Herbert Feigl

{{Infobox philosopher

| region = Western philosophy

| era = 20th-century philosophy

| image = Philosopher Herbert Feigl (1902 –1988) In 1973.jpg

| caption = Herbert Feigl (1973)

| name = Herbert Feigl

| birth_date = {{birth date|1902|12|14|df=y}}

| death_date = {{death date and age|df=yes|1988|06|01|1902|12|14}}

| birth_place = Reichenberg (Liberec), Bohemia, Austria-Hungary

| death_place = Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.

| school_tradition = Analytic philosophy
Vienna Circle

| main_interests = Philosophy of science

| influences = Moritz Schlick, Hans Hahn, Hans Thirring, and Karl Bühler

| influenced = Donald Davidson

| notable_ideas = Nomological danglers

| notable_students = Hugh Mellor

| thesis_title = Zufall und Gesetz: Versuch einer naturerkenntnistheoretischen Klarung des Wahrscheinlichkeits- und Induktionsproblems (Chance and Law: An Epistemological Analysis of the Roles of Probability and Induction in the Natural Sciences)

| thesis_url =

| thesis_year = 1927

}}

Herbert Feigl ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|f|aɪ|g|əl}}; {{IPA|de|ˈfaɪgl̩|lang}}; December 14, 1902 – June 1, 1988) was an Austrian-American philosopher and an early member of the Vienna Circle.{{Citation|last=Neuber|first=Matthias|title=Herbert Feigl|date=2018|url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/feigl/|encyclopedia=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|editor-last=Zalta|editor-first=Edward N.|edition=Winter 2018|publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University|access-date=2019-05-07}}{{Cite journal|last=Savage|first=C. Wade|date=1989|title=Obituary for Herbert Feigl|journal=Erkenntnis |volume=31|issue=1|pages=v–ix|issn=0165-0106|jstor=20012225|doi=10.1007/BF01239127|s2cid=119787454}} He coined the term "nomological danglers".{{Cite book|title=Philosophy of mind : the key thinkers|others=Bailey, Andrew, 1969-|isbn=9781441190963|location=London|pages=107|oclc=861533440|quote=Smart (1959) credits Feigl with coining the term 'nomological danglers' for conscious properties, as they are conceived on the emergentist view.|last1 = Bailey|first1 = Andrew|date = 2013-11-21}}

Biography

The son of a trained weaver who became a textile designer, Feigl was born in Reichenberg (Liberec), Bohemia, into a Jewish (though not religious) family.{{cite book|title=Inquiries and provocations : selected writings, 1929-1974|last=Feigl|first=Herbert|publisher=D. Reidel Pub. Co.|year=1981|isbn=90-277-1101-1}} He matriculated at the University of Vienna in 1922 and studied physics and philosophy under Moritz Schlick, Hans Hahn, Hans Thirring, and Karl Bühler. He became one of the members of the Vienna Circle in 1924 and would be one of the few Circle members (along with Schlick and Friedrich Waismann) to have extensive conversations with Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper. Feigl received his doctorate at Vienna in 1927 for his dissertation Zufall und Gesetz: Versuch einer naturerkenntnistheoretischen Klarung des Wahrscheinlichkeits- und Induktionsproblems (Chance and Law: An Epistemological Analysis of the Roles of Probability and Induction in the Natural Sciences). He published his first book, Theorie und Erfahrung in der Physik (Theory and Experience in Physics), in 1929.{{Cite web|url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/feigl-herbert|title=Feigl, Herbert [Encyclopaedia Judaica]|last=Avrum Stroll/Ruth Beloff|website=www.encyclopedia.com|access-date=2019-05-07}}

In 1930, on an International Rockefeller Foundation scholarship at Harvard University, Feigl met the physicist Percy Williams Bridgman, the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine, and the psychologist Stanley Smith Stevens, all of whom he saw as kindred spirits. In 1931, with Albert Blumberg, he published the paper "Logical Positivism: A New European Movement" which argued for logical positivism to be renamed "logical empiricism" based upon certain realist differences between contemporary philosophy of science and the older positivist movement.{{Cite book|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZCWLpalg7tAC&pg=PA40|title=The Vienna Circle in the Nordic Countries : networks and transformations of logical empiricism|last=Faye|first=Jan|date=2010|publisher=Springer Science + Business Media|others=Manninen, Juha., Stadler, Friedrich.|isbn=9789048136834|location=Dordrecht|pages=40|chapter=Niels Bohr and the Vienna Circle|oclc=567371218|quote=[8] Albert Blumberg and Feigl suggested in their 1931 paper “Logical Positivism. A New European Movement” that logical positivism was renamed “logical empiricism” because of certain differences between the new and the older positivist movement.}}

In 1930, Feigl married Maria Kaspar and emigrated with her to the United States, settling in Iowa to take up a position in the philosophy department at the University of Iowa. Their son, Eric Otto, was born in 1933. In 1940, Herbert Feigl accepted a position as professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota, where he remained for 31 years. His close professional and personal relationship with Wilfrid Sellars produced many different collaborative projects, including the textbook Readings in Philosophical Analysis and the journal Philosophical Studies, which he and Sellars (with other colleagues) founded in 1949.

In 1953, he established the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science (the first center of its kind in the United States) with a grant from the Hill Foundation. He was appointed Regents Professor of the University of Minnesota in 1967.

Feigl believed that empiricism is the only adequate philosophy for experimental science. Though he became a philosopher instead of a chemist, he never lost the perspective, and the scientific commonsense, of a practical scientist. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto{{cite web|url=http://www.americanhumanist.org/Humanism/Humanist_Manifesto_II |title=Humanist Manifesto II |publisher=American Humanist Association |access-date=October 8, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121020110719/http://www.americanhumanist.org/humanism/Humanist_Manifesto_II |archive-date=October 20, 2012 }} and he was, in the paradigmatic sense, a philosopher of science.

Feigl wrote the introduction to the 1974 edition of Moritz Schlick's General Theory of Knowledge{{cite journal |last1=Watkins |first1=J.W.N. |title=Moritz Schlick and the Mind-Body Problem |journal=The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science |date=December 1977 |volume=28 |issue=4 |pages=369–382|doi=10.1093/bjps/28.4.369 }} and wrote a memoir of Schlick for a published collection of Schlick's papers.{{cite book |last1=Schlick |first1=Moritz |title=Moritz Schlick Philosophical Papers Volume 1: (1909–1922) |date=1978 |publisher=Springer Netherlands |page=XV}}

Feigl retired in 1971 and died of cancer on 1 June 1988 in Minneapolis. He was joined in death by his wife Maria the following year; they were survived by their son Eric O. Feigl, a professor of physiology at the University of Washington.

Selected publications

Herbert Feigl, [http://ditext.com/feigl/mp/mp.html "The "Mental" and the "Physical": The Essay and a Postscript"] (1967)

References

External links

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feigl/ Herbert Feigl] entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Matthias Neuber
[http://ditext.com/sellars/memoriam/minn.html Minnesota Philosophy Department photo c. 1953] featuring Feigl with, amongst others, Wilfred Sellars and May Brodbeck
Readings in the Philosophy of Science (1953, co-edited with May Brodbeck) At Internet Archive.
Readings In Philosophical Analysis (1949, co-edited with Wilfrid Sellars) At Internet Archive.