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Birth
Carl Gustav "Peter" Hempel is born.
Although he led a distinguished career as an educator perhaps his biggest contribution to philosophy is the raven paradox, also know as Hempel's paradox, or Hempel's ravens. In the raven paradox the question is asked of what constitutes evidence for a statement. -
Early life
After moving to Berlin, Hempel participated in a congress on scientific philosophy, he met Rudolf Carnap and became involved in the Berlin Circle of philosophers. -
Continued Education
Received his doctoral degree from the University of Berlin with a dissertation on probability theory, titled Beiträge zur logischen Analyse des Wahrscheinlichkeitsbegriffs (Contributions to the Logical Analysis of the Concept of Probability) -
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Principal Works
1936: "Über den Gehalt von Wahrscheinlichkeitsaussagen" and, with Paul Oppenheim, "Der Typusbegriff im Licht der neuen Logik"
1942: The Function of General Laws in History
1943: Studies in the Logic of Confirmation
1959: The Logic of Functional Analysis
1965: Aspects of Scientific Explanation
1966: Philosophy of Natural Science
1967: Scientific Explanation -
Emigration to the US
Hempel emigrated to the United States, where he accepted a position as Carnap's assistant at the University of Chicago -
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City College of New York
Held positions at the City College of New York. During his time in New York he proposed the raven paradox to illustrate a contradiction between inductive logic and intuition. Hempel proposed his paradox as such;
1. All ravens are black
2. If something is not black, then it is not a raven
3. My pet raven is black
4. This green apple is not black, and it is not a raven -
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The Raven Paradox
Raven Paradox by Hattie Waldron
Given a general statement such as all ravens are black, a form of the same statement that refers to a specific observable instance of the general class would typically be considered to constitute evidence for that general statement. -
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Yale University
Taught at Yale University -
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Princeton University
Taught at Princeton University, where he taught alongside Thomas Kuhn and remained until made emeritus -
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Hebrew University in Jerusalem
Between 1974 and 1976, he was an emeritus at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem -
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University of Pittsburgh
Became a University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh -
Death
Carl Gustav Hempel passes away.
In his death he left a legacy that forces us to alter our reasoning and how we conduct observations. The raven paradox teaches us that despite two pieces of evidence seemingly being unrelated, they can actually assist in proving the factuality of a hypothesis.