Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
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W03.1: Similarity after Carnap - Perspectives from Philosophy and Cognitive Science Location: 23.21 U1.75 In his Aufbau programme, Carnap sought to provide a formally rigorous account of how property concepts—and ultimately scientific theories—can be constructed on the basis of similarity, particularly through a procedure he called quasi-analysis. Goodman famously challenged the viability of this method, later even claiming that the appeal to similarity is inherently problematic. This workshop aims to bring together scholars from both philosophical and psychological traditions to debate the role of similarity in constituting categorization, analogical reasoning, and belief systems—and to explore the continuing relevance of Carnap’s work in this debate. | |
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Structuring Qualities: From Carnap's Quasi-analysis to Quality Space Theory Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany This talk explores the connection between the account of qualities set out by Rudolf Carnap’s phenomenalist constitution system, as presented in The Logical Structure of the World and contemporary quality space theory (QST) as advocated by Clark and Rosenthal. Both frameworks assume that qualities can be characterized in terms of similarity relations: Carnap proposes that equivalence classes of elementary experiences, grouped by recollected resemblance, provide the basis for reconstructing qualities. QST, on the other hand, models qualities as locations in similarity-based quality spaces that are determined by perceptual discrimination in the relevant sensory modality. I argue that, although there is a historical link from Carnap via Goodman to contemporary QST, the differences between the two accounts prevail. This is particularly evident in at least four respects: (1) Carnap considers total experiences, whereas QST considers modalities in isolation; (2) Carnap compares successive experiences, whereas QST compares experiences elicited by simultaneously presented stimuli; (3) Carnap relies on introspection, whereas QST relies on discriminatory behavior that may occur non-consciously; and (4) Carnap treats similarity as fundamental and distinguishability as derived, whereas QST reverses this explanatory direction. | |