The Logical, the Methodological, and the Epistemological: Structural Objectivity and its After-Images in Reichenbach and Carnap
Alan Richardson | University of British Columbia
Zusammen mit Vienna Circle Society/Together with Vienna Circle Society
Date: October 21, 2026
Time: 7 pm
Venue: Aula am Campus der Universität Wien, Hof 1, Eingang 1.11, Spitalgasse 2-4, 1090 Wien
YouTube Livestream:
https://www.youtube.com/live/oNthgIJMuK8
As part of the conference
The Vienna Circle and Logical Empiricism. Research and Historiography
October 19-21, 2026
University of Vienna – Aula at Campus
Organized by:
Vienna Circle Society and Institute Vienna Circle
https://viennacircle-today.univie.ac.at/
Abstract
One of the many virtues of Michael Friedman's work was the way it allowed us to disentangle two issues: first, the various ways the epistemological or methodological function of the synthetic a priori can be articulated and, second, the various philosophical vocabularies you might feel you can or must use to articulate them. Friedman himself, somewhat surprisingly given his early work on space-time, came to be most interested in Carnap's attempt to articulate constitutive principles for semantic systems in metalogical vocabulary. In this talk I will both further elaborate that story and contrast it with the different development in Reichenbach's scientific philosophy. Our starting point will be the somewhat different accounts of structural objectivity in Reichenbach's (1920) Relativitätstheorie und Erkenntnis A Priori and Carnap's (1928) Der logische Aufbau der Welt and then we shall trace how those differences reflect different philosophical visions that get elaborated differently across the decades of their careers.
Short bio
Alan Richardson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. His research career has largely been concerned with the history of philosophy of science, especially logical empiricism. He is the author of Carnap's Construction of the World (Cambridge, 1997) and Logical Empiricism as Scientific Philosophy (Cambridge, 2024). He is a co-editor of the forthcoming Oxford University Press edition of Carnap's Aufbau, which is volume 2 of the Oxford Collected Works of Carnap.