The Notion of Objectivity in 19th Century German Philosophy and its Role for the Aufbau

Christian Damböck (Vienna) gives a talk at the MCMP workshop "Influences on the Aufbau" (1-3 July, 2013) titled "The Notion of Objectivity in 19th Century German Philosophy and its Role for the Aufbau". Abstract: This paper compares Carnap’s empiricist and objectivist conception from the Aufbau with a certain family of accounts of the empirical and objectivity that had been emerged in 19th Century Ger- many. Although these accounts were marginalized at the beginning of the 20th Century there were traces of this German empiricist (and objectivist) tradition to be found both in the philosophy of the Dilthey- school and in neo-Kantianism. Therefore, we try to argue first that Dilthey and the neo-Kantians (or at least some of them) have been sympathetic to a certain kind of empiricist and objectivist reasoning, and second that Carnap’s own empiricist and objectivist conception most probably has been influenced by these German empiricists (and objectivists).