What was and what could have been: Janina Hosiasson-Lindenbaum's role in the philosophy of probablity.

Project Information

Janina Project

Grant agreement ID: 101106480

DOI

10.3030/101106480

Project closed

EC signature date 16 May 2023

Start date 1 October 2023

End date 30 September 2025

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 183 600,96

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAT WIEN
Austria

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Janina Project (What was and what could have been: Janina Hosiasson-Lindenbaum's role in the philosophy of probablity.)

Reporting period: 2023-10-01 to 2025-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The aim of this project is to uncover the historical and biographical factors that determined the career of Janina Hosiasson-Lindenbaum as a female, Jewish and Polish philosopher in the 1930s, and to analyze her original contributions to the philosophy of probability. If we are to tell the full story of inductive logic and the philosophy of probability of the 1930s and 1940s, Hosiasson-Lindenbaum's work has to be included in it. Yet, in spite of having been involved in all of the branches of inductive logic and philosophical theory of probability at the period, as well as working with the most important thinkers in this area, Hosiasson-Lindenbaum is missing from the histories of philosophy. The first gap in our knowledge of Hosiasson-Lindenbaum's philosophy that needs to be filled is that her whole body of work has to be considered in the task of reconstructing her philosophical position, rather than the handful of papers that were published in English. Without that, we will have no precise understanding of what her contributions were. It is also important that we understand why she did not gain the same prominence as her contemporaries.

The first objective of the project is to identify the ways in which Hosiasson-Lindenbaum's social status and the details of her (academic) biography influenced the uptake of her ideas in the philosophy community. What were the factors influencing JHL’s academic career before World War II? What were the exact factors that led to the ultimate failure of the attempts to rescue JHL as a refugee scholar during World War II?

The second objective is to reconstruct Hosiasson-Lindenbaum's position on the foundational questions in philosophy of probability and inductive logic and to evaluate its conceptual and historical importance. What was her own conception of probability: was she a logicist influenced by Keynes, or an early subjectivist developing a logic of partial belief functions? What was her role in the birth of confirmation theory, and how did her own work in
that area come about?

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the project, the full - published and unpublished - body of Janina Hosiasson-Lindenbaum's work was gathered and analyzed. The origins and the development of her early theory of rational degrees of belief were reconstructed from the published work and archive material, putting it all in the social and philosophical context in which it was developed. Archive research was done - in person, online, and with the help of long-distance assistants - in the United States, England, Poland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and France. The result of that was the fullest reconstruction of Hosiasson-Lindenbaum's professional and private life to date. In particular, the strategies used by Hosiasson-Lindenbaum when trying to escape Lithuanina as a was refugee in 1939-1941 were uncovered and the reasons for their ultimate failure were postulated, based on the available material as well as a study of the wider historical context of these events. An in-depth study was made of the uptake of Hosiasson-Lindenbaums ideas, together with other similar cases in the history of (female) philosophy, leading to the formulation of a framework for researching and writing about the achievements of female philosophers in 20th century analytic philosophy. Hosiasson-Lindenbaum's scientific network was reconstructed based on the archive material, as well as her career strategies. A case study of Hosiasson-Lindenbaum's career was used to inform an original approach to the problem of including women in the history of philosophy.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project has filled the gap in our understanding the history of early 20th-century philosophy of probability by reconstructing the conceptual development of Janina Hosiasson-Lindenbaum's early theory of rational degrees of belief. The study of the impact of different philosophical communities on this work contributed to our understanding of intellectual networks of the era. The project also delivered a reconstruction of the decision process that led the Rockefeller Foundation to reject Hosiasson-Lindenbaum's application for the refugee scholar program. This analysis contributes to our understanding of how non-conceptual factors (like institutions, world events, and personal networks) have shaped the history of 20th century philosophy. An analysis of Hosiasson-Lindenbaum's professional networks and career strategies, as well a meta-perspective insight into the sources available for this sort of research, have provided a case study for a proposal on ways in which women can be included in the history of philosophy. Hosiasson-Lindenbaum's life as a refugee and the details of her incarceration were uncovered and described.