<研究論文(原著論文)>ウィーン学団の科学的ヒューマニズム : カルナップとノイラートを中心とした、論理実証主義の社会的・政治的コミットメント

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the social and political commitments of the members of the Vienna Circle as “scientific humanism, ” based on their published works, letters and diaries, testimonies of their contemporaries, and the results of recent studies of the Circle. Focusing on Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath, I argue that behind their famous criticism of metaphysics lies the practical goal of contributing to the rational reform of our society and lives by creating tools for thinking, and that Carnap and Neurath, in particular, have the idea of contributing to such a reform by creating and improving our linguistic and logical tools, and put this idea into practice. I consider four forms of tools they are interested in: symbolic logic, a common language for unified science, pictorial languages such as ISOTYPE, and international auxiliary languages such as Esperanto. This paper is structured as follows. After describing the background of this paper (Section 1), in Section 2, I consider the manifesto of the Vienna Circle, “The Scientific Conception of the World” (1929), and related texts, showing that the members of the Vienna Circle situate themselves in the Enlightenment tradition , and that their common thought is summarized by Carnap as “scientific humanism.” In Section 3, after looking at some of Carnap's and Neurath's social and political involvements, I consider in detail their involvement in four forms of the reform of our linguistic and logical tools. Finally, in Section 4, I address the concern that scientific humanism of the Vienna University is a scientism that neglects our lives.