Max Black

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Max Black (born February 24, 1909 in Baku , † August 27, 1988 in Ithaca, New York ) was an American philosopher and influential exponent of analytical philosophy in the first half of the 20th century. He wrote important contributions to the philosophy of mathematics , the philosophy of language and developed the mid-20th century authoritative metaphor theory , based on the position of IA Richards .

Life

Max Black was born in Azerbaijan to businessman Lionel Black and his wife Sophia Davinska. In order to escape anti-Semitic persecution, the family went to Paris shortly after Max Black's birth and then to London in 1912, where Max Black was to grow up.

During his school days, Max Black stood out for his talented violin playing and his excellent command of chess. He then visited the Queens' College in Cambridge , where he studied mathematics and around the professors teaching there as Russell , Wittgenstein , George Edward Moore and Frank P. Ramsey for the analytic philosophy became interested.

In 1930 he received his BA ( Bachelor of Arts ). A scholarship enabled him to study for a year in Göttingen , where he worked on his first book ( The Nature of Mathematics ) and met his future wife Michal Landsberg, with whom he later had two children.

In 1933 Max Black returned to England and enrolled at the University of London , where he received his Ph.D. in 1939 for the dissertation Theories of logical positivism. received. From 1936 to 1940 he taught mathematics at the College of Education in London (Institution of Education), then followed a call to the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Illinois , Urbana (USA) and in 1947 moved to Cornell University in New York. In 1954 he was appointed to the Susan Linsage Chair for Philosophy and Human Sciences. In 1963 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In September 1967 he organized an international congress on the psychology of art. He taught at Cornell University until his retirement in 1977 and then gave numerous lectures at various universities. In 1948 he had already accepted US citizenship. As the second American to date, Max Black was President of the International Institute of Philosophy from 1981 to 1984.

Work and appreciation

Max Black is considered one of the most influential philosophers of American analytical philosophy and has rendered outstanding services to the philosophy of language (metaphor theory, dealing with Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics ), philosophy of mathematics ( problems of analysis , 1954) and philosophy of art.

In his first book ( The Nature of Mathematics , 1933) he interpreted Brouwer's intuitionism in anticipation of views that later matured into his art and epistemology.

Four years later he uses the term vague sets to describe the observability of indeterminacy and the meaning of indeterminacy in the field of logic . These terms go into later fuzzy logic as fuzzy sets .

As a translator for Gottlob Frege (together with Peter Geach he edited the major works Freges in the USA in 1952) and commentator for Ludwig Wittgenstein (commentary on the Tractatus , 1964), he forms an important bridge between the European, especially British, school of analytical philosophy and the UNITED STATES.

Among the American philosophers, Black primarily deals with the behaviorism and general semantics of Alfred Korzybski . His theory of metaphor, which he developed at an early stage and adopted by others, evaluates it as an interactive shift of meaning , similar to a speech act .

As an analytical philosopher, he is always interested in the description models of “what is the case” (Wittgenstein). In addition, Black emphasized formal modeling and representation more than Wittgenstein. Differences were roughly three model types: the model as a rem prototype (scale models), model as a (mental) image (analogical models) and model as a guide to action (theoretical model) what the Triassic index, icon and symbol of semiotics and aesthetics meet can. The possibility of any judgment about the “world” is based on the possibility of “measuring” new things on these models, as long as the models are generally binding.

In his Philosophy of Art, Max Black sets up the doctrine that it is impossible to establish a rule for the arbitrary, creative violating rules that art practices.

Black described himself as: "a lapsed mathematician, addicted reasoner, and devotee of metaphor and chess " (a "fallen mathematician, thinker and admirer of metaphor and chess"). His semantic metaphor theory, based on Richard's (1936), was decisive in the mid-20th century, and later numerous philosophers presented semantic theory drafts with different emphases on the metaphor definition problem.

Publications (selection)

Fonts

  • The Nature of Mathematics . 1933, reprint 1959.
  • Vagueness: An exercise in logical analysis in the Philosophical Society . 1937.
  • A New Method of Presentation of the Theory of the Syllogism . 1944.
  • Language and Philosophy: Studies in Method . (1949). Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP (here also the article: Korzybsksi's General Semantics, to which the article by Bruce I. Kodish below refers)
  • Critical Thinking . 1946. NYS, 2nd ed. 1952
  • Problems of Analysis . 1954.
  • Metaphors are no arguments, my pretty maiden . In: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume LV (1954-1955), 273-294.
  • Models and Metaphors. Studies in Language and Philosophy . Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1962.
  • A Companion to Wittgenstein's Tractatus . 1964.
    • German: A compendium on Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Turia + Kant, Vienna / Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-85132-955-1 .
  • The Labyrinth of Language . Mentor, New York 1969 (other sources cite 1968 as the year of first publication)
  • Margins of Precision: Essays in Logic and Language . 1970.
  • The Prevalence of Humbug and Other Essays . Cornell Univ. Pr., Ithaca, 1983
  • Making intelligent choices, how useful is decision theory? 1985.
  • The Importance of Language . Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs 1962. Reprinted 1982: ISBN 0-8014-9077-4 .
  • Art, Perception and Reality , together with EH Gombrich and Julian Hochberg . Johns Hopkins University Press , Baltimore 1972.
  • Perplexities . Cornell University Press, Ithaca / London 1990.

Editing and translations

  • Rudolf Carnap: The Unity of Science , translated and with an introduction by Max Black in Psyche Miniatures , General Series no.63. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., London 1934.
  • Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege . Edited by Peter Geach and Max Black (1953). 3rd ed. Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1980.
  • The Social Theories of Talcott Parsons. A critical examination . Edited by Max Black. Prentice Hall, 1961.
  • Philosophical analysis: a collection of essays . Edited by Max Black. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs 1963
  • William P. Alston: Philosophy in America: essays , edited by Max Black. George Allen & Unwin, London 1965.
  • John R. Searle: What Is a Speech Act. Philosophy in America . Ed. Max Black. Allen, London 1965.
  • Stephen Francis Barker: Induction and Hypothesis. A Study of the Logic of Confirmation . Contemporary Philosophy, edited by Max Black. no year
  • The Morality of Scholarship. Northrop Frye, Stuart Hampshire, Conor Cruise O'Brien. Edited by Max Black (Studies in Humanities, vol. 1). Cornell University Press, 1967.

Max Black's article for the Encyclopedia Britannica

  • Abstract and abstraction . 1956 Vol 1, pp. 67-68 (1957 edition: Vol. 1, pp. 67-68)
  • Antinomy . 1956, vol. 2, p. 70
  • Condition . 1957, Vol. 6, pp. 220-221
  • Deduction . 1957, Vol. 7, pp. 132-133

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Black, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH February 24, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Baku
DATE OF DEATH August 27, 1988
Place of death Ithaca (New York)