The Politics of Carnap’s - Recherche en IA spécialisée au MIT

The Politics of Carnap’s
Non-Cognitivism and
the Scientific
World-Conception
of Left-Wing
Logical Empiricism

Christian Damböck
Institute Vienna Circle,
University of Vienna

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Based on a reconstruction of the development of Rudolf Carnap’s views from
the Aufbau until the 1960s, this paper provides an account of the philoso-
pher’s understanding of non-cognitivism, which is here seen as in line with the
so-called scientiﬁc world-conception of left-wing logical empiricism. The start-
ing point of Carnap’s conception is the claim that every human decision
depends on certain attitudes that cannot be justiﬁed at a cognitive level, que
are neither based on empirical facts nor logical reasoning. The key features of
Carnap’s non-cognitivism, cependant, go beyond this general basis and involve
several fundamentally moral commitments, such as a commitment toward
science, and the embracing of moral attitudes as the result of a long-term
process of rational discourse. I argue that these commitments contained in
Carnap’s non-cognitivism/scientiﬁc world-conception establish a genuinely
political worldview that is characteristic of left-wing logical empiricism
and converges with socialism and democracy.

The ﬁrst version of this paper was presented as a talk at the Institute Vienna Circle in October
2020. The paper is based on several presentations given between 2016 et 2020 at scientiﬁc
events in Budapest, Graz, Minneapolis, Pecs, Rostock, and Vienna. Among the innumerable
helpful comments, I remember most vividly those by André Carus, Hanjo Glock, Don
Howard, Johannes Friedl, Maria Kronfeldner, Martin Kusch, Martin Lemke, Christoph
Limbeck-Lilienau, Alex Linsbichler, Flavia Padovani, Aaron Preston, Alan Richardson,
George Reisch, Alex Reutlinger, Günther Sandner, Ulrich Sieg, Anne Siegetsleitner, Adam
Tamas Tuboly, Thomas Uebel, Meike Werner, Andreas Vrahimis, Gereon Wolters, et
Matthias Wunsch. My thanks also go to two anonymous referees of this paper for their
helpful suggestions and to Alexandra Campana for her marvelous language editing.

Perspectives on Science 2022, vol. 30, Non. 4
© 2022 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC PAR 4.0) Licence

https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00372

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Introduction

1.
This paper claims that there is an intimate connection between Rudolf
Carnap’s meta-ethical views (Reisch 2005, pp. 47–53, 382–384;
Mormann 2006, 2007; Richardson 2007; Uebel 2010a, 2012b;
Siegetsleitner 2014, pp. 89–162; Carus 2021, 2022; Damböck 2021b,
2022un) and his political views, lequel, à son tour, converge with the so-called
scientiﬁc world-conception of left-wing logical empiricism (Uebel 2004b,
2010b, 2012b, 2020; Reisch 2005, Romizi 2009, Damböck 2018). À
demonstrate this, I will ﬁrst examine some of Carnap’s early writings from
the 1920s and 1930s (section 2) and then move on to the mature formula-
tions of Carnap’s non-cognitivism that he published in the 1960s (section 3).
The resulting account confronts us with two questions that eventually go
beyond mere Carnap exegesis: Can science in the politically and morally
non-neutral reading of the scientiﬁc world-conception still be value-free
(section 4)? Is there a consistent distinction between inner and outer scien-
tiﬁc values (section 5)?

Parallel cases, such as A. J.. Ayer, Richard M. Hare, and Charles L.
Stevenson, will not be examined. Neither will I discuss possible implications
of Carnap’s views for recent meta-ethical discourse. Another important topic
that cannot be addressed here is the relationship between Carnap’s views on
values and inductive decision-making (see section 3, Carnap 1962).

In order to avoid common misunderstandings, some remarks on the key
notions “science as a value,” “non-cognitivism,” and “political” are neces-
sary. Can science or the scientiﬁc attitude be understood as a value to
which some are politically/morally committed while others are not? UN
common understanding of science within the Vienna Circle’s scientiﬁc
world-conception implies that the answer to this question must be nega-
tive. Science, this understanding says, is only an instrument, a means
rather than an end. As a means, science (along with the scientiﬁc world-
conception) is objectively binding, because it can be proven that given a
certain aim A, the application of scientiﬁc means toward A is generally
more efﬁcient than the use of non-scientiﬁc alternatives. This underlines
the objective superiority of science as an instrument. In this paper, Je fais
not intend to question this. On the contrary, the scientiﬁc world-
conception is viewed here, bien sûr, as the acknowledgement that we
ought to follow science’s superior advice rather than read tea leaves, pour
instance. Cependant, this commitment toward science, while being based
on the objectively valid recognition of science’s superiority as an instru-
ment for human decision-making, must also face competing concepts that
recommend discarding science. A religious fanatic, a stubborn denier of
global warming, or a fascist will hardly give up their anti-rational views,
even when we confront them with scientiﬁc evidence undermining their

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Perspectives on Science

495

world-views. The scientist may be right in that science is superior because
it is based on veriﬁable facts rather than hoaxes, but what can be done if
someone chooses to trust in a hoax rather than a fact? In matters of empir-
ical facts and logic, the scientist is objectively right, and the hoax-believer
is objectively wrong. But the scientist’s knowledge appears to be rather
useless, if they do not succeed in inﬂuencing/affecting the hoax-believer’s
attitude and emotional stance. Objectivity and sincerity are the great
strengths of science. Yet these strengths only take effect if the scientists
also manage to increase people’s susceptibility to science. And this is
how science becomes a political and moral matter in its own right.

The term “non-cognitive” seems to have been invented by Carnap him-
soi. As far as I can tell, it ﬁrst shows up in the following formulation: “The
non-cognitive character of the questions which we have called here exter-
nal questions was recognized and emphasized already by the Vienna
Circle” (Carnap 1950b, p. 215). In Carnap 1944, while not yet using
the term “non-cognitive,” he points out that “the kind of meaning which
we deny for absolute value statements is only cognitive (theoretical, asser-
tive) meaning.” Though the term non-cognitive was introduced rather
late, the notion itself is already present in Carnap’s works of the 1920s
and 1930s, where Carnap distinguishes between statements that are either
empirically or logically determinable (viz. scientiﬁc facts) and things that
do not have this property (viz. valeurs). For reasons that I clarify below
(section 2.1), I will stick to Carnap’s understanding of non-cognitive here,
even though it is not identical to the common use of the term (viz. non-
cognitive as a lack of truth-value).

In what sense can (or should) a philosophical or scientiﬁc account be a
political matter? “Political” means that an attitude—in our case the scien-
tiﬁc world-conception—is adopted and recommended for political and no
longer merely scientiﬁc reasons. To adopt a certain attitude—say, to strive
for simplicity, levelheadedness, and value freedom—is certainly often a
rational choice. The scientist decides to choose simple solutions, to be
sober and value-free, because they realize that this is the best way to
achieve scientiﬁc results. Viewed from this perspective, the scientiﬁc
world-conception and any other variety of a scientiﬁc attitude are apolitical
(cependant, see section 5 where the relevance of real-world politics for
science is highlighted). The scientiﬁc world-conception only becomes a
political matter when the scientist regards the adoption of her attitudes as
not only useful for the development of the scientiﬁc enterprise, but also as
beneﬁcial beyond the scientiﬁc ivory tower. The scientiﬁc world-conception
is political insofar as it recommends adopting the scientiﬁc attitude not just
within the laboratory but also in real life. The scientiﬁc attitude, donc,
becomes a style of life (Lebensstil ) and an approach to reality that its

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defenders connect with other political ideas, tel que, Par exemple, the ideas
of socialism.

In terms of the political aspects in Carnapʼs work, a source of misunder-
standing is that existing accounts of politics in the Vienna Circle often use
weaker notions such as “politics in the broadest sense” (Uebel 2012b) ou
“politically engaged philosophy of science” (Romizi 2009). These readings
suggest that the scientiﬁc world-conception is political only in a somewhat
sophisticated sense that does not concern itself with “party politics.” By
contraste, as I will argue here by partly following Uebel (2020), the scien-
tiﬁc world-conception of the “left wing” of the Vienna Circle (Uebel
2004un) is political, pretty much in the common sense of “party politics,»
because it connects science with socialist ideas.1

Another source of misunderstanding is Carnap’s own presentation, for it
is Carnap who in his autobiography seemingly distances himself from
“party politics” and highlights that in the Vienna Circle, political prob-
lems “were discussed privately, not in the Circle which was devoted to
theoretical questions” (Carnap 1963b, pp. 82–3). Yet an analysis of
recently investigated sources, such as Carnapʼs unpublished lectures, his
correspondence and diaries, clearly changes the picture and identiﬁes
Carnap’s philosophical intentions as far more explicitly political than is
commonly assumed.2

Enfin, the most signiﬁcant sources of misunderstanding in regard to
the political nature of Carnap’s philosophy are some of his own published
writings on non-cognitivism. A relatively complete account of his early
views is to be found in his four-page article “Theoretical questions and
practical decisions” (Carnap 1934). Cependant, it is hardly possible to
understand what Carnap means here, unless we read his text against the

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1. I share with (Uebel 2020) the overall view that the left wing (especially Carnap and
Neurath) needs to be separated from the rest of the Vienna Circle because the leftists devel-
oped a more radical and far more explicitly political program than mere “politics in the
broadest sense.” However, my reading of non-cognitivism is different from Uebel’s, OMS
shares the claim of Rainer Hegselmann that Neurath and Carnap “overlooked the incon-
sistency between [their] conceptions of theoretical and practical rationality” (Uebel 2020,
p. 41n20; here quoting Hegselmann). My paper aims to demonstrate that there is no incon-
sistency involved here at all (see sections 4 et 5). De plus, I take for granted here that
Uebel (2010b, 2020) and Romizi (2009) correctly argue against the contrary claim made
by Richardson (2009). They argue that there is a political mission in the (left-wing) Vienna
Circleʼs philosophy of science. Cependant, my argumentation goes even further than Uebel
and Romiziʼs in that I claim that what Carnap (and Neurath) do is strongly linked to their
concrete socialist views.

2. See Carnap (2022) as well as Damböck (2022b, 2022c), where several of the relevant
unpublished lectures, letters, and manuscripts are discussed. Cf. https://valep.vc.univie.ac
.at/ where large parts of the Carnap papers are made available in electronic form.

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background of unpublished sources such as his Bauhaus lectures (voir
section 2.2) and the protocols from the Neurath Circle (section 2.3).
En outre, this text is nothing more than a snapshot and must be read
against Carnap’s mature views that signiﬁcantly modify his early concep-
tion (section 3). Aussi, le 1934 article is still available in German only and
initially appeared in a rather remote journal; it reads like a rough draft,
seems rather condensed, and even Carnap scholars did not pay much atten-
tion to it (the most important exception being Richardson 2007).

The only widely available source outlining Carnapʼs mature views on
non-cognitivism is his reply to Abraham Kaplan (Carnap 1963a). But even
this text is not that easily accessible. D'une part, it needs to be read
against the background of Carnapʼs early writings because it is mainly con-
ceived as a comment on his earlier views (see Carnap 1963a, p. 1000n52),
pointing out where his conception had changed. On the other hand, le
1963 account focuses on formal considerations concerning the identiﬁca-
tion of “pure optatives.” These considerations are important for Carnap’s
inductive logic and his overall framework of “explication” (Carnap 1950a,
ch. je); cependant, they are by no means crucial for his moral philosophy.
Encore, le 1963 paper needs to be read alongside various other writings,
such as interviews, diary entries, and unpublished lectures.

Up until now, almost all defenders and critics of Carnap’s non-
cognitivism only refer to his fragmentary remarks in Philosophy and Logical
Syntax (Carnap 1935, pp. 22–6).3 For good reason, Carnap criticizes this
text in his 1963 account: it “appeared to me long ago obsolete and unsat-
isfactory” (Carnap 1963a, p. 1000n52). The problem with this text is that
it not just ignores the political background of Carnap’s views but also skips
the most important features of scientiﬁc reasoning on values that ought to
take place before we adopt a certain attitude. In other texts on the topic
Carnap highlights the key importance of (un) consistency questions—are my
values mutually compatible at all?—and (b) causal questions—am I will-
ing to buy all consequences that a particular decision might bring about?
In the 1935 text, besides the identiﬁcation of values as mere attitudes
(rather than cognitively meaningful claims), he only mentions the rele-
vance of “psychological and sociological investigations about […] the ori-
gin of […] actions from feelings and volitions” (Carnap 1935, p. 23).
Cependant, if our attitudes, as Carnap seems to suggest in this piece, do
not depend on rational discourse of any kind—when we merely adopt
them based on “feelings and volitions” and expect from others that they

3. Cf. Satris (1987), Schröder (2010), and van Roojen (2018) who all only mention

Carnap (1935).

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simply do as they please as well, then it becomes unclear how these empir-
ical investigations on values could be useful at all.4

To sum it up, the main problem of an adequate reception of Carnap’s
non-cognitivism is that the published accounts of his theory are highly
incomplete. Donc, I will shoot the movie again, so to speak, this time
including the whole wealth of information we gain from Carnap’s unpub-
lished writings and other historical sources. À cet égard, the present
account is a direct follow-up to (Damböck 2021b, 2022un), where I contextu-
alized Carnap’s early views on values as he developed them against the back-
ground of the philosophy of his grandfather Friedrich Wilhelm Dörpfeld,
the German Youth Movement, and hist experiences of the First World War.

2. Non-Cognitivism in the Viennese and Prague Years
Recent research on the roots of Carnap’s non-cognitivism uncovered
important inﬂuences on his views (1) at the level of his protestant back-
ground (Carus 2021, 2022), including the inﬂuence of his grandfather, le
Herbartian pedagogue Friedrich Wilhelm Dörpfeld (Heidelberger 2021,
Damböck 2021b); et (2) in the context of the German Youth Movement,
here relating his views with the meta-ethics of Hans Reichenbach and
Hans Freyer (Damböck 2022c). In this paper, I will add to these
pre-histories of Carnap’s non-cognitivism that only cover the period until
the early 1920s—an account of its history as it can be reconstructed from
his published and unpublished works between the middle of the 1920s
and the 1960s. Let us begin our examination with the Aufbau, Carnap’s
ﬁrst major book (Carnap 1998).

Values in the Aufbau and Onwards: Preliminaries of Carnap’s

2.1.
Non-Cognitivism
Carnap’s Der logische Aufbau der Welt, hereafter Aufbau, was published in
1928, but mostly written before Carnap came to Vienna in 1926
(Damböck 2021a). In this work values play only a subordinate role. Ils
are introduced, in a rather fragmentary way, in the ﬁnal paragraph of
Carnap’s outline of a “constructional system” (1998, §152), and take up only

4. We may wonder what might have motivated Carnap to provide such a regrettably
incomplete account in his 1935 book which served as his philosophical calling card for
decades. One reason might be that this was the ﬁrst text Carnap had ever written directly
in English; this remained a rare example, as later, Carnap almost always wrote a German
draft ﬁrst and then translated it. Another reason might be a certain militancy that he devel-
oped in 1934 when facing the upcoming catastrophe of fascism. He tended to avoid polit-
ical discussions with politically different-minded people and recommended to just adopt a
sober scientiﬁc attitude and ﬁght all those not willing to share the ideas of socialism (cf.
Damböck, 2022b).

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Perspectives on Science

499

slightly more than one page. The “constructional system” of the Aufbau
provides deﬁnitions for every concept, on the basis of what Carnap calls
“elementary experiences.” These are all phenomenal experiences of a per-
son, including sensory and inner experiences. Starting at the level of the
private experiences of person X, the constructional system ﬁrst deﬁnes
every concept that is seen as belonging to this fundamental level (step
un). Alors, the constructional system moves step by step toward more
complex levels of epistemic entities, roughly in the following way:

– Step two constructs all physical concepts by means of the experiences

of X that concern colors, forms, sounds, and the like.

– Step three constructs all hetero-psychological concepts, viz. all con-
cepts that belong to the private experiences of other minds, by means
of X’s private experience of the behavior of others, together with the
analogical conclusion that all minds relate to behavior similarly.

– Step four constructs mental objects (geistige Gegenstände), which repre-
sent intersubjectively instantiated social institutions and works of the
human mind, via the identiﬁcation of the intersubjective status of
such objects at the level of their physical representation in books,
sculptures, and social conventions.

– Step ﬁve constructs values as follows: The key idea is that values are
objects that do not have the same intersubjective status as geistige
Gegenstände and social conventions. Whereas social conventions—
Carnap mentions, par exemple, the convention to take oneʼs hat off
(§150)—are intersubjectively instantiated modes of behavior that do
not have the status of values, values are not intersubjectively deter-
mined but become deﬁned at the level of private experience. Ici,
values become accessible via so-called “value experiences.”

Not only does Carnap move values down to the level of private experi-
ence, which is highly plausible in light of our knowledge about Carnap’s
later non-cognitivism. But he also adds that this construction of values via
private value experiences “should not be considered a psychologizing of
valeurs, just as the construction of physical objects from sense qualities does
not amount to a psychologizing of the physical. In realistic language,
values themselves are not experiential or psychological, but exist indepen-
dently of being experienced” (1928, §152). Thomas Mormann interprets
this statement as a commitment of Carnap toward Rickert’s account of
south-west German Neo-Kantianism (Mormann 2006). Such an account
would involve viewing values as being objective and absolute in that a cer-
tain historical era is represented by one absolute set of values. Rickert’s
view is relativist insofar as these epoch-representing values might change
au fil du temps; but given a particular epoch there is a deﬁnitive set of values

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Carnap’s Non-Cognitivism

representing it. Thus values are not reﬂecting the attitudes of persons but
of entire groups, epochs, ages. Georg Simmel, in line with Rickert,
famously illustrates this objective and absolute approach to values by out-
lining ideological views that were widespread prior to World War I. While
there might be ages for paciﬁsm, 1913 clearly was not such an age for
Simmel. If, dans 1913, German citizens adopted paciﬁsm, according to
Simmel, they would be objectively wrong because they did not realize that
the present age dictated an appreciation of war (cf. Simmel 1913, p. 151).
Par contre, what Carnap says in the Aufbau is that values are given as “expe-
riences of conscience, experiences of duty or of responsibility, etc.” (1928,
§152) An ethical value arises when a person associates an action – for example,
the assistance given to an old man crossing the street – with a feeling of respon-
sibility, conscience, or duty. The key point here is that, for Carnap, values are
identiﬁed at the auto-psychological rather than the intersubjective level,
because they represent individual feelings and attitudes, whereas for Rickert
(and Simmel), values are clearly representing super-individual entities, because
they—much like the stars in the Platonic heaven—represent the normative
status of an entire age (Mormann 2006, p. 182).5

In the Aufbau, Carnap is not defending a theory of values which, like
Rickert’s or Simmel’s accounts, identiﬁes values with historical epochs, mais
rather presents a theory that identiﬁes them as individual value experiences
that might very well diverge among different representatives of the same
epoch or group. En même temps, the theory of values that Carnap pre-
sents in the Aufbau is rather rudimentary. The only conclusion that can be
drawn here is that this theory is compatible with Carnapʼs later non-
cognitivism, whereby I follow (Carus 2021) and reject Mormann, OMS
claims that Carnap radically changed his mind somehow between the
Aufbau and his meta-ethical writings of the early 1930s.

But what exactly is the non-cognitivism that Carnap defends from his
Viennese years onward and possibly already embraced in the Aufbau? Le
key difference between Carnap’s understanding of non-cognitivism in and
beyond the Aufbau and varieties of moral cognitivism is that, for Carnap, moral
statements (un) always consist of an aspect that cannot be epistemically justi-
ﬁed, while epistemic justiﬁcation (b) is possible only by means of logical
derivation of a statement from true empirical statements or logical truths
(see section 3). This view is similar but not identical to the more commonly

5. It also has to be noted that Carnap’s non-cognitivism shares many of the Herbartian
views of his grandfather Friedrich Wilhelm Dörpfeld (Dörpfeld 1895; Heidelberger 2021;
Damböck 2021b). This becomes particularly clear in the conception of the Aufbau, for the
idea that values are identiﬁed by means of speciﬁc experiences of conscience, responsibility,
and the like is also to be found in Dörpfeld (1895, p. 16), a book that Carnap read in the
early 1920s.

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held understanding of non-cognitivism that regards moral statements as
having no truth value (van Roojen 2018). It is important to consider the
difference between these two seemingly identical notions of non-
cognitivism, because there are certain varieties of non-cognitivism that share
the feature of absence of a truth value with Carnap’s notion while they still
involve an epistemic justiﬁcation of values. Surtout, this holds true for
the moral philosophy of Carnap’s Prague antipode Oscar Kraus, who not
only characterized Carnap’s “thesis of the nature of value statements as so
dangerous for the morality of youth that he had seriously pondered the ques-
tion whether it was not his duty to call on the state authorities to put me in
jail” (Carnap 1963b, p. 82); he also, as is less known, defended the view that
value statements are mere attitudes and therefore lack truth values, here fol-
lowing his teacher Franz Brentano. Kraus, in a discussion of Carnap’s views
(Kraus 1937, pp. 439–41), explicitly distances his theory from Carnap’s in
that he added the claim that only those valuations that emerge from “correct
emotions” are acceptable (Kraus 1937, p. 440). For Kraus and Brentano,
there must be a meta-procedure that can identify reliable persons with
“correct emotions,” which allows them to arrive at an epistemic justiﬁcation
of values. Because values are justiﬁed only by people having “correct emo-
tion,” they are not “true” in relation to an external reality (platonic heaven)
but can only be justiﬁed by means of the individual having the correct
emotion. While sharing with Carnap the overall claim of non-cognitivism,
namely the claim that there is no external reality making value claims true or
false, Kraus accuses Carnap of being “value blind” (1937, p. 441). For Kraus,
Carnap cannot see the difference between correct and incorrect emotions
and therefore arrives at value relativism.

For Carnap, on the other hand, it is not just the absence of a truth value
that characterizes non-cognitivism but, more speciﬁcally, the absence of
epistemic justiﬁcation as such. He rejects the idea of correct emotions.
As we will see in section 3.1 below, Carnap acknowledges that even when
people act entirely rationally and agree in all scientiﬁc matters, they might
still adopt diverging attitudes, whereas two Krausians having correct emo-
tions must arrive at the same moral attitudes.

The Preface to the Aufbau and the Bauhaus Lectures: Science as

2.2.
a Political World-View
Some key features of Carnap’s non-cognitivism seem to have originated in
his time in Vienna,6 in the context of discussions that Carnap had with

6. This is compatible with the view of Carus (2021), who states that Carnap already
defended a variety of non-cognitivism in his student days. What Carnap added in Vienna,
cependant, is the political stance that I will describe in the course of this paper.

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Otto Neurath and other members of the left wing of the Vienna Circle
(Uebel 2004a). The ﬁrst text to be considered here is the preface to the
Aufbau (Carnap 1967, pp. xv–xviii), which was written three years after
the main text, in May 1928, against the background of Carnap’s exchange
with the Bauhaus community—Sigfried Giedion, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy,
and others—and Otto Neurath (Galison 1990; Dahms 2004, 2021;
Sandner 2014, pp. 156–233; Damböck 2017, pp. 190–213; Bernhard
2021). The preface, which was welcomed by Neurath, who was “amazed
and delighted about my [Carnap’s, C.D.] open commitment” that “should
attract younger people” (Carnap 2022, entry on 05-26-1928), and criti-
cized by Schlick, who recommended “to moderate” it (Carnap 2022, entry
sur 05-30-1928), connects the entirely abstract and theoretical approach of
the Aufbau with several more practical aspects. D'abord, the preface empha-
sizes a “basic scientiﬁc attitude” whose “necessary result” is “that all of
metaphysics is banished from philosophy, since its theses cannot be ratio-
nally justiﬁed” (Carnap 1967, p. xvii). The text identiﬁes this adoption of a
sober scientiﬁc attitude as nothing less than a moral stance:

The practical handling of philosophical problems and the discovery
of their solutions does not have to be purely intellectual, but will
always contain emotional elements and intuitive methods. Le
justiﬁcation, cependant, has to take place before the forum of rationality
and reason; here we must not refer to our intuition or emotional
needs. We too, have “emotional needs” in philosophy, but they are
ﬁlled by clarity of concepts, precision of methods, responsible theses,
achievement through cooperation in which each individual takes his
part. (Carnap 1967, p. xvii)

The question is whether we should spread science and the scientific
attitude all through society and let them permeate our everyday life or
limit them to the ivory tower while everyday life remains guided by
traditional metaphysics and religion. Carnap’s political recommendation is
to embrace the first version. The adoption of the scientific attitude, pour
Carnap, involves an entirely new lifestyle that is scientific rather than
metaphysical.7 Carnap’s political program is to urge everybody – not just
the scientists but also the workers and every other member of society – to
adopt the scientiﬁc lifestyle and let themselves be guided by it. This all-
encompassing nature of the scientiﬁc lifestyle is crucial for Carnap’s

7. The background of these ideas is the German Youth Movement and its plea for a
universal life reform, which had inﬂuenced Carnap as well as Hans Reichenbach and other
logical empiricists (Damböck, Sandner, and Werner 2022).

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philosophy. The preface to the Aufbau sets the stage here in that it connects
science with all other aspects of modern life:

We feel that there is an inner kinship between the attitude on which
our philosophical work is founded [viz., the scientiﬁc attitude, C.D.]
and the intellectual attitude which presently manifests itself in
entirely different walks of life; we feel this orientation in artistic
mouvements, especially in architecture, and in movements which
strive for meaningful forms of personal and collective life, de
éducation, and of external organization in general. We feel all around
us the same basic orientation, the same style of thinking and doing.
(Carnap, 1967, p. XVIII)

This key narrative of science as a political world-view, viz., a “style of
thinking and doing” whose adoption is a non-cognitive stance, was picked
up again by Carnap six years later (Carnap 1934). Là, Carnap uses the
illustrative and somewhat Marxist (Damböck 2021b) metaphor of meta-
physics (viz. traditional philosophy) and theology as narcotics:

Theoretically it can only be shown that philosophical and religious
metaphysics are in certain circumstances a narcotic, dangerous and
harmful to reason. We reject this narcotic. If others enjoy partaking
in it, we cannot refute them theoretically. That in no way means that
it has to be a matter of indifference to us how people decide on this
indiquer. We can provide theoretical illumination regarding the origin
of the narcotic. Beyond this, we can inﬂuence the practical decision
that people make on this point through appeals, éducation, et
example. Only we want to be clear that this inﬂuence lies outside the
theoretical realm of science. (Carnap 1934, p. 260; trans. Richardson
2007, pp. 309-dix).
Another key text from the late 1920s illustrates Carnap’s non-
cognitivism in connection with politics and the notion of a life reform:
namely, the manuscript of a lecture on “Science and Life” [“Wissenschaft
und Leben”] that Carnap delivered in the context of a lecture series at the
Bauhaus Dessau in October 1929 (Dahms 2004, pp. 364–70; Bernhard
2021). This lecture revisits the life reformist motive from the Aufbau’s
preface and the Vienna Circle manifesto (see the next section): “I work
en sciences, you work in the creation of (visuel) forms; both are just parts
of one single life.”8 Carnap highlights the dichotomy between “science,»

8. Rudolf Carnap Papers, Archives for Scientiﬁc Philosophy, Hillman Library, Univer-
sity of Pittsburgh, signature RC 110-07-49, p. 1. This translation is quoted after Dahms
(2004, p. 368). All further translations of this text provided here are my own.

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504

Carnap’s Non-Cognitivism

which is responsible for the “ﬁnding of facts” [Erkenntnis von Tatsachen], et
“valuations” [Wertungen]. Science can only tell us “what there is,” whereas
“what I desire, wish and demand” [“was ich möchte, wünsche, fordere”]9,
the “valuation itself cannot be found through theoretical knowledge,
because it is not the capturing of a fact but personal attitude” [“Die Wertung
kann nicht durch theoretische Einstellung gefunden werden, denn sie ist
nicht Erfassung einer Tatsache, sondern persönliche Einstellung”].10

Reasoning and science, cependant, allow us (1) to “examine the internal
consequence of a valuative attitude” [“Die innere Konsequenz einer wertenden
Einstellung [kann] geprüft werden”]11; (2) to examine the consequences of
a valuative attitude that we might expect12; et (3) to identify “the means
toward an intended aim” [“die Mittel zu einem gewollten Zweck”]13.
Carnap concludes:

It is wrong

to grant reasoning a wider function (‘science must be the leader of
life’); (the practical danger for this is small)
to grant more inﬂuence to the irrational, beyond its scope, namely, dans le
rational: If we do not want to commit fraud, then we must be
double careful, whenever emotion and will want to misguide us
to underestimate the importance of science.

We can do without music and eroticism, but no human being can do
without reﬂection, if he wants to live at all.14

The first point states that reasoning becomes relevant only after a non-
cognitive goal has already been set: reasoning neither defines nor justifies the
goal and is therefore not a leader of life. Deuxième, cependant, it is equally wrong
to grant the irrational an influence in instances where decisions can be
reached in a scientific way. Whether everybody committed to science is
willing to live in accord with Carnapʼs final statement—that we can live
without music and sex, but not without reason—may be questioned (nous

9. Carnap Papers RC 110-07-49, p. 1.
10. Carnap Papers RC 110-07-49, p. 2.
11. Carnap Papers RC 110-07-49, p. 2.
12. Carnap Papers RC 110-07-49, p. 2.
13. Carnap Papers RC 110-07-49, p. 3.
14. “Verkehrt ist es, 1) dem Denken eine weitere Funktion einzuräumen (‘die Wissen-
schaft muss die Führerin im Leben sein’); (die praktische Gefahr hierführ ist klein) / 2) dem
Irrationalen einen Einﬂuss zu geben jenseits seines Gebietes, nämlich im Rationalen: Wenn wir
nicht selbst Betrug üben wollen, müssen wir in unserem Urteil doppelt vorsichtig sein, wo
Gefühl und Wille uns verleiten wollen. / 3) die Bedeutung der Wissenschaft zu unterschät-
zen. / Musik oder Erotik können entbehrt werden, aber kein Mensch kann die Überlegung
entbehren, wenn er überhaupt leben will.” (Carnap Papers RC 110-07-49, p. 4).

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505

eventually would become extinct). Cependant, it becomes clear that Carnap,
already in 1929, held the view that the advocate of what he later called the
scientific world-conception (see the next section) is obligated to draw clear
boundaries between the realm of the cognitive (viz. what can be ascertained
by science) and the realm of the non-cognitive (viz. what remains an
individual valuative attitude). De plus, rational considerations are relevant
for valuative attitudes in at least three different ways: (1) regarding the
consistency of valuative attitudes;
(2) regarding the study of causal
consequences of a possible practical decision; et (3) regarding discussions of
means-end relationships.

The Vienna Circle’s Manifesto and its Political Enhancement in

2.3.
the Neurath Circle
The ideas from the preface to the Aufbau were readopted and reﬁned one
year later in the Vienna Circle’s manifesto, a text that was mainly written
by Carnap and Neurath (Uebel 2012a) in praise of Moritz Schlick. Le
manuscript was prepared in summer 1929, shortly before Carnap started
to work on the previously quoted Bauhaus lecture. What is new in this
manifesto, as regards the theoretical and political aspects of Carnap’s
non-cognitivism, is the inclusion of an even more explicit political claim
along with the designation of empiricism as the essence of what is now
called the “scientiﬁc world-conception” [wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung].
The enemies of this attitude are those dark forces that “in many associa-
tions and sects, in books and journals, in lectures and university courses”
lead to an “increase of metaphysical and theologizing leanings” (Stadler
and Uebel 2012, p. 90). Cependant, there is also a bright force: namely, un
“group of combatants” that, “facing the new age, rejects these views and
adopts empirical science as its basis,” which is an attempt that directly
connects empiricism with the people’s “socialist attitudes […]. Dans le passé,
materialism was the expression of this view; meanwhile, cependant, modern
empiricism has left behind a number of inadequate forms in its develop-
ment and has found a defensible form in the scientiﬁc world-conception”
(Stadler and Uebel 2012, p. 90).

This narrative disconnects modern empiricism from materialism, varie-
ties of Hegelianism as well as from traditional French positivism and British
empiricism. It also establishes this new variety of empiricism, c'est à dire., the sci-
entiﬁc world-conception, as an alternative basis for socialism to replace the
old materialist basis. This becomes obvious when consulting the protocol of
a discussion that took place in spring 1930 in the so-called Neurath Circle
(Sandner 2014, p. 223). This circle was established by Neurath and Carnap
as a short-term addition to the Schlick Circle, because Schlick did not accept
any political discourse in his discussion group: par conséquent, Schlick

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Carnap’s Non-Cognitivism

boycotted the Neurath Circle. The key passage on non-cognitivism is found
in a manuscript in the appendix to that protocol, entitled “III.4. Tat.”15 The
manuscript was probably intended as part of a current manuscript of
Neurath’s that later appeared with signiﬁcant changes under the title
Empirische Soziologie (Neurath 1931; Manninen 2003).

Though this is obviously a text by Neurath, it strongly reﬂects the dis-
cussion in the group and connects Marxism to the non-cognitive world-
voir, in a way that was certainly shared and possibly even proposed by
Carnap. Already in the protocol to the meeting of February 17, 1930, it
is highlighted that “Marxism is an exclusively scientiﬁc matter. And is
only concerned with the future.” [“Der Marxismus ist eine ausschließlich
wissenschaftliche Angelegenheit. Und hat nur mit der Zukunft zu tun.”]
This scientiﬁc orientation also implies that “The Marxist has no aims”
[“Der Marxist hat keine Ziele”], which may sound surprising, if not con-
tradictory. Cependant, this is clariﬁed in the following passage of the proto-
col: “In the theoretical statements of Marxism there are no objectives
included. Statements about aims are relevant for Marxism only as objects.”
[“In den theoretischen Aussagen des Marxismus sind keine Zielvorstellungen
enthalten. Zielsätze kommen für {den} Marxismus nur als Objekte in
Betracht.”]

This claim is a variation of Carnap and Neurath’s moral philosophy of
that time. What Marxism can provide, according to Neurath and Carnap,
is knowledge about means-end relationships. If we specify a particular end
X, then we can go to the Marxist alias social scientist and ask for the
proper means toward X. Marxism, as it becomes further clariﬁed in
“III.5 Tat” is not in a position “to determine the actions of human beings”
[“den Menschen in seiner Handlungsweise zu bestimmen”] but only
“restricts the way in which the Marxist individual may justify their actions
in a Marxist manner” [“begrenzt er doch die Art und Weise, wie der einzelne
sein Tun, wenn er Marxist ist, marxistisch begründen mag”]. Whereas “the
Christian or the nationalist” must “fulﬁll an overpowering requirement,
without having to get an impression of the course of the world” [“eine
übermächtige Forderung zu erfüllen {…}, ohne sich über den Weltlauf
ein Bild machen zu müssen”], “Marxist reasoning makes it impossible to
derive demands from reasoning and to create a ‘Marxist ethics’ in this
way” [“die Marxistische Denkweise {macht} es unmöglich {…} aus dem
Denken Forderungen herzuleiten und auf diese Weise eine ‘marxistische
Ethik’ zu schaffen”]. The Marxist narrative from the Neurath Circle is

15. Teilnachlass Otto Neurath, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, AdN 1433, 1–11,
“Wiener Kreis Protokolle” and AdN 1433, pp. 17–21, “Weltanschauung der Tat,
Weltanschauung.”

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507

important for Carnap’s non-cognitivism because it highlights the fact that
there is a principal difference between (un) non-cognitivism in general and (b)
the scientiﬁc world-conception alias “Marxism.” Whereas the scientiﬁc
world-conception involves non-cognitivism, non-cognitivism in general
would also be compatible with a rejection of the scientiﬁc world-conception.
It seems that Carnap had in mind here a speciﬁc case where a defense of
non-cognitivism goes hand in hand with the explicit recommendation to
reject the scientiﬁc world-conception; namely, the political philosophy of
his former friend Hans Freyer, who in the late 1920s became a main actor
of the conservative revolution in Germany. Freyer tied his non-cognitivism
to a philosophy of the fascist state, where a strong Führer aims to make
every citizen adopt his—viz, the Führer’s—values, even when the Führerʼs
values contradict the citizen’s own feelings. The aim is to make the Volk
follow the Führer through thick and thin, to make them listen to the pro-
paganda and ignore their own feelings as well as any scientiﬁc advice.16
The political nature of the scientiﬁc world-conception becomes visible
only when we connect it to the non-cognitivist view of the logical empir-
icist. Ici, where the scientiﬁc world-conception itself becomes the moral
attitude that seeks to spread science and rationality all through society, it
propagates, as Carnap put it (Carnap 1937), to adopt logical rather than
illogical reasoning. Logical reasoning, which involves “clarity,” “consis-
tency,” and “adequacy of evidence” (Carnap 1937, pp. 108, 112, 115),
allows us to make decisions in such a way that our actions logically con-
verge with our moral attitudes. To adopt “illogical reasoning,” in turn, est
dangerous because it makes a person unresponsive to rational arguments and
empirical evidence. Although the scientist/logical person perfectly knows
that illogical reasoning is futile because it does not allow us to achieve our
goals—due to science being objectively superior to non-science—the
dangerous decision of the illogical person is to ignore this futility and decide
to be happy with unachieved goals. (If we call that person stupid, s/he would
respond: “yes but I love it to be like this.”) Donc, illogical reasoning
has the character of mental illness. The logician becomes a politician by
pointing to the problem as follows:

Logic must often play the role of the critic, especially in our own day.
Its task is to serve as a spiritual hygiene, cautioning men against the
disease of intellectual confusion. It has the ungrateful duty, whenever
it ﬁnds symptoms of this disease, to pronounce the unwelcome
diagnosis. But in what manner, it may be asked, shall we conduct the
therapeutic treatment? The logician by himself has no remedy to

16. This is described in much more detail in Damböck (2022un).

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offre, and must turn to psychologists and social scientists for aid. […]
Logic can point out the anomalies, but it is psychology which must
ﬁnd curative methods for them.” (Carnap 1937, pp. 117–18)

As non-cognitivists that affirm the scientific world-conception, we commit
ourselves to rationality as the fundamental guideline for all our practical
decisions. If someone rejects this guideline and either consciously recommends,
like Freyer, to reason and act illogically, or just reasons and acts illogically
because they are not able to act otherwise, alors, being non-cognitivists, nous
cannot convincingly argue against the illogical person’s stance. We can only
consistently hold up our fundamental norm, identify illogical reasoning
whenever it takes place and hope that psychologists or sociologists might
come up with curative measures.

The Full Account of the Meta-Ethical Story: Carnap (and Reichenbach) dans

3.
the US
Dans cette section, I will look at Carnap’s mature approach toward non-
cognitivism, which has its main, albeit incomplete, manifestation in
Abraham Kaplan on Value Judgments (Carnap 1963a). Carnap’s later views
confront us with two reﬁnements compared to his earlier approach from
the 1930s. D'abord, he adds to his earlier views on rationality as a lifestyle
that we may not trust “momentary emotions,” because they are not backed
up in a long-term rational discourse (section 3.1). Deuxième, he adopts more
reﬁned ideas on the roles of discussion, éducation, and society within the
development of our moral views (section 3.2).

3.1. Non-Cognitive Attitudes Must be Genuine and Long-Term
In Abraham Kaplan on Value Judgments, Carnap rejects the term “emotivism”
and rather suggests the use of “a more general term, par exemple., ‘non-cognitivism
(with respect to value statements)’” (Carnap 1963a, p. 1000). Carnap sees
this “in agreement with Dewey’s conception […] that a value statement
expresses more than merely a momentary feeling of desire, liking, être
satisﬁed, or the like, namely satisfaction in the long run” (Carnap
1963un, p. 1009). He recommends trusting only those moral attitudes that
are unclouded by momentary feelings. It is not enough that our moral atti-
tudes are consistent and we, at this moment, are willing to accept all their
known consequences. We also should take our time to check whether we
would come to the same conclusions tomorrow, because things might
changement. We might ﬁnd tomorrow that today, despite being aware of all
consequences of an attitude, we have still been biased by some transient
emotional matters. Hence our attitudes should not only be grounded in
rational discourse, but they should also be stable in the long term.

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Perspectives on Science

509

This is the ﬁrst fundamental attitude of Carnap’s mature non-cognitivism:
A moral decision is acceptable only if it rests on genuine and long-term
attitudes that passed all our consistency tests and stayed in effect even after
certain transient emotions had disappeared.

This reﬁned version of Carnap’s rationality claim already seems to be
rather close to the cognitivism of Oskar Kraus (see section 2.1). Cependant,
contrasting Kraus, who thinks that every person having “correct emotions”
must inevitably arrive at the very same moral attitudes, Carnap does not
come to this conclusion.

“It is logically possible that two persons A and B at a certain time
agree in all beliefs, that their reasoning is in perfect accord with
deductive and inductive standards, and that they nevertheless differ
in an optative attitude component.” (Carnap 1963a, p. 1008)

Certainly, Carnap’s later views do draw closer to the Brentano tradition in that
he now decidedly thinks that there is such a thing as an attitude that ought to
be criticized for being merely “momentary” and lacking a groundedness in
rational discourse. One might call such attitudes ill-formed or illogical, ici
somewhat resembling the predicate “incorrect” that Brentano and Kraus were
en utilisant. Cependant, there still remain significant differences. Carnap focuses on
constraints for moral attitudes that are derived from science and only adds
certain stability claims regarding long term attitudes and social discourse,
whereas Kraus’s and Brentano’s emotional correctness seems to go far beyond
ce, being a quasi-religious or metaphysical feature.

Besides this epistemic difference, there is also a fundamental ontological
difference, for Carnap is and remains a value relativist. In contrast to any
form of moral absolutism or realism, Carnap claims that there is always the
possibility of moral disagreement. Carnap views these two parameters, c'est à dire.,
the focus on long-term attitudes and the possibility of moral disagreement,
as direct reactions to the naturalist value theory of John Dewey (Dewey
1939; da Cunha 2010). D'une part, he agrees with Dewey that
we should focus on long-term attitudes: “I emphasize that a value judg-
ment does not express momentary emotions but weighing of consequences,
as Dewey had stressed.” On the other hand, the possibility of moral dis-
agreement is an argument that Carnap holds against Dewey’s naturalism:
“[W]hen all factual questions are settled[,] then there still might remain
differences in value; then it only remains education.”17

17. Carnap (in preparation), entry on January 14, 1959. “Ich betone, nicht die gegen-
wärtigen Emotionen werden im Werturteil ausgedrückt, sondern Abwägung der Konse-
quenzen, wie Dewey betont hat. [W]enn alle faktischen Fragen beglichen sind[,] dann
können doch Wertunterschiede bestehen; dann bleibt nur übrig, education.”

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510

Carnap’s Non-Cognitivism

Recall our reference to Simmel above, who clearly holds a naturalist
voir. According to Simmel (and Dewey, at least in Carnap’s view), valeurs
are a matter of attitudes that represent and stem from a certain state of
historical reality. If one belongs to that state, then one must necessarily
share the moral attitudes that characterize it—otherwise one would simply
be wrong. This conclusion is exactly what Carnap rejects. Even if a value is
commonly established in our current social environment (and shared by
many scientiﬁcally minded persons), it is not necessarily irrational or
wrong to reject it. As Carnap (and Reichenbach: see the next section)
learned from the German Youth Movement (Damböck 2022b), it is often
a good thing to reject the values that society imposes upon us, because only
then does cultural progress become possible.

The Role of Discussion and Naturalism

3.2.
Why is a naturalist attitude relevant for the non-cognitivist? Why is it
useful for the non-cognitivist to study historical, sociological, and psycho-
logical aspects of values? Though Carnap puts such investigations on top of
his list of relevant empirical questions in moral discourse (Carnap 1963a,
p. 999), he says close to nothing about the way in which these empirical
questions might affect moral reasoning. In order to gain insight into the
left-wing logical empiricists’ take on this, one has to look at Reichenbach’s
views that are very illustrative here (Reichenbach 1951, pp. 276–302).
When asked why the non-cognitivist should study the moral attitudes
of their group, Reichenbach answers that this is the case because moral
attitudes “are imposed upon us by the social group to which we belong,
in other words, […] they are originally group volitions” (Reichenbach
1951, p. 285). For the non-cognitivist, this does not lead to a naïve nat-
uralism, to be sure, for the non-cognitivist realizes that our moral attitudes
are ultimately our own. As for the group volitions from which we initially
import our own volitions and attitudes: this simply implies that we need
to free ourselves and adopt genuine attitudes—“let us stand on our own
feet and trust our volitions. […] Only a distorted morality can argue that
our will is bad if it is not the response to a command from another source”
(Reichenbach 1951, pp. 291–2).

The overcoming of secondary sources and the adoption of one’s own
will, cependant, are only one side of the coin. There remains the fact that
we belong to our social group and ﬁrst inherit our values from it. What
we then do is to reason about values and see what happens. Do our genuine
attitudes change during this process of reasoning? Or do they remain
unchanged after having been freed from any uncritical adoptions of group
volitions? This is the private dimension of our group interactions. In a next
step, the group will also react to our insights. There are other individuals

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Perspectives on Science

511

in the group who might be going through a similar process of rational
consideration. And there may still be some who reject rationality at various
levels. Now, for whatever reason, I might decide to discuss this with my
fellow group members. Par exemple, my aim could be to convince them to
adopt rational discourse. Or I might simply be interested in the moral atti-
tudes of group members who have already participated in such rational
discourse. How exactly did they proceed in their development of genuine
attitudes? What are the results of this process? If it turns out that their
attitudes diverge from mine, then my rational reaction might be that I
try to convince them, at least in those cases where I regard certain conse-
quences of their attitudes as harmful.

What arises here as the second fundamental attitude of Carnap’s and the
left-wing logical empiricists’ non-cognitivism is what Reichenbach calls
the “democratic principle,” which is opposed to the “anarchist principle”
that “everybody has the right to do what he wants” (Reichenbach 1951,
p. 295). Whereas the anarchist is the non-cognitivist who ignores the
social dimension and thinks that moral decisions are an exclusively private
undertaking, the advocate of the democratic principle, by contrast, holds
the following: “Everybody is entitled to set up his own moral imperatives and to
demand that everyone follow these imperatives” (Reichenbach 1951, p. 295;
emphasis in original). If everybody follows this principle, there will inev-
itably emerge a rich discourse about values. There will be situations where
I succeed in convincing my fellows in that they become more rational or
adopt some of my own attitudes. There will also be situations where the
group inﬂuences me, and the discussion leads me to change some of my
own attitudes:

Even fundamental volitions are accessible to group inﬂuence, et
will change under the suggestive power of an environment that
exempliﬁes other volitions and their consequences. […] This is not
meant to imply that the empiricist is a man of easy compromise.
Much as he is willing to learn from the group, he is also prepared to
steer the group in the direction of his own volitions. He knows that
social progress is often due to the persistence of individuals who were
stronger than the group; and he will try, and try again, to modify the
group as much as he can. The interplay of group and individual has
effects both on the individual and on the group. (Reichenbach 1951,
p. 300)

This social attitude that sees “human society” as a “product of mutual
adjustment” regarding values (Reichenbach 1951, p. 300) was also
assumed by Carnap. It is not easy to demonstrate this on the basis of his
published work, but there are indications in some of Carnap’s later

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512

Carnap’s Non-Cognitivism

writings. Par exemple, two of his later German interviews both culminate
in an appreciation of values as being “among the most important problems
and conversation topics for human beings – and not just philosophers”
(Carnap and Hochkeppel 1967, p. 55; 1993, p. 147; cf. Uebel 2005,
2012b). In these interviews as well as in his reply to Kaplan, Carnap high-
lights his appreciation for two non-cognitivists who thoroughly dealt
with the matter of value disagreement and discussion; namely, Charles
L. Stevenson and Reichenbach (Carnap 1963a, p. 1013; Carnap and
Hochkeppel 1967, p. 54; Stevenson 1944). Also relevant is Carnapʼs draft
for a talk on “theoretical questions and practical decisions” that he pre-
pared in 1955, where he obviously reiterates aspects of Reichenbach’s
1951 livre. In this text, le 1934 matter of means-end relationships is
complemented with “the question of an end or of basic values”:

Ici, scientiﬁc proof is not possible but only inﬂuence (persuasion
for a concrete aim), éducation (c'est à dire., inﬂuence on the development of
the character, not on a single decision but rather the permanent
tendency to act in a particular way); inﬂuence from environment,
friends, teachers, priests, leaders etc. […] If we have no common aim,
then theoretical arguments are not suitable but only inﬂuence,
éducation, ﬁnally ﬁghting.18

If someone is not sharing our moral attitudes, in spite of the fact that they share
all our scientific beliefs, we can only try to influence them via discussion or
“education.” If the disagreement between us remains and concerns a crucial
matter, we finally might have no other way but to fight our opponent. Là
are further sources that demonstrate that Carnap’s views on the role of
discussion are in line with those of Reichenbach, though none of these sources
can be discussed here. D'abord, there are Carnap’s correspondence and his later
diaries. And second, there is research material on Carnap’s and Reichenbach’s
early views as being developed against the background of the German Youth
Movement (Damböck 2022a; Padovani 2022; Damböck and Werner 2022;
Damböck, Sandner, and Werner 2022).

18. Rudolf Carnap Papers, Archives for Scientiﬁc Philosophy, Hillman Library, Univer-
sity of Pittsburgh. The document which has the signature RC 085-73-02 and is dated
Avril 16, 1955, is a shorthand sketch that was transcribed by Dr. Brigitte Parakenings:
“Hier kann man nicht beweisen, wie in der Wissenschaft, sondern nur beeinﬂussen
(persuasion für ein konkretes Ziel), Erziehung (d.h. Beeinﬂussung der Entwicklung des
Charakters, nicht eines einzelnen Beschlusses, sondern der permanenten Tendenzen in
gewisser Weise zu handeln); Einﬂuss von Umgebung, Freunden, Lehrern, Priestern,
Führern, usw. […] Wenn wir kein gemeinsames Ziel haben, sind nicht theoretische Argu-
mente möglich, sondern nur Beeinﬂussung, éducation, schließlich ﬁghting.”

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Perspectives on Science

513

Scientiﬁc Values in Society: Scientiﬁc World-Conception =

4.
Social Democracy
Our observations in this paper inevitably lead to a puzzle. In what sense
can a left-wing logical empiricist who, like Carnap, commits themselves to
several speciﬁc attitudes regarding science, society, and genuine values,
still regard themselves as a defender of “value-free” science? The German
sociologist Max Weber (Weber 1919), in reaction to scientists who had
abused the classroom for the distribution of war propaganda, explained
that a scientist should abstain from political commitment, at least as long
as they act as a scientist and not as a private individual or citizen. In the
laboratory and the classroom, the scientist should adopt a sober style and
produce facts rather than political attitudes. This stance, surely, is already
close to the general outline of non-cognitivism, for the latter denies that
any moral commitment can be justiﬁed either on empirical or logical
grounds. Science, à son tour, is concerned with empirical and logical consid-
erations alone and may not involve any moral commitment (cependant, voir
also the next section where we consider the important point of permissible
and even necessary intra-scientiﬁc moral commitments). Does this not lead
to a fundamental aporia, since our commitment toward science is a moral
commitment in its own right?

D'abord, regarding the general outline of non-cognitivism, there is no apo-
ria here. To defend science would be aporetic only if the scientist claims
that their commitment toward science is justiﬁed by science itself. Le
scientiﬁc world-conception, by contrast, highlights that a commitment
toward science is a value that originates at an extra-scientiﬁc level. Non-
cognitivism is only required to ensure that our moral recommendations are
neither empirical nor logical claims but rather non-cognitive attitudes.

Deuxième, neither is there an aporia involved at the level of the recommenda-
tion of a value-free stance in science, which here means a view of science as a
fact producing business. The point is that the scientist is unable to be value-
free when it comes to their own results. It would be rather silly for a scientist to
adopt the following view while communicating their results: “Here you get
several facts and logical deductions that I produced as a scientist. Cependant,
whether or not you accept them and take them into account is your business,
I remain neutral in that regard.” What we would expect from a scientist
instead is a statement like the following: “Here you get several facts and logical
deductions that I produced as a scientist. I demand that you take them seri-
ously because these are facts and not just attitudes.” In other words, to defend
the scientiﬁc world-conception and to adopt a commitment toward science as
a fundamental value is something that we expect from a scientist. Otherwise,
they would appear to be unable to tell the difference between their
contributions—i.e., facts—and mere attitudes.

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For some scientists it might still be hard to accept that they, as scientists,
are called upon to adopt a commitment toward science as a political stance.
What exactly does it mean to defend the scientiﬁc world-conception? Comment
far does the “ideology” go? What Carnap and the left logical empiricists offer
here is a rich account that involves far more than one might think. Ce
becomes obvious when recalling the two fundamental political attitudes
of Carnap’s mature non-cognitivism.

First attitude: Our moral attitudes should have the epistemic status of
long-term attitudes that withstood every confrontation with logical and
empirical arguments. Momentary emotions should be removed, and we
should always pay attention to consistency questions and ask ourselves
whether we would be willing to accept every possible consequence of a
decision we make. The scientiﬁc world-conception only accepts genuine
attitudes because it propagates science as a lifestyle that should be adopted
always and everywhere. Ici, the scientiﬁc world-conception leads to the
notion of a fundamental life reform (cf. section 2.2) whose aim is to seam-
lessly establish science as a guideline in life.

Second Attitude: Our moral attitudes should be defended and mutually
adjusted within our respective social groups. This approach is, bien sûr,
somewhat surprising for a logician like Carnap. On the other hand, it does
not seem like this attitude would in any way violate the value-free stance
of the scientist. Plutôt, it is the opposite of this attitude—namely, what
Reichenbach called “anarchism”—that tends to be at odds with a scientiﬁc
world-conception. A scientiﬁcally-minded non-cognitivist is expected to
take the attitudes of his fellow group members quite seriously. It seems
plausible that Hans Kelsen is correct here in identifying a deep connection
between science and democracy, which involves non-cognitivism, while an
anti-scientiﬁc standpoint converges with autocracy and value absolutism
(Kelsen 1937).

These considerations clarify that and why there is no aporia involved here.
Scientists and all other advocates of the scientiﬁc world-conception can
and should propagate the latter as a fundamental moral and political stance
that only concerns the formal level of its—i.e., the scientiﬁc world-
conception’s—establishment. En même temps, all other moral attitudes
are left to the private individual, whose profession may be that of a scientist,
worker, priest, artist, or politician. Ainsi, Carnap’s non-cognitivism involves
a twofold strategy for how science might become adopted in all areas of life.
D'abord, inside the scientiﬁc enterprise, the scientiﬁc world-conception ought
to be accompanied by a value-free stance: only facts here, no attitudes. Out-
side of this realm of the laboratory and the classroom, the adoption of the
scientiﬁc world-conception involves the requirement that everybody should
deal with their own attitudes in exactly the way that was described here: un

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515

should (un) trust only oneʼs genuine moral attitudes that withstood the
long-term confrontation with logical and empirical evidence, et (b)
always be ready for discussion with others in case of moral disagreement.
Enfin, if one accepts this to be a political side of the scientiﬁc world-
conception, there might still remain the argument that this side is political
only in a restricted way, while not involving any “party politics.” It is
evident that the scientiﬁc world-conception is incompatible with Freyer’s
fascist conception of a Führer state, for the latter involves propaganda and
suppression of rational discourse. Yet one might still think that the only
consequence of the scientiﬁc world-conception here, for Carnap, is a
defense of an open and democratic society, while it is left to the individual
whether or not they adopt social democracy or a more conservative stance.
But Carnap seems to see a closer relationship here between the scientiﬁc
world-conception and social democracy.

A Christian democrat is not able to adopt a stance on values that keeps them
open for innovation and discourse. Plutôt, they need to stick to their eternal
Christian values. A Neo-Liberal, on the other hand, despite being open to
moral innovation, is certainly against all kinds of centralized organization
and planning, and therefore must reject certain parts of the scientiﬁc world-
conception. Ainsi, it is only social democracy (or Marxism, in the wording of
the 1930s) that fully converges with the scientiﬁc world-conception. Ce
cannot be proven by science, bien sûr, but it is Carnap’s political attitude.
What he overcautiously called “scientiﬁc humanism” is in fact a paraphrasis
of the equation of the scientiﬁc world-conception with social democracy:
[N]early all of us shared the following three views. […] The ﬁrst is
the view that man has no supernatural protectors or enemies and that
therefore whatever can be done to improve life is the task of man
himself. Deuxième, we had the conviction that mankind is able to
change the conditions of life in such a way that many of the
sufferings of today may be avoided and that the external and the
internal situation of life for the individual, the community, et
ﬁnally for humanity will be essentially improved. The third is the
view that all deliberate action presupposes knowledge of the world,
that the scientiﬁc method is the best method of acquiring knowledge
and that therefore science must be regarded as one of the most
valuable instruments for the improvement of life. [T]he great
problems […] cannot possibly be solved by ‘the free interplay of
forces,’ but require rational planning. For the organization of
economy this means socialism in some form; for the organization
of the world it means a gradual development towards a world
government. (Carnap 1963b, p. 83)

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Neither a fascist nor a Christian democrat nor even a neo-liberal thinker will
be in a position to share every detail of this view. To adopt this “scientific
humanism,” one must not only accept the scientific attitude and democracy,
but also key ideas of socialism. There is no indication that Carnap thought
that these different sides of the scientific world-conception—the more
intra-scientific one that converges with clarity, soberness, and trust in
scientific facts, and the real-world political side that involves conscious
planning and centralized organization—could be separated.

5. Appendix: Real-World Values in Science
The original meaning of value freedom in science as demanded by Max
Weber—i.e., scientists may not use the classroom for political propaganda—
interferes with a notion that became prominent during the Cold War and
in some ways contradicts Weber’s account. Weber only meant that the
scientist is not permitted to talk as a scientist about matters of everyday
politics that have nothing to do with their own scientiﬁc business. Le
value freedom of cold warriors as criticized in recent history and the soci-
ology of science (Longino 1990; Douglas 2016) adopts the idea that the
scientiﬁc enterprise may not be affected by any intrinsic political or moral
issues at all. The scientist, according to this newer view, is a fact ﬁnder who
lives in the ivory tower of rationality and is entirely detached from value
disputes of any kind. A philosophical variation of this second form of value
freedom would be an extreme form of scientiﬁc realism which denies that
the activities of the scientist may involve any normative commitment.
Scientists produce empirical hypotheses, test and then either corroborate
or falsify them. This view, which is close to Popperian falsiﬁcationism,
was always rejected by the left wing of the Vienna Circle (Neurath
1935). That science has an important attitude component and always
includes a (moral) commitment of some kind was forcefully defended in
(Carnap 1950b), where Carnap emphasizes that the fundamental conven-
tions of science, scientiﬁc theories and logical frameworks, ultimately rest
on practical decisions that depend on pragmatic considerations about their
“fruitfulness,” i.e., their “efﬁciency as instruments, the ratio of the results
achieved to the amount and complexity of the efforts required” (Carnap
1950b, pp. 220–21). The attitudes that make us adopt or reject a “linguis-
tic framework” are as non-cognitive as moral attitudes (Carnap 1950b,
p. 215). Although the fruitfulness or efﬁciency of a scientiﬁc framework
adds an aspect of empirical corroboration,19 it remains a matter of the sub-
jective decision of the scientist what they eventually regard as fruitful or
favorable. That is why Carnap draws this strong parallel here and calls

19. Thanks to a reviewer of this paper for pointing this out.

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517

“external questions,” viz., questions of framework adoption, non-cognitive.
As in any other practical decision, the decision for or against a scientiﬁc
framework rests on a wealth of empirical and logical facts. Cependant, là
remains some crucially important non-cognitive epsilon of mere attitude
ici, and therefore framework decisions resemble moral decisions.

If the adoption of scientiﬁc frameworks, which include fundamental
principles and axioms, as well as scientiﬁc theories that go beyond mere
empirical facts, is a non-cognitive question of attitude, in what sense
can we still hope to keep science free of values? If, in other words, science
is through and through a value-driven matter, in what sense can this enter-
prise at the same time consider refraining from any moral and political
commitment? To answer this, it is very important to adopt the distinction
made at the beginning of this section. If we follow the strategy of left log-
ical empiricism, then the following statement holds true: The duty of the
scientist, here completely in line with Weber’s principle of value freedom,
is to restrict themselves, as a scientist, to considerations of those values that
matter for their scientiﬁc enterprise. This includes epistemic values such as
truth, lack of bias, and fruitfulness. In light of recent developments in the
philosophy of science, the latter might also include feminist considerations
about the epistemic beneﬁt brought about by the work of female scientists,
as well as considerations about a possible beneﬁt from the employment of a
diverse community of researchers, rather than a mere group of white male
heterosexual protestants. As long as intra-scientiﬁc values concern episte-
mic beneﬁt or loss while being relatively independent of questions of
real-world politics, they are clearly epistemic values, in the sense of
(Carnap 1950b).

But intra-scientiﬁc values also include matters of real-world politics that
arise within the scientiﬁc enterprise relatively independent from questions
of epistemic beneﬁts and losses. The scientist as an employee, the scientiﬁc
experiment as an undertaking that involves considerations about ecology,
human and animal rights, as well as a wealth of matters that arise in con-
nection with political bias, corruption, and fraud in science are all political
aspects. Science is here by no means an exception, but rather functions as
an integral part of society and real-world politics; donc, it must follow
the respective rules and regulations. Some or all of these values might still
indirectly involve epistemic gains and losses, but these are here enforced by
society’s rules that must not be bypassed by science. Let me just illustrate
this point by means of the example of feminist philosophy of science. Nous
need to separate the question if female scientists are doing science differ-
ently or even better, which is clearly an epistemic value question, from the
question of female employment (referring to aspects such as an increase in
the number of female scientists, equal payment, etc.), which in itself is not

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a question of epistemic value but a political question. Science is asked to
deal with both questions, whereas Carnap and his allies seem to have put
their ﬁnger only on the epistemic values (and only a fraction of them).

The relevance of real-world values that surround the overall matter of
values in science is hardly appreciated in the theoretical writings of
Carnap, Neurath, or Reichenbach. But we can try to amend their concep-
tion and add the newer ﬁndings of science as real-world politics. This brings
about the following model. Il y a (un) epistemic values as an intra-
scientiﬁc matter (truth, fruitfulness), (b) real-world values that matter in
science because they concern the role of the scientist, (c) other real-world
values that concern political questions that are not directly relevant for what
the scientist does and therefore should not be touched by the scientist. Le
resulting distribution of responsibility and permission in regards to dealing
with any of these value types by either the expert or the private individual is
illustrated in the matrix below:

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Is responsible and permitted to deal
with …

The expert (le
scientist in their own
ﬁeld of expertise):

The non-expert (every
individual, y compris
scientists acting as
private individuals):

… epistemic values, such as empirical
adequacy, truth, elegance, ou
fruitfulness
… real-world values that matter in
science because they concern the role
of the scientist, the ethics of
experimentation, and the like
… real-world values that concern the
whole of society as it moves forward
outside the scientiﬁc ivory tower

YES

NON

YES

The ﬁrst line of the matrix states that epistemic values are a matter for the
expert only. The questions of whether or not a certain theoretical frame-
work should be adopted and whether a certain scientiﬁc claim is true or
false can be answered by the scientist only. Laypeople are not permitted to
question scientiﬁc results, simply because they are not qualiﬁed to do so.
The same holds true for all scientists who are not experts in the ﬁeld in
question. Think of the story of about the physicists who tried to obscure
specialist ﬁndings regarding the consequences of tobacco smoke, mondial
warming, and other issues (Oreskes and Conway 2010): they were not

Perspectives on Science

519

permitted to question these results, simply because they were not experts
in the respective ﬁelds.

The middle line of the matrix is rather uncontroversial today: as far as
science is one social enterprise among others, it should also be subject to all
relevant real-world political and moral considerations, rules, and decisions.
Cependant, this should not undermine our empiricist world-view, lequel
connects two additional and crucially-important branches with the whole
value-driven business of science, namely, (un) the idea that epistemic values
are an exclusive business for the experts; et (b) that experts, à son tour,
should refrain from any political commitment in matters of real-world
politique. The latter is stated in the third line of the matrix.

Science is responsible to deal with all matters of real-world politics that
are directly relevant for its status as a social activity. Female employment is
relevant here, because it is an overall political matter, and so are tobacco
smoke (because scientists may die from smoking or secondhand smoking)
and global warming (a scientist’s activities may affect the CO2 balance).
But scientists, in their role as scientists, are neither responsible nor permitted
to propagate measures and normative claims regarding such real-world
politique. These rules do not only matter for scientists engaging in highly
theoretical research, but also for those scientists being concerned with
entirely practical matters. Scientists tell us that (secondhand) smoking
makes us die early, but what (if any) kind of measures we should take against
smoking is ultimately a matter of politics, viz. a practical decision, lequel
should be informed by scientiﬁc evidence but also by an attitude that goes
beyond the ﬁeld of science. The same holds true for global warming. If we
take Weber and the left-wing of the Vienna Circle seriously, then it is not the
duty of the climate scientists to prescribe concrete measures against global
warming. Plutôt, what the climate scientists are supposed to do is give us the
facts about global warming and the probable outcome of different scenarios.
The politicians are then asked to use these facts to develop a scientiﬁcally
informed practical decision. Scientists provide important advice here, mais,
strictly speaking, they are not permitted to recommend concrete normative
decisions: they contribute (logical and empirical) facts, not values.

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