Quasianalytic Individuation: Carnap's Aufbau as against Weylean Skepticism

Iulian Toader (Bucharest) gives a talk at the MCMP workshop "Influences on the Aufbau" (1-3 July, 2013) titled "Quasianalytic Individuation: Carnap's Aufbau as against Weylean Skepticism". Abstract: Carnap maintained that, unlike mathematics, the empirical sciences must individuate their ob- jects, and that they can (and should) do so via univocal systems of structural definite descriptions. In this paper, I evaluate Carnap's strategies for univocality, against the Southwest German neo-Kantian demand for a “logic of individuality”, but also against the challenge of Weylean skepticism – the view that objec- tivity and understanding are opposite ideals of science.