Husserl’s and Carnap’s Theories of Space

point 4.

⁵³ Carnap (1923). Cf. Mormann (1994) and Seibt (2000).

⁵⁴ Carnap (1924b). Carnap refers to this research in his (1925, p. 345).

⁵⁵ Cf. Seibt (1997, p. 315).

⁵⁶ Carnap (1922) (henceforth Chaos). When translating Wirklichkeit as „the world of experience” I follow Seibt, see her (2000, p. 178 note 5).

⁵⁷ Seibt, (2000, p. 171).

⁵⁸ Carnap, Chaos, p. 1.

⁵⁹ The term Konstitution has been written by Carnap in blank places of his manuscript. However Carnap uses also the term Konstruktion namely in relation to the Wirklichkeit and to psychology and physics (ibid pp.12-13). I am not concerning here how those disciplines can be constructed on the ground of the monosubjective experience. The quotation marks are used by Carnap himself and may prove his meta-epistemological attitude.

⁶⁰ ibid p. 1.

⁶¹ ibid p. 2

⁶² Cf. Carnap, Chaos, p. 3.

⁶³ ibid p. 3.

⁶⁴ All the manuscript is very sketchy.

⁶⁵ The term ‘class’ seems to be exceptionally incomprehensible, since Carnap wants to describe the structure of our sensuous experience. We can treat the term operationally and even metaphorically only, for all the ‘sensuous material’ is not given to us in any ‘portions’ that could let us segregate them logistically. We cannot also conceive our cognitive apparatus as logistically ordered.

⁶⁶ Carnap, Chaos, p. 5.

⁶⁷ ibid p. 7.

⁶⁸ ibid.

⁶⁹ Unfortunately, Carnap do not show or explain how he discovers those categories.

⁷⁰ ibid p. 8. Henceforth mL.

⁷¹ This is written by hand (ibid p. 9). Cf. note 16 in that paper.

⁷² Cf. Seibt, (2000, p. 170).

⁷³ The system of the Aufbau-1 is called the Konstitutionssystem (and the first note about the constitution of the objects of our experience (despite Erlangen conference) is in Carnap’s (1925, p.345)). His theory is called the Konstitutionstheorie. The most important procedures are ‘constitutional’ and only in the chapter on quasi-analysis Carnap introduces the term Nachkonstruktion referring to the reconstruction of the structure of the knowledge of subject. In the English version we deal with the ‘construction system’ and ‘construction theory’. It caused a certain terminological mess wherein we speak either of the ‘constitution theory’ in Carnap (e.g. A. Wiegner, Popper, V. Mayer, Seibt, Mormann) or ‘construction theory’ (C.U. Moulines). Unfortunately, it must occur in my analysis. Spiegelberg asserts that the term ‘constitution’ was taken by Husserl from neokantians (The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction Hague 1960, 214-215), hence one might say that Carnap refers to them not to the founder of phenomenology but in §3 of the Aufbau we can find the explicit reference of the Konstitutionstheorie to Husserl’s (and Meinong’s) theory. Cf. Sokolowski (1970).

⁷⁴ That way (i.e. as the elementary experience) was modified in the Aufbau-2 the original term Elementarerlebnis. Husserlian term the Erlebnis should not be translated into the experience, however Carnapian Elementarerlebnis was a weird constructed term and perhaps for its strangeness was changed by the more accurate the elementary experience. I use that last one in my interpretation (referring usually to the visual perception) and in the same time I prefer to avoid Husserlian Erlebnisstrom used also by Carnapa (translated as the stream of experience).

⁷⁵ Certainly The Logical Building of the World must not be conceived as other traditional works of philosophers. For it is an encyclopedic-synthetic work (enriched analytically with the researches mentioned above, of course) and it is not a result of the individual investigations of the thinker. Hence we should be conscious either of the programmed eclectics or mainly the meta-theoretic character of the Aufbau: all the gathered herein results of researches of different disciplines are ordered in the course of constructing of the ‘system of science’ and reconstructing of the structure of our sensual (here: visual mainly) experience. At the bottom of the construction there lies a special conception of science and scientific language (within them there is situated such and such vision of philosophy and epistemology).

⁷⁶ It is fragmentary, delimited (we cannot grasp, so to speak, the whole space) and subjective. Husserlian attitude hence is realistic and Carnapian anti-realistic.

⁷⁷ In the sense Carnap’s conception from the Aufbau differs to that of the Raum and refers to that of the Chaos.

⁷⁸ Cf. Grünbaum, (1973, p. 175), referring to Russell’s geometric conception from his The Principles of Mathematics posing identifying the geometric space with the physical one.

⁷⁹ In the sense we can speak of Carnapian logical conctructionism.

⁸⁰ The mutual relation between logic and physics is not clear in Carnap’s early thought.

⁸¹ Carnap, Aufbau § 124.

⁸² Carnap, Aufbau § 124. Reichenbach maintains explicitly that the space does not exist (1958, p. 86).

⁸³ Carnap, Aufbau § 125.

⁸⁴ Cf. Seibt, Constitution…, p. 171 ff., Mormann, A Quasianalytical Constitution of Physical Space,