"PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS ARE MEANINGLESS"

CARNAP, RUDOLF.

Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie. Das Fremdpsychische un der Realismusstreit.

Berlin, Weltkreis-Verlag, 1928. 8vo. In the original printed wrappers. Wear to extremities, loss to top and bottom of spine and a waterstain to the right part of front wrapper. Internally with light pencilmarks throughout. 46 pp.

First printing of Carnap's publication in which asserted that many philosophical questions were meaningless, the way they were posed amounted to abuse of language. An operational implication of this opinion was taken to be the elimination of metaphysics from responsible human discourse. This is the statement for which Carnap was best known for many years.
The publication also introduces for the first time his universal "meaning criterium". He indicates that the elimination of metaphysics serves philosophy, not science.

All in the Vienna Circle followed Carnap's judgement in Pseudoproblems of Philosophy and Schlick's contention in his response to Planck's renewal of anti-Machian polemics that questions like that of the reality of the external world were not well-formed ones but only constituted pseudo-questions. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Carnap himself said about the publication: "The pamphlet Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie… was first written in the Spring of 1927, at the end of my first year in Vienna. It shows, therefore, a stronger influence of the Vienna discussions and Wittgenstein's book [Tractatus]. [the] condemnation [in Scheinprobleme] of all theses about metaphysical reality, which I sharply distinguish from empirical reality, is more radical than that in Aufbau, where such theses are only excluded from the domain of science. My more radical outlook was influenced by Wittgenstein's view that metaphysical statements, while in principle unverifiable, are therefore senseless. This view was accepted by the majority of the members of the Vienna Circle and other empiricists." (Nieli. Wittgenstein: From mysticism to ordinary language. P. 63.).

Order-nr.: 44836