Biography of Rudolf Karnap

He was born in Ronnedorf, in Germany. He studied physics, mathematics and philosophy at universities in Freiber and Vienna. In his philosophy, Gottlieb Frege was influenced. In the First World War he served in the army. His doctoral dissertation on a comparative analysis of the concepts of space, which are used in physics, mathematics and philosophy, is aimed at emphasizing the importance of logical consideration of concepts.

Carnap was a leading figure in the Vienna circle. In the same year, together with Otto Neurat and Hans Han, he created the manifesto of the Viennese circle: "Viennese circle: a scientific concept of peace", in which the goals and methods of the Vienna circle were proclaimed. Together with Hans Reichenbach, he created "Erkennnis" - a magazine dedicated to the philosophy of science.

From G. Here Karnap published his "Logical Syntax of the Language". Logical positivism is often called logical empiricism.

He has his predecessor David Home, who rejected claims to the knowledge of such metaphysical issues as the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, since the ideas on which these claims are based cannot be traced to the simple sensual impressions that are their source. In the same way, members of the Vienna circle rejected as meaningless allegations that are not checked empirically.

Through this criterion of verification, they believed that metaphysical statements are meaningless. In the manifesto of the Vienna circle it was written: “If someone claims:“ God exists ”,“ the original cause of the world is the unconscious, ”“ there is an Entertechia that is the basis of the life of creatures ”, then we should not say:“ What you say is erroneous, ”but should rather ask:“ What do you mean by these sentences?

One type includes statements in the form that they are expressed in empirical science, their value can be determined by a logical analysis, or, more accurately, reducing to simple sentences about empirically given. Other statements, including the aforementioned statements, are completely meaningless if we take in the sense in which they use their metaphysics. "Early formulations of the criterion to determine meaningfulness lead to difficulties that are associated with testing simple sentences through people's experience, since experience can be different in different people.

Karnap put forward his decision of this difficulty, in contrast to the decision extended by the slalit. He believed that some statement is checked if it is in a certain attitude to the approval of observation. This indicates the logical possibility of checking the statement. He calls the allegations of observation "protocol sentences." Although protocol sentences are related to the data and describe this experience or phenomenon, they do this, according to Carnap, only in the form of a material method of speech, that is, a method by which we are associated with facts, phenomena, objects, in contrast to the formal method of speech, in which we are dealing only with linguistic forms.

Thus, the decisive verification of any statement is that there is a logical equivalent between approval and a number of observation proposals for the verified proposals. This requirement causes criticism, since any universal statement, for example, the statement of laws, is meaningless through the criterion of verification, because any proposal related to an unlimited number of cases cannot be logically equivalent to the number of observation proposals.

By virtue of this, Karnap refuses this criterion and turns to the concept of confirmation. In gg. We can only confirm the proposal again and again. Therefore, we will talk about the problems of confirmation, and not about the problem of verification. ”Carnap distinguishes between the audited and confirmed proposals. Some proposal is checked if we know the experimental method for checking it and confirmed if we know, under what conditions it should be confirmed.

Thus, the proposal can be confirmed without verification, since we can know what procedures confirm it, but are not able to carry out them. The Karnapov’s concept of probability is the initial point for its work. Karnap published his main work "Logical foundations of probability", in which he explores the possibility of a formal similarity between inductive and deductive procedures.

An important conclusion of this work of Carnap was the statement that the semantics - the study of meanings in the language - now acquires importance to all branches of logic.