Speranza's post connecting Dick and (of course) Grice to Carnap contains a quote from Grice which is reminiscent of something which Carnap says in his "Intellectual Autobiography".
Grice said, apparently, :
"If you cannot put it in symbols it's not worth saying it."
Rather uncompromising!
Long before him Carnap (a more radical enthusiast for symbolic logic) more modestly (when writing about how he felt early in his PhD research) wrote:
"When I considered a concept or proposition occurring in a philosophical or scientific discussion, I thought that I understood it clearly only if I felt that I could express it, if I wanted to, in symbolic language."
That was published 1963, but talks about his views just after the first world war.
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Excellent quotation.
ReplyDelete"When I considered a concept or proposition occurring in a philosophical or scientific discussion, I thought that I understood it clearly only if I felt that I could express it, if I wanted to, in symbolic language."
I may comment further at the Grice Club!