I do Jl. I had a brief look and found the shortest dismissal of Russell and Carnap I've ever seen! On about page 3. Perhaps he goes into more detail later.
The easiest mistake to make about Carnap and metaphysics is to think that anything anyone has ever called metaphysics is dismissed by Carnap. But maybe he has a more subtle critique in there.
I do Jl. I had a brief look and found the shortest dismissal of Russell and Carnap I've ever seen! On about page 3. Perhaps he goes into more detail later.
The easiest mistake to make about Carnap and metaphysics is to think that anything anyone has ever called metaphysics is dismissed by Carnap. But maybe he has a more subtle critique in there.
Well, what brought me again recently to him was the sentence, "The Nothing noths", that Carnap criticizes in German and Ayer in English. Henry provides some formalization. Scherb in a recent essay tries to expand on Henry's criticism. But you are right that it's so easy to dismiss Carnap's anti-metaphysical attitude, and misunderstand it!
At http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=20445455
you can read the abstract of Scherb's reference. He uses one of our favourite words: 'reconciliation', too!
Jürgen Ludwig SCHERB, "Nichtet das Nichts wirklich nicht? Analyse und Explikation : oder: eine deutsche Vorkriegsdebatte europäisch belichtet"
"The agenda of the following explication project is set by a German pre-war debate between Rudolf Carnap and Martin Heidegger about allegedly meaningless metaphysical statements such as the Nothing noths (= das Nichts nichtet). Within the mainstream of 20th century analytical philosophy this statement has come to be regarded as obvious metaphysical nonsense. As we all know, this led to an unfortunate confrontation between analytical and continental philosophy. Despite the fact that this formerjudgement had been corrected in a short remark by the Mancunian philosopher Desmond Paul Henry in the 60s, which he repeated more explicitly in the 80s this unnecessary conflict still seems to exist. Unfortunately Henry's remark didn't find its way to a greater audience, perhaps because Henry didn't prove his claim in a canonical way, perhaps because it contains an ambiguity, which may give rise to criticism. However, the required disambiguation together with the missing proofs can and will be given here within Lesniewski's ontology. Following Ludger Honnefelder we can call the Lesniewski systems, which were developed roughly at the same time (1913-1939), the third beginning of metaphysics. They will provide the still missing bridge between Carnap and Heidegger, which can be regarded as an ontological supplement to and a partial correction of Michael Friedman's brilliant background study on Heidegger, Carnap and Cassirer. The hermeneutical conclusion to be drawn is that reconciliation between the two types of philosophy is not only possible along Cassirer's ideas, but also along the lines ofbroadly logical form. In other words: We shall propose a more fundamental way for reconciliation. The hermeneutical outcome is as follows: One can make use of precise logic tools in a more general way than Carnap himself without declaring at least some central statements of Heidegger's Fundamentalontologie to be pure nonsense." -- Philosophisches Jahrbuch, vol. 115.
I thought R. B. Jones would find D. P. Henry's attempts at symbolism of some interest. Being a mediaevalist, D. P. Henry does not hesitate to quote from Anselm, who once said, "Necesse est nihil esse nihil" ("Nothing must be nothing", in Henry's colloquial paraphrase). Some of the symbolism used by D. P. Henry includes, for "The Nothing noths":
i. sol(Λ) ii. ͻ[[Λ]](Λ) iii. □ ͻ[[Λ]](Λ)
The first gives the 'singularity' "the" ("the Nothing"); the second is, D. P. Henry, says, a logical truth "derivable from the deductive metaphysics" (as he puts it) which he is constructing; the third is my attempt at getting at Anselm's 'necesse'...
Yes, not so easy to grasp out of context! If you construct a formal notation in which to express "Nothing noths", and properly define the rules of the system in such a way that your formal expression of "Nothing noths", then you are exempt under the principle of tolerance from Carnap's dismissal other than on pragmatic grounds. Once you have done that he can't say its "meaningless" metaphysics. But he probably would say it was useless and served no purpose.
I do Jl. I had a brief look and found the shortest dismissal of Russell and Carnap I've ever seen! On about page 3. Perhaps he goes into more detail later.
ReplyDeleteThe easiest mistake to make about Carnap and metaphysics is to think that anything anyone has ever called metaphysics is dismissed by Carnap.
But maybe he has a more subtle critique in there.
I do Jl. I had a brief look and found the shortest dismissal of Russell and Carnap I've ever seen! On about page 3. Perhaps he goes into more detail later.
ReplyDeleteThe easiest mistake to make about Carnap and metaphysics is to think that anything anyone has ever called metaphysics is dismissed by Carnap.
But maybe he has a more subtle critique in there.
Well, what brought me again recently to him was the sentence, "The Nothing noths", that Carnap criticizes in German and Ayer in English. Henry provides some formalization. Scherb in a recent essay tries to expand on Henry's criticism. But you are right that it's so easy to dismiss Carnap's anti-metaphysical attitude, and misunderstand it!
ReplyDeleteAt http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=20445455
ReplyDeleteyou can read the abstract of Scherb's reference. He uses one of our favourite words: 'reconciliation', too!
Jürgen Ludwig SCHERB,
"Nichtet das Nichts wirklich nicht? Analyse und Explikation : oder: eine deutsche Vorkriegsdebatte europäisch belichtet"
"The agenda of the following explication project is set by a German pre-war debate between Rudolf Carnap and Martin Heidegger about allegedly meaningless metaphysical statements such as the Nothing noths (= das Nichts nichtet). Within the mainstream of 20th century analytical philosophy this statement has come to be regarded as obvious metaphysical nonsense. As we all know, this led to an unfortunate confrontation between analytical and continental philosophy. Despite the fact that this formerjudgement had been corrected in a short remark by the Mancunian philosopher Desmond Paul Henry in the 60s, which he repeated more explicitly in the 80s this unnecessary conflict still seems to exist. Unfortunately Henry's remark didn't find its way to a greater audience, perhaps because Henry didn't prove his claim in a canonical way, perhaps because it contains an ambiguity, which may give rise to criticism. However, the required disambiguation together with the missing proofs can and will be given here within Lesniewski's ontology. Following Ludger Honnefelder we can call the Lesniewski systems, which were developed roughly at the same time (1913-1939), the third beginning of metaphysics. They will provide the still missing bridge between Carnap and Heidegger, which can be regarded as an ontological supplement to and a partial correction of Michael Friedman's brilliant background study on Heidegger, Carnap and Cassirer. The hermeneutical conclusion to be drawn is that reconciliation between the two types of philosophy is not only possible along Cassirer's ideas, but also along the lines ofbroadly logical form. In other words: We shall propose a more fundamental way for reconciliation. The hermeneutical outcome is as follows: One can make use of precise logic tools in a more general way than Carnap himself without declaring at least some central statements of Heidegger's Fundamentalontologie to be pure nonsense." -- Philosophisches Jahrbuch, vol. 115.
I thought R. B. Jones would find D. P. Henry's attempts at symbolism of some interest. Being a mediaevalist, D. P. Henry does not hesitate to quote from Anselm, who once said, "Necesse est nihil esse nihil" ("Nothing must be nothing", in Henry's colloquial paraphrase). Some of the symbolism used by D. P. Henry includes, for "The Nothing noths":
ReplyDeletei. sol(Λ)
ii. ͻ[[Λ]](Λ)
iii. □ ͻ[[Λ]](Λ)
The first gives the 'singularity' "the" ("the Nothing"); the second is, D. P. Henry, says, a logical truth "derivable from the deductive metaphysics" (as he puts it) which he is constructing; the third is my attempt at getting at Anselm's 'necesse'...
Yes, not so easy to grasp out of context!
ReplyDeleteIf you construct a formal notation in which to express "Nothing noths", and properly define the rules of the system in such a way that your formal expression of "Nothing noths", then you are exempt under the principle of tolerance from Carnap's dismissal other than on pragmatic grounds. Once you have done that he can't say its "meaningless" metaphysics. But he probably would say it was useless and served no purpose.
Well, 'meaning' was Grice's idea to replace what he found was Peirce's krypto-technic (as Grice calls it) talk of 'symbol', 'index' and 'sign' itself!
ReplyDeleteSo it may well be the case that one CAN use "mean" to mean "of use".
"That has no meaning"
would be equivalent (via implicature) to
"There's no use to it."
I'm never sure why Heidegger thought that nothings nothed.
It sounds even less meaningful in the past, so I will report the thing in the present: I'm not sure why Heidegger thinks that nothings noths.
Oddly, if you look at Grice's WoW you find in the Prolegomena the utterance:
i. Heidegger is the greatest living philosopher.
which perhaps was an otiose thing to say THEN and false now -- seeing that 'living' no longer applies. Ah, well!
Grice is not USING "Heidegger is the greatest living philosohper", merely MENTIONING it!