Arthur Pap in Vienna and the Criticism of Logical Empiricism

Abstract In the 1950s, after a year in Vienna, Arthur Pap published a monograph on the most recent developments in analytic philosophy ( Analytische Erkenntnistheorie , 1955), a book which can be read as a strong criticism of logical empiricism. I reconstruct the historical context in which the book was written and analyze Pap’s criticism of a core thesis of the logical empiricists: the linguistic theory of logical necessity. Against Rudolf Carnap and Friedrich Waismann, Pap argues for an absolute notion of necessity as a property of propositions conceived as abstract entities independent of language and linguistic conventions. I analyze Pap’s arguments against the logical empiricists as well as Rudolf Haller’s reaction to Pap’s criticism. Pap’s arguments can be seen as an attempt to give to analytic philosophy a re-orientation quite at odds with logical empiricism.