Showing papers in "Synthese in 1949"

Abstract: La conception de l'essence de la philosophie qui vient d'etre esquissee paraitrait se recommander pour plusieurs raisons: a) Elle presente la philosophie comme etant une science, en intention et potentiellement, au meme sens du mot „science“ que par exemple la physique ou la biologie: mais une science dont le sujet propre de recherches est different de celui des sciences naturelles; et d'ailleurs une science qui n'est pas encore tres avancee, parce que son sujet propre, et la methode de recherche qui lui est appropriee n'ont generalement pas ete discernes d'une facon adequate. b) En faisant une distinction entre les problemes pratiques a resoudre par la philosophie, et les problemes de philosophie, qui sont theoriques, notre conception rend justice, d'une part a l'opinion que la reflection philosophique peut et doit contribuer a la sagesse dans la conduite des affaires pratiques, et d'autre part au fait que beaucoup des problemes theoriques de la philosophie sont aussi abstrus, abstraits et techniques, et en apparence aussi denues d'implications pratiques, que beaucoup des problemes de physique theorique ou des mathematiques pures; mais la relation entre la theorie et la pratique est logiquement la meme dans les deux cas. En consequence meme les questions philosophiques les plus abstraites, quand elles ne sont pas des pseudo-questions et sont bien posees, ont potentiellement une importance pratique de l'espece particuliere qui a ete indiquee. c) La conception de la philosophie que nous avons ebauchee fait place, dans le domaine general de la philosophie, non seulement a la morale et aux autres branches de la philosophie dites normatives, mais aussi a la metaphysique et a l'epistemologie, tant que les hypotheses de ces dernieres ne sont pas dogmatiques, mais peuvent etre mises a l'epreuve consistant a voir si elles s'accordent avec les faits observables de l'espece appropriee, aussi bien qu'a l'epreuve de coherence interne et de coherence reciproque ou mutuelle. d) La conception philosophique presentee specifie quelle est l'espece de faits pouvant servir de reference pour controler empiriquement la validite ou l'invalidite des speculations philosophiques quand elles ne sont pas presentees comme des revelations d'oracle, et ainsi rend claire la forme particuliere que la methode scientifique, generatrice de connaissances, et non de simples croyances, doit assumer, lorsqu'elle est appliquee au sujet de recherches qui distingue la philosophie des autres sciences. e) Finalement, notre conception met en relief le fait que les mots (et en particulier les termes de valeur, et autres termes philosophiques) sont des outils crees par l'homme tout autant qu'une hache, un moteur electrique ou une maison; que les mots sont les moyens les plus typiques par lesquels les hommes s'influencent reciproquement, et enfin que les mots influencent les sentiments, les croyances et les actions, meme quand ils sont mal compris ou employes a tort. En consequence l'analyse ou la fixation de leur signification, qui permet de les appliquer avec discernement et sans malentendu aux faits, actions ou evenements concrets, est une tâche de la plus haute importance pour l'homme vivant en societe.

Abstract: Vegetation study (\"Vegetationskunde\", vegetatiekunde), also named \"phytocenology\" and often designed as \"plant sociology\" (phytosociologie, etc.) is, generally spoken, the science of plant individuals living together on a certain spot or in a certain environment (habitat). The \"naive Stage\" of it began +__ 1800 A.D. (Alexander von Humboldt , F15rke). Since the end of the past century it developed rapidly in the United States as much as in Europe, although in the first decennia in Europe still being considered as a branch of plant geography. The term \"phytosociology\" has been used as early as 1896 by the Pole Paczoski and the Russian Krylow; the Swiss botanist Carl Schr6ter since 1902 used the term \"synecology\", but in a much wider sense as it is employed today in Europe. (See def. 5 d). Not before 1918, however, vegetation study in Europe has developed a system of concepts and methods peculiar to it and has become conscious of its specific problems, so that it might value as an independant science compared with \"idiobotany\" or botany of organisms (see def. 5 a--b).

Abstract: It is a well known phrase to say that the difference between religion and belief on the one hand and knowledge and science on the other, may be described as follows: the former depends on revelation, as we say in Dutch and Norwegian on "openbaring", the latter not. As a matter of fact, however, I very often have the impression of struggling revelation, even in semantical and sociological studies. I suddenly find myself on the point of presenting something as a result of my brain work without being able to give a somewhat detailed description of my assumptions and the auxiliary hypothesis which reasonably must have led me from the observations of any kind to this "result". In the following I will mainly deal with certain means of resistance against this temptation of revelation. This is to say that I will try to give a hint of a kind of investigations which will be involved in all philosophical or logical analysis and semantical or signifie studies of our Oslo-group, and which we at the time regard as being the most important part of such studies. Arne Naess has suggested the name of "elementary analysis" for those kind of investigations. As an illustration of elementary analysis I will use my own study on "private enterprise". The most usual procedure so far applied, when analyzing a linguistic expression would be one of the following. The analyst or investigator makes a single subject, namely himself object of an investigation and records the ideas immediately. The analysis might also includea criticism (unfavourable) of the accessible or potential, but frequently less successful attempts in the same direc tion of other authors. Or the analyst may back up his hypotheses of usage by quotations which may be interpreted in such a way that they directly or indirectly are supporting his ideas. Or fellow human beings might be asked what they mean by or maintain to mean by the

Abstract: It remains to summarize the contributions which each of the three disciplines discussed here is making toward the development of a science of man.

Abstract: The present work is an attempt at defining certain semantic concepts which properly belong to the so-called pragmatics of language, that is science which deals with the relations existing between the language itself and the people who use it. For that purpose five primitive expressions of essentially pragmatic character have been chosen, by means of which it is proposed to define the relation of naming, the concept of the true sentence and other semantic notions. It should be made clear that none of these concepts strictly refer to any natural language, though some sections of the latter may satisfy certain conditions of the definitions accepted. Such a situation may arise in many other branches of science, especially in those of the humanist branch. Here we are often unable to describe concrete phenomena by means of a definition which operates a small number of precise terms, as the real phenomena are of much more complex character. Consequently, after we have made the decision to accept an exact definition, it may appear as often as not that there are many borderline cases which satisfy that definition, even if we have not intended so, or do not satisfy it, even if we have intended that they should do it.

Abstract: Dans la premi6re de ces Confdrences, M. Reichenbach a discut~ le probl~me de l ' inddterminisme quantique en faisant intervenir .sa mdthode de preuve inductive, et il a montr6 la diff6rence entre la fa~on dont se pose le problbme en th6orie classique et en th6orie quantique. La deuxi6me Confdrence 6tait consacr6e aux objets inobservds et ~t une logique ~ trois valeurs qui permet de ddcrire les anomalies causales apparaissant dbs qu'on veut faire un tableau objectif des ph~nom~nes quantiques. Abordant dans ses deux derni6res Confdrences la question de la direction du temps, M. Reichenbach distingue entre l'inf~rence du temps ~ l 'entropie et l'infdrence ,de l 'entropie au temps. C'est la thermodynamique statistique qui fixe le fl6che du temps, et \"il semble que dans le doma~ine des quanta le concept de temps perde sa signi[ication directe\". La distinction entre l ' ind6termination de l'avenir et la d~termination du pass6 et le concept de \"devenir\" ont trouv6 une expression dans les lois de la physique: le pr6sent, qui sdpare l'avenir du pass6, est le moment off ce qui 6tait ind~termin~ devient d~termin~. Le grand int~r~t, aussi bien philosophique que scientifique, de ces confdrences, explique leur succ6s auprbs d 'un public aussi nombreux que vari~. J . L . Destouches.

Abstract: In 1945, in a paper in "Philosophy and Phenomenological Research", Rudolf Carnap made a distinction between two concepts of probability. One of these, called by him "probability2", is based in one form or another on frequency quotients of observed phenomena, whereas the other one, called "probabilityi", deals with a concept like "rational degree of belief", which doubtless most of the classical probabilists from Jacob Bernoulli onwards, and several of the modern ones, had in mind. The present work is a gigantic effort to make this concept precise, and to give, as it is stated on the cover "A clarification of the notion of probability ? and the construction of a new and exact theory of probability on a logically sound basis". The author tries to do this by basing the concept of probability on the semantics of a given object-language. As such he choses (p. 65) a language of an extremely simple type. It contains seven signs (viz. W , V , Y ' =*, Y, '(Y)' ; 't' stands for "tautology") a finite number of predicates of any finite order, an infinite sequence of individual variables, and either a finite number N or an infinite sequence of individual constants. In the former case the language is called "Sn"> i*1 the latter "Soc". Out of these signs "atomic sentences" are formed, which apply any one of the predicates, say of order n, to any n of the individual constants. A "state-description" ('3'; p. 70) is a conjunction, having as components one out of each "basic pair", consisting of an atomic sentence and its negation. (Hence the state-descriptions correspond one to one with the subsets of the set of all atomic sentences). Two state-descrip tions are called "isomorphic" (p. 109) if they can be obtained from each other by a permutation of the individual constants, and the dis junction of a class of all state-descriptions, isomorphic with one of them, is called a "structure