Herbert Feigl
Austrian-American philosopher
Herbert Feigl
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Herbert Feigl (1973)
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Born |
(
1902-12-14
)
14 December 1902
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Died |
1 June 1988
(1988-06-01)
(aged
85)
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Era | 20th-century philosophy |
Region | Western philosophy |
School |
Analytic philosophy
Vienna Circle |
Thesis | Zufall und Gesetz: Versuch einer naturerkenntnistheoretischen Klarung des Wahrscheinlichkeits- und Induktionsproblems (Chance and Law: An Epistemological Analysis of the Roles of Probability and Induction in the Natural Sciences) (1927) |
Notable students | Hugh Mellor |
Main interests
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Philosophy of science |
Notable ideas
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Nomological danglers |
Influences
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Influenced
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Herbert Feigl ( / ˈ f aɪ ɡ əl / ; German: [ˈfaɪgl̩] ; December 14, 1902 – June 1, 1988) was an Austrian - American philosopher and an early member of the Vienna Circle . [1] [2] He coined the term " nomological danglers ". [3]
Biography
The son of a trained weaver who became a textile designer, Feigl was born in Reichenberg (Liberec) , Bohemia , into a Jewish (though not religious) family. [1] [4] [2] He matriculated at the University of Vienna in 1922 and studied physics and philosophy under Moritz Schlick , Hans Hahn , Hans Thirring , and Karl Bühler . [1] He became one of the members of the Vienna Circle in 1924 [1] and would be one of the few Circle members (along with Schlick and Friedrich Waismann [5] ) to have extensive conversations with Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper . Feigl received his doctorate at Vienna in 1927 for his dissertation Zufall und Gesetz: Versuch einer naturerkenntnistheoretischen Klarung des Wahrscheinlichkeits- und Induktionsproblems ( Chance and Law: An Epistemological Analysis of the Roles of Probability and Induction in the Natural Sciences ). [1] [4] [2] He published his first book, Theorie und Erfahrung in der Physik ( Theory and Experience in Physics ), in 1929. [4] [5] [2]
In 1930, on an International Rockefeller Foundation scholarship at Harvard University , [5] Feigl met the physicist Percy Williams Bridgman , the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine , and the psychologist Stanley Smith Stevens , [2] all of whom he saw as kindred spirits. In 1931, with Albert Blumberg , he published the paper "Logical Positivism: A New European Movement" [1] which argued for logical positivism to be renamed "logical empiricism" based upon certain realist differences between contemporary philosophy of science and the older positivist movement. [6]
In 1930, Feigl married Maria Kaspar [1] and emigrated with her to the United States, settling in Iowa to take up a position in the philosophy department at the University of Iowa . [2] Their son, Eric Otto, was born in 1933. In 1940, Herbert Feigl accepted a position as professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota , where he remained for 31 years. [1] His close professional and personal relationship with Wilfrid Sellars produced many different collaborative projects, including the textbook Readings in Philosophical Analysis and the journal Philosophical Studies , which he and Sellars (with other colleagues) founded in 1949. [5] [2]
In 1953, he established the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science (the first center of its kind in the United States) [1] [5] with a grant from the Hill Foundation. [2] He was appointed Regents Professor of the University of Minnesota in 1967. [5]
Feigl believed that empiricism is the only adequate philosophy for experimental science . Though he became a philosopher instead of a chemist, he never lost the perspective, and the scientific commonsense, of a practical scientist. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto [7] and he was, in the paradigmatic sense, a philosopher of science.
Feigl retired in 1971 and died of cancer on 1 June 1988 in Minneapolis . [1] He was joined in death by his wife Maria the following year; they were survived by their son Eric O. Feigl, a professor of physiology at the University of Washington. [2]
Selected publications
- Herbert Feigl, "The "Mental" and the "Physical": The Essay and a Postscript" (1967)
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Neuber, Matthias (2018), "Herbert Feigl" , in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University , retrieved 2019-05-07
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Savage, C. Wade (1989). "Obituary for Herbert Feigl". Erkenntnis (1975-) . 31 (1): v–ix. doi : 10.1007/BF01239127 . ISSN 0165-0106 . JSTOR 20012225 . S2CID 119787454 .
-
↑
Bailey, Andrew (2013-11-21).
Philosophy of mind
: the key thinkers
. Bailey, Andrew, 1969-. London. p.
107.
ISBN
9781441190963
.
OCLC
861533440
.
Smart (1959) credits Feigl with coining the term 'nomological danglers' for conscious properties, as they are conceived on the emergentist view.
{{ cite book }}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link ) - 1 2 3 Feigl, Herbert (1981). Inquiries and provocations : selected writings, 1929-1974 . D. Reidel Pub. Co. ISBN 90-277-1101-1 .
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 Avrum Stroll/Ruth Beloff. "Feigl, Herbert [ Encyclopaedia Judaica ] " . www.encyclopedia.com . Retrieved 2019-05-07 .
-
↑
Faye, Jan (2010).
"Niels Bohr and the Vienna Circle"
.
The Vienna Circle in the Nordic Countries
: networks and transformations of logical empiricism
. Manninen, Juha., Stadler, Friedrich. Dordrecht: Springer Science + Business Media. p.
40.
ISBN
9789048136834
.
OCLC
567371218
.
[8] Albert Blumberg and Feigl suggested in their 1931 paper "Logical Positivism. A New European Movement" that logical positivism was renamed "logical empiricism" because of certain differences between the new and the older positivist movement.
- ↑ "Humanist Manifesto II" . American Humanist Association. Archived from the original on October 20, 2012 . Retrieved October 8, 2012 .
External links
- Herbert Feigl entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Matthias Neuber
- Minnesota Philosophy Department photo c. 1953 featuring Feigl with, amongst others, Wilfred Sellars and May Brodbeck
- Readings in the Philosophy of Science (1953, co-edited with May Brodbeck) At Internet Archive .
- Readings In Philosophical Analysis (1949, co-edited with Wilfrid Sellars) At Internet Archive .
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