Selected Philosophical Essays

Carl Gustav Hempel (1905–1997) was one of the preeminent figures in the philosophical movement of logical empiricism. He was a member of both the Berlin and Vienna circles, fled Germany in 1934 and finally settled in the US where he taught for many years in New York, Princeton, and Pittsburgh. The essays in this collection come from the early and late periods of Hempel’s career and chart his intellectual odyssey from a rigorous commitment to logical positivism in the 1930s (when Hempel allied himself closely with Carnap) to a more sociological approach close in spirit to the work of Neurath and Kuhn. The collection brings together essays which have up till now been difficult to find, four of which are appearing in English for the first time. Cumulatively they offer a fresh perspective on Hempel’s intellectual development and on the rise and demise of logical empiricism.

• Major selection of essays by one of the great logical empiricists of the twentieth century • Richard Jeffrey, the editor, is a celebrated philosopher in his own right; a friend of collaborator of Hempel and much better known than the editor of the forthcoming Oxford volume (James Fetzer)

Preface; Introduction; Part I. Truth: 1. On the logical positivists’ theory of truth; 2. Some remarks on ‘facts’ and propositions; 3. Some remarks on empiricism; 4. The problem of truth; 5. The irrelevance of the concept of truth for the critical appraisal of scientific claims; Part II. Probability: 6. On the content of probability statements; 7. On the logical form of probability statements; 8. A definition of degree of confirmation (with P. Oppenheim); Part III. Methodology: 9. The logical analysis of psychology; 10. Schick and Neurath: foundation vs. coherence; 11. On the cognitive status and the rationale of scientific methodology; 12. Provisoes; Part IV. Memoirs: 13. Rudolf Carnap, Logical Empiricist; 14. The Vienna Circle and the metamorphoses of its empiricism; 15. Hans Reichenbach remembered; 16. Empiricism in the Vienna Circle and in the Berlin Society; Part V. Publications of C. G. Hempel.