5 Jun
2025
5 Jun
'25
5:05 p.m.
The Institute Vienna Circle and the Vienna Circle Society cordially
invite you to the
*8th Arthur Pap Lecture*
*Luca Oliva (University of Houston)*
Kinds of A Priori
*Thursday, June 12, 2025**
*5 pm**
Aula am Campus
University of Vienna
Hof 1, Eingang 1.11
Spitalgasse 2-4
1090 Vienna
*For those who can't make it to Vienna, the event will also be streamed
via YouTube:Link <https://www.youtube.com/live/DMGipA4G1ks>*
Registration:vcs@univie.ac.at <mailto:vcs@univie.ac.at>
No registration fee
Abstract
In 1944, Arthur Pap analyzed different kinds of "a priori" beyond the
scientific statements that served as the standard reference for the
logical empiricist criticism of the Kantian model. His analysis focuses
on the meanings of formal, material, and functional a priori, engaging
primarily with the arguments of Aristotle, Kant, Schlick, Wittgenstein,
Dewey, and Carnap. In this context, Pap advocates for the reducibility
of Kant's synthetic a priori to the material a priori, while also
arguing for the consistency of the latter with the functional meaning of
the a priori. Oliva's talk will center on the first two meanings. It
will specifically analyze Pap's views on Kant's synthetic-analytic
distinction, Leibniz's notion of true sentences as identities (which
relates to Wittgenstein's notion of tautology), and Hilbert's notion of
implicit definitions – adopted by Schlick and defended by Einstein.
Oliva will also consider Pap's later writings from 1949 and 1957 and
assess the claims concerning analyticity, necessity, and material
implication they developed. Supporting references will include works by
Shieh (2006), Stump (2011, 2021), Mormann (2021), and Limbeck-Lilienau
(2025).
Short Bio
Luca Olivais an assistant professor and the program director of /Liberal
Studies/ at the University of Houston. His research interests lie in
epistemology and philosophy of mathematics but also involve ethics and
metaethics. He has primarily published on issues of analytic Kantianism,
the a priori in logical empiricism (including Wittgenstein), and
Rickert's abstract objects and normativity. His articles have appeared
in the /Kantian Review/, the /Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/, and
collections published by Cambridge University Press, the North American
Kant Society, and De Gruyter. Oliva teaches theories of knowledge and
truth, as well as ethics. In recent years, he has been a lecturer at
the University of Vienna (2019) and the Institute Vienna Circle (2015,
2017), an academic visitor at the University of Oxford (2016, 2017), and
a visiting professor at the Universities of Insubria (2024) and Bergamo
(2015, 2022) in Italy.Since 2024, Oliva has co-organized the
/Reconstructing Carnap/ webinar series affiliated with the University of
Florence. In 2023, he also initiated the /Ethics and Normativity Seminar
Series/ at the University of Houston.