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Tuesday, May 15, 2007 from 4:15 PM - 5:45 PM (PT)
I consider how the logical empiricists -- mainly Carnap and Schlick -- developed a characteristic perspective on the relationship between logic and experience against the background of their understanding of Einstein, Frege, and Hilbert, and also against the background of an earlier strand in scientific philosophy represented by Helmholtz and Poincaré. Although this tradition (especially via Helmholtz) was also engaged with developments in the psychology and physiology of the time, it was much more closely engaged with developments within the exact sciences -- and, in particular, with the modern axiomatic tradition associated especially with Hilbert. This gave the conception of the logical empiricists a distinctively "transcendentalist" flavor (associated with the Kantian and neo-Kantian tradition) quite different from various current forms of "naturalism" and "psychologism."
By Steven Ericsson-Zenith, Chairman of IASE
Is the manifest existence of experience in the world to be mastered only by poets and priests, or is its mystery one that science can disclose?
Before 1950 the answer was clear, experience lay at the foundation of scientific consideration. But the challenge of it seemed unsurmountable.
In 1928, the philosopher of science, Rudolf Carnap, wrote:
The question is this: provided that to all or some types of psychological processes there correspond simultaneous processes in the central nervous system, what connects the processes in question with one another? Very little has been done toward a solution to the correlation problem of the psychophysical relation, but, even if this problem were solved (i.e., if we could infer the characteristics of a brain process from the characteristics of a psychological process, and vice versa), nothing would have been achieved to further the solution of the essence problem (i.e., the psychophysical problem). For this problem is not concerned with the correlation, but with the essential relation; that is, with that which "essentially" or "fundamentally" leads from one process to the other or which brings forth both from a common root.
...there still remain, in the main, three hypotheses: mutual influence, parallelism, and identity in the sense of the two aspect theory...
Three contradicting and unsatisfactory answers and no possibility of finding or even imagining an empirical fact that could here make the difference: a more hopeless situation can hardly be imagined...
Rudolf Carnap, P. 37-38. The Logical Structure of the World. 1928.
Since 1928 a lot of work has been done in neuroscience on what Carnap calls the “correlation problem.” We have identified behavior in the nervous system that corresponds to certain psychological processes. But, as Carnap anticipated, no progress has been made on the essential problem, popularly known as the “mind / body problem.”
In workshops and seminars the Institute for Advanced Science & Engineering aims to bring together leading theorists, logicians and computer scientists, with empirical research in biology and physics to ask some of the harder questions regarding the foundations of logic and apprehension, with the ultimate goal of addressing what is, perhaps, the last remaining really hard problem in science and moving toward a demonstrable explanation of experience in nature.
This series of lecture/discussions is a prelude to our workshop in December. Speakers from multiple disciplines are invited to present in the context the Institute's theme, "Explaining Experience in Nature." We will create sub-tracks in the series such as "The Positivist Agenda" and "The Agenda of Realism" to indicate the general approach under discussion. The format of this series of lectures/debates consists of a 40 minute lecture followed by a led discussion and debate.
Professor Michael Friedman, a leading scholar of the history of logical positivism, gives our inaugural talk on the positivist agenda. He is Frederick P. Rehmus Family Professor of Humanities at Stanford University and is the author of Reconsidering Logical Positivism published in 1999 by Cambridge University Press. For more information about Professor Friedman see his Stanford University profile..
Professor John McCarthy, also of Stanford University and speaks in this series next month, will offer an initial response to Professor Friedman's presentation.
We anticipate that this event will be video recorded and a form of that recording will be made available on the web after the event. Participants will be asked to sign a release form so that we can include the material in an educational video series that is in development.
Steven Ericsson-Zenith, Chairman.
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