Background
Hong, Qian was born in 1909 in Anhui Province, China.
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Qian Hong
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Universities of Berlin and Jena in Germany. University of Vienna in Austria, where he obtained a PhD.
Career
Lecturer, University of Beijing. Professor, Southwest Associated University. Professor and Head of Department, National Wuhan University.
Pr0" fessor and Head of Department, Yenching University. Professor and Head of Department, University of Beijing. Head of Seminar for History of Foreign Philosophy, University of Beijing.
Director. Institute of Foreign Philosophy. University of Beijing. President, Society for the Study of Contemporary Western Philosophy: Research Fellow, New College, Oxford.
Views
The career of Hong Qian was entirely taken up by (hose agenda-setting arguments and debates of logical positivism which have shaped analytical Philosophy in this century. After preliminary (raining in Germany he became a student of Moritz Schlick. In the Vienna Circle from 1931 to 1936 Hong encountered the ideas of Wittgenstein, Carnap, Neurath and Schlick and those of visiting Philosophers, including A. J. Ayer. Although he was absorbed by the doctrines and controversies °1 logical positivism in general, Hong was most drawn to Schlick’s own project for a ‘consistent empiricism’ and its relation to the principles of Berkeley and Hume. From Schlick and Wittgenstein Hong adopted the view of philosophy as a method of analysis rather than a set of doctrines. This, in turn, Provided an influential solution to the question of how philosophy related to science. Philosophy was neither cut off from science nor absorbed within it; rather, it was a method for dealing with (he meaning of expressions and statements, especially to exclude those which lacked meaning (rom any enterprise seeking to give knowledge. The method exercising this discipline was verifieationism, the claim that a statement was mean- ■ngful only if there were in principle a means of showing it to be true or false. Metaphysical statements were those failing the verificationist (est. Hong provided a sensitive history of central debates over the difficulties with verificationism: whether a formulation could be found which avoided excluding too much or too little. He also assessed the various accusations of backsliding into metaphysics or, through Carnap’s rejection of a correspondence theory of truth, of falling into conventionalism or crude rationalism. Hong adopted Schlick’s analysis of how traditional metaphysical questions arose. He distinguished sharply between knowledge and experience: the former logical and communicable, the latter psychological and private. He held that by confusing the two a specious discipline was formed. The distinction between logic and psychology, so important to Frege at the very beginning of modern analytical philosophy, was thus crucially retained. This distinction gained central importance in relation to a question Hong considered repeatedly: the foundation of knowledge. He endorsed Schlick’s rejection of Carnap’s basic or protocol propositions as candidates for the foundation of empirical knowledge on the grounds that they were hypotheses as liable to turn out to be false as any hypotheses, but he was also critical of Schlick’s own alternative foundation in affirmations or observation statements. Because of their thoroughly ostensive nature, their meaning and truth can be determined together, like analytic statements and unlike other empirical statements. As a result, they are empirical but not hypotheses, and can function as the foundation of knowledge. Yet Hong saw that their completely ostensive character was incompatible with the logical character of statements. Schlick’s own distinction between logic and psychology defeated his attempt to found empirical knowledge and provided grounds for the currently prevailing desire to account for knowledge without foundations. Hong argued that in his last years Schlick came under Wittgenstein’s negative influence and fell back into metaphysical confusion. He greatly admired Wittgenstein's Tractatus, but believed that Wittgenstein’s later work led to error. Regarding Kant, Hong rejected a priori constraints on science but was drawn to Kantian themes in the analysis of experience and knowledge. He could accept a Kantianism shorn of transcendence. Although there is nothing syncretic in Hong’s philosophy, his work is extremely important for China. It disciplines and clarifies major discussions of philosophy and science in China in the 1920s. His many students have absorbed his exacting standards of argument, reason and truth. The humane fluency of his prose has also made its mark. Most important, he shows what an honest and adventurous mind can achieve through rigorous and independent thought, and that Chinese scholars could make significant contributions to international philosophy. In addition to his own work, anthologies of Western philosophical writings edited by Hong have had great influence.
