Workshop: Logical Empiricism and American Pragmatism on Values and Democracy
June 15 (afternoon), 16, & 17, 2025. University of Vienna
Venue: SR 3A (Neues Institutsgebäude, Universitätsstraße 7, 1010
Vienna)
No registration needed. Everyone is invited to attend.
Sunday, June 15
14:0015:00 Christian Damböck (University of Vienna): Toward a Shift in
Narrative: Carnap, Dewey, and Lewis on Values and Practical Decisions.
15:3016:30 Sander Verhaegh (Tilburg University): Pragmatism and Logical
Empiricism on Values: A Cultural Analysis
17:0018:00 Christoph Limbeck-Lilienau (University of Vienna): Dewey versus
Stevenson on Values
18:3019:30 Cheryl Misak (University of Toronto): The Battle over Value:
Dewey and the Unity of Science
Monday, June 16
10:00-11:00 Thomas Uebel (University of Manchester): The Scientific
World-Conception Reconstituted and Compared with Dewey's Theory of Valuation
11:3012:30 Claudia Cristalli (Tilburg University): Being "of service to man
in his characteristic activity as a valuer": the scientific study of values
in Charles W. Morris
14:3015:30 Roberto Gronda (University of Pisa): Abraham Kaplan and the
American axiological tradition
16:0017:00 Lucas Baccarat (University of Vienna): Bentley and Neurath on
Experience
17:3018:30 Alan Richardson (University of British Columbia): Pluralisms in
the US 1900-1950 and Horace Kallen's criticism of Neurath
Tuesday, June 17
10:00-11:00 Georg Schiemer (University of Vienna): Carnap and Kelsen's Pure
Theory of Law
11:3012:30 Flavia Padovani (Drexel University): Hans Reichenbach and C.I.
Lewis on the pragmatic a priori
14:3015:30 Friedrich Stadler (University of Vienna): Harvard 1939: The
Interaction of European and American Pragmatism
16:0017:00 Matthias Neuber (University of Mainz): Philipp Frank on Values,
Democracy, and the "Humanistic Background of Science"
17:3018:30 Adam Tuboly (Hungarian Academy of Science): From General
Education in a Free Society to Science in a Free Society: Nagel, Kuhn, and
Feyerabend
While previous research at the Institute Vienna Circle has focused mainly on
the encounters between American pragmatism and logical empiricism in the
European context in the decades before and after 1900, this workshop will be
devoted to developments in the United States between the 1930s and 1960s. In
addition, the workshop will focus on the philosophy of values, law, and
democracy as developed in the exchanges and sometimes conflicts between key
members of the logical empiricist movement, including Rudolf Carnap, Otto
Neurath, Hans Reichenbach, and Hans Kelsen, on the one hand, and pragmatists
such as C.I. Lewis, John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, Abraham Kaplan, and Charles
Morris, on the other. Here, broad agreement on the understanding of science
and democracy is accompanied by sometimes sharp disagreement on the
philosophy of values, more precisely, the tension between non-cognitivism
and verificationism regarding values. The aim of this workshop is not only
to reconstruct these tensions, but also to contextualize them historically,
to try to resolve them systematically, and to build bridges to the
contemporary discourse on the philosophy of law, politics, and deliberative
democracy. On the other side of the political spectrum, the liberal
discourse in the US is compared to the fascist discourse on politics and law
as it developed in Europe, and in particular in Nazi Germany.
Literature:
Christian Damböck (2025), "Noncognitive Deliberation. The Political Legacy
of Logical Empiricism", Erkenntnis.
<https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-024-00911-7>
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-024-00911-7
David Dyzenhaus (2023), The Long Arc of Legality. Hobbes, Kelsen, Hart, CUP.
Christoph Limbeck-Lilienau (2010), "Rudolf Carnap und die Philosophie in
Amerika. Logischer Empirismus, Pragmatismus, Realismus", Friedrich Stadler
(ed.): Vertreibung, Transformation und Rückkehr der Wissenschaftstheorie,
Lit Verlag, 85-164.
Giovanni Maddalena and Friedrich Stadler (eds.) (2019), European Pragmatism,
in: European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy,
<https://doi.org/10.4000/ejpap.1459>
https://doi.org/10.4000/ejpap.1459.
Cheryl Misak (2000), Truth, Politics, Morality. Pragmatism and Deliberation,
Routledge.
Cheryl Misak (2015), The American Pragmatists, OUP.
Sami Pihlström, Friedrich Stadler, and Niels Weidtmann (eds.) (2017),
Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism, Springer.
George Reisch (2005), How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science. To
the Icy Slopes of Logic, CUP.
Alan Richardson (2003), "Logical Empiricism, American Pragmatism, and the
Fate of Scientific Philosophy in North America", Gary Hardcastle and Alan
Richardson (eds.), Logical Empiricism in North America, University of
Minnesota Press, 1-24.
Alan Richardson (2007), "Carnapian Pragmatism", Michael Friedman and Richard
Creath (eds.): The Cambridge Companion to Carnap, CUP, 295-315.
Thomas Uebel (2015), "American Pragmatism and the Vienna Circle: The Early
Years", JHAP 3:3, 1-35.
Sander Verhaegh (2020), "Coming to America: Carnap, Reichenbach and the
Great Intellectual Migration. Part I: Rudolf Carnap/Part II: Hans
Reichenbach", JHAP 8:11, 1-47.
Organizers: Lucas Baccarat, Christian Damböck, and Christoph
Limbeck-Lilienau
Hosts: Institute Vienna Circle, Vienna Circle Society
Language: English