Ernst Cassirer’s Neo-Kantian Philosophy of Science

Alan Richardson (University of British Columbia) - Philosophers of science sometimes like to distinguish philosophical concern regarding science from (mere) historical concern regarding science by stressing the normativity of philosophy of science (and correspondingly the descriptive nature of history of science). This form of ahistorical logical or methodological normativity would scarcely be recognizable, however, to Ernst Mach or Ernst Cassirer. Here I will concentrate on the fundamental concepts of Cassirer’s philosophy of science as especially exemplified in his 1910 Substance and Function. I will argue that the normativity of philosophy of science cannot be, for Cassirer, disentangled from the history of science, precisely because philosophy of science is responsible for answering the question: in precisely what sense is science progressive? The normativity of Cassirer’s philosophy of science, thus, points the field toward the characteristic questions of the Enlightenment: the nature and limits of progress. Tensions in Cassirer’s account will point the way to some moves and themes in philosophy of science after Cassirer.

Jeremy Heis (University of California, Irvine) - Ernst Cassirer, like all of the “classical” Neo-Kantians, characterized his philosophy of science as a kind of “idealism.” Although many contemporary philosophers have identified affinities between their own philosophies of science and Cassirer's, few if any philosophers today defend “idealism” in the philosophy of science. In this talk, I answer the question: What did Cassirer mean by calling his philosophy of science “idealism”? In particular, I argue that there are four distinct senses of “idealism” in Cassirer's philosophy of science: idealism about "method," idealism about "content," idealism of "a priori principles," and idealism about "objectivity." These four senses of idealism are opposed, respectively, to naturalism, sensualism, empiricism, and realism. I illustrate each of these senses of idealism with different aspects of Cassirer's philosophy of mathematics and natural science. Moreover, some of these four senses of idealism are quite modest, and some are widely held, even by philosophers who would not describe themselves as “idealists.” Last, I identify the sense in which Cassirer's philosophy of the Geisteswissenschaften is "idealistic."