagined in the Tractatus; instead, there is a plurality
34
Cf., e.g., Putnams work on this, especially Putnam (2002); see also Pihlstrm (2005).
of equally acceptable ways of conceptualizing reality through different pragmatic

engagements, each with their own valuational purposes built into them. We should
again note how close this view comes to the Carnapian pluralism about linguistic
frameworks. These may be related to each other through networks of family resem-
blances (to use Wittgensteins well-known concept).35 Language-games (or linguis-
tic frameworks) are not mirrors of an independent reality, and there is no way of
representing the world from a Gods-Eye View; instead, there are only human, con-
textual, pragmatically embedded perspectives from within our forms of life.
We may here draw support from Putnams account of Wittgensteins relation to
Kant and pragmatism (thereby highlighting Putnams own appreciation of a kind of
Viennese background of his own neopragmatism): Wittgenstein inherits and
extends [...] Kants pluralism; that is the idea that no one language game deserves
the exclusive right to be called true, or rational, or our first-class conceptual
system, or the system that limns the ultimate nature of reality, or anything like
that. (Putnam 1992, 38.) Putnam continues to observe very interestingly from the
perspective of the proposal to integrate Wittgenstein into the pragmatist tradition
that for this reason Wittgenstein can be said to refute key ideas propounded by two
leading twentieth-century pragmatists, i.e., both Quines reductive naturalism and
Rortys relativistic and postmodernist neopragmatism: [...] he agrees with Rorty,
against Quine, that one cannot say that scientific language games are the only lan-
guage games in which we say or write truths, or in which we describe reality; but,
on the other hand, he agrees with Quine as against Rorty that language games can
be criticized (or combatted); that there are better and worse language games.
(Ibid.)36
Arguably, a Wittgensteinian pragmatist may hold that our practice-embedded
perspectives may, and often do, yield (or presuppose) metaphysical insights into the
way the world is, or must be thought to be (by us), from within the various practical
contexts we operate in. These are not insights into the world as it is absolutely inde-
pendently of our conceptualizing practices and (ethically or more generally valua-
tionally laden) practical points of view, but they are metaphysical insights
nonetheless. For example, the well-known Wittgensteinian view (if we may say that
Wittgenstein ever maintained philosophical views)37 that there can be no private
language in the sense of a language that only its speaker could ever understand or
learn to use, just like the pragmatically pluralistic thesis derivable from the
Putnamian interpretation just cited, can be interpreted as a metaphysical thesis
about the way the world, including language and our life with language, is, for us
language-users in the kind of natural circumstances and contexts (forms of life) we
35
Wittgenstein may even have derived the notion of a family resemblance from pragmatism, that
is, from William Jamess Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), which he is known to have read
carefully. See Goodman (2002).
36
Note, again, that it is far from clear that Quine can be called a pragmatist at all, despite his
influence on both Putnams and Rortys versions of neopragmatism. See Koskinen and Pihlstrm
(2006).
37
I am fully aware that some New Wittgensteinians resist such formulations.
158 S. Pihlstrm
are in. In this sense, both pragmatism and Wittgenstein can be understood as criti-
cally rethinking the nature of metaphysics and anti-metaphysics rather than sim-
ply moving beyond metaphysics.
There are also other debates in Wittgenstein scholarship to which a (neo)pragma-
tist perspective would offer insightful (but often neglected) perspectives. For
instance, two other key issues of Wittgenstein studies provide particularly useful
insights into the ways in which Wittgenstein, or the contemporary Wittgensteinian
philosopher, could be regarded as a pragmatist: the distinction invoked in recent
discussions of On Certainty, in particular between the propositional and the non-
propositional (see again Moyal-Sharrock 2003, 2004); and the related tension
between anti-Cartesian fallibilism and what has been called (by Stanley Cavell) the
truth in skepticism in Wittgenstein.38 I believe it can be plausibly argued that
dichotomous readings of Wittgenstein in terms of these philosophical (or
metaphilosophical) oppositions lead to unpragmatist and even un-Wittgensteinian
positions, just as the dichotomies between theoretical (constructive) and therapeutic
(deconstructive) or between metaphysical and anti-metaphysical approaches do.
Holistic Pragmatism
As we have seen, there are both metaphysical and anti-metaphysical elements in the
kind of (e.g., Putnamian) neopragmatism that organically grows out of (Carnapian)
logical empiricism while abandoning its total elimination of metaphysics. How to
weigh these different views as parts of one and the same pragmatist overall
approach? In brief, how to integrate metaphysics with anti-metaphysics? In consid-
ering this question, I now want to move on from the Putnamian position toward
another type of (neo)pragmatism that may be more promising in offering such an
integration.
One suggestion for a way of developing an integrated pragmatist approach,
returning to the original rendezvous of pragmatism and logical empiricism, is
Morton Whites (1956, 2002) holistic pragmatism, which is basically an epistemo-
logical position but can be extended to a holistically pragmatist ontology of culture
as well as, possibly, to a metaphilosophical account of what is correct and incorrect
in both metaphysics and anti-metaphysics.39 In a Quinean manner, White labels his
pragmatism holistic; like Quine, he follows the anti-Cartesian and more generally
anti-rationalist line of pragmatist thought (White 2002, 35), abandoning any first
38
Putnam (2012, 563) perceptively notes that Cavells work also aspires to get us to see than an
idea of being totally free of skepticism [in the deep sense of failing to acknowledge the suffering
of others] is itself a form of skepticism. The key reference here is, obviously, Cavell (1979).
39
White, of course, was also a key mediating figure between logical empiricism and pragmatism,
along with philosophers like Lewis, Nagel, Quine, and Goodman. For an excellent recent discus-
sion, see Sinclair (2011). Cf. also my recent paper on White (Pihlstrm 2011a), on which I to some
extent rely here, as well as, again, Koskinen and Pihlstrm (2006) on Quine and pragmatism.
philosophy. The specific nature of Whites position emerges against the back-
ground of Quines more extreme views. While both Quine and White begin from a
firm rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction and from the holistic idea that our
beliefs (or sentences) are not tested individually but face the tribunal of experi-
ence in corporate bodies, they draw quite different morals from this picture.
Whereas philosophy of science is, for Quine, philosophy enough, White pro-
poses the kind of holistic approach Quine favors in the philosophy of science to be
developed into a philosophy of culture, examining not only science as logical
empiricism primarily did but also religion, history, art, law, and morality (ibid.,
x-xi). This cultural philosophy covers philosophy of science as one of its sub-
fields science, of course, is part of culture, something that human beings culti-
vate but White insists that other cultural institutions require empirically informed
philosophical scrutiny no less than science does (ibid., xiii). In this sense White
crucially extends the scope of philosophical activity from the logical-empiricist
focus on the philosophy of science, which, for Quine, was philosophy enough.40
Holistic pragmatism says that philosophy of art, of religion, of morality, or of other
elements of culture is in great measure a discipline that is epistemically coordinate
with philosophy of natural science (ibid., 66). Quines way of restricting his philo-
sophical concerns to science should be abandoned as one more unfortunate and by
no means necessary remnant from logical positivism (ibid., 3). The idea that ethics,
in particular, may be viewed as empirical if one includes feelings of moral obliga-
tion as well as sensory experiences in the pool or flux into which the ethical believer
worked a manageable structure has been strongly present in Whites writings from
an early stage to the present (see White 1956, 1981, 2002, passim). This can be
regarded as the main novelty in his thought in relation to previous pragmatic holists
like Quine.
Quine (1953a) took his famous holistic step by arguing that even logical truths
are not immune to revision, because they are tested along with factual claims as
components of a large conjunction of statements (White 2002, 71). No general ana-
lytic/synthetic division can be drawn, as statements about, say, the synonymity of
terms are ultimately empirical statements describing the contingencies of factual
language-use (ibid., 71, 73). Despite this fundamental agreement with Quine, White
argues that observation sentences (e.g., Thats a rabbit) and ethical sentences
such as Thats outrageous cannot be sharply separated from each other any more
than analytic and synthetic statements can; their difference is a matter of degree
instead of being a difference in kind (ibid., 154155, 160163). The ethical sen-
tences at issue are, moreover, genuinely normative: Avoiding the view that ethical
sentences are synonymous with sociological or psychological sentences, and being
impressed by the failure of reductive phenomenalism as well as the power of holism
to bridge the traditional epistemic gap created by the distinction between the ana-
lytic and the synthetic, I propose a nonreductive version of holism in order to bridge
the gap between the moral and the descriptive []. (Ibid., 157.)
40
See Quine (1953b); cf. Isaacson (2004), 245.
160 S. Pihlstrm
That is, descriptive statements and normative ethical principles form conjunc-
tions that are tested holistically, just as Quine had argued that scientific and logico-
mathematical beliefs in science are. Logic, science, and ethics form a unified whole,
a holistic web without epistemic dichotomies. Moreover, as logical principles may,
by Quinean lights, be given up in the face of sufficiently recalcitrant experience,
descriptive statements may be denied in order to preserve a normative principle we
do not want to give up (ibid., 159), although such situations are rare. Whites point
is that ethics is not inferior to science, or immune to empirical evaluation, because
feelings of obligation together with sensory observation link ethical sentences to the
natural world. Pace Quine, ethics is, then, anchored in experience (ibid., 160).
Ethics is a soft science rather than a hard one, but it is a science nonetheless,
hardly any softer than Quines own naturalized epistemological science, the
branch of psychology studying human cognition (ibid., 161162). Furthermore,
feeling sentences are also fallible and can be surrendered when a conjunction is
tested (ibid., 166). Both ethics and science are, then, corrigible but cognitive enter-
prises just like classical pragmatists like Dewey maintained. Both are elements of
human culture that in the end forms a holistic totality instead of any compartmental-
ized group of distinct areas with definite boundaries. Knowledge and morals, as
White himself formulated his point many years ago, form a seamless web (White
1956, 287).
I would be happy to construe this view more metaphysically as a thesis about
there being no value-neutral facts at all (see Pihlstrm 2005, 2010); however, I
doubt that White himself ever intended it in such a metaphysical sense. In any case,
Whites holism could be extended from the epistemic justification of different kinds
of statements (sentences) to whatever is the equivalent of such normative justifica-
tion in the critical evaluation of entire cultural practices and institutions. While
remaining distinct from each other, such practices (e.g., science, politics, religion,
art, and others) are dynamically interrelated and must therefore be tested holisti-
cally whatever it ultimately means to test them. One way of supplementing
Whites holistic ethics-science corporatism would, indeed, be the addition of
pragmatist metaphysics into the picture yielding an even more comprehensive
form of holistic pragmatism. One may argue that White himself (just like Putnam in
the end) is too faithful a disciple of logical empiricism because he simply goes too
far in the somewhat dogmatic project of avoiding metaphysics at all costs.41
Accordingly, also metaphysical statements, like scientific and ethical ones, can
thus be holistically evaluated in the pragmatic way White suggests. Pragmatist
metaphysics itself can be holistically developed; however, one may argue that it
must not be holistic in a monistic way (as in Hegelian holistic idealism criticized by
the pragmatists) but genuinely pluralistic, as James famously maintained in
41
I would thus not suggest that we follow him into, say, the claim that there is no pragmatic differ-
ence between Peircean scholastic realism and nominalism (see again White 2002). On the contrary,
there is a major pragmatic difference between these positions but these (and other) metaphysical
views indeed have to be understood pragmatically, not as metaphysical theories independent of
pragmatic and hence eventually broadly cultural considerations.
Pragmatism and elsewhere. Furthermore, a pragmatist metaphysics of culture must

differ, crucially, from metaphysically realistic approaches, in which the nature of
cultural entities is examined on the basis of a metaphysical scheme presupposed to
be true from a Gods-Eye View. Both reductionist (naturalist) and anti-reductionist
(e.g., Platonist?) positions here typically turn out to presuppose such metaphysi-
cally realist background assumptions, which the pragmatist must firmly reject. (The
pragmatist also rejects, following Dewey, any principled, essentialist dichotomy
between culture and nature.) However, pragmatist metaphysics (in the way I am
developing it) is a species of transcendental idealism, reinterpreted as transcenden-
tal pragmatism. This approach makes ontological/metaphysical postulations and
commitments dependent on not just linguistic frameworks but more generally
human purposive practices thus on human culture in a broad sense.
Does this lead to a problematic circular structure in our metaphysical system? A
further pragmatist inquiry ought to be devoted to analyzing this threat of circularity
that seems to emerge from the position sketched here, showing that the relevant kind
of circularity at issue need not be vicious but can in fact be self-strengthening. Thus,
we begin to notice how the metaphysical relevance of contemporary originally
heavily logical-empiricism-involving neopragmatism extends from a core p osition
such as Putnams conceptual relativity to various surrounding views and ideas
that often incorporate rich philosophical reflections on the human condition.
Certainly no formal investigation of linguistic frameworks and their logical struc-
tures is sufficient to settle the neopragmatist issue of realism vs. antirealism, or
neopragmatist tensions between metaphysics and anti-metaphysics.
Similarly (returning to concerns raised earlier in this paper), Putnams account of
conceptual relativity should in my view be developed in ways that Putnam himself
doesnt find congenial: first, it should be seen as metaphysically relevant, despite
Putnams residual logical empiricism (i.e., Carnapianism); and secondly, it should
be rearticulated as a pragmatized version of transcendental idealism, despite
Putnams desire to avoid all talk about the transcendental (as well as any kind of
idealism).42 A full development of these themes would, however, require a book-
length study. Let me just here assure you that the metaphysical relevance of Putnams
neopragmatism actually goes well together with the transcendentally idealist rein-
terpretation of his pragmatic realism, insofar as transcendental idealism itself is a
(benign) metaphysical view. This requires, however, that we also give up those
interpretations of transcendental idealism itself that treat it as merely methodologi-
cal. Pace Henry Allison (2004), we have to view transcendental idealism, even in
its pragmatic rearticulations, as a metaphysically relevant approach to the way the
As is well known, logical empiricism has recently been observed to have been more strongly
42
neo-Kantian than the received view construes it as being see, e.g., Friedman (2001) and
Richardson (1998) and the same, arguably, applies to pragmatism and neopragmatism see
Pihlstrm (2003) and (2009). Indeed, insofar as this neo-Kantian emphasis is on the right track,
neopragmatism may be considerably more Kantian than the leading neopragmatists themselves,
especially Rorty but even Putnam, have ever acknowledged. On the neo-Kantian character of logi-
cal empiricist philosophy of science comparable to Kuhns new philosophy of science (and,
hence, pragmatism), see also Pihlstrm and Siitonen (2005).
162 S. Pihlstrm
world must be categorized by human beings in order for it to be cognitively experi-

enceable. Here, again, we see how systematic inquiries into realism and other issues
in contemporary philosophy need historical backing and ultimately we need to go
all the way back to Kant, not just back to logical empiricism or classical
pragmatism.
Conclusion
Contemporary pragmatism and neopragmatism should recognize not only their

roots at Harvard (e.g., Peirce, James, Lewis) and Columbia (e.g., Dewey, Nagel) but
also their logical-empiricist Viennese background and should do so in many areas:
in metaphysics, anti-metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, ethics, and
philosophy of religion, among others. This paper has largely, though not exclu-
sively, focused on Putnams neopragmatism, which is a highly illuminating case
because of its indebtedness to Carnaps ideas of tolerance and linguistic frame-
works; however, the moral of the paper is more general. Pragmatism is at its best
when it flexibly engages in collaboration with other philosophical orientations
including not only analytic philosophy but also phenomenology, hermeneutics,
critical theory, and other approaches while maintaining its own identity. There is
much more work to do here. The various pragmatist themes in Wittgenstein scholar-
ship only briefly and tentatively discussed above should be investigated further.
Whites holism should be formulated with greater precision. And so forth.
Pragmatism, moreover, ought to speak and also listen not only to the well-
known philosophical orientations today, such as analytic philosophy or phenome-
nology, but also to the marginalized, forgotten, and eclipsed ones, whether or not
pragmatism itself was ever truly eclipsed by logical empiricism or analytic
philosophy.
Acknowledgments This paper is based on a presentation at the workshop, Pragmatism and

Logical Empiricism, Vienna Circle Institute, University of Vienna (November 89, 2013). Related
material was also presented at the conference, Philosophical Revolutions, University College
Dublin (June, 2013). I should like to thank Maria Baghramian, Sarin Marchetti, Larry Hickman,
Friedrich Stadler, Ilkka Niiniluoto, and Heikki J.Koskinen, among many others, for valuable com-
ments and discussion. I also gratefully acknowledge the critical comments by an anonymous
referee.
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The Ghost ofPragmatism. Some Historical
Remarks ontheDebate ontheFoundations
ofProbability
MariaCarlaGalavotti
Abstract This paper explores the impact of pragmatism on logical empiricism in

connection with the debate on the foundations of probability. Peirces conception of
probability, anticipating the propensity interpretation launched by Popper in the late
1950s, is recalled together with the multifarious influence he had on a number of
authors including Nagel, Reichenbach, and Ramsey. This is followed by a discus-
sion of the impact of C.I.Lewiss viewpoint on Carnap, to conclude with an over-
view of de Finettis deeply pragmatist perspective.
The title of this paper is borrowed from Hermann Weyls The Ghost of Modality
(1940)1 where possibility is deemed an idea of [...] paramount importance both
for science and everyday life. In a similar vein, I maintain that the debate on the
foundations of probability that took place in the first decades of the twentieth cen-
tury is permeated with a cluster of ideas that form the kernel of pragmatism. In what
follows attention is called to the influence exercised by pragmatism on that debate,
focussing on authors belonging to or connected with logical empiricism.
On Pragmatism
The paternity of the term pragmatism is usually ascribed to Charles Sanders

Peirce and the philosophical movement of the same name linked to the gatherings
of the Metaphysical Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the years 18701872.
This article is an expanded version of my Probability and Pragmatism, in: Dennis Dieks,
Wenceslao J. Gonzalez, Stephan Hartmann, Thomas Uebel, Marcel Weber (Eds.), Explanation,
Prediction, and Confirmation, Dordrecht: Springer, 2011, pp. 499510. A number of passages
appearing here are borrowed from that paper.
1
Hermann Weyl, The Ghost of Modality, in: Marvin Farber (Ed.), Philosophical Essays in
Memory of Edmund Husserl, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1940, pp.278303.
M.C. Galavotti (*)
Department of Philosophy and Communication, Via Zamboni 38, 40126 Bologna, Italy
e-mail: mariacarla.galavotti@unibo.it

168 M.C. Galavotti
Besides Peirce, the group included William James and a number of intellectuals of
various provenance. Two men operating in the field of jurisprudence had a decisive
influence on the group, namely Nicholas St. John Green, whose ideas were much
admired by Peirce, and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, upholder of a prediction
theory of law of which pragmatism has been regarded as a generalization.2
Pragmatism is not only a philosophical movement, but also a method, as both Peirce
and James emphasized. According to widespread opinion, pragmatism cannot be
forced into a clear-cut definition: Lovejoy distinguished thirteen kinds of pragma-
tism3 and Schiller gave it seven definitions.4 Nevertheless, some points of agreement
among the different perspectives can be identified. In an attempt to outline the main
traits of pragmatism, Philip Wiener singles out five main components: (1) a plural-
istic empiricism; (2) a temporalistic view of reality; (3) a relativistic or contextual-
istic conception of reality; (4) a probabilistic view of physical and social hypotheses
and laws in opposition to both mechanistic or dialectical determinism, and (5) a
secular democratic individualism.5
With an eye to the debate on the foundations of probability, some further issues
must be addressed. First of all, mention should be made of the conception of truth
as consent in the long run put forward by Peirce and basically accepted by James.
To quote James, truth is an expedient in the long run and on the whole of course;
[...] The absolutely true, meaning what no farther experience will ever alter, is that
ideal vanishing-point towards which we imagine that all our temporary truths will
some day converge.6 Also important is the centrality of the notion of action within
the pragmatist perspective as reflected in Peirces maxim underpinning his theory of
meaning, according to which the only means of determining and clarifying the
sense of an assertion consists in indicating what particular sort of experiences one
thereby intends to affirm will be produced, or would be produced, given certain
circumstances.7 Peirces maxim is echoed by James definition of pragmatism as a
method by which we interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical
consequences.8
2
See Max H.Fish, Justice Holmes, the Prediction Theory of Law, and Pragmatism, in: Kenneth
Laine Ketner and Christian J.W. Kloesel (Eds.), Peirce, Semeiotic, and Pragmatism. Papers by
Max H.Fish, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986, pp.618.
3
See Arthur Lovejoy, The Thirteen Pragmatisms and Other Essays, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
Press, pp.129.
4
See Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller, Studies in Humanism, London-New York: Macmillan,
1907.
5
See Philip Wiener, Pragmatism, in: Philip Wiener (Ed.), Dictionary of the History of Ideas,
NewYork: Charles Scribners Sons, 1973, volume III, pp.551570.
6
William James, Pragmatism, London-New York: Longman, 1907. Reprinted London, Routledge
1992, p.109.
7
Charles Sanders Peirce, How to Make our Ideas Clear, in: Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss
(Eds.), Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1934, 5.402.
8
William James, Pragmatism, cit., p.39.
The Ghost ofPragmatism. Some Historical Remarks ontheDebate ontheFoundations 169
Of great impact on the foundations of probability is the tenet that prediction is

the main task of knowledge. If knowledge serves the purpose of helping man face
the future, good predictions are needed. In this spirit, the criterion for evaluating the
goodness of predictions is given by their success. No less relevant is the crucial role
assigned by pragmatists to belief, which they endow with a dispositional meaning
in the sense of preparedness to act.9 The hypothetical aspect characterizing the
view of belief as a mode of expectation, or a looking forward to action is a funda-
mental ingredient of the pragmatist outlook. Among others, it is forcefully stressed
by the Italian pragmatist Giovanni Vailati, who borrows from Julius Pikler the tenet
that I believe this is tantamount to saying if it were my will I could obtain certain
presentations. [...] the would be of presentation is the is of objective existence.
Actual objective existence is conditional subjective existence; it is presentableness
through will.10
Also worth mentioning is Peirces view of logic as the ethic of thought,11 tell-
ing us how we should reason to attain our ends, including knowledge and truth.
eirce astheForerunner ofthePropensity Theory

P
ofProbability
With few exceptions, notably those of Peirce and Clarence Irving Lewis, pragmatist
philosophers did not pay much attention to probability. Peirce dealt extensively with
probability, induction and statistics and influenced in many ways the debate on the
foundations of probability, which abounds with references to his work.
Ian Hacking devotes the last chapter of his book The Taming of Chance to Peirce,
whom he describes as a man whose professional life as a measurer was immersed
in the technologies of chance and probability, and who, in consequence of that daily
experience, finally surrendered to the idea that there is absolute chance in the
universe.12 In fact, Peirce denied determinism, and because he regarded the world
as probabilistic he was a strong supporter of the statistical method: so much so, that
statistics historian Theodore Porter writes that Peirce wished to make statistical
method central to scientific reasoning.13 In connection with the interpretation of
9
In this connection, Fish (among others) stresses the influence exercised upon pragmatists by
Alexander Bain. See Max H. Fish, Alexander Bain and the Genealogy of Pragmatism, in:
Kenneth Laine Ketner and Christian J. W. Kloesel (Eds.), Peirce, Semeiotic, and Pragmatism.
Papers by Max H.Fish, cit., pp.79109.
10
Julius Pikler, The Psychology of Belief in Objective Existence, London-Edinburgh: Williams and
Norgate, 1890, p.54. Quoted by Giovanni Vailati, Le origini e lidea fondamentale del pragma-
tismo, in: Rivista di psicologia applicata V (1909); reprinted in: Scritti, Ed. Mario Quaranta, Sala
Bolognese: Forni Editore, 1987, volume I, p.116128.
11
See Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, cit., 1.280, 1.444, 5.85, 5.133, 5.533, 8.191.
12
Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, p.215.
13
Theodor Porter, The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 18201900, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1986, p.221.
170 M.C. Galavotti
probability, Peirce anticipated the so-called propensity theory. After claiming that
probability is a statistical fact,14 Peirce observes that it never properly refers
immediately to a single event, but exclusively to the happening of a given kind of
event on any occasion of a given kind, but it does not simply refer to past occur-
rences, being rather the ratio that there would be in the long run.15 So defined,
probability is a dispositional concept. As Peirce puts it, the assertion the probabil-
ity that if a die be thrown [...] it will turn up a number divisible by three, is one-
third means that the die has a certain would-be; and to say that a die has a
would-be is to say that it has a property, quite analogous to any habit that a man
might have. Only the would-be of a die is presumably much simpler and more
definite than the mans habit.16 It is precisely because of the stress he puts on the
would-be, which attaches a dispositional character to probability, that Peirce is
reputed to be the forerunner of the propensity theory of probability.
It was Karl Popper who in the late 1950s put forward the propensity view to the
purpose of interpreting single case probability attributions made in Quantum
Mechanics.17 Later on, Popper generalized the theory in view of a much wider
application, from micro-physics to human action.18 A point of divergence between
Peirces and Poppers viewpoints is that while Peirce regards the dispositional prop-
erty of probability as pertaining to objects (such as the die of the above example),
Popper ascribes propensity to the set of conditions surrounding the occurrence of
events, or chance setup. Accordingly, probability is a property of an experimental
arrangement liable to produce, if we repeat the experiment very often, a sequence
with frequencies which depend upon this particular experimental arrangement.
These virtual frequencies [...] characterize the disposition, or the propensity, of the
experimental arrangement to give rise to certain characteristic frequencies when the
experiment is often repeated.19 Popper regards propensities as theoretical proper-
ties pertaining to physical objects, analogous to Newtonian forces. Like all other
scientific statements, statements about propensities are hypotheses which have to be
testable. For that reason, Popper draws a distinction between probability statements,
which express propensities and refer to frequencies in virtual sequences of experi-
ments, and statistical statements, which refer to relative frequencies observed in
actual sequences of experiments, and clarifies that statistical statements are used to
test probability (propensity) statements.
14
Charles Sanders Peirce, Notes on the Doctrine of Chances (1910), in: Collected Papers, cit.,
8.4.
15
Ibidem, 2.661.
16
Ibidem, 2.664.
17
See Karl Popper, The Propensity Interpretation of the Calculus of Probability, and the Quantum
Theory, in: Stephen Krner (Ed.), Observation and Interpretation, London: Butterworths, 1957,
pp.6570; and The Propensity Interpretation of Probability, in British Journal for the Philosophy
of Science, 10, 1959, pp.2542.
18
See Karl Popper, A World of Propensities, Bristol: Thoemmes, 1990.
19
Karl Popper, The Propensity Interpretation of Probability, cit., p.67.
After Popper the propensity theory became quite popular among philosophers of
science, in spite of a number of problems disclosed by the debate on the topic.20 For
one thing, the dispositional character of the notion of propensity makes it barely
applicable to inverse probabilities, and therefore to Bayess rule. Furthermore, the
propensity theory requires completeness of information in connection with the
description of the chance setup, but completeness of information is hardly ever ful-
filled in practice.
Ernest Nagels Truth-Frequency Interpretation ofProbability
In a number of papers published in the 1930s, Nagel put forward a truth-frequency

theory of probability that is very much in tune with pragmatism. According to his
theory, probability refers to an inference from one set of propositions to another, and
denotes the relative frequency of the effectiveness of such an inference. In order to
define probability, Nagel borrows from Peirce the notion of leading principle taken
as a proposition formulating a class of inferences whose inferential value depends
upon the frequency with which it leads as a matter of fact to true conclusions from
true premisses.21 Probability represents a theoretical notion, and probability state-
ments are tested by comparing their consequences with observed frequencies.
A distinctive trait of Nagels interpretation is the conviction that questions of
probability, like questions of relevance, always involve material or factual, in addi-
tion to purely logical, considerations.22 After praising Peirce for his insistence
upon the connection between formal principles of inference, and the existential
traits which are explored with their help, Nagel maintains that the truth fre-
quency theory of probability can not be only a logical theory. If its interpretation of
the nature of probability is sound, the effectiveness of probable arguments should be
grounded in certain generic traits of existence. The theory has metaphysical bear-
ings as well as a logical function. It points to the existence of a certain type of natu-
ral structure and contributes toward the understanding of the objective nature of
universals.23 Claims like this coexist in Nagels writings with the view that the
term probability is not univocal, for it has different meanings in different
contexts.24 It is noteworthy that the unifying character of the different meanings of
probability derives from the fact that it represents a measure of success of a certain
type of inference. However, the classes of propositions to which it applies vary
20
This is argued in some detail by Donald Gillies, Philosophical Theories of Probability, London:
Routledge, 2000, where more on the propensity theory of probability can be found.
21
Ernest Nagel, A Frequency Theory of Probability, in: The Journal of Philosophy, 30, 1933,
p.537.
22
Ibidem, p.541.
23
Ibidem, p.551.
24
Ernest Nagel, The Meaning of Probability, in: Journal of the American Statistical Association,
31, 1936, p.26.
172 M.C. Galavotti
according to the context in which they occur. The same holds for confirmation,
which represents one of the contexts to which probability applies. As a matter of
fact, Nagel believes that in connection with the confirmation of general hypotheses
the truth-frequency interpretation marks a decisive advantage over other theories,
including those upheld by Reichenbach and Carnap. As to Reichenbach, Nagel
maintains that his approach misses the point of what scientists mean when they
speak of the probability of theories. In his words: I do not persuade myself that
Professor Reichenbachs interpretation of the probability of a theory formulates
what physicists do with it or even think about it for the most part.25 A similar atti-
tude inspires Nagels claim that there are [...] some obvious respects in which
Carnaps proposed rational reconstruction of induction deviates from actual induc-
tive practice.26
Nagel is concerned to ensure wide applicability to the notion of probability, and
his plea for pluralism should be seen in the light of such concern. In that spirit he
objects to the frequentism of both von Mises and Reichenbach that probabilities are
not obtained only through the observation of frequencies, but can also be obtained
otherwise; for instance a probability value may be deduced from some general
theory already established, instead of being obtained from observation of a statisti-
cal series.27 When evaluating probabilities, researchers should never lose sight of
scientific practice, including the conditions and assumptions under which experi-
ments are performed, and the kind and amount of evidence available. As stated in
Nagels monograph Principles of the Theory of Probability written for the
International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, the amount and kind of evidence
required for probability statements depend on their interconnections with the body
of our knowledge and theories at a given time.28
Interestingly, towards the end of that monograph Nagel tackles the problem of
induction, and purports a pragmatic justification based on the self-corrective char-
acter of the method, praising Peirce for having emphasized it. In Nagels words:
the problem of induction which the present writer recognizes as genuine is the
formulation of the general features of scientific method of the method which, in
short, leads to a proportionately greater number of successful terminations of
inquiry than the number which other methods may have to their credit.29
25
Ernest Nagel, Probability and the Theory of Knowledge, in: Philosophy of Science, 6, 1939,
p. 230. In the same paper the reader will find a detailed criticism of Reichenbachs theory of
probability.
26
Ernest Nagel, Carnaps Theory of Induction, in: Paul Arthur Schilpp (Ed.), The Philosophy of
Rudolf Carnap, La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1963, p.789.
27
Ernest Nagel, The Meaning of Probability, cit., p.21.
28
Ernest Nagel, Principles of the Theory of Probability, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1939, p.59.
29
Ibidem, p.73.
ans Reichenbach BetweenLogical Empiricism

H
andPragmatism
A most active representative of logical empiricism and a member of the Berlin

Society for empirical philosophy, Reichenbach was so deeply influenced by prag-
matism as to deem his own perspective, as expounded in Experience and Prediction,
a form of pragmatism. Peirces thought, which he approached around 19281929 on
Sidney Hooks suggestion,30 was particularly influential as testified by a number of
quotations in Reichenbachs writings.
First of all, pragmatism imprints the theory of meaning developed by Reichenbach,
who is equally critical of the position of the Viennese school aiming to show that
every proposition has a verifiable meaning,31 and of the notion of partial definabil-
ity put forward by Carnap in Testability and Meaning, as such theories overlook
the probabilistic aspect characterising scientific (as well as everyday) language.
Reichenbach regarded probability, not truth, as apt to provide the toolbox for a con-
ception of scientific knowledge in tune with scientific practice. With this conviction,
he developed a probabilistic theory of meaning which substituted probability rela-
tions for equivalence relations and conceived of verification as a procedure in terms
of probabilities rather than in terms of truth. Instead of defining the meaning of
a sentence [...] it merely laid down two principles of meaning; the first stating the
conditions under which a sentence has meaning; the second the conditions under
which two sentences have the same meaning.32 Reichenbach ties the meaning of
scientific statements to their predictive character, which is a condition for their test-
ability, and states the fundamental principle underpinning his approach as follows:
there is as much meaning in a proposition as can be utilized for action.33 The
similarity with the pragmatists theory of meaning is evident.
An important component of Reichenbachs theory of meaning is the Principle
of retrogression. This principle makes it possible to ascertain the relation between
direct and indirect propositions by allowing the meaning of an indirect proposition
to be obtained from the propositions about observables from which it was inferred,
and to interpret such inference as an equivalence, in the sense that the meaning of
the conclusion of the inference is the same as the meaning of the premisses of the
inference.34 Reichenbach calls attention to the similarity between his own view-
point and that of the pragmatists: pragmatists he writes have, at an earlier time,
expressed the same idea by calling observation propositions the cash value of the
30
Reported it in Hooks memoir appearing in Maria Reichenbach and Robert S. Cohen (Eds.),
Hans Reichenbach, Selected Writings, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978, volume I, pp.3235.
31
Hans Reichenbach, Logicist Empiricism in Germany and the Present State of Its Problems, in:
Journal of Philosophy 6, 1936, p.143.
32
Hans Reichenbach, The Verifiability Theory of Meaning, in: Proceedings of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, 53, 1951, p.47.
33
Hans Reichenbach, Experience and Prediction, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 80.
Italics original.
34
Ibidem, p.49.
174 M.C. Galavotti
indirect proposition.35 After acknowledging his debt to pragmatists with regard to

the notion of meaning, Reichenbach claims to proceed one step further in the same
direction, by bringing probability into the theory of meaning and more broadly into
the theory of knowledge. In his words: our conception may perhaps be taken as a
further development of ideas which originated in pragmatism. Pragmatists had the
merit of taking an anti-metaphysical stand, further developments were made possi-
ble by the progress of logical instruments.36
Also in tune with pragmatism is the centrality ascribed to prediction. Reichenbach
goes as far as maintaining that the theory of knowledge is a theory of prediction,37
and given that statements about the future are probabilistic in character, the theory
of knowledge requires the theory of probability, namely a theory of propositions
about the future [...] in which the two truth-values, true and false, are replaced by a
continuous scale of probabilities.38 Within Reichenbachs perspective probability
theory rests on the frequency interpretation, which is therefore the cornerstone of
his whole epistemology. Frequency plays a twofold role in connection with proba-
bility. On the one hand, a frequency is used as a substantiation for the probability
statement; it furnishes the reason why we believe in the statement, on the other a
frequency is used for the verification of the probability statement; that is to say, it is
to furnish the meaning of the statement.39
The version of frequentism elaborated by Reichenbach is more flexible than that
of Richard von Mises, and is devised for a wider range of applications.40 A major
difference with von Mises is that Reichenbach develops a theory of induction
revolving around the method of concatenated inductions, whose fundamental fea-
ture is that of being self-corrective. It is noteworthy that Reichenbach praises Peirce
for emphasizing this crucial character of the inductive procedure, but is not satisfied
with his way of putting the matter. A footnote in The Theory of Probability contains
the following claim: The self-corrective nature of induction was emphasized by
C.S.Peirce, who mentioned the constant tendency of the inductive process to cor-
rect itself. However, in Collected Papers (1878; Cambridge, Mass., 1932) Vol. II,
p.456; see also ibid., p.501, and Vol. V, p.90 I have not been able to find a passage
in Peirces work where he clearly states a reason for his contention. The fact that he
constantly connects the problem of induction with that of a fair sample, that is, with
the use of random sequences, seems to indicate that he bases the self-corrective
35
Ibidem. See also footnote 10, where Peirce is quoted and James, Dewey and Schiller are
mentioned.
36
Ibidem, p.69.
37
Hans Reichenbach, La philosophie scientifique: une esquisse de ses traits principaux, in:
Travaux du IX Congrs International de Philosophie, Paris: Hermann, 1937, p. 89 (my
translation).
38
Hans Reichenbach, Logicist Empiricism in Germany and the Present State of Its Problems,
cit., p.159.
39
Hans Reichenbach, Experience and Prediction, cit., p.339. Italics original.
40
For a comparison between Reichenbachs and von Misess versions of frequentism, see Maria
Carla Galavotti, On Hans Reichenbachs Inductivism, in: Synthse, 181, 2011, pp.95111.
nature of induction on Bernoullis theorem. [...] Such an argument is invalid, of

course, since the justification of induction must be given before the use of probabil-
ity considerations.41
Indeed, the justification of induction is for Reichenbach of paramount impor-
tance because the theory of probability involves the problem of induction, and a
solution of the problem of probability cannot be given without an answer to the
question of induction.42 In order to justify induction he proposed a genuinely prag-
matical argument that bears some similarity with the one given by Nagel.
Reichenbachs argument revolves around the idea that the key to justify induction
lies with its success, moving from the assertion that inductive inference cannot be
dispensed with because we need it for the purpose of action to argue that such a
procedure gives the best possible guide to the future.43 Since probability statements
serve the purpose of guiding decisions leading to actions, they will be justified if it
can be shown that they provide the best possible guide to action. It turns out that the
frequency interpretation is amenable to this kind of pragmatical justification because
it satisfies what Reichenbach calls the principle of the greatest number of suc-
cesses, namely it leads us to act in the most successful way possible. Induction is
therefore justified in view of the attainment of what is taken to be its purpose,
namely the capacity to make good predictions.
This kind of solution to the problem of induction is in tune with that propounded
by another logical empiricist and a member of the Vienna Circle, namely Herbert
Feigl, who draws a distinction between two kinds of justifying procedures, called
vindication and validation. The validation procedure is commonly used in
deductive logic, and consists in appealing to more and more general standards until
the fundamental principles of a theory are reached. The fundamental principles
themselves cannot be validated in the same way, but need to be vindicated by means
of pragmatic considerations, typically based on the success obtained in view of the
achievement of a certain goal. Given that the purpose of induction is the acquisition
of new knowledge by formulating good predictions, Feigl proposes to regard an
inductive method as vindicated if it can be shown that it allows for successful pre-
dictions about the future.44
41
Hans Reichenbach, The Theory of Probability, Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1949, 2nd edition 1971, p.430, footnote 1. The book is the English (revised and expanded)
version of Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre, Leyden: Sijthoff, 1935.
42
Hans Reichenbach, Experience and Prediction, cit., p.339.
43
Ibidem, p.346.
44
See Herbert Feigl, De principiis non disputandum ...? On the Meaning and the Limits of
Justification, in: Max Black (Ed.), Philosophical Analysis, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
pp.119156. Reprinted in: Herbert Feigl, Inquiries and Provocations: Selected Writings 1929
1974, Ed. Robert S.Cohen, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980, pp.237268.
176 M.C. Galavotti
Clarence Irving Lewiss Influence onCarnap
Lewis deals with probability in Chapter X of An Analysis of Knowledge and

Valuation. After an extensive discussion of logicism and frequentism with reference
to the writings of Keynes and Reichenbach, he comes to the conclusion that an
account of probability should be possible which identifies a tacit community of
conception underlying both these theories and perhaps more fundamental and
important than their differences: an account, namely, which should take as its point
of departure the thesis that a probability is a valid estimate of a frequency from the
given data.45 For Lewis, probabilities are expressed by logical relations ruled by a
priori principles, but the reliability of probability estimates stands on empirical
grounds because it depends on the data taken into account in a given situation. As
Lewis puts it: since the validity of an estimate depends only on the data and the
rules, this conception belongs to the general class of a priori theories.46 That said,
he emphasizes the importance of taking into account the best possible reference
class to assure the highest degree of reliability to probability estimates: the prag-
matic problem of arriving at a well-judged determination, is that of so choosing the
reference class as to give a determination having the highest possible degree of
reliability.47 Claims like this show that while embracing a logical view of probabil-
ity Lewis was concerned about scientific practice and aware of the importance of
contextual factors.
Lewiss approach had an influence on Carnap, who in Logical Foundations of
Probability claims to be especially gratified by the great similarity between the
conceptions of the nature of the logical concept of probability which were devel-
oped independently by Lewis and himself.48 The ideas contained in Lewiss pas-
sages mentioned above are further developed in Carnaps writings, where they play
a pivotal role. Without going into the details of Carnaps perspective, let us just
notice that in Logical Foundations of Probability logical probability, which is also
called probability1, is both a method of confirmation and a method of estimating
relative frequencies, or what Carnap calls probability2. The dual role assigned to
probability1 forges a bridge between the two notions of probability, accomplishing
that very synthesis envisaged by Lewis.
A further analogy regards the conviction shared by Lewis and Carnap that prob-
ability estimates result from an a priori and an empirical component: the first
depending on logical rules and the other provided by experience. The combination
of empiricism and apriorism characterizing Carnaps position is grounded in the
belief that experiential data can be described by observation sentences which
45
Clarence Irving Lewis, An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, La Salle, Ill.: Open Court,
1946, 2nd edition 1950, p.291.
46
Ibidem, p.304.
47
Ibidem, p.314.
48
Rudolf Carnap, Logical Foundations of Probability, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950,
p. ix. Italics original.
qualify as true or false. Richard Jeffrey describes such components of Carnaps

inductive logic as follows: one side is a purely rational, logical element: a prior
probability assignment M characterizing the state of mind of a newborn Laplacean
intelligence [...] The other side is a purely empirical element, a comprehensive
report D of all experience to date. Together, these determine the experienced
Laplacean intelligences judgmental probabilities, obtained by conditioning the
ignorance prior M by the Protokollsatz D.49 Jeffrey rejects the idea that the
empirical and rational components of our judgments can be separated and deems an
empiricist myth the conviction, shared by Carnap and Lewis, that experience can be
described by observation sentences that can be true or false. By contrast, Jeffrey
maintains that probability evaluation need not be based on certainties, but it can be
probabilities all the way down, to the roots,50 and regards probability judgments as
requiring a congeries of skills in addition to empirical evidence, which in many situ-
ations is itself uncertain. In a genuinely pragmatist vein, for Jeffrey the estimation
of probabilities represents a deeply context-dependent activity, that is much too
complex to be reducible to the mixture of logical and empirical elements envisaged
by Carnap, but needs to be accounted for in a more flexible way, closer to Bruno de
Finettis subjectivism.
A number of authors detect a pragmatic component of Carnaps thought in rela-
tion to the link established between meaning and testing procedures in Testability
and Meaning, and his Principle of Tolerance.51 Furthermore, A.W.Carus argues
that the young Carnap was influenced by Hans Vaihinger, as testified by the prepara-
tory sketch of the Aufbau titled From the Chaos to Reality (1922).52 As a matter
of fact, in Meaning and Necessity Carnap acknowledges his debt to Lewiss method
of analysis, especially in connection with the notions of intentionality and syn-
onymicity. Carnap praises the pragmatical viewpoint for its fruitfulness in the last
paragraph of Meaning and Necessity, where he maintains that there is an urgent
need for a system of theoretical pragmatics, not only for psychology and linguistics,
but also for analytic philosophy. Since pure semantics is sufficiently developed, the
time seems ripe for attempts at constructing tentative outlines of pragmatical
systems.53 This claim reappears in Carnaps reply to Morriss paper Pragmatism
and Logical Empiricism in the Schilpp volume.54
49
Richard C.Jeffrey, Introduction: Radical Probabilism, in: Probability and the Art of Judgment,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp.23.
50
Ibidem, p.11.
51
See Alan Richardson, Carnapian Pragmatism, in: Michael Friedman and Richard Creath
(Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Carnap, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007,
pp.295315; and Cornelis van de Waal, On Pragmatism, Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 2005.
52
See A.W. Carus, Carnap and Twentieth-Century Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2007.
53
Rudolf Carnap, Meaning and Necessity, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947, 2nd edition
1956, p.250.
54
Rudolf Carnap, Replies, in: Paul Arthur Schilpp (Ed.), The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, La
Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1963, pp. 8798. For an insightful discussion of the exchange between
Carnap and Morris and a comparison of their views on pragmatics see Thomas Uebel, Pragmatics
178 M.C. Galavotti
Also endowed with a pragmatical flavour is the distinction between internal

and external questions put forward in Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology
(1950). The same holds for Carnaps admission, to be found in his late writings on
inductive logic, that the choice of a -function does not depend on purely logical
considerations, but on contextual elements such as beliefs, actions, possible losses,
and the like.55 Carnaps writings of the 1960s abound with expressions and state-
ments that seemingly bring him close to pragmatism, but it should be kept in mind
that Carnap retained a rationalistic view of the reasonableness of inductive meth-
ods, as opposed to the successfulness of the [] credence function of a given
person in the real world. Success depends upon the particular contingent circum-
stances, rationality does not.56 In the same vein, after having endorsed Reichenbachs
pragmatic justification of induction during the 1940s and 1950s, Carnap subse-
quently turned to a justification grounded on the notion of inductive intuition.57 This
move served the purpose of keeping the justification of induction entirely aprioris-
tic, as opposed to arguments based on specific past experiences, e.g., the success of
bets which were based on the proposed axioms.58 It can be concluded that in spite
of having accepted the inclusion of pragmatic elements into inductive logic, Carnap
maintained a deeply rationalistic attitude and never went so far as to embrace a
genuinely pragmatist perspective.
The Pragmatism ofFrank Ramsey and Bruno de Finetti
Without a doubt, the natural offspring of pragmatism in the debate on the founda-
tions of probability is the subjective interpretation, which took shape in the late
1920s with the work of Frank Ramsey and Bruno de Finetti. Subjectivists regard
probability as a quantitative expression of the degree of belief in the occurrence of
an event entertained by a person in a state of uncertainty. Probability is taken as a
primitive notion endowed with a psychological foundation, which needs an opera-
tive definition that specifies a way of measuring it. A classical and well known
method of measuring probability is in terms of bets, but this is by no means the only
option. In fact Ramsey adopted a definition in terms of preferences to be deter-
mined on the basis of the expectation of obtaining certain goods, not necessarily of
in Carnap and Morris and the Bipartite Metatheory Conception, in: Erkenntnis, 78, 2013,
pp.523546.
55
See Rudolf Carnap, Inductive Logic and Rational Decisions and A Basic System of Inductive
Logic, Part 1, in: Rudolf Carnap and Richard C.Jeffrey (Eds.), Studies in Inductive Logic and
Probability, volume I, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.
56
Rudolf Carnap, The Aim of Inductive Logic, in: Ernest Nagel, Patrick Suppes and Alfred
Tarski (Eds.), Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1962, pp.303318.
57
See Rudolf Carnap, Inductive Logic and Inductive Intuition, in: Imre Lakatos (Ed.), The
Problem of Inductive Logic, Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1968, pp.257267.
58
Rudolf Carnap, Replies, cit., p.978.
a monetary kind, and de Finetti recommended penalty methods, like scoring rules
of the kind proposed by Brier, as an alternative to the betting scheme.59 After Ramsey
showed that coherent degrees of belief satisfy the laws of probability, coherence
became the cornerstone of subjective interpretation, and the only requirement of
rationality to be imposed on degrees of belief. A major consequence of the fact that
there is no further demand of rationality to be met besides coherence is that dis-
agreement is admissible; in other words it is admitted that on the basis of the same
body of information two people entertain different degrees of belief in the same
hypothesis.
Ramsey is often deemed a pragmatist in view of his conception of truth, theories,
scientific laws, and knowledge in general. Philip Wiener mentions Ramsey among
the supporters of a relativistic or contextualistic conception of reality and values in
which traditional eternal ideas ofspace, time, causation, axiomatic truth, intrinsic
and eternal values are all viewed as relative to varying psychological, social, histori-
cal, or logical contexts.60 Thayer deems Ramsey a pragmatist in connection with
his conception of laws and theories, and calls attention to his pragmatic criterion of
the meaning of a sentence.61 Ramsey himself in Facts and Propositions observes:
the essence of pragmatism I take to be this, the meaning of a sentence is to be
defined by reference to the actions to which asserting it would lead, or, more vaguely
still, by its possible causes and effects.62 The similarity with the pragmatist theory
of meaning is clear, and indeed a number of quotations of Peirce and James in
Ramseys writings are evidence of the deep influence pragmatism exercised on him.
Such an influence is not limited to the notion of meaning, but extends to Ramseys
theory of probability and more generally to his epistemology, which is deeply
probabilistic.
The gist of Ramseys philosophy and the overall trait of his pragmatism is the
centrality ascribed to man seen as an agent acting in the world, together with the
related idea that human action is guided by belief. This brings to the fore the notion
of belief, which as we saw is the essential ingredient of Ramseys conception of
probability. Ramseys justification of induction is genuinely pragmatic, being based
on the claim that induction is a useful habit which it is reasonable to adopt because
mankind would be helpless without it. As Ramsey puts it: this is a kind of pragma-
tism: we judge mental habits by whether they work, i.e. whether the opinions they
lead to are for the most part true, or more often true than those which alternative
59
For more on this see Philip A. Dawid and Maria Carla Galavotti, De Finettis Subjectivism,
Objective Probability, and the Empirical Validation of Probability Assessments, in: Maria Carla
Galavotti (Ed.), Bruno de Finetti, Radical Probabilist, London: College Publications, 2009,
pp.97114.
60
Philip Wiener, Pragmatism, cit., p.553.
61
Horace Standish Thayer, Meaning and Action. A Critical History of Pragmatism, Indianapolis-
New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1968, p.311.
62
Frank Plumpton Ramsey, Philosophical Papers, Ed. Hugh Mellor, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990, p.51.
180 M.C. Galavotti
habits would lead to.63 This passage belongs to the final section of Truth and
Probability, which Ramsey claims is almost entirely based on the writings of
C.S.Peirce.64
Other points of agreement between Ramsey and Peirce concern the view of logic
as self-control,65 and that of truth as what everyone will believe in the end.66
Such a conception of truth bears directly on the idea that those theories which gain
universal assent in the long run are accepted by the scientific community and
taken as true.67 A strictly related notion is that of true scientific system, which
Ramsey defines as the system to which the opinion of everyone, grounded on exper-
imental evidence, will eventually converge. A distinctive pragmatical flavour also
characterizes the notions of causality and scientific laws, which Ramsey regards as
rules for judging that form a system with which the speaker meets the future.68
The other starter of modern subjectivism, namely Bruno de Finetti, was also
strongly influenced by pragmatism, and deeply admired the mathematician and phi-
losopher Giovanni Vailati, a prominent representative of Italian pragmatism. In de
Finettis vivid prose: I had, by and large, adopted the mode of thinking advocated
by authors like Vailati and Calderoni [] it was precisely this form of reasoning
which, in successive waves, from Galileo to Einstein, from Heisenberg to Born,
freed physics and with it the whole of science and human thought from those
superstructures of absurd metaphysical dross which had condemned it to an endless
round of quibbling about pretentious vacuities.69 Aversion to metaphysics and con-
cern for the widest possible applicability of probability are the hallmarks of de
Finettis philosophy of probability, that Jeffrey labelled radical probabilism.70 It
amounts to a deeply probabilistic view of science and knowledge in general, revolv-
ing around the idea that the absolute truth does not exist71 and the best one can
attain is good forecasting. The proper tool for good forecasting is probability, and
more specifically the subjective theory of probability, which regards forecast as the
product of the evaluating agents experience combined with the available empirical
information.
63
Ibidem, p.93.
64
Ibidem, p.90.
65
Frank Plumpton Ramsey, Notes of Philosophy, Probability and Mathematics, Ed. Maria Carla
Galavotti, Naples: Bibliopolis, 1990, p.227.
66
Frank Plumpton Ramsey, Philosophical Papers, cit., p.161.
67
Ibidem.
68
Ibidem, p.149. For more on Ramseys pragmatism see Maria Carla Galavotti, New Prospects
for Pragmatism: Ramseys Constructivism, in: Maria Carla Galavotti, Dennis Dieks, Wenceslao
J.Gonzalez, Stephan Hartmann, Thomas Uebel and Marcel Weber (Eds.), New Directions in the
Philosophy of Science, Dordrecht: Springer, 2014, pp.645656.
69
Bruno de Finetti, Teoria delle probabilit, Turin: Einaudi, 1970, English edition Theory of
Probability, NewYork: Wiley, 1975, p.41.
70
See Richard C.Jeffrey, De Finettis Radical Probabilism, in: Bruno de Finetti, Probabilit e
induzione Induction and Probability, Eds. Paola Monari and Daniela Cocchi, Bologna: CLUEB,
1992, pp.263275.
71
Bruno de Finetti, Probabilismo, in: Logos, 1931, pp.370, English version Probabilism, in:
Erkenntnis, 31, 1989, p.170. For more on de Finettis subjectivism see volume 31 of Erkenntnis,
nos. 34, entirely devoted to Bruno de Finettis Philosophy of Probability.
De Finetti is often mentioned in connection with his representation theorem.

This result, which he found in the late 1920s, shows that the adoption of Bayess
method in conjunction with exchangeability leads to a convergence between degrees
of belief and frequencies. By building a bridge between information on frequencies
and probability taken as degree of belief, the representation theorem made subjec-
tive probability applicable to statistical inference, and gave rise to the inferential
methodology underlying so-called neo-Bayesianism. De Finetti attaches a prag-
matic import to the representation theorem, claiming that it answers the problem of
induction because it justifies why we are also intuitively inclined to expect that
frequency observed in the future will be close to frequency observed the past.72
This argument is obviously pragmatical, based as it is on the role of induction,
namely to guide inductive reasoning and behaviour in a coherent way.
To sum up, it can be said that de Finettis philosophy of probability is altogether
imbued with pragmatist ideas. His view that scientific knowledge is a product of
human activity, ruled by probability rather than truth, and his conviction that the
main purpose of science is to make good predictions are obviously in tune with
pragmatism, and so is the tenet that the goodness of inductive inferences is to be
judged on the basis of their success. The same holds for the dynamic character
ascribed to the process of knowledge acquisition, as reflected by the adoption of
Bayess rule as the necessary and sufficient foundation of all ampliative inferences.
Moreover, de Finettis subjectivism is intrinsically pluralistic, as it admits that dif-
ferent probability evaluations are made on the basis of the same body of evidence.
This follows from the fact that probability assessments are made to depend on
objective information, such as frequencies or symmetries, as well as subjective ele-
ments, such as expertise in a particular field.
A few remarks on a major difference between objective and subjective approaches
to probability do not seem out of place at this point. Unlike upholders of objective
interpretations of probability including frequentism, propensionism and logicism,
subjectivists do not believe in true, or unknown, probabilities. As an immediate
shortcoming, subjectivists do not need to impose requirements such as reference
class homogeneity (Reichenbach) or total evidence (Carnap) on probability evalua-
tions, because for them the Bayesian method taken together with exchangeability is
enough to guarantee convergence of probabilities as evidence accumulates, and to
learn from experience faster than under independence. The crucial problem for sub-
jectivists is obviously the choice of priors, which they regard as context-dependent,
taking also in this respect a pragmatist attitude. After having adopted requirements
like reference class homogeneity and total evidence, objectivists like Reichenbach
and Carnap have to admit that such requirements cannot be met in practice, and are
therefore forced to weaken them to resort to epistemically relativized formulations.
The propensity theory does not fare much better in that connection, because as
Bruno de Finetti, Subjective or Objective Probability: is the Dispute Undecidable?, in:

72
Symposia Mathematica, 9, 1972, p. 34. For more on de Finettis philosophy of probability see
Maria Carla Galavotti, Anti-Realism in the Philosophy of Probability: Bruno de Finettis
Subjectivism, in: Erkenntnis, 31, 1989, pp.239261.
182 M.C. Galavotti
David Miller maintained propensities must be referred to the complete situation of

the universe (or the light cone) at the time,73 a requirement that is clearly much too
strong to be satisfied. In other words, the notion of objective probability, or the idea
that there are true or unknown probabilities, can only be upheld at the price of
admitting that pragmatic and contextual elements cannot be excluded from the eval-
uation of probability.
Closing Remarks
Peirce thought that pragmatism would become the dominant philosophical opinion
of the 20th Century.74 It is questionable whether his prediction has been fulfilled,
but it can hardly be denied that the philosophy of science has become progressively
more open towards pragmatism since its beginnings in the early twentieth century.
Equally undisputable is the influence of pragmatism on logical empiricism, although
the extent of such an influence has yet to be explored in full.
A tremendous impulse to philosophy of sciences progressive opening towards
pragmatism from the 1950s onwards came from Patrick Suppes, upholder of a
probabilistic empiricism in which important concepts of science and philosophy
do not receive a univocal definition, being instead assigned a specific meaning
depending on the context. In that perspective, the ideal of logical reconstruction
pursued by logical empiricists is replaced by the search for context-aware represen-
tations of scientific phenomena and context-sensitive inferential methods, leading to
a pluralistic and dynamic view of scientific knowledge.75 Many other authors
besides Suppes have moved in a similar direction, suffice it to think of Bas van
Fraassens pragmatics of explanation, and Richard Jeffreys probability kinematics,
to mention just a couple of names.
Insofar as the foundations of probability are concerned, the preceding discussion
leads to a twofold conclusion, partly historical and partly conceptual. From a his-
torical point of view, there is no doubt that pragmatism had a strong impact on the
debate that took place in the first decades of the last century. From a conceptual
point of view, the preceding remarks suggest that all interpretations of probability
have to make an appeal to pragmatic considerations in some way or other.
73
David Miller, Critical Rationalism. A Restatement and Defence, Chicago: Open Court, 1994,
p.183.
74
Quoted from Charles Morris, Pragmatism and Logical Empiricism, in: Paul Arthur Schilpp
(Ed.), The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, cit., pp.8798.
75
See Patrick Suppes, Representation and Invariance of Scientific Structures, Stanford: CSLI,
2002.
Part II
General Part
Eino Kaila andTheVienna Circle
(21st Vienna Circle Lecture)
IlkkaNiiniluoto
Eino Kaila (18901958) was the leading Finnish philosopher in the first half of the
twentieth century. During the time he sought personal contact with Hans Reichenbach,
Moritz Schlick, and Rudolf Carnap, he had already in 1926 formulated his own posi-
tion of logical empiricism. For Kaila, philosophy is the alpha and omega of sci-
ence: philosophical reflection has to be based upon the results of the best current
work in physics, biology, and psychology. Even though Kaila was a consistent critic
of metaphysics, who admired exact methods in philosophy, his philosophical passion
to solve the riddle of reality differed from the program of logical positivists and later
analytic philosophers of language. As a result, his encounter with the Vienna Circle
in his visits in 1929, 1932, and 1934 was dramatic, even stormy.
Kailas Dramatic Personality
Eino Kaila, working in Finland as Professor of Philosophy at the University of

Turku, wrote on September 28, 1928 a letter to Hochgeehrter Herr Kollege
Professor Moritz Schlick in Vienna, complaining that he lives almost completely
intellectually isolated in his remote homeland.1
Six years later the tone has changed: returning from his third visit to Vienna, in
an interview in the journal Uusi Suomi on June 20, 1934, Kaila praised Vienna
which has been able to keep its position as a leading cultural centre and a pilgrimage
Based on the 21st Vienna Circle Lecture, given at the University of Vienna, November 7, 2013. I
wish to thank Juha Manninen and Friedrich Stadler for illuminating discussions about Kaila and
the Vienna Circle during many years.
I. Niiniluoto (*)
Department of Philosophy, History, Culture, and Art Studies, University of Helsinki,
Unioninkatu 40 A, P.O. Box 24, FI-00014 Helsinki, Finland
e-mail: ilkka.niiniluoto@helsinki.fi

186 I. Niiniluoto
of foreign scientists and artists. And he proudly added that Finnish scholars need not
be merely receptive but can compete on equal basis with the highest achievements
in the world.2
To understand what had happened in the meantime between 1928 and 1934,
when Kaila had direct contact with the Vienna Circle, one needs to look at his earlier
career and his persistent attempt to solve the riddle of reality by combining science
and philosophy.
Eino Kaila was born in 1890in a family with clerical traditions.3 After studying
theoretical and practical philosophy at the University of Helsinki in 19081910, he
finished his Masters degree in 1910 and doctoral dissertation in 1916. Kaila was a
dramatic personality with restless search, passionate seriousness, and complete
devotion. His artistic orientation is shown by his early work as a literary and theatre
critic and as a dramaturge of the Finnish National Theatre in 19191921. But his
scholarly ambition was even stronger: during the 1910s he searched his own posi-
tion in both main subfields of his major subject theoretical philosophy: epistemol-
ogy and psychology.
Kaila found organized religions too dogmatic, Immanuel Kants philosophy too
aprioristic, Henri Bergsons voluntarism too speculative, and Ernest Haeckels
materialistic monism too superficial. William Jamess pragmatism was at first stim-
ulating but not for long.4 Ernst Machs positivism was a more serious challenge. It
attracted Kaila who already as a teenager had a monistic vision of the world, but he
was critical about Machs rejection of theoretical entities. Kaila argued in 1913 that
atoms are real, even though they are not things. In papers and lectures in 1919
1920 Kaila concluded, mainly by arguments from the psychology of perception,
that Machs phenomenological physics is mistaken: every physical thing or event
transcends the complex of sensations, and belongs to a mind-independent causal
nexus. So at the age of thirty, Kaila had reached the position known as critical
realism.5
Kailas doctoral dissertation, ber die Motivation und die Entscheidung: Eine
experimentell-psychologische Untersuchung (1916), is an experimental study of
decision making, following the approach of Oswald Klpes Wrzburg School.
Kaila defended psycho-physical parallelism against interactionists, maintaining that
physical brain processes are prior to psychological experiences. In a Finnish mono-
graph on mental life as a biological phenomenon in 1920, he sharply rejected all
forms of vitalism in biology (postulation of eln vital or entelechy). While psycho-
logical laws are special cases of physiological causation, Kaila was still unwilling
to accept mechanistic reductionism and attempted to formulate a non-reductive ver-
sion of monism.6 New support for this view came from William Khlers and Max
Wertheimers Gestalt psychology which Kaila discussed in his 1923 monograph on
the structure of mental life.7
With these merits in philosophy and experimental psychology, Eino Kaila was
appointed the first Professor of Philosophy at the new Finnish University of Turku
in 1922. He was largely a self-learned man, with enormous reading not only in
philosophy but also in many special sciences. Apart from brief visits to Paris, Berlin,
and Mnchen, he had studied only in Helsinki with Professor Arvi Grotenfelt who
Eino Kaila andTheVienna Circle 187
was a specialist in Neo-Kantian philosophy of history. Edward Westermarck, the

other professor in Helsinki, represented Anglo-Saxon evolutionary naturalism, but
his studies in ethics and sociology did not have impact on Kaila even though also
Westermarck in 1918 became Professor in Turku in the new Swedish-language uni-
versity. Kaila had in 1920 polemic exchange with Westermarcks student and friend
Rolf Lagerborg who had defended Machs phenomenalism. Kailas main academic
friend during his lonely Turku years in the 1920s was the mathematician Rolf
Nevanlinna.
Logical Empiricist Seeking Contacts
It is no wonder that Eino Kaila, as an ambitious young professor, started to seek

contacts to European philosophers by correspondence.8 Probably the first letter was
to Hans Reichenbach in Stuttgart on March 1, 1923, with questions about probabil-
ity and causality. On this topic Kaila published his first monographs in German: Der
Satz vom Ausgleich des Zufalls und das Kausalprinzip in 1925, and Die Prinzipien
der Wahrscheinlichkeitslogik in 1926. The former was influenced by Edgar Zilsels
Viennese dissertation, and the latter referred extensively to modern studies in prob-
ability by J. von Kries, Bertrand Russell, J.M. Keynes, Reichenbach, and Schlick.
In his monograph on probability logic in 1926, Kaila characterized his position
as logical empiricism (in opposition to psychologistic empiricism).9 With refer-
ences to Leibniz and Schlicks Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre (1918), he formulated a
Principle of Observability (Das Prizip der Erfahrbarkeit): every statement about
reality must imply something definite about experience which is a ground for the
truth or the probability of that statement. Besides true statements about the imme-
diately given (hic et nunc), this allows probable statements about the non-given (das
Nicht-Gegebene). The same principle is given in 1926 in a Finnish article which
distinguishes scientific and metaphysical explanations. Unlike Carnaps similar cri-
terion in Scheinprobleme in Philosophie (1928), where factual content draws a line
between meaningful and meaningless statements, Kailas criterion gives a demarca-
tion between science and metaphysics like Karl Poppers Logik der Forschung
(1934).10
Using his principle, Kaila defended a new form of probabilistic critical realism:
given the empirical data, the hypothesis about external reality (Aussenwelthypothese
AH) has a high probability, for without AH it would be a miraculous accident that
the human world picture can in fact be used to predict observable phenomena.11
Kaila combined this thesis (today known as the no miracles argument for scientific
realism) with the claim (today known as epistemic structural realism) that we know
only relations between things, while claims about the qualities of the external world
would be metaphysical. Kaila mentioned in 1926 as fellow critical realists Klpe,
Schlick, and Meinong, but considered the probabilistic formulation as his original
contribution.
188 I. Niiniluoto
The exact date of Kaila first contact with Schlick is not known, but likely it was
in the mid-twenties. Schlick informed Kaila about the new study that Rudolf Carnap
(a newcomer in Vienna since 1926) was preparing, and in 1927 Kaila contacted
Carnap about it. In 1928 Kaila was able to send Carnap two new monographs:
Probleme der Deduktion (1928), which discusses philosophy of mathematics with
references to Russell, Whitehead, Poincar, Weyl, Hilbert, Zermelo, Fraenkel,
Viktor Kraft, Ludwig Wittgensteins Tractatus, and Carnaps dissertation Der
Raum, and Beitrge zu einer synthetischen Philosophie (1928), which formulates a
philosophy of nature based on the idea of Gestalts or non-additive wholes. On June
6, 1928, Carnap replied by telling that his Der logische Aufbau der Welt is finally in
print. After Kaila had received the book by mail in August, he immediately wrote a
letter to Carnap (about analytic statements and the assignment of colors to world
points) who replied to Kailas objections on September 18.
When Kaila on September 28, 1928, sent Schlick his manuscript on Carnaps
constitution theory, with the provisional title Die Logisierung der Philosophie und
die berwindung des Gegensatzes zwischen Realismus und Phnomenalismus, he
admitted that I must make essential modifications to my position. It is this letter
where Kaila complained about his isolated situation in Finland.
In a letter to Schlick on January 13, 1929, Kaila again insisted that it is necessary
to introduce probabilistic inferences to the constitution theory. He quoted Russells
point that if inference is taken in the sense of strict deductive logic, there is no
escape from the solipsist position. This means that Carnaps system does not allow
us to speak about quanta or electrons in the sense of realistic physics. Carnap gave
his reply in a letter on January 28, 1929. Carnap admitted that he has not yet worked
on probability and induction, but he would take probabilistic inferences to be analytic
or tautological in Wittgensteins sense.12 About Russells remark he stated that
one should distinguish metaphysical and methodological solipsism, and further he
contended that physics can be interpreted without metaphysics.
In the same letter, Carnap told that he and Schlick would be glad to learn to know
Kaila personally and to discuss common problems with him. Against Kailas worry
that German philosophy is dominated by surrogates of religion, like Sein und Zeit,
Carnap assured that in Vienna (at least in certain circles) prevails an atmosphere,
where you can find a good echo for strictly scientific philosophy.
Finally, on March 21, 1929, Schlick sent Kaila an official invitation to visit
Vienna and give a lecture there in May. This was a generous gesture from Schlick,
whose Thursday seminar was by no means an open forum for all philosophers.
Kailas First Visit toVienna
Kaila arrived in Vienna for his first visit on May 10, 1929, and stayed for 5 weeks.
He gave on May 16 a lecture in Schlicks Circle on the concept of probability.13
Schlick left to the USA on May 25, and Kaila had about 20 meetings with Carnap
and Herbert Feigl.14 In later discussions, when Friedrich Waismann lectured on
probability, Kaila intervened by defending his probabilistic realism with non-closed

protocols and non-given objects. Kaila also presented to Carnap his objections
against the methodological solipsism of the Aufbau.
In a letter to Schlick on July 21, 1929, Feigl told that Kaila seemed at first accept
our position, but it was a little sad that he returned to his probability logic to
show that the problem of realism is meaningful.15 But Kailas arguments led him to
ask whether probability statements about future events are meaningful.
Kaila himself described his stormy visit to Vienna in his letter to Reichenbach in
Berlin on July 13, 1929:
I tried to defend a position like yours against Carnap. In particular, I agree with you that
probability implications which are the main content of science cannot be truth functions of
the given (in Russells and Wittgensteins sense). But I can hardly claim to have succeeded
to make any influence on the formidable dialectician Carnap.
In his reply on July 23, 1929, Reichenbach expressed his agreement. In the next let-
ter on August 8, 1929, Kaila complained that he cannot attend the first joint meeting
of the Vienna and Berlin groups in Prague in September, and added a long anticipa-
tion of the counterarguments that Carnap is likely to advance there against Kailas
and Reichenbachs position.
Perhaps Kaila belittled his impact on Carnap, as it is known from the archive in
Los Angeles that Carnap worked from November 1929 to the fall of 1930 with an
unfinished Kaila-essay with the title ber die Konstitution des
Nicht-Gegebenen.16
An interesting additional testimony can be found in a short report in Finnish on
Kailas lecture inthe Finnish journal Uusi Suomi, signed by pseudonym Cailus. The
unknown author presents himself as an eye-witness after the lecture in Caf
Arkadenhof behind the University, with some inside knowledge about Kailas invi-
tation to the Circle and his relations to Schlick and Carnap. Kailas fluent German
is praised. Kailas visit and lecture in the Circle is described in the title as an intel-
lectual tournament in Vienna. Given Kailas dramatic leanings, one can make the
probable guess that Cailus is Kaila himself.
Kailas plan of rewriting his Beitrge of 1928 was never realized,17 but in 1929
he published in Finnish a synopsis of his main views of the contemporary world
outlook. This book Nykyinen maailmanksitys outlines Kailas synthetic pro-
gramme where anti-metaphysical philosophy is the alfa and omega of science. To
seek answers about questions concerning time and space, matter, life,and soul, one
has to study and interpret the best available scientific theories (relativity theory,
atom theory, theory of evolution, and Gestalt psychology). A unifying theme in all
these fields is the existence of non-additive wholes.
In the fall of 1929, Kaila received ten copies of Carnaps Abriss der Logistik, to
be used as a textbook in the university. Later in the same year, when the Vienna
Circle published its manifesto Wissenschafliche Weltauffassung: Der Wiener Kreis
(1929), Kaila is mentioned as an author close to the circle.
Kailas debate with Carnap continued in 1930 with the publication of Der logis-
tische Neupositivismus: Eine kritische Studie in Turku.18 Kaila expressed his
190 I. Niiniluoto
a dmiration of Carnaps exact method, but complained that it leads to catastrophic

results: if problems of realism, other minds, and future are all meaningless, this is
the end of all philosophy. Kaila added a number of specific objections to the
constitution theory: quasi analysis starts epistemologically too soon, direction of a
relation and the nature of experienced time and perceptual space as already
structured manifolds cannot be determined extensionally. Further, the assumption
that higher entities are introduced by analytic definitions leaves no room for induc-
tive probability inferences which enable one to transcend or complement the given.
Kailas objections to Carnap were discussed in the Circle on December 11,
1930.19 In the next day, Carnap replied to Kaila in letter, with reference to Carl
G. Hempels two papers in Berlin. The main content of the letter is repeated in
Carnaps review of Kailas book in Erkenntnis in 1931, where Carnap admits that
there are several open problems in his system. Later logical positivists and empiri-
cists (like A.J. Ayer, Jrgen Jrgensen, and Viktor Kraft) have given credit to Kailas
monograph as the first detailed criticism of Carnaps constitution theory, but Carnap
himself did not mention Kaila in the English edition of the Aufbau in 1967.
Kailas Appointment inHelsinki
Relation to the Vienna Circle played an important role in Eino Kailas appointment
in Helsinki.20 Arvi Grotenfelt retired from the chair of Theoretical Philosophy in
Helsinki in the spring of 1929. The main applicants were Kaila and J.E.Salomaa,
who worked in the history of philosophy with neo-Kantian leanings. The referees
were Grotenfelt, and two well-known German Neo-Kantians Ernst Cassirer and
Bruno Bauch. Cassirer noted Kailas works in Gestalt theory, but with Bauch left
the choice undecided, while Grotenfelt preferred Kaila as the more original
thinker.
In the Faculty of Arts, conservative humanists expressed doubts about Kailas
interest in naturalist psychology, natural science and the unity of science, but the
vote on January 18, 1930, was 106 for Kaila. One of Kailas supporters was Rafael
Karsten, Westermarcks pupil who was Professor of Practical Philosophy. Salomaa
wrote a complaint, and Kailas reply boldly defended the new method of philoso-
phy of the Vienna Circle.21 In the faculty debate, some professors feared that the
goal of Ernst Mach Verein is communism. In the Consistorium on April 30, 1930,
Kaila was defended by Rolf Nevanlinna and the physiologist Yrj Renqvist
(Reenp), and the votes were 4017in favor of Kaila, who was appointed to the
chair on June 27, 1930.
Kailas appointment in Helsinki was a radical turn in Finnish philosophy. As the
new professor, Kaila quickly introduced logical empiricism in the curriculum, and
educated the next generation of professors of philosophy (G.H. von Wright, Oiva
Ketonen, Erik Stenius) and psychology (Kai von Fieandt, Arvo Lehtovaara).22
Kailas charismatic lectures on logic, epistemology, and psychology were followed

by students of all fields. He also became, after Grotenfelt, the President of the
Philosophical Society of Finland in 193652.
New Visits toVienna
On May 1931 Kaila met for the first time Reichenbach in Berlin and briefly Carnap
in Vienna. In the same year he published a review of Jrgensens logic in Erkenntnis.
Kailas second longer visit to Vienna was from January to June in 1932. Again
Kaila had regular contacts with Carnap who explained new ideas about metalogic
to his Finnish friend. But at this time Kaila was mainly engaged in psychological
studies in Charlotte Bhlers institute. He made experiments with 71 suckling
infants (from 2 to 8 months), and argued that they react to a Gestalt-quality of the
eye region of the human face. The results were published as a monograph Die
Reaktionen des Suglings auf das menschlische Gesicht (1932).
During his third visit in the spring of 1934 Kaila made some new experiments
with children, which led to debates with Ch. Bhler in Zeitschrift fr Psychologie
(1935). Kaila had also contacts with Charlottes husband Karl Bhler, who had
moved from the Wrzburg School of psychology to become Professor of Philosophy
in Vienna. Kaila was aware of the problems with Waismanns manuscript which
Wittgenstein refused to accept. In Vienna Kaila wrote his essay on Albert Einsteins
religion which appeared in the next year in Theoria. After this trip Kaila made the
enthusiastic remarks cited in the beginning of this paper.
The influence of Karl Bhler is visible in Kailas masterpiece in the psychology
of personality: Persoonallisuus (1934), with translations to Swedish (1935) and
Danish (1949). Kaila defended eloquently dynamic psychology, where personality
is a holistic complex and human actions are meaningful relative to animal, mental,
and deep-mental needs. With K.Bhlers distinction between signals, expressions,
and symbols, Kaila argued that the symbol function is the mark of humanity.23
In these years Kaila also developed further his philosophical views. He accepted
from Carnaps constitution theory the Thesis of Translatability: all concepts have to
be reducible by explicit definitions to the language of experience. However, he
consistently rejected logical positivism: in ber den Zusammenhang zwischen
Sinn und Verifikation von Aussagen (Ajatus, 1933) and ber die Allstze (lec-
ture in the Eight World Congress of Philosophy in Prague on September 1934), he
rejected Schlicks and Waismanns new verificational theory of meaning. Against
Schlicks and Franks instrumentalist view of laws as inferential pseudo-statements,
he argued that laws of nature are expressed by genuine universal statements. This is
allowed by the Principle of Testability which is a reformulation of his own Principle
of Observability from 1926.
192 I. Niiniluoto
The Riddle ofReality
In the meantime, already in 1931, Carnap had changed the basis of his constitution
system to physicalism: the universal language of science consists of publicly
observable statements about observable objects. Carnap claimed that metaphysics
can be eliminated by the logical analysis of language, and argued in Logische Syntax
der Sprache (1934) that the task of philosophy is the logical syntax of language. In
his review of Carnaps book in Theoria in 1936, Kaila protested against this empha-
sis on the philosophy of language: science and philosophy cannot get rid of their
inhaltliche Redewise and use only the formale Redeweise. He also argued
against the syntactical approach that philosophy needs the concept of meaning
(betydelse in Swedish).
But as Kaila approved Carnaps exclusion of metaphysics, he again faced the
puzzle: how can one defend realism as a meaningful problem? Kailas solution was
given in ber das System der Wirklichkeitsbegriffe: Ein Beitrag zum logischen
Empirismus (1936), published as the second volume in the new monograph series
Acta Philosophica Fennica.24 According to Kaila, science investigates general laws
or invariances. In modern science, Galileo made the important step from Aristotles
substantial invariances to relational invariances. Appealing to Leibniz, Kaila sug-
gested that invariance is the criterion of reality. He distinguished three levels of
objects with increasing invariance and degree of reality: phenomenal p-objects (e.g.
perceptions, mirror images), physical f-objects (e.g. ordinary bodies and things like
tables and trees), and scientific s-objects (e.g. atoms, electrons, fields of force). The
Thesis of Translatability is still maintained by the requirement that higher level
objects are invariances or regularities between lower level objects. Following
Carnap, Kaila agreed that the problem of other minds is solved by logical behav-
iorism: terms referring to other minds are reducible to statements about their bodily
behavior.
Carnap politely received Kailas book, but did not give detailed comments on it.25
In fact, Carnap had already concluded in his article Testability and Meaning in
1936 that dispositional concepts cannot be explicitly defined by the observational
language. This meant that the Thesis of Translatability has to be given up. Kaila was
worried about this move, but in a letter on April 27, 1937 Carnap assured that he
cannot be unfaithful to empiricism.
Kaila expressed his new ideas in a widely read textbook Inhimillinen tieto (1939),
published in the same year as a Swedish translation by G.H. von Wright. Here Kaila
summarized the four main theses of logical empiricism: denial of synthetic a priori,
testability, translatability, and logical behaviorism. He argued that for theories
which include rationalizations or idealizations translatability and testability
apply only to the theory as a whole. He further attempted to refute Carnaps 1936
argument by giving a definition of dispositional concepts in second-order logic.26
The last remaining letter from Carnap to Kaila was written on January 15, 1940,
when Finland was in the Winter War against Soviet Union. Carnap stated that
Inhimillinen tieto could be published in English in the Library of Unified Science.27
He gave counter-arguments to the Kaila-formula, but added that the definition of

dispositional concepts may need intensional language.
Kaila made his last visit to Vienna in the summer of 1939 (with his son Olli), but
the Circle did not exist any more. The only remaining member he could meet was
Kraft. In the same year Kaila wrote in the past tense an entry on Wienin piiri (The
Vienna Circle) in a Finnish Encyclopedia, but he continued to use the term logical
empiricism for his own studies.
This fate of the Vienna Circle was a great personal and professional loss to Kaila.
When Kaila published in 1942in the middle of war his new version of the reality
concept, ber den physikalischen Realittsbegriff: Zweiter Beitrag zum logischen
Empirismus, with a critique of conventionalism, and a cautious defense of Plancks
realism against Machs phenomenalism, it received no attention from the new
English-speaking analytic philosophers of science.28
Kaila never visited England, and published nothing in English. After the war in
1948 he made one trip to the United States, meeting Hempel in New York and
Gdel in Princeton, but the New World did not appeal to Kailas European taste.
Kailas Philosophy ofNature
In Finland Kaila continued his academic career with spectacular success. In 1940 he
was the key speaker in the celebrations of the 300th anniversary of the University of
Helsinki, and his monograph on the history of academic learning in Finland was
widely distributed in German and French translations. After the war he played an
important role in the establishment of the new Faculty of the Social Sciences. On
April 1948 Kaila was appointed as one of the first ten members of the new Academy
of Finland. This highest honor for Finnish scientists and artists gave him a full-time
research position without teaching duties.
Kaila was a famous psychologist in the Scandinavia, but after 1948 Psychology
was separated from the chair of Theoretical Philosophy in Helsinki, and Kailas
students Kai von Fieandt and Oiva Ketonen occupied the most important positions
in these two fields. The victory of Kailas logical empiricism in Finland was associ-
ated with success stories of his students in the new Anglo-Saxon analytic philoso-
phy and philosophical logic: G. H. von Wright was Wittgensteins successor as
Professor at the Universityof Cambridge in 19481951 (and became later in 1961
a member of the Academy of Finland),29 and von Wrights student Jaakko Hintikka
(appointed Professor of Practical Philosophy in Helsinki in 1959) started his U.S.
career at Harvard and Stanford.
Kaila was actively occupied with revisions of his views. In Inhimillinen tieto
(1939), he accepted Tarskis theory of truth, and 3 years later he suggested that
value statements are prescriptions without truth values. However, in Syvhenkinen
elm (1943), Kaila suggested that Weltanschauungen or life stances (which are
products of emotional thinking with little or no theoretical meaning)are testable on
194 I. Niiniluoto
the basis of results they have as motives of action; this notion of practical test-
ability is known from the pragmatist tradition.30
The last chapter of Kailas 1942 monograph on reality was devoted to micro-
physical theories. In 1943 he published in Finnish an analysis of quantum mechan-
ics, and planned a volume Dritter Beitrag zum logischen Empirismus, with the
themes Der Realittsbegriff der Quantenphysik, Kritik der dinghaften Vernunft,
and Philosophischen Invariantentheorie. Kaila, who was critical of Niels Bohrs
views, attempted to find a realist interpretation of quantum mechanics. As a member
of the Academy of Finland, he could concentrate on his synthetic philosophy of
nature based on holistic field theories. The results included Zur Metatheorie der
Quantenmechanik (1950) and the first part on Atomdynamik of his Terminalkausalitt
als die Grundlage eines unitarischen Naturbegriffs (1956), but the plans for the next
parts on Biodynamik and Neurodynamik were never finished.31 Kaila had no training
in mathematics and physics, so that his project was too gigantic for one man. But he
had a clear insight of what he was aiming at: the essay on relativity theory, Einstein-
Minkowskin invarianssiteoria (1958), contains his arguments against positivism,
operationalism, prognostisism, and conventionalism, together with a sketch of the
notion of isomorphism between theoretical and empirical structures.
In 1956 Kaila started to write in Finnish a summary of his unitary philosophy of
nature with the title Hahmottuva maailma (The World as a Structuring Whole). It
was supposed to cover the same themes as his Nykyinen maailmanksitys in 1929:
matter, life, and psyche, now unified by the notion of holism. When Kaila died in the
summer of 1958, only a part on everyday experience was in a finished form. It
appeared posthumously in German translation as Die perzeptuellen and konzeptuel-
len Komponenten der Alltagsehrfahrung in 1960.32
Kailas last writings continue his life-long project in seeking a monistic or unitar-
ian world view or Naturphilosophie without reductionism. He admits no sharp
dichotomy between matter and mind, structure and quality, physical and phenome-
nal, conceptual and perceptual: from the point of view of quality everything is men-
tal, from the point of view of relation or structure everything is material. Already in
1944 he wrote about Gestalt behaviorism, which aims at the physicalization of the
symbol function and proves that the emergence of qualities is only illusory. With
reference to Kants thesis that matter consists of external relations, Kaila formulates
a view which can be called ontic structural realism.33
Juha Manninen has attempted to date Kailas first doubts about logical empiri-
cism.34 In 1945 Kaila wrote in his diary: Realgehalt und Realitt sind zweirlei,
i.e. reality is not equal to real content (the empirical consequences derivable from a
statement). Kailas last regular lecture series as professor in 194748 was entitled
Revisions of logical empiricism. In his works in the 1950s Kaila gave up the
Thesis of Translatability. A clear argument is given in the study of everyday experi-
ence: the physical statement There are matches in the matchbox (M) cannot be
translated by perceptual regularities of the form If I shake the box, then it rattles
etc., since these regularities contain references to action not present in M, and their
number need not be finite. The same kind of argument can be given for the failure
of translating statements about theoretical entities. The conclusion is that there is
some truth to realism.35
Kaila thus returned in the 1950s to the critical realism he defended before his
encounter with the Vienna Circle. But his version of realism is complex, since in his
hierarchical account of degrees of reality the more real objects are also more con-
ceptualized (invariant, articulated, symbolized, measurable, quantitative). Yet, they
are in some sense independent of our perceptions: the physics is the same for color-
blind and color-seeing persons. Kaila spoke in this connection about the relativiza-
tion of reality: there is no sharp dichotomy between the real and non-real.36
In Niiniluoto (1992) I suggested that Kaila was some sort of internal realist.
For Hilary Putnam, internal realism (as opposed to metaphysical realism) claims
that there is no ready-made world, but objects and structures are relative to con-
ceptual frameworks.37 In particular, one should give up the sharp line between prop-
erties discovered in the world and properties projected onto the world.
Matthias Neuber has challenged the conclusion about Kailas internal realism,38
and I agree that one has to be cautious in comparing Kaila and Putnam. Neuber cor-
rectly sees that Kailas non-linguistic way out does not make realism a problem
of language, as it was for Carnap and philosophers accepting the linguistic turn.
He reminds that Kailas 1942 monograph criticized conventionalist theories of mea-
surement, and thereby presupposed some degree of independence for quantitative
invariances. So Kailas talk about conceptualization is not pluralist and relativist
in the sense as Putnams. But Neuber does not mention Kailas decisive step against
Translatatibity in the 1950s. After the rejection of Translatability, Kaila need not
any more say that scientific s-objects are identical with lower-level invariances.
Neuber goes on to suggest that for Kaila the real s-objects themselves cause the
highest invariances of concepts related to s-objects, so that they can be abductively
inferred. There is not much direct textual evidence for this interpretation, but Kaila
makes in passing the point that a f-claim like the statement M about the matchbook
unifies, totalizes or integrates a certain realm of experience (if-then state-
ments).39 This is similar to the no miracles argument that Kaila used in 1926 to
defend his Aussenwelthypothese AH.40
After the first English translations in the Vienna Circle Collection in 1979,
Kailas philosophy of science has gradually received scholarly attention,41 so that
one might even talk about a Kaila Renaissance today. For the 2014 English transla-
tion of Kailas Human Knowledge, the publisher Open Court proposed the subtitle
A Classic Statement of Logical Empiricism. I hope this survey shows that Eino
Kaila was not only an important historical figure with interesting contacts to the
Vienna Circle, but also an independent serious thinker whose works deserve to be
studied by contemporary philosophers of science.
196 I. Niiniluoto
Notes
1. In meiner fernen Heimat lebe ich aber in einer ziemlich vollstndigen geisti-
gen Isolierung. Cited by von Wright (1979), p.88.
2. See Niiniluoto (1986).
3. The best introduction to Kailas life and work is von Wright (1979). See also
Niiniluoto et al. (1992), Niiniluoto (2006), Niiniluoto and Pihlstrm (2012).
Kailas complete bibliography is published in Manninen and Niiniluoto (2007).
4. See the recent translation of Kailas 1912 essay on James (Kaila 2011) and its
commentary by Pihlstrm (2011).
6. See von Wright (1992), Niiniluoto (2010).
8. Most of Kailas correspondence was destroyed after his death. Kailas letters to
Reichenbach are preserved in the Pittsburgh archives, and they are cited by
Manninen (2012). Carnaps letters to Kaila were rescued by G.H. Wright, and
they are preserved in The von Wright and Wittgenstein Archives at the
University of Helsinki. They are cited by Niiniluoto (1986) and Manninen
(2012).
9. According to von Wright, Kaila was the first who used the term logical empiricism
(ein logischer Empirismus). He never accepted for himself the label logical
positivist. For the complex history of these terms, see Uebel (2013).
10. See Carnap (1967), Popper (1963). Cf. Niiniluoto (2012).
11. See Kaila (2003a), p.60.
12. It was not until mid-forties when Carnap started his studies in inductive logic.
13. See Stadler (2001), p.239.
14. Manninen (2012) has checked this from Carnaps diary. Feigl had discussed
Kailas works on probability in his 1927 dissertation.
15. Feigls letter, preserved in Pittsburgh, is cited by Manninen (2012), p.35.
16. See Carus (2007) and Manninen (2012), p.42.
17. Kailas program of synthetic philosophy in Beitrge 1928 raised some doubts
in Philipp Frank and Otto Neurath, but Kaila was defended by Schlick (see
Manninen, 2012, p, 33). Kailas own view of Frank and Neurath was not very
favorable (see Kaila 1979, p.252).
18. For an English translation, see Kaila (1979).
19. Notes were made by Rose Rand (see Stadler 2001, pp.242244).
21. For an English translation, see Kaila (2003b).
22. For the emergence of analytic philosophy in Finland, see Haaparanta and
Niiniluoto (2003).
23. Kaila wrote a review of Bhlers Sprachtheorie in Erkenntnis in 1936.
25. A review of Kailas book was written by Viktor Kraft in Theoria in 1937.
26. This attempted definition is known as Kaila-Formel (see Stegmller 1970,

p. 222). G. H. von Wright still left the status of Translatability open in his
monograph Den logiska empirismen in 1943 (in Finnish in 1945).
27. This project is finally accomplished when the translation of this book as Human
Knowledge has appeared in 2014 (see Kaila 2014).
28. For an English translation, see Kaila (1979). Kraft wrote in 1942 a review on
Kailas book for Theoria.
29. See Haaparanta and Niiniluoto (2003), Manninen (2010).
30. For discussions about this notion of practical testability, see Salmela (2003),
Pihlstrm (2003, 2011), and Niiniluoto (2012).
31. For a recent penetrating interpretation of Kailas project of combining formal
teleology and probabilistic laws, see Stltzner (2012).
33. See Ladyman (1998) for the distinction between epistemic and ontic structural
realism.
34. See Manninen (1977).
35. See Kaila (1979), p.305.
36. See Kaila (1979), pp.271, 276.
37. Putnams internal realism also claims that truth is an epistemic notion, but this
thesis would have been rejected by Kaila. For a critical discussion of Putnams
views, see Niiniluoto (1999), Ch. 7.
38. See Neuber (2012a, b).
39. See Kaila (1979), p.303.
40. See section Logical empiricist seeking contacts and Kaila (2003a). For the
abductive no miracles argument, see Niiniluoto (1999), pp.187, 193.
41. The initiative for the collection Kaila (1979) came from Mario Bunge, and the
translation project was carefully supervised by G.H. von Wright.
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Court.
Kraft, Viktor. 1937. Review of E.Kailas ber das System der Wirklichkeitsbegriffe. Theoria 3:
128131.
. 1942. Review of E. Kailas ber den physikalischen Realittsbegriff. Theoria 8:
299306.
Ladyman, James. 1998. What is Structural Realism? Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
29: 409424.
Manninen, Juha. 1977. Eino Kailas First Doubts about Logical Empiricism. In Studia excellentia,
Reports from the Department of Philosophy 3, ed. Ilkka Niiniluoto, Jan von Plato, and Esa
Saarinen, 1829. Helsinki: University of Helsinki.
. 2010. Between the Vienna Circle and Ludwig Wittgenstein The Philosophical Teachers
of G.H. von Wright. In Manninen & Stadler(2010), 4767.
. 2012. Eino Kaila in Carnaps Circle. In Niiniluoto and Pihlstrm, 952.
Manninen, Juha, and Ilkka Niiniluoto, ed. 2007. The Philosophical Twentieth Century in Finland:
A Bibliographical Guide, Acta Philosophica Fennica 82. Helsinki: Philosophical Society of
Finland.
Manninen, Juha, and Friedrich Stadler, ed. 2010. The Vienna Circle in the Nordic Countries:
Networks and Transformations of Logical Empiricism, Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook 14.
Dordrecht: Springer.
Neuber, Matthias. 2012a. From Carnap to Kaila A Neglected Transition in the History of wis-
senschaftliche Philosophie. In Niiniluoto and Pihlstrm. 5370.
. 2012b. Realism as a Problem of Language From Carnap to Reichenbach and Kaila. In
Rudolf Carnap and the legacy of logical empiricism, ed. Richard Creath, 3756, Vienna Circle
Institute Yearbook 16. Dordrecht: Springer.
Niiniluoto, Ilkka. 1986. Eino Kaila und der Wiener Kreis. In Weder Noch: Tangenten zu den
finnish-sterreichischen Kulturbezieung, ed. Georg Gimpl, 223241. Helsinki: Mitteilungen
aus der deutschen Bibliothek.
. 1992. Eino Kaila and Scientific Realism. In Niiniluoto etal., 102116.
. 1999. Critical Scientific Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
. 2006. Der dramatische Philosoph: Eino Kaila (18901958). In Jahrbuch fr finnish-
deutschen Literaturbeziehungen, ed. Hans Fromm etal., 155167. Helsinki: Mitteilungen aus
der Deutschen Bibliothek.
. 2010. Kailas Critique of Vitalism. In Manninen & Stadler. 125134.
. 2012. Eino Kailas Critique of Metaphysics. In Niiniluoto and Pihlstrm. 7189.
. 2013. Gestalt Theory in Eino Kailas Psychology and Philosophy. Gestalt Theory 35:
217226.
Niiniluoto, Ilkka, and Sami Pihlstrm, ed. 2012. Reappraisals of Eino Kailas Philosophy, Acta
Philosophica Fennica 89. Helsinki: Philosophical Society of Finland.
Niiniluoto, Ilkka, Matti Sintonen, and G.H. von Wright, ed. 1992. Eino Kaila and Logical
Empiricism, Acta Philosophica Fennica 52, 102116. Helsinki: Philosophical Society of
Finland.
Pihlstrm, Sami. 2003. Pragmatistic Influences in Twentieth-Century Finnish Philosophy: From
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. 2011. Eino Kaila on Pragmatism and Religion: An Introduction to Kailas 1912 Essay on
William James. Transactions of the Charles S.Peirce Society 47: 146157.
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Refutations. London: Routledge.
Salmela, Mikko. 2003. Analytic Moral Philosophy in Finland. In Haaparanta & Niiniluoto,
413444.
Stadler, Friedrich. 2001. The Vienna Circle: Studies in the Origins, Development, and Influence of
Logical Empiricism. Wien: Springer.
Stegmller, Wolfgang. 1970. Theorie und Erfahrung. Berlin: Springer.
Stltzner, Michael. 2012. Terminal Causality, Atomic Dynamics and the Tradition of Formal
Teleology. In Niiniluoto and Pihlstrm, 163193.
Uebel, Thomas. 2013. Logical Positivism Logical Empiricism: Whats in a Name?
Perspectives on Science 21(2103): 5899.
von Wright, G.H. 1979. Introduction. In Kaila., ixxlii.
. 1992. Eino Kailas Monism. In Niiniluoto etal., 7191.
Review Essay: Two books on the Berlin Group
of Logical Empiricists
GntherSandner
Nikolay Milkov, Volker Peckhaus (Eds.): The Berlin Group and

the Philosophy of Logical Empiricism. Dordrecht: Springer
2013.
Nikolay Milkov (Ed.): Die Berliner Gruppe. Texte zum
Logischen Empirismus. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag 2015.
Although the logical empiricism movement and its program took root in a number
of European cities (including Prague and Warsaw), it seems undoubted today, how-
ever, that the projects characteristic of logical empiricism developed primarily in
Vienna and Berlin as Alan Richardson and Thomas Uebel put it only a few years
ago.1 As for these two centres, however, it was Vienna that has attracted much more
attention from the scientific community in history and philosophy of science (HPS)
in recent decades. Systematic research on the Vienna Circle already started decades
ago and has gotten well established today not only in its place of origin but also in
many other European countries and above all in North America.2 In contrast, there
have been until now only a few studies on the Berlin Group and its members.
The most important ones are the two German editions of essays from the 1990s:
Hans Reichenbach und die Berliner Gruppe (1994) and Hans Reichenbach.
Philosophie im Umkreis der Physik (1998).3 As the respective titles suggest, however,
the focus in both cases was on Hans Reichenbach although the first edition also deals
1
Alan Richardson/ Thomas Uebel, Introduction, in: Alan Richardson/ Thomas Uebel (Eds.), The
Cambridge Companion to Logical Empiricism. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press 2007,
pp.110, p.3.
2
The key work on the Vienna Circle is still Friedrich Stadler, The Vienna Circle. Studies in the
Origins, Development, and Influence of Logical Empiricism. Wien, New York: Springer 2001.
Scholars from North America who published on the Vienna Circle, continental logical empiricism
and its further development in the USA include Robert Cohen, Nancy Cartwright, Alan Richardson,
Gary Hardcastle and Michael Friedmann to mention but a few.
3
Lutz Danneberg/ Andreas Kamlah/ Lothar Schfer (Eds.), Hans Reichenbach und die Berliner
Gruppe. Braunschweig: Viehweg 1994; Hans Poser/ Ulrich Dirks (Eds.), Hans Reichenbach.
Philosophie im Umkreis der Physik. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag 1998.
G. Sandner (*)
e-mail: guenther.sandner@univie.ac.at

202 G. Sandner
explicitly with other Berlin Group members. Among the core group members of the
Berlin Group of logical empiricists (see below), a profound biographical monograph
has only been written on Hans Reichenbach, whose Collected Works were also
published in German and even two volumes of selected works in English.4 Partly
included in the editions mentioned above are several essays on individual scholars in
the Berlin Group such as the essays by Volker Peckhaus on Kurt Grelling, Wilhelm
Schernus on Alexander Herzberg and, most recently, Nikolay Milkov on Dubislav.5
Dieter Hoffmann has written some articles on the Berlin Society of Empirical/
Scientific Philosophy an association closely connected to but not identical with the
Berlin Group.6 Just as the Vienna Circle had its public organization (The Ernst Mach
Association) there was also an organization in Berlin that organized public lectures
and debates. Additionally, there are some contributions from contemporary propo-
nents themselves such as those by Hans Reichenbach, Carl Hempel, Martin Strauss
and Nicholas Rescher.7 Taken all together, there are a few contributions published in
English, but the main body of research on the Berlin Group has only been published
in German. Thus, in comparison to the Vienna Circle, there is a lack of research in all
relevant areas including philosophy, history and biography.
Under these circumstances, an English edition on the Berlin Group is more than
welcome. In fact it is urgently needed. The idea for the present book originated at a
conference in Paderborn, Germany in September 2009, and the articles in it are
revised and extended versions of some of the papers presented there. The book is
divided into several parts. It starts with an introductory chapter (part I) and one on
the historical-theoretical context (part II), continues with essays on core group
members Hans Reichenbach (part III), Walter Dubislav (part IV) and Kurt Grelling
(part V), and concludes with contributions on Paul Oppenheim and Carl Hempel
4
Karin Gerner, Hans Reichenbach sein Leben und Wirken. Eine wissenschaftliche Biographie.
Osnabrck: Phoebe Autorenpress 1997. Andreas Kamlah (Ed.), Hans Reichenbach, Gesammelte
Werke. 9 Bnde. Braunschweig: Viehweg (19771994). Maria Reichenbach/ Robert S. Cohen
(Eds.), Hans Reichenbach, Selected Writings 19091953. Two Volumes. Dordrecht, Boston,
London: Reidel 1978.
5
Volker Peckhaus, Von Nelson zu Reichenbach: Kurt Grelling in Gttingen und Berlin, in:
Danneberg/Kamlah/Schfer, Hans Reichenbach, loc. cit., pp. 5386. Volker Peckhaus, Kurt
Grelling und der Logische Empirismus, in: Rudolf Haller/Friedrich Stadler (Eds.), Wien
Berlin Prag. Der Aufstieg der wissenschaftlichen Philosophie. Wien: Hlder-Pichler-Tempsky
1993, pp.362385. Abraham S.Luchins/ Edith H.Luchins, Kurt Grelling: Steadfast Scholar in a
Time of Madness, in: http://gestaltheory.net/archive/kgrelbio.htmal, 31.03.2015. Wilhelm
Schernus Alexander Herzberg: Psychologie, Medizin und wissenschaftliche Philosophie, in:
Danneberg/Kamlah/Schfer, Hans Reichenbach, loc. cit., pp. 3351; Wilhelm Schernus,
Verfahrensweisen historischer Wissenschaftsforschung. Exemplarische Studien zu Philosophie,
Literaturwissenschaft und Narratologie. Hamburg 2005 (pp. 105122), Nikolay Milkov, On
Walter Dubislav, in: History and Philosophy of Logic, DOI: 10.1080/01445340.2014962247.
6
Dieter Hoffmann, in: Danneberg/Kamlah/Schfer, Hans Reichenbach, loc. cit.; in: Haller/Stadler,
Wien Berlin Prag, loc. cit. and in: Richardson/Uebel, Logical Empiricism, loc. cit.
7
Hans Reichenbach, Logistic Empiricism in Germany and the Present State of its Problems, in:
The Journal of Philosophy Vol. 33, No. 6, 1936, pp.141160. Nicolas Rescher, The Berlin School
of Logical Empiricism and Its Legacy, in: Erkenntnis Vol. 64. No. 3, 2006, pp.281304. Martin
Strauss, Hans Reichenbach und die Berliner Schule, in: Naturwissenschaft, Tradition, Fortschritt
(Beiheft). Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften 1963, pp.268278. Carl G.Hempel, Hans
Reichenbach Remembered, in: Erkenntnis Vol. 35, 1991, pp.510.
Review Essay: Two books on the Berlin Group of Logical Empiricists 203
(part VI). So what has the new edition to offer and what makes it evidently differ-
ent from the earlier publications?
Initially there is a profound introductory essay by one of the two editors, Nikolay
Milkov (The Berlin Group and the Vienna Circle: Affinities and Divergences),
which focuses on the Berlin Group and the Vienna Circle in a comparative way. The
author demonstrates convincingly that there was a discussion forum on philosophy
of science in Berlin, which operated largely independently from Vienna. It had its
own key figures, its own working program, its lectures, its publications and also its
own programmatic aims. With respect to the history of logical empiricism in
Germany, he identifies Hans Reichenbach, Kurt Grelling, Walter Dubislav and
Alexander Herzberg as core group members in Berlin. The latter, psychologist
Herzberg, is an almost forgotten though nevertheless very important scientist and
intellectual who influenced and co-created the development in Germany. Thus, it is
regrettable that the edition includes no essay about him.
Milkov, however, presents a short overview of the historical development of the
Berlin Society, starting with Petzoldts Society for Positivistic Philosophy in 1912
and then discussing the foundation of the Berlin Society for Empirical Philosophy
in February 1927, and makes it clear that the Berlin Society (a non-registered asso-
ciation) and the Berlin Group are not the same entity. His main argument, however,
is another one. He mainly focuses on the differences between the group in Berlin
and the Vienna Circle. An important historical-intellectual distinction, although not
the only one that Milkov mentions, between Berlin and Vienna is doubtlessly the
Friesian tradition. Especially Leonard Nelson (18821927), the founder of the Neo-
Friesian Society, exerted a considerable intellectual influence, mostly via Kurt
Grelling who was very close to him. In discussing the differences in the philosophi-
cal programs of Vienna and Berlin, Milkov mostly follows Reichenbachs previ-
ously mentioned 1936 essay, including attributing a program of logical positivism
to Vienna and one of logical (or logistic in Reichenbachs text) empiricism to
Berlin. In this essay Reichenbach focused on the difference between Berlin and
Vienna as follows:
In line with their more concrete working-program, which demanded analysis of specific
problems in science, they [the members of the Berlin Group] avoided all theoretical maxims
like those set up by the Viennese school and embarked upon detailed work in logistics,
physics, biology, and psychology. The central problem selected for analysis was probability
and induction.8
Obviously, this is also mostly identifiable as Reichenbachs own personal pro-

gram. This differentiation between Vienna and Berlin may be worthy of discussion
but it is surely not beyond controversy. There are many profound arguments against
the thesis of Reichenbachs essay, which Thomas Uebel elaborated on in detail not
long ago. Uebel pointed out, for instance, that Reichenbach only attacked a
strawman version of Vienna Circle philosophy and that there was no uniform use
of these terms [logical positivism and logical empiricism] either among the
Reichenbach, Logistic Empiricism, loc. cit., p.144.

8
204 G. Sandner
embers, opponents or sympathizers of the Vienna and the Berlin Group.9 These
m
arguments, however, should have been weighed and discussed seriously.
In order to explain the differences in reception between the Berlin Group and the
Vienna Circle, Milkov offers a three-part explanation. Why has less attention been
paid to the Berlin Group and why has it been partly neglected by historians of phi-
losophy of science? First, the Vienna Circle included some scholars (especially Otto
Neurath) and initiated some actions (publication/presentation of the Vienna Circle
Manifesto in 1929) that were very effective in public reception. There was nothing
comparable on the Berlin side, Milkov suggests. Second, in Berlin it was only Hans
Reichenbach who developed his own philosophical program, whereas there were
more programmatic thinkers in Vienna. Third, he focuses on the historical and polit-
ical differences between Germany and Austria. Whereas in Germany the Nazis
came to power already at the end of January 1933, a non-Nazi regime in Austria
lasted until 1938. Milkov concludes: This afforded the members of the Vienna
Circle more of an opportunity than the Berliners in the face of Fascists tyranny to
regroup and maneuver for a more or less organized exodus (p.7). There could be
much debate about arguments 1 and 2, but lets focus on the third. Five more years
to organize an exodus in Vienna? Rudolf Carnap had left Vienna for Prague already
in 1931. From March 1933 onwards, a slow coup detat started in Austria. As a
consequence of the military defeat of the working class movement in the short civil
war of February 1934, the Ernst Mach Association was banned by the authoritarian
clerical-conservative government (Austrofascism). Otto Neurath, who worked in
Moscow at that time, decided never to return to Austria. Hans Hahn died a few
months later. In June 1936, the nominal leader of the Vienna Circle, Moritz Schlick,
was murdered by a mentally disturbed National Socialist. In fact, not five years
later but only a single year after the Nazis came to power in Berlin, logical empiri-
cism was de facto violently terminated even in Vienna. Thus, the question of differ-
ent reception was and still is doubtlessly an important one but the answer still
remains open to debate.
Briefly to the other contributions: Nicholas Rescher in his very short article
stresses the personal continuities between the Berlin Group and the development of
philosophy of science in the USA (The Berlin Group and the USA: A Narrative of
Personal Interactions). He focuses especially on his own role (also as a contempo-
rary eyewitness to history) and that of Olaf Helmer. In this context, he also reports
on the involvement of both with RAND (Research and Development). This is, how-
ever, a story in which Rescher delivers a much more affirmative interpretation than
that of George Reisch in his hotly debated book on logical empiricism and the Cold
War. Reisch had emphasized RAND as a crucial agent of Cold War military
research and of McCarthyism.10 For Rescher, however, this is nothing but a con-
spiracy theory.
9
Thomas Uebel, Logical Positivism Logical Empiricism: Whats in a Name? In: Perspectives
on Science Vol. 21, no. 1, 2013, pp.5899, p.76 and p.87.
10
George Reisch, How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science. To the Icy Slopes of
Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005, p.353.
The section on the historical and theoretical contexts provides a useful introduc-
tion to Jakob Friedrich Fries (17731843) and the Neo-Frisian school, and explains
its influence on and relevance for the Berlin Group (J.F. Fries Philosophy of
Science, the New Friesian School and the Berlin Group: On Divergent Scientific
Philosophies, Difficult Relations and Missed Opportunities by Helmut Pulte). A
detailed analysis of Ernst Cassirers influence on psychologist Kurt Lewin, who was
another protagonist of the Berlin Group, has been done by Jeremy Heis (Ernst
Cassirer, Kurt Lewin, and Hans Reichenbach). The author makes clear that the
historical connections between Cassirer and the Berlin Group were at least as strong
as the ones between Cassirer, Carnap and the Vienna Circle (about which Cassirer
has written). Additionally he contributes some interesting observations on the rela-
tion between Cassirer and Reichenbach, who had close personal and intellectual
contacts throughout their careers. Following this, Flavia Padovani discusses the
relation between Reichenbach and Lewin starting with their common past in the
Free Students movement (Genidentity and Topology of Time: Kurt Lewin and
Hans Reichenbach). Whereas there are only a few references to the historical back-
ground (which is enlightening in many respects), Padovanis focus is on Lewins
term Gen-identity (identity through/over time). It was a key concept of his intel-
lectual work, which Reichenbach took up but denotes, according to Padovani, with
a different meaning.
Michael Stltzner (Did Reichenbach Anticipate Quantum Mechanical
Indeterminism?) focuses on Reichenbachs essay entitled Logistic Empiricism in
Germany (1936) in which the author suggests that a) the Berlin Group was particu-
larly strong in relating their program to development and progress in contemporary
natural sciences, b) his own program on probability and induction was the core
argument of the Berlin Groups program, and c) this program was confirmed by the
natural sciences in those days. Stltzner, however, demonstrates that Reichenbachs
intellectual portrayal is doubtful in many respects, and that, above all, the develop-
ment of modern physics did not confirm Reichenbach at that time. In contrast,
Reichenbach did not involve himself in the details of physical discussions but pur-
sued a genuinely philosophical agenda (p.146).
A much broader approach to Reichenbach than that of many rather specialized
articles in this book is that of Andreas Kamlah (Everybody Has the Right to Do
What He Wants: Hans Reichenbachs Volitionism and Its Historical Roots), who
wants to discuss about the way how the interpretation of science reflects a certain
conception of man (p.11). What was the core element in Reichenbachs program?
Kamlah identifies freedom of choice as the decisive and crucial feature not only
in his ethics but also in his philosophy of science and his epistemology. It builds the
bridge between the scientific, the political and the social approach of Reichenbachs
intellectual work. He focuses on three different ideological movements that had
influenced the young Reichenbach: the Wandervogel (birds of passage), the
Landschulheim (an institution which represented the movement of educational
reform) and the Freistudenten (free students movement). Every conception of sci-
ence, he maintains, represents and reflects a particular conception of the human
being. Volitional and arbitrary were strongly redundant in Reichenbach writ-
206 G. Sandner
ings and they had an ideological meaning: They reflected the urge for autonomy that
was characteristic for Reichenbachs extreme libertarianism, anti-authoritarianism
and decisionism. In this context he looks back to the youth movement and the
debates on reform education (Reichenbach was a follower of controversial peda-
gogue Gustav Wyneken) in which he was active and involved before and during
World War I. Although the political Reichenbach seemed to have disappeared
after 1919, there are continuities due to the educational debate, such as his 1931
essay on Montessori pedagogy11 which he also followed in practice: Reichenbach
sent his children to a Montessori school in Berlin. Even in Kamlahs multifaceted
reflections on Reichenbach, some research gaps become evident. As the author
admits, it is not even clear whether Reichenbach was a member of the Wandervogel
at all. Additionally, he did not integrate Reichenbachs role as a leading representa-
tive of the socialist students in Berlin after World War I.In sum, however, he con-
vincingly claims that philosophy of science ought not to ignore the political,
economic and scientific developments of the time. He concludes that Reichenbach
would have been called a libertarian today and was, according to common terminol-
ogy, a compatibilist, for whom, even in a deterministic universe, human actions and
decisions are free in many situations.
Then, the edition focuses on two more key figures of the Berlin Group. Firstly
there is a section on Walter Dubislav. It starts with an analysis of Dubislavs contri-
butions to mathematical logic and metalogic (Dubislav and Classical Monadic
Quantificational Logic by Christian Thiel), discusses his encounter with transcen-
dental arguments (Demonstrations, Not Deductions: Walter Dubislav and
Transcendental Arguments by Temilo van Zantwijk) and considers his relation to
Bernard Bolzano (Dubislav and Bolzano by Anita Kasabova). The later article
makes a convincing case that Dubislavs view on Bolzano is of interest especially to
historians of logic and philosophy. After the publication of this book, however, co-
editor Nikolay Milkov wrote an enlightening biographically oriented article on
Dubislav (mentioned above). It would have been a perfect fit in this edition, which
provides scant biographical information.
Secondly, there is the case of Kurt Grelling. The chapter starts with a concise
overview of The Third Man (beside Reichenbach and Dubislav) by co-editor
Volker Peckhaus (The Third Man: Kurt Grelling and the Berlin Group), which is
especially interesting for those unfamiliar with his essays published in German. The
author discusses many decisive facets of Grellings intellectual biography such as
his role as a Neo-Friesian and a student of Leonard Nelson, and also his time in the
free students movement. Nevertheless the essay deals mainly with Grellings
scientific development and much less with his biography and his tragic fate, which
ended in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Incidentally, Peckhaus also writes
about the disagreement between Grelling and Dubislav about the latters Die
Definition (1931). As on many other occasions, it becomes evident at this point
that even the Berlin Group was never a school with an authoritative program
Hans Reichenbach, Montessori-Erziehung Erziehung zur Gegenwart, in: Die neue Erziehung,
11
Vol. 8, 1931, pp.9199.

which the Vienna Circle was not either. Arkadiusz Chrudzimski (Gestalt,
Equivalency, and Functional Dependency: Kurt Grellings Formal Ontology) con-
cludes the section on Grelling by focusing on his contributions to the concept of
gestalt theory, which again brings out the enormous complexity of his intellectual
work.
The last section of the book is on Paul Oppenheim and Carl Hempel, who co-
authored a canonical text on scientific explanation.12 Whereas Oppenheim and his
logico-philosophical concept of order is intellectually portrayed by Paul Ziche and
Thomas Mller (Paul Oppenheim on Order The Career of a Logico-Philosophical
Concept), Nikolay Milkov discusses Hempels role as a link between Berlin and
Vienna and classifies him in contrast to Michael Friedmann as more related to
Berlin than to Viennese logical empiricism (Carl Hempel: Whose Philosopher?).
Finally, Erich H.Reck (Hempel, Carnap, and the Covering Law Model) discusses
Hempels model of scientific explanation (the Covering Law Model) and evaluates
it as an extremely important and influential model of explanation which remains a
very useful approach in both philosophy of science and scientific theory.
In sum, the book on the Berlin Group edited by Nikolay Milkov and Volker
Peckhaus is a valuable and seminal contribution to the history of philosophy of sci-
ence of logical empiricism. Although there are research gaps that remain (some of
which only became evident thanks to this publication), it marks a promising start for
further investigations.
The German collection of texts by members of the Berlin Group, also edited by
Nikolay Milkov, can and should be used as complementary reading (by those who
read in both languages). It is structured quite similarly to the book on the Vienna
Circle13 and starts with a well-informed introductory essay by the editor (some over-
lapping to the English essay discussed above is unavoidable, naturally). Interestingly,
Milkov interprets Herzbergs popular newspaper article on empirical philosophy
and Reichenbachs short monographic essay entitled Aims and Methods of Modern
Philosophy of Nature as manifestos of the Berlin Group that represent its different
programmatic periods (in short: a pre-Reichenbach and a Reichenbach period).
Carefully considered, they can actually be interpreted as quasi-manifestos, since
they criticized the status quo (of contemporary philosophy), discussed a favored
alternative scenario, and blueprinted a more desirable future (from the point of view
of scientific philosophy).
The text edition is structured in different intellectual areas and approaches: the-
ory of science and philosophy of nature, philosophy of mathematics, probability
and induction, definition and justification, metaphysics and ontology of science and
history of philosophy. The proponents of the Berlin Group (Reichenbach, Dubislav
and Grelling) are represented by five or six essays each, whereas Lewin, Herzberg,
Hempel and Oppenheim each contribute one or two. In general, the texts are very
12
Carl G. Hempel/Paul Oppenheim, Studies in the Logic of Explanation, in: Philosophy of
Science, Vol. 15, No. 2, 1948, pp.135175.
13
Michael Stltzer/Thomas Uebel (Eds.), Der Wiener Kreis. Texte zur wissenschaftlichen
Weltauffassung. Hamburg: Meiner 2006.
208 G. Sandner
well selected. It was probably unavoidable that certain gaps remain, for instance
psychology, which played a very relevant role in Berlin, especially the contributions
of Wolfgang Khler, Kurt Lewin and Alexander Herzberg. Nevertheless the selec-
tion emphasizes both the variety and complexity of the Berlin Group. Some of Hans
Reichenbachs essential essays are missing (including his programmatic essay
Aims and Methods of Modern Philosophy of Nature) but this is because Milkov
had already published a small edition of Reichenbachs texts a few years before.14
In sum, even this book with selected essays by members of the Berlin Group is an
important publication and very useful not only for students but for anyone interested
in continental logical empiricism, its philosophical complexity and its historical
development.
Research on the history and philosophy of the Berlin Group is still in its early
phase. Further investigations are required, and not only to scrutinize the historical
debates and their present meaning. A close historical contextualization is also
needed. Placing the groups of logical empiricists in their respective contexts their
culture and society would demonstrate, I assume, that it was not primarily a com-
petitive relationship between Vienna and Berlin. Both groups faced similar chal-
lenges and, in a way, they reacted jointly. Certainly, both Otto Neurath and Hans
Reichenbach wrote their own intellectual histories of logical empiricism in which
they obviously legitimized their own roles. For further research, however, it makes
no sense to follow these self-descriptions. In the end, both the story of a particular
Austrian philosophy different and independent from the German tradition (the so
called Neurath-Haller hypothesis) and the story of a particular German logistic
empiricism that overcame the shortcomings of Viennese logical positivism
(Reichenbach) will probably be increasingly relativized if not rejected altogether.
Nikolay Milkov (Ed.), Hans Reichenbach: Ziele und Wege der heutigen Naturphilosophie. Fnf
14
Aufstze zur Wissenschaftstheorie. Hamburg: Meiner 2011.

Report/Documentaion From Late
Enlightenment to Logical Empiricism: The
Berlin Society of Empirical/Scientific Philosophy
and the Ernst Mach Association in Vienna
GntherSandner andChristianPape
Introduction
It is widely acknowledged today that continental Logical Empiricism (LE) devel-

oped primarily in Vienna and in Berlin.1 Both capitals Berlin and Vienna gave birth
to academic and intellectual groups that presented a challenging new program in
philosophy of science. Despite the largely autonomous and independent develop-
ments of these particular groups2 there are, however, some remarkable parallels,
relations and interrelations. They are not only related to the respective approaches
in philosophy of science or the philosophical programs. There is also a considerable
accordance due to the ideological and historical origins, the resulting programmatic
foundations, the genesis and the organizational structures. Both groups of intellec-
tuals developed on the basis of already existing organizations and ideological
movements, which were, however, amazingly similar in both cities. They
FWF Austrian Science Fund (P 24306 G 17): The Politics of Logical Empiricism (director:
Gnther Sandner).
1
Alan Richardson/ Thomas Uebel: Introduction, in: Alan Richardson/ Thomas Uebel (Eds.), The
Cambridge Companion to Logical Empiricism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007,
pp.110, p.3.
2
A number of contributions emphasized the differences between the Berlin Group and the Vienna
Circle. Cf. e.g. Hans Reichenbach, Logistic Empiricism in Germany and the Present State of its
Problems, in: The Journal of Philosophy Vol. 33, No. 6, 1936, pp. 141160. Martin Strauss,
Hans Reichenbach und die Berliner Schule, in: Naturwissenschaft, Tradition, Fortschritt
(Beiheft). Berlin: Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften 1963, pp.268278; Nikolas Rescher, The
Berlin School of Logical Empiricism and its Legacy, in: Erkenntnis vol. 64, 2006, pp.281304.
Nikolay Milkov, The Berlin Group and the Vienna Circle: Affinities and Divergences, in: Nikolay
Milkov/ Volker Peckhaus (Eds.), The Berlin Group and the Philosophy of Logical Empiricism,
Dordrecht, Heidelberg, NewYork. London: Springer 2013, pp.332.
G. Sandner (*) C. Pape
e-mail: guenther.sandner@univie.ac.at; christian.pape@univie.ac.at

210 G. Sandner and C. Pape
represented an intellectual field that included various associations mostly founded

at the end of the nineteenth century. They followed what they called a scientific
worldview (wissenschaftliche Weltanschauung) or scientific world-concep-
tion (wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung) a term that did not reappear until later
in the famous Vienna Circle Manifesto of 1929. That included a secular, laically
anti-metaphysic program closely associated with the natural sciences (e.g. theory of
evolution) which focused on dissemination of knowledge via popular education. It
primarily encompassed groups such as the Monists, Freethinkers and followers of
non-religious ethics. All these groups wanted to strengthen the role of science in
society and public life. Thus, in contesting the claims of other ideological hege-
monic forces, they followed necessarily a political approach as well.
In Berlin and in Vienna as well, a relatively open forum for discussion that
included a number of core members and associated scholars and intellectuals (who
represented a kind of periphery) was established in the late 1920s. The discussion
groups that met more or less regularly were the Berlin Group and the Vienna
Circle.3 Beyond that, however, there was also an association in each city closely
connected to the respective groups.4 The Berlin Society of Empirical/Scientific
Philosophy and the Ernst Mach Association in Vienna. Despite far-reaching person-
nel overlaps, the associations and the discussion rounds were not identical and pur-
sued different purposes. Whereas the Berlin Group and the Vienna Circle were
primarily active in philosophizing and intellectual exchange among their members,
the Berlin Society and the Ernst Mach Association addressed a wider public. They
organized lectures, seminars and congresses, edited a journal and, in the Viennese
case, also published a programmatic manifesto. Thus, they addressed their activities
not only to the scientific community but to society or more precisely to the inter-
ested and well-educated layperson. Both associations wanted to spread, disseminate
and popularize their particular approach in philosophy of science and to connect it
with developments in society at large. In a way, they both pursued the goal of a more
educated and enlightened society. This reflects, however, their respective origins in
the intellectual milieu of the late enlightenment (Sptaufklrung) as Stadler put
3
In the fall of 1924, Moritz Schlick initiated interdisciplinary discussion rounds which met regu-
larly at the instigation of his students Friedrich Waismann and Herbert Feigl (). These discus-
sions can be seen as the beginnings of the Vienna Circle (Friedrich Stadler, The Vienna Circle.
Studies in the Origins, Developments, and Influence of Logical Empiricism, Wien/New York,
Springer 2001, p.199). The Berlin Group met in and around the seminars of Hans Reichenbach
(from October 1926 onwards) and a later colloquium he held together with Walter Dubislav. Cf.
Nikolay Milkov, Einleitung, in: Nikolay Milkov (Ed.), Die Berliner Gruppe. Texte zum Logischen
Empirismus. Hamburg: Meiner 2015, ixlxi, ix.
4
In contrast to the Mach Association the Berlin Society was not officially registered. cf. Dieter
Hoffmann, Zur Geschichte der Berliner Gesellschaft fr empirische/wissenschaftliche
Philosophie, in: Lutz Danneberg/ Andreas Kamlah/ Lothar Schfer (Eds.), Hans Reichenbach
und die Berliner Gruppe, Braunschweig/Wiesbaden: Viehweg 1994, pp. 2132, p. 30; Lutz
Danneberg/ Wilhelm Schernus, Die Gesellschaft fr wissenschaftliche Philosophie: Programm,
Vortrge und Materialien, in: Danneberg/Kamlah/Schfer, Hans Reichenbach, loc. cit., pp.391
482, p.395 (fn 20).
Report/Documentaion From Late Enlightenment toLogical Empiricism 211
it in the Austrian case.5 Contrary to their more or less purely scientific self-image,
however, ideology did not completely disappear.6
The following essay focuses in a comparative way on these organizations their
origins, history, most important representatives, their activities (including joint ven-
tures), and their respective programmatic foundations. Its aim is not simply to iden-
tify similarities and/or dissimilarities but to (1) focus on their ideological contexts
of origin and (2) their programmatic foundations. In what way are they related or
dependent on each other? It soon becomes obvious that both associations were not
only organizations of although popularized scientific reasoning. They were
also at least in part ideological organizations (so-called Weltanschauungsorga
nisationen).7
Late Enlightenment, Science andIdeology
As Dieter Hoffmann suggests, the establishment of the Berlin Society for Empirical
Philosophy in 1928 was closely connected to older associations of the second half
of the nineteenth century such as the German Freethinkers Association (founded in
1881), the German Society for Ethical Culture (established in 1892) and the German
Monist League (founded in 1906). All of them represented a positivistic approach
and were primarily active in the German capital Berlin.8 Many years earlier,
Friedrich Stadler had already made similar observations concerning the Austrian
case. Around the turn of the century (and partly in the decades before), a number of
associations were founded which combined scientific, secular (and often anticleri-
cal if not antireligious) thinking and social reform. The Monist League, the
Freethinkers Association and the Ethical Society or Community (from 1919
onwards) were among them. Despite close contacts and collaboration, they all
existed independently in both the German Reich and in Austria-Hungary. They all
continued their activities from 1918 onwards and focused their work on the respec-
tive capitals Vienna and Berlin.
5
Friedrich Stadler, Sptaufklrung und Sozialdemokratie 19181938, in: Franz Kadrnoska
(Ed.), Aufbruch und Untergang. sterreichische Kultur zwischen 1918 und 1938. Wien, Mnchen,
Zrich 1981, pp.441473.
6
cf. Donata Romizzi, The Vienna Circles Scientific World-Conception: Philosophy of Science
in the Political Arena, in: Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of
Philosophy of Science, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2012, pp.205242; Donata Romizzi, War die wissenschaftli-
che Weltauffassung nicht auch eine Weltanschauung? in: Friedrich Stadler/ Elisabeth Nemeth
(Eds.), Die europische Wissenschaftsphilosophie und das Wiener Erbe. Wien: Springer 2013,
pp.127151.
7
Among others, the term was coined by Michael Rudloff, Weltanschauungsorganisationen inner-
halb der Arbeiterbewegung der Weimarer Republik. Frankfurt/M, Wien: Peter Lang 1991.
8
Dieter Hoffmann, The Society for Empirical /Scientific Philosophy, in: Alan Richardson/
Thomas Uebel, Cambridge Companion, loc. Cit., pp.4157, p.44.
The famous Darwin-popularizer Ernst Haeckel founded the German Monist

League in Jena in 1906. After Haeckel, chemist Wilhelm Ostwald was the most
prominent Monist. Following the development in Germany only a few years later,
pacifist sociologist Rudolf Goldscheid became president of the Austrian Monist
League (founded in 1913) with philosopher Friedrich Jodl as its leading campaigner.
In both Berlin and Vienna, the Monists were agents in the so-called Kulturkampf
and fought for a strict separation of church and state.9 Thus, it is not surprising that
the widely read and most influential clerical-conservative Austrian newspaper
Reichspost warned of Monism as a serious danger for the German people.10 The
Monists cooperated closely with the anti-clerical Freethinkers movement. While
the Monists represented an intellectual elite, the Freethinkers were rather a mass
movement with many thousand members in each country (65,000in 1932in Austria
alone).11 The ethical movement (German Society for Ethical Culture and Ethical
Community in Austria) provided non-religious ethics. Its forerunner was the
American Society for Ethical Culture founded by Felix Adler in NewYork in 1876.12
After the end of the World War I in Austria, the umbrella organization Free
Federation of Cultural Associations (Freier Bund kultureller Vereine) was founded
in 1919 and included the Freethinkers Association, the Monist League and the
Ethical Community. In this organization Stadler identified some key intellectual
figures such as Friedrich Jodl (professor at Vienna and Prague University), Josef
Popper-Lynkeus (the social reformer famous for his pamphlet General Obligation
to Nutrition as a Solution to the Social Question), writer and adult educator
Wilhelm Brner (re-founded the Ethical community in Austria in 1919) and soci-
ologist Rudolf Goldscheid.13 Although formally independent and apolitical, many
of these associations were casually associated with the Social Democratic Workers
Party (SDAP), which was by far the strongest political force in the Austrian capital
Vienna. Their social-liberal aims and programs (social reform, education, science,
enlightenment etc.) made these associations natural allies of the left: Another poten-
tial ally, liberalism, was politically speaking not relevant anymore, and the other
political camps the German-Nationalist and the Christian-Conservatives were
extremely hostile to leftist-liberal, enlightened ideas. There remained nonetheless a
certain distance between some members of, for instance, the Freethinkers
Association and Social Democracy.14
Although organizations such as the Monist League und the Freethinkers were
autonomous and independent entities, a closer look demonstrates that they were
also connected. Not only were many people members and/or functionaries of both
9
cf. Rudolf Goldscheid, Monismus und Politik, Wien, Leipzig 1912.
10
Hackels Monismus ist eine Gefahr fr das deutsche Volk (Reichspost, 17.05.1916, 8).
11
cf. the article Freidenker in: www.dasrotewien.at, 31.03.2015.
12
Patka, Marcus C., Freimaurerei und Sozialreform. Der Kampf um Menschenrechte, Pazifismus
und Zivilgesellschaft in sterreich 18691938. Wien: Lcker 2011, p.56.
13
Stadler, Sptaufklrung, loc. cit., pp.445446.
14
Franz Sertl, Die Freidenkerbewegung in sterreich im 20. Jahrhundert. Wien: Dissertation 1994,
pp.204237.
associations. The Austrian Freethinkers, for instance, openly declared that Monism
is nothing less than our ideology and that there is a kind of labor division
between the two organizations. While the Freethinkers Association was working
for the enlightenment of the masses, the Monists supported primarily intellectu-
ally scientific ways of thinking.15 Moreover, there was also close cooperation
between the Austrian and the German groups. September 1116, 1927, for instance,
the German Monist League held a conference in Vienna. There were lectures by
German and Austrian Monists such as Oskar Vogt and Max Deri on the German side
(both members of the Berlin Society!) and Rudolf Goldscheid, Julius Tandler and
Max Adler on the Austrian.16
A few examples demonstrate the (even ideological) closeness between the late-
enlightenment organizations and the later associations in Vienna and Berlin (Mach
Association and Berlin Society). In Austria the Freethinkers Association played the
decisive role in founding the Mach Association, and many prominent freethinkers
such as Carl Kundermann, Bruno Schnfeld and Franz Ronzal became its board
members.17 Some of these men, however, were also members of the Ethical
Community and the Monist League. Additionally many of the Logical Empiricists
and members of the Mach Association worked as supporters or speakers of the
Ethical Community (e.g. Schlick, Carnap, Kraft),18 the Monist League (Schlick,
Neurath, Feigl) and the Freethinkers Association (Neurath and Frank) even though
there was a certain distance to old-fashioned forms of monism and freethinking as
Neurath once put it.19
In sum, these organizations were both programmatic and with respect to their
membership extremely interrelated a fact that was critically observed by their ide-
ological opponents. When the Ernst Mach Association organized a lecture by Hans
Hahn, the clerical and conservative Reichspost headlined Propaganda of
Freethinkers at the University and the association was polemically disparaged as
an institution for antireligious ideas.20
Particularly in Germany, the relation between proponents of the Berlin Society
and the Monist League was striking. Alexander Herzberg and Max Deri published
periodically in the journal of the Monist League especially in the years before the
15
Die Monistentagung in Wien (11. 16. September 1927), in: Der Freidenker Vol. 31, No. 9,
1927, p.133. Zwischen uns besteht Arbeitsteilung zur Erreichung desselben Zieles: Whrend wir
fr die Aufklrung der Massen arbeiten, bemht sich der Monistenbund um die Vertiefung des
freien, wissenschaftlichen Denkens.
16
Vossische Zeitung (VZ), 13.03.1927, p.28. Arbeiter Zeitung (AZ), 14.09.1927, p.6; Neue Freie
Presse, 13.09.1927, pp.56.
17
Friedrich Stadler, Vom Positivismus zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung. Am Beispiel der
Wirkungsgeschichte von Ernst Mach in sterreich von 1895 bis 1934. Wien, Mnchen: Lcker
1982, pp.171173.
18
Stadler, Sptaufklrung, loc. cit., p.451.
19
Cf. Otto Neurath, Die Philosophie im Kampf gegen die Wissenschaft (1932), in: Rudolf
Haller/ Heiner Rutte (Eds), Otto Neurath. Gesammelte philosophische und methodologische
Schriften. Band 2. Hlder-Pichler-Tempsky: Wien 1981, pp.571576.
20
Freidenkerpropaganda an der Universitt, in: Reichspost, 08.06.1929, p.6.
Berlin Society came into being. Herzberg defined monism as a scientific world-
view and way of life.21 Foundation member Georg Graf von Arco was also a Monist
(and briefly president of its Berlin section from 1921 to 1922) as well.22 Even Hans
Reichenbach and Kurt Grelling published repeatedly in Monist journals. Lily
Herzberg, Alexander Herzbergs wife, wrote her dissertation on the main philo-
sophical ideas of contemporary Monism, which she identified as positivism, mate-
rialism and critical realism.23 Lily Herzbergs study was accepted but rather
negatively evaluated by philosopher and psychologist Max Dessoir, who criticized
that an earlier (obviously rejected) version was nothing but pure propaganda.
Dessoir faulted a conflict of interest because the author and her husband were
Monist activists themselves, as he put it in his assessment of Herzbergs disserta-
tion.24 Ironically, Dessoir was later a lecturer on the program of the Berlin Society
in 1932 and 1934.25 Another founding member of the Berlin Society, Joseph
Petzoldt, came quite close to the Monist League and was asked to become a board
member. For the League, however, leaving the church was a precondition for mem-
bership and, interestingly enough, Petzoldt eventually refused to do this.26
Ideologically, the idea of a scientific worldview or world-conception was
very popular in the Monist movement. They spoke mostly about Wissenschaftliche
Weltanschauung27 (which was also part of the subtitle of the Monists journal) and
not of Weltauffassung which Neurath and others eventually preferred because of
the supposed ideological contamination of Weltanschauung.28 In fact, the Logical
Empiricists did not coin the term. Already in 1923, well-known Austrian Monist
Rudolf Goldscheid promoted a scientific world-conception (Wissenschaftliche
Weltauffassung).29
21
Alexander Herzberg, Wissenschaft und Monismus, in: Monistische Monatshefte, Vol. 8, No. 1,
1923, pp.17. (Wissenschaftliche Weltanschauung und Lebensgestaltung).
22
Margot Fuchs, Biographie ohne Nachla oder: Kontextualisiert bis zur Kenntlichkeit. Der
Erfinder-Ingenieur Georg v. Arco (18691940) als Thema der Technikbiographik, in: Christian v.
Zimmermann (Ed), (Auto)Biographik in der Wissenschafts- und Technikgeschichte, Heidelberg:
Palatina 2005, pp. 6374. Margot Fuchs, Georg von Arco (18691940) Ingenieur, Pazifist,
Technischer Direktor von Telefunken. Eine Erfinderbiographie. Berlin: Diepholz 2004.
23
The doctoral thesis was published in parts. Lily Herzberg, Die philosophischen Hauptstrmungen
im Monistenbund, in: Annalen der Philosophie und philosophischen Kritik, Vol. 7, 1928, pp.113
135, pp.177199.
24
HUB (Humboldt Universitt Berlin), Philosophische Fakultt 671, Bl. 209210 RS.
25
Danneberg/Schernus, Gesellschaft, loc., cit., pp.422423.
26
German Monist League to Joseph Petzoldt, 25.10.1922 (Estate Petzoldt, TU Berlin, Pe 3065).
Later he became a board member of the local branch in Hannover (cf. document Pe 30 e).
27
e.g. Alexander Herzberg, Wissenschaft und Monismus, in: Monistische Monatshefte.
Monatsschrift fr wissenschaftliche Weltanschauung und Lebensgestaltung, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1923,
pp.17.
28
Thomas Uebel, Writing a Revolution: On the Production and Early Reception of the Vienna
Circles Manifesto, in: Perspectives on Science, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2008, pp.70102, pp.9698.
29
Goldscheid, Rudolf, Die Pflanzsttten der Wissenschaft als Brutsttten der Reaktion, in: Die
Wage, Vol. 4, 1923, pp.137143, p.143.
olitics, Culture andAcademic Life intheInterwar Years:

P
Vienna andBerlin
Red Vienna is well-known as the socialist capital of the interwar years in conti-
nental Europe, a model of communal socialism that attracted considerable attention
in the European left-wing movement.30 Already at the turn of the century and espe-
cially in the Weimar years, however, Red Berlin was a also well-known expres-
sion.31 In the Weimar Republic, not only Social Democrats (SPD) but also
Communists (KPD) were strong political parties in the German capital. In contrast
to interwar Vienna, however, there was not a single socialist party with an absolute
majority of votes (as the SDAP always had). In Berlin, there was a social-liberal
coalition with a liberal as long-time mayor.32 Nevertheless, quite similar to the situ-
ation in Austria in which Red Vienna was surrounded by right-wing conservative
and therefore politically hostile provinces, large parts of Germany looked upon Red
Berlin mistrustfully too. In many respects, however, the German capital was more
modern, cosmopolitan and avant-garde than the Austrian. Even Berlins self-image
was that of nothing less than the most progressive city in Europe if not the world.33
Both groups the Ernst Mach Association and the Berlin Society appeared as
modernist movements. They endeavored to overcome traditional school philoso-
phy and to make clear that, with respect to knowledge claims, there is no authority
beyond or above science. Many of their representatives were, politically speaking,
left-wing intellectuals ranging from social-liberal to strongly Marxist. They felt part
of a modern and secular movement of renewal that comprised not only the sciences
but also many other cultural fields such as architecture, literature and the arts. In
many respects, however, it was closely connected with social and political change.
Thus, for the representatives of tradition and conservatism, the rise of modernism
meant a dangerous threat. These (mutual) animosities were closely related to anti-
Semitism. The cities of Vienna and Berlin in particular represented the kind of mod-
ern culture that German and Austrian anti-Semites perceived as Jewish. A group
of anti-Semitic pseudo-scientists attacked even Albert Einsteins theory of relativi-
ty.34 Rising National Socialism was a dangerous threat in both cities from the early
1920s onwards. Politically motivated violence in the streets, terror attacks and even
murderfor example, the assassination on June 23, 1922 of German Foreign
30
Anson Rabinbach, The Crisis of Austrian Socialism. From Red Vienna to Civil War 19271934.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1983; Helmut Gruber, Red Vienna. Experiment in Working-
Class Culture 19191934. NewYork, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1991.
31
From a communist perspective: Annemarie Lange, Berlin in der Weimarer Republik. Berlin:
Dietz 1987, pp. 795831. cf. also David Clay Large, Berlin. Biographie einer Stadt. Beck:
Mnchen 2002, p.113.
32
cf. Christian Engeli, Gustav B. Oberbrgermeister von Berlin 19211930. Stuttgart:
Kohlhammer 1971.
33
Large, Berlin, loc. Cit., p.197.
34
Lange, Berlin in der Weimarer Republik, loc. cit., pp. 714716, Large, Berlin, loc. cit.,
pp.182183.
Minister Walther Rathenau, a Jewundermined many peoples confidence in the

young democracies.
Thus, despite their apparently purely scientific orientation, the Berlin Society
and the Mach Association were parties to the political and cultural conflicts whether
they wanted to or not. Most of their activists were socialists, liberals or Marxists
and many of them were Jewish and became targets of anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist
actions. Especially the University of Vienna in the interwar years became a (not
only) ideological battleground in this context,35 probably even more than in the case
of Berlin.36
In academia and in intellectual circles in both Berlin and Vienna, there were
many opponents of an explicitly scientific and empirical approach in philosophy.
Although especially in Berlin many protagonists of the Berlin Society were them-
selves well-established scientists, the program of a scientifically oriented philoso-
phy was not academically successful.37 This is undoubtedly one of the reasons why
extramural popular education and popularization of knowledge were associated
with the history of both organizations.
Many academic careers of Logical Empiricists were strongly influenced by these
political and cultural antagonisms. Reichenbach for instance was criticized for his
socialist past in the appointment procedure for a professorship at the University of
Berlin.38 Edgar Zilsels habilitation was prevented by an anti-Marxist and anti-
Semitic network (Zilsel was active in the Mach Association and the Vienna Circle)39
and even scholars of the caliber of Neurath would have had no chance to establish
themselves at the University of Vienna.40
35
Bruce Pauley, From Prejudice to Persecution. A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism. Chapel Hill,
NC; University of North Carolina Press 1991, pp.89101 and pp.121124. Oliver Rathkolb (Ed.),
Der lange Schatten des Antisemitismus. Gttingen: Vienna University Press 2013; Klaus Taschwer,
Hochburg des Antisemitismus. Der wissenschaftliche Niedergang der Universitt Wien in der
ersten Hlfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Wien: Czernin 2015.
36
Aleksandra Pawliczek, Akademischer Alltag zwischen Ausgrenzung und Erfolg. Jdische
Dozenten an der Berliner Universitt 18711933. Stuttgart: Steiner 2011. Aleksandra Pawliczek,
Kontinuitt des informellen Konsenses. Die Berufungspolitik der Universitt Berlin und ihre
jdischen Dozenten im Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik, in: Rdiger Bruch (Ed.),
Kontinuitten und Diskontinuitten der Wissenschaftsgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart:
Steiner 2006, pp.6992. Georg G.Iggers, Academic Anti-Semitism in Germany 18701933. A
Comparative International Perspective, in: Tel Aviver Jahrbuch fr deutsche Geschichte, Vol.
XXVII, 1998, pp. 473489; Notker Hammerstein, Antisemitismus und deutsche Universitten
18711933, Frankfurt/M./New York: Campus 1995.
37
Hubert Laitko, Wissenschaft in Berlin um 1930, in: Hans Poser/ Ulrich Dirks (Eds.), Hans
Reichenbach. Philosophie im Umkreis der Physik. Berlin: Akademie Verlag 1998, pp.139155.
Lutz Danneberg, Der Logische Empirismus der zwanziger und dreiiger Jahre: Rezeption und
Ausstrahlung, in: Poser/Dirks, Reichenpoch, loc. cit., pp.119138.
38
Hartmut Hecht/Dieter Hoffmann, Die Berufung Hans Reichenbachs an die Berliner Universitt,
in: Deutsche Zeitschrift fr Philosophie, Vol. 30, No. 5, 1982, pp.651662.
39
Johann Dvorak, Edgar Zilsel und die Einheit der Erkenntnis. Lcker: Wien 1981, pp.2021.
Klaus Taschwer, Geheimsache Brenhhle, in: www.academica.eu, pp.2425, 31.03.2015.
40
Gnther Sandner, Otto Neurath. Eine politische Biographie. Wien: Zsolnay 2014, p.225.
omparative Organizational History, Scholars and(Common)

C
Activities
A forerunner of the Berlin Society for Empirical Philosophy was Joseph Petzoldts
Society for Positivistic Philosophy which was founded in 1912 and integrated into
the Kant Society in 1921. Ernst Mach was among its regular members while Albert
Einstein and Sigmund Freud were honorary members. Despite his academic ambi-
tions, Joseph Petzoldt (18621929) worked most of his professional life as a school-
teacher and was appointed to a professorship at the Technical University
Charlottenburg only in 1922.41 Throughout his life, Petzoldt was a follower of Mach
whom he praised as a great man and educator.42 In his essay on positivistic philoso-
phy, he explained his approach in which empiricism, the rejection of metaphysics
and critique of the separation of the humanities and the natural sciences were deci-
sive elements.43
Petzoldt was also one of the founders of the Berlin Society for Empirical
Philosophy on February 27, 1927in the apartment of Georg Graf von Arco, an engi-
neer and technical director of Telefunken. Initially, the society was founded as the
Berlin local branch of an International Society for Empirical Philosophy.44 The man
behind the International Society was Raymund Schmidt, editor of the journal
Annalen der Philosophie. In fact, however, the international society seemed to
remain more or less congruent to the local group in Berlin. Friedrich Kraus, director
of the second medical clinic of the Charit, became the societys first chair, Georg
Graf von Arco and well-known brain researcher Oskar Vogt served as vice-chairmen,
and Joseph Petzoldt as general secretary. Also among the founding members were
art historian Max Deri and psychologist Alexander Herzberg. The opening session
started with a lecture by Petzoldt entitled Rationales und empirisches Denken.45
A programmatic circular proclaimed the need for an empirically and scientifi-
cally oriented philosophy.46At the end of 1927, the society already had 110 mem-
bers.47 Its lecture program focused on medicine, psychoanalysis and psychology,
academic fields in which Berlin was very strong at the time.
In 1926, Hans Reichenbach became an associate professor in Berlin. Around him
were some students who later became members of the society such as Carl Gustav
Hempel and Martin Strauss. In the beginning, Reichenbach remained somewhat
41
Walter Dubislav, Joseph Petzoldt in memoriam, in: Annalen der Philosophie und philoso-
phischen Kritik, Vol. 8, 1929, pp.89295. Dieter Hoffmann, The Society, loc. cit., pp.4548.
42
Joseph Petzoldt, Ernst Mach, in: Der Kunstwart, Vol. XXIX, No. 12, 1916, pp.232233.
43
Joseph Petzoldt, Positivistische Philosophie, in: Zeitschrift fr positivistische Philosophie, Vol.
1, 1913, pp.116.
44
VZ, 04.03.1927, p.15. Cf. List Petzoldt Estate, Pe 3216.
45
Joseph Petzoldt, Rationales und empirisches Denken, in: Annalen der Philosophie und phi-
losophischen Kritik, Vol. 6, 1927, pp.145160, p.153.
46
(Aufgaben der) Internationale(n) Gesellschaft fr empirische Philosophie. (Petzoldt estate, Pe
3217)
47
Hecht/Hoffmann, Berufung Reichenbach, p.48. cf. Estate Petzoldt Pe 3216 (Beilage zu Pe 32).
distant from the society. On November 15 1927, however, he held a lecture entitled
ber die philosophischen Grundlagen der Mathematik and only a short time later
in 1928 he became a member.48
After Petzoldts death in 1929, theory and logic of science became more impor-
tant in the societys program. This turn was mainly organized by Reichenbach as
chair and Walter Dubislav as general secretary (from winter 193132 onwards).49 In
this time, the association was renamed the Berlin Society for Scientific Philosophy,
most probably pursuant to a proposal by mathematician David Hilbert.50
Over the years, newspaper reports on the activities of the Berlin Society were
published continuously, for instance in the liberal Vossische Zeitung (VZ) and even
in some other periodicals.51 Although the articles were often written in a critical
way, they assured considerable public resonance. Especially the philosophically
educated journalist Heinrich Mhsam repeatedly published articles but he distanced
himself from what he called nave positivism and characterized the society as a
sect. The Berlin Society, however, rejected the charge and defended itself.52 The
VZ, however, also published articles by proponents of the Berlin Society. Alexander
Herzberg, for instance, wrote about Friedrich Kraus lecture53 and Hans Reichenbach
published a whole series on popularized natural science and scientific philosophy.54
Reichenbach, a gifted popularizer, was also active in radio features.55
The last lecture took place on May 23, 1933 and was held by Austrian psycholo-
gist Alfred Adler. The Society still existed until 193536, though much reduced in
size since the societies leading members had left Berlin. Reichenbach went to
Istanbul in 1933 (and to the USA in 1938). Dubislav, who was general secretary and
the societys last president, lost his university job in 1935 and went to Prague in
1936 where he died under mysterious circumstances.56 Grelling, who headed the
society until 1936, left Germany relatively late. He had been forced into retirement
in March 1933, escaped for Brussels only in 1937, was held in a French internment
48
Danneberg/Schernus, Berliner Gesellschaft, loc. cit., p.393.
49
Hecht/Hoffmann, Berufung Reichenbach, loc. cit., p.49.
50
Joergen Joergensen, The development of logical empiricism. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press 1951, 48.
51
Danneberg/Schernus, Berliner Gesellschaft, loc. cit., pp.405408.
52
Heinrich Mhsam, Philosophische Sonntagspredigt, in: VZ, 07.11.1932, p. 8. Heinrich
Mhsam, Erbauung und Wissenschaft, in: VZ, 22.11.1932, p.5.
53
Alexander Herzberg, Professor Kraus in der Gesellschaft fr empirische Philosophie, in: VZ,
27.10.1927, p.10.
54
Reichenbachs articles are the following: Philosophie der Naturwissenschaften, in: VZ,
03.01.1928, p.9; Bertrand Russell, in: VZ, 12.02.1928, pp.3031; Von Kant zu Einstein, in:
VZ, 04.03. 1928, pp.3637; Kausalitt oder Wahrscheinlichkeit, in: VZ, 18.07.1928, pp.2021;
Einsteins neue Theorie, in: VZ, 25.01.1929, p.9. Physikalische Forschung, in: VZ, 31.03.1929,
pp.3031. Philosophische Forschung, in: VZ, 16.06.1929, p.28. Mathematische Forschung,
in: 18.08.1929, p.18. Hundert gegen Einstein, in: VZ, 24.02.1931, p.10.
55
Danneberg/Schernus, Berliner Gesellschaft, loc. cit., p.403.
56
cf. Prager Tagblatt, 18.09.1937, p.4. Danneberg/Schernus, Berliner Gesellschaft, loc. cit., p.400.
camp and eventually murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz.57 Alexander Herzberg

failed to establish himself at the University of Istanbul58 and eventually went to
England where he died in 1944.59 In the end, Reichbach was the only member of the
logical empiricist core group who survived World War II and National Socialism.
In June 1926, the city of Vienna opened a memorial to Ernst Mach in a city park.
Among the speakers at this ceremony was Moritz Schlick who stressed the impor-
tance of Machs program of empiricism and positivism not only for the sciences but
also for culture and society. Intellectual freedom, Schlick asserted, was closely
associated with Mach.60 The sympathy for Mach represented an (albeit fragile) cul-
tural alliance between liberal and socialist forces. This becomes obvious when com-
paring the articles on the Mach memorial in the socialist Arbeiter Zeitung (AZ) and
the liberal Neue Freie Presse.61 In a way, this alliance existed also in the Mach
Association (Vienna Circle) with Moritz Schlick as the bourgeois-liberal and Otto
Neurath as the Marxist with proletarian habitus.62
In November 1928, in the journal of the Viennese Freethinkers, a committee of
proponents (mostly Freethinkers and none of the Vienna Circle) called for the foun-
dation of an Ernst Mach organization which ought to disseminate knowledge
from natural sciences and philosophy of enlightenment.63 In the following issue, the
journal reported the act of foundation including the opening speech by Otto Neurath
on November 23, 1928 on Ernst Mach and the exact conception of the world.64
Already on April 12, 1927, Freethinker Carl Kundermann, a representative of the
educational authority of the city of Vienna, officially registered the association. The
lecture program, however, did not start until the end of 1928.65 Thus, the Freethinkers
movement mainly organized the foundation of the Ernst Mach Association in
November 1928.
At the beginning of 1929, a professorship in Bonn was offered to Moritz Schlick.
The board of the newly founded Mach Association wrote him a letter and urged him
57
Volker Peckhaus, The Third Man: Kurt Grelling and the Berlin Group, in: Nikolay Milkov/
Volker Peckhaus (Eds), The Berlin Group and the Philosophy of Logical Empiricism, Heidelberg;
NewYork, London: Springer 2013, pp.231243. Volker Peckhaus, Von Nelson zu Reichenbach:
Kurt Grelling in Gttingen und Berlin, in Danneberg/Kamlah/Schfer, Hans Reichenbach, loc.
cit., pp.5386. cf. Abraham S.Luchins/ Edith H.Luchins, Kurt Grelling: Steadfast Scholar in a
Time of Madness, in: http://gestaltheory.net/archive/kgrelbio.htmal, 31.03.2015.
58
cf. Hans Reichenbach to Alexander Herzberg, 12.02.1937. (Philosophisches Archiv Universitt
Konstanz, HR 013-46-55).
59
Wilhelm Schernus, Alexander Herzberg: Psychologie, Medizin und wissenschaftliche
Philosophie, in: Dannberg/Kamlah/Schfer, loc. cit., pp., 3351.
60
Die Enthllung des Ernst-Mach-Denkmals im Rathauspark and Moritz Schlick: Ernst Mach,
der Philosoph, in: Neue Freie Presse, 12.06.1926, pp.1112.
61
Cf. Neue Freie Presse, 12.06.1926 and Arbeiter-Zeitung, 13.06.1926.
62
Cf. Stadler on the differences between Neurath and Schlick, Vienna Circle, loc. cit.,
pp.498507.
63
Der Pionier, Vol. 3, No. 11, 1928, pp.23.
64
Der Pionier Vol. 3, No. 12, 1928, pp.910. (Ernst Mach und die exakte Weltauffassung).
65
Stadler, Vom Positivismus, loc. cit., pp.170173.
to stay in Vienna and continue the Vienna Circles philosophical program. Although
there was no special favor from the responsible Austrian Ministry of Education, it
was in the end a successful enterprise. Schlick remained in Vienna and his decision
to stay stimulated the work for the planned booklet.66 Although he was moved by
the authors amicable intentions, he was not happy with the manifesto because of
its advertising style and its propagandizing tone.67 Nevertheless, Schlick was an
exponent of the scientific world-conception and from 1930 onwards he edited
together with Philipp Frank the Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung.68
The presentation of the manifesto on The Scientific World-Conception. The Vienna
Circle (1929) took place at a meeting in Prague in September 1929 (Epistemology
of the Exact Sciences).
The political developments in Austria, however, restricted the working condi-
tions of the Mach Association. Already in June 1933, the authoritarian government
banned the Freethinkers Association. This was the end of the alliance between the
Freethinkers and the Mach Association. Even before, there had been some disagree-
ments between Kundermann and Schlick. Whereas Kundermann called for more
political activism, Schlick firmly rejected any politicization.69 Following the events
of February 1934 (a short civil war between the working class movement and the
anti-democratic right-wing government that resulted in the definite end of parlia-
mentary democracy), even the Ernst Mach Association was banned because of its
asserted sympathies for and cooperation with the socialist party. Schlick, however,
stressed in letters to Chancellor Dollfu the apolitical character of the associations
activities and his loyalty to the dictatorial regime.70
Among their common activities was the editorship of the journal Erkenntnis
(which followed the Annalen der Philosophie) by Hans Reichenbach and Rudolf
Carnap, and the organization of the conference in Prague (September 1929). A com-
parison of the annual programs of the two groups shows the following71: In Berlin
there were many lectures, which focused on problems of the individual sciences
such as psychology, biology, engineering, physics and medicine. Only a few presen-
tations dealt with logics or empiricism. Most of these scientific disciplines were also
present in the program of the Mach Association (especially physics, biology, math-
ematics, and even psychoanalysis). In contrast to the situation in Berlin, however,
many of the titles of the lectures sounded more programmatic. Scientific
66
Stadler, Vienna Circle, loc. cit., p.335.
67
Henk L. Mulder, The Scientific World-Conception. The Vienna Circle (1968), in: Friedrich
Stadler/ Thomas Uebel (Eds.), Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener Kreis, Wien/New
York: Springer 2012, pp. 259264, p. 263. Herbert Feigl, The Wiener Kreis in America, in:
Donald Fleming/Bernhard Bailyn (Eds.), The Intellectual Migration. Europe and America, 1930
1960, Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard University Press 1969, pp.630673, p.646.
68
Stadler, Vom Positivismus, loc. cit., p.167.
69
ibid., p.195.
70
cf. Stadler, Vom Positivismus, loc. cit., pp.196205.
71
Cf. for Berlin Danneberg/Schernus, Berliner Gesellschaft, loc. cit., pp.478481 and for Vienna
Stadler, Vom Positivismus, loc. cit., pp.181182.
orld-conception, physicalism and particularly unity of science appeared

w
repeatedly. Additionally, a number of the Viennese lectures dealt with questions of
economics or sociology, which were almost totally absent from the Berlin program.
Therefore the social sciences obviously played a more important role in Vienna and
were only rarely represented in Berline.g. by Richard Thurnwald, an empirically
oriented anthropologist who lectured about empirical sociology.72 While some of
the Viennese logical empiricists lectured in Berlin (especially Carnap and Neurath),
neither Reichenbach nor anyone else from the core group of the Berlin Society was
invited to lecture in Vienna. Carl Hempel, who came from Berlin to Vienna, only
represented a personal exchange.73
Although we do not exactly know how many members were in the audience, the
events were generally well attended in Vienna and Berlin as well. Controversial
discussions are only known from Berlin, a fact that resulted in a rather strict order
for debate, which seems to have been unknown in Vienna.74 The field of parapsy-
chology (e.g. telepathy, soothsaying etc.) elicited reactions among scholars in both
groups, namely by Hans Hahn in Vienna, and Alexander Herzberg and Georg Arco
in Berlin, who conducted a hotly debated experiment on telepathy and radio.75 In
contrast to Vienna, however, in Berlin it was also part of the lecture program
(although in a critical way) and resulted in a controversyeven physical conflict
between the organizers and some followers of Hanussen.76
The Mach Association, on the other hand, was much more embedded in the intel-
lectual and educational fabric of its hometown. Thus, the Mach Association orga-
nized, for instance, a multi-part seminar in 1931 (January 28 to the end of April) on
problems of modern sciences and humanities (Einfhrung in die Probleme der
modernen Natur- und Geisteswissenschaft) which took place at the pedagogical
institute of Vienna and was even addressed to teachers and thus to multipliers who
propagated their knowledge in schools.77
72
VZ, 30.06.1927, p.17.
73
Nikolay Milkov, Carl Hempel: Whose Philosopher? in: Milkov/Peckhaus, Berlin Group, loc.
cit., pp.293308.
74
cf. Danneberg/Schernus, Berliner Gesellschaft, loc., cit., p.406; Alexander Herzberg an Joseph
Petzoldt, 24.10.1928, (Petzoldt Estate, Pe 3210, Beilage (Pe 3215).
75
Alexander Herzberg, Telepathie und Rundfunk, in: Die Sendung, Vol. 5, No. 16, 1928, pp.177
178; Lily Herzberg, Telepathie und Rundfunk, Umschau Vol. 32, No. 18, 1928, pp. 353354;
Joseph Petzoldt, Vorfragen zur Frage der Telepathie, in: Annalen der Philosophie und philoso-
phischen Kritik Vol. 7, 1928, pp.200204.
76
cf. the articles in VZ on 09.06.1932, p.11 and 12.10.1932, p.5.
77
Arbeiter-Zeitung, 28.01.1931, p.5; Der Pionier Vol. 6, No. 2, 1931, pp.1314.
Programmatic Foundations andCharacteristics
As Dieter Hoffmann pointed out, the activities of the Berlin Society were also an
expression of a particular world-conception in which the emphasis on progress, sci-
ence and technology, on industry and culture formed the ideological background.78
This is obviously true of the Mach Association as well. To discuss the issue, I will
focus on some programmatic texts which reflect, in one way or the other, the ideo-
logical pre-history of both groups and their world-conception.
The groups had no common manifesto. In the Vienna Circles Scientific World-
Conception, members of the Berlin Group such as Reichenbach, Dubislav and
Grelling were only mentioned as authors close to the Vienna Circle.79 The main
programmatic text of logical empiricism in the interwar years represented a revolu-
tionary spirit that reached far beyond the academic field. It explicitly postulated an
inner link of the scientific world-conception to endeavors of a new organization
of economic and social relations, toward the unification of humankind, toward a
reform of school and education,80 Although some logical empiricists such as
Schlick, Reichenbach and even the influential Wittgenstein criticized the texts form
and content,81 there was also approval not only from Viennese scholars but also
from Berlin. In his article on Bernard Bolzano, Walter Dubislav praised the vener-
ated scholar as a forerunner of the scientific world-conception with special refer-
ence to his socio-political activities.82
Another programmaticperhaps competingtext was The Turn of Philosophy
by Moritz Schlick, which was published a year later in the journal Erkenntnis.83 In
contrast to the manifesto, however, it makes no mention of references in philosophy
and science to any social or political ideology, does not even use the term scientific
word-conception, and it focuses mainly on the inner development of philosophy of
science.
What about the program of the Berlin Society? Already in its pre-history, the
Aufruf of Petzoldts Society for Positivistic Philosophy proclaimed a compre-
hensive worldview based upon facts as a decisive target of the organizations activ-
ities.84 Even later, however, there were some quasi-manifestos. Beyond the short
circular already mentioned and published on the foundation of the Berlin Society
for Empirical Philosophy, there was, first, Petzoldts opening lecture on rational and
empirical thinking. It postulated that empirical philosophy also needed rational
78
Dieter Hoffmann, The Society, in: Richardson/Uebel, Logical Empiricism, loc. cit., p.44.
79
Stadler/Uebel, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung, loc. cit., pp.103107.
80
ibid., p.81.
81
cf. Mulder, Scientific-World Conception, loc. cit., pp.262263.
82
Walter Dubislav, Bernard Bolzano, in: VZ, 05.10.1931, pp.56.
83
Michael Stltzner and Thomas Uebel qualified both the Vienna Circle manifesto and Schlicks
article as Programmschriften (programmatic texts). Cf. Michael Stltzner/ Thomas Uebel (Eds.),
Der Wiener Kreis. Texte zur wissenschaftliichen Weltauffassung. Hamburg: Meiner 2006.
84
cf. Hentschel, Petzoldt-Reichenbach, loc. cit., p. 16 (Eine umfassende Weltanschauung auf
Grund des Tatsachenstoffes ()).
thinking and that both ways are necessary elements of knowledge (as the title sug-
gests). Petzoldt, however, also made an ideological point: Mental procedures, he
maintained, are always determined by biology. Thus, no worldview at all, be it phil-
osophical or even theological, may ignore this. In a rather Monist way, Petzoldt
additionally stressed the fact that there is no difference between humanities and
natural sciences and between mind/spirit and nature.85
Nikolay Milkov characterized Alexander Herzbergs 1928 newspaper article on
Empirical Philosophy as the manifesto of the societys early period (the period
before Reichenbach).86 Herzbergs brief and popularly written portrayal of the new
empirical philosophy is not only a plea for a philosophy that integrates new scien-
tific developments such as the theory of relativity, gestalt theory, or even theory of
stability (Petzoldt). It also postulates the unification of knowledge towards a com-
prehensive and unified worldview.87
The program for the later period was probably best expressed by Reichenbach in
Aims and Methods of Modern Philosophy of Nature.88 Despite some obvious dif-
ferences between him and Petzoldt (particularly on causality, induction and
probability),89 Reichenbach as well pointed out that there is no contradiction
between modern empiricism and rationalism. Additionally both Petzoldt and
Reichenbach polemicized against scholasticism and romanticism. For Reichenbach,
however, it is not philosophy which has something substantial to say about ques-
tions of contemporary society. He stated: It has become ever more obvious that
decisive new insights into the meaning of life, be it new visions of human society,
or of the relationship between the sexes, or of the education of children and adoles-
cents, or of the distribution of work and leisure in daily life, are found not by specu-
lative philosophers but by people in practical life who discover new values in their
activities and are able to make them acceptable to others through the impact of their
personalities.90 Reichenbachs essay on Logistic Empiricism in Germany can be
read as a sort of Berlin manifesto in exile.91 In this essay he conceded that this
85
Joseph Petzoldt, Rationales und empirisches Denken, lo. Cit.,, p.153.
86
Nikolay Milkov, Einleitung des Herausgebers, in: Nikolay Milkov (Ed.), Die Berliner Gruppe.
Texte zum Logischen Empirismus, Hamburg: Meiner 2015, pp. ix-lxi, p. xxxix.
87
Alexander Herzberg, Empirische Philosophie, in: VZ, 8. August 1928, p.11. (D)ie Aufgabe,
ein einheitliches Weltbild zu begrnden (), wird in ihren Hauptzgen jedenfalls auf dem Boden
der Erfahrung gelst werden mssen.
88
Cf.., Milkov, Einleitung, loc., cit., pp. xxxixxi.
89
Cf. the relation Reichenbach-Petzoldt in: Klaus Hentschel, Die Korrespondenz Petzoldt
Reichenbach. Zur Entwicklung der wissenschaftlichen Philosophie in Berlin. Berlin: Sigma
1990.
90
Hans Reichenbach, Aims and Methods of Modern Philosophy of Nature (1931), in: Marie
Reichenbach (Ed.), Modern Philosophy of Science. Selected Essays by Hans Reichenbach.
London: Routledge& Kegan Paul 1959, pp.79108, p.106.
91
Friedrich Stadler, The road to Experience and Prediction from within: Hans Reichenbachs sci-
entific correspondence from Berlin to Istanbul, in: Synthese, No. 181, 2011, pp.137155, p.146.
principle had a great educational influence upon a wide public92 only with respect
to Carnaps war against pseudo-problems.
What all these programmatic approaches have in common is the conviction that
the rejection of metaphysics, the renewal of philosophy and its scientific orientation,
its connection and accessibility to the modern (natural) sciences have consequences
not only for philosophy (of science) alone. Rather, they are necessarily essential
for every worldview (Petzoldt), and should promote a collective endeavor of
establishing a unified worldview (Herzberg). It is the scientifically oriented per-
son who is much better equipped for the challenges of modern life than the literary
person, Reichenbach stated.93 We are witnessing how the spirit of the scientific
world-conception penetrates in growing measure the forms of personal and public
life, of education, of childrearing, of architecture, and how it helps shape economic
and social life according to rational principles, as it says in the manifesto.94 In sum,
a scientific world-conception seems to be the only sustainable approach for a desir-
able future human life.
92
Hans Reichenbach, Logistic Empiricism in Germany and the Present State of its Problems, in:
The Journal of Philosophy Vol. 33, No. 6, 1936, pp.141160, p.143.
93
Reichenbach, Aims and Methods, loc. cit., pp.105108.
94
Stadler/Uebel, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung, loc. cit., p.90.
Reviews
atthias Neuber (Ed.). Fiktion und Fiktionalismus: Beitrge

M
zu Hans Vaihingers Philosophie des Als Ob. 283 pp.,
Wrzburg: Verlag Knigshausen & Neumann GmbH, 2014.
BjrnHenning
Vienna, Austria
In 1911, German philosopher Hans Vaihinger (18521933), a student of such nota-
ble nineteenth century philosophers as Christoph Sigwart and Eduard Zeller, pub-
lished his main monograph Die Philosophie des Als Ob (The Philosophy of As if,
translated into English in 1924). In it, he seeks to answer the question how it is that
we arrive at the truth through knowingly wrong ideas. Vaihingers book stands in
the tradition of Kants and Nietzsches philosophy, and supports a scientific antireal-
ism. More specifically, it can be seen as an early version of fictionalism, a position
that has recently been discussed by e.g. Arthur Fine, Mark Kalderon, and Matti
Eklund. On 800 pages Vaihinger tries to develop a system of the theoretical, practi-
cal and religious fictions of mankind, arguing for a position he dubs positivist
idealism or idealistic positivism. His magnum opus was released in ten editions
within no more than 16years, which suggests a lively discussion of his philosophy
in the German-speaking world at that time. Yet in the history of philosophy,
Vaihinger is probably better known as the founder and editor of the famous Kant-
Studien as well as the founder of the Kant-Gesellschaft, and as co-editor of Annalen
der Philosophie, a journal subsequently taken over by Rudolf Carnap and Hans
Reichenbach, and renamed as Erkenntnis, the publication organ of the Vienna Circle
and the Berlin School of logical empiricism.
One hundred years after the date of its first publication a conference on Vaihingers
Philosophy of As if was organized by the Forum Scientiarum. The Forum
Scientiarum is an institution of the University of Tuebingen promoting the dialogue

Institute Yearbook 19, DOI10.1007/978-3-319-50730-9
226 Reviews
between the sciences and the humanities. The proceedings of that conference have
now been published, edited by Matthias Neuber who also provides a helpful intro-
duction. In it he singles out the interdisciplinary approach as an advantage of
Vaihingers fictionalism. The volume contains a welcome collection of sixteen
papers. The authors jointly attempt to contribute to a historical-critical reconstruc-
tion of Vaihingers philosophy of fictions to assess the tenability of its central
claims, and to explore ways of applying it to a variety of scientific disciplines such
as mathematics, logic, physics, the cognitive sciences, literary studies, ethics, and
the philosophy of religion.
The book is thematically divided into three parts: (1) Foundations; (2)
Fictionalism in Logic, Mathematics, and Physics; (3) Fictionalism in the Humanities.
The first part contains an informative biographical survey of Vaihingers life by
Gerd Simon as well as two insightful analyses of the history of ideas and problems
of the Philosophy of As if conducted by Michael Heidelberger and Gottfried
Gabriel. Heidelbergers study includes a thorough investigation of the influence of
Friedrich Albert Langes History of Materialism on Vaihingers as if philosophy
revealing it as a successor to Langes philosophy. In the last section of his article he
sketches a historical trajectory originating from Vaihingers fictions leading to early
Wittgensteins pseudo-sentences. Gabriel initially discusses the impact of
Nietzsche on Vaihinger before arguing, following Vaihingers distinction between
(scientific) fictions and (mythological, aesthetic) figments, against attempts of
invalidating the fact-fiction distinction of postmodern and poststructuralist propo-
nents such as Hayden White.
In part two the authors address the adequacy of Vaihingers fictionalism for the
exact sciences and discuss whether it is a useful tool for describing and illuminat-
ing these disciplines. Generally, their verdicts are not too positive about the tenabil-
ity of Vaihingers concept of fiction in the sciences. Following Christian Betschs
distinguished study on Vaihingers as if philosophy from 1926, Volker Peckhaus
analyses the usefulness of Vaihingers fictions for modern mathematical and formal
logic. He arrives at the conclusion that the philosophy of as if is completely inad-
equate. Although logicians and mathematicians actually make good use of fic-
tions, e.g. in terms of mathematical axioms, Vaihingers claim that we knowingly
operate with contradictory concepts and propositions is untenable. Torsten Wilholt
and mathematician Ulrich Felgner generally agree in their papers with Peckhauss
critical assessment. Wilholt attempts different interpretations of Vaihingers fic-
tionalism before analyzing the systematic potential of fictionalism as a philoso-
phy of mathematics. In his analysis he not only addresses Vaihinger but also
contemporary proponents of mathematical fictionalism such as Hartry Field and
Stephen Yablo. Although Wilholts admits that fictionalism is quite appealing as a
philosophy of mathematics, he indicates severe systematic problems mathematical
fictionalism still has to face. Using mathematical examples, e.g. the concept of
infinity as well as the concepts of negative, irrational, infinitesimal, and imaginary
numbers, Felgner, too, investigates the applicability of (Vaihingers) fictions to
mathematics. In his contribution, Klaus Hentschel draws on his much-noticed dis-
sertation on the philosophical interpretations of relativity theory in the early twenti-
Reviews 227
eth century. In particular, he deals with the reception of Vaihingers philosophy

amongst physicists of relativity and quantum mechanics. According to Hentschel,
physicists pursued two strategies: either they did not take the philosophy of as if
all too seriously, like Einstein did for good reason, or, in the case of Schrdingers
assessment of the Copenhagen interpretation, they used it for the purpose of ridicul-
ing theories they considered unsatisfactory. Vaihinger thought of mathematics as
being the main field of application for his fictionalism. At his suggestion the
Viennese Academy of Sciences offered an award for the best essay on the topic fic-
tions in mathematics in 1923. Mathematician Christian Betsch won the award. In
his paper Betschs son, Gerhard Betsch, addresses the biographical and historical
context of the prize essay Fiktionen in der Mathematik, published in 1926.
In their joint paper the first article of the third and final part of the book the
authors Sabine Dring and Bahadir Eker relate Vaihingers fictionalism to contem-
porary (meta)ethical debates (John L.Mackie, Richard Joyce, Mark Kalderon). The
challenge both authors had to accept was the vagueness and incompleteness of an
ethical position in the Philosophy of As if. Despite this obstacle, the authors man-
age to characterize Vaihinger as an antirealist, error theorist, and understand his
fictions as a precursor of what in nowadays is called revolutionary fictionalism.
Subsequently, Harald Maurer discusses the applicability of Vaihingers concept of
fiction to the cognitive sciences and neuro-informatics. In particular, he proposes
that connectionist models, based on David E.Rumelhart and James L.McClellands
ideas, have attributes of Vaihingers fictions. Focusing on pragmatic aspects of
Vaihingers philosophy, Georg Barthimus Koridze investigates Vaihingers fic-
tionalism with respect to the philosophy of religion. He contrasts Vaihingers ideas
with William Jamess philosophy of religion suggesting that similarities in their
accounts can be explained in terms of their shared Kantian heritage. However, he
also points out differences regarding the truth value of religio-philosophical propo-
sitions. The paper that concludes this anthology is Jrgen Wertheimers essay.
Wertheimer provides a sketch of how the theme of fiction figures in German litera-
ture, roughly, in the last two centuries, e.g. H. von Kleist, Fr. Schiller, and Fr.
Drrenmatt.
In comparing the results of part two and three of this book, it seems that
Vaihingers fictionalism is a better fit for the humanities than the exact sciences.
The authors do not elaborate on this particular result in the printed version. A desid-
eratum for possible future studies on Vaihinger is the investigation of the relation
between his activity as founder and editor of highly influential philosophical institu-
tions or journals, and his influence and reputation within the philosophical commu-
nity in the German-speaking world. As Gerd Simon points out in his article, the
publication of ten editions of the Philosophy of As if within less than two decades
suggests that Vaihinger wrote indeed a philosophical bestseller. An investigation
focusing on Vaihinger and his socio-historical context might shed more light on this
phenomenon. One might suspect that it was not only the originality of Vaihingers
philosophical ideas but also his talents as an influential organizer and coordinator of
philosophical institutions that explains his apparent reputation among philosophers.
Furthermore, it remains doubtful whether it is accurate to characterize Vaihingers
228 Reviews
as if philosophy as a plea for interdisciplinarity apparently meant in the sense

of multiple applicability , as suggested not only in the introduction of the book.
After all, most of the authors conclude that attempts to apply Vaihingers fictional-
ist program to selected scientific disciplines are at least problematic. Based on the
general conclusions drawn by the various authors one is inclined to say that in terms
of how useful it is as a philosophy of science, Vaihingers fictionalism provides a
completely inadequate rather than a satisfactory account. Applied to the sciences, it
seems to create more problems than it solves.
Some of the articles of this book appear, at times, less coherent. Of course, that
is to be expected with regard to the general form of conference proceedings.
Wertheimers, rather unorthodox, essay in the last part of the book appears to be
somewhat detached from Vaihingers as if philosophy. While philosophically
instructive and inspiring, the comparison between Vaihinger and Wittgenstein in the
first part of the book seems historically somewhat vague. A few more historical
documents and references would have helped to illuminate the intellectual relation-
ship between both philosophers. In spite of these minor remarks, the conference
proceedings provide a long-awaited, excellent study, rich in content and detail, on
Vaihinger and his fictionalism that will be a welcome contribution to the HOPOS
and HPS community. Besides a detailed introduction to his biography and his as if
philosophy, its origins and philosophical mentors, this collection is philosophically
revealing with respect to the applicability and suitability of Vaihingers fictional-
ism for selected contemporary scientific disciplines.
Reviews 229
Siegetsleitner, Anne (2014) Ethik und Moral im Wiener

Kreis Zur Geschichte eines engagierten Humanismus.
Wien: Bhlau.
UweCzaniera
Department of Philosophy
University of Bayreuth
D-95440, Bayreuth, Germany
As analytic philosophy is growing older, the field of history of analytic philosophy
is growing larger. Now Anne Siegetsleitner from the University of Innsbruck has
published a 400 pages volume on morals and ethics in the Vienna Circle: Ethik und
Moral im Wiener Kreis Zur Geschichte eines engagierten Humanismus. This book
is not meant to discuss or to criticize the ethical contributions of the Circle members
(at least not in very much detail), but to give a precise exposition of the development
and the contents of their approaches to ethics.
The general aim of the book is to refute two allegedly predominant views con-
cerning morals and ethics in the Vienna Circle: 1. The members of the Vienna Circle,
as citizens, have not been very interested in questions of morals. 2. The members of
the Vienna Circle, as philosophers, have not been very interested in questions of
ethics. The second view is illustrated by the assumption that many people tend to
take the positions of Rudolf Carnap in berwindung der Metaphysik durch logische
Analyse der Sprache and Alfred Jules Ayer in Language, Truth, and Logic as repre-
sentative views of Vienna Circle ethics: The propositions of ethics are not verifiable,
hence they are meaningless, and that is all moral philosophy has to say.
Myself being a disciple of Rainer Hegselmann, I never believed in either of the
predominant views. Nevertheless, many people certainly do, and in any case it is
extremely helpful to have a volume that assembles the ethical positions brought
forward in the Vienna Circle. It shows clearly that besides noncognitivism we get
positions covering the whole range of ethics deontic logic, consequentialism,
deontologism, virtue ethics and even normative ethics.
After some enlightening remarks concerning the somewhat strange reception the
Vienna Circle received in the Frankfurt School, and a section highlighting the cul-
tural environment of the Vienna Circle and the political as well as the educational
and moral activities of its members (thereby refuting view 1), the reader is intro-
duced to the ethical views of a first protagonist of the Circle, Rudolf Carnap. After
introducing his intellectual and ethical development, Siegetsleitner focuses on the
successive core writings of Carnap in which he touches on questions of moral phi-
losophy and metaethics. The positions receive a detailed reconstruction and the
reader is also informed about their reception and various influencing sources.
Furthermore, some attention is devoted to the question whether the denial of epis-
temically accessible objective values may lead to a destruction of morals in real
life.
230 Reviews
In a personally adjusted manner, Siegetsleitner proceeds to other members of the

Vienna Circle Karl Menger and his logic of norms, Otto Neurath and his brand of
scientifically informed socialism free from metaphysics, Philipp Frank and his kind
of moral pragmatism, Moritz Schlick whom we may ascribe; I think, a certain form
of consequentialist virtue ethics, Viktor Kraft who proposed the most cognitivist
form of ethics held in the Vienna Circle, and, in the end, Herbert Feigl and his own
kind of moral pragmatism.
The obvious strength of this book lies in its comprehensiveness. If someone
wants to know what the members of the Vienna Circle had to say about ethics and
does not have the time to consult the single publications, here is the volume that
presents the relevant positions at one blow.
On the other hand, in some respects I found the book rather weak:
1. To question whether practical morality has been of any interest to the members
of the Vienna Circle as citizens seems artificial. The smallest possible acquain-
tance with the Circle protagonists should suffice to see the inadequacy of this
view. The author also suggests that there is a tension between being a metaethical
noncognitivist and being a morally committed citizen. But she would have had
to argue for there being such a tension. At first glance, I do not see it. Moreover,
it seems at least an exaggeration to say that analytic philosophy nowadays mar-
ginalizes ethics. The quoted enumeration of talk sections on the German Society
for Analytic Philosophy conferences (p. 65) certainly does not mirror the
assumed respectability of the topics. It was Georg Meggle who organized the
first GAP conferences, and it would be ridiculous to suggest that he would regard
ethics as a marginal field of analytic philosophy.
2. Even if the expositions of the several positions are adequate, sometimes the
reconstruction of influencing sources does not seem convincing. This holds espe-
cially for the Carnap section. I do not see the fruitfulness in linking, for example,
the Logischer Aufbau der Welt and the Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie to
Lebensphilosophie, Neo-Kantianism, Rickert or Nietzsche. The common
logical-empiricist interpretation of these works as an attempt to carry out
Wittgensteins Tractatus philosophy still seems to me much more coherent and
interesting, and it would have been more fruitful to evaluate them in this respect
in more detail. Another example: At the end of his berwindung der Metaphysik
durch logische Analyse der Sprache, Carnap praises Nietzsche for using the form
of poetry, not theory, when it comes to express ethical convictions. The usual
understanding of this remark has it that Carnap urges us to reserve the form of
theory for the discussion of cognitively significant topics. Siegetsleitner, how-
ever, says that Carnap has returned to Lebensphilosophie (p.132) this is a
much more ambitious claim, and one would have to argue for it.
3. Of course, a historically orientated volume cannot spend too much pages on a
systematic evaluation of the contributions it presents. Consequently, Siegetsleitner
usually renounces such evaluations. It is only in the Carnap section that we get
some critical remarks. But if you come up with criticism, you should argue care-
fully. Here, criticism always seems a bit superficial. On pages 142/3, for exam-
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ple, we hear that a collective decisionism (the position Siegetsleitner subscribes

to) offers other and better answers to the ethical questions Carnap addresses. But
we neither get a substantial argument for collective decisionism nor an argument
showing why Carnap is wrong. P. 159 provides another example of superficiality
when the author recurs on the idea that being a good knife implies being a sharp
knife she simply overlooks the distinction between functional terms (like
knife) and non-functional terms (like sunset or man) (see Hare 1957).
4. There would have been space for some substantial criticism because some sec-
tions (especially the one about Victor Kraft) suffer from too much repetition. I
had the impression that a bit more of systematization in the expositions could
have freed much space for evaluation without rendering the expositions less
informative.
5. In the same way, I miss more hints concerning the argumentation-based critical
reception of Vienna Circles metaethics. Richard Hare, for example, provided a
substantial critique of emotivism in his Language of Morals why do we not
hear anything about that? And it would also be interesting to hear something
about whether Moritz Schlicks understanding of evolution could still pass the
test.
To sum up, I think that Siegetsleitners Ethik und Moral im Wiener Kreis is
extremely valuable to get an overview over the variety of ethical positions held in
the Vienna Circle. However, when it comes to evaluate these positions, it only deliv-
ers a starting point.
Reference
Hare, R.M. 1957. Geach: Good and evil. In Theories of ethics, ed. P. Foot. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
232 Reviews
Siobhan Chapman, Susan Stebbing andtheLanguage

ofCommon Sense, Palgrave Macmillan 2013.
DejanMakovec
Vienna, Austria
Here is one hand, and here is a history of analytic ideas. At the turn of the century
British idealism was full-blown and so were idiosyncratic turns of phrase about the
Absolute. A new tradition parted ways by emphasizing common sense and pioneer-
ing symbolic logic in philosophy, which later entered the common sense of a wider
intellectual public. With her intellectual biography of Susan Stebbing, who figured
centrally in this philosophical transition, Siobhan Chapman documents the history
behind analytic ideas and provides the reader with a number of missing links in the
history of the academic discipline and with anecdotes worth knowing about it.
I admit, I have heard the name Susan Stebbing before I read this book. Hearing
this name probably comes with learning one of the following details. Stebbing is the
author of Thinking to Some Purpose; she was a philosophical adherent of Moore;
she was the first female professor of philosophy in Britain. Details, that will find
their place in the background of the rich philosophical career Chapman describes.
The chapters of the book follow Stebbings life chronologically and I will keep this
order for their brief summary:
1. The Analyst in Training: Stebbing started her academic training in History at
Cambridge. The first chapter sets the scene with G.E.Moores withdrawal from
F.H. Bradleys and John McTaggarts philosophical influence. Moore made his
appearance by trading the idealist framework for common sense and emphasiz-
ing the analysis of empirical statements themselves over their provability. Before
Stebbing met Moore, she encountered philosophy with Bradleys Appearance
and Reality.
2. Becoming a Philosopher: As Cambridge by that time did not allow women to
earn an academic degree, Stebbing pursued her graduation at Kings College
London. There she wrote her master thesis about Henri Bergsons voluntarism
and American pragmatism. In it she argues that these philosophical movements
are incompatible, ultimately rejecting both for their failure to provide a sensible
theory of truth. While Bergsons intuitive truth cannot be communicated, by
deeming all useful statements false, the pragmatists identification of truth and
usefulness fails to discern falsehood. In 1917 Stebbing read a paper to the
Aristotelian Society. Moore was in the audience and challenged the very mean-
ing of her statements in a passionate manner. A second talk to the society the
following year prompted an in-depth correspondence of letters between Stebbing
and Moore which was to establish a lasting friendship. This second chapter fol-
lows Stebbings difficult way to a full-time academic position, through her brief
occupation as a school teacher, her activity for the League of Nations Union, and
the beginnings of her lifelong career as an outspoken and challenging reviewer.
Reviews 233
3. Science, Logic and Language: For the decade of the 1920s Stebbing closely fol-
lowed and reviewed Alfred North Whiteheads philosophy of science from
enthusiasm since Principia Mathematica to disappointment about his theologi-
cal turn in Process and Reality. Rather than taking a stance herself and pursuing
some form of reductionism, she consistently scrutinized the expressions of her
contemporaries, treating physics, philosophy and common sense as equals with
different purposes in our understanding of the world around us. In 1930 Stebbing
published A Modern Introduction to Logic. As an introductory textbook for first-
year students it stood out by including the new mathematical logic as it was
developed by Gottlob Frege and implemented by Whitehead and Bertrand
Russell. As a textbook on logic it still stands out by starting with a chapter on
Reflective Thinking in Ordinary Life and including examples from everyday life
to politics such as the weight of a box of chocolates, house prices and capital
punishment. With this first mature book she already established her long term
influence on philosophy and philosophical education in Britain.
4. Cambridge Analysis: The fourth chapter covers Stebbings most immediate
interference with an ongoing philosophical debate. The context of her genuine
contribution is logical atomism as it was pursued in the school called Cambridge
analysis founded by Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein. In her textbook and in a
series of papers she positioned herself by criticizing Russell for his failure to
distinguish the analytic definition of a symbol from the analysis of a concept. By
what she called directional analysis of concepts we do acquire new knowledge
about the facts our expressions are supposed to signify. Thus the result of clarify-
ing our expressions is not merely an analytic readjustment of our symbols.
Chapman provides a rich description of the time where the very means and pur-
pose of analytic philosophy was to be defined. Here Stebbing figured promi-
nently as a critic of Russell and it led to her cooperation in the editing of the first
issue of Analysis. In 1933 a chair in psychology was officially reassigned to keep
Stebbing at Bedford College and finally make her a professor of philosophy.
5. Logical Positivism and Philosophy of Language: In 1933 Stebbing was selected
as President of the Aristotelian society and she delivered the annual British
Academy philosophy lecture. She chose logical positivism as its topic. While
this philosophical movement was established on the continent by that time, it
was less known in Britain. Stebbing met Moritz Schlick 3years earlier and fol-
lowed the publications of the Vienna Circle closely. Logical positivism was in
many ways close to Cambridge analysis and Stebbing similarly criticized it for
restricting philosophical analysis to language alone. But she also took issue with
the Vienna Circles epistemic and semantic emphasis of first personal reports and
verification, claiming it leads them to methodological solipsism. She insisted
that the purpose of analysis is to clarify existing beliefs, not to justify them, and
that the logical positivists should have read Moore more closely. Her criticism
notwithstanding, Stebbing played a central role in the introduction of logical
positivism to the English-speaking world. She invited Rudolf Carnap to give a
lecture at Bedford College in 1934 and Karl Popper in the year after. In 1935 she
participated on the first Organization Committee of the International Congress
234 Reviews
for the Unity of Science that took place in Paris, where she also met Otto Neurath
and Philipp Frank of the Vienna Circle.
6. A Wider Audience: In addition to her teaching load and running a department
Stebbing became a public intellectual in the 1930s. Chapmans sixth chapter
looks at two popular books Stebbing published in this period: Logic in Practice,
1934, is a guide to the semantic flaws of socio-political discourses, such as the
General Strike in 1926. Written for the ordinary reader, it was nevertheless
praised by the small academic audience it reached. It was followed by Philosophy
and the Physicists in 1937, in which Stebbing puts the analytic screws on the
idealist or mystical styles of her contemporary popular scientists. These were Sir
James Jeans The Mysterious Universe from 1930 and Sir Arthur Eddingtons
The Nature of the Physical World published in 1935. Eddington proves to have a
persuasive and playful way to integrate the scientific account of an everyday
object into a trivial scene from everyday life. This is fine for the purpose of dis-
playing the difference between physics and common sense. But as soon as he
draws conclusions from such playful descriptions in order to integrate religious
beliefs into the scientific world, Stebbing contrasts his almost subatomic living
room with a just as persuasive commonsensical description that does away with
the need for mystery.
7. Politics and Critical Thinking: A sober critique that intends to pay close attention
to the words of public discourse and political figures is the overwhelming task
that Stebbing approached in her 1939 Thinking to Some Purpose. Her best known
book she wrote at a time of personal loss, of failing health and of competing
ideologies in a society on the brink of war. Chapman offers a feel for the circum-
stances by consulting personal letters, as she does throughout the book. A recon-
struction of political and intellectual debates surrounding Thinking to Some
Purpose completes this chapter on a book by Stebbing that is still referred to in
the twenty-first century.
8. Logic and Ideals: With the start of the war and the evacuation of Bedford College
to Cambridge, Stebbing came to live once again where she would have been
denied an academic career. Cambridge had changed in the meantime, but not for
the better in Stebbings opinion. Not least because of mutual disdain with
Wittgenstein, who even opposed her being invited to give a lecture in 1939. Her
next book, Ideals and Illusions, 1941, comes across more like a due political
intervention than a sober guide to intellectual freedom the way Chapman pres-
ents it. Stebbing authored it somewhat on demand being addressed as a public
intellectual in these times. Although she was not very satisfied with the result
herself, Ideals and Illusions found an appreciative audience. She also helped
refugees from Nazi-occupied countries. In 1941, with a supporting letter by
Albert Einstein, she got Neurath out of British imprisonment. At Oxford Neurath
made himself director of his reestablished ISOTYPE Institute and Stebbing its
president.
After being diagnosed with cancer in 1942, the illness that should end her life in
the following year, she spent a period of recovery entertaining multiple book proj-
ects. But on request she wrote her final A Modern Elementary Logic, 1943, an intro-
Reviews 235
duction for students of philosophy at British universities and in the field abroad.
This time unburdened with ancient logic and the analysis of current political ram-
blings it should prove her lasting influence as a teacher of philosophy in a number
of reprints. (9) Stebbing, Philosophy and Linguistics: A Modern Introduction to
Logic was to be considered Stebbings most remarkable contribution by her contem-
poraries. In the final chapter Chapman traces Stebbings academic way up to Gilbert
Ryle, J.L. Austin and thereby the beginnings of ordinary language philosophy. She
ends the book with an excursion into critical discourse analysis and suggests
Stebbing as a plausible ancestor to this later discipline.
By way of these summaries I cannot communicate my most striking reading
experience. This was a personality named Susan Stebbing coming to life some-
where over chapters (5) and (6). The anecdotes and letters cited by Chapman gave
me a vivid impression as if I was watching the professor in her various academic
and public interactions. Of course, this is an intellectual biography in chronological
order, but all the more I think it worth mentioning that it was fun to read, although
the story has its darker moments as well. Chapman succeeds in displaying the prag-
matics of Stebbings work, excerpts from which I will keep sharing with
colleagues.
236 Reviews
Eino Kaila, Human Knowledge: AClassic Statement

ofLogical Empiricism. Translated byAnssi Korhonen; edited
byJuha Manninen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, andGeorge A.Reisch.
Chicago, Illinois: Open Court, 2014, pp. xxvii + 217
MatthiasNeuber
Tbingen, Germany
Eino Kaila (18901958) is one of the less well-known figures within the logical
empiricist movement. Although there has been some research on his philosophical
work in recent years, Kailas contribution to the logical empiricist project is still in
need of closer examination. The present volume should prove as an excellent basis
in this respect. In fact, Kailas Inhimillinen tieto is a classic of early/mid twentieth-
century philosophy of science. It is therefore all the more important that the book is
now available in the translation by Anssi Korhonen.
The volume comprises ten chapters and an introduction by the editors Juha
Manninen and Ilkka Niiniluoto. As the editors point out in their introduction, Kaila
conceived of his book (published in the Finnish original in 1939) both as a textbook
of scientific philosophy for laymen and as a systematic introduction to logical
empiricism for professionals. Rudolf Carnap, with whom Kaila stood in close con-
tact, welcomed Kailas contribution especially for its paying attention to the his-
torical connections, since these, as Carnap admitted, were mostly ignored in the
existing publications by the logical empiricists. Furthermore, Carnap suggested to
publish the book in English translation for the Library of Unified Science which in
turn was published, in the Dutch exile, by Otto Neurath. However, nothing came of
Carnaps suggestion because Holland was soon occupied by German troops,
Neurath had to flee to England, and Finland went to war against the Soviet Union in
the summer of 1941. But how came it that Kaila had such splendid connections to
the members of the Vienna Circle? Here, it must be seen that academic philosophy
in Finland had for a long time been dominated by Hegelian idealism which, accord-
ing to the editors, was represented by the national philosopher Johan Vilhelm
Snellman (18061881). Kaila, even in his early years, was not at all attracted by
idealism. Rather, he engaged in the philosophy of science, focusing on Machian
positivism and its rejection of atomism. Kaila himself defended the reality of atoms
and argued for their being part of a mind-independent causal nexus. In 1926, he
published his monograph Die Prinzipien der Wahrscheinlichkeitslogik, where he
critically discussed both the views of probability of Edgar Zilsel and Hans
Reichenbach. Herbert Feigl, in his 1927 dissertation Zufall und Gesetz (which was
supervised by Moritz Schlick), critically evaluated Kailas monograph. In 1929,
Kaila (on invitation by Schlick) decided to visit Vienna in order to participate at
some of the Vienna Circles meetings. In the Circles 1929 manifesto
Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung Der Wiener Kreis, Kaila was mentioned as
one of the thinkers close to the scientific world-conception of the Circle. This had
to do in the first place with Kailas methodological orientation which implied that
Reviews 237
there is no sharp difference between philosophy and special scientific disciplines

and that philosophy itself should proceed by making use of exact methods. However,
as concerns questions of systematic outlook, Kaila, like Reichenbach, defended
some sort of probabilistic realism, particularly against Carnaps declaration that the
realism controversy is meaningless.
This brings us to the books ten chapters which are tied together by one red
thread, namely (the unifying idea of) invariance. More precisely, the book is subdi-
vided in three parts. Part One deals with the problem of theory formation, Part Two
with the formal truth of theories, and Part Three with the empirical truth of theories.
Invariance plays an essential role in all three parts. However, it is especially Part
One where Kaila develops his invariantist approach to science and scientific theory
construction. As he declares in the preface, for him the logical empiricist concep-
tion of knowledge is the culmination of two and a half millennia of development in
human ideas (xxvi). Yet, it must be seen that Kaila, by invoking invariance, contrib-
uted an own and very specific version of the logical empiricist conception of knowl-
edge. Heavily inspired by Ernst Cassirers Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff
(1910), Kaila characterized the aim of science as the search for invariances (3).
By invariance he meant something like regularity, or lawfulness; but he also meant
by it the stability, or constancy, of physical entities like energy. On the whole, it is
invariances which, according to Kaila, are the object of both scientific and prescien-
tific knowledge. Or, as he puts it at the beginning of chapter 1: As the invariances
that we discover are more general, the more we succeed in satisfying our pursuit of
knowledge. (ibid.) Thus there is a hierarchy of invariant systems ranging from
everyday perceptual objects to the most stable and lawful objects of science. The
outstanding characteristic of the objects of science is that they are idealized.
According to Kaila, in science we round off everything in thought (10), that is, we
rationalize our concepts for instance the concept of acceleration to give them
that exactness, precision, and simplicity that is not possessed by the corresponding
phenomena of experience (ibid.). Nevertheless, the search for invariances leads,
according to Kaila, to substantive knowledge. Although it is not perceptual qualities
which are grasped by scientific knowledge, we are in position to acquire knowledge
of certain structural features which, in mathematized science, usually have the sta-
tus of isomorphisms. It is for this reason that Kaila thinks that it is wrong to say that
we know nothing of things-in-themselves; after all we know their structure (14).
Chapters 2, 3 and 4 reconstruct the historical development from the Greeks up to
Galileo, Newton, and Leibniz. For Kaila, Galileo is the hero of this story. For it was
Galileo who brought together the two decisive components of scientific knowledge:
the search for invariances, on the one hand, and the requirement of verification, on
the other. Whereas Aristotle raised the question What? and accordingly looked for
the substance, or essence, of things, Galileo raised the question How? and accord-
ingly looked for functions, or as Kaila alternatively puts it, relational invariances
(51). Questions about essences were completely ignored by Galileo, which in turn,
in Kailas eyes, makes him one of the forerunners of logical empiricism (53).
However, with Descartes, the empiricist impetus was rudely stopped: This distin-
guished mathematician, despite being given the honorific title father of modern
238 Reviews
philosophy, was far behind Galileo in his conception of knowledge. In Galileo we

find a fruitful balance between the search for invariances and the requirement of
empirical verifiability. But with Descartes this balance tilts toward Plato and a pos-
tulate of invariance. Empirical verifiability, it is suggested, is not necessary in prin-
ciple, for we are supposed to know the laws of nature in advance. (59) Unlike
Galileo, Descartes, by raising the question Why, was looking for ultimate causes
and thereby stepping back to Aristotelian essentialism. But then, Kaila rather dra-
matically declares, the gigantic figure of Newton (61) entered the stage. With
Newton, the Galilean conception of knowledge got saved, that is, according to Kaila
Newton redirects the course of modern science, rescuing it at a moment when
Cartesianism was leading it away from the right path (61). By rejecting a priori
speculative hypotheses about the essences of phenomena and their causes, Newton
returned to the empirical basis of science. As early as in his New Theory of Light and
Colours of 1671, Newton refused to answer Aristotelian and Cartesian what- or
why-questions: Science has no other task than to start from experience and state the
exact laws of phenomena that will help other phenomena to be predicted. That
famous slogan, Hypotheses non fingo, is already presupposed in this first work.
(62) With Leibniz, this whole development reaches its culmination. For, according
to Kaila, it was Leibniz who, in terms of his principe de lobservabilit, most
forcefully articulated the requirement of empirical verifiability. Thus, like Galileo
and Newton, Leibniz the alleged radical rationalist (67) should be seen as a
forerunner of the modern, i. e. logical empiricist, conception of knowledge.
Chapter 5 closes Part One by reflecting on the problem of induction and its rela-
tion to the concept of probability. As Kaila briefly indicates, the task of an inductive
logic in his view is illusory. For him, the probability that we assign to inductive
generalizations is purely psychological. It has to do exclusively with the way of
discovery (82), whereas logic is restricted to the way of demonstration (ibid.).
Accordingly, an inductive logic would be a contradictio in adiecto.
Part Two of the book is subdivided in two chapters. Chapter 6 deals with logical
truth, chapter 7 with mathematical truth. As concerns logical truth, Kaila gives an
instructive and very readable overview over the basic elements of modern first-order
logic. He thereby draws on results provided by David Hilbert, Bertrand Russell,
Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Alfred Tarski. Furthermore, he addresses Kurt Gdels
work on the so-called decision problem and finally concludes that logical truths are
consequences of definitions (120) and are therefore to be seen as analytical sen-
tences. Interestingly enough, Kaila in this context anticipates certain ideas by W.V.
O.Quine, claiming that the analyticity and syntheticity of a sentence is a relative
matter that depends on how certain concepts have been defined (116). As concerns
mathematical truth, Kaila, at the end of chapter 7, introduces what he calls the first
main thesis of logical empiricism (136). What this thesis says is that the metalogi-
cal statements Statement L is analytic and Statement L is a priori are equivalent.
The so-called second main thesis of logical empiricism says that every statement
concerning reality must have real content. This in turn comes very close to what
Carnap (in his Testability and Meaning) called the Principle of Testability. Kaila
concludes Part Two by claiming that Kants basic question, How are synthetic a
Reviews 239
priori statements possible? is a mistake because there are no such statements.

(140) On Kailas own account only analytic statements are a priori and vice versa.
Synthetic statements, on the other hand, are a posteriori, i.e., dependent exclusively
on experience.
Part Three, which deals with empirical truth, is focused on such synthetic state-
ments. At its very beginning, in chapter 8, Kaila introduces the so-called third main
thesis of logical empiricism, namely the Principle of Translatability which says that
every theory (or set of theoretical statements) must be translatable into the language
of experience. However, Kaila qualifies this principle by conceding that not every
factual statement must be capable of a definitive verification (or falsification). He
thereby criticizes the radical positivist (147) positions of Ludwig Wittgenstein
and (especially) Moritz Schlick who, in his view, required that every factual state-
ment be translatable to statements concerning the given. Yet, in the further devel-
opment of logical empiricism this radical view became liberalized by the weaker
requirement of testability. As Kaila further points out, there is no empirical state-
ment which is immune against revision. On the other hand, he goes not so far as to
defend some sort of coherence theory of knowledge, albeit some extremists
among the logical empiricists (156), especially Otto Neurath, argued in favor of
such a theory. On the whole, it remains somewhat unclear what Kailas own position
in this context amounts to. The best guess seems to be that he intends to defend
some sort of Duhemian holism, as regards the relation of theory and experience.
At any rate, Kaila explicitly states that [w]e must [] give the principle of test-
ability a broad interpretation, so that a theory in its entirety can be regarded as one
sentence (170). Furthermore, Kaila rejects all forms of metaphysics, understand-
ing by metaphysical a sentence which is intended as a factual sentence but does
not have any experiential consequences. He directly criticizes Heideggers essen-
tialism and existentialism and banishes it (in an overtly Carnapian manner) from
the area of philosophy as something like a lyrical outburst (173). Chapter 9 deals
with the logic of physical theories. It contains an interesting interpretation and
justification of micro-physical theories. In Kailas view, a sentence of a physi-
cal theory cannot be ruled out as metaphysics solely on the grounds that it fails to
depict any specific phenomenon of experience (195). Rather, [f]rom a logical
point of view, there is nothing wrong with developing a micro-physical theory as far
beyond the threshold of observation as one may wish, in which case the theory
will of necessity contain many sentences that cannot be tested in experience, as long
as they are considered in themselves (ibid.). Again, Duhemian holism, drives
Kailas argumentation, thus anticipating Quine anew. The concluding Chapter 10 is
devoted to what Kaila calls logical behaviorism. By logical behaviorism he
means the articulation of the following, so-called fourth main thesis of logical
empiricism: Sentences about a subjects immediate experience are equivalent to
certain sentences about the states in the subjects body. Simply put, Kaila in this
connection recapitulates Carnaps conception of the notorious mind-body problem.
His position seems to be that of a moderate physicalist. However, how the ques-
tions pertaining to the mind-body problem are to be answered is, according to Kaila,
for future experience to decide (205).
240 Reviews
Given the increasing interest in Kailas variant of logical empiricism, the present
volume is a valuable source for scholars interested in the history of philosophy of
science. Moreover, Human Knowledge deserves to be recommended to those who
want to get a systematic overview over the principal tenets, claims and arguments of
the logical empiricist project.
Index
A C
Acham, K., 7 Carnap, R., 3, 4, 18, 35, 62, 83, 84, 8790, 97,
Adler, A., 218 98, 104, 105, 109, 122, 127, 128, 131,
Adler, F., 32, 212 132, 140150, 152, 153, 162, 172, 173,
Adler, M., 213 176178, 181, 182, 185, 187192, 195,
Allison, H., 161 204, 205, 207, 213, 220, 221, 224
Arco, G., 221 Cartwright, N., 32, 73, 74, 201
Aristotle, 104, 107, 192 Carus, A.W., 177
Armstrong, A.C., 26, 84 Carus, P., 6, 7, 10, 57, 61, 84, 132
Austin, J.L., 235 Cassirer, E., 44, 190, 205
Ayer, A.J., 105, 150, 190 Cavell, S., 155, 158
Chalmers, D., 104
Chapman, S., 232235
B Chrudzimski, A., 207
Baghramian, M., 162 Coffa, A., 16
Bauch, B., 190 Cohen, M.R., 3
Bayes, T., 171, 181 Comte, A., 46
Bergson, H., 17, 18, 23, 44, 4951, 53, 56, 57, Conant, J., 154, 155
60, 62, 63, 86, 186 Creath, R., 141, 145
Bernard, C., 45 Czaniera, U., 229231
Betsch, C., 226227
Betsch, G., 227
Bhme, G., 74 D
Bohr, N., 194 Davidson, D., 119
Boltzmann, L., 13, 31, 9698 Democritus, 58
Bolzano, B., 206, 222 Deri, M., 213, 217
Born, M., 180 Descartes, R., 17, 32, 86
Brner, W., 212 Dessoir, M., 214
Boutroux, ., 44, 4951, 53, 57, 58, 6063 Dewey, J., 3, 4, 9, 10, 12, 15, 17, 19, 24,
Bradley, F.H., 232 25, 57, 6781, 84, 90, 92, 140,
Brentano, F., 20, 24 141, 145, 147, 149, 155,
Bridgman, P.W., 3, 4 160162, 174
Bhler, C., 191 Diamond, C., 154
Bhler, K., 191 Dollfu, E., 220
Burge, T., 119, 120 Dring, S., 227
Butts, R.E., 5 Driesch, H., 85

Institute Yearbook 19, DOI10.1007/978-3-319-50730-9
242 Index
Dubislav, W., 202, 203, 206, 207, 210, 217, H

218, 222 Hacking, I., 44, 45, 57, 58, 60, 73, 74, 169
Duhem, P., 11, 16, 17, 27, 28, 30, 32, 33, Haeckel, E., 186, 212
37, 93 Hahn, H., 15, 16, 18, 19, 27, 34, 35, 37, 84,
Dummett, M., 144 87, 89, 90, 92, 93, 9698, 105, 204,
Drrenmatt, F., 227 213, 221
Haller, R., 6, 8, 14, 16, 30, 84, 202, 213
Hare, R., 231
E Haug, M.C., 105, 106, 114
Eddington, A., 234 Hegeler, E.C., 6
Einstein, A., 6, 7, 31, 180, 191, 194, 215, Hegselmann, R., 229
217, 218 Heidelberger, M., 4951, 62, 135
Eisler, R., 85 Heis, J., 205
Eker, B., 227 Heisenberg, W., 180
Eklund, M., 225 Helmer, O., 204
Helmholtz, H., 13
Hempel, C.G., 68, 131, 132, 190, 193, 202,
F 207, 217, 221
Fechner, G., 12, 20 Henning, B., 225228
Fechner, T., 51, 62 Hentschel, K., 14, 22, 93, 222, 223
Feigl, H., 3, 4, 125, 127, 131, 175, 188, 189, Herzberg, A., 202, 203, 207, 208, 213, 214,
210, 220 217219, 221, 223, 224
Felgner, U., 226 Hesse, M., 73, 74
Fieandt, K. von, 190, 193 Hickman, L., 162
Field, H., 226 Hilbert, D., 188, 218
Fine, A., 225 Hildebrand, D.L., 67, 70, 7476, 81, 147
Finetti, B. de, 177182 Hintikka, J., 112, 193
Fish, M., 168, 169 Hoffmann, D., 202, 210, 211, 216218, 222
Fraassen, B. van, 67, 136, 182 Hohenester, A., 7, 14
Fraenkel, A., 188 Holmes, J.O.W., 168
Frank, P., 4, 16, 18, 19, 27, 2931, 34, 35, 68, Holton, G., 4, 7, 21, 96, 139
8490, 9294, 9698, 132, 179, 180, Hook, S., 173
191, 213, 220 Hume, D., 95, 107, 128
Frege, G, 112 Husserl, E., 20, 2325, 167
Freud, S., 217
Friedman, M., 140, 143, 149, 161, 177,
201, 207 J
Fries, J.F., 205 Jacoby, G., 22, 23
James, W., 35, 8, 9, 11, 12, 1421, 2325,
2733, 35, 37, 38, 4346, 49, 5158,
G 6164, 8486, 8898, 140142, 144,
Gabriel, G., 226 147, 149, 151, 154157, 160, 162, 168,
Galileo, 180, 192 179, 186
Gdel, K., 193 Jeans, J., 234
Godfrey-Smith, P., 38, 69, 70, 79, 81 Jeffrey, R., 177, 178, 180, 182
Goldscheid, R., 212214 Jerusalem, W., 9, 11, 14, 2227, 29, 30, 32,
Gomperz, T., 27 33, 35, 8486, 91, 92, 94
Goodman, N., 131, 145, 158 Jespersen, O., 108
Goodman, R., 154, 157 Jevons, F., 28
Grelling, K., 202, 203, 206, 207, 214, 218, Jodl, F., 27, 212
219, 222 Jrgensen, J., 190, 191
Grotenfelt, A., 186, 190, 191 Jourdain, P.E.B., 12
Gunn, A., 46, 47 Joyce, R., 227
Index 243
K Maurer, H., 227

Kaila, E., 139, 185195 McCormack, T.J., 6, 7
Kalderon, M., 225, 227 McTaggart, J., 232
Kamlah, A., 201, 202, 205, 206, 210, 219 Meggle, G., 230
Kant, I., 24, 26, 3032, 45, 47, 128, 142, 148, Meinong, A., 187
151, 153, 155157, 162, 186, 194, 217 Milkov, N., 201210, 219, 221, 223
Kaplan, D., 136 Miller, D., 182
Karsten, R., 190 Minkowski, H., 134
Kasabova, A., 206 Misak, C., 84, 98, 139, 141
Kaufmann, F., 4 Mises, R. von, 4, 16, 62, 172, 174
Ketonen, O., 190, 193 Moore, G.E., 19
Keynes, J.M., 176, 187 Morris, C., 3, 4, 17, 19, 140142, 145, 177,
Kleinpeter, H., 21, 24, 87 178, 182
Kleist, H. von, 227 Mhsam, H., 218
Knorr-Cetina, K., 73, 74 Mller, T., 207
Khler, W., 186, 208
Koridze, G.B., 227
Koskinen, H., 103123, 140, 144, 151, 157, N
158, 162 Nagel, E., 3, 4, 68, 127, 132, 140142, 158,
Kraft, V., 188, 190, 193, 213 162, 171172, 175, 178
Kraus, F., 217, 218 Nelson, L., 203, 206
Kries, J. von, 187 Neuber, M., 125136, 195, 197
Klpe, O., 186, 187 Neurath, O., 3, 1619, 27, 29, 30, 3238,
Kundermann, C., 213, 219, 220 8490, 92, 9698, 105, 128, 140, 141,
145, 196, 204, 208, 213, 214, 216,
219, 221
L Nevanlinna, R., 187, 190
Lagerborg, R., 187 Newton, I., 16, 21
Lange, F.A., 215 Nietzsche, F., 2325, 34, 87
Laplace, P.-S., 43, 45, 46 Niiniluoto, I., 123, 162, 185195
Laudan, L., 80
Lehtovaara, A., 190
Leibniz, G.W., 108, 150, 187, 192 O
Lenzen, V., 133 Oppenheim, P., 202, 207
Lewin, K., 205, 207, 208 Ostwald, W., 5, 11, 12, 24, 97, 212
Lewis, C.I., 4, 109, 133, 139142, 148, 149,
158, 162, 169, 176178
Lewis, D., 119 P
Limbeck-Lilienau, C., 8, 18, 83, 98 Padovani, F., 205
Loeb, J., 4 Pap, A., 133
Lotze, H., 12, 20 Pape, C., 56, 58, 209224
Lovejoy, A., 168 Papini, G., 38
Lowe, J., 105, 106, 114, 115, 117, 122, 123 Pearson, 9, 11, 12, 28, 33
Peckhaus, V., 201209, 219, 221
Peirce, C.S., 4, 9, 10, 14, 17, 19, 24, 29, 30,
M 4364, 84, 86, 88, 9193, 97, 98, 104,
Mach, E., 310 107, 114, 122, 140, 142, 162, 167174,
Mackie, J.L., 152 179, 180, 182
Makovec, D., 232235 Perry, R.B., 4, 5, 9, 12, 14, 2022, 5156, 62,
Manley, D., 104 93, 94
Manninen, J., 194, 196, 197 Petzoldt, J., 203, 214, 217, 218,
Marchetti, S., 162 221224
Martin, R.M., 3 Pihlstrm, S., 70, 139162, 196, 197
244 Index
Pillon, F., 45 Schnfeld, B., 213

Planck, M., 193 Sellars, R.W., 125, 129131
Poincar, H., 9, 12, 16, 17, 27, 28, 3033, 44, Sharrock, M., 154, 158
48, 49, 60, 63, 93, 188 Shook, J.R., 67, 69, 70, 72, 74, 75, 80, 140
Popper, K., 37, 170, 171, 187, 196 Siegetsleitner, A., 229231
Porter, T.M., 58, 60, 169 Sigwart, C., 225
Price, H., 148, 156 Simmel, G., 5, 23, 25, 34
Pulte, H., 205 Simon, G., 226, 227
Putnam, H., 38, 131, 142150, 152158, Skinner, B.F., 4
160162, 195 Spengler, O., 33
Putnam, R.A., 80 Stadler, F., 314, 16, 18, 20, 26, 84, 89, 201,
202, 210213, 219, 220, 222
Stallo, J.B., 11, 28
Q Stebbing, S., 86
Quetelet, A., 45 Steen, M., 107, 108
Quine, W.V.O., 4, 32, 38, 86, 104, 105, Stenius, E., 190
108123, 140, 141, 144, 145, 147, 148, St.John Green, N., 168
157160 Sthr, A., 27
Stltzner, M., 62, 197, 205, 222
Strring, G., 34, 35
R Strauss, M., 202, 209, 217
Ramsey, F., 84, 140, 178182 Stubenberg, L., 135
Rathenau, W., 216 Stumpf, C., 20
Read, R., 154 Suppes, P., 178, 182
Reck, E.H., 207
Reichenbach, H., 6869, 73, 76, 77, 88, 132,
140, 143, 153, 172176, 178, 181, 185, T
187, 189, 191, 196, 201210, 214, Tandler, J., 213
216224 Tarski, A., 127, 178, 193
Reisch, G., 3, 19, 204 Thiel, C., 206
Renouvier, C., 4448, 5157, 63 Thomsen, A., 22
Renqvist (Reenp), Y., 190 Thurnwald, R., 221
Rescher, N., 202, 204, 209 Tiles, J.E., 75
Richardson, A., 3, 18, 19, 83, 140, 141, 143, Tuggle, M., 67, 80
146, 161, 177, 201, 202, 209, 211, 222
Rickert, H., 23, 25
Romizi, D., 4364 U
Ronzal, F., 213 Uebel, T., 3, 4, 1619, 25, 26, 3032, 35,
Rorty, R., 142, 145, 147, 155157, 161 8398, 131, 136, 140, 141, 177,
Royce, J., 34, 84 180, 201204, 207, 209, 211, 214,
Rumelhart, D.E., 227 220, 222
Russell, B., 4, 5, 7, 1719, 28, 72, 73, 78, 92,
93, 121, 122, 187189, 218
Ryle, G., 235 V
Vaihinger, H., 177
Vailati, G., 26, 169, 180
S Vogt, O., 213, 217
Salomaa, J.E., 190
Sathaye, S.G., 76, 79, 80
Schernus, W., 202, 210, 214, 218221 W
Schiller, F.C.S., 2426, 84, 91, 92, 168, 174 Waismann, F., 89, 188, 191, 210
Schlick, M., 3, 4, 3438, 84, 8791, 93, 134, Wasserman, R., 104
135, 140, 150, 185, 187189, 191, 196, Weinberg, C.B., 5
204, 210, 213, 219, 220, 222 Wertheimer, J., 227, 228
Schmidt, R., 217 Wertheimer, M., 186
Index 245
Westermarck, E., 187, 190 Wundt, W., 20

Weyl, H., 167, 188 Wyneken, G., 206
White, H., 226
White, M., 143, 158160, 162
Whitehead, A.N., 188 Y
Wiener, P., 168, 179 Yablo, S., 226
Wilholt, T., 226
Williams, D.C., 113, 169
Windelband, W., 23 Z
Wittgenstein, L., 7, 35, 84, 89, 93, 135, 142, Zantwijk, T. van, 206
147, 149, 150, 152158, 162, 188, 189, Zeller, E., 225
191, 193, 222 Zermelo, E., 188
Wright, G.H. von, 190, 192, 193, Ziche, P., 207
196, 197 Zilsel, E., 62, 187, 216

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Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook

Institute Vienna Circle, University of Vienna

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/6669

ISSN 0929-6328 ISSN 2215-1818(electronic)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017932275

Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017

Printed on acid-free paper

This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature

Institute Vienna Circle FriedrichStadler

Part ILogical Empiricism and Pragmatism

Part IIGeneral Part

I.The relation of Logical Empiricism and North-American Pragmatism has been

Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 3

The prestigious book series Library of Living Philosophers presents volumes

As one more reference, Robert E.Butts, in Pragmatism in Theories of Induction

for experimental physics (18641867).12 Pleasingly, the inaugural lecture of Mach

Pragmatism book and expressed an intellectual affinity to pragmatism without ever

1890  Mach The Analysis of Sensations: Antimetaphysical, Peirce The Architecture of

The biographer of James concludes in this regard as follows45:

four essays in addition to 12 lectures: A Contribution to the History of Acoustics,

The Pragmatic Oil

Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 15

Neuraths anti-foundationalism, his fallibilism as well as his criticism toward

James, Mach, andothers

 ilhelm Jerusalem: TheViennese Supporter ofJames

tures. England as Gnther Jacoby said is the country of gentlemen; Germany

Nonetheless, in the German-speaking world there were also some exceptions.53

expressed the hope that Jamess contribution could be appreciated in Germany in

James, Vienna, andPhilosophy ofScience

Jerusalems both questionable psychologism and biological approach to knowledge.

This particular kind of anti-foundationalist pragmatism became gradually an

Pragmatism, when he had reminded the contribution of teachers such as Mach

For a Pragmatist philosopher receptive to Duhems epistemology, this means

Surprisingly enough, Neuraths own naturalism, fallibilism, and anti-

Bergson, H. 2013. La pense et le mouvant. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Howard, D. 1990. Einstein and Duhem. Synthese 83: 363384.

Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 43

 ontextualization: Scientific Determinism intheLate

According to Ian Hacking, the explicit2 concept of scientific determinism started to

concept of scientific determinism8 and on some related arguments by Renouvier

This primate of action explains both Renouviers already mentioned rejection of

A voluntaristic argument against scientific determinism very similar to

Variety, individuality, indeterminacy, and changeability increase, according to

mathematical standpoint, immediate experience as a source of knowledge (cf. esp.

William James onScientific Determinism

Charles Renouviers anti-deterministic philosophy had on the young William James

physical laws.38 A year later, an enthusiastic adhesion to Renouviers voluntaristic

Long before his defence of an ontological pluralism in his A Pluralistic Universe

Theoretic rationality aims at prevision, certainty and determinacy, and it comes

James priorities affected also his conception of psychology. As I have already

The already mentioned article on The Dilemma of Determinism (1884) pres-

If we compare these definitions with James defence of pluralism in his A

Charles S.Peirce onScientific Determinism

The position we are rescuing is Tychismwrote James to Bergson on June 13,

Finally, according to Peirce, scientific determinism does not receive support a

According to Peirce, chance is real, while determinism is based on abstract or

of frequentism, as an empirical interpretation of probability.82 While a full-fledged

Closing Remarks: Pragmatism, Metaphysics andScience

At the end of this historical-philosophical reconstruction it is appropriate to recall

Still, as we have seen, most arguments against scientific determinism put

deterministic one, depending on their (speculative, metaphysical) idea of how real-

The attempt to evaluate Deweys instrumentalism in the context of the realism-

Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 67

 eichenbach: Dewyan Instrumentalism fromaPositivist Point

Institute Vienna Circle FriedrichStadler

Part ILogical Empiricism and Pragmatism

Part IIGeneral Part

1890 Mach The Analysis of Sensations: Antimetaphysical, Peirce The Architecture of

The Pragmatic Oil

James, Mach, andothers

ilhelm Jerusalem: TheViennese Supporter ofJames

James, Vienna, andPhilosophy ofScience

ontextualization: Scientific Determinism intheLate

William James onScientific Determinism

Charles S.Peirce onScientific Determinism

Closing Remarks: Pragmatism, Metaphysics andScience

eichenbach: Dewyan Instrumentalism fromaPositivist Point

Alternate Readings ofDewyan Instrumentalism

Beyond Realism andAntirealism?

Instrumentalism: Realism or Antirealism?

Instrumentalism: Method or Theory?

The First Vienna Circle andAmerican Pragmatism

The Endorsement ofPragmatism inSchlicks Vienna Circle

he Problematic Nature ofSome Pragmatist

Central European Pragmatism

he First Vienna Circle, Viennese Empiricism

The Armchair Problem

Rational Restraints andOntological Context

Trust inSense Experience andScientific Experiments

Organization ofSensations by Means ofConcepts

Logical or Argumentative Rationality

Feigl onSemantic Realism

Sellars ontheIdea ofaPure Pragmatics

Feigls Broadening ofPerspective (and anAlternative toIt)