Gustav Bergmann

The Logic of Psychological Concepts

The purpose of this paper is to provide a methodological rather than, strictly speaking, a philosophical discussion of its subject, the logic of concept formation in psychology. But even a treatment of this kind cannot entirely avoid matters of a more general nature, some of them logical, some epistemological. By insisting on the limitations of this essay I merely wish to caution the reader in three respects. First, those more general matters, logical and epistemological, will be kept at a minimum. Second, no attempt will be made to state them with the degree of precision and all the qualifications which are in order in a paper that addresses itself exclusively to logical analysts. Third, I shall for the most part content myself with stating them, without defending them in the way and in the sense in which a technical philosopher who speaks to his colleagues must defend what he asserts. The philosophical viewpoint here taken is that of Logical Positivism. But since Logical Positivism is a far-flung, complex, and still very active movement rather than a single school with a well-defined and, among its members, universally agreed-upon doctrine, the reader may fairly wonder to which of the several positivisms this acknowledgment refers. So it is, perhaps, neither useless nor improper to add that a statement of my philosophical position may be found in two articles in a recent handbook (1, 2). 1. Concepts and Statements. If English were as neat a pattern as arithmetic or one of the schematic languages logicians have constructed, each word could be assigned to one of three categories. One of these, let us call it the first, would contain all structure words (synonym: logical words) such as and, is, all, property. Structure words do not designate anything in the sense in which the words in the other two categories do designate something. The second category would contain all proper names (synonym: particulars). In English and other natural languages we name for the most part only such things as people, mountains, rivers; for the rest we make shift with so-called descriptive phrases, com* Based on lectures delivered during the winter 1949/50 before the University of Minnesota chapter of Psi Chi and before the psychological seminar at the University of Indiana. t By ignoring it I have, in this paper, implicitly taken a position on the counterfactuals issue which now raises so much dust. After this has been submitted, I explicitly discussed that matter in Comments on Professor Hempels The concept of cognitive significance, to be published among the papers presented at the 1950 conference of the Institute for the unity of Science. See also Julius R. Weinberg, Contrary-to-fact conditionals, J. Phil., 1951, 48, 17-22.

The Verifiability Theory of Meaning

In 1923 I was asked by the editors of the Handbuch der Physik to write an article about the philosophy of physics. Since one of the points I wanted to discuss in this article was the reality of the physical world, I used the occasion of a trip to the Bavarian mountains to see Moritz Schlick at his summer vacation place and to talk with him about this problem. I told him that I had recently discussed these questions with a young philosopher who was writing a book entitled Der logische Aufbau der Welt, and who advanced the idea that Machs positivism could be given a strict logical form by regarding any statement about the physical world as logically equivalent to a combination of statements about sense data. I myself objected to this equivalence ; I thought that only a probability relation ship could be maintained. Schlick supported me in this view; he argued that the positivistic equivalence was untenable. That was in 1923. A few years later, after Schlick had invited Rudolf Carnap to become a member of his department and had succeeded in attaching Ludwig Wittgenstein to his circle in Vienna, Schlick changed his views completely and turned posi tivist. In this environment, those views were elaborated which culminate in the thesis that the meaning of a sentence is the method of its verification. Mainly as the achievement of Carnap,1 the verifiability theory of meaning was thus given an elaborate logical form ; for the first time in its long history, which goes back to William of Occam and Leibniz, this theory was set forth with the precision tools of modern symbolic logic. My article written in 1923 had to wait for publication until 1929, when the volume of the Handbuch finally came out.2 My refusal to accept the equivalence interpretation was based on the distinction between a complex (Gebilde) which is artgleich to its elements from a complex which is artverschieden to its elements, a thesis which I took over into a later book of mine as the distinction between a reducible and a protective complex of elements.3 But I knew that it was vain to go into a further elaboration of my conception before I had been able to con

On Some Methodological Problems of Psychology

TH~~T THE end of the last century, there began a movement away from traditional philosophy and towards a closer contact of philosophical thought with empirical science. Philosophers following this course were met halfway by groups of scientists, mostly physicists and mathematicians, who in their own field had found themselves face to face with problems which traditionally belonged to philosophy. But since neither of these two groups was inclined to respect conventional boundaries, they joined forces and the result of their endeavors proved challenging to both philosophy and science. Various aspects and representative theses of this movement are known to-day as logical positivism, operationism, physicalism or scientific empiricism. For the movement as a whole, however, the term logical positivism is now becoming generally used. The present paper should be considered as a selective and partly historical survey of the methodological discussion in psychology from the standpoint of logical positivism.

Notes on Ontology

In a recent book ([9]) Professor Hochberg attempts to derive a contradiction from my assay of acts, first articulated in an essay published in 1955 ([1]) and then developed through three books ([2], [3], and [4]) during the Fifties and Sixties.1 One purpose of this essay, officially the major one if I may so put it, is to show that the attempt fails. Both Hochbergs argument and my counterargument will be presented in the second of the three sections into which the essay is divided. Yet this middle section is the shortest of the three. The first consists of two long notes without which the second could not be understood. The last section consists of a series of seven numbered notes of varying length. Both the first and the last, particularly the last, also contain some indications about the major changes that have taken place in my world (ontology) since, more than a decade ago, I stopped reporting them in print. For without these indications the deep-lying ground and the far-ranging ramifications of the present disagreement between Hochberg and myself would almost certainly be missed. To provide some such indications, however succinct,2 is the other purpose of this essay. But I shall, as I should, also show that the hard core of my counterargument does not depend on what happened to my world during the Seventies.

Holism, Historicism, and Emergence

In a recent article1 P. Henle gave an analysis of the notion of emergence. His inquiry deals with what he calls, quite appropriately, the emergence of characteristics. Such emergence, that is, the emergence of qualities and relations is undoubtedly the primary connotation of the term, and I feel that Henle has been very successful in clarifying it. The purpose of the present paper is to discuss in some detail one special aspect of Henles analysis. This is done because the precise formulation of this particular aspect sheds light on the notion of elementarism. And the opposite of this notion, holism or organicism, belongs undoubtedly to the variety of fused and confused meanings the idea of emergence has come to cover. The first section simply restates, with some modifications and criticism, what I take to be Henles main points. In this statement as well as in the later sections occasional use has been made of the terminology of logical positivism. There is, however, no intention to tag Henle with this particular label, nor do I believe that my simple considerations depend upon the subtleties of anyepistemological approach. This is natural enough since most of what Henle says, and all I shall say, lies on the level of the philosophy or methodology of science. Accordingly no difficulties should arise and, conversely, no far-reaching conclusions should be drawn from the realistic terminology which also will be occasionally employed. I shall immediately avail myself of the conveniences this latter mode of speech offers in order to point out that I am dealing, as I believe Henle does, not with psychological matters, but rather with emergence in an objective sense. The second section develops that special aspect of emergence with which I propose to deal. The third section offers a string of supplementary critical and historical remarks, particularly on that variant of holism which is known as Gestaltism. The fourth section, finally, applies the method of this paper to a partial analysis of historicism; certain aspects of historicism are shown to be closely related to the emergentist doctrine.

The Subject Matter of Psychology

HE coordination of both logical syntax and * methodological analysis of scientific language by scientific empiricism (logical positivism) has achieved a twofold result: (.) I. Elimination of philosophical pseudo-problems and purification of the empirical sciences from the biases engendered in them by these problems. 2. Creation of an instrument apt for exact formulation, location, and analysis of the real meaning of the valid philosophical issues. While in the earlier phases of the logico-positivistic movement the first of these two major achievements has been particularly hailed by its students and likewise resented by its opponents, emphasis now has shifted towards the second. Language analysis shows that

Purpose, Function, Scientific Explanation:

Speaking nonscientifically about certain states of affairs, or facts, or situations, we often use the two words ’purpose’ and ’function’. Call these facts the critical facts. Call the two words, ’function’ and ’purpose’, the two critical words. The problems I wish to talk about all arise in connection with three questions. First. Can the scientist, speaking scientifically, do justice to the critical facts? Second. Assuming that he can, must he in speaking about them himself use the two critical words? Third. Assuming that he need not use them, may he use them? The difference between the second and the third question hangs by the difference

Frege's Hidden Nominalism

SOME philosophical pieces are like symphonies, others like quartets. This one is merely an ontological theme with variations. After I have introduced the theme, it will be seen that Exemplification versus Mapping is a very good name for it. The phrase does not signify, though, except to one already familiar with the theme. That is why I did not choose it as a title. All but the last of the variations are comments on Freges ontology, though as such they are highly selective. This is one reason for the title I chose. The other is that I hope to draw expository advantage from its shock value.

The Revolt Against Logical Atomism—I

Philosophical movements rise and fall, not excluding those that set out to end all movements or even philosophy itself. Having run its course, a movement is either found wanting or judged to have made a contribution. In either case, it is vigorous while the clever young men gather around its banner. And, of course, there are always many clever young men eager to enlist. Oxford is now the centre of a vigorous movement. Surely it is not the whole of contemporary British philosophy. Yet hardly anyone now philosophizing in Britain or, for that matter, in this country, is unaware of it. Urmsons1 recent book hails from Oxford. For at least two reasons it

Remarks on Realism

Positivists and phenomenalists of all sorts maintain, and long have maintained, some variant of the following thesis concerning the existence of physical objects: Such statements as There is (exists) now a wall behind my back are synonymous with a class of statements of which the following is representative If I shall turn my head (have certain kinesthetic experiences), then I shall also have the visual experience called seeing a wall. This amounts to proposing what many of us call a philosophical analysis of exist or, more precisely, of one meaning of exist; for the thesis implies that this verb, in the sense in which we use it when we say This wall exists, is dispensable in the sense of being definable. Realists, who oppose the thesis, hold that exist, in the sense mentioned, is what I would call an undefined descriptive predicate; and then they go on to recommend that instead of defining existence in terms of what we (shall) see, we had better say that we shall, if we turn, see a wall because there is a wall (and because we have put ourselves in a position to perceive it). Thus one could say, perhaps, that the realists wish to convert the positivistic position; instead of founding existence upon experience, they want to found experience (among other things) upon existence. To be sure, this is but a bare and crudely formulated schema of an issue that has been argued for a long time. Also, contemporary analysts for the most part do not discuss the issue directly; they give their attention to preliminary and, therefore, more fundamental questions. Like experienced chess players, who know to which characteristic situations in the middle game certain openings will eventually lead, we try to convince each other of the excellence of our respective openings. There is, in particular, one fundamental or opening move that is now widely discussed and which, I believe, most of us examine with a view to the position in which we shall find ourselves-in the middle game-with respect to the realism issue. I refer to the clarification of the relations between meaning and verification or, to put it the way positivists do, to the formulation of an adequate meaning criterion. Let me indicate the connection between these questions and the crude schema I have given for the realism issue. According to current garden varieties of positivism, a statement is (empirically) meaningful if it is verifiable by (future) 1 Verification is used in its generic sense which includes falsification and, if you please, also confirmation and its opposite.