Plagiarism!: Wittgenstein Against Carnap

Richard Creath

Plagiarism!: Wittgenstein Against Carnap

 

In 1932 Ludwig Wittgenstein accused Rudolf Carnap of plagiarism and seems to have gone

so far as to scrawl the word ‘Plagiarism’ on one of Carnap’s offprints and initial that note as

well.  Priority disputes are inherently distasteful and usually sterile.  And they are often

impossible to adjudicate fully.  I make no such attempt here.  But these disputes can also be

revealing about what the participants thought they were doing and what they thought they had

achieved.  It is in this latter vein that I revisit the 1932 dispute.  My primary focus will be on

Carnap, and I begin by examining the accounts of the dispute by three distinguished

philosopher/historians, Jaakko Hintikka, Thomas Uebel, and David Stern. 

The aim is not a verdict on Wittgenstein’s charge of plagiarism, but to see what the dispute

and surrounding documents show about how Carnap’s views were developing in the early

thirties, what antecedents those ideas may have had (including in Wittgenstein), and how

Carnap saw the changes in his views.

 

Richard Creath is President’s Professor of Life Sciences and of Philosophy at Arizona State

University and Director of the ASU Program in History and Philosophy of Science.  He is the

author of many papers in philosophy of science and on Rudolf Carnap and W.V. Quine.  He is

also the editor of several books, and General Editor of The Collected Works of Rudolf Carnap.