Gätschenberger on the "Given" and Carnap's Aufbau

Elena Tatievskaya (Augsburg) gives a talk at the MCMP workshop "Influences on the Aufbau" (1-3 July, 2013) titled "Gätschenberger on the "Given" and Carnap's Aufbau". Abstract: In his Aufbau Carnap rejects Gätschenberger’s (1920) statement that the pure language of the “given” is impossible. Gätschenberger who represents cognition as ordering reality by means of symbolizing holds an experience (“Erlebnis”) to be a natural symbol which posits some object identifiable on the basis of the effects of the experience and in particular actions induced by it. Carnap treats the given as an object and ordering reality as constructing things. I argue that Carnap’s concept of the given can be considered as a solution of some problems of Gätschenberger’s theory which explains the forming function of expe- rience through reference to the form and constituents of the object cognized which in their turn are de- fined by other means of symbolizing.