AUSTRIAN PHILOSOPHY PAST AND PRESENT

Transcription

1 AUSTRIAN PHILOSOPHY PAST AND PRESENT

2 BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHll.,OSOPHY OF SCIENCE Editor ROBERT S. COHEN, Boston University Editorial Advisory Board THOMAS F. GLICK, Boston University ADOLF GRUNBAUM, University of Pittsburgh SYLVAN S. SCHWEBER, Brandeis University JOHN J. STACHEL, Boston University MARX W. WARTOFSKY, Baruch College of the City University of New York VOLUME 190

3 AUSTRIAN PHILOSOPHY PAST ANDPRESENT Essays in H onor of Rudolf H aller Editedby KEITH LEHRER University of Arizona and JOHANN CHRISTIAN MAREK K a r l - F r a n z e n sgraz - U n i v e r s i t t SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

4 A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / Printed on acid-free paper AH Rights Reserved 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1997 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permis sion from the copyright owner.

5 RUDOLF HALLER 1996

6 CONTENTS KEITH LEHRER AND JOHANN CHRISTIAN MAREK / Introduction BARRY SMITH / The Neurath-Haller Thesis: Austria and the Rise of Scientific Philosophy J. C. NYlRI / Haller on Wittgenstein on Art DALE JACQUETTE / Haller on Wittgenstein and Kant JAN WOLENSKI / Haller on Wiener Kreis MA TJAZ POTRC / Haller and Brentano' s Empiricism JOHANN CHRISTIAN MAREK / Haller on the First Person ix THOMAS E. UEBEL / From the Duhem Thesis to the Neurath Principle 87 JAAKKO HlNTIKKA / The Idea of Phenomenology in Wittgenstein and Husserl 10 1 LEOPOLD STUBENBERG / Austria vs. Australia: Two Versions of the Identity TheOIY 125 RICHARD SYLVAN / Issues is Regional Philosophy: Austrian Philosophy? And its Austral Image? 147 RICHARD SYLVAN / Metaphysics: De-stroyed or In-De (con) structible 167 JOHANNES L. BRANDL / Thinking and Talking About Oneself 177 CHRISTIAN PILLER / Humeanism and Prudence 189 MARIAN DAVID / Analyticity, Carnap, Quine, and Truth 203 ALFRED SCHRAMM / Inductive Knowledge 221 vii

7 viii CONTENTS RUDOLF HALLER / An Autobiographical Outline BIBLIOGRAPHY OF RUDOLF HALLER Index

8 KEITH LEHRER & JOHANN CHRISTIAN MAREK INTRODUCTION This book is about Austrian philosophy leading up to the philosophy of Rudolf Haller. It emerged from a philosophy conference held at the University of Arizona by Keith Lehrer with the support of the University of Arizona and Austrian Cultural Institute. We are grateful to the University of Arizona and the Austrian Cultural Institute for their support, to Linda Radzik for her editorial assistance, to Rudolf Haller for his advice and illuminating autobiographical essay and to Ann Hickman for preparing the camera-ready typescript. The papers herein are ones presej,lted at the conference. The idea that motivated holding the conference was to clarify the conception of Austrian Philosophy and the role of Rudolf Haller therein. Prof Rudolf Haller of Karl-Franzens University of Graz has had a profound influence on modern philosophy, which, modest man that he is, probably amazes him. He has made fine contributions to many areas of philosophy, to aesthetics, to philosophy of language and the theol)' of knowledge. His seven books and more than two hundred articles testify to his accomplishments. But there is something else which he did which was the reason for the conference on Austrian Philosophy in his honor. He presented us, as Barry Smith explains, with a unified conception of Austrian Philosophy. We all knew that there were philosophers f r Austria o ~ throughout the years who wrote some important treatises, but before Haller we did not think of there as being a tradition among those philosophers, unified and continuous enough, rooted within the culture and at the same time international. In his historical representation of Brentano, Meinong, the great Vienna Circle of this century, and the enigmatic figure of Wittgenstein, we see the unifying character of the emphasis on psychology, language, science, analysis and empiricism that marks Haller's conception of Austrian Philosophy. This conception distinguishes it from the tradition of Kant, Hegel and Heidegger in Germany characterized by metaphysical extravagance. The conception of Austrian Philosophy Haller has articulated, practiced and fostered in his students is one we treasure. Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle had a profound influence on philosophy throughout the world, and, most profoundly, on philosophy in the United States. As the shadow of Hitler darkened Europe with tyrannical fascism, the light of Vienna brightened the world with logical clarity. That is the stoi)' that emerged from the work of Haller in Graz as the contributions of Brentano, Meinong, and the members of Vienna Circle were clarified and exhibited. As the scholarly work proceeds at the ix

9 x K. LEHRER & J. MAREK Research Institute and Documentation Center for Austrian Philosophy founded by Haller in Graz, and as Haller brings the world to Graz and Graz to the world, we are touched. For he shows us Austrian Philosophy transcending borders, crossing oceans, and creating a philosophy of analysis, science and empiricism. This conception of Austrian Philosophy is, as Haller would modestly insist, not his alone, others contributed to the conception of it, of course, and not all would agree with his conception. But there is no better way to celebrate Austrian Philosophy than to celebrate Haller as we do this occasion. We now turn to a detailed characterization of the contribution of Haller which owes a great deal to the suggestions of Heiner Rutte and Werner Sauer to whom we extend our thanks. Rudolf Haller's philosophical work is best understood against the background of the history of philosophy in Austria. Before World War IT, Austrian philosophy had reached a peak in the work of the Vienna Circle. This development was suddenly interrupted by the regime of National Socialism and didn't continue in Austria even after the war with the exception of a few special individuals, such as Viktor Kraft and Bela Juhos. An eclectic mixture of Christian, idealistic, existential and holistic thinking dominated the lecture halls. A younger generation of philosophers, who could not see the point of such nebulous thinking, turned to analytic philosophy with the aim of reinstating the tradition of the Vienna Circle in a modified form. Working on the reevaluation and reinstating of this tradition, Haller increasingly directed his efforts toward a problem-oriented historical reconstruction of the various schools of thought pertaining to contemporary analytic philosophy. By tracing those schools back to their roots, he attempted to discover shared guiding ideas which were often overshadowed by later developments. This perspective resulted in the discovery of surprising similarities between superficially often diverging concerns about ontology, language criticism, and empiricism, which gave rise to analytic philosophy. In particular, such similarities could be detected between the schools ofbrentano and Meinong, on the one hand, and the teachings of Ernst Mach, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the Vienna Circle, on the other hand. Haller was concerned with abolishing the all too familiar cliches that surround the origin, the leading personalities, and the doctrines associated with these movements. This led him to a new perspective on Austrian philosophy which emphasizes its independence from those movements that dominate Germany and its connections with the development of analytical philosophical thought in England, the U.S.A., Poland, and so forth. Accordingly, Haller attempts to develop a new view concerning the Vienna Circle. First of all, there is a historical correction. The Vienna Circle did not, according to Haller, only begin with the arrival of Moritz Schlick or Rudolf

10 INTRODUCTION xi Carnap in Vienna,. but already had early roots in a circle of three friends, Otto Neurath, Hans Hahn, Philipp Frank ('First Vienna Circle'), who, being followers of Mach, discussed those problems in the philosophy of science that arose in the context of conventionalism. Secondly, there is a systematic correction. For Haller, the Vienna Circle is much more closely connected both with the conventionalism of Henri Poincare and Pierre Duhem and with pragmatism, and it is much less a positivism of brute facts and hard data than is usually assumed. This is revealed by the radical ideas ofneurath, which met with much agreement, as well as in the work of Carnap and others. For example, the Vienna Circle itself already anticipated the later so-called 'anti-empiricist> criticism of the 'orthodox' neo-positivist epistemology and philosophy of science. Haller demonstrates that holism, conventionalism, naturalism, pragmatism, and historicism can already be found in Neurath and others. Haller's thinking is also unorthodox with respect to the relation between Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle. In contrast to the usual thesis that postulates both a principled disparity between Wittgenstein's ideas and those of the Vienna Circle as well as an erroneous reception of Wittgenstein's ideas by the circle, Haller attempts to show those commonalities that Wittgenstein and the Circle share with respect to verificationism and physicalism, which is not only true for Schlick and Waismann, but also for Carnap and Neurath. It is a general concern of Haller's to excavate the unified empiricist orientation of a scientific world-picture which underlies the many open clashes of ideas in the Circle. Haller also noticed that the boundaries between the early and the late Wittgenstein dissolve quickly, when one studies in detail Wittgenstein's development during the twenties and thirties. This made him an early defender of the so-called 'thesis of unity' in the interpretation of Wittgenstein's work. Haller is concerned to free the picture of the Vienna Circle, its context and influence, from certain stereotypical images that were conjured up by alleged anti-positivists, for example, Karl Popper, and in this way to make the ideas of the 'Neopositivists' or 'Logical Empiricists' relevant for the current discussion. As part of this softening of the usual perspective, Haller also pays attention to the various original fringe personalities and outsiders of the context of the Circle (e.g., Heinrich Gomperz). In this way, Haller tried to revise the all too familiar cliche laden picture of Ernst Mach, who recently became the focus of Haller's interest. Haller pursues another thread of historical revision by bringing the similarities and commonalities between the doctrines of Franz Brentano, Alexius Meinong, and their followers, on the one hand, and the doctrines of the empiricists and nominalists, on the other hand, to our attention. He traces the empiricist elements in the philosophy of mind and ontology of Brentano and

11 X11 K. LEHRER & 1. MAREK Meinong. In this way, he makes an important contribution to an understanding of the convergence between empiricist and phenomenological (in the broadest sense) perspectives which arose more recently in analytic philosophy in the context of a revitalization of genuine ontological questions. Indeed, it is Haller's accomplishment ( with Roderick Chisholm, Gustav Bergmann, and others) to have furthered the spreading of the ideas of Brentano and Meinong as well as some of their students into the current discussions within analytic philosophy abroad, as he also brought attention to Chisholm's work in German speaking countries at the same time. In the context of such widespread historical research, Haller (as did Neurath) sees the emerging picture of a unified Austrian philosophy with a common empiricist, language-analytic, and anti-metaphysical character, which shows a noticeable independence from the essentially idealist oriented German philosophy. It is furthermore important to remind the reader of Haller's early investigations into the history of concepts, for example, the history of the problem of meaning. His papers on this topic further attest to Haller's fundamental concern to retrace the historical branching of analytic philosophy. Like his later papers, those studies show him as an original, unorthodox historian of analytic philosophy who never loses touch with contemporary problems but, instead, attempts to bring historical considerations to bear on current discussions. Haller's wide ranging and systematic philosophical interests took him far beyond the history of Austrian philosophy in the past and made him an innovator in Austrian philosophy of the present The range of his interests is demonstrated by the variety of topics concerned with conceptual analysis and clarification with which he is and has been concerned. These include his work on the (1) the analytic/synthetic dichotomy, questions concerning identity and the problem of meaning (meaning - use - form of life); (2) relativity of concepts and theories, as well as questions concerning the progress of knowledge; (3) knowledge and perception, as well as the discussion concerning an act-oriented (praxeological) foundationalism; (4) the nature of fictional objects and of aesthetic evaluations; (5) subjectivity and objectivity, and, finally, questions concerning the I. One fundamental tenet of Haller is revealed in all of these studies: a skeptical attitude toward sharp and inflexible dichotomizing, which is often, in both historical and systematic philosophical research, presupposed as obvious, but which too often poses obstacles to a useful analysis of the complexity and variety of actual cases, for example, the historical and substantial problems of modem empiricism. This attitude is expressed most strikingly, perhaps, in Haller's attempt to reconcile empiricism and pragmatism, and in his closely related efforts to

12 INTRODUCTION xiii establish what he calls praxeological foundationalism. The epistemological foundationalism of Haller is indebted to Wittgenstein and finds the justification of our basic beliefs in their role in practice. The regress of justification is ended, the circle broken, and dogmatic assumptions avoided by the role of basic beliefs in action The great Scots, Hume and Reid, adversaries though they were, agreed that skepticism is blocked in by the demands of everyday activity. What Haller has added is that those needs of practice contain the solution to the traditional skeptical problem. If you role up the sleeve of practice in epistemology, you find that the skeptic has nothing up his sleeve. In his epistemology, Haller exhibits the connection between empiricism and pragmatism that he finds in Austrian Philosophy. At the same time, the unification of empiricism and pragmatism reveals the unification of Austrian Philosophy and American Philosophy. This unification created a dominant movement in international philosophy past and present For sake of future philosophers and the cultures in which they live, we hope this philosophy will dominate into the future as well. University of Arizona & Karl-Franzens-UniversiUit, Graz