Construction Theory and the Elementarerlebnisse

Our work seeks through a reading of Carnap’s Construction Theory to point out the hypothesis that, starting from experience and the Gestalt tradition, it may be possible to outline a relation between on the one hand psychical events and functions related to experiences lived by the Self, and its identity on the other.

We furthermore intend to suggest it is possible to sketch a kind of analysis highlighting the centrality of the notion of psychophysical parallelism inherited from the eighteen Century psychology, and still present in some of the groundbreaking texts in logical positivism. Construction Theory, which (through the definition of “state of affairs” corresponding to the objectivity of lived-experiences) articulates itself by considering elementary lived-experiences representing the “elementary elements” from an empirical point of view, is based (from a knowledge-theoretical point of view) on the a priori hypothesis of the non-decomposability of lived-experiences, and therefore determines the epistemological sense of the Theory of Knowledge.

According to this analysis, it is exactly to investigate the constitution of concepts and the problem of the scientific synthesis of concepts that the determination of reality via the Theory of Relations is laid out; which is why Carnap specifies the following:

Thus, we choose a system form with au “autopsychological” basis. It will then be shown how it is possible to envisage these basic elements as unanalyzable units and nevertheless to construct those objects which are later on called the “properties” or “constituents” of these experiences through a procedure which is actually synthetic, but takes on the linguistic form of an analysis. (We shall call this procedure “quasi analysis”).

The actual basic concepts of the constitutional system, i.e., those concepts to which all other concepts of science are to be reduced, are not the basic elements, but the basic relations. (Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World, trans. by Rolf A. George for Open Court Classics, Chicago and La Salle, Illinois, USA, p. 13).Footnote 1

The notion that elementary lived-experiences are not divisible into parts and thus not definable is representative of the importance of the semantic function scientific – but also pre-scientific – predicates (in their being “primitive” according to the definition of their “similarity” relation criterion) have; therefore Carnap, according to the Kantian tradition, gives an ontological account of the objects considered as well as an epistemological account of the order according to which those objects are known. The tradition originating in Logical Positivism claims that other factors be drawn into consideration when discussing philosophical themes and problems regarding physical phenomena and psychical processes.

We can thus notice how the interpretative hypothesis of the presence of form psychology, or Gestalttheorie,Footnote 2in the Aufbau – most notably in two such important exponents as Wolfgang Köhler and Max Wertheimer – concerns what will then be the treatment of issues concerning the psychical world of others. This treatment goes on with the so-called “problems of essence”, as Carnap, in the Appendix of the Aufbau entitled Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie, calls ontologically relevant issues. It is thus significant, in order for a consideration of the degree of epistemological priority of objects to be under focus, that their definition and their knowledge – theoretical nature be ascertained. With regard to this, referring to the main issue here dealt with, we underline that in Carnap’s work emerges the importance of defining such a concept as “somatic field”: this notion represents for Köhler the perception of the functioning of the physical system, starting from the teleological perspective of objectifying perception, deriving from the phenomenological issue concerning lived-experience of consciousness, and which is quite apparent to be tightly connected with the theoretical stance of another exponent of Gestalt Psychology, namely Heinz Werner. Furthermore, the issue concerning the definition of the qualitative nature of sensations turns out to be fundamental for the psychological analysis of the psychical intensity of perception in the perspectives of both Carnap and Moritz Schlick, as far as one seeks to draw upon Stumpf’s analysis and conception (Margolis, 1982).

Going back to the initial issues, we shall see how here a relation is outlined between one’s own psychical field (according to Carnap’s analysis of this concept), and the issue concerning concepts and their constitution, which all is to prove fundamental for the definition of “constitution system” (Konstitutionssystem).

And decisive for this analysis will prove the dispute that eventually took place between Carnap and another exponent of the Gestalt movement, Karl Duncker.Footnote 3At any rate, in the analysis provided within the Aufbau the outline of relations is what prevails on the rest, not only (according with a theoretical stance inherited from Russell) in regard to “observable predicates”, but also in psychological terms concerning “dispositional propositions”, thus meaning a system which is de facto fully characterized by scientific propositions.

As a consequence, the relationship that is ultimately defined between the constructional manifold of scientific language and the issue raised by psychical functions also shows clear traces of an extensional criterion (namely one based on definitions referring to external objects and classes of objects).

In Carnap’s thinking all of that receives a structure of its own in order of the relationship between psychical functions and the givenness of objects to be investigated. With this regard, we maintain that the extensional criterion, central to concept construction (Begriffsbildung), also concerns sensation analysis and association psychology. Now, this issue appears to be relevant for an extensive and full account of psychical functions, and therefore in order to ascertain which the binds between those and perceptions are, and which in turn determine streams of consciousness.

With regard to this we maintain that objects inherent in the spiritual world, particularly the idea of memory (Gedächtnis) of perceptions and lived-experiences, are necessary for the constitution of a theory of empirical reality and the world (Weltlehre), and thus for the interpretation of semantic knowledge, even though Carnap’s semantic investigation is particularly directed towards the conceptual operations addressed by investigations regarding the rational reconstruction of objectivity.Footnote 4

We therefore state that the function the here discussed theory of knowledge and analysis of elementary lived-experiences – and subsequently the metaphysical issue concerning the relationship with the concept of reality – have, also determines the reflections of the Aufbau on the consideration of the empirical manifold and phenomenal reality.

An instance of the issue concerning an analysis of elementary lived-experiences and the interpretation of the concept of reality is the problem of the Self and the world. Carnap’s interpretation of the problem of the Self (made explicit by the here provided account of the class of elementary lived-experiences) highlights what may labelled “a unified expression for that which the elements have in common”, namely the possible reference to observation data (cf. § 163).

It thus comes natural in this perspective to scrutinize the conception of the unity of consciousness as expressed by a philosopher like Moritz Schlick, in many respects similar to Carnap, one who underlined the importance of “the original fact of the given”, which would have to deal with experiencing and observation.

Indeed in both thinkers we can envisage a kind of identification of the issue of the self and that of the concept of world. We can hereon in the Aufbau read such remarks as the following:

The “self” is the class of elementary experiences. It is frequently and justly emphasized that the self is not a bundle of representations, or experiences, but a unit. […]

The existence of the self is not an originally given fact. The sumdoes not follow from the cogito; it does not follow from “I experience” that “I am”, but only that an experience is. The self does not belong to the expression of the basic experience at all, but it is constructed only later, essentially for the purpose of delineation against the “others”; that is only on a high constructional level, after the construction of the heteropsychological. Thus, a more fitting expression than “I experience” would be “experience”, or still better “this experience”. Thus, we ought to replace the Cartesian dictum “this experience; therefore, this experience is”, and this is of course a mere tautology. The self does not belong to the original state of affairs (§ 65). (ibid., pp. 260–261)Footnote 5

From a theoretical point of view, the problem of the self is tightly connected with an analysis of reality and the definition of the epistemological and ontological issue about the very idea of world, since that problem underlines the importance of the dispute between Realism and Idealism, and then, as a direct consequence, determines the development of the idea of psychophysical parallelism.

Construction Theory is epistemologically “neutral” in its location just between either of those options and suggests that it may be possible to determine the concept of thing per se, as “a non- given real object”, according to a tradition belonging as a matter of fact (if one bears Schlick’s reflection in mind) to science and not metaphysics (which in turn remains outlined as a theoretical form and “extrascientific field”), and most notably if we consider the problems arising from a consideration of psychophysical parallelism.

This is why a confrontation and clash takes place between the problem of the scientific constitution of empirical reality and the metaphysical problem of reality (Aufbau§§ 168–170). And in fact the analysis of the issue of that parallelism seems to take place within the metaphysical stance rather than the point of constitutional definition view of the objects of knowledge, leaving a new theoretical field open for a neo-Kantian ontological investigation, which consistently leads to defining “the psychophysical fundamental situation, by giving reality to things-in-themselves which have different sorts of properties” “fundamental psychophysical situation through the acknowledgment of a reality degree in things-in- themselves already possessing different types of properties”:

It is a familiar fact that metaphysics explains the parallelisms of the first kind through realistic or phenomenalistic postulations of physical things-in-themselves; it is one and the same thing which on one hand appears to me as the visual thing, apple, and on the other hand as the taste thing, apple. Parallelisms of the second kind can be explained through analogous postulations of psychological realities; it is one and the same psychological entity which is, on one hand the representation of an apple and which carries with it, on the other hand, a certain emotional quality. Thus in both cases the metaphysical explanation makes use of a reification (positing as real) or substantialization (in the sense of the category of substance). In a similar way, the parallelism of the third kind, the one that occurs in the psychophysical basic situation, can be explained through reification of things-in- themselves which have two different types of property. (ibid., p. 271)Footnote 6

The point will be to determine how we can investigate questions regarding real and “psychical and spiritual” objects, in order on the one hand for an analysis of the physical sphere, that is of the classes of relations between things (to be determined in their matter-of-fact objectivity), to be provided: on the other, we will have to investigate the relationships those have with physical and spiritual objects.

In our reflection, as far as the Aufbauis concerned, it is not simply the problem of the lived- experience of consciousness what matters, but also the prospect of a rational reconstruction of objective knowledge, relative to a system of definitions, and thus as part of a consideration of the transcendental constitution of objectivity and the concept of world (Guido Küng, 1975).

We maintain it is possible to identify rules explaining the constructive procedure of the formal structure of object construction, and define the connection with the functional schemes concerned with the definition of what Carnap calls “fourth language”, namely that of fictitious construction (cf. §99), in turn necessarily concerned with the definition of psychical processes and as a consequence particularly demanding. Yet, having to confront the main issue here dealt with, we shall have to bear in mind that not only is it important to remark that in Carnap the associative issue of form (or Gestalt-) psychology determines the meaning of psychical functions and the language expressing them, but also that the analysis of external reality and the laws of nature as provided by Schlick provide a link between the empirical verification hypothesis and the meaning of consciousness and judgements on matters-of-fact. A decisive step is outlined by the contrast between Schlick’s interpretation of such notions as nature- and physical world laws (that apply to the world and the concept of reality) on the one hand, and Carnap’s account of material rules of inference explaining physical phenomena and reality depending upon conventionalFootnote 7rules.

As a matter of fact, the stances taken by these two thinkers differ notably, since whereas Schlick’s analysis concerns the importance of the laws of nature and possibly the significance of empirical verifiability (with reference to external reality), which implies a critique of conventionalism,Footnote 8Carnap instead connects the definition of empirical laws to some kind of conventionality, even as regards the very concept of world.

It seems at any rate relevant that one could speak of Schlick’s “lawful structure”, that concerns the product of empirical laws and seems to derive from the concept of law verifiability. We thus aim to interpret the way in which Schlick deals with judgements and predictions regarding phenomena: we view it as the kind of exemplification of a realistic interpretation of nature laws already sketched in his 1935 “Sind die Naturgesetze Konventionen?”. Here Schlick is mostly concerned with the importance of “ordinary definitions” which through characteristic features of concepts determine their intensions; intuitiveness, on the other hand, and experience fix the ostension of a given concept and thus its meaning; but it is “implicit definitions” – as we regard them – what enables to conceive of nature’s and the world’s intelligibility, and thus allow to formulate a hypothesis- and judgement system for nature.

Besides, according to Schlick the constitution of the world’s physical objects has to deal with the notion that it is possible to conceive of an interpretation of causality as “functional dependence” between phenomena, as it becomes apparent if we consider the analysis provided in his 1931 Die Kausalität in der gegenwärtigen Physik, mainly dealing with the identification of an empiristic theory of world and reality.

This work is in sharp contrast with the neo-Kantian analysis in Ernst Cassirer’s Substance and Functionof world views as provided by physics. Going back to Carnap, we shall now note how the constitution method of the Aufbau(1) as it deals with a system of empirical hypotheses and “coordinative definitions” about the analysis of the world and reality is differently structured from when it (2) is directed towards the analysis of “meaning postulates” about the psychical functions of lived-experiences.

Carnap’s interpretation of reality and physical objects concerns logical transformation rules (L-rules) and extra- rules (P-rules), as physical laws and material rules, which as a matter of fact turn out to be decisive for the individuation of syntactic statements, mostly object statements. Furthermore, general rules for reduction and transformation of statements are in particular valid for the analysis of quasi-syntactic pseudo-objectual statements determined by the materiality of speaking. In order to make sense of the nature of such statements, we shall recall that they concern “the structure of space and time, the cause-effect relation, the differences and relationships between the physical and the psychical, the character of numbers and numerical functions, necessity, contingency, possibility and impossibility”.Footnote 9Pseudo-objectual statements are as a matter of fact so framed as to determine properties about the syntactic relationships characterizing language structure, the notion of proposition and problems bound with the theory to meaning. This in particular turns out to be of the utmost importance for an interpretation of the real character of spiritual phenomena and psychical lived-experiences, all of which could never be addressed by the rigorous methods used in physics. Furthermore, in Carnap’s interpretation of the word and reality no properties are determined that could be liable to such a univocal interpretation as the one common in modal logic, instead what is framed is a set of material rules of inference that make up the core of scientific laws.

Therefore, the point is building up, according to rules, a set of hypothetical probabilistic and merely conventional arguments aimed at questioning the very possibility of a physical kind of necessity for causality (according to what we might label a Humean point of view of matter-of-fact “causality” as we might envisage it in logical empirism).

The structural aspect of the interpretation of phenomena is clarified through the identification of relational properties, which in turn represent just the material rules of inference for scientific laws. In this perspective, which is typical of Carnap’s logical empirism, scientific laws are compatible with realism and antirealism of nature laws.Footnote 10

The Physical Account Provided in Weltbegriffand the Psychical Dimension

The theory regarding construction by means of an abstraction process draws on the separation of the “given” and the apperceptive elaboration of the “lived recognition”, so that it is not possible to limit oneself to hypothetical, subjective inferences, and it is in turn necessary to mention the specification and classification of the given by the constitution of an intersubjective world (§§ 148 e 165).

In our most recent work (with the purpose of determining the ontological issue of the concept of world) we considered issues regarding Construction Theory and problems arising from the notion of essence (§§ 157–183), central to a confrontation with the psychophysical issue (§§ 166–169), so that we may finally address the empirical (§§ 170–174) and subsequently the metaphysical concept of reality (§§ 175–178).

Indeed, despite the critique of Mach’s “elementism”, and abiding by the assumption that objectual propositions may be translated into the language of physics, regarding these passages we may now begin to outline the purport of what Carnap says:

The second concept of reality (meant as independent of the subject) represents the most conspicuous divergence point between realism, idealism and phenomenalism. These three currents differ in that they attribute reality in the second sense to fields of different amplitudes (within an empirical-real dimension). From a realistpoint of view both physical and psychical objects are real. Subjective idealism, on the contrary, holds other people’s psychical objects, not physical ones, for real (…). Phenomenalismon the other hand sees external reality beyond the psychical to be the case, but then, like Idealism, denies that physical objects may be real; this reality applies, according to such doctrine, to things-in-themselves (…). The concept of reality, meant as independence of the knowing sphere) does not belong to (rational) science, but to metaphysics.

The conception just outlined with regard to the concept of reality is similar to the one embraced by positivists, which dates back to Mach. The concept of thing-in-itself refers in its very definition to the concept of reality (in its independence from the knowing subject). Our conception thus confines through this concept with metaphysics as well. Since metaphysics is the extrascientific field of theoretical form (§ 182).Footnote 11

The idea that Construction Theory represents the criterion according to which the neutrality of an epistemological point of view prevails on the unilateralism of currents like realism, idealism and phenomenalism allows to understand the issue about the divergence between the empirical and the metaphysical concept of reality: all of that is outlined in a theoretical framework leading to a full understanding of a realistic stance within both the sciences and, problematically, metaphysics.

Seen in this perspective, the issue concerning intensive sensations (namely of intensity as a relevant aspect of physical phenomena in their sheer qualitative characterization) lets us analyze the Weltbegriffstance about realism with regard to scientific activity: this is why, as an example, the outline of spatial ordering, the concept of world and external reality all reflect the intersubjectivity of scientific concepts and their field of analysis. But here another issue arises, since the main purport of Carnap’s construal is the sheer structural form of the relationship between elements experienced within the psyche and science, which in its part is about the “description of relationships” and that of properties of physical phenomena as relationships, ascertained starting from elementary propositions.

And indeed, what we see is that Carnap largely devotes himself to a structural analysis of the functional coordination consciousness makes of the “logical and not real relationship” of perception with the external world in its reality.

A structural analysis then sets in to solve the question regarding the identity of the Self and the mental consideration of objects of experience.

Furthermore, Carnap goes back to the analysis of notions about the reality of the external world and the qualities of objects, then trying to question the propositions of body physiology and the functioning they allegedly picture, and in doing so he rivets on the mutual translatability of physical and psychical objects, according to the perspective embraced by him in his constitutional system. As a matter of fact, Carnap poses the problem of essence of the psycho-physical issue that does not come to solution merely by analyzing the interaction (Wechselwirkung) between the world, physical reality, and the psychical dimension of lived-experiences, since the issue concerning the definition of the causal relationship between those remains open.

The problem of essence takes on other features as Carnap confronts the interpretation of Identity Theory (as presented by Fechner’s scientific psychology which Carnap closely scrutinizes and which is thus dramatically reconsidered by him and partly reduced in its importance). It turns out to be otherwise if we consider Schlick’s account of the controversy about psychophysical parallelism: the Austrian philosopher unequivocally poses the definition of the relationship between the world and its “appearances” on one side, and the reality of the thing-in-itselfon the other. And in this we envisage a possibility for critical solutions that may concern Carnap’s thinking as well.

In this sense, the issue concerning some psychical law-like regularity (a technical term, this describes a natural law-like regularity) is confronted by Schlick through the example given by the cerebral localization, in relation with laws of nature, of mnestic remnants of perceptive phenomena of the Self. In the analysis we intend to provide of Schlick’s psychical law-like regularities, just as we scrutinize his confrontation with objections against the issue of psychophysical parallelism, and thus see an important reference to Erich Becher’s (cf. Becher 1922: Gehirn und Seele) Johannes Adolf von Kries’ and works (cf. von Kries 1901Über die matieriellen Grundlagen der Bewusstseinserscheinungen), both momentous in grounding the criticism against attempts at reducing “psychology to brain physiology”. And indeed Schlick states the following:

All physiological hypotheses start from sense perception as the most important source of mental life in general. In perception, nerve stimuli are conducted from a sense organ (say, the retina of the eye) to a central organ (say, the visual area of the cerebral cortex). After they fade away they leave behind certain traces, residues or dispositions that are utilized to explain memory images and association. The various residues are bound to one another by “threads of association”, and if one of the residues is stimulated, then under certain conditions the stimulus radiates out through the threads to other residues, is communicated to them, and in response to this latter physical process there is a revival in consciousness of the representations that correspond to these traces in the brain, for example, when I look at a portrait of a friend, certain cells in my optic center are activated. A connection is set up with other centers, such as the acoustical, and residues are aroused there that correspond to the tonal image of the name of that friend. His name rises to the surface of my consciousness. (Moritz Schlick, General theory of knowledge, p. 315)

In this respect, Schlick’s account of a more refined – so do we think – epistemological (erkenntnistheoretisch) parallelism, namely the one between brain structures and cognitive functions, is the result of the analysis of physical bodies and their interactions within a possibility of a definition in a symbolic-conceptual system. Not only does the constitutional system, defining the way in which the sciences express things themselves, allow us to interpret a confrontation with the issue concerning the relationship (which again is highly significant) with the philosophical aspects of Köhler’s psychische Gestalten, but it also lets us define the field for a discussion concerning the essence of the physical analysis and the psychical dimension in the Aufbau.

Thus as ordinarily formulated, physiological hypotheses are unable to provide an explanation for mental events. Some thinkers have therefore concluded that at the point where it fails, the physiological theory must be replaced with a mentalistic theory. In other words, we must revert to the assumption that the mental, the mind, is a reality of a special kind. This reality resists description by the spatio-quantitative concepts of natural science and has its own peculiar law-like regularity, which we know from experience as “psychological”.

According to this conception, the contrast between physical and designates a difference that is essentially real. The “physical” is that reality whose nature can be described by quantitative concepts. The “mental” is that reality for which thus us not the case. Thus here two concepts take on another sense. This new definition couldcoincide with the distinction we made earlier between objective and subjective qualities (which may also be expressed as the distinction between the extramental and the mental). But this is not the case if one assumes, as most of these thinkers do, that there is such a thing as unconsciousmental being. For the property of belonging to a consciousness is the characteristic, necessary feature of the reality we designated above as subjective or mental. (ibid., 317)

Therefore it seems that from the analysis provided by Carnap it is possible to find confirmation for the idea that it is possible to speak of a translatability into the language of physics of psychological propositions and the observation of physical phenomena as these appear, and that it is thus possible to question the relationship between physical objects and the psychical dimension.

The problems of the foundations of psychology contain analogues to those of biology just mentioned. (1) Can the concepts of psychology be reduced to those of physics in the narrower sense? (2) Can the laws of psychology be reduced to those of physics in the narrower sense ? (Physicalism answers the first question in the affirmative, but leaves the second open.) The so-called psychophysical problem is usually formulated as a question concerning the relation of two object-domains : the domain of the psychical processes and the domain of the parallel physical processes in the central nervous system. But this formulation in the material mode of speech leads into a morass of pseudo-problems (for instance: “Are the parallel processes merely functionally correlated, or are they connected by a causal relation? Or is it the same process seen from two different sides?”). With the use of the formal mode of speech it becomes clear that we are here concerned only with the relation between two sub-languages, namely, the psychological and the physical language; the question is whether two parallel sentences are always, or only in certain cases, equipollent with one another, and, if so, whether they are L- or P-equipollent (Rudolf Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1937, p. 324).

And indeed it is exactly in this respect that we can find grounds for Carnap’s idea of the constitution of the concept of “overdetermination of experience”, namely a wider interpretation of the foundations of psychology, but at the same time a more severely bounded logico- ontological, and then also metaphysical, analysis.

This interpretation determines the issue of language meaning and the ­sensibleness of assertions about the empirical reality (where this is freed of the metaphysical claim staked on it by a certain form of empiricist perspective): they condition the reading of the constitution system (Konstitutionssystem), and stress the analysis of physical objects rather objects belonging to the psychical sphere of others. The analysis of Construction Theory is deepened by introducing of the possibility for “dispositional predicates” of psychical processes to be dealt with in the framework of the issue about descriptive languages in their extensional character, namely through the determination of the objectivity of factual “states of affairs”.

About the Experience and Objectivity of Factual “States of Affairs”

The objectivity of factual “states of affairs” is crucial to formulate definitions grounded on experience, especially if we abide by the suggestions in Carnap’s 1928 work Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie: Das Fremdpsychische und der Realismusstreit. In this respect we deem the treatment in Schlick’s 1936 Meaning and Verificationfundamental, as much as it is Hempel’s reading of the issue concerning the meaning of propositions, so that is it now necessary to underline that on no account can the verification problem be reduced to any “matter-of-fact”,Footnote 12and thus seem analyzable in simple reductionist terms, since it necessarily involves an ontological, and then also an epistemological commitment.

In this regard, Carnap marks a significant progress in thinking in his attempt to define the relationship between factuality and propositions, or “sensible assertions”, but then he also suggests the hypothesis of perceptive experience and its expression, using the idea that a certain kind of protocols and the specific language used in them may in this respect be fully functional.

The Theory of Constitution of “factual states of affairs” is structured starting from the description of “states of affairs” (Sachverhalte) and modal logic (concerning semantic relations of “postulates” of meaning): all of that may be better understood through the notion of context meaning, one that is build up on “known features”, and that enables to grasp the relationships existing between certain statements and their truth-values:

In order to realize a knowledge-theoretical utilisation we take, from the experience of communicating a, of which we have consciousness only through perception of the physical signs (a1), therefore something like the acoustic perception of pronounced words (namely as noises), or the visual perception of written words (as strokes of pen), but not the understanding of those signs (b1), which is also realised in the lived- datum; from this material, a1,we subsequently infer, availing ourselves of already possessed knowledge, the theoretical content b1. This reconstruction certainly presupposes that the words used in the communication of A already be known to us, or that at least we may deduce their meaning from the context (namely, that we may hypothetically infer their meaning). If this presupposition is not verified, then no E1experience can be the case and we cannot envisage ingredient b1at all: if I receive a letter written in Chinese, all I see is some black strokes, without experiencing myself anything psychical which might belong to others. But if, on the contrary, that presupposition is verified, then I can deduce the meaning of the assertion from the words perceived (namely from the noises heard or the pictures seen) with the help of the meanings of words known to me; and the meaning of the assertion is content b1, namely the psychical of others which in E1becomes an object of knowledge (…).

The psychical process in A, (b3), can reconstructively be deduced (by means of that presupposition) starting from physical circumstances (a3); sometimes, even in the lived-datum itself, this process is not there immediately to be found as something given, but is constructively inferred (…). We only mean to maintain that between the theoretical contents of ingredients b and a of the lived-given there is a logical dependence relationship, which can be shown by the fact that, furthermore, b can deduced by inference from a and drawing upon already possessed knowledge (…).

The meaning of an assertion consists in its standing for some (thinkable, not necessarily existing) factual state of affairs. If a (supposed) assertion does not stand for any (thinkable) factual state of affairs, then it is meaningless proper, and just apparently an assertion. If an assertion does stand for a factual state of affairs, the nit is by all means meaningful, and more precisely: it is true if that state of affairs is the case, and false if it is not. Of a given assertion it is possible to know whether it is provided with meaning well before we know if it is true or false. (ibid., 457–459; 464)Footnote 13

We mean to highlight the problems behind the identification of contents of perceptive experience and precisely in this regard we deem it significant to discuss the importance of the reference to “factual states of affairs” (namely according to that stance of Carnap’s that is relative to the description of states of affairs or Sachverhalte), and thus discuss the subsequent distinction between representations of objects and representations of “factual states of affairs”. In this regard, this analysis of factual states of affairs offers again Meinong’s point of view (and relevantly his consistent distancing himself from Carnap with regard to the definition of the concept of Objective) and the idea that it is possible to determine the content of an assertion independent of object representations.Footnote 14And indeed Carnap, from his point of view regarding how it is possible to represent the issue of the objectivity of factual states of affairs, expresses himself as follows:

On the direction of intention thus naturally depends that a representation be one of some given factual state of affairs, or the mere representation o fan object; in the first case the lived-datum contains a predicative act that states or denies the existence of that state of affairs. From the above mentioned distinction of both types of representation descends this further distinction, central to our reflections: a representation of factual states of affairs can give the content of an assertion, whereas the representation of an object cannot(…), or, in Meinong’s object theory terms we shall say that the content of a prepresentation of factual states of affairs is an “objective”. (ibid., 469)

By these means, that comes to be stated which is known as the empirical criterion of significance, and which is thus assumed to warrant a solution for the confrontation between Realism and Idealism, thanks to the possibility to outline the analysis of mutual interactions between the phenomenon of the real object and the psychical character of spiritual objects, as well as that of the problem of the essence of concept constructions.Footnote 15

At this point, Carnap builds up his objectivity criterion, since a causal relationship and a constitution system acquire a knowledge-theoretical value; as a consequence, he highlights the definition of a relationship between the physical world of phenomena and facts on the one hand and the psychical dimension on the other, and he insists on the translatability of mental states into assertions relative to the body and psyche.Footnote 16

To conclude, we deem Moritz Schlick’s final analysis of factual states of affairs and Realism illuminating; indeed, in such works as Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre(Form and Content), philosophy of knowledge addresses the analysis of the phenomenal manifold and the mechanisms reproducing “facts” in thought. The function of science is thus preserved, in the attempt to recognize (wiedererkennen) phenomenal “facts”, even though these present themselves in their incompleteness.

The issue about realism along with that concerning the concept of world are tightly connected with the constitution system: the concept of reality, thought, and the conceptualization this undergoes deal with kennen(to know or experience something), than is with an interconnection of concepts and judgements concerning the conception of psychophysical parallelism as well, namely the issue about this is understood in its problematic character with reference to the essence of knowing. With this in mind, it all comes down to outline a possible confrontation between a scientific perspective and that of Allwörter, namely universals, which in Carnap’s account is extra-scientific and yet proves crucial especially on the pre-categorial level.

Most formulations of wide use in the inhaltliche Redeweisedepend on the use of universal terms. Universal words very easily lead to pseudoproblems (…). For instance, philosophers from antiquity to the present have connected with the universal term “number” deep researches and disputes (…). And similarly, numerous pseudoproblems have been posed with regard to the nature of space and time; and this not only by speculative metaphysicians (up to the present time), but by some philosophers (amongst whom Kant) as well, one whose knowledge-theoretical stances were manifestly directed toward empirical science (…). We may recall the large amount of merely apparent questions and speculations about the nature of both physical and psychical reality. And Scheinfragenabout relations and properties, and with them the entire controversy about universals rest upon the seduction of Allwörter. All pseudoproblems of this kind fade away when we use the formal, instead of the content mode of expression, and thus use in the formulations of problems instead of universals term as (“number”, “space”, “universal”), syntactic words corresponding to those (“numerical expression”, “spatial coordinate”, “predicate”) (Logische Syntax der Sprache, 415–416).

In Carnap’s analysis the problem of depiction  <  or substitution  >  (Stellvertretung), referring to judgements about the structure of facts and as such confronts them not so much regarding contents as structural relationships, and appears to solve Russell’s issues about knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description in terms that permit to avoid that distinction and that only refer to the issue about judgement and reality.

And in this respect, through Carnap’s analysis of experience and external reality we open up new philosophical horizons for discussion about scientific positivism.