-
German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter.
-
From 1910 to 1914, he attended the University of Jena, intending to write a thesis in physics.
-
Carnap worked on a doctoral thesis called “Der Raum. Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftslehre” (1922).
-
Carnap worked on a book which became one of his major works, namely Der logische Aufbau der Welt (1928) (translated as “The logical structure of the world”, 1967).
-
Carnap published papers (Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie, 1928 – translated as “Pseudoproblems in Philosophy”, 1967) in which he appears overtly skeptical of the aims and methods of metaphysics, i.e. the traditional philosophy that finds its roots in mythical and religious thought.
-
Carnap was appointed Professor at the German University of Prague.
-
Carnap attempted to develop a full theory of the logical structure of scientific language. This theory, exposed in Logische Syntax der Sprache (1934) (translated as “The logical syntax of language”, 1937) gives the foundations to his idea that scientific language has a specific formal structure and that its signs are governed by the rules of deductive logic.
-
Carnap was a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago.
-
After having considered problems in semantics, i.e. the theory of the concepts of meaning and truth (Foundations of Logic and Mathematics, 1939
-
Introduction to Semantics, 1942; Formalization of Logic, 1943), Carnap turned his attention to the subject of probability and inductive logic.
-
His views on that subject are for the most part exposed in Logical foundations of probability (1950) where Carnap aims to give a sound logical interpretation of probability.
-
He died at age 79 in Santa Monica, California, U.S.