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2. Introduction of LOGICAL EMPIRICISM into Japan
What is logical empiricism?
This is a philosophical movement initiated by a number of philosophically minded scientists and scientifically minded philosophers in 1920's in Vienna and Berlin. For instance, Moritz Schlick, Otto Neurath, and Rudolf Carnap are among the most important members. This movement is best known as "the Logical Positivism" or "the Vienna Circle". Although there were a wide variety of opinions among the members, the most salient features of logical empiricism are often summarized as follows.
(1) As regards the general theory of knowedge, they supported empiricism, i.e. the position that holds that our knowledge comes essentially from experience.
(2) As regards logic and mathematics which were the stumbling block for traditional empiricism (since logical or mathematical knowledge do not seem to depend on experience), they adopt the new view of logic developed by Frege, Russell and Whitehead. Logical truth is analytically true, that is "true by virtue of the meanings of the words contained in the proposition", and gives no information about the empirical world; for instance, "this is a chalk or is not a chalk" is trivially true because the predicate "is a chalk" can only be affirmed or denied about anything. Frege-Russsell's logicism about mathematics tried to extend this view to mathematics, insisting that mathematics can be reduced to logic, and hence is also analytically true.
(3) Thus, all propositions whose truth cannot be established by logic alone seem to have some empirical content, and the validity of this extra-content can only be justified in terms of experience or observation. And they wished to put forward this as a decisive reason for rejecting any sort of metaphysics; the tenet of anti-metaphysics was their shared opinion. So they proposed the verification theory of meaningfulness: For any non-logical proposition, its meaning can only be clarified in terms of empirical verification; otherwise a proposition is meaningless. Applying this criterion to metaphysical assertions, they thought such assertions can be shown to be meaningless (so that scientists do not have to deal with them).
(4) And the same criterion can be applied to philosophy too. Philosophy should stop talking about metaphysical nonsense, and philosophy too should be done constructively or "scientifically", so to speak. More specifically, philosophy can be done fruitfully by employing logical analysis and the criterion of meaningfulness, thereby eliminating nonsensical problems and concentrating on significant problems. Thus they emphasized the importance of analysis in philosophy.
Actually, many of their assertions were not completely new. As I have already suggested, some tenets can be found in the origin of modern philosophy itself (for instance, Descartes emphasized the importance of analysis in his scientific and philosophical inquiries), others in British empiricism, still others in earlier philosophy of science in the 19th century. For instance, many of the members of the Vienna Circle were admirers of Ernst Mach. And Mach propounded the philosophy of science which emphasized the importance of experience and the economy of thought.
Again, Mach's successor in Vienna, Ludwig Boltzmann also developed a philosophical view on science closely connected with his own scientific activities, although his position was against Mach's. And we can find some "positivistic" tendencies in Einstein's theories of relativity (Special Relativity, 1905; General Relativity, 1916); Schlick or Reichenbach were enthusiastic about relativity, although, as it turned out, their philosophical positions eventually differed from that of Einstein. I mention this because people often lose sight of the connection between logical empiricism and concrete examples of science.
We should also mention that American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce put forward a similar view, when he wrote a number of papers towards the end of the 19th century. His view is named "pragmatism". Thus, when a number of logical empiricists went to the United States, there was a good intellectual background for American philosophers to accept the substantial part of logical empiricism. The situation was somehow different for Japanese philosophers.
For Mach, Boltzmann, Reichenbach, and Einstein and others, see:
Logical empiricism imported into Japan after World War II.
The former president of the Philosophy of Science Society Japan (PSSJ) Nobushige Sawada (1916-) wrote a brief review essay in Philosophy of Science 30 (1997), and his essay is useful here. According to him, aroud 1940 a series of scientific books were published from Sogensha, containing Japanese translations of western scientists and Japanese authors' monographs. And one volume in this series contained translations of several authors belonging to logical empiricism or the Viena Circle. However, this volume did not attract many readers, presumeably because of the heavy atmosphere of the pre-war period----presumably, "Science must be used for the war, don't philosophize on it!" Again, toward the end of the war (1944), a Tokyo publisher issued a collection of translations of a number of papers on logical empiricism (by such authors as Karl Menger, Rufolf Carnap, and Karl Popper), but this was also neglected.
After the war, Sawada continues, Japanese philosophy began anew to develop centering on the controversies between the Marxist philosophy (Marxism was illegal before and during the war) on the one hand and the Existentialist philosophy (especially French version, such as Sartre's) on the other. And Japanese Philosopical Association was founded in 1950; many of the founders were sympathetic to the Marxist philosophy. And it is quite remarkable that this was the first nation-wide association for philosophy! Of course there were seveal philosophical associations in the pre-war period and they published even journals; but they are quite regional, centering on single universities such as the University of Tokyo or Kyoto University.
And the logical empiricism was imported into Japan in this period. There were several factors conducive to this. First, Stanford University contributed by opening a summer seminar called "Americal Studies Seminar", and Professor John Goheen (philosophy, Stanford Univ.) introduced Americal philosophy to Japanese scholars. (I myself attended one of his seminars here in Kyoto University in 1965, when I was a junior; but that was long after the Americal Studies Seminar). A number of young Japanese philosophers were stimulated by this and began to study American philosophy and logical empiricism; as you may know, most of the leaders of logical empiricism, including Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach, Carl Hempel, and Herbert Feigl, moved into the United States, and many native American philosophers (such as Quine) were strongly influenced by them. Thus, those young Japanese philosophers (Shozo Omori, Nobushige Sawada, Hiromichi Takeda, to mention only a few), realizing the need for learning new mathematical logic in order to understand logical empiricism, began to absorb this new logic and new philosophy. Many of them went to the United States (Harvard, in particular), thanks to Galioa-Fulbright grants, and began to publish when they came home. That was the beginning of Japanese philosophy of science, the late 50's.
[to be continued.....]
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(c) Soshichi Uchii, March 24, 1998; last modified April 19, 2006.
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