Ethics and Morality in the Vienna Circle Anne Siegetsleitner Workshop Five Years MCMP: Quo Vadis, Mathematical Philosophy? Munich, June 2, 2016
1. Introduction Thank you for the invitation to talk about ethics and morality in the Vienna Circle in this workshop about the future of mathematical philosophy. For several reasons, that is not to be taken for granted. The first pertains to me as a philosopher: I am not a mathematical philosopher. A second reason is that mathematical philosophy is not closely associated with morality or ethics. Moreover, the Vienna Circle itself is not closely associated with morality or ethics, either. However, I hope that these reservations will vanish or at least be diminished by the end of my talk. In keeping with the purpose of this workshop, I aim to provide some input from the past by giving a selective overview and discussing with you whether this is of more than antiquarian interest. As you know, from the Vienna Circle and other European philosophical groups (especially the Berlin Group) emerged a philosophical movement that now is known as Logical Empiricism, Logical Positivism or Neopositivism. The characterization as well as the relationship of this movement to ethics and morality are not considered difficult without reason. Nevertheless, the questions that arose in this context are worth reconsidering. This may be surprising to someone who still holds at least one of the two main prejudices concerning the Vienna Circle that I will concentrate on. If we take the term “morality” to refer to a certain common practice of daily life you are all sufficiently familiar with and the term
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