Annotation
The Vienna Circle was a group of philosophers meeting regularly in Vienna in the years around 1930. Its most famous members were Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, and Moritz Schlick. The philosophy they promoted was to be scientific in spirit and empiricist in doctrine; it was to be the outcome of collective work rather than of the single genius; and it was to employ the new logic developed by Frege and Russell. Metaphysics was to be avoided.
Behind these slogans, however, hides a complex set of different views defended by different members of the group and a great variety of topics dealt with. In this course we shall familiarize ourselves with these views and topics by studying primary texts as well as secondary literature. Topics and texts to be covered include Carnap’s Aufbau, the unity of science, the critique of metaphysics, the protocol sentence debate, and the verificationist theory of meaning.