So hello and welcome to the first session of the seminar The Enigma of Carnap's Aufbau, Logical Intertwinement of Experience and Knowledge with Reza Negarestani. I'll just read the course description briefly. So this eight session seminar provides a critical and constructive reading of one of the central texts of analytic philosophy, The Logical Structure of the World, Aufbau, written by Rudolf Carnap in 1928. An immensely consequential and at the same time controversial, Aufbau's main mission is to put forward a new form of philosophy rather than serving an old philosophical wine in a new formal bottle. The book in its entirety is a scientific, is a daunting, ambitious, and technical project that borrows its elements from scientific enlightenment, neo-Kantianism, Gestalt theory, and phenomenology, among others, all glued together
by the might of a new logical and epistemological framework. Roughly two entwining moments are present in the book, one de-centering into the elementary lived experiences of human agents, and the other ascending from such experiences to the edifice of scientific knowledge. The medium that supports this ascent and dissent are provided by phenomenology and the new logic in the form of constitution systems. Systems of piecewise construction. Through the study of the first three parts of Alphabau, with the help of supplementary critical and constructive reading materials, we not only engage with the beast of analytic philosophy, but also recover an image of Carnac often misunderstood as distorted in contemporary history of philosophy, both by analytic and continental traditions. The enigma of Alfvau is revealed to be the enigma of Carnap as a philosopher of enlightenment.
Given the scope of Alfvau and its desolated richness, whose end product is an imposing multifaceted architecture, we will engage with supplementary materials as part of the syllabus, but also take the liberty to sidestep from the listed reading when required. So yes, that's it. Take it away Reza. Thank you very much. Thank you. uh so uh hello everyone uh glad you showed up uh today this is a special day um i don't have anything to say really other than you know many thanks for taking this class i hope that it will satisfy you as i was just making a joke about this um this uh session is going to be pretty straightforward you know from the history of philosophy you know we are going to talk about
about the backgrounds from which this book coming from. And from next session, maybe not the next session, but down the line, it starts to become a little bit technical. So I was saying that it's just like a bad fever, which you fluctuate between some sort of logical hallucination and forms and moments of clarity. Without further ado, it would be great if you start to introduce yourself, briefly say where you are coming from, what your background is, and why you took this class.
So I can kind of, you know, somehow down the line, try my best to kind of commensurate your interests with that of the class. Please. I can start if that's fine. Sure, absolutely. Yeah, hi Reza, nice to see you again. Absolutely. So my name is Jesse Benjamin. I'm currently in Brighton. I'm from Germany originally. I'm doing a PhD in philosophy of technology at the University of Twente. And lots behind my motivation to attend this class
is that I am quite far removed from analytic philosophy, quite far. So I'm kind of more of a phenomenologist in lots of ways. But I'm quite interested in expanding this existing framework that I work within. So post-phenomenology, which is kind of like an empirical analytical approach to studying technology. And I'm interested in expanding it towards accounting more for computation, how computation is involved in the constitution of experience, obviously. And so what I'm interested in is, on the one hand, understanding more about, as you said, or as was read in the start, about the common overlaps that exist between both traditions.
And on the other hand, for me personally, it will be really interesting to gain more of a grasp on the analytic approach towards thinking about how things are constituted right because in my move towards making computation and computational media graspable within the framework that's kind of a move that i'll have to make anyway so i've i've taken some computational theory classes from the new center before so with anil for example but i'm also interested in this more kind of like philosophical basis then in this regard so that's kind of thank you so much thank you thank you so our moderator wants to go through you know
or maybe you should take liberty and do it oh hi i can do it I'm a filmmaker from Mexico City. I am lately I've been writing a lot about indigenous integration of video in indigenous communities in Latin America. So I got to know Carnap in your class, Durian Object, like two years ago, I think. And that's where I got this notion of intersubjectivity that exist in the work of Carnap and I think I can use the knowledge of Carnap's philosophy
in my own work for what I'm trying to build in relation to indigenous knowledge of Latin memory. I see, I see. Thank you so much. Thank you. Shall I just go? Please. Yeah. Hi everyone. I'm James. I'm from the UK. I've just completed a master's in philosophy and I just have a general interest in the history of philosophy. I've never read Carnap I just know uh rumors in continental or analytic tradition uh it was actually more in analytic but I have a more of an interest I'd say I have a bit of a split it depends on the day but
I've never read Carnap directly or any of the logical positivists so uh I'm just quite intrigued by them because there's loads of like stereotypes etc of yes yes yes they are the boogeyman they are the boogeyman of analytic philosophy like if you don't behave in content of philosophy then maybe you should go back to karnak and karnak have exact revenge on you yes um but what is your field of uh philosophy i mean what is your concentration on a certain do you have a concentration on a a certain kind of project? So my dissertation was in political philosophy so that was more my focus
but now I'm finished that I'm more interested in like the history of philosophy generally especially like 20th century. I see, I see, I see. Thank you so much, thank you very much. My dear bosses. Hi, I can say something. I'm Sophie. I studied analytical philosophy when I was younger and was quite into it. I don't know, until I was, I think, more, how to say, into continental philosophy and went to art school right after and graduated two years ago from college.
And now I'm very interested in having a look back onto analytical philosophy. And I never really encountered Carnap, so that's why. Thank you so much, Luffy. hi i can go um my name is matthew i am living in los angeles um i'm a comedian i have no formal training in philosophy and have approached it kind of autodidactically through the best way the best way the best way
but uh it has but also insufferable yes in terms of taxation on on finances on cognitive faculty so on so forth yes yeah definitely but I've always had a prejudice against analytic philosophy but I've recently realized that for me reading thinkers who write very systematically is very intoxicating for me. Yes, seductive almost. Very seductive. So I'm very interested in the fever dream aspect that you mentioned. Sure, sure. Thank you so much. I mean, glad that we have a full autodidact here.
Please. I can go. Yeah. So my name is Andy. I'm based out of Charleston, South Carolina in the U.S. right now. I, so I got my undergraduate degree in English and media studies. And I have like a basic background in like critical theory and media theory and things like that. But I'm interested in possibly pursuing graduate work in philosophy. And I'm taking this class because I'm particularly interested right now in the ways in which I'm interested in like the political economy of information and how, for example, maybe rationalism could be applied. It's like a study of that from war.
Maybe I'm invested in Marxist critique. I see. I see. Yeah. So that's the ball with Karnap. He's a rationalist, but his works are, you know, I mean, as we are, I mean, there is a reason that there is school of thought is called logical empiricism, which is actually more accurate than positivism. Because positivism was an older, basically, philosophical movement through which Vienna Circle, to which Carnap, Reichenbach, and Otto Neurath belong, they emerged.
So essentially, they are logical empiricists, but it's a heretical empiricism. Essentially, they are always on the side of rationalism. The main tenets of them is rationalism. But the thing is that they always maintain that they are truly empiricist. As we move forward, you will notice. And that's actually, I think, it's really interesting, precisely because first of all, I will talk about this briefly. Karnoff was a very political person, right? He was part of the youth movement in Germany, which were basically the anti-fascists,
like the Antifa of the day, right? The Antifa of the day. And at the moment, his friend Otto Neurath was murdered on the steps of the university by this crazy Nazi, he started to think about to leave Germany before things get worse. And he came to the US after the after coming to the US, he precisely because, you know, Americans were extremely, at that point, paranoid about Germans, right? Regardless of whether you are a commie or a fascist
or something else, they were skeptical of all these people, right? So he kept his political, communist political activities, Marxist political activities of some sort, were egalitarian, so to speak, under radar. And only he began these kinds of activities later in time with the segregation movement. In fact, he's one of the only few philosophers in the history of 20th century before everyone else starts to criticize segregation and become allied with black members of anti-segregation movement. So he has that kind of background life and his
philosophy is actually part of it. I mean many people have tried to argue that no it is not but recent scholarship work, scholarly works on this issue all point to the fact that, in fact, even the most earliest, the earliest works of Carnap, not even of Bao, even like the early, like their realm, the space and, you know, kind of like stuff like Unity of Science, should be understood in terms of these kinds of egalitarian politics the carna was always beholden to it's fascinating yeah that's an aspect that i've always been drawn to and um maybe specifically
analytic philosophers who seem to have a separation between politics yes well of course there are people like Quine too, an awful man, a great philosopher. Please. Hi, hello Reza, hello everyone. My name is Zé Antonio. I'm speaking from the very south of Brazil. I'm a legal theorist finishing my PhD in PUC Rio de Janeiro. And well, I guess Reza knows how I have kind of an ambivalent relation with modernist
Russianist project. But at the same time, I feel the same attraction that people have mentioned to this kind of very systematic approach, which allows you to have actual tools for mapping cognitively and navigating problems in a more rigorous way, which you often don't get at the other pole of this kind of of separation. So recently, I've been studying, I've been looking for constructing a kind of way
of theorizing law that's based on Hans Kelsen, who is another kind of a different kind of positivist from Vienna, but who was kind of peripherally connected to the Vienna circle. And he also has this kind of constructive and, you know, Baal-styled approach to law. So I was thinking that even though I don't know anything about Carnap, maybe this is like probably the best moment that I could actually engage with this. and then probably I can find some inspiration for thinking about the legal questions that I'm trying to approach,
though I know that it's a whole different discussion. So, yeah, I guess that's it. Thank you, Zee. Thank you so much. I'm glad to have you here. Please. Next one. Hello, Reza, if you may. Hello, everybody. I'm Federico. I'm currently in Colombia, South America, finishing a very lacerating journey through an MA program in philosophy. I hope it can be finished soon. And my interest in Carnap and in general, like this, turn to rationalist philosophy lies in my personal project of trying to link, once again,
structural thought into political thought and political praxis. In particular, what Ressa mentioned, I'm very interested in the Promethean aspect of the Vienna Circle. I'm also very interested like in the way that logical structuration of the world can work in place of, I don't know, naive political movements that take affect and neo-primitivism as a fighting point. So it's trying to find a way through thinking once again in structure, using theory of complexity theory, structural developments in science and philosophy of science, philosophy
of mind. So I'm very interested. I mean, it's a very long project. It will take a very long time, but I'm very interested in trying to find this injunction. Thank you. Thank you, Federico. Thank you. Thank you so much. Please? Hi, I'm Edna. I'm from Mexico City. I studied my bachelor's degree in philosophy. When I started, I was very interested in frege, but then I leave that path and started to study political philosophy. So I would like to go back to analytics. And I think this is a great
opportunity for me to do it. Thank you so much. Yes, yes. I mean, that's actually a very good, I mean, Carnap, if you want to really look back into Frigge without getting, you know, some of the logicist program or Friggean logic program prejudices is exactly Carnap precisely because Karnap, even though he was a student of the master, right, but he was influenced mainly by other kinds of things. I mean, Fouiga for him was just merely a platform, scaffolding, but the other factors that came and made him the philosopher that he became were coming from various different traditions,
and I'm going to talk about it today precisely to kind of triangulate the scope of of BAU from a historical perspective. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Hi, can you hear me? So hello everyone I'm Zenobio I'm from Brazil too but the northeast and part of it and I'm a bachelor design student I'm finishing the bachelor degree right now and I'm bringing together
speculative realism philosophies and what is left of it and what the fragments of it right now and try to to think this as a methodological approach to design i'm also in my mind with benjamin breton's approach to design the realistic and materialistic approach and the yeah what what i'm actually in the future i'm trying to to learn the much as i can of philosophy in general to to make or to to help to build a philosophy of design
i see i see i see thank you so much thank you Okay, hi, hi, hi. I'm Karl. I'm from Sweden. I'm supposed to be a geographer, but what I'm doing is I'm basically studying different epistemological and extension methodological problems in sort of cultural geography and the extended humanities return to different earthy themes by trying to cash out different naturalist perspectives. So it doesn't really much to do with Carnap and although I am very interested in sort of trying to learn more, the only thing by Carnap I've read is his, in fact his doctoral dissertation, I think, was the
realm about this sort of the exposition of different kinds of space, which was a very good read to be fair. Yeah, mostly what I would like to get out of this course is basically an idea of Karl Lehenbauer, Where Carnap sits within the wider currents of of 20th century philosophy, because I think it's important to understand kind of this position of a logical positive positive and do to see sort of what comes afterward. Karl Lehenbauer, And also, I might be surprised and change everything I think about everything so. Karl Lehenbauer, Thank you, Colin. Great to have you here again. Karl Lehenbauer, Please. Hi, hello Reza, hello everyone.
My name is Cassio, I'm from Brazil. I did a graduation in philosophy and wrote a monograph on the concept of aesthetic appreciation and I'm currently doing an MA program and writing MA thesis on the critique of transcendental structures that is presented on intelligence and spirits. And I think my interest in this course is basically to spend my knowledge on the notion of logic as an organo so thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you very much really glad to have you here um please yes
yes maria uh i'm maria karoleva i'm in moscow and i'm an art critic who tries to be a controversial person called art theorist i don't know whether art needs me at all because everybody says that uh well go away we don't need you have a philosophy i have read analytic philosophers but in not systematic way and i'm trying to figure out how to use them in my text that's why thank you that's a that's a that's a super statement i must say thank you so much hello everyone can you hear me yes yeah my name is delshad i'm from kurdistan iraq i'm a medical doctor i have no background in philosophy whatsoever i have only taken i know
who you are you are friends on facebook yeah i have only taken a seminar with daniel sassiloto So recently, I actually published a paper on Triple Amperecent about, it's called the deep stematization of manifestorality. It's actually a piece against Reza. You know, I'm a medical doctor and I'm arguing his philosophy. So it's so oxymoronic. I argue in that piece that, you know, Reza talks about in his book. Actually, I haven't finished this book, but I have read pieces of the book. that structures only belong to the linguistic domain actually i argue that no structures belong to the pre-linguistic ostensive domain of embedded actions so because this course about
offbow you know structure or the logical structure of the world or the construction of the world so i i i hope to to change my mind that yeah the structure does not only belong You knocked on the wrong door at this point. It's actually so oxymoronic. I'm a medical doctor. I'm not a doctor. I know. I know that. Yes. It's really actually great to have you here. I know you. I mean, we have been talking. I've actually had also a student from Iraq. Sorry? I have never had any person in my class from Iraq. I'm the first one. And I'm a doctor.
I'm treating patients with COVID-19. I'm studying of coronavirus. So, so not to the point. Thank you. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Hi, I'll go. Can you hear me? Yes. Hello, sir. Hi, my name's Franklin Bruno. I'm Franklin Bruno. I'm in Queens, New York. I'm a writer and musician. I have a philosophy background. I did a doctorate at UCLA about, what is it, it's going on about 15 years ago. So my background is partially in symbolic logic and philosophy of language.
And Carnap and Reichenbach were certainly a presence, the legacy at UCLA. And we also got a ton of Frege. And I didn't work on that. That wasn't my specialization. I wasn't working on that. And I have just come to feel that I have some gaps about major works in analytic philosophy. And also just two other things I'll say. On the one hand, there was a tendency to approach these things largely from the technical side. and I feel like I missed out on a lot of what the actual philosophy involved in deciding to do these
technical exercises or deciding to do things one way rather than another I mean we could do the logic chopping and I you know I teach intro symbolic logic and I can do all that and some of the some of the background commitments are were were less clear to me and I would like to understand them better because I actually am a philosopher not a logician or a mathematician by training. Thank you so much I mean it's actually it's quite a little bit intimidating here to have a veteran analytic philosopher. I mean look you know I learned my I always say that like I learned everything else like anything I know about phenomenology or continental philosophy I had to learn it on the street because you weren't allowed to read it practically right and the
other thing I'll say is that I have, I'm glad that you brought up the political commitments, because I have a little bit of a kind of chip on my shoulder about the knee-jerk assumption of people that I know in the, say, the poetry world, or the art world, or the wider humanities, who basically think that, like, if you have any time for this, or even recognize that, like, you know, logical inferences have a certain purchase on our cognition, right, that you must be some kind of neoconservative, right? And so, so it's very interesting. And I don't want to go on and on. But there were interesting things that I kind of gradually realized that you say, oh, there is this legacy of, you know, emigres and also people, I mean, we were the we were the
philosophy department that kind of harbored Angela Davis, and capture from being sort of thrown to the wolves by the administration and so on. So the story of analytic, conservative, continental, left, liberal, you know, is just not as simple for me. And I appreciate anything that complicates me or helps me understand it better. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next person, please. Can I go? Yes, of course. My name is Vincent Ardidon. I'm a writer and researcher based in Manila. It's currently 12.38 in the morning here. My inquiry and practice circuits on theory, materialism, but also philosophy of post-nature.
my closest I've heard Karna from analytic philosophy introductions and memes before but my closest encounter would be reading some of the readings sent to us so I'm interested to learn more about his analytic approach and analytic philosophies logical empiricism in general thank you so much thank you very great to have you here please I'll go. Hi, I'm Oliver. I was in Ress's last class, the practical necessity of having demons with some of the other people here. And I have a background as a musician, mostly.
and I guess in regards to structuralism or structural analysis I've mostly engaged with that in the field of musical theory and building different types of new new new types of notation and musical notation particularly animated notation and well I have an interest in developing that as well as well structuralism in an in another sense than the canonical continental tradition yeah thank you thank you I mean well of course I know where you are coming from and I want to make this
interdiction about one of the greatest jabs in history of philosophy and it's Carnap versus Heidegger, right? So Carnap was so enchanted by music, right? He had a very, you know, it's famous that he had Nietzsche on his bedside all the time, reading Nietzsche, you know, and you know he's not a kind of Nietzsche guy right and the thing is that uh the in his paper which is his attack on Heidegger and metaphysics he says that Heidegger is not even a musician unlike Nietzsche he's not he says first he says that Heidegger uh
is not a philosopher then he says that he's not even a musician like a Nietzsche is like the ultimate jab against Heidegger. Famous that Karnap, I have actually some letters from him and Quine where they are actually talking about music, really. And of course, you know, he was a very cultural person, right? But of course, they are never coming in his philosophy. so to speak, you know, explicitly. I mean, everything that you get, you might try to apply it to other fields, but I think that they should be under certain kinds of considerations. I'd love to see those letters at some point. Also, you, early on, you mentioned his interest in
poetry, and I was curious to ask you about the source, the source of that. The source, well, I mean, you know, he was friends with so many good novelists. I mean, you know that one of the greatest fans of Karna was Robert Musil. You know, the writer of Man Without Quality. I mean, Robert Musil actually, when he read Aufbau, he thought that this is just an extraordinary piece in human culture. It's just like outside of the purview of whatever we have ever produced in philosophy. Yeah, no, he was very quite, well, of course, he was always keeping it away from his philosophy,
kind of like a kind of has that kind of Socratic mannerism to not basically give the impression that the relation between his philosophy and his interests are obvious, or for that matter, someone should use those his philosophy in order to justify Carnap's interest in philosophy, politics, etc. That was just this like you know uh is is um worry about these kinds of philosophical misappropriations. Please, Lauren and uh any friend? Hey oh
After you? Yes, please. Anyone who wants to start. Yes, please go on. Hi, I'm Lauren. So, my, like, I dropped out of a continental philosophy. Oh, first, I live in Paris, although my heart is always in Orange County, California, where I'm from. I dropped out of a philosophy program at Bard when I was 17. and then I became a deep learning researcher at Amazon. It's a really long story. But I'm taking this class because I think that one of the things that's sort of perverse about deep learning is that some of the people that have the most rigorous philosophical engagement and constitution
of the subject tend to be wrong scientifically. And then the obverse is also true. And so what really interests me is how a self can be constituted a posteriori, like in light of scientific advances in the field. Thank you so much. Thank you. That's a very interesting and peculiar background. Yeah, like I really like continental philosophy and then especially kind of like the mystics. Like I really like Levinas and Ben-Hameen. And then I think Deleuze is more relevant as time goes on. But then I had like most of my education in everything in computer science and philosophy is completely auto didactic, I guess.
But I became more sympathetic to analytic philosophy. but I think it's kind of funny that there's this defense going on of analytic philosophers having political engagements and emotions and liking art because I think that I find that that's true of both scientists and analytic philosophers and the stark division that's constructed between continental and analytical thinkers is somewhat contrived. Like if you read early Wittgenstein, it's hard to miss his mysticism, you know, it's more complex, I think. Right, yes, yes, and of course, Wittgenstein is this sucker for minimalist modernism. Yeah, absolutely, and I feel too like there's some really compelling, you know,
philosophy is always implicit, like I think that philosophy comes prior to everything else, else. And I would say that, you know, all of these grand intellectual figures of deep learning, they have their own, sometimes covert, but their own philosophies. And it's, I have yet to see a satisfactory critical engagement with the epistemology, even a simple answer to a question of is a neural network a subject or an object? It's all very fascinating. And a lot of it's gone uh unexamined and so i look forward to like the next decade of philosophers examining such things thank you thank you so much thank you thank you uh next please yeah i can go um i am
and uh i'm originally from ireland currently living in london um yeah my background's in philosophy and then i did a master's in art i just finished that so i'm kind of somewhere between the the two. Yeah, I think my interests at the moment are concerned with construction of subject in relation to, yeah, like scientific thought and the scientific image, the Salazian kind of distinction between the scientific and manifest image as this relates to subjects and to, yeah, questions around governance, but also around culture and art. So that also, I guess, is kind of why I'm here, why I want to, you know, do a bit of reading on Carnap. I'm really interested in just from reading the first chapter on like both the kind of
methodological approach and then also, yeah, the kind of project that kind of underpins it. So, yeah, I'm very tired today as well. I don't have more to say than that, but happy to be here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you again. Next, please. Hi, my name is Rafael. I'm from Brasilia, Brazil. It's a pleasure to be here, all of you. My background, I'm from, I'm a bachelor in social science. I've researched on phenomenology, post-structuralism, and these days I've been having a second bachelor on computer science.
I've been trying to have some bridges, some epistemological bridges, some readings that I'm interested in is like whiteheads, exchangers, and they have some conceptual alchemy, let's say, on how to interact with objects and I'm trying to look on some insights on this. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next, please. Hi, I can go. Yes, please. My name is Chen Di. I'm in Beijing right now and it's midnight here. I hope I won't be too sleepy at the end of the seminar.
And I don't have any philosophy background. I did my MFA fine art and graduated two years ago. And I started to read about, I read this book called On the Existence of Digital Object. and Karnap was one of the main... You mean Yukoiz? Yukoiz? Yes. And I just got a bit curious. And yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next, please.
Hey, I'm a first time attendee at this school. I'm Jan from Mubljana. I have a background in philosophy. I did some philosophy of science, Carnap included. I'm interested in concepts like theories of concepts, history of theories of concepts and philosophy, and also how they relate to engineering. I'm currently working as a PhD student in social sciences of journalism and looking at software engineering in journalism organizations. I try to see how
my ideas about engineering and concept theories fit together in like a real empirical setting. So yeah, stuff like Frege scaffolding is very interesting to me. And all this talk around explication. Last thing, maybe I hate to contradict you, but it was Schlieg that was murdered, not Neuretlift. Yes, yes, you're true. Yeah, okay. That's all. Thank you so much. I guess I'll go.
My name is Casey. Hi, everyone. I just graduated from MIT in September. And my background is art and ecological design. And yeah, I guess my thesis research was on the history of systems thinking, starting from cybernetics and complexity theory. And I don't know, it was kind of interesting about how all these systems thinker got more metaphysical. And yeah, and I'm really interested in, like I guess right now, I'm really interested in biosemiotics, this theoretical biology as this kind of framework to unify a bunch of things. So, but I'm more interested in this kind of like rational philosophy.
Yeah. Biosemiotics or biosemantics? Biosemiotics. Biosemiotics, okay. Oh, and Caroline Jones is on my thesis committee. She's a person. I see, I see. Okay. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Maria, I don't think you... What, me? Yes. Hi. Hello. Maria. I'm based in the U.S. right now. I'm in Michigan. and I'm interested in mysticism, spirituality. I'm interested now in like the problems that philosophy finds in mysticism as well. And the reason I'm interested in like Carnap is last year, maybe a little bit less than a year ago,
I was trying to start this group, this reading group at the New Center of this book on solipsism. and I was very intrigued on the problems of solipsism. And one of the related philosophers that came up was Carnap with his methodological solipsism, the idea that you can start with the individual self as a starting point and sort of build up philosophically around it. So I guess I'm just kind of pursuing this interest. After psychological determination thesis, which we will talk about, yes. Yeah. excellent maria by the way fantastic glad you here again uh any anyone else who was left out who hasn't talked yet
any person no No? Nothing? No one? Okay, if that's the case, let's have five minutes, five minutes, refreshing, basically, break. And then I will start, because we are a little bit behind, I'll start to give, I will start to read, actually, of discussing because then I would ramble and I take time. I will start to read from what I have prepared about the background of Aqbao and what we are actually dealing with
Sorry. Sure, absolutely. yeah why i think it was maria who said that carl's method is called methodological socialism as far as i know that carl was carl was you know there's the philosopher silos stala solis i think silos i don't i don't know how to pronounce his name he says he characterizes carl's method as neutralism you know he does not adhere to any kind of you know the debate he does not side with either realism or nominalists No, actually he's Carnap specifically rejects, he's neutral about nominalism, he specifically
rejects realism even though, I mean as we have seen the introduction it's called about constitution or construction of reality right, so there is a word but then of course, reality is just like, you know, he's a philosopher in a good sense, in a very, he has a, what you might call to be a certain kind of humility. So he's using a concept that is available to the history of philosophy as a kind of makeshift concept, only to cast it out as a pseudo problem, you know, cast it away as a pseudo problem. And the thing about this, what Maria was talking about, if I'm not mistaken, she was referring to a very specific problem,
which we will arrive at, this idea of auto-psychological determination, which is actually a discussion about the constitution of intersubjectivity. Now, from a historical perspective, this comes from, you know, Nookantians, but also people like Husserl, right? That kind of, the position that Carnot takes with regard to the psychological determination, which we will clarify what it is later on in the coming sessions, that position usually from a historical philosophical perspective is associated with methodological solipsism,
or even logical solipsism. So yes, there is actually a historical context for this name. We'll talk about this, of course. Yes, but neutrality, yes, is quite neutral. But there are certain kinds of, but his neutrality is not, his neutrality is what you might not say that it's not relativistic neutralism, right? It's neutral to the extent that it doesn't want to deal with certain kinds of thorny concepts that are loaded with too much, you know, polizamy from, for, for, in terms of history of philosophy. Even though he uses them, but he's very careful
that every time that he uses such a concept, he actually very slow, piecewise, step by step, explicated to basically arrested from its vagueness, so to speak. Shall I start, my friends? Okay. So what are we dealing with here? What is this book? Most important thing that we
need to talk about even in the most brief and reductive way is that what is Vienna circle. What is its aim? So Vienna circle, which is now being either equated to positivism or logical empiricism is not really, yes, there is a shared repertoire of methods and methodological thinking and assumptions within the Vienna Circle, right, among its members.
But just because you share from a philosophical perspective, the same repertoire of assumptions or premises and methods doesn't mean that your conclusion will be the same, right? It would be a rash assessment of Vienna Circle to call them, oh, that are all this, all that. like all philosophical movements, a bunch of philosophers get together according to certain kinds of methods that they have agreed on. And of course, some philosophical movement, I'm not going to name names, such as speculative realism, are not having even the methodological
agreement. But nevertheless, Vienna Circle does have that kind of methodological agreement. So the method of doing philosophy is kind of similar among the members. Most importantly, they have a shared assumption. But even then, there is no guarantee that the conclusions that each member of this movement will reach with regard to a certain kind of problem will be the same as another member of this philosophical group who has started working on the same problem with the same methods and the same premises that's not really the case in Vienna Circle so let's put out of the window
that you know Vienna Circle there is no such a thing as you know that are all these kinds of of rigid positivist, so on and so forth. What is important here is then to study, to think about what kind of premises they share. Well, I think one of the first premises that they do share is really the concept of reality, right? that Carnap talks about it explicitly in, you know, section, the essay, Pseudo-Problems, Philosophical Pseudo-Problems.
So, you know, you can say that among the meaningless Pseudo-Problems, I mean, most meaningless Pseudo-Problems, Carnap give a certain kind of, you know, status to the issue of realism right i.e the question of the existence of an external world independent from the cognizing consciousness for the word consciousness here we can say that you know we are going to actually think about it in carnappian sense consciousness we are not actually thinking in a Hegelian sense, you're not thinking about Kantian system, you're thinking
about it specifically in Carnap's sense. That concept is the same as the object, and any sort of dispute between saying that, oh, you know, this idea that, oh, well, you're then trying to reify the concept by objectifying it or basically reduce all objects to concepts allow some sort of kantian classical kantian move or hegelian move or whatever no that's not really the case he has a very specific about the isomorphity between objects and concepts so um so consciousness
here is what you might call to be the unity of object and concept, so cognizing consciousness. Likewise, questions about the relations of language to extra linguistic reality, according to Vienna Circle, were counted as metaphysical. Indeed, in his intellectual autobiography, Carnap mentions that Vienna Circle, with Wittgenstein's Tractatus, as claiming that the logical structure of sentences and the relation between language and the world are things that show themselves but cannot
be said. In other words, this amounts to, this tantamounts to the ineffability of syntax and semantics, confirming Hintika's thesis that Frigge, Russell, and Wittgenstein, and the Young Carnac, in their footsteps, advocated the universal medium view of logic and language. So this is, this is really the most important thing it's like one of the it's like what you might call to be the technical premise of the vienna circle like reality the whole idea of reality is just philosophically unexplicando it's not even explicando because because you see an explanation
what is an expert like for example when we say that uh you know um i don't know um consciousness so consciousness is an explicando what do we mean by consciousness you know after the philosophy of mind german idealism philosophy of mind descartes to kant to sellers to brandon to daniel danette to naturalistic computational turn about consciousness we have noticed that you know whenever we are talking philosophers talk about consciousness are actually not talking about the the same thing, right? So which means that basically we have a repertoire of covert concepts plugged into some sort of general concepts such as consciousness. And that's what makes it
extremely fuzzy, right? To the point that everything that we are, if you're basically doing serious philosophy of mind should be differentiating the levels of understanding what consciousness means but also the constraints of you know what consciousness one as a different type of consciousness has with regard to consciousness two with regard to consciousness pre-consciousness, force, and so forth. Like, look, for example, think about consciousness in this sense. So if you read Charles Andrews's purse,
so the world is, you know, the furniture of the world is conscious, right? But that just doesn't make any sense. And that actually leads to further confusion, right? precisely because then some people like this reductive eliminativist people say that well nature of consciousness can be turned into reduced to these kinds of purely neural computational uh you know um processes right uh where basically are prevalent in nature and we are going to they can even we can think about certain kind of bootstrapping scenario or basically higher levels of consciousness
a la Daniel Danette in Darwin, the most dangerous idea, can bootstrap itself from those, you know, primitive or elementary processes. Now, and the opposite of that view would be certain kind of pure Hegelian scenario, where basically people say that, look, consciousness is nothing without self-consciousness, without conceptual self-consciousness. So if you don't have conceptual self-consciousness you wouldn't have consciousness you can even make a more extremist version of this
so rather respectable thesis by saying that well you everything everything that we say ever about reality is created by concepts so this is really this is like carlap sees through this bullshits right away. So he wants to do like a Stalin. My apologies, I always make a Stalin jokes in my classes. He wants to make a two, a forking assault on two fundamentally irresponsible
forms of philosophy. So what are these? One is the one that says that reality, for something to be counted as real, it ought to be apprehended, namely fall under a concept. Number one. Number two, for something to be counted as real, first concept should come and then the objects that it has created. Like concepts simply create reality. So Carnac tries to, so these are what he would call to be,
I mean, essentially Carnac's position here is that he wants to neutralize these kinds of unsophisticated materialist thinking, that objects give rise to their own concepts, but also the extremist idealistic, basically, way of thinking, that concepts create their own objects. He wants to move against both of these as fundamentally pathological, philosophical. Any questions before I move forward?
Is there kind of like a strange disparate similarity between Carnap and, say, Deleuze in that sense of the creation of concepts? concepts? Yes, of course, precisely because Carnap, Deleuze's idea of the concept is quite, has elements of Espinoza and has implicit elements of Hegel. Right? Carnap's idea of concept is functionalist. And we are going to talk about what does it mean for the concept to be understood in terms of the function, you know, conceptual logical function.
That's one of his, I think that that's what makes Karlap interesting now. As a certain kind of philosopher, that true idea of functionalist understanding of concepts does two things at the same time. One, it shows that you can't have any experience without a constitutive system in the sense of concept or object constitution. Second, the point is that for Carnap, any sort of statement that we are ever going to
make about reality are beholden to what we call to be a constitution theory or a constructive theory that we essentially by this with the second point he tries to say that all this is stuff about where the concept comes from like these kinds of you know lavish content of philosophy things like those where the concept comes from or you know where the object come from a lot uh can't transcendental deduction are just philosophically misguided these are
actually are really out of their mind they they are basically they can't even explicate what the problem at hand is with regard to to transcendental deduction, you know, what it means to have an objective claim about the furniture of the world, and about more like what you might call to be the idealistic realm, to say that where do concepts flow. He thinks that all such claims are misguided precisely because they don't understand the relation between a triad, relation between
language in general sense, object and concept. So majority of these things, these arguments, as Carnap says in the introduction, turn out to be idle linguistic disputes. I'm going talk about what idle linguistic dispute means. So any more? Any more? Anything? Yes. Yes, please go on. Can I ask in medieval terms, he was neither realist nor nominalist? No, no. I don't know why you philosophers are so obsessed with concepts. You know,
You know, if I point to Reza, I don't know what's behind you, Reza. Is it dough? Is it cupboard? I don't know. I can point to you and assert the reality of that thing without having a concept of what is behind you. So I can point to you and there is... My point is normative and it's rational because it could be wrong, it could be right, but I don't have a concept of what's behind you. No, no, no. I think that you can go further. I think that you are thinking like a true doctor, like Abysina, like Ebnesina. You are thinking like a true doctor of empiricism, right? But this is really what Carnap's fight with empiricism is. I mean, Carnap, this is why I'm saying that Carnap is actually,
when they call him logical empiricist, like other members of Vienna Circle, he's not empiricist. He's actually giving the most ferocious assault on the organ of classical empiricism that has endured from the medieval time. Look, when you are saying that, oh, I'm pointing to you, so there is a certain kind of immediacy right here. There is immediacy that is almost pretty conceptual. But the thing is that it is not really. I mean, you see, we can think about it even in your inactivist, your inactivist embodied
cognition. Look, when I actually point to a cat, they usually actually come to me. but under what condition can you ever say ever say that the cat was triggered by my pointer finger comes to me and rather than by a root right by certain kind of habituation and this is really one of the things that Karnak tries to explicate here because you know and I'm going to talk about this idea, this assault on habituation of cognition or sensation is one of the centerfolds of Husserl,
Neocantianism, which Carnap inherits. Like, you know, on what account would you be able to, unless that you are basically, you are merely trying to be some sort of external behavioralist theories on what account would you be able to tell me pointing to a cat and the cat comes your way has certain kind of pre-conceptual capacity yeah merleupon talks about you know the norm of optimality he says that you know if there is an evolutionary account of how If I point to this cat and not this cat, there's an implicit norm of correctness or incorrectness.
If I point to this cat and not this cat, when you ask me to point to a specific particular object or organism in my environment, it's a rational thing to do. Even if I don't have a concept of cat, I can point to this cat and not this cat. even without having the concept of cat no you can't you really can't because you see if you don't have the concept of cat then you might actually point to a mouse a mouse that looks like a cat or one of these foxes with big ears that look like one of these
sphinx cats no you have no point of concept You know, Brandon talks about... Please, please go on. I'm sure you are more familiar with Brandon. Brandon talks about dogmatic updating, you know. When, you know, I have, for example, I have a preconceptual understanding or a rational pointing to an object. But if I'm wrong, my concept can upgrade or update my wrongness and rightness or correctness or incorrectness in regards to my ostention. You know, my point is not that, you know, everything is purely ostensibly or preconceptual. We can have a conceptual updating of my conceptual, but not everything is conceptual. You know, infants, you cannot tell, you cannot say that infants are purely irrational animals that have no contact with reality.
No, no, not everything is conceptual. You know, the infant can have a friction with the external world without having any language or any concept or so ever. No, I don't. Yes, it might. It might be. You see, this is a fiction. This is what Hans Weihinger calls a fiction. And fiction is exactly what I'm going to talk about, what Kana takes seriously here. look any sort of interaction of the sort that you have been talking about like actually a cat make a gesture toward a mouse and we we humans see it as oh this is actually pre-conceptual because none of these are linguistic creatures right but the thing is that here meows you are
doing this by way of a certain kind of implicit analogy to how we explicate about our theoretical and practical reasonings. It is always in analogy with human conceptualization that we model, that we model non-human behaviors or non-linguistic behaviors. Otherwise, there wouldn't be any sort non-linguistic behaviors to begin with from a cognitive perspective. Is there a notion in philosophical thought of a strong or weak sense of inner subjectivity? Because this is an incredibly important discussion in machines right now. Like what's sort of the
minimum viable inner subjectivity that we could arrive at these? It's a big topic in disentanglement and representation learning. It's basically concepts, but you know, like in ML, not in the Right, right, right. But like, you know, the debate isn't like everyone kind of agrees that there is some sort of shared, shared subjectivity, like it's all no one says to Syrian everyone's like a bit person. But like what what those minimum they're called sometimes inductive biases might be as a subject of huge debate so I was wondering if there's an analogous debate in the circle like either it has to be super over determined like people have extremely shared cognitive. priors, I guess? Or is this... I think that this is one of the main ideas of Carnap as we will...
Oh good. ...essentially Carnap thinks that this idea of intersubjectivity exactly like Hossa. So first of all, let me tell you that Carnap comes from a very diverse philosophical background, like, you know, and that's why he's such a giant in philosophy. He's coming from from Neocantianism, Neocantianism of Marburg School, Neocantianism of other schools. It comes from Marx's Phenomenalism. It comes from Hosserlian phenomenological tradition, two different trends. I'm familiar with phenomenology. And Phenomenalism, Marx's Phenomenalism is a different beast altogether. Then he also
comes from the school of fictionalism. Hans Beihinger probably was one of the strongest influences on Erlich Karnat. And where is Zee? Zee, are you dead now? So Zee is actually writing a project on Hans Wehinger with regard to the notion of law. So this plus Russell and Whitehead idea of a logical system. So it's like, this is why I'm saying that the analytic philosophy is the very, I mean, early analytic philosophy is the very definition
that there is no distinction between continental and analytic, from a historical perspective. Now, with regard to early Carnap, his idea of language is vague. His idea of the concept is vague. His idea of the object is vague. His idea of the philosophical prospectus, how philosophy should move forward, is also vague. Remember, why Vienna Circle emerged to begin with from a cultural perspective.
I mean, does anyone know anything about this cultural context of the Vienna Circle and hence Carnac? There's a red Vienna injunction as well, like the bettering of social workers via the logical construction of architecture, commonality, all of that. Otto Neureth as well, social democracy. Yes, essentially the whole points of Vienna Circle in the early days was to re-enlightening Re-enlightenment. That was a project. Re-enlightenment. Rekindling the original Enlightenment project.
Why the original Enlightenment project failed so miserably? Such that in the early 20th century and late 19th century, there is a resurgence of the most conservative bullshittist brands of philosophy such as romanticism and by that i romanticism i don't mean novelist romanticism i mean novelist is one of the greatest philosophers of all time romanticism is like like the the kind of romanticism that emerged at the end of the 19th century in Germany was like this that, I mean, think about, I talked about this in my last
course, like Ludwig Klages, like one of the worst, I mean, vitalist, Roman Catholic, Protestant, I mean conservative, Nazi pretender, taxonomist. Put all of this stuff and then you get a philosopher of its kind. So and it was precisely because it was this romantic vision of the world like the world that we are talking about, the reality we are talking about is outside of the scope of our knowledge, of our logical reconstruction. And that's what makes the world such a great place, you know? Because Hitler can also come and makes it even better,
just like Trump can, right? And this was one of the main issues that triggered Vienna Circle right away. To rest the project of enlightenment from these pretenders, the kind of romantic pretenders who thought that nature of language is ineffable. We can never talk about reality. We should always talk about the unknown. And look, we are seeing it in our time, philosophically, theoretically, like the whole resurgence of the CCRU, Nick Land, stuff. Overvalorization of the unknown leads to the complete deterioration
of knowledge and responsibilities about the world. And Carnap took this right away. he understood what is at the stake um he just needed a trigger to get out of goddamn europe and he did it successfully thankful thanks the rouge mother of all abominations and he did it and he did well and then And what I'm going to say here is that, so Vienna Circle was always situated in a very
specific philosophical context to rekindle the Enlightenment thesis. Why am I saying that rekindling Enlightenment thesis? What was wrong with the original enlightenment formula that members of Vienna Circle felt so bad that they should have a new modern philosophy to rekindle it, right? You know, if you have already some good shit, why do you need a new version of it, right? The thing is that the question was simple. My apologies. One second. I need to get some water for myself. One, one, one sec.
And we should think about Afbou, logical structure of the world, within this mission, rescuing the projects of enlightenment right not merely as a philosophical project but as a cultural and political project because that was extremely important for them right so why as i mentioned why do they need to rescue enlightened project i mean what was wrong with it that that it requires basically saving, right? Two fundamental flaws have always been attached
and undermine the question of enlightenment. One, the project of enlightenment has no criterion for genuine knowledge. extremely important. Project of enlightenment has no criterion for genuine knowledge. Two, it does not tell us how such knowledge is to relate to the practical realm broadly defined. So, and you see that these kinds of issues are being cropped up when people, certain
kinds of philosophers, particularly in the vein of Prometheanism today, talk about enlightenment, and then people say that, well, you know, first of all, you know, What is knowledge? What is knowledge? You are just trying to turn all knowledge to these kinds of knowledge. But what about the mystics' experience of knowledge? What about Paschal's idea that knowledge ultimately is knowledge about the unknown God? even we even a god for which even we have no fucking knowledge we have to uh
render it we have to we have to understand it as something plausible right and through this plausibility we can generate more knowledge or or people like uh say that you know there are certain kinds of things in the world that are not really objects of epistemological knowledge. So two, this first one. Then the second one is with regard to, it does not tell us how such knowledge is to relate to the practical realm. Like people say that, well, enlightenment, well enlightenment literally is about theoretical knowledge it had it can never actually say
anything whatsoever about what we ought to do mainly practical concerns right so karnak tries to like a good Stalin as I mentioned try to attack on multiple fronts at this point showing that you guys didn't even understand what knowledge means so your ideas about the relation about theoretical knowledge practical knowledge with regard to the world and with regard to one another
is completely misguided. And that's Carnap's revenge, which is really great. And we are going to talk about it, how he's doing it. I mean, a revenge should be taken peace-wise. And that makes the greatest philosophy called revenge. And philosophy is, in fact, an organ of revenge. philosophy is a discipline that never closes the circle of revenge upon its own concepts Reza I think yes you Chad has a question he yes yes please please my apologies my apologies I mean
I, yes, please. Sorry. I wrote, I read your article about the labor of the inhuman. You know, that's a fascinating article for me. You know, you said in the article that, you know, what's human is transmittable to other, you know, whatever it is that can think and talk and, you know, I found it fascinating. Yeah, but I think you will be on much sounder ground if you don't assume that what's human is linguistic. Because, for example, I'm sure you have heard about Helen Keller.
She was a dumb, deaf author who could write and think and feel and whatever you consider as human without being a linguistic agent. you she was an embedded actually this is this actually shows that he she was a purely linguistic agent because look we have a person who is deprived of senses right this is like the the classical the classical uh uh uh conryard's any of you know anything about the allegory of the marble statue So this is a story in philosophy by Jacques de Congria.
I can send you materials about this, but you have to email me because I will forget otherwise. It's about this idea that, look, imagine what we call human, right, is molded and casted within a case of marble. So it's just like an inanimate object, like Dilash Dichon was talking about. So think about this, that the agent is simply like something kind of like almost looks like an inanimate object. is that within this thought experiment, we can scrap layers of marbles and let this
genie or human inside the casing have morsels of interactions with the world, sensory interactions with the world. So within this idea of thought experiment, then what would be the theory of mind with regard to this encased human being. So that was one of the greatest thought experiments of all time. And actually, Carnap actually knew about this. So with regard to that, I would say that, look, as long as you don't have a language, you are not going to have any sort of sense. I mean your senses were so confused that would be
that they would be almost pre-linguistic like an infant. Essentially an infant precisely can create a gradient of certain kinds of proto-conceptual activities. But things like, for example, like, like, you know, you might using my hands left, right, forward, backward, these kinds of stuff, you know, really primitive, gestural interaction with the environment. But anything that requires synthesis between such
concepts is absolutely deprived and absent in a pre-linguistic agent like a pre-linguistic agent would not be able to understand the idea of north western let me how can how can it do that how can it do that i just want to know okay for example if for example i'm a doctor uh for example do you think that homo erectus i don't know i'm not familiar with you know paleontology sure sure only records homo erectus homo habilis for example we consider them to be pre-linguistic agents pre-verbal pre-linguistic agents do you think that they were not they don't didn't have healers who could you know detect a mass or abnormal skin lesion in
their pre-linguistic body that they were detecting yes i mean this is like this is the whole point no i mean i think that you are you're uh talking about certain kinds of look with every sort of phenomenon a phenomenon can always be understood as a kind of a package right a package a package with conceptual or inferential significance. Like, look, a red mushroom, a red poisonous mushroom, right? It's a package of sensorial, and it's just like as what you might call to be, you know, I mean, the reason I'm using it, precisely because I want to make a video game
example of this to show that why empiricism is such a bullshit um right uh Cormac McCarthy says that all sorts of narratives about all sorts of objects should always bottom out to either death or life hence look sensation of a poisonous mushroom A proper philosophical object. I think it's exactly the opposite. When you talk about inactivism or embodied action, it's precisely against empiricism. Empiricism talks about sense of empiricism.
It is not. It is not. From a historical perspective, look, inactivism… For example, if you talk about ostention, you know, pointing, when I talk about the implicit norms of rightness and wrongness and correctness and incorrectness in terms of pointing to a certain object, this is a poisonous mushroom, this is not a poisonous mushroom. Even if you don't talk, you just point to it. But can inactivism ever say, for example, what is the difference between two statements about the world the world is made of atoms and the world is made oh okay or actually even better better
a more fundamental thesis. The world is made of temporal sensations and the world can never be reproduced by temporal time. I think that's a good example. You know, temporal thinking or temporal construction of the world as what conceptual thinking would update the ostensibly or embedded action. I'm talking about the lower level, you know, lower than the temporal. Okay. For example, I ask you about, for example, if you talk about, for example, a healer in a homo habilis,
don't you think that homo habilis or home erectus had a healer who didn't have language but could detect abnormal skin lesion? they were not yes but what you see when you are talking about detection it's a very very very very um uh what you might call to be fuzzy concept what do you mean by detection do you mean detection in the way that signs detect some causal route or are you mean that by virtue of some sort of trial I mean detection in terms of ostensate act. You have an environmental bombardment of sensory concept, sensory bombardment to your sensor.
are if if that but their rightness or rightness or wrong is in terms of what you can detect in terms of what's there actually in the world without having a language no i completely understand i completely understand a lesion in the skin of us a homo habilis could detect a lesion in the skin of its conspecific no no no without having a No, no, no. I think that you are smuggling fundamentally, basically, radical theses into homo habilis being able to detect something, lesion or something. No, no, no. Absolutely not. I mean, you are basically what you might call to be gerrymandering the history of science and gerrymandering of the history of concept.
Look, most importantly, like... You know, my moral is quite ethical, you know. No, it is ethical. No, it is ethical. If I don't assume that pre-verbal beings like, for example, homo habilis or homo helberdenogenesis couldn't talk and therefore they couldn't help other species because they don't have language and they couldn't detect a lesion in the specifics of their species. But that is the whole point. But that's the whole point. They literally could not help other species. Everything that you are talking about is from the perspective of a language,
linguistic agent might do a historical projection. So from a historical projection, yes, they could. they could or maybe they not it's a probabilistic idea it's not a linguistic argument really i mean uh we do say that you know um i'm more confused that i'm seeing no no we can we can talk about this but but yes um no i i think that really the idea of language is fundamental. Like, look, language is the prime vague concept. So you think homohabbolism couldn't help any other concept of their kind?
Please, please, someone say yes. Please, please. Yeah, just one point. I just, with respect to the present debate, I don't see or particularly accept that the fact that some linguistic form is not present makes detection of something and its association with disease non-conceptual. I don't think the line cuts there. Okay. That wasn't actually my question. Two things. One, could you repeat the two, your sort of two bullet pointed, the second one was it doesn't tell us how knowledge relates to the practical, to the practical, I did just didn't
get how you formulated your first point. Yes, I mean, one of the things is that, yes, I mean, when I talked about it, it's not from today's idea of enlightenment, right? You know, so we have, we have grown up, we understand enlightenment in a different light, But I think that from a historical perspective, when Kornab and Reichenbach, Utenurath and Schalick and all those people, I started to think about such problems. There was a concerning issue with regard to the question, that there is no obvious,
if any connection at all, between theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge. Essentially, this is why that they somehow were cornered, because of these kinds of misconstruing and misunderstanding to a certain kind of what you might call to be, from a Volvo perspective, fascistic analytic philosophy, so to speak. Of course, they were not fascists. They can't even tell the difference
between theoretical and practical philosophy. And if they could, there wouldn't be a way to move from their version of theoretical philosophy to practical, to their version, if it was any practical philosophy. And to be honest with you, this is the bugbear of Vienna Circle. I mean, look, majority of these French epistemologists in 20th century were great, were great, by the way. Always tried to make a scarecrow of the Vienna Circle,
particularly Carnac, by virtue of this, that, oh, they were just talking about theoretical science. They were just like, so reductivist, so this, so on that. No, they just don't understand the systematic project that these people tried to, you know, basically create, construct. Thanks. The other question, or just, I'd like to get your response. it seems like a Carnapian and even sort of the end of circle and certainly like a Arian move is to say that something that philosophers have thought mattered doesn't matter that a certain
distinction is without a difference right so we get this in the oh this is this is an idle idle linguistic dispute and that sort of move. And we also get it in that same section five on concept and object where he says, it makes no difference where a given sign denotes the concept or the object or whether a sentence holds for objects or concepts. There is at most a psychological difference, namely a difference in mental imagery. Okay. I don't want to necessarily get too deep in the weeds at this point about like what that argument is or the specific thing but just this form of argument uh that often gets put into the terms of the phrase like cognitive significance right what actually makes a difference has cognitive significance what doesn't make a
difference doesn't and that's what's wrong with metaphysics it has no cognitive significance so it seems like um maybe this is one of the things that uh troubles people the most about this mode right because i think really my mental imagery what mental imagery i i have uh doesn't have anything to do with how i think about things it doesn't influence my conceptual scheme maybe conceptual is the wrong word but it doesn't do something and i wonder if that's even like you know oh linguist like which which words you use don't don't matter so i wonder if these things have something to do with the the feeling that anyone with a sort of um you know uh sort of who's aesthetically sensitized especially feels like well aren't you what isn't it a problem that
you're just saying this stuff isn't really cognitively significant what what is its status if it doesn't make the right kind of difference for philosophy. That's very broad, but like that I feel is one of the things that troubles people about this perspective. Well, the thing is that, I mean, the only answer is that comes back to the background, comes back to the historicity of where he's coming from and how he understands three things unity of all sciences and essentially the aufbau is the greatest work of all times about the possibility that we can reduce all diverse sciences to one science this is
not okay some people might think about that oh basically Carnap is trying to do some bullshits move here reduce economy sociology to quantum physics no no this is absolutely not true it's absolutely not true essentially what Carnap tries to do is that to show that if If all scientific statements are of the same nature, in the sense of reducibility, that within the construction system, if statements we are making about A are reducible to B,
statements that we are that we have about B can be reduced to statements about C. Then, a statement about A can be reduced to statements about C. Now, this is basically the the main, basically, idea here. Now, this is not really, however, a straightforward word. I would say Carnap's idea of construction system
It's something that using today's election day kind of vocabulary is something of both worlds. So he tries to use the logic of Kantianism and basically Horserlianism. At the same time, he tries to play the side of Russell and these kinds of people. So his idea of reducibility is both logical and experiential. And this is really one of the
greatest things about Carnap, that whenever we think that, oh, he made a mistake, he actually is in the right cell. He has done the great thing. Essentially, his idea is about what it means to say something about the furniture of the walls, and how we are going to reconstruct our talks about the logic of the world. Because why is this important? Because if you can't reconstruct your talks about your experiences of the world,
then perhaps you didn't have those experiences to begin with. That's really an interesting and extremely challenging part of Carnap and no Rache, no Kantianist in this whole scenario. Look, you can never say that, oh, I had this experience of the world. To have an experience of the world requires certain kinds of bias, so to speak, bias in a positive sense, about certain kind of constraints that I have accepted and I'm going to mobilize from now on.
So where does this kinds of intricate, what you might call it, interaction with the world, so to speak, comes from regard to Carnap's thesis? Well, I think it absolutely comes from his, basically, his Kantianism. So he can ask himself,
What sort of Kantianism is available to someone who at the same time holds that all mathematics, including geometry, is analytics, right? A version of Helpholts view presumably that the qualitative properties of a spatiality, though not the axiom of geometry, are synthetic a priori, on the basis of something like pure intuition. And this is indeed what we find in the early Karna, even before 1920s, before Der Ramm desertation.
it seems that his interpretation of Kant was largely naturalistic and Helmholtzian. As he recounts from his student days, and let me read this passage for you from Carnac, my apologies. My apologies. Once I gave a report in Bach's seminar on this view of Kant, the geometrical structure of the space is determined by the form of our intuition, I tried to show that it seems possible to generalize this conception considerably because I saw an analogy
between a space on the one hand and system of other features, of sense, qualities on the other. In particular, I tried to show that the three-dimensional structure of the system of colors ordered according to their similarities is determined by the form of color intuition in the same way in which the three-dimensional structure of a space is determined by the form of our spatial intuition. So he's essentially in a very corner
by saying something like this in a very precarious situation. It's between the jihadist free, the extremists, basically Marburg, Nookantian people, and the fundamentalist free. So how are, how we can ever be able to put all of these, you know, ideas or proclivities, so-called proclivities together? The thing is that he can't in an ordinary sense.
So he has to play a softball. What is the softball here? He has to say that that object, that the object you know that the object is not an entity of reality right so with that he kind of get rid of the whole realists materialist kinds of people he would say that the
object is nothing but the function of thought the function of the concept concept functional. Dear Reza, sorry to interrupt. You know, St. Augustine talks about, you know, there's a ball for an infant that manipulates the object of the ball. You know, he talks about abstention. The whole concept of abstention comes from St. Augustine. He says, for example, the infant is a pre-linguistic, pre-verbal agent. he does not have any concept of the ball but yet the ball itself determines what kind of play would determine the infant to play with
I don't know if you understand that right, right, right that's actually a very good example the structure of the ball determines what kind of play is allowed for the infant to play with the ball I have a niece who plays with balls. When I look at her, she is manipulating the object. She does not reach for my shirt, but she reaches for the ball because the ball itself determines what kind of play is allowed for her to play with. She's a pre-linguistic agent. She's a pre-verbal agent, but she knows what's... Of course, know is a wrong word. Not a wrong concept. She, I don't know.
I don't know how to pronounce to talk about it she be consciously whatever she plays with a ball without having a concept of a ball that determines what kind of play is allowed for her to play with i think there's a excellent proof that you know the structure of the ball the ball has a structure for her without being a linguistic agent you know structuration conceptualization and categorization as not purely conceptual endeavor. Yeah, no, I mean, look, when, I mean, I don't know what you really mean by conceptualization. Are you having a Kantian understanding of the concept? Because that is absolutely not within the purview of Kona.
Essentially, what he means by conceptualization is simply as simple as that. that look, I'm actually going to read Garnab's here to clarify this point. The differences among the three, by the three, it means categories of synthetic faculty of the intellect, basically general science of abstract entities such as magnitudes as developed by you know Hermann Grossman and uh Russellian Freedian idea of pure logicism right that every sort of this
mathematical stuff can be described and defined by way of uh you know logical entities it says YOH KAWANOVSKY- The diff this difference among the three can be made clearer if you look example at the different meanings of the straight line. YOH KAWANOVSKY- abstract geometry means by a straight line and order to continuous series, i.e. a pure system of relations. whose elements are completely indeterminate. If, on the other hand, we take the basic configurations of a spatial intuition, the point of ideal space as the elements, then abstracted space becomes pure space.
A straight line is now a spatial curve with certain attributes, not one observed in nature, but the straight line that Euclide, or better, ordinary projective geometry, speaks of. Philosophical, physical geometry, finally, treats of spatial relations in nature. By a straight line, it means a certain line, i.e. one-dimensional manifold of physical space, more specifically a bodily space, which is never actually precisely given in nature, but can be defined asymptotically by conditions of increasingly precise approximations.
so yeah essentially Carnot doesn't want to fall in those kinds of you know trap holes he tries to still maintain a certain kind of idea that you know basically the stuff that we are talking about the world we can work with them like geometrical ideas like for example you and me having a certain kind of distance from one another on a what you might call to be on a geodesic geodesic line on a curvature so on so forth he just doesn't want to work it he he
He simply tries to do something else. He tries to remind us that all such notions, all such claims are predicated on the kinds of ideas and assumptions we have about what it means to live in a nature, in a reality. He's so interesting because to me he sounds exactly like an algebraist and I mean I know that there's obviously like an underlying similarity with the analog yes no but specifically specifically in algebra is like the way he talks about closure and then constructing spaces of similarity and difference and then you also the inner subjective element because if you have two
vector spaces like if two agents from their own orientation construct these two closed spaces there always exists a translation. It's called the Prakastian method to translate between the two. So it just, it seems like he's doing just algebra, like in a very pure sense. Actually, he is doing that. He is really doing that. Look, he's not actually doing this specifically. I'm going to talk about this in later sessions. Rizzo? Essentially, the axiomatization method of Korona is entirely couched in terms of what, in contemporary terms, we say synthetic geometry. Is that similar to like a geometric algebra?
Algebra and geometry, yes. Yeah, I've been studying that recently. What a coincidence. Yes, in the sense that, so, I mean, he was under influence of some of the greatest mathematicians of the time, particularly the ones who came up with the structural framework program. And his idea was that, you know, basically I can turn this. So essentially, so why is that, first of all, why is that he is actually going with geometry, right? Isn't he the goddamn student of Rige?
You know, why does he need to go with geometry? Precisely because he's really, really basically influenced by the phenomenological tradition. Husserl, Ogadingel, Hans Weyinger, so on and so forth. So he's in this new game now. And within this game, the idea of geometry is purely phenomenological. Because there is a caveat here. Look, if he tries to do geometry in the sense of, I don't know,
early 19th century geometry, then he's not talking about the object of experience being analyzable with regard to, you know, kind of elementary experiences. Essentially what I'm trying to say that he is in a very precarious situation with regard to a question of geometry as a constitution system, just like Euclid. Euclid. Euclid is a good example. Why is this in a precarious situation? So he wants to attack or somehow override
two prevalent dogmas of his time. One, that a logical system is sufficient to make the objects of experience. Such as that, for example, my acquaintance with certain kind of logical connections. about the furniture of the world can make the world. He thinks that it's just like the pinnacle of trivial idealist tradition.
He also does not want to end up in certain kinds of pragmatist, bullshit pragmatist situation, such that, you know, every time that I'm talking about certain kinds of lines and certain kinds of relations between such and such of phenomenons, I can simply use some sort of geometrical concept loosely. So he wants to avert both of the situations, and the situation is becoming even more intricate in the sense that he wants to be at the same, I mean,
maybe not want, but nevertheless he will end up, he will end up in a situation where he can talk about the furniture of the world, but then he cannot talk about the furniture of the world without the certain kind of logical structures that require to distinguish tang of such structures, of such objects in the world. And that's what he calls the theory of relationships.
The theory of relationships. The theory of relationships when we think about it from a Vowell's perspective, well, it comes from Russell and Whitehead. It's essentially the idea that if we are going to make a reduction of certain kinds of phenomena, A to B to C. So if A is reducible to B by way of a certain kind of constitution system, and B is reducible to C by way of a certain constitution system, then of course A is reducible to C, meaning that reduction within a constitutive system, what this translator calls construction system, is transitive.
The transitivity of reduction is primordial. So this allows us to think about some kinds of problems that can always be translated to other kinds of problems. And the very fact that there is a translatability between problems of type A to problems to type B to the problem to type C means that most probably from Carnot's point of view every time that we are talking about certain kinds of objects whether of the logical nature
or of sensory nature right But such objects can be understood in terms of constitutive systems and constitutive definitions in the sense, what is the meaning of it from a philosophical point of view? Like, for example, I have an experience of certain kind of complex and manifold of sensations in a Kantian sense. Purple. Experience of purple objects.
Within the Carnapian system, I can show that this experience is not unique. the only reason that it's unique is precisely because of how it's constituted by virtue of the elements of judgments and concepts that make the judgment of something to be purple to entail what it means for something to be purple
So that's the most important thing here. And Carnac tries essentially to do this at this time, for the time being, to show that everything that we are talking about can be actually reverse engineered in terms of more elementary assertions. assertions which are no longer made in the realm of natural language but assertions that are actually made in the organon of logic logically constructible and hence
they can be reproduced and do you know what is the consequence of such world view like if all experience so essentially he is trying to do something that Kant wanted to do but Kant wasn't capable of doing that he's trying to do something so simple saying that there is no experience at all if it cannot be reconstructed logically do you know what the consequence of such claim means, entails we get
fucked up claims about AI the greatest ideas about AI like literally you think that oh so experience of human is so special but as long as you cannot logically reconstruct it within a constitution system then it's not experience and the moment that you actually are capable of constitutionally constitutively within a conservative system reverse engineering this experience then we are no longer talking about this specific form of agent they're talking about person like in a
solarzian way like a person can be a robot can be ex machina so on so forth and that's that's really ahead of its time Reza, I think we have a question from Andy as well. Andy, are you there? Yeah, thanks. I actually was thinking about this before that discussion, but it might relate. So in the Friedman piece that we read, the Cambridge Companion, he uses- Yes, yes. He talked about Carnap's use of the word holism
to describe the way that his approach, and that's a term derived from Gestalt psychology. And I was curious about having any relationship to you, you're placing emphasis on, Earlier, you placed emphasis on constraints in his work. I think. Yes. Yeah. Right. I mean, are you asking me that? So obviously, so this is something that, I mean, because of the introductions of all the students and all the tangential talks, we lost a little bit of time. I wanted to talk about basically four backgrounds
from which we can think about Afbal. Like four trajectories that led to the writing of Afbal. One, of course, is Fregean. You know, the idea that logic is the base of scientific reconstruction. Like a philosophy that is now, according to Vienna Circle, a philosophy that now is armed with logic is a revolutionary philosophy. Why? Precisely because it can be reconstructed. And hence, according to Husserl, it regained a special status. It becomes science par excellence
because it's reconstructable, right? If philosophy can be logically reconstructed, then it has the same status, the fundamental status of science, right? And then it renders philosophy as the organon of all exact sciences. So, number one. Number two. Sorry. the idea that there is a certain kind of correspondence, but it's correspondence of the secondary group
between phenomenological experience, right, and the logical reconstructions of objects and concepts at the most basic level by way of the constitution system, right? So essentially this is a Hoseleian idea to which Carnap subscribes, right? What is this? He wants to show that He can create a certain kind of bridge between logic and experience.
Allah was there in formal and transcendental logic, right? Purely of the phenomenological tradition. Then a phenomenalistic thesis, Allah Mark. in a sense that he wants to do something quite bold in a sense that he wants to say that if a statement cannot be phenomenalistically formulated then it is not really a statement about experience. number three so number four he wants to do something else as well
this is Poincaré influence so I'm immediately trying to tell you that the kind of question that you are asking requires replying to a manifold influences of Karna for writing this book. Phenomenalistic, phenomenological, logistic, logicism, Hans Weyhenger, Nookantianism, fiction and hypothesis, and ultimately Poincaré, Poincaré, Dingler idea that essentially, look,
as I mentioned, one of the greatest things about this book is that it's essentially a book about enlightenment. Also, it tries to ask us this question, how can, how could enlightenment fail what did it do wrong that it failed what was its measure of knowledge theoretical or practical that led that led to its demise so So basically, Karna tries to do something here by saying that,
look, we can come up with a program. in common with the program, the commensurate, theoretical knowledge, theoretical scientific knowledge as a primary core of enlightenment with what it lacked, namely practical knowledge, such that every sort of action, every sort of doing, every sort of thought, belief, can be traced back to one single system of thought.
And that is basically Carnap's ambition here in Afbaba, to show that, yes, old enlightenment lacked, but if we really understand the meaning of enlightenment, scientific enlightenment, as a constitution system, then the distinction between theory and practice, as we had it in the classical sense falls apart they become part of the same blossoming system of enlightenment
um thank you reza uh i guess we are going a bit over time so i just wanted to give an announcement real quick. We will have the whole scheme on presenters. So for people to present some of the texts and initiate some of the discussions on the next classes, I'm going to email you about it and sort it out exactly how it's going to be done. Probably you will have to assign yourself over there. If I may intervene, look, precisely because we
are manifold at this point. like how many are we like 30 i mean obviously it's not going to uh we are not be able to get the real-time presentations from all of you i think that regardless of that we are going for the voluntary people uh like if you want to present one person can present each session then if you can't then record your video send it to me i will read i will listen to it i will look at it then of course we will have a feedback and i i will talk about this but precisely because we are short on time i think the best idea is that we have only one oral presentation each session
but we need three presentations actually you know according to the number of people who are participating. So the other two, in their own time frame, if you can please record it. It's just 10 minutes. 10 minutes, no more than 10 minutes. 10 minutes of talk about the topics with regard to this class. then send it to me and CC, you know, other people. And of course, I will definitely come back to you.
But yes, precisely because we are too many at this point, I think that to not compromise the timing of the class, let's just stick with a certain kind of restriction. Also, most importantly, precisely because we had the introduction day, today's election day, I know, understand. It's still next 40 minutes of next session, I'm going to talk about the background of Bob, because I really couldn't actually talk about it. It's really interesting. I mean, the reason I'm really insisting on this point, it's precisely because if we don't understand where it came from, what their background problems are, we are going to really struggle with this work.
This is not really like Derrida or Deleuze. It's just really an extremely complex work that we really need certain kind of perspective as the backbone of the sport. How was it made? So we have to do it. Regardless of that, I think we are good. We are good. Any suggestions by any of you? Look, I mean, my friends who have been for me for years know that I'm a rambler.
I shouldn't be left to my own devices, right? But please do tell me when you have a question or you want me to change the style of lecturing, so on and so forth. I mean, look, it's just experimental. And precisely because every time there are different bodies of students, we have to shuffle around a little bit of our technical and strategical ways of teaching. Yes, Reza, we want to know what are the reading requirements. are you required to write a paper at the end of the seminar or the logistical details oh you are going to be the presenter next time i don't think so i'm just asking about what i'm just i'm just asking about the requirements
I'm just asking about the requirements. No, what are the readings? No, I think this is the thing. Okay. Next session. So this session was the introduction from page 1 to 15. So next session, read the next page brackets. for Afbau plus the first 10 pages of Richardson's book on Afbau. For a reason, I actually picked this word precisely because it's very, very thorough,
critical, but also sympathetic. You know, it's the best of all possible word. I think that you have it already in your Google Drive. So who's going to talk next semester? I mean, not next semester. Next session. Sophie? Lauren? Ooh. Well, someone should say I'm going to work on it. okay i'll try my best i'll look this is why we listen to the greatest people they always sacrifice themselves for the greatest good of the humanity
okay i'll be with the president next time good great super fantastic um time frame for like presentations we have uh around 10 minutes 10 minutes 10 minutes yes let's be very very brief because you see i mean look how many pages we have to read i mean it's just like huge so we have to kind of save time a little bit cool um so the presentation was exactly about the the exact topic i want to talk about for example uh carnage relation to for example a limit of materialism i i have an idea about no no no
what no no no you can't i can't do that no you can't do that really are you trying to jump the gun all of a sudden no you're going to talk about the idea of constructive definite constitutive definition of constitutive system and its relation with the carnage overall project I'll back out of it anyone else no you are going to do it you can't be a typical Middle Easterner I actually tried to give you a peace proposal but now I heard about all the peace constraints I'm not going to be part of this program no you can't I don't allow you okay
I'll try my best okay my friends my apologies that I couldn't be able to because we had the introduction of course this is a very special day I hope to see you next week okay so who I'm supposed to contact with in terms of the next subject me you guys will have the like you guys will have the shared folders with everything and the syllabus and so on okay thank you anytime bye love you everyone take care of yourselves and cha-cha bye bye