Carnap Corner

Presupposition

2011-11-03T09:18:00.000-07:00

Speranza

I uploaded a bit on presupposition in Collingwood in our joint blog, "The city of eternal truth" (cfr. "The city of eternal blog", just teasing). By joint I mean Jones's and Speranza's.

This was in reply to Jones's post on presupposition in The Grice Club. Tit for tat, as they say!

Meaning Postulates for "Refudiate"

2010-08-03T10:50:00.000-07:00

Chortles refudiate frumiously.

Recall Carnap's example taken up by Grice, "Pirots karulise elatically". Now, Palin was onto something. An online source provides a 'meaning postulate' alla Old Carnap for her neologism:

"a conjunction of repudiate (i.e., renounce the planned building) and refute (i.e., dispute the notion that it is necessary and appropriate at that exact location)."

So what's the buzz?

Under Carnap's Lamp

2010-07-30T14:56:00.000-07:00

One of the nice things about the Goguen/Carnap connection mentioned in my last post is that the aspect of Carnap it relates to is his central logical doctrines, rather than the more marginal phenomenalistic reductionism which has more often (in my acquaintance) been involved in recent attempts to build on or resurrect aspects of Carnap's philosophy.

I am still chasing the connections and finding more recent research which invokes Carnap's pluralism. Admittedly the reference to Carnap is probably just that superficial; nothing more than Carnap's principle of tolerance is invoked.
However, that does not mean that there is no more of interest in the research.
Certainly in the case of Institutions and their applications there is material which might prove useful to a contemporary philosopher engaged in a programme of research which had more in common with Carnap's work (which is what I suppose myself to be).

Anyway, Belnap is the next connection for the sake of his Under Carnap's Lamp: Flat pre-semantics.
As well as the connection (however tenuous) with Carnap, there is some connection here with my recent work on Grice's Vacuous names.
The connection is that the method I there adopt, the use of shallow embeddings, is intended to facilitate addressing semantic issues while side stepping the complexity of reasoning about syntax.

What Belnap calls "pre-semantics" is precisely that, the discussion of semantics with syntax excised. Belnap talks as if this were more novel than it is, for this is one of the ideas which came from Scott and Strachey's work on the denotational semantics of programming languages.
They advocated considering semantic issues before syntactic ones (and did not see any difficulty in the use of the term "semantics" in this way).
The most conspicuously syntax detached semantic issues concerned what computer science then called "domain theory".

However, Belnap's speciality here is "flat", and I have not read far enough to get a decent handle on what he means by this or to understand the importance he attaches to it. It seems to be connected with what he calls the relativity of the concept of truth, which seems to me an unfortunate way of talking about the handling of context in semantics.

RBJ

Carnap and Goguen

2010-07-29T23:24:00.000-07:00

I was reflecting upon the poor quality of the Google alerts I get on Rudolf Carnap and wondering whether to scrap the alert when along came this gem which I am very very glad know about, and makes me happy to continue receiving a high proportion of garbage in my Google Carnap alerts.

While philosophers continue to have doubts about Carnap's pluralism, we have now had half a century of pluralism in Computer Science and Information Systems Engineering, in which domain there is a natural presumption that languages can be invented at will and on a pragmatic basis.
Up until now, I have not been aware of any recognition either in Computer Science or Philosophy of the connection between Carnap's philosophy and the culture of computing. At last I have a paper making the connection, between the work of Carnap and that of one of the great theoreticians of pluralism (without the word) in computer science, Joseph Goguen, whose work has already contributed a great deal to my way of thinking about mathematics and computing.

Carnap Goguen and the Hyperontologies (by Kutze, Mossakowski and Lütze) is the paper which explicitly connects the work of Carnap and Goguen. It seems to be principally from an AI/Semantic Web perspective, and so I will be very interested to discover whether this will help with my "X-Logic" ideas (for which semantic web is one motivator).
In this connection, Goguen's previous work on (logical) "Institutions" is relevant and it is of interest to me to discover where this has now lead, and to be able to consider more carefully how this relates to my present perspective.

More anon on "Carnapian Goguenism".

RBJ

Review of "Metametaphysics"

2010-06-18T05:46:00.000-07:00

This Review of Metametaphysics by Guido Imaguire is of a book collecting 17 contributions on that topic, edited by Chalmers, Manley and Wasserman.

The authors apparently form two opposing camps representing various degrees of "deflationism" or "anti-deflationism" (among other terms), and this therefore represents one of the many contemporary debates whose novelty consists partly in their not rejecting out of hand Carnap's position on metaphysics.

WIthout having read the review fully, let alone the book, I am given the impression of a menagerie.

At the beginning of the twentieth century philosophers were aware of their vulnerability. Russell's metaphysics was savaged by Wittgenstein, and he promptly abandoned metaphysics, imagining that Wittgenstein was the man for the job. Wittgenstein however, possibly impressed by how easy it is for a young kid to wreak havock with the metaphysical pretensions of a great figure like Russell, decided instead to concoct a philosophy the principle feature of which is to say nothing sufficiently definite ever to be refuted.

Though not fond of metaphysics, Carnap's did not shy from the kind of ambitious philosophical program which carried risk of failure, and was subjected to devastating attack mid century by representatives of an emerging sense of self confidence in American academic philosophy.

From those days of vulnerability we seem to have moved in the second half to a pluralism of philosophical standpoint which admitted almost anything which could not be confused with the standard caricature of the only philosophical veiwpoint held to have been definitively refuted (i.e. that of Carnap).

Have philosophers become irrefutable?
Do they now engage only in works of fantasy which cannot be dismissed on the ground that they speak only of an abstract realm which bears no relation to reality (even when it discusses realism)?

Like Carnap, I am a pluralist, now not only a linguistic pluralist but a methodological one. But Carnap and myself are not idle fantasists.
Though we would not deny anyone the language of their choice, we like to adopt languages and methods on a pragmatic basis, and an undue proliferation of languages, or of metaphyics, probably will not provide a basis for any great advance in our knowledge either scientific or philosophical.

What then might constitute and undue proliferation?

Fortunately I do not need to answer that question.
The onus is on those who propose to motivate their proposal, and on those who adopt to select carefully for their purposes in hand.

What we still lack, which Carnap tried to supply but was rebuffed, was any way of sorting out the philosophical chaff from the real money.
The tools of modern logic were thought to supply the means to make that distinction, and though they may fall short of the whole task, philosophers have never come near exploiting them to the extent envisaged by Carnap.

Until these questions of analytic method are reconsidered and philosophy begins to be undertaken rigorously wherever that is feasible, we will be able to look upon such a collection and wonder whether the debate it represents can ever yield fruit.

RBJ

Quine/Carnap on Ontology (CFP)

2010-06-14T03:17:00.000-07:00

Here's another snippet of evidence of the resurrection of Carnap as a philosopher (rather than a whipping dog).

A call for papers:
The Carnap/Quine debate and its contemporary relevance to metaontology.

RBJ

The Aufbau and Neutral Monism

2010-06-09T23:34:00.000-07:00

I have a Google alert on Carnap, which mostly comes up with junk, but occasionally finds something worthwhile.
I will add to this blog a highly filtered version, and here is the first, an online PDF version of a nice discussion of Carnap's Aufbau.

Carnap's Aufbau and the Legacy of Neutral Monism
by Andy Hamilton
[in David Bell and Wilhelm Vossenkuhl eds. Science and Subjectivity, Berlin: Akademie Verlag,
1992, ISBN 3-05-002188-8, pp. 131-152]

Oddly enough, though he quotes Carnap (from Schilpp) talking about his neutrality with respect to the ontologies of phenomenalism and physicalism,
he then goes on to criticism of the Aufbau as being clearly phenomenalistic (hence not neutral). Of course it is! Carnap's idea is that you progress both the phenomenalistic and the physicalistic perspectives and judge their merits and applicability pragmatically. In the same paragraph we find Quine's criticism that the Aufbau fails to effect a full reduction. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

The Aufbau was Carnap's first best attempt at a phenomenalistic reduction.
He finds that the most radical conception of what a reduction should be (i.e. everything definable in terms of the reductive base) is not going to work, so he comes up with some more subtle relationship. Having had a shot at that he goes on to consider physicalism and the theoretical language, in both these he is considering languages which are closer to those of science than the phenomenalistic language.

This all seems consistent with his (admittedly evolving) overall conception in which he is metaphysically neutral, but allowing the use of any ontology on a pragmatic basis.

RBJ

More Reck on Carnap

2010-06-01T15:06:00.000-07:00

Here is another bit of Carnap scholarship from Reck:

From Frege and Russell to Carnap: Logic and Logicism in the 1920s

There is a gap in Carnap's autobiography in relation to a major transition which he made in his thinking about his core programme of applying logic to science,

In the early twenties Carnap has taken a lead from Russell in terms of the orientation of his philosophical program, and is studying Principia Mathematica.
His "Abriss der Logistick" is a logic text based on Russell's Theory of Types (with the ramifications and the axiom of reduction dropped). This was not published until 1929,

But when Carnap comes to Logical Syntax, in the early 30s, he has adopted a position which is much more like that of Hilbert, which is quite a substantial movement. The Frege/Russell approach is sometimes called universalism because it is not pluralistic with respect to the logical systems, they think in terms of one logical system. More importantly, after the logical system is set up you are supposed to define concepts using explicit definitions.
Hilbert's was more pluralistic, and for Hilbert an axiom system was used to give an "implicit" definition of mathematical concepts.
In his autobiography Carnap gives us little information about how this transition in his thinking occurred.
Reck provides an interesting story on what was going on.
Another source of detail about what was happening to Carnap's ideas on logic may be found in a paper by Goldfarb:

On Godel's Way In: The Influence of Rudolf Carnap

The puzzle for me about how Hilbert's influence came to bear on Carnap is resolved by the mention of two men who Carnap does not speak of in his autobiography. The first is Heinrich Behmann, who was an associate of Hilbert's and with whom Carnap "closely collaborated". The other is Fraenkel, whom we have just come across in the Fraenkel-Carnap problem.

It sounds as though at this time Carnap was heading in the direction of adopting axiomatic "implicit" definitions, and was undertaking theoretical investigations to underpin the legitimacy of such methods. The question of categoricity is of course relevant in this connection, one might take the view that axioms do provide a good (if implicit) definition of mathematical concepts only if they are categorical.

In this connection it appears that Carnap was working on a book to be called "Allgemeinen Axiomatik", which never appeared. Goldfarb's paper suggests that this may be because when Godel entered the field with his PhD proving the completeness of first order logic, this exposed the weakness of the methods by which Carnap had been approaching similar problems. Hence Godel's book was never published.

RBJ

R. B. Jones's System C-R

2010-05-31T16:02:00.000-07:00

by J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club.
-- for the Carnap Corner.

WHEN Grice was invited (we trust) to honor Quine (SOME honoring: it came out in a book entitled, "Words and objections" -- SOME pun on Quine's alleged masterpiece), he talked of "System Q".

When Myro died, among his drafts was a few pages (which I MUST have somewhere) entitled, something like, "A sketch of System G, in gratitude to Paul Grice for the original idea". He had indeed previously referred to such a System in a piece Jones is familiar with. Or rather with a piece by Myro in a COLLECTION Jones is familiar with, since it includes Code's "Izzing and Hazzing" essay. This one is Myro's "Identity and Time", where, as I say, he also mentions this System G (as he later will in his unpublished drafts).

The point then? Well, I have gone on record for having extended Myro's System G, into what I call "System G-HP" where "HP" are meant as subscripts and where thus the hyphen is unnecessary. I don't know if Rudolf had another name than Rudolf, but then there's R. B. Jones's System C-R, which is, thus, System Carnap.

I propose that Speranza's System G-HP and JOnes's System C-R are IDENTICAL, which is a good way to the City!

More on this later, I hope. I have to go the City of Eternal Truth right now to drop the news!

Carnap and Grice in the history of logic (KEYWORD: "History of Logic")

2010-05-29T09:58:00.000-07:00

-- by J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club
---- for the Carnap Corner

I SHOULD DROP A NOTE IN "THE CITY of eternal truth", someday -- but the point is there. I am fascinated that Jones found that chapter on "Carnap and modern logic" (by Reck), in the Friede et al, Cambridge companion to Carnap -- of interest.

We should discuss a bit of a timeline here. As we move towards the overlapping of things.

From what _I_ see, "Whitehead/Russell" are central. This was 1910, but the whole thing was finished by 1913, only. Then there's the 1914 notebooks by Wittgenstein, which ARE important from a historical perspective.

Then of course we have anything EARLIER. Grice was OBSESSED by Russell, "On denoting" (Mind, 1905 -- which thus predates his collaboration with Whitehead) and I would think Carnap thought of Russell's theory of description of some value.

Then we can go EARLIER, to my pet: nineteenth-century logic. Frege, of course. But which WERE the general tracts by Frege: the conceptual notation, of course, which as Jones notes elsewhere (his website) is just Leibniz (and I'd add Wilkins) deja vue all over again!

---- Frege's PHILOSOPHICAL points were perhaps more 'minor'. Then there's PEANO, which Ruseell adopted, at least at the point of terminology --.

At an earlier time, the divergences between, say, British and Continental sources diverge. And I wouldn't know which German authors which are relevant to the History of GERMAN logic are of GENERAL importance. Stigwart perhaps. Then we should go back to KANT. Because after all, he wrote on Logic, too. People are too obsessed with his general theory of knowledge, but most of his points were purely logic, and it's very good to see that neo-Kantian is used, with a straight face, when talking Carnap.

Before that, we go to the scholastics which were pretty confused on a number of things, but not on ALL things. Kneale, "The Development of Logic" has been useful to me on this. And then, yes, we get to Aristotle! -- And categoricity without tears!

Carnap and Grice on constructivism

2010-05-29T09:49:00.000-07:00

--- Thanks to Jones for referring to the essay, "Carnap and modern logic" in the volume co-edited by Friedman (Friedman was a close collaborator with Grice -- and a few pieces by Friedman and Grice and by Grice and Friedman need to be edited from the Grice collection -- tomorrow, perhaps). This to acknwoledge this footnote, 8, on one of that pages of that essay, where the author acknowledges 'constructionism' or 'constructivism', which we have discussed with Jones elsewhere (notably in the Grice Club). So the point is that THIS usage of 'constructivism' by the author of "Carnap and Modern Logic" is yet a different one.

He just means Brouwer, and what will later will transpire as 'intuitionism'. But it IS interesting to focus on why the earlier labels for this approach were indeed 'constructionism' or 'constructivism'. The author of that essay perhaps too hastily goes on to dimiss the point. Surely one can't have everything in an essay and the man had been INVITED to write it! But in any case, the author points that at SOME time, then, Carnap was viewing 'constructivism' as a 'third approach'.

In the Gricean rewrite, the problem with constructionism, when applied to intuitionism, lies in things like the acceptance or not of something like DNE (double negation elimination). What construction you ACCEPT is a matter of YOUR intuitions. Brouwer was perhaps not sophisticated enough (I write that provocatively) to see the points that would later concern English-speaking philosophers (as I'm not!) but -- hey!

Or not hey!

---

Awody and Reck on Categoricity

2010-05-29T04:03:00.000-07:00

Further to my last post about categoricity in relation to the Fraenkel-Carnap problem, I found a couple of interesting papers on the history which provide technical background.

My very concise "explication" of categoricity (and related concepts) can be seen spelt out more fully and very clearly by Awody and Reck in:
Completeness and Categoricity, Part I: 19th Century Axiomatics to 20th Century Metalogic with the history continued in Completeness and Categoricity, Part II: 20th Century Metalogic to 21st Century Semantics.

I have not read much yet, and I'm sure that it soon gets tough going, but it starts off gently, and comes in early with two points which I like.
The first is to point out the importance of Fraenkel and Carnap to the development of these topics. The second is to say that higher order logics are good and that the tendency in parts of mathematical logic to focus exclusively on first order logic is not so good, either from the point of view of historical or contemporary understanding.

RBJ

Carnap and Modern Logic

2010-05-29T01:56:00.000-07:00

There has been a very considerable development of Carnap scholarship over the last couple of decades with which I am myself mostly unacquainted, but which hopefully has now corrected the caricatures which were prevalent when Logical Positivism was first supposedly given a definitive refutation.

It remains the case that most of the material I read on Carnap regards Carnap's philosophy as centering around phenomenal reductionism (the Aufbau) or the verification principle, despite the small place which these occupy in the very readable (and short) but apparently not widely read Carnap autobiography.

It is therefore nice to see something contributing to a better understanding of Carnap's work relating to the real core of his philosophy.

Carnap and Modern Logic is a chapter from the recent "Cambridge Companion to Carnap" which is of great interest (at least) in filling in detail of the history of Carnap's logical work which would not otherwise be accessible to a wide audience.

It is of particular interest to me in providing details about the influence of Hilbert on Carnap, on which Carnap says little in his autobiography, but which, on the face of it, accounts for the most substantial differences between the approach to logic of Frege and Russell and that seen in Carnap, and which in some respects weaken (make more vulnerable to the Quinean attack) the resulting conception of logical truth/ analyticity. I was assuming that the influence of Hilbert came via Schlick (I possibly hint on this in the draft Carnap/Grice conversation), but this work may tell me otherwise (when I have digested it).

RBJ

Categoricity and "The Fraenkel-Carnap Question"

2010-05-29T01:17:00.000-07:00

The Fraenkel-Carnap question has today come to my notice, and I suspect this may be the source of the matters to which Speranza referred in an earlier post to Carnap Corner on categoricity.

The Fraenkel-Carnap question is (according to Weaver and George):

whether every finitely axiomatizable semantically complete second-order theory is categorical

I offer an "explication" of this as follows.

A theory is a set of sentences in some logical system.
A second order theory is a theory in a second order logic.
A theory is finitely axiomatisable if all the sentences in the theory are formally derivable from some finite subset if the sentences.
A theory is semantically complete if it "determines" the truth value of every sentence in the language, however this means semantically, not syntactically.
It means that every sentence in the language has the same truth value in every model of the theory, so semantically it is either true or false in the context of the theory, which does not mean that it is provable or disprovable, since second order logic is not complete.

Categorical has two meanings, a syntactic and a semantic meaning.
We know that the semantic meaning is the relevant one here since the answer to the question is otherwise too easy.

A theory is syntactically categorical if every sentence or its negation is in the theory.
A theory is semantically categorical if it has only one model up to isomorphism, this is sometimes qualified by cardinality, since a first order theory with an infinite model will have models of every infinite cardinality and no two models of different cardinality will be isomorphic. So, often, categorical should be read: all models of the same cardinality are isomorphic.

One might naively suppose that a semantically complete theory will be semantically categorical, but the theory of "true arithmetic" provides a counter-example. "true arithmetic" is the set of true sentences of first order arithmetic.
It is semantically complete, because every sentence or its negation is true, but it is not semantically categorical, it has non-standard countable models.

The fact that first order logic is complete tells us that any semantically complete axiomatic theory will be syntactically categorical, but the above counterexample shows that this does not entail semantic categoricity.

In the case of second order logic, we forgo completeness of the deductive system for the sake of greater expressiveness in the semantics (leaving the syntax behind).
The consequence of the more expressive semantics is that second order arithmetic becomes semantically categorical, but the semantic expressiveness is not matched by any greater syntactic strength, so we don't have syntactic categoricity. Consequently we now have a categorical "true second order arithmetic", and its no longer obvious where to look for a counter-example to the general thesis considered in the Fraenkel-Carnap question.

This seems to me to be a somewhat recondite problem in mathematical logic.

I cannot myself see that it has any philosophical significance.
Carnap apparently offered a proof of the conjecture which was flawed.
Some partial results have been proven, the unqualified conjecture remains unsolved.

RBJ

Chalmers' John Locke Lectures

2010-05-16T22:43:00.000-07:00

What great sign of revival in the respectability of Carnap is the devotion of the Oxford John Locke lectures, this year by Chalmers, to some kind of Aufbau-like project.

The last thing I saw of his was something on the distinction between verbal and substantive question, which I do think worth getting clear.

I doubt that he is the man to get to the core of Carnap's programme, which is not phenomenal reductionism, but its nice that he is contributing to the rehabilitation of Carnap.

I haven't actually looked at any of the material online (apart from the first abstract) but I may be back when I have.

RBJ

Categoricity in Carnap and Grice

2010-05-01T09:20:00.000-07:00

Not sure what the concept stands for in Carnap, but I'm SURE 'category' is a BASIC category in Grice!

Title:Carnap, Completeness, and Categoricity: The 'Gabelbarkeitssatz' of 1928
Authors:Awodey, S
Carus, A W
Source:Erkenntnis: An International Journal of Analytic Philosophy, 54(2), 145-172. 28 p. 2001.
Document Type:Journal Article
Subjects:AXIOMATICS
CATEGORICITY
COMPLETENESS
LOGIC
LOGICISM
Persons as Subjects:CARNAP
GÖDEL, KURT
Abstract:In 1929 Carnap gave a paper in Prague on "Investigations in General Axiomatics"; a brief summary was published soon after. Its subject looks something like early model theory, and the main result, called the 'Gabelbarkeitssatz', appears to claim that a consistent set of axioms is complete just if it is categorical. This, of course, casts doubt on the entire project. Though there is no further mention of this theorem in Carnap's published writings, his 'Nachlass' includes a large typescript on the subject, 'Investigations in General Axiomatics'. We examine this work here, showing that it provides important insights into Carnap's development during this critical period.

Jan Dejonzka does Carnap (He did Grice)

2010-05-01T09:11:00.000-07:00

This below, because I have on record gone to great lengths of lovely conversation with this lovely author, so I'm sure what he says is fun -- and true!

Observational Ecumenicism, Holist Sectarianism: The Quine-Carnap Conflict on Metaphysical Realism
Authors:Dejnozka, Jan
Source:Philo: A Journal of Philosophy, 9(2), 165-191. 27 p. FALL-Winter 2006.
Document Type:Journal Article
Subjects:ECUMENICALISM
EMPIRICISM
EQUIVALENCE
HOLISM
METAPHYSICS
NATURALISM
PRAGMATISM
REALISM
SECTARIANISM
Persons as Subjects:CARNAP, RUDOLF
QUINE, WILLARD VAN ORMAN
Abstract:Do any significant philosophical differences between Quine and Carnap follow from Quine's rejection of Carnap's analytic-synthetic distinction? Not if they both understand empirical evidence in merely observational terms. But it follows from Quine's rejection of the distinction that empirical evidence has degrees of holophrastic depth penetrating even into logic and ontology (gradualism). Thus, his reasons to prefer realism to idealism are holophrastically empirical. I discuss Quine's holist sectarian realism on private languages, externalism versus internalism, unobserved objects, unobservable abstract entities, bivalence, ecumenicism versus sectarianism, and on gradualism itself.

From Vienna to Santa Fé, from Oxford to the Eternal City

2010-05-01T09:08:00.000-07:00

--- No clear idea why Santa Fé is mentioned here...

Carnap and Language: From Vienna to Santa Fé (in Slovak)
Authors:Hanzel, Igor
Source:Organon F: filozofický casopis, 14(4), 470-497. 28 p. 2007.
Document Type:Journal Article
Subjects:LOGIC
METALANGUAGE
METALOGIC
SEMANTICS
SYNTAX
Persons as Subjects:CARNAP, RUDOLF
CHURCH, ALONZO
Abstract:The paper reconstructs three main stages in the development of Carnap's approach to language in the years 1931-1947. It starts with Carnap's approach to metalogic in his Viennese 'Zirkelprotokolle' (1931) and his 'Logische Syntax der Sprache' (1934) from the point of view of one-level approach to the relation between metalanguage and its object language. It then analyzes Tarski's turn to semantics in his paper presented at the Paris conference in September 1935, as well as the implications of his view for Carnap's approach to semantics from 1935 until 1943. Finally, it analyzes Church's rediscovery of Frege and its impact on Carnap's shift to the extension/intension distinction in his semantics in the years 1943-1947.

Martin Firiedman on Carnap and Grice

2010-05-01T09:02:00.001-07:00

A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger
Reviewers:Bird, Graham
Source:Kantian Review, 12(2), 161-163. 3 p. 2007.
Reviewed Item:Friedman, Michael; (2000). A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger. Chicago: Open Court.
Document Type:Book Review

--- Martin Friedman was collaborator with Grice on topics of 'universalia', now deposited at Bancroft. He wrote on Carnap, too.

Gustav Bergmann on Carnap and Grice

2010-05-01T08:59:00.000-07:00

This bit below informs me that G. Bergmann belonged in the Vienna Circle. He referred to Grice as an "English futilitarian". I suppose he has nicer things to say about Carnap!

---

Wiener Kreis: Texte zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung von Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Moritz Schlick, Philipp Frank, Hans Hahn, Karl Menger, Edgar Zilsel und Gustav Bergmann
By: Stölzner, Michael, Uebel, Thomas. Reviewed by: Neuber, Matthias. Zeitschrift fuer philosophische Forschung, 62(4), 618-619, 2 p. Hamburg: Verlag Felix Meiner. October-December 2008. (AN PHL9065400)
Database: Philosopher's Index
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Essays by Carnap and Grice in J. Baillie, ed. "Contemporary Analytic Philosophy"

2010-05-01T08:55:00.000-07:00

Title:Contemporary Analytic Philosophy
Authors:Baillie, James
Publication Information:Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall; 1997.
Subjects:ANALYTIC
ATOMISM
EPISTEMOLOGY
LANGUAGE
Abstract:

"This anthology includes some of the most influential readings in 20th century analytic philosophy. Authors are Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Ayer, Schlick, Carnap, Moore, Ryle, Grice, Austin, Sellars, Quine, Tarski, Davidson, Krupke, Putnam. Each selection is given a detailed introduction, including biographical details, summary of the argument, criticism and recommendations for further reading."

One wonders that pieces.

Blurb for Ostertag's book that combines Carnap and Grice

2010-05-01T08:48:00.000-07:00

When I found that Ostertag had managed to reproduce only PART of Grice's 'Vacuous Names' in this expensive MIT book, I was SO disappointed... Anyway, he includes Carnap, too, and one wonders what section.

"The debate over the proper analysis of definite descriptions, which began with Bertrand Russell's classic essay, continues to this day. While it is now widely acknowledged that, like the indexical expressions "I," "here," and "now," definite descriptions in natural language are context sensitive, there is significant disagreement as to the ultimate challenge this context-sensitivity poses to Russell's theory. This reader is intended both to introduce students to the philosophy of language via the theory of descriptions, and to provide scholars in analytic philosophy with ready access to some of the central contributions in this area. It includes classic works by Russell, Carnap, Strawson, Lambert, Donnellan, Grice, Peacocke, Kripke, Wettstein, Soames, Neale, and Schiffer."

The book is "Definite descriptions: a reader", MIT, 1998.

Russell, Carnap, Grice: the 'self' -- making sense of it via 'logical construction'

2010-04-26T18:35:00.000-07:00

--- by JLS, of the Grice Club.

FURTHER TO SOME POSTS at the Grice Club, and City of Eternal Truth, this blogger. This from:

http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/carnap.html

"Carnap says that construction theory

may also clarify the problem of what

defines the nature of the self, in that

the self may be defined as a unified

expression of elementary experiences (p. 260 of Logical Structure of the World)."

--- exactly Grice's view in 1941, which he maintained till the day of his death, in 1988.

Carnap and Grice on 'pragmatic' -- and what the inventor of it all thought about things: Morris -- via Sharpless

2010-04-15T21:42:00.000-07:00

Seth Sharpless knows many (interesting things). Elsewhere, he pointed out how "Morris held that the debate between Quine and Carnap on the analytic-synthetic distinction could have been resolved had it been cast within the field of pragmatics."

Sharpless quotes from from Morris, "Signification and significance," pp. 46ff -- and publicly so. Morris writes:

"Another central issue in contemporary philosophy is whether a sharp
distinction can be made between analytic and synthetic sentences (or
"propositions"). In the present context this is the question of whether a
sharp distinction can be made between formative and lexical discourse. I
have suggested elsewhere that the distinction can be made only in terms of
pragmatic considerations--and not in terms o£ semantics or syntactics alone.
This seems to be implicitly involved in Carnap's introduction o£ "meaning
postulates" in his defense o£ the distinction o£ the analytic and the
synthetic. To decide whether the sentence "All crows are black" is analytic
or synthetic involves reference to the sign structure (and hence to the
dispositions to respond) of a specific interpreter (or a group of
interpreters). If the interpreter is disposed at a certain time to respond
to all denotata of the term 'crow' by the term 'black' (i.e., if he would
not call anything a crow unless it were black), then the sentence is
analytic at that time; otherwise it is not. Thp criterion is thus pragmatic
and involves the use of signs (i.e., the acceptance of a sign framework) by
a specific producer of the signs. 'Acceptance' is a basic term, in
pragmatics."

Sharpless comments: "Personally, I would not put it quite in this way, but I do believe that most of the force behind Quine's criticism of analyticity would vanish if the "language" under consideration were relativized to synchronic aspects of
idiolects, and if one allowed for reference to "meanings" (intensions,
senses) in the metalanguage, instead of, like Quine, nominalistically
banishing "meanings" to the "myth of the museum." It is hard to make the
case that any given sentence in English is analytic, but that may be because
English allows for a variety of proper interpretations, in some of which the
sentence would be analytic and in others not. Still, on an occasion when a
person interprets such a sentence (in conformity with the English lexical
rules), he may employ some specific criterion of identification (sense) of
the many allowed by English to identify denotata, and which criterion he
employs determines whether the sentence is analytic or not."

This is pretty much in keeping with Grice's pragmatist bent, too. I would think

Carnap and Quine

2010-04-12T14:27:00.001-07:00

The Carnap Corner blog was initiated to complement the Grice Club and The City of Eternal Truth as a place for material on Carnap related to a join project of mine with J.L.Speranza, attempting to find common ground (and note irreconcilable differences) between Carnap and Grice (as they might have become) through "A conversation between Carnap and Grice".

Carnap also figures large in another of my projects, which is at present holding things up on my collaboration with Speranza (since I felt the need to get it going before pressing on with JLS, and it is stubbornly declining to move rapidly enough for me to say that is done).

In that project there is an important segment on the Carnap/Quine relationship (as it really was. not in this case a contemporary rehash).

On this I have been gradually gathering a better coverage of the relevant literature in my small personal library (having no convenient access to Universities), and as I do so my perception of how things were is slowly but surely transforming, almost beyond recognition.

I don't believe when I first read "Two Dogmas" that I knew enough about Carnap to realise that the paper was a repudiation of Carnap's programme. It was then for me an outrageous bag of transparently fallacious arguments against a fundamental and fundamentally important philosophical distinction.

When I later became better acquainted with Carnap and aware of the relationship between him and Quine I came to think of "Two Dogmas" as an act of betrayal more cutting than any cogent critique could have been.

It remains the case that I cannot comprehend how Quine could have believed the arguments he put forward in "Two Dogmas", but my recent readings have finally forced me to recognise how far from the truth my first impressions were.

It now seems to me that over the first twenty years of Quine's professional life, the development of his philosophy was closely linked with that of Carnap, that the influence was in both directions, and that Carnap's influence on Quine, though not what he would have wished, was possibly much greater than that of Quine on Carnap.

For the moment however, just a comment on the latter.

There are many shifts in Carnap's preoccupations, even within that core thread of analytic technique, method and philosophical underpinnings, which I regard as his most important work. When Quine and Carnap first met "The logical syntax of language" was nearing completion, and Carnap was still in Europe benefiting from the philosophically congenial atmosphere of the Vienna Circle (even though not then in VIenna).

There followed soon the disruptions engendered by impending war and emigration to the USA, and it was in Chicago that the next, semantic, phase in Carnap's philosophy began with the production of the first two volumes of a projected series on Semantics (by Harvard). These have the character of works written by a philosopher progressing a programme of work in a benign context in which the general aims would be largely acceptable but the details subject to intense scrutiny and discussion.

Ten years earlier such a volume would have been discussed in the Vienna Circle, and the critique would have been in the context of a general acceptance this was a worthwhile line of development.

While the first Volume was in manuscript an opportunity to reproduce that kind of benign and productive philosophical environment arose. Both Carnap and Tarski spent 1940-41 at Harvard with Quine, Russell also was present for the first term. These four were the core participants of occasional meetings discussing "logical problems".

According to Quine, Carnap offered the manuscript of his "Introduction to Semantics" for criticism, but:

"midway through the first page, Tarski and I took issue

with Carnap on analyticity. The controversy continued through subsequent sessions, without resolution and.without progress in the reading of Carnap's manuscript."

One sees in the volume intended as the third in the series on semantics a radical change. "Meaning and Necessity" is much less a straightforward technical presentation written in apparent assurance of constructive reception. Unlike the previous volumes it is substantially devoted to comparison between Carnap's proposed methods and those of other philosopher's who had done related work, such as Frege, Russell, the logician Alonzo Church, C.I.Lewis, and of course, Quine and Tarski. The two topics, semantics and necessity, directly addressed the central controversy between Quine and Carnap.

Carnap evidently was not confident that he could accurately present Quine's point of view, and solicited a letter from Quine for inclusion in the volume.

Quine's opposition to Carnap's conception had been evident as early as his 1936 paper "Truth by Convention". In 1940 it had been shown to represent so severe a reservation as to warrant refusal (de facto if not de dicto) to discuss Carnap's most recent work. Carnap's 1947 publication of "Meaning and Necessity" can be read, in its principle themes and detailed discussions as a response to Quine's antipathy on logical truth (which Carnap identified with analyticty and necessity and defined through semantics).

What then was new to Carnap in "Two Dogmas",. could he have felt betrayal at that point? Surely this was just more of the same?

"Two dogmas" puts into print what Carnap might possibly have suspected back in 1940, that Quine was determined to reject his philosophy, come what may. It offers a "critique" so uncompromising as to border (like much scepticism) on incoherence and leave no possibility of reconciliation.

It ushered in a period in which Carnap and logical positivism were not even considered worthy of careful critique, but could be dismissed with conventional caricatures.

In this lengthy controversy Carnap's philosophical writings came to be substantially directed towards amendments addressing cogent critiques (such as are found in the supplementary papers in the second edition of "Meaning and Necessity" and in new approaches presented in Carnap's volume in the library of living philosophers), and in detailed comparisons with related works explaining why Carnap preferred the methods he was offering.

The effect on Carnap we might therefore speculate, was to increase the time he expended on exposition and on corrections to his ideas on these core issues at the expense of moving on to other problems.

The effect on Quine might possibly have been more profound and lasting. The central features of Quine's philosophy were reactions against Carnap, and were primarily reactions against the most fundamental core features of Carnap's philosophy, the analytic/synthetic dichotomy, the nature of logical truth and necessity, ontology, the value and use of formal languages. Can Quine's subsequent philosophical writing be understood as a continuous servicing of the obligation to sustain a tenuous position provoked through opposition to Carnap?

It is said of my favourite ancient sceptic that he was exceptional in his ability, then fashionable, to argue the case successfully both for and against any question.

Is Quine's philosophy an enterprise of similar character extended over an entire and lengthy career, made less obvious but no less impressive by Quine arguing only and tacitly as devil's advocate?

As I read around this central episode in the philosophies of Carnap and Quine, I find my perception continuously moderating, and my perception of the reality softening little by little. At present however I seem to be heading in the direction of crediting Quine with providing a foil which will ultimately yield a sharper appreciation of those aspects of Carnap's philosophical outlook which deserve a place in the future.

RBJ

Carnap and Grice on Deviant Logics

2010-03-18T21:38:00.001-07:00

--- by J. L. S.
------ for the Carnap Corner

G. RESTALL HAS provided an instantiation of the 'disyunctive syllogism', and R. B. Jones was then rightly moved to reminisce about that encounter with Restall at the Cambridge Centre of Mathematics.

It has to do with 'or'

The dog went to the right or to the left.
The dog didn't go to the right.
----
Ergo, the dog went to the left.

----

It was Quine, I would think, who all started it (sic). "Deviant" logics -- later taken up by Susan Haack in her manual. It had, I think, in Quine, to do with 'changing the subject'.

Quine noted that the way to compare the 'classical' logic framework with alternative ones was not an easy one: there were some incompatibilities or incommensurabilities of paradigms (or 'language frameworks', as Carnap would call them in "LSO").

---

The point may be Lockean:

"the meaning is what you keep in your head". So, two parrots (to use his example) may be talking 'or', and yet for one parrot it means 'v' and for another it means 'w'. While 'w' can be defined in terms of 'v' (vel), the parrot may not! (do it).

How Grice would react:

I think he would abide by 'language frameworks' alla Carnap, only perhaps would call them 'idiosyncratic' procedures. The word, 'idio-', Grice uses specifically in WoW:
124:

This is Grice's nominalist strategy, as misunderstood by Bennett ("Foundations of Language" -- "The Meaning-nominalist Strategy"):

Grice:

it will be convenient first to
consider the idea of [a gesture, signal]
timeless meaning for an individual
(within a signalling IDIOLECT so to speak)

I prefer idiosyncratic since the signal should not be vocalised (as 'lect-' suggests).

So, when he goes to define his System Q (in honour of Quine) for the Quine festschrift -- and later turned onto System G by Myro -- it's best to regard the introduction of 'or' (and its elimination) as idiolectal, or idiosyncratic. Philosophical problems, for Grice (vide his "Wellesey" lecture in WoW:Part II on 'conceptual analysis') arise from individual problems for a philosopher -- not to respond to a 'social' or 'collective' one:

my philosophical puzzles
have arisen in connection with my
use of [an expression or concept], and my
conceptual analysis will be of value to
me

-- and it is in this context where he does mention 'idiosynrasies', including linguistic, and I'd say, logical ones.

I would asume that "nobody as pluralistic as Carnap" would yield that the System C will have quite a few subdivisions: C', C", C"', etc.

Carnap scholarship - a curates egg?

2010-03-11T08:26:00.001-08:00

I searched on the internet today for a copy of the manifesto
of the Vienna Circle.
Though I failed to find it, I did find an article on the
Vienna Circle in the Stanford Encyclopaedia which looked as
if it might provide something new for me on Carnap.
.
I have noticed of late the huge amount of material on Carnap
which now comes up in a Google search. When I first put up
my modest offering on Carnap (which was not so very long ago,
1998) I was partly provoked by there being almost nothing on
Carnap on the web. The situation is now much transformed.
.
The article at Stanford begins by referring to the great
amount of historical research which has contributed to our
understanding of the philosophy of the Vienna Circle over
the last 25 years, and how this has improved the critical
assessment of these philosophers.
.
I read the introductory general material and then went to
see what he had to say about the analytic/synthetic
distinction. Here I was instantly dismayed, for it seemed
to me that the account (which might possibly be an accurate
account of the contemporary assessment/debate) was
conspicuously lacking in understanding of some elementary
but fundamental points.
.
It has occurred to me in the past, and it does again, what
good painstaking and thorough historical research if those
who undertake it don't actually understand what they are
reading?
.
Possibly I may follow up with some specifics under separate
headings.
.
RBJ

Carnap and Wittgenstein : Truth Functional ~ Truth Conditional

2010-03-10T14:41:00.001-08:00

I have been digging into Carnap's Autobiography (in the

Schilpp volume) paying attention to what he says (which is a

great deal) about the sources of his ideas, while trying to

progress the biographical parts of the Carnap/Grice

conversation I am working on with J.L. Speranza.

I found a nice way of thinking about one of the issues which

I have recently been discussing on hist-analytic.org with

Speranza.

In the Tractatus Wittgenstein presents a couple of ideas about the status of logical truths. He is working with Hume's fork which separates true propositions in to those which are logically true and those which are empirically true. He has some insights into the nature of propositions and of logical truth which allow this to be explained more fully than was possible for Hume.

Two separate ideas contribute to a satisfactory explanation.

The first is that the relevant part of the meaning of a proposition can be captured by its truth conditions which tell you the truth value of the proposition in every possible situation. This idea suffices to distinguish between analytic and synthetic truths, the analytic truths being those which are true under all conditions, synthetic propositions are true under some and false under others.

This is Wittgenstein's insight that logical truths are tautologous.

The second idea is that of a truth function.

It was well known that the classical propositional connectives are "truth functional", that the truth value of a complex proposition formed using them depends only on the truth value of the constituent propositions. Quantification is more complicated. A quantifier operates on a propositional function rather than a proposition, so cannot be truth functional in quite the same way as the connectives. Nevertheless in an appropriately augmented sense it too is "truth functional", and the effect is that any complex proposition formed from "atomic propositions" by

the propositional connectives or quantifiers is truth functional. It is not quite trivial to make this precise, but with some minor caveats this is what Wittgenstein does

in the Tractatus and this is what is done in a rather different way in the semantics of first order logic which we find (subsequently) at the beginnings of model theory.

The second insight is more definite than the first, in that it takes us from the idea that a logical truth has tautologous truth conditions, to the idea that it is a tautologous truth function of its atomic propositions.

We have added the idea that the "possibilities" relative to which the truth conditions are defined are assignments of truth values to the constituent atomic propositions.

One step more and we get into trouble.

That step is to answer the question "but which assignments ot truth values are possible" and give the obvious answer:

well they are all logically possible.

We have now moved from a truth conditional account of logical truth which can correctly account for that notion of logical truth which is complementary to the notion of empirical truth (i.e. the truths of reason in Hume's fork, by contrast with "matters of fact") to an essentially narrower conception which corresponds closely to that of first order validity (not yet defined at the time of the Tractatus).

The problem then is for Wittgenstein that the conception of logical truth in the Tractatus fails to take account of "determinate exclusion" which is the possibility that two atomic propositions are not logically independent.

This according to Hacker was the primary consideration which undermined the Tractarian conception of the status of logic

(for Wittgenstein, in about 1930).

So what has this to do with Carnap?

.
Carnap gives several accounts of logical truth or L-truth (by which he almost always means analyticity).
The early ones in his syntactic phase don't concern us here, but in his later semantic phase we find in "Meaning and Necessity" that his semantic characterisation of L-truth

explicitly follows the Tractatus. He defines a state description as (effectively) an assignment of truth values to atomic propositions.

The semantics is then given as rules which tell us whether any proposition "holds" in any state description, i.e.which gives the truth conditions in terms of state descriptions (these are the "possibilities").

A proposition is L-true if it holds in every state description.

Carnap makes no provision here for restricting the possible state descriptions, though he is explicit in declaring L-truth to be an explication of Leibniz's "necessary truth" and Kant's "analytic truth", and goes on himself to define necessity in terms of L-truth.

Though I see no aknowledgement of an error in "Meaning and Necessity" Carnap later offers another explication of analyticity in "Meaning Postulates". In this paper he again uses the term L-truth, but he now distinguishes two kinds of logical truth a narrow and a wide, identifies L-truth with the narrow conception (which has the same definition as was given in "Meaning and Necessity", ostensibly for the broad notion) identifies the broader conception with analyticity, and gives an explication using meaning postulates to restrict the states of affairs which count as possibilities in determining whether a proposition is tautologous.

So far as I am aware this is the only place where he uses L-truth intending to explicate a narrow conception of logical truth.

When we come to his reformulation for the Schilpp volume he simply drops L-truth and introduces A-truth for analyticity, effectively removing the conflict with Quine over the scope of logical truth by giving him the concept.

Meanwhile, seemingly by accident, Carnap has given, in "Meaning Postulates", a more precise characterisation of the narrow concept than I have seen elsewhere,

Carnap may be thought of here as defining analyticity in terms of tautological truth conditions, and logical truth in term of tautological truth functions. He has implicated that the logical connectives are the truth functional connectives (in the broad sense in which quantifiers count as truth functional). Nowhere does he explain this or offer it as a characterisation, (that I am aware of), it just falls out by accident.

In fact the feature of his semantics out of which it falls is in other terms undesirable. for it prejudices the division of the semantics into evaluation rules (defining the truth conditions) and constraints on possibilities ("Meaning postulates"), forcing all but the truth functional aspects to be covered in the latter rather than the former.

I should mention one other fly in the ointment, which I have glossed over and should be dealt with more carefully. That is the need for the semantics of quantification to know the domain of discourse. This makes quantification a truth function of the propositional function only if the domain of quantification is either fixed in advance or is somehow recoverable from the collection of true atomic propositions (e.g. if every value is known to have a name).

RBJ

Ramsey, Carnap, and Grice on the ι-operator

2010-03-01T05:25:00.000-08:00

------ By J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club
------------- For the Carnap Corner

----

As Psillos says, elsewhere, Carnap "re-invented" the Ramsey sentence. This is interesting. Apparently, it was Feigl who brought Ramsey to Carnap's attention. Unnecessarily, for Carnap had thought up the whole thing independently.

Philosophical credits were properly due in due time

This below, to distinguish Ramsified things. For Grice it's 'way of Ramsified naming' versus 'way of Ramsified definition': the latter operates with iota.

JL

---

Looking for structure in all the wrong places: Ramsey sentences ...by A Cei - 2006 - If the Ramsey sentence describes a class of realisers for the relevant ...... Ramsey sentences with the 'uniqueness' operator or ι-operator. ...

Grice Refines Carnap's Ramsey Sentences (?)

2010-03-01T04:49:00.000-08:00

------------ By J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club
---------------------- For the Carnap Corner:

Grice distinguishes two types of Ramsifications:

Method In Philosophical Psychology (From the Banal to the Bizarre) *by P Grice - 1974
be to adopt the first alternative (that of Ramsified naming) and to ..... sible solution of the Selection problem (D). Only those laws which ...
www.jstor.org/stable/3129859

Ramsey, Carnap, and Grice on Θ

2010-03-01T04:44:00.000-08:00

------------- By J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club.
---------------------- For the Carnap Corner.

----- WHILE in the treatment of these topics (e.g. by Schiffer, "Ceteris Paribus Laws") I've seen "T" to symbolise Theory (and cfr. the interesting generalisations by Rescher using T as theory of everything in "Theory of everything (philosophy)", wiki, I would follow this link below, and call me pedantic if I find the Greek letter, theta, a good one to signal "theory", too.

JLS

Ref.:
Empirical Adequacy and Ramsificationby J Ketland - 2004

realist who accepts a scientific theory Θ thinks that Θ is empirically .... gically interpreted (e.g., by Carnap-Bridgman style correspondence rules).

Grice on Ramsification

2010-03-01T04:13:00.000-08:00

---- By J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Circle
------------ For the Carnap Corner.

Gr75 (repr. Gr91) explicitly mentions Ramsification, and obviously, no Ramsification without Carnap. Grice, who could have credited Carnap at that point, doesn't. (It was a lecture, so there was perhaps no need). In any case, here for the closer Carnap connection.

From wiki, "Carnap-Ramsey sentence". (Grice is strictly concerned with T: psychological theoretical concept, and O: input of perception and output of sensoriness.

---- But Carnap's original goal was, interestingly, more general -- or as general as it can get:

The wiki entry goes:

"In the theories of Ramsey, Carnap found the method he

needed, which was

1. to substitute variables

for each T-term

2. to quantify existentially all T-terms

in both T-sentences and correspondence rules."

"The resulting "Ramsey sentence" effectively

eliminates the T-term as such, while still

providing an account of T’s empirical

content."

"The evolution of the formula proceeds thus:

Step 1 (empirical theory, assumed true):

TC ( t1 . . . tn, o1 . . . om)

Step 2 (substitution of variables for T-terms):

TC (x1 . . . xn, o1 . . . om)

Step 3 (-quantification of the variables): .

"Step 3 is the complete Ramsey sentence, expressed "RTC," and to be read as follows:

"There are some (unspecified) relations such that TC (x1 . . . xn, o1 . . . om) is satisfied when the variables are assigned these relations.""

"(This is equivalent to an interpretation as an appropriate model."

"There are relations r1 . . . rn such that TC (x1 . . . xn, o1 . . . om) is satisfied when xi is assigned the value ri, and .)

"The Ramsey sentence captures the factual content of the theory."

"Though Ramsey believed this formulation

was adequate to the needs of science,

Carnap disagreed."

"In order to delineate a distinction between

analytic and synthetic content,"

--- cfr. Grice on 'analytic psychological laws': he who wills the end, wills the means', and such. Caeteris paribus in character.

"Carnap thought the reconstructed sentence

would have to satisfy three desiderata."

"The factual (FT) component must be
observationally equivalent to the original theory (TC)."

"Second, the analytic (AT) component
must be observationally uninformative."

"Third, the combination of FT and AT must be
logically equivalent to the original theory."

"Desideratum 1 is satisfied by RTC

in that the existential quantification

of the T-terms does not change the

logical truth (L-truth) of either statement,

and the reconstruction FT has the same

O-sentences as the theory itself,

hence RTC is observationally equivalent to TC:

(i.e., for every O-sentence: O, )."

"As stated, however, Desiderata 2 and 3 remain unsatisfied. That is, taken individually, AT does contain observational information (such-and-such a theoretical term is observed to do such-and-such, or hold such-and-such a relation); and AT does not necessarily follow from FT."

"Carnap’s solution is to make the
two statements conditional."

"If there are some relations
such that [TC (x1 . . . xn, o1 . . . om)]
is satisfied when the variables are assigned some relations,
the relations assigned to those variables by the original theory will satisfy [TC (t1 . . . tn, o1 . . . om)] – or: RTC → TC."

"This brilliant move satisfies both
remaining desiderata and effectively
creates a distinction between the total
formula’s analytic and synthetic components."

"Specifically, for Desideratum 2: The conditional sentence does not make any information claim about the O-sentences in TC, it states only that if the variables in are satisfied by the relations, the O-sentences will be true."

"This means that every O-sentence in TC that is logically implied by the sentence RTC → TC is L-true (i.e., every O-sentence in AT is true or not-true."

Examples:

"The metal expands or it does not; the chemical turns blue or it does not, etc.)."

"Thus TC can be taken as the non-informative (i.e., non-factual)
component of the statement, or AT."

"Desideratum 3 is satisfied by inference: given AT, infer FT → AT. This makes AT + FT nothing more than a reformulation of the original theory, hence AT Ù FT ó TC."

"Finally, the all-important requirement for an analytic-synthetic distinction is clearly met by using two distinct processes in the formulation: drawing an empirical connection between the statement’s factual content and the original theory (observational equivalence), and by requiring the analytic content to be observationally non-informative."

"Of course, Carnap’s reconstruction as it is given here is not intended to be a literal method for formulating scientific propositions."

"To capture what Duhem would call the entire holistic universe relating to any specified theory would require long and complicated renderings of RTC → TC."

"Instead, it is to be taken as demonstrating logically that there is a way that science could formulate empirical, observational explications of theoretical concepts – and in that context the Ramsey-Carnap structure can be said to provide a formal justificatory distinction between scientific observation and metaphysical inquiry."

"The Ramsey-Carnap formulation is, of course, not inviolate."

"Among its critics are John Winnie, who extended the desiderata to include an "observationally non-creative" restriction on Carnap’s AT – and both Quine and Hempel attacked Carnap’s initial assumptions by emphasizing the ambiguity that persists between observable and non-observable terms."

"Nonetheless, the Carnap-Ramsey construct was an interesting attempt to draw a substantive line between science and metaphysics."

INDEED -- and was much respected by Grice. (And while VERY GENERAL, it's yet not an external 'thingy').

---

Refs

Carnap, R. Theoretical Concepts in Science, with introduction by Psillos, S. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A

Carnap, R. (1966) An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (esp. Parts III, and V), ed. Martin Gardner. Dover Publications, New York. 1995.

Carnap, R. (1950) Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology, in Moser & Nat, Human Knowledge Oxford Univ. Press. (2003).

Demopoulos, W. Carnap on the Reconstruction of Scientific Theories, The Cambridge Companion to Carnap, eds. R. Creath and M. Friedman.

Moser, P.K. and vander Nat, A. (2003) Human Knowledge Oxford Univ. Press.

Schlick, Moritz (1918) General Theory of Knowledge (Allegemeine Erkenntnislehre). Trans. Albert Blumberg. Open Court Publishing, Chicago/La Salle, IL. (2002).

Carnap, Grice, and the Theory of Everything

2010-03-01T03:17:00.000-08:00

---- By J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club
----------- For the Carnap Corner.

--- Roger Bishop Jones has used "theory of everything" in both his website and in open discussion in hist-analytic (posts filed). I, too!

So here this historical piece: and you can imagine that that great grandfather's name was "Carnapus Griceus".

From wiki, 'theory of everything':

"A great-grandfather of

Ijon Tichy — a character from

a cycle of Stanisław Lem's

science-fiction stories of 1960s --

was known to work on

the "General Theory of Everything"".

JLS

Ramsey: Shared Love of Carnap and Grice

2010-03-01T02:02:00.000-08:00

--- By J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club
----------- for the Carnap Corner

--- THIS LINK BELOW provides a good full page of Carnap on well-known topic of the 'correspondence rule'

O <----> T

observation theory

-- This has at least two offsprings of importance in the Carnap/Grice debate:

-------(a) Phenomenalism, (which both Carnap and Grice reject) as wanting to see 'material' object as a 'theoretical' concept.

------- (b) Functionalism (a bete noire for Grice), as applied to psychology. In this second context, input and output (perceptual input and sensory output) are O-terms (in a Turing machine set) and the psychological predicate is the T-term.

Grice relies on Ramsification. In the link below we see Carnap at his best: exposing views and 'explicating' as was his wont and favourite term, which are so abtract they hurt! What a genius. Surely the same type of temperament that Grice was seen to display, in his more relaxed modes!

JLS

The Oxford handbook of philosophy of biology - Google Books
Michael Ruse - 2008 - Science
... pluralism is theoretically monistic, but operationally pluralistic. ... Rudolf Carnap explains: Our theoretical laws deal exclusively with the behavior ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=0195182057...

The Carnap We Love

2010-03-01T01:51:00.000-08:00

---- By J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Circle
---------- for the Carnap Corner

--- Roger Bishop Jones may not be welcoming the 'we' in header, or the verb ('love') but that's because he loves ALL CARNAPS. The Carnap I particularly love is the one I identify with quotes like this below, from an online source:

"Carnap and Ayer ridiculed the whole debate as mystical nonsense."

--- any old debate: realism vs. idealism, monism vs. pluralism (I think the case is in the above quote), objectivism vs. subjectivism, libertarianism vs. determinism -- and the REST of them!

----- Grice Studies. Get your PhD NOW

-------- Carnap Studies -- Get your PhD -- YESTERDAY!

(Just joking: on the idea that Carnap makes the study of philosophy (as we knew it) quite a lovely study to undertake: Imagine his suggested readings for "Metaphysics II". What a genius!)

We need to consider Philosophy (or at least _I_ should) as it applies to items _Grice_ found of interest, which makes the thing funNER!

Monism: What Variety? (Give Me A Sweet Break)

2010-03-01T01:47:00.000-08:00

--- By J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club.
----------- for the Carnap Corner.

---- ROGER, you have to be careful, and keep up the good work. There's a growing literature on your hero, and they are abusing him! So, now we have full articles on Carnap and "anomalous monism" and this below on Carnap and "neutral monism". The problem is they are not blogging: they come from out-of-the-mainstream unis and it's all difficult to access. But the biblio (of historical importance) should be easy enough to retrieve, if we were interested. Just sampling the combos for alternatives for epithets. Etc.

JL

---

Neutral Monism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)by L Stubenberg - 2005
1992, “Carnap's Aufbau and the Legacy of Neutral Monism”, in Bell, ... 1971, Essays in Radical Empiricism and A Pluralistic Universe, New York: Dutton.

Demons, No Ghosts

2010-03-01T01:34:00.000-08:00

--- By J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club
----------- For the Carnap Corner

From an onice source:

[PDF]

"Metaphysics After Carnap: the Ghost Who Walks?"

by H Price

"an argument for Monism, where

Carnap requires Pluralism, as it were."

"I want to show that this is a mistake,

and rests on a confusion

between two theoretical [things]."

www.usyd.edu.au/time/price/preprints/metameta.pdf

--- Metaphysics SHOULD NOT be a ghost who talks, but if H. Price is so fastidious about it, let's use "metaphilosophy". :)

Monism Comes In One Variety

2010-03-01T01:22:00.000-08:00

--- By J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club
----------- For the Carnap Corner

---- WE ALL KNOW IT'S PRETTY HATEFUL TO provide and provide and provide literature reference, especially coming from the philosophy machinery -- but here is the abstract (online) from a specific "Carnap" secondary bibliography essay (below). Again, to consider when discussing

Pluralism vs. Monism

--- None is a bete noire for Grice, but the may attach to other things so let's be sort of warned:

Matti Eklund (2009).

"Carnap and Ontological Pluralism."

In David J. Chalmers, David Manley & Ryan Wasserman (eds.),

Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations
of Ontology. Oxford University Press.

"ABSTRACT. "My focus here will be Carnap’s views on ontology,

as these are presented in the seminal

“Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology” (1950).

I will first describe how I think Carnap’s

distinction between external and internal questions

is best understood.

Then I will turn to broader issues regarding

Carnap’s views on ontology. With certain reservations,

I will ascribe to Carnap an ontological

pluralist position roughly similar to

the positions of Eli Hirsch and

the later Hilary Putnam."

"Then I turn to some interrelated

arguments against the pluralist view."

"The arguments are not demonstrative."

"Some possible escape routes for

the pluralist are outlined."

----- Such kindness. Gladiatorial at best! :). It's only the later Putnam, though. :(, not the latest and top.

"But I think the arguments constitute a

formidable challenge."

for anyone who will get the book!

"There should be serious doubt

as to whether the pluralist view,

as it emerges after discussion

of these arguments, will be worth

defending."

Sure it will -- the only good things
worth defending are those YOU will
doubt about!

"Moreover, there is an alternative

ontological view which equally well

subserves the motivations

underlying ontological pluralism."

---- Don't say it's Monism, because it comes in just one variety and there's two of us here: Roger Bishop Jones and I. :).

Ontology: Monism vs. Pluralism

2010-03-01T01:13:00.000-08:00

---- By J. L. Speranza, the Grice Club,
------------ for the Carnap Corner.

---- TO CONSIDER SOMEWHAT seriously, from an online source: "Beall and Restall [2000], [2001] and [2006] advocate a comprehensive pluralist approach to logic, which they call Logical Pluralism, according to which there is not one true logic but many equally acceptable logical systems. They maintain that Logical Pluralism is

compatible

with

monism about metaphysical modality."

-- Restall, whom I know, is explicitly neo-Carnapian. Not oddly, Grice has defended monism about metaphysical modality too (i.e. that necessarily 'must' and analytically 'must' must be the same must) in what he calls the Aequi-Vocality Thesis.

I think it should be pretty serious to consider here the epithets:

logical

vs.

ontological

cfr.

physical

vs.

metaphysical

--- &c.

And also the

monism-pluralism distinction.

Monism since strictly the possibly only good alternative to 'pluralism' of the sort that Carnap defends explicitly elsewhere. To consider as demons, perilous and malevolent (betes noires) or other.

neo-Carnapian

2010-02-28T19:37:00.001-08:00

--- By J. L. S. of the Grice Club
------------for the Carnap Corner

I WOULD THINK that if you ask a German to say "neo-Carnapianism" in German he may say "neo-Carnapism". Google so far gives just one hit for that:

[PDF] Radical Interpretation, Normativity,

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat

This amounts to a certain Neo-Carnapism which leads to the (re-)introduction of analyticity into L1. 11) Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, p.25. ...

www.mbph.de/Language/normanaly.pdf

The Carnap-Grice Conversation (cf. The Carnap-Strawson Conversation)

2010-02-28T12:22:00.000-08:00

--- By J. L. S.

----------- I WOULD THINK CARNAP was pretty fortunate, if that's a word, in having Strawson contribute to his Living Philosopher volume. It gave the occasion not so much to read the rather verbose thing by Strawson, but, to reply to it!

It may do to approach that 'conversation' bit by bit. While it's one stretch followed by 1/4 of same stretch by Carnap, it may be best to 'analyse' or dissect it in terms of particular conversational moves. I will provide a few clues:

---- STRAWSON starts the conversation. He proposes some neologisms or terms to 'frame' the question: constructionists versus _us_.

CARNAP replies that he rather speaks of 'naturalists', short for 'linguistic naturalists' for Strawson's ilk.

STRAWSON proposes to criticise Carnap on 'explanation.

CARNAP replies that Strawson fails to honour Carnap's own preferrence for the word 'explication' and that he totally forgets (not disingenously) to mention that role of 'clarification'. For Carnap it's first clarification, and then explication.

STRAWSON never provides one clear example. Except Carnap's own, "The room is warm" vs. "The temperature of the room is 20C". Quality versus Quantity. Strawson offers this example as a counter-example to Carnap on metaphysics. Strawson wants to say that 'has temperature 20C' fails to encapsulate the issue of 'is warm'.

CARNAP questions this.

STRAWSON brings in another example. The interpretation of '.' (the symbol he uses, after Principia Mathematica) and '-', the tilde or squiddly, also used in Principia. He does not, fortunately, care to state what they stand for (He made a point about this in "'.' and 'and'" and "'-' and 'not'" in the book most criticised by Grice in his lifetime, Introduction to Logical Theory (1952).

CARNAP takes up the issue.

STRAWSON wants to say that there may be a difference or divergence of meaning (between '.' and 'and' and '-' and 'not'. He is suggesting there may be valid inferences in the vernaculars of NL that are not reproduced in the analogues of FL.

CARNAP considers this but is not worried. He himself proposes a more interesting, perhaps, case of 'or', not as 'v' but as 'w'. His point is that, if a divergence IS noted, it can still be marked, or remarked by the use of a new symbol (the exclusive 'disjunction') (All this has Gricean relevance -- since Grice's metier is to elucidate how we go on multiplying senses, or avoiding common mistakes in both constructionalists and naturalists).

STRAWSON brings in 'science', and 'common sense', and 'philosophy'.

CARNAP is unimpressed and makes some sharp criticism to OLP (ordianary langauge philosopher), drawing from Sellars, etc, and being especially punny and playful that he IS NOT MEANING Strawson!

STRAWSON continues to bring in the philosophical relevance of ordinary language.

CARNAP goes on, in his perhaps most effective, or at least most amusing move, to declare the 'barbarity' of the new world. He is identifying Strawson with the Good Old World of England and Oxford and Grice and Germany and Ruhr, and Vienna and Jena. Instead, Carnap opposes the New World (! With old-worlders like that!). His geographical metaphor is just that: he wants to say that, to use Grice's term, there is no SANCTITY in ordinary language, and that barbarous expressions WILL be tolerated.

STRAWSON continues to dwell on how ordinary our philosophical practice is.

CARNAP criticises the 'naturalists' with sticking with what is 'talent' for them -- things they are used to -- as a fixation, and an ability to expand the horizons, and just be more blooming tolerant. "This does not apply to Strawson, of course", Carnap concludes!

A good tour-de-force!

Carnap and Grice on Linguistic Naturalism

2010-02-28T03:12:00.000-08:00

----- By J. L. S.
--------- for the Carnap Corner

LEARNING FROM

http://www.rbjones.com/rbjpub/philos/bibliog/carnap63.htm

that Sir Peter Strawson (once collaborator with Grice) did contribute with "Carnap's Views on Constructed Systems versus Natural Languages in Analytic Philosophy", which prompted his (commisioned, we realise), "Strawson on Linguistic Naturalism" I am tempted to imagine a closer conversation here with Strawson's mentor in the field: Grice!

Good online link for Carnap on metametaphysics!

2010-02-28T02:55:00.000-08:00

---- JLS
for the Carnap Corner

----- I AM PLEASED that I THINK I'm 'guiding' if that's the word, Jones towards the use of 'metaphilosophy'. In any case, here is 'meta-metaphyics', and it has a good essay, which I'll have to analyse in some more detail on 'ontological pluralism'. I arrived at it via googling for "Austinian Carnapian", and the Austinian glee is there alright!

Metametaphysics: new essays on the foundations of ontology - Google Books ResultDavid John Chalmers, David Manley, Ryan Wasserman - 2009 - Philosophy - 529 pages
... by shrugging it off with Carnapian tolerance for many different answers, or by insisting with Austinian glee that the answer is laughably trivial''.14 ...
books.google.com/books?isbn=0199546002...

"More Carnapian than Austinian"

2010-02-28T02:47:00.000-08:00

--- by J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Circle
----------- For the Carnap Corner

-- An online source -- I'm retrieving some crossreferences Austin/Carnap, and find this one from

REFRAINING (1979), by R. E. Moore

where a reference is made to Myles Barnd (1971)

Brand "describes his project there as "more Carnapian
than Austinian". (p. 45), so most probably he never
intended that (D5) capture our ordinary ...

www.springerlink.com/index/X23Q0505H020W550.pdf

--- So one could visualise something like

On many occasions -- R. B. Jones is a specialist in J. L. Austin, so he knows --, Grice would feel the burden of the Austinian Code a heavy one.

Grice had more of a theoretical spirit than Austin ever _tried_. Grice looked for generalities, abstractions, regularities beyond 'statistics'.

It would not be unreasonable to see Grice's choosing and sticking so ardently with Carnap's 'pirots' as Grice's feeling "more Carnapian than Austinian" in more than one respect!

Grice's "More Positivistic Vein"

2010-02-28T02:37:00.000-08:00

--- By J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club.
------------ for the Carnap Corner

IN A POST in GriceClub.Blogspot, "Grice on adaptiveness" I quote at some length, inviting a comment by Kramer, from Gr91, i.e. Grice's Conception of Value. This book actuall comprises two sepearate pieces: the 1983 Paul Carus Lectures, and the much earlier, Gr75, i.e. "Method in philosophical pscyhology". These things should be taken into consideration when viewing the CarnapGrice interface, as it were -- if we want to check a 'development' of this or that idea.

In the quotes from Gr75 in that post then, I direct the attention to Grice's 'turn of phrase':

"in a more positivistic vein"

---

Vis a vis the very interesting things that R. B. Jones has said, and is able to say, on 'positivism' as a _creed_, I will defer commentary! But not quite!

What Grice is willing to say is that

'a change of idiom'

may be just what it takes from one bete noire (e.g. Mechanism) to its twin enemy (Finalism).

Thus, he is considering 'pirots' (which he borrows from Carnap). These are _not_ animals, for the simple reason that they don't have an anima! (Grice is sceptical of 'animism' here).

Similarly, he envisages that someone may be, rightly, sceptical of attributions of 'causa finalis', telos.

-- for specific claims about 'pirots' -- in terms of their continued operancy.

Thus, in its stead, he proposes:

survival utilty.

Grice is willing to say that

finality =df survival utility

I.e what is a turn of phrase in one bete noire ('survival utility') -- i.e. Grice when in the 'positivistic mood' -- may well get translated to a turn of phrase in its corresponding twin bete: finalism.

--- For each bete noire, then, and for the mother of them all, Minimalism, Grice seems to be suggesting a corresponding turn of phrase. This has methodological consequences in that it gives clues as to what constitutes each 'bete noire' and how to fight her!

JLS

Überwindung

2010-02-20T16:24:00.000-08:00

* * * * * * * * * By J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club

* * * * * * * * * * * * * For the Carnap Corner.

"Überwindung" is the word Carnap used in his "Überwindung" essay. It has been translated, by A. P. (it "was" translated, indeed) as "elimination" but that's perhaps too strong.

I think 'windung' is cognate with 'winding' as in Sir Paul (McCartney), The long and winding road".

"Über" brings a sense of finality to it, and while this preposition is not usually capitalised, but written as "über", it _is_ when prefixing a noun, like '-windung' which yields "elimination".

---- The sentence in focus is

Heidegger

"Das Nichts selbst nichtet"

-- Carnap omits, but we need broader context, the 'selbst', as it is, perhaps, otiose.

Now: the arguments for the 'rejection' and 'elimination' of a whole enterprise surely cannot rest on a solecism, and Carnap KNEW it.

But analytic philosophers (unlike Quine: he cannot have his cake and eat it, so he's no more an 'analytic philosopher' to me) will like to analyse in some detail. So whatever Heidegger's "external" considerations, we want to focus on this particular sentence. And more importantly, on Carnap's arguments for 'rejecting' or ueberwinden-ing it. But later,

JLS

Carnap and Grice on nonsense

2010-02-19T01:08:00.000-08:00

-----------By J. L. S. of the Grice Club
for the Carnap Corner

From an online source:

“Caesar times 17 is purple.”

---

indeed, but only under a certain light.

I think I do Like Carnap's syntactic period.

-- where 'period' is ambiguous.

"Caesar is and"

indeed is not a wff.

"Caesar times 17 is purple" is a different type of nonsense. I would not call ill-formed formulae "nonsense" because, to me, nonsense applies to 'semantic', not to syntactics.

----

Carnap compares:

Caesar is a prime number

with

Caesar is a general.

---

Oddly, Grice has

You're the cream in my coffee.

as a categorial mistake -- alla Caesar is a prime number -- and triggering a metaphor. But we are not here to find scenarios where nonsense becomes sense. We are here to provide an exegesis of ... Heidegger?

---

The Absolute is lazy

once repeated a few, becomes sensical -- O'Connor -- even if it may be difficult to see what sensory experience could verify it.

Chomsky's infamous

Colourless green ideas sleep furiously,

is "buttered with carnaps" all over again --.! (And without a credit!)

Etc.

When Grice was fighting for a def. of "... means ..." in one way or other, he must have been having Carnap's "nonsense" in mind, too. Etc.

"Caesar is a prime number"

2010-02-19T00:52:00.000-08:00

------------By J. L. S.

From an online source:

"In “The Elimination of Metaphysics” Carnap describes what kinds of sentences or phrases we should think of as meaningless."

"The first example he gives is."

i. Caesar is and.

"Now clearly this is meaningless, no problem (or at least it seems obvious to me that such a serious break of syntax leads to that result.)"

"However, Carnap then presents the second meaningless sentence."

ii. Caesar is a prime number.

"Carnap’s analysis of this statement is that it is meaningless in virtue of it being neither true nor false."

"He claims that if we were to say that this is a meaningful, false statement, that we would be committed to saying that Caesar is divisible by another whole number. Since Caesar is neither a prime number nor divisible by another whole number, the statement, “Caesar is a prime number,” is, not false, but meaningless."

"But why think a thing like that? Surely, we would instead want to say that there is a set of all prime numbers and that, in virtue of Caesar not being identical to any member of that set, the statement “Caesar is a prime number,” is false."

"Clearly this is an instance of a category mistake but don’t we know to call it a category mistake in virtue of the fact that we know we know what the statement means?"

"And further, my professor thinks that Carnap would claim that the statement “Caesar is not a prime number” is true. But how could this be the case if its negation is false?"

"Several members of the class agreed with Carnap as did my professor and I just cannot make any sense of it. Any help would be greatly appreciated."

---- Tomorrow.

--Personally, I don't see why we cannot name a number, "Caesar".

"Mary brought Caesar gifts to the party"

"3" as it happens.

"3" is indeed a number in some formal systems, no?

Harrison considers a different case:

"Snow is white"
"Arthur is white"

-- surely we could call "snow" "Arthur". But here the problem, Harrison notes, is that 'snow' is a natural kind. And natural kinds don't get to get names like those. Etc.

---

I agree with this student's professor that "Caesar is not a prime number" is true.

Etc.

The Go-Between: Carnap, Grice -- and Sir Freddie

2010-02-19T00:19:00.000-08:00

===== By J. L. S.

Ayer was playing with "The Nothing nothings" early enough.

He writes:

"This formulation of the verification principle fails."

"Take some experiential proposition… “O”

i. The pillar box is red.

, and any “nonsensical” statement “N”

ii. The nothing nothings.

"Then, since the observation statement “O” can be deduced from “N”, together with “if N then O”, but not from “if N then O” on its own, “N” counts as

factually meaningful

according to this formulation of the verification principle."

"Thus, if we take “N” to be “the Nothing nothings” and “O” to be “that pillar box is red”, we can establish that “the Nothing nothings” is factually significant."

But it ain't!

Grice was impressed by Ayer, and he didn't hide it!

Grice's example in "Causal theory of perception" as it happens is:

iii. The pillar box _seems_ red.

How much more phenomenalist can YOU get?

So, according to this initial interpretation of the Verification Principle sentences such as ‘the Nothing nothings’ are still factually

He is teavy

2010-02-19T00:10:00.000-08:00

===========By J. L. S.

From an online source:

"There are statements which are ... pointless to work out. Examples given by Carnap include:

i. The average weight of the inhabitants of Vienna
whose telephone number ends with a 3
is x.

ii. In 1910 Vienna had only 6 inhabitants’.

He says of such sentences that

"they are really meaningful,
though they are pointless; for
it is only meaningful sentences
that are even divisible into
(theoretically) fruitful and sterile, true and false."

"It can be seen that there are two types of meaningless sentences or propositions, either strings of utter gibberish using ‘words’ which are not contained in our language, or sentences..."

"‘made of regular ... words… [which] because they are grammatical from a superficially syntactic point of view… [give] a kind of illusion of understanding.'"

"This second type is called a "pseudo-statement" because it appears to be grammatically a normal statement or proposition."

"Statements of Metaphysics are held to be pseudo-statements because although they are grammatically correct they are, in themselves meaningless, either because they are entirely nonsensical or because they contain a word whose meaning is not verifiable."

"Carnap gives the example"

iii. He is teavy.

"We would say that"

"‘in order to learn the meaning of this word, we ask him about its criterion of application: how is one to ascertain in a concrete case whether a given thing is teavy or not?’"

"If there are no circumstances in which we can empirically verify the meaning of the word then why should we believe that objects could have the attribute ‘teavy’ since it makes no difference to the world if it is true or false?"

"The Logical Positivists argued that the same thing could be held true of most of the claims of Metaphysics."

Etc.

His other examples in that "Elimination" essay are:

iv. Caesar is a prime number

and

v. Nothing noths.

The essay was first tr. to English by Swiss-born philosopher Arhur Pap (who died in 1959) and published by Ayer in 1959. Etc.

Das Nichts Nichtet

2010-02-18T23:24:00.000-08:00

------------- By J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club
for The Carnap Corner

--- To consider rather seriously:

Heidegger's claim

(i) Das Nichts nichtet

"Nothing noths"

Does it compare with

(ii) Pirots karulise elatically.

?

It would seem that syntactically, Carnap should tolerate (i)!

Asserting

2010-02-18T16:08:00.001-08:00

-------------- By J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Circle
for The Carnap Corner

I AM GLAD to see that Brandom, a good philosopher, has paid good attention to 'asserting' qua verb, in a title of one of his essays, with special reference to the Carnap, shall we say, and Grice 'interface'.

For Carnap, to 'assert' is a, or the, pragmatic concept par excellence. He was possibly influenced by Morris on this, as to 'assertion' being 'evidence' for 'belief' -- and in turn Morris would have been influenced by Peirce.

The route to Grice is similar. He was also influenced by Peirce and Morris, and would use, as any Oxonian worth his name would, use 'assert' and 'state' perhaps interchangeably to deal with issues of 'belief' "expression".

A good point here is

Moore

It is raining but I don't believe it.

This amused Grice in ways that probably did not amuse Carnap. Grice spends a good whole pasage to deal with in in terms of the _semantics_ (rather than the 'pragmatics') of 'asserting'.

--- I drop these notes, because as we consider the sub-components or modules of a system (System C, System G, you name it), we may come to believe (and yet, also assert) that the pragmatic subcomponent is about _this_.

One problem of divergence of Carnap and Grice would be their reactions to Quine's idiocies (I use 'idiocy' alla Aristotle, to refer to his idiosyncratic things). In "Word and Object" he considers various alternatives to the analysis (the cheek! He thinks there's no such thing!) of

Paul asserts that p.

He wants "asserts that p" to be treated as a monadic predicate. Since he won't believe in "Paul" either, that comes out as:

Fx & Gx.

i.e. x is paulising and x is asserting that p. None of that nonsense (Grice calls it 'stupidity' in WoW:RE, last page) in Carnap or Grice.

In Grice it's all very complicated, but 'assert' is associated with a type of psychological acceptance. He thinks 'accept' must do general duty for both assertoric acceptance and boulomaic acceptance.

In Carnap, the issue, perhaps because he was no Gricean, was, perhaps, simpler, and he would say things like Paul asserting that it is raining is a relation between Paul and a sentence.

Davidson may come in here with his analysis of things like: Paul asserts that. It is raining. So one has to be careful. Etc. But this _is_ fun.

Carnap and Grice on the internal-external distinction

2010-02-18T15:58:00.000-08:00

------------- By J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club
for the Carnap Corner

--- This is hot topic, and various scenarios can be devised.

Here, my gut reaction as a Gricean: "remember Hart!"

--- From an online source and vis a vis Grice's numerous Hart refs. in WoW:

"Hart has recourse to an "internal-external" analysis."

So has Carnap: in Carnap it applies to 'proposals'. And it's DIFFERENT questions. One question is internal, another is external. Hart is playing with the epithet, 'internal' or 'external' as applying to the _same_ phenomenon (under different guises):

"The point of view for validity is internal."

Cfr. Carnap, section 17 of his opus magnum, on principle of tolerance.

The view from inside the teapot, or from inside the fly-bottle:

"When we judge a law valid, we
do so from the perspective of a
member of the legal community - we
take the secondary rules for granted."

but think outside the box:

"The secondary rules do not follow
from any other rules. We can only
"justify" them from the outside.
Externally, then, Hart treats the
normative status of secondary
rules as a question "closed on fact."
The fact is the fact of implicit
internal acceptance."

The inter-play:

"That a secondary rule is accepted
is an external, descriptive fact.
Inside the system, we view the
secondary rules as norms.
Outside (from the point of view
of the sociologist) is
only descriptive fact.
This makes Hart's theory useful for
analytic/scientific purposes."

-- end of online source quoted.

--

To restrict:

To Language: Meta-Language, Object-Language.

Internal: object-linguistic
external: meta-linguistic
(a) assertoric construal
(b) other: proposal, "in logic there's no morals", etc.

---

Etc.

Howe

LSS §17

2010-02-18T15:45:00.001-08:00

------------- by J. L. S.

From LSS, section 17:
"It is not our business to set up
prohibitions, but to arrive at
conventions […]. In logic
there are no morals.
Everyone is at liberty to build
up his own logic, i.e. his own
language, as he wishes.
All that is required of him is
that, if he wishes to discuss it,
he must state his methods
clearly, and give syntactical
rules instead of
philosophical arguments"
Tolerated Gricean reactions:
--"our"? Majestic 'we'! He does _not_ mean I. Carnap, out of whose typewriter the mimeo flowed!
--'convention'. This was pretty much a fuzzy notion till Lewis wrote his PhD on it! (and later his book got published. Alas, his thesis supervisor was you-know-who: "Orman" as I call him).
-- "at liberty": I like that. The correct connotation of 'liberalism' about it, which I am (Cfr. my "Meaning-Liberalism" in Grice and Carroll, for The Jabberwocky: the Journal of the Lewis Carroll Society).
-- Grice on Deutero-Esperanto in WoW: "that makes me the master". Meaning as NOT involving 'convention'. But this is a verbal point. What word we use is 'immaterial', and Grice would have agreed with the spirit of the Carnap thing here. There are various traces of what I call idiosyncrasism in Grice.
--- The opp. 'syntactic rule' -- can you FLOUT a rule like that? cfr. Carnap on Heidegger as going syntactically 'over the top' -- vs. ('philosophical') argument is one that Grice may have encountered difficult to swallow. He would NOT distinguish between philosophical and OTHER types of argument. And an argument MAY be required to back your 'proposal' that will be tolerated. But I see Carnap's point.

Etc.

LSS §17

2010-02-18T15:45:00.000-08:00

"It is not our business to set up prohibitions, but to arrive at conventions […]. In logic there are no morals. Everyone is at liberty to build up his own logic, i.e. his own language, as he wishes. All that is required of him is that, if he wishes to discuss it, he must state his methods clearly, and give syntactical rules instead of philosophical arguments" (Logical Syntax §17).

The Implicatures of Tolerance

2010-02-18T15:31:00.000-08:00

--------------by J. L. S. of the Grice Club
for the Carnap Corner

--- QUINE infamously told Carnap in private correspondence which the world later all knew about: "Your principle is so 'tolerant' that it will tolerate 'Hitler'!"

----

There is an unwanted 'implicature' of 'tolerant'. Witness the online etymological note:

"tolerance. 1412, "endurance, fortitude," from O.Fr. tolerance (14c.), from L. tolerantia "endurance," from tolerans, prp. of tolerare "to bear, endure, tolerate" (see toleration). Of authorities, in the sense of "permissive," first recorded 1539; of individuals, with the sense of "free from bigotry or severity," 1765. Meaning "allowable amount of variation" dates from 1868; and physiological sense of "ability to take large doses" first recorded 1875. Tolerant is recorded from 1784. The verb tolerate is attested from 1531."

Smith tolerated him.

"him".

Implicature:

"Smith endured him"

--

There is a (-) ring to it. This must, or could, be 'implicatural'. Calvin, for example, may 'tolerate' something which he thinks is actually (+).

In which case, to analyse, 'tolerate', we may not need to import value-judgements like that!

Next: Stay tuned: Principle of Tolerance properly tolerated by you know who.

Cassirer Lecture -- CANCELLED

2010-02-18T15:26:00.000-08:00

------------- By J. L. S.

--- When I was in Yale, I was quite close to Cassirer. He instituted the Cassirer Lectures at Yale. I never attended one!

From an online source:

"In what follows I hope to show that the early Carnap was pursuing a program that is very similar to that of Cassirer."

Oddly, I still keep at my (Swimming-Pool) library (I add this as a touch of welcome frivolity -- who wants to have yet another biblio ref.? The world would be a more habitable place without them!), Cassirer's excellent ch. on the history of semantics.

He was very well read, but he is not, alas, very well read. Is that anti-analytic?

Husserlian prairies, Meinongian jungles

2010-02-18T15:22:00.000-08:00

------------ By J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club
for the Carnap Corner

From an online source:

"Husserl exerted a crucial influence on the early Carnap."

It's _late_ now but: to consider: "the young Carnap", "the early Carnap", how early can you be?

Oddly Husserl exteerted a crucial influence on me: I tried to avoid all the seminars on phenomenology given by that fanatic of Mario Presas at my Philo Dept.!

------ Grice speaks of "Meinongian jungle" in "Vacuous Names". He is brief about them: "Avoid them".

Meinong was possibly Husserlian.

They say that Ogden/Richards, The meaning of meaning, is also Husserlian in parts. The idea of a phenomenology of content, etc.

-- Etc.

JLS

Under Carnap's Lamp

2010-02-18T12:40:00.000-08:00

----------

If Philosopicallexicon.com plays superficially on the bel-nap of the carnap, the American logician takes Carnap to task (in a good way) in his "Under Carnap's Lamp".

The thing is found online.

He refers in the abstract to:

"the usefulness of Carnapian tolerance"

-- vis a vis that ungriceous student who mentioned, "You'll end up tolerating Hitler!" --.

---

One of the keywords is indeed "Carnap" and the thing was published, let me check, in Studia Logica, vol. 80 -- we don't name years because, as Grice says, "they date things" (In defense of a dogma).

---

On the first page, he uses the majestic 'we' (that Jones and I also use but non-majestically) and says 'we' is 'in the tolerant spirit of Carnap'.

The essay reads very well.

He says that Carnap 'softens (the) absolutism'

-- and he refers to Carnap's "two methods" with "L".

-- Goes on to qualify "Carnap's influence as legendary beneficent":

--- Oops. No: it's legendary taht his benefecent influence is!

Goes on to discuss Tarski. The fact that he finds him jargonistic endears me cheerfully to Belnap.

He makes a very interesting ref. to Carnap's "special favourite", of trans-categorialism, as it were:

operator -- predicate
sentence -- term

etc. Carnap would treat trans-categoremata as categoremata. (A topic that would have amused, gladly, Grice).

On p. 4 he makes the extraordinarily clever point that

"it seems reasonable, and Carnapian"

that the categoremata/syncategoremata distinction is spurious!

---

On p. 5 he keeps speaking of having "Carnapian tolerance" in mind.

On p. 13 he provides Carnapian "meaning postulates" for gorse and furze.

On p. 26, and you'll have to enjoy Belnap's style, he says,

"This is just right, and in accordance with common pratice and Carnap's methods of intension and extension".

And manages to mention the apostate when he refers to:

"Carnap's logical insight [on constant/variable for proposition] unfortunately spoofed on metaphysical grouds by Quine -- vide Appendix"

Belnap is amused by this but we are not!

--- He goes on to add (contingently local) identity (cfr. Grice) to "a Carnap-Bressan type of modal logic".

Under Carnap's Lamp indeed!

Under Carnap's Lamp

2010-02-18T12:23:00.000-08:00

---- By J. L. S.

from Philosophicallexicon.com

belnap, n. (from bel-, beautiful, + carnap) A carnap felicitously defined in ordinary idiomatic language (e.g. "synonymous" for "intensionally isomorphic").

-- Must say I like the idea!

Surely Carnap _meant_ what he said when he said it!

---

His personal page lists

1955 as his first publication.

--- Not sure where he was born. The "Jr." thing is very interesting and pro-American.

--- His "Tonk, Plonk, and Plink" is of course a genial classic -- repr. I think in Strawson, "Philosophical Logic", 1969. Indeed, it's 1967, and credited in his personal page, too.

His most relevant item here should be "Under Carnap's Lamp" which he links online.

Peppered With Carnaps

2010-02-18T12:19:00.000-08:00

-------------By J. L. Speranza

From the philosophicallexicon.com -- silly, I know, but may merit a comment, or two:

-- begin quoted text:

carnap, n. (1) A formally defined symbol, operator, special bit of notation. "His prose is peppered with carnaps" or "the argument will proceed more efficiently if we introduce a few carnaps." n. (2) Loss of consciousness while being taken for a ride.

-- end quoted text.

Carnap and Grice on 'analytic'

2010-02-17T14:23:00.000-08:00

By J. L. S.

---- It should be noted that keep talking, as I did in the past, of the analytic-syntehtic distinction, we are echoing Quine, and we shouldn't be doing THAT all the time!! Surely 'analytic' is more of an important concept than a fine distinction!

------ Grice writes in Foreword to WoW:

"I hope the reader will not pass over the epilogue. It contains some relevant material". And it does.

For, for the first time, the "In defense of a dogma" was repr. by any of its two co-authors.

So let's check what he says about the dogma in the Retrospective Epilogue:

He detects 'strands' in his life:

"The very second strand I detect is a concern to DEFEND (against Quine, no doubt, who was rushed from Oxford by all of us) the viability of an analytic/synthetic [I'm glad Grice uses / rather than -] distinction."

"It is my belief [faith?] that there is a possibility of findicating one or more of a number of distinctions which might present themselves under the casual title of 'The analytic/synthetic distintion'".

And here comes illuminating Grice as often:

"I shall say ****NOTHING******* here bot this
strand."

"Not because I think it is UNimportant, mind."

"Rather, I shan't say anything because I think it is
THE most important topic in philosophy".

"It is required in determining not merely the
answers to PARTICULAR questions, but the
nature of PHILOSOPHY itself".

He is of course implicating that Quine did not know the first thing about it!

Grice goes on:

"Yet, I feel."

"And I feel that I have yet to complete some work in this area."

"The lacuna may be mitigated by the fact that
I provide some discussion of it in my below."

"Prejudices and Predilections, which
become The Life and Opinions of Paul Grice"

--.

And he also refers to the concluding note of the "Valedictory Essay".

---Here Grice throws in _Ryle_!

"Far from being a basis for

REJECTING the analytic-synthetic distinction"

Grice has Ryle -- or R* as he prefers: a rational reconstruction of an uninhibted Ryle -- saying,

"opposition to the idea that there ARE
initially

TWO

bundles of statements,

such as
"my neighbour's 3-year old son
understands Russell's theory
of types"

and

"my neighbour's 3-year old
son is an adult"

--- lying AROUND, somewhere OUT THERE,

in the world of thought, bearing

the labels 'analytic' and 'synthetic'

(irrespectively), waiting to be noticed,

DOES provide us with the

KEY

to making the analytic-synthetic

distinction ACCEPTABLE."

-------------- It is at this point that I refer to Grice's self-entrenched pragmatism (he would not of course share my etiquette or lack of it).

"For, the proper view will then be that

ANALYTIC propositions

are among the INVENTIONS of theorists

who are SEEKING, in one way or another"

-- read: Scientists or Ordinary-Languageists --

"to ORGANISE and SYSTEMATISE"

--- and this is a big good CarnapGrice interface: the system --

"an initially unidifferentiated"

-- surely by Quine

"corpus of HUMAN KNOWLEDGE."

"Suncess in this area is a matter of intellectual VISION"

-- that's Greek for 'theoria'.

"not of good eyesight."

-- as Quine may have prided hisself of having.

"As Plato once remarked,"

-- the man who needed his beard cut with Occam razor in the imagery of our Akron-born nominalist --

"the ability to see horses
without seeing horseness
is a mark of STUPIDITY."

Implicature???!!! :)

"Such considerations as THESE

are said to lie behind

reports that yet

a FIFTH fairy godmother"

-- and the only one from across the 'pond'

-- "Q*". "She was LAST SEEN rushing HEADLONG

out of the gates of Never-Never Land"

and the City of Eternal Truth, no doubt.

"loudly SCREAMING ["Opaque context!"] and

hotly pursued by G*."

"But the narration of these stirring events must be left to another and longer day".

Vide "City of Eternal Truth", your next blog, as you keep tuned!

Implicit Definitions in Carnap and Grice

2010-02-17T14:14:00.000-08:00

* * * * By J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club

* * * * * * * * for the Carnap Corner

**************************** NOT MUCH TO SAY, actually, but I may! I see that the issue of 'implicit' definition features well in Carnap's elaborations on Frege.

Indeed, Boghossian, whom I met, discusses two types of analytic:

frege-analytic

and

carnap-analytic

to which I will of course add

grice-analytic

For Boghossian (discussed in a pdf online in "Analysis" by a member of the Sheffield Univ Philo Dept):

frege-analytic

has to do with 'substitution' of synonym for synonym.

Examples

(x) Bx --> not Mx
(no bachelor is married, example (c) Carnap)

(x) Rx --> Blx
(ravens are black)

or as I prefer

(x) Px --> Kx (pirots karulise elatically).

----

For Carnap, rather, it's via 'implicit definitions'. This relates notably to the definition of the 'logical' particles (i.e. the non-descriptive ones, as he has them) in, say, "Pirots karulise elatically":

ALL pirots karulise elatically
A is a pirot
______
A karulises elatically

In Boghossian's reconstruction:

(A) -- argument above is VALID.
Therefore, "C" (where "C" stands for logical constant, (x) in our case) means what it means. (For (A) would NOT be valid if "C" meant other).

-- Defining "all" (or "(x)", for the choice of symbol is immaterial here) like that is _implicitly_ defining it. Short for or of 'stipulating'.

GRICE COMES IN.

Alas, his locus classicus is contro with Strawson, but surely we can trace Grice's own, versus Strawsonianly shared, views on this.

--- Biblio should include
Grice "Prejudices and predilections of Paul Grice".
-- on the status of the analytic-synthetic distinction. What I call, "You've come a LONG way, Grice", from the Paradigm-Case-Argument defense of 1956.

Grice, Retrospective Epilogue in WoW. I may append some relevant quotes from WoW later.

Cheers.

My Kind of Hero

2010-02-17T04:14:00.000-08:00

* * * * * By J. L. Speranza, of The Grice Club

* * * * * * * for The Carnap Corner

From a review of Quine's autobiography, "The time of my life":

"Insofar as Quine ever had a hero it was Carnap."

-- which has the nice quality of a graffito to it.

I was reminded of Strawson's manifesto in his inaugural Oxford talk (Logico-Linguistic Papers repr.):

"A homeric struggle calls for ... heroes".

And trust he'll place his former tutor (once a tutor always a tutor), Grice as such. He fails to have Quine or Carnap, but he has Frege alright!

----

Carnap and Grice on 'true' as redundant

2010-02-17T03:35:00.000-08:00

By J. L. Speranza, of The Grice Club
for The Carnap Corner

---

I read from R. B. Jones's interesting page at

http://www.rbjones.com/rbjpub/philos/bibliog/quine53a2.htm

(a running commentary on Quine's "Two Dogmas"):

"En passant, at the beginning of this
section [on so-called "semantical RULES"]
is Quine's complaint about the difficulty
in deciding whether

i. Anything green is extended.

is analytic. This is he says down to the
meaning of analytic, not to any difficulty
with the meanings of 'green' or 'extended'.
I believe that Grice has observed that
this is a bad example because we
have difficulty even in deciding
whether it is true [never
mind 'analytic'] and this can
hardly be because of a difficulty
with the concept of analyticity.

--- Yes, that sounds like Grice alright! I would think it's straight from the Grice/Strawson 1956 thing "In defense of a dogma", now in WoW (Strawson was fortunately never allowed to reprint the thing in any of his works!).

----

Chapman notes that Grice was concerned in private notes (e.g. his draft for his valedictory essay) on similar things --. This seems like a case of 'analytic' alright, as opposed to 'nothing can be red and green all over' which Grice regarded as synthetic a priori, or at least Karen's and Tim's playmates did (*Grice would experiment with his children's playmates for criteria of intensionality).

----

But back to the thing, 'true, yet not analytic',

I was amused by I think it's a footnote in "Meaning and Necessity" by Carnap where he cursorily rejects Ramsey's view, or cursorily endorses it, rather. The idea that

"... is true" is redundant.

(More interestingly, that "... is false" is equipolent with an L-statement involving negation).

So, here we could play a bit on that.

For if "... is true" is redundant (as I actually think it _is_),

"Anything green is extended"

and

"'Anything green is extended' is true"

are, well, truth-conditionally equivalent (yes: we know '... is true' is metalinguistic, but we are playing Ramsey here).

--- So, what redundant equivalence can we provide for

"... is analytic".

Oddly, this is a perfect case of a meaning postulate for Carnap -- for what is a meaning postulate but a "semantical rule"? --.

(x)Gx --> Ex

---

I cannot think right now what the corresponding for 'is analytic' would be in redundant terms, but Grice will!

Grice/Strawson write (WoW: reprint, p. 201)

"There is a certain circle or family of expressions: ... Other members of the family are ... "semantical rule"".

But Roger Bishop Jones is perfectly right, and here is the Grice/Strawson passage, straight from WoW: 207. After quoting in extenso from Quine:

--- QUINE:

"I do not know whether the statement, 'Everything green is extended' is analytic. Now does my indecision over this example really betray an incomplete understanding, an incomplete grasp, of the 'meanings' of 'green' and 'extended'? I think not. The trouble is not with 'green' or 'extended' but with 'analytic'

---- end of Quine quote

-- Begin of Grice/Strawson:

"If, as Quine says, the trouble is with 'analytic,'
then the trouble should DOUBTLESS disappear when
'analytic' is removed. So let us remove it, and replace
it with a word Quine himself has contrasted
favourably with 'analytic' in respect of perspicuity --
the word 'true'. Does the indecision at once disappear.
We think not."

--------------must say I love the cheek of this double act! They are avoiding the auxiliary 'do' as saracastically minimised by Quine, "We don't think so!".

---Grice/Strawson continue:

"The indecision over 'analytic' (and equally,
in this case, the indecision over 'true')
arises, of course, from a further indecision:
namely, that which we feel when confronted with
such questions as,

'Should we count a _point_
of green light as _extended_ or not?'

As is frequent enough in such cases

-----

[Other Cases: Should we count this albino raven as one? Should this pirot who is blatantly karulising, but not elatically enough, be counted as one? Should this featherless biped which is naturally irrational be counted as human, etc.]

..., the hesitation arises from the fact that
the _boundaries_ of application of words
are NOT determined in usage in all possible
directions."

They go on:

"But the example Quine has chosen is PARTICULARLY
unfortunate"

--- problematic I'd say. I leave unfortunate to victims of Tsunami --

"... for his thesis [that there is a dogma of empiricism],
in that it is ONLY TOO EVIDENT that our hesitations
are not HERE [emphasis Grice/Strawson's] attributable
to obscurities in 'analytic'"

--- CARNAP MUST have loved this! He MUST have referred to Grice/Strawson in work.

"It would be possible", Grice and Strawson continue,
"to chose other examples in which we should hesitate
between 'analytic' and 'synthetic' and have few qualms
about 'true'"

-- They are thinking of

"Nothing can be red and green all over: True no doubt. But synhetic? Karen's and Tim's playmates think so.

Grice/Strawson end their paragraph:

"But no more in these cases than in the sample
case does the hesitation necessarily imply
any obscurity in the notion of analyticity;
since the hesitation would be sufficiently
accounted for by the samr or a similar kind
of indeterminacy in the relations between words
occurring within the statement about which the
question, whether it is analytic or synthetic,
is raised".

For the record, it's best to see this as PDA (Paradigm Case Argument). Grice will have permanent qualms about it, and will consider it in retrospect in his valedictory essay. Speranza deals with it in "On the way of conversation" vis a vis J. F. Bennett's rather hurried evaluation of Grice/Strawson as a presequel to Grice's Meaning.

In the end, both Carnap and Grice possibly ended as pretty much pragmatists as to the ultimate viability or use of the analytic-synthetic distinction. In this connection, Grice's Prejudices and predilections (Gr86) being perhaps his clearest manifesto along those lines.

Carnap and Grice on "logical" versus "non-logical"/"descriptive"

2010-02-17T03:09:00.000-08:00

By J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club

for the Carnap Corner

----

I have shared this info elsewhere, but it amuses me and it comes straight from the pages of the OED -- with which Grice SHOULD have been more familiar with! ("I don't care what the dictionary says!" "And that's where you make your big mistake", got the rebuke from Austin)

-- A pirot, the OED has as follows

-- begin cited text:

pirot.
[Apparently < French pirot (1611 in Cotgrave: see quot. 1611 at sense 1),
although this is apparently not recorded elsewhere, and is of unknown
origin. Compare PIDDOCK n.]

1. A razor shell.

1611 R. COTGRAVE Dict. French & Eng. Tongues, Pirot, the Pirot, or
Hag-fish; a kind of long shell-fish.

2. A piddock.

1686 R. PLOT Nat. Hist. Staffs. vii. 250 A sort of Solenes (which the
Venetians call Cape longe, and the English Pirot)..a kind of Shell-fish deep
bedded in a solid rock.

-- end cited text.

---

In "Meaning and Necessity" Carnap uses the terminology (loose, i.e. he is not doing 'carnaps' here -- (a "carnap" defined in the philosopher's lexicon as "a formally defined symbol, operator, bit of notation")),

Pirots karulise elatically
A is a pirot
____________________________

A karulises elatically

----

He would have (as per "Meaning and Necessity" and intuitively enough):

"is" and "a" as 'logical words' -- especially in their formal counterparts.

'pirot' (as well as 'karulise' and 'elatic') as 'descriptive' words.

----

This has a slight connection with Grice, as misunderstood by Cohen.

In an infamous paper, Cohen ("Grice and the logical particles of natural language"), argues against Grice's thesis for things like 'if' -- which will feature in the logical form of

'pirots karulise elatically' (on the standard reading).

The meaning of the horseshoe -- the meaning of 'if'?

"if" as a logical (non descriptive) word. Yet not a variable, so a "logical constant" word.

When it comes to 'truth-functional operators' in the bivalent system that both Carnap adn Grice abode by, the thing is easy enough: the truth-table will do it for us.

When it comes to "(x)", for every x, for all xs, if x is a pirot, x karulises elatically, the idea of talking of the 'meaning' of '(x)' is somewhat trickier, in that it ceases to be algorithmically decided by a truth-table, but reference to general guidelines (what guideline is not general?) for standard models in standard interpretations -- in the semantics sub-domain of the formal system -- are required. Nothing too fancy: (x)(Px --> Kx) will be true iff all items falling under the extension of P are and none of them can be shown to fail to be K.

Etc.

Carnap and Cooley on "postulate"

2010-02-17T02:56:00.000-08:00

By J. L. Speranza

----

The idea of a meaning-postulate, especially in the Johnson/Lakoff variant, is one which is familiar with Griceans.

Carnap introduces it in his "Necessity" book with a nod to Cooley. Carnap allows that perhaps the term, 'postulate', _is_ controversial, but then Cooley (1942) had used it in "a similar sense".

---

The two he works with in his appendix are

(x) Bx --> - Mx

(with "B" and "M" for bachelor and married, respectively)

and a similar one, minus the "-", of course, with "R" and "Bl" for 'raven' and 'black', for which he proposes a counterexample in terms of state-descriptions challenging its status as such (alleged meaning postulate).

While Johnson/Lakoff play with Gricean ideas in terms of these postulates ("Conversational postulates" in Cole/Morgan) it is to Grice/Strawon, Defense of a dogma (repr. WoW) that we must go for a better elaboration of the Carnap concept.

The term or predicate Grice/Strawson consider in that essay is

adult
3-year old

-- My neighbour's three year old is an adult.

This they deem, intuitively enough (and of course against Quine's 'dogma of empiricism' as he saw it), analytic. It will provoke the counterreply: "That cannot be!"

Grice/Strawson contrast, then

(x)((3YO)x --> - Ax)

with things like

My neighbour's three-year old son understands Russell's theory of types.

This will rather provoke, "I can't _believe_ that!" (rather that, "I fail to understand what you mean") and is thus better NOT seen as a meaning-postulate (Carnap's "All ravens are black" scenario).

Of course with the 'raven-black' the scenario is subtler. My mentor on this has been Thomas Simpson, in a rather obscure book. He goes on to fantasy about the white-raven. Surely an albino raven won't do. We want a genotype of the right phenotype. And the corvus corvus does require 'black' as phenotype, making the thing "almost" "like" a meaning postulate. I know ALL my birder friends will agree!

Something to Consider: The "Elatically"

2010-02-16T19:10:00.001-08:00

By J. L. Speranza

----

I put this frivolously, but it's not meant to be!

Consider

i. Pirots karulize elatically.
A is a pirot
-----
Thus, A karulizes elatically.

The 'elatically' bit has given so many problems to logicians, that one has to adjudicate a lot of insight, foresight and sight to Carnap on _that_ one!

----

This leads to:

i. Carnap held to be a pragmatist in matters of choosing a language.

ii. I don't think the same holds for Grice: leaving aside the issue of a scientific unified physicalist language to hold all the truths worth holding, there is for Grice (and indeed all logicians I met!) the problem that a System (G, C, what not) has to recover, testify, justify, model, retrieve, yield, all the arguments that we deem 'valid' in NL.

iii. "Elatically" in arguments:

Pirots karulize elatically
_____________________________

Thus, pirots karulize.

This seems blatantly valid, yet it _is_ a minor problem to get that 'valid' in first-order predicate calculus with identity!

iv. I pose the problem, if problem it is, to consider, reflect on, different aims at playing with Symbolo, or Systems C, or G. If one takes a mere pragmatist standpoint one is not putting oneself in a position to be held accountable if one's system fails to model an ordinary-language argument. And that _would_ be a problem (for some logicians, and indeed philosophers (of language, included)).

Cheers,

JL

System CR and System GHP

2010-02-16T16:49:00.000-08:00

By J. L. Speranza, of The Grice Club
for The Carnap Corner

The following is a running commentary on a 'semantics' for a formal system like System C-R (apres Rudolf Carnap, that is -- a revised System C) and System G-HP (a hopefully plausible rewrite of System G, apres H. P. Grice).

Our guiding tutor here will be B. Mates, Elementary Logic (that Grice quotes in the building of his system Q to honour Quine):

In System C and System G, "the formulae of the languages are assembled from atomic formulas using the logical connectives and the two quantifiers, (x) and (Ex)".

"To ascribe meaning to all sentences of a first-order language, the following information is needed: a domain of discourse D, usually required to be non-empty."

But vide Grice, "Vacuous Names" for a lifting of this requirement.

"An object carrying full information about the domain is known as a structure (of signature σ, or σ-structure, or L-structure), or as a "model"".

"As to how to interpret formulas of the form ∀ x φ(x) and ∃ x φ(x), the idea is to see the domain of discourse as forming the range for these quantifiers."

"The idea is that the sentence ∀ x φ(x) is true under an interpretation exactly when every substitution instance of φ(x), where x is replaced by some element of the domain, is satisfied."

"On the other hand, the formula ∃ x φ(x) is satisfied if there is at least one element d of the domain such that φ(d) is satisfied."

EXTENSIONALISM:

"Because the first-order interpretations described here are defined in set theory, they do not associate each predicate symbol with a property (or relation), but rather with the EXTENSION of that property (or relation)."

"Example of a first-order interpretation"

Domain: pirots a, b, c, karulising

Individual constants:

a: pirot called Augustus.

b: pirot called Basil.

c: pirot called Crispin.

Px: x is a pirot
Kx: x karulises.
x is perceiving/potching x'
x is perceiving/pocthing x' as another pirot/karuliser.

In the interpretation of G:

some statements are true, and some are false.

"A first-order interpretation is usually required to specify a nonempty set as the domain of discourse. However, empty relations do not cause any problem for first-order interpretations, because there is no similar notion of passing a relation symbol across a logical connective, enlarging its scope in the process. Finally, the identity relation (x = y) is often treated specially in first order logic and other predicate logics. The axioms related to equality are automatically satisfied by every normal model, and so they do not need to be explicitly included in first-order theories."

"There are reasons to restrict study of first-order logic to normal models. If non-normal models are considered, then every consistent theory has an infinite model; this affects the statements of results such as the Löwenheim–Skolem theorem, which are usually stated under the assumption that only normal models are considered."

Etc.

Refs.

Carnap, Logical Syntax of Language -- the seminal work of 1937 (German original 1934) that set many a trend in this area
Grice, in Festchrift for Quine.
Mates, Elementary Logic.

---

Carnapiana, Griceana

2010-02-16T06:58:00.000-08:00

A look, Gricean, at Carnapiana

The 1920s.

1922 Der Raum: Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftslehre, dissertation, in Kant-Studien, Ergänzungshefte, n. 56

--- on space as synthetic a priori

1925 "Über die Abhängigkeit der Eigenschaften der Raumes von denen der Zeit" in Kant-Studien, 30

--- the correspondence of 'space' (raum) and 'time' (zeit). Spatio-temporal continuants.

1926 Physikalische Begriffsbildung, Karlsruhe : Braun, (Wissen und Wirken ; 39)

--- physicalist as narrowly interpreted: three levels: lower one being 'perceived things or objects and their properties'.

1928 Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie, Berlin : Weltkreis-Verlag

'schein' being Carnap for 'pseudo-'. Literally, 'apparent'. Cfr. "pirots karulize...". Pseudo-sense, nonsense? We don't think so. Uninterpreted at most.

1928 Der Logische Aufbau der Welt, Leipzig : Felix Meiner Verlag (English translation The Logical Structure of the World; Pseudoproblems in Philosophy, Berkeley : University of California Press, 1967)

aufbau really gives 'house'. Speranza's father being an architect, he knows. Bauhaus. Bauer, architect. So this is, more poetically, the house of the world.

1929 (with Otto Neurath and Hans Hahn) Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung der Wiener Kreis, Vienna : A. Wolf

-- a lovely historical reference: "Wiener Kreis" the Vienna Circle. Cfr. all the refs. by Grice (Prejudices and predilections, Actions and Events, PPQ, to "Vienna")

1929 Abriss der Logistik, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Relationstheorie und ihrer Anwendungen, Vienna : Springer

1932 "Die physikalische Sprache als Universalsprache der Wissenschaft" in Erkenntnis, II (English translation The Unity of Science, London : Kegan Paul, 1934)

-- interesting idea of the 'characteristica universalis'.

1934 Logische Syntax der Sprache (English translation The Logical Syntax of Language, New York : Humanities, 1937)

tr. by E. Smeaton, Countess of Zeppelin. Includes the "pirots karulize elatically" manifesto.

1935 Philosophy and Logical Syntax, London : Kegan Paul

1936 "Testability and meaning" in Philosophy of Science, III (1936) and IV (1937)

-- Interesting for the language game including: to prove, to test, to verify. Cfr. Popper, to falsify. Observational vs. theoretical.

1938 "Logical Foundations of the Unity of Science" in International Encyclopaedia of Unified Science, vol. I n. 1, Chicago : University of Chicago Press

1939 "Foundations of Logic and Mathematics" in International Encyclopaedia of Unified Science, vol. I n. 3, Chicago : University of Chicago Press

1942 Introduction to Semantics, Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press

1943 Formalization of Logic, Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press

--- Carnap as a formalist. Formal logic, symbolic logic. Grice on formalists vs. informalists. Important topic: the meaning of the connectors. Connectors formally defined, connectors syntactically defined. Pseudo-questions in the search for the 'meaning' of the connectives, etc.

1947 Meaning and Necessity: a Study in Semantics and Modal Logic, Chicago : University of Chicago Press

--- Carnap on 'must'. A must here! Cfr. Grice on must, Gr. 2001.

1950 Logical Foundations of Probability, Chicago : University of Chicago Press

-- vis a vis Grice on Kneale. The metaphysical bearing of probability. Induction, primary and secondary.

1952 "Meaning postulates" in Philosophical Studies, III (now in Meaning and Necessity, 1956, 2nd edition)

-- Carnap on 'entailment'. He uses the 'horseshoe' as early as 1937 -- list of symbols online. A meaning postulate formulated with the horseshoe. Moore on entailment. Grice's take on "Bachelors are unmarried males" in "In defense of a dogma" (with Strawson). "Meaning postulates" as correctly defining 'meaning'. The vagaries of the term 'postulate', revived by Johnson/Lakoff to apply to Grice's pragmatic generalisations (as 'conversational postulates' -- and thus in terms of Carnapian entailments).

1952 The Continuum of Inductive Methods, Chicago : University of Chicago Press

1954 Einführung in die Symbolische Logik, Vienna : Springer (English translation Introduction to Symbolic Logic and its Applications, New York : Dover, 1958)

-- Symbolic, rather than formal logic now.

1956 "The Methodological Character of Theoretical Concepts" in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. I, ed. by H. Feigl and M. Scriven, Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press

--- on Ramsey, observational vs. theoretical. Against a more 'theoretical' take by Ramsey (Ramsification), Carnap opts for a 'pragmatic' approach to theoretical concepts. Grice on theoretical concepts in philosophical psychology: "... thinks that..." as theoretical. For Grice, the questions of psychology are _theoretical_, not a matter for mere _analysis_.

1958 "Beobacthungssprache und theoretische Sprache" in Dialectica, XII (English translation "Observation Language and Theoretical Language" in Rudolf Carnap, Logical Empiricist, Dordrecht, Holl. : D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1975)

--- Good in providing the German for 'observation', a tricky English term if ever there was one. It's be-ob-acht-ung in German.

1966 Philosophical Foundations of Physics, ed. by Martin Gardner, New York : Basic Books

--- cfr. Grice on "Eddington's Tables". Surely Grice's knowledge of physics can't compare with Carnap's, but he can always play.

1977 Two Essays on Entropy, ed. by Abner Shimony, Berkeley : University of California Press

Other Sources

1962 Logic and Language: Studies Dedicated to Professor Rudolf Carnap on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, Dordrect, Holl. : D. Reidel Publishing Company

--- Oddly, Grice would contribute to Flew's volume, "Language and Logic"!

1963 The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, ed. by Paul Arthur Schillp, La Salle, Ill. : Open Court Pub. Co.

1970 PSA 1970: Proceedings of the 1970 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association: In Memory of Rudolf Carnap, Dordrect, Holl. : D. Reidel Publishing Company

1971 Analiticità, Significanza, Induzione, ed. by Alberto Meotti e Marco Mondadori, Bologna, Italy : il Mulino

1975 Rudolf Carnap, Logical Empiricist. Materials and Perspectives, ed. by Jaakko Hintikka, Dordrecht, Holl. : D. Reidel Publishing Company

--- Carnap as a "logical" empiricist rather than as a logical 'positivist'. The importance of slogans, or lack thereof!

1986 Joëlle Proust, Questions de Forme: Logique at Proposition Analytique de Kant a Carnap, Paris, France: Fayard (English translation Questions of Forms: Logic and Analytic Propositions from Kant to Carnap, Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press)

--- Interesting in that they skip Locke that R. B. Jones and I love: Note Jones's website for Locke on 'trifling propositions' in the Essay of 1690!

1990 Dear Carnap, Dear Van: The Quine-Carnap Correspondence and Related Work, ed. by Richard Creath, Berkeley : University of California Press

--- Quine wrote extensively on Grice, too. Very good excerpts in Chapman's book on Grice. Quine would attend parties at Grice's college, St. John's, etc. This was the hedyday of "Dogmas of Empiricism" -- that gave Carnap (if not Carnap) the 'dogmatic' slur. The fact that Grice came to the defense of the underdog did not help! ('underdog' being Grandy's 'joke').

1991 Maria Grazia Sandrini, Probabilità e Induzione: Carnap e la Conferma come Concetto Semantico, Milano, Italy : Franco Angeli

1991 Erkenntnis Orientated: A Centennial Volume for Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach, ed. by Wolfgang Spohn, Dordrecht; Boston : Kluwer Academic Publishers

1991 Logic, Language, and the Structure of Scientific Theories: Proceedings of the Carnap-Reichenbach Centennial, University of Konstanz, 21-24 May 1991 Pittsburgh : University of Pittsburgh Press; [Konstanz] : Universitasverlag Konstanz

---- Grice cites Reichenbach at some length in his PPQ 1986.

1995 L'eredità di Rudolf Carnap: Epistemologia, Filosofia delle Scienze, Filosofia del Linguaggio, ed. by Alberto Pasquinelli, Bologna, Italy : CLUEB

--- Etc.

System C, System G

2010-02-16T06:32:00.000-08:00

By J. L. Speranza

R. B. Jones entitles his recent post, "meaningless 'systems'" or rather he refers to that phrase as provoked by Chapman on Grice.

The mention of 'system' is very relevant here.

Grice was fortunate to have a friend like Myro. In unpublished work -- but also in Myro's contribution to the Grice festschrift, Myro introduces the "System G".

This is of course apres Grice.

Grice had done the very same thing when inventing a System Q for Quine, which he had presented to the Quine festschrift. What amused me is that Quine responded, with a one-page long, "Reply to H. P. Grice" where he finds Grice's system to be 'forbiddingly complex' (Quine's word).

So we need a System C for comparison.

These Systems -- are indeed FL for short -- comprise

Syntactics: this is actually the _second_ component, since the 'vocabulary' is not even listed.

Semantics (optional): the truth-tables and the interpretations I, I', ... under a model M, M', ... etc.

Pragmatics (informal): where issues such as 'assertion', 'implicature' are considered.

So the idea of a 'meaningless' system relates to the "semantics" component. Many notions (if we may call them so) are perfectly manageable at the syntactics level only. This is the Hilbertian influence on Carnap. And it is what lies behind the very idea of a well-formed formula.

I often find 'well-formed' and 'formula' to trade on the redundant. After all a formula has to be well formed. An ill-formed formula is not a formula:

(x) Px --> Kx

Pirots karulise elatically.

is a wff.

The other possibilities

pirots elatically karulise

karulise pirots elatically
karulise elatically pirots.

elatically pirots karulise
elatically karulise pirots

seem okay but none of that freedom at the syntactic formal level.

Only

(x) Px --> Kx

is well formed. Also of course

(x) Kx --> Px
(x) Kx --> Kx
(x) Px --> Px

-- i.e. "Every karuliser is a pirot", "Karulisers karulise" and "pirots pirotise".

But you cannot have things like

Kx(x) Px-->

which is just an ill-formed formula, i.e. not a wff, i.e not a formula.

In some systems, any string from vocabulary items is deemed a formula and so the above "Kx(x)Px -->" would count as a formula. The syntactic rules (formation and transformation rules -- I'm using the latter apres Carnap) define a 'wff'. This gives 'wff' a value-oriented side to it. Like 'sentence', to use Grice's example, the idea of a formula is built upon our notion of a good formula, or well formed one. Etc.

Carnap and Grice on Morris

2010-02-16T06:15:00.000-08:00

By J. L. Speranza

In his note on Chapman on Carnap, Jones takes issue with Chapman's rather simplified view of syntactics vs. semantics.

We are discussing

pirots karulize elatically
A is a pirot
-----
A karulizes elatically

-- tr. from the German original
by A. Smeaton, Countess of Zeppelin, 1937

---

Chapman notes that Carnap is sticking to 'syntax'. A point she and indeed Carnap fails to give enough attention to is that some sem- (call it semantics) is present in the above: nothing is said about the morphogrammatical words like the -s marker for singular, the -ly marker for adverb, and the totally meaningful formation of "is a" (in "A is a pirot").

So, what Carnap seems to be concerned here -- but I wouldn't know what form he gives to universally quantified sentences:

(x) Px --> KEx
Pa & KEa

i.e. he _is_ using "A" as a singular term ("A is a pirot"). In Quine's scheme, and indeed Grice, in his talk "How pirots karulize elatically", this "A" comes out as "a" as per above.

Then we have to turn onto a semantic bloc the idea of karulising-elatically (KE) because the logical form of adverbial modifiers was unknown till Davidson's first shots at this in "The logical form of action sentences".

But if we see the above, we see that it's only with the "extension" of predicates:

"P" and "K" (or "KE" if you wish) that he is concerned as leaving 'meaning-free', or as I prefer, "interpretation" free. This may be, as Jones suggests, a bit of an influence from Hilbert (rather than Frege) and that's a very good thing to have, if we are going to deem Carnap a die-hard formalist, for nobody can be more of a formalist than Hilbert was.

I _love_ the label 'formalist' because that's precisely the one that Grice uses to oppose these people (say Hilbertians -- here we may need to see the Hilbert/Russell-Whitehead interface) and, ... Strawson! (Who Grice, amusingly, calls an 'INformalist'). Later, Grice learned the lesson and changed this into modernists versus neo-traditionalists!

---

Roger Bishop Jones writes of Carnap's oevure where, to use Jones's apt wording, he

"he syntacticised all the relevant semantic concepts" (emphasis mine. JLS).

For it's precisely that what we want. Let's propose four words here:

to semiotise: to turn into a semiotic system.

This has three subbranches:

The first is indeed:

to syntactise: to turn syntactic. Where syntactics is that branch of semiotics that deals with formation and transformation rules -- Carnap was enamoured with syntax, and so was Grice. Carnap wrote of "the logical syntax of language"; Grice has an unpublished thing on "The syntax of illusion" (for an investigation of phenomenalist talk _sans_ physicalist backing: 'that stick is bent').

Then we have

(b) to semanticise. This is done via interpretations. It's the truth-table thing. BUT it can be done more 'formally' via 'syntactising'. I.e. no interpretation required, or truth-table indeed. The system remains purely a syntactic one.

(c) to pragmaticise. This is done via leaving room for things like 'assertion', which is Carnap's paradigmatical pragmatic notion. One can have a syntactic string ("(x)Px --> Kx") and we may go on to semanticise it ("P" -- meaning postulate, "K", meaning postulate") and we may go on to pragmaticise it by examining what belief the utterer is endorsing when he asserts to pirots karulising elatically.

Etc.

A Fantasy World: Was Carnap's Pirots Gricefied

2010-02-16T06:01:00.000-08:00

By J. L. Speranza
for the Carnap Corner

--- R. B. Jones, our Carnap expert, does, very amusingly and interestingly, take up my reference to S. R. Chapman. She teaches English at Liverpool and has published extensively on various philosophers, including Chapman. We are discussing her references to Carnap/Grice (in particular the interface). I thought that Chapman cared to quote a specific passage from the Grice lectures (which Grice _amusingly_ thought of titling, "How pirots karulize elatically: some simpler ways", but did not), but she doesn't. So the actual written ref. by Grice on this continues to be the already published "Gr75 repr. Gr91:140" ("pirots (which Russell and Carnap...")).

In any case, I'm pleased Jones uses 'fantasy':

"Chapman is fantasizing about Carnap here I believe..."

And this is serendipitous, because Chapman uses 'fantasy' in particular the same context, only he thinks it's Grice who's the fantasier (and I follow her there!)

She wants to say that the pirots inhabit a fantasy world. I like that! I like Peter Pan, too -- and I'm amused that Grice saw Q in the Never-Never Land --. In a way the city of eternal truth is also a bit of fantasy, if you ask me!

Anyway, Chapman (in a way, aptly) contrasts the motivations of Carnap and Grice here:

---1) Carnap is writing (or being translated in 1937)
---2) Grice is lecturing in California in the 1970s.

Chapman writes about the pirots. Do not be confused, she says, by these two authors using the same word (same 'nonsense' I would go on to say), for:

"Carnap wanted to use SEMANTICALLY OPAQUE forms"

-- read 'nonsense'

"to hint at how an analysis of syntax"

-- syntactics I wrote on my margin. Cfr. Carnap on semeiosology, or something that he uses: he is indeed working on this originally Peircean idea that semiosis includes three branches: syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics.

"might proceed without reference to meaning"

-- here the problem is that Carnap is already using 'semiosiology' or something, and this, alas, makes a reference to 'sem-', which is the Greek for 'meaning'. There is an overlap, in mere roots of words, between SEMiosis, and SEMantics. So one has to be careful here.

"[On the other hand, though not necessarily the right one] Grice's intention in borrowing his [i.e. Carnap's] example is to consider what concepts might be necessary to the discussion of MEANING and reference, freed from the normal preconceptions of such a discussion".

This is sort of alright. For in this 'fantasy world' that pirots inhabit, Chapman cares to quote, slighly condescendingly as her wont is, how Grice "treated his audience to pieces of" [things like]:

I quote directly from Grice now:

"a pirot _a_ can be said to potch of some obble x as fang or feng: also to cotch of x, or some obble o, as fang or feng; or to cotch of one obble o and another obble o1 as being fid to one another"

--- These notes are transcripts (by one wonders who) from a tape. So there are some typos there: notably, 'karulize' is spelled 'carulise'!

Etc.

Chapman and Carnap's "Meaningless" systems

2010-02-16T05:10:00.001-08:00

By Roger Bishop Jones

for the Carnap Corner

On Tuesday 16 Feb 2010 00:08, J. L. Speranza wrote:

> As Chapman notes, the agenda of regimenting FL vs. NL is already
> there in the Intro to this book (Cfr. Carnap's two lectures in
> London):
>
> "In the introduction to The Logical Syntax of Language", Chapman
> expands, "Carnap presents a typically LOGICAL POSITIVIST accont of
> the PHILOSOPHER's reason for taking language seriously."
>
> Seriously? This seems like the antonymy of seriousness to me, but I
> see her point.
>
> "A suitably rigorous language will provide the necessary tools for
> logical and SCIENTIFIC exposition. This language is to be a FORMAL
> SYSTEM, concerned with types and orders of symbols but paying no
> attention to MEANING."

Chapman is fantasizing about Carnap here I believe, though I have not
actually read "Logical Syntax".

I believe Carnap, as a formalist, is like Hilbert (probably was
influenced in this by Hilbert rather than Frege).
Hilbert was not a formalist who regarded formal languages as
meaningless.
His formalism consisted in requiring meaning to be expressed
purely through a formal axiomatisation (often called an implicit
definition).

Carnap systematised this idea in his Philosophy of Logical Syntax, in
which he syntacticised all the relevant semantic concepts.
He did not regard his formal languages as meaningless, he simply
advocated that the semantics be rendered through the rules which
defined the analytic sentences.

RBJ

Gricean Look at Carnap Biblio

2010-02-15T17:41:00.000-08:00

This is a further look at some of the later publications by Carnap too.

1922. Der Raum: Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftslehre, Kant-Studien, Ergänzungshefte, no. 56. His Ph.D. thesis.

--- We have discussed this. The Space as a synthetic-apriori category in Kant. The fact that Carnap narrows the focus to 'wissenschaftslehre' suggests he may be into Kant's rather dogmatic presumption that Newton had to be right regardless (as he wasn't).

1926. Physikalische Begriffsbildung. Karlsruhe: Braun.

This is about 'physics' rather than physicalism, which is usually understood more narrowly (as Carnap will, in other publications) to deal with third-person reports of mental ascriptions of behaviour ("He is thinking of a platter of spaghetti"). This one touches on phenomenalism rather in the sections on 'perceived objects and their properties'. This is the lowest level (qualitative) from which Carnap raises to quantitative and abstract higher levels.

1928. Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie (Pseudoproblems of Philosophy). Berlin: Weltkreis-Verlag.

Shows his concern with methodological questions. Pseudoproblems will become in linguistic key his pseudo-statemens. E.g. Heidegger, Nothing noths.

1928. Der Logische Aufbau der Welt. Leipzig: Felix Meiner Verlag. English translation by Rolf A. George, 1967. The Logical Structure of the World. Pseudoproblems in Philosophy. University of California Press.

1929. Abriss der Logistik, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Relationstheorie und ihrer Anwendungen. Springer.

1934. Logische Syntax der Sprache. English translation 1937, The Logical Syntax of Language. Kegan Paul. This was tr. By A. Smeaton, countess of Zeppelin, and includes the charming, "Pirots karulize elatically; A is a pirot; thus A karulizes elatically". Formal calculus. Formation rules, etc.

1996 (1935). Philosophy and Logical Syntax. Bristol UK: Thoemmes. Excerpt.

1939, Foundations of Logic and Mathematics in International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol. I, no. 3. University of Chicago Press.

1942. Introduction to Semantics. Harvard Uni. Press.

1943. Formalization of Logic. Harvard Uni. Press.

1956 (1947). Meaning and Necessity: a Study in Semantics and Modal Logic. University of Chicago Press.

1950. Logical Foundations of Probability. University of Chicago Press. Pp. 3-15 online.

1950. "Empiricism, Semantics, Ontology", Revue Internationale de Philosophie 4: 20-45.

1952. The Continuum of Inductive Methods. University of Chicago Press.

1958. Introduction to Symbolic Logic with Applications. Dover.

1963, "Intellectual Autobiography" in Schilpp (1963: 1-84). Vide Roger Bishop Jones, and ch. ii of Bishop Roger Jones and J. L. Speranza.

1966. Philosophical Foundations of Physics. Martin Gardner, ed. Basic Books. Online excerpt.

1971. Studies in inductive logic and probability, Vol. 1. University of California Press.

1977. Two essays on entropy. Shimony, Abner, ed. University of California Press.

1980. Studies in inductive logic and probability, Vol. 2. Jeffrey, R. C., ed. University of California Press.

2000. Untersuchungen zur Allgemeinen Axiomatik. Edited from unpublished manuscript by T. Bonk and J. Mosterín. Darmstadt: Wissenschftliche Buchgesellschaft. 167 pp. ISBN 3-534-14298-5.

------ Pirot, you've gone a long way!

A Gricean Look at Carnap's Publications

2010-02-15T16:48:00.001-08:00

The early Carnap wrote, naturally enough, in German. Here is what a neo-Grice finds of interest, today, of some of what Carnap wrote:

1921

Der Raum. Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftslehre. Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der hohen philosophischen Fakultät der Universität Jena. (Jena: Universität Jena, 1921)

--- the space. Obviously, the ROOM, literally, but not as in the living room (but cfr. lebensraum). This is indeed the synthetic a priori category of Kant's space. Grice will show an interest in this vis a vis his student Strawson writing a book on Kant and the 'bounds of sense'. The topic merges with Carnap in that 'sense' is pretty ambiguous as used by Kant. What goes beyond the a priori, yet synthetic constraints of the apperception of 'space' dictates what we find and fail to find meaningful.

Contents: Introduction. Formal space. Intuitive space. Physical space. The mutual relation among formal, intuitive, and physical space.

--- the idea of 'formal space' would have pleased the late Grice, with all his emphasis on Platonic supralunary entities. The formal space is the space of Greek geometry of course, and it merges with ideas that the analytic statements of our cathedral of learning are both algebraic (or arithmetical) _and_ geometrical statements.

The relations between experience and knowledge of space. Bibliography and suggested reading. Biography.

---- Strawson was the big one here to focus on 'spatio-temporal continuity' as a metaphysical constraint on our conception of things. Grice was more of a mentalist, phenomenalist, memory-theoretical one (he saw 'memory' rather than spatio-temporal continuity as providing the key questions to the self).

1922

"Der Raum. Ein Beitrag zur Wissenschaftslehre." Kant-Studien Ergänzungshefte Nr. 56. (Berlin: Verlag von Reuther & Reichard, 1922). 87 pages.

1923

"Über die Aufgabe der Physik und die Anwendung des Grundsatzes der Einfachstheit" Kant-Studien (Berlin), Band 28 Heft 1/2 (1923), pp. 90 - 107.

1924

"Dreidimensionalität des Raumes und Kausalität: Eine Untersuchung über den logischen Zusammenhang zweier Fiktionen" Annalen der Philosophy und Philosophischen Kritik (Leipzig), Band 4 Heft 3 (1924), pp. 105-130.

The idea of 'causality' will feature large in some of Strawson's and Grice's metaphysical views. The early Grice (WoW) has some essays on the notion of 'cause' as involving a 'willing' element to be avoided by critics of ordinary language.

1925

"Über die Abhängigkeit der Eigenschaften des Raumes von denen der Zeit" Kant-Studien (Berlin) Band 30 Heft 3/4 (1925), pp. 331-345

-- Here the spatio-temporal continuity is considered, with the dropping of 'zeit' (time, literally, 'tide') onto the bargain.

1926

"Physikalische Begriffsbildung" in Ungerer, Emil (ed.) Wissen und Wirken, Einzelschriften zu den Grundfragen des Erkennens und Schaffens, Band 39 (Karlsruhe: Verlag G. Braun, 1926). 66 pages.

--- intersting for the early use of 'physicalist' or 'physicalic' literally.

Contents: Introduction, the task of physics. The first level of physical concept formation, qualitative level: Perceived things and properties. The second level of physical concept formation, quantitative level: Physical magnitudes. The third level of physical concept formation, abstract level: The four-dimensional world process. Bibliography. Index of topics and individuals cited.

---- it seems to be the first level: the qualitative level of perceived things and properties that will keep interesting Grice for _decades_, vide his "Remarks about the senses" in WoW: indeed, the phenomenalist challenge: how to transcend the phenomeanlist level of perceived things and properties to higher levels (quantitative and abstract).

1927

1. Carnap wrote a synopsis of Physikalische Begriffsbildung: "Physikalische Begriffsbildung" Annalen der Philosophie und philosophischen Kritik (Leipzig) Band 6, Heft 4 (July 18, 1927), pp. 76 - 77.

2. "Eigentliche und uneigentliche Begriffe" Symposion: Philosophische Zeitschrift für Forschung und Aussprache (Berlin-Schlachtensee) Band 1 Heft 4 (1927), pp. 355 - 374.
In the Schilpp volume, "Aussprache" is written "Ausprache."

1928

1. Der Logische Aufbau der Welt (Berlin-Schlachtensee: Weltkreis Verlag, 1928). 290 pages.

Contents: Preface (Vienna, May 1928). Introduction: Task and Plan of the Investigations. Preparatory Elucidations. On the form of scientific assertions. Overview of the types of objects and their relations. The problems of form of a constitution system. The forms of level. The form of system. (Formal investigations. Material investigations.) The basis. (The basic elements. The basic relations.) The form of objects. The form of presentation of a constitution system. Development of a constitution system. The lower levels: Objects of one's own psyche. The middle level: physical objects.

--- it's these two levels that will concern Grice:

lower level: object or content of one's own psyche.
middle level: material objects.

The upper levels: mental objects and objects of other psyches.

--- there seems to be an asymmetry with Grice at this level. Grice does not seem to have considered too serioulsy the problem of 'Other Minds', perhaps because he was Oxon, and he thought that Wisdom had bored people enough about it! But the later Grice HAS to give an answer to this: his functionalist manifesto is a third-person programme for the development of 'third-person' descriptions of 'mental predicates' ("Jack is thinking about Jill"). But this third-person programme needs adaptation by Grice to render first-person ascriptions possible ("I am thinking about Jill"): here Grice considers privileged access and incorrigibility which are NOT available, ceteris paribus, in third-person ascriptions.

Clarification of some philosophical problems on the basis of the constitution theory. Some problems of being. The psycho-physical problem.

It's good that Carnap, sticking with German -- and thus Greek -- keeps the Greek root of 'psyche'. The philosophical jargon Grice had to endure was that of 'mind', and he made a point of calling his thing 'philosophical psychology'. So the continuity that Carnap suggests between scientific and philosophical psychology would have pleased Grice.

The constitutional or empirical problem of reality. The problem of metaphysical reality. Task and limits of Science. Summary. Bibliography and index.

2. Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie: Das Fremdpsychische und der Realismusstreit (Berlin-Schlachtensee: Weltkreis-Verlag, 1928). 46 pages.

1929

1. Notice of Paul Bommersheim Beiträge zur Lehre von Ding und Gesetz. Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik (Leipzig) Band 36 Heft 1 (1929), pp. 27-28 of the separately paged reviews (= ger. "Literaturberichte")

---- interesting: Ding und Gesetz has an awful Quinean ring to it. Grice contributed to Quine's festshcrift, Word (Gesetz) and Object (Ding).

2. Abriss der Logistik, Mit Besonderer Berücksichtigung der Relationstheorie und ihrer Anwendungen Volume two in the series "Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung, edited by Philipp Frank and Moritz Schlick. (Wien: Verlag von Julius Springer, 1929). 114 pages.

Contents: Preface (Vienna in January 1929). System of Logistic (sections 1 through 29). The task of logistic. Functions. Truth-functions.

---- The early Grice was a thoroughly truth-functionalist. His whole polemic with Strawson originated because of this. Grice would often retreat to Whitehead/Russell, PM, for relaxation!

Axioms. Theorems of propositional logic. Universal and existential propositions. Symbols. Classes. The theory of types. Class operations. Relations. Operations of relations. The hierarchy of types. Symbolic functions of converse, regions and field. Chains. Operations. Three and many-placed relations. The classes of 0, 1, and 2; freedom from ambiguity. The principle of abstraction. The cardinal numbers. isomorphism; the relational (ordinal?) numbers. The R-chains. Groups. Finite and infinite. Various analyses of relation. Progressions. Series. Limit concepts. Continuity. Applied logistic. Section thirty, on the axiomatic method.

--- Grice entered logic seriously (as late as 1969, for the Hintikka/Davidson festschrift for Quine when the vogue for axiomatic presentations was kaput, and Gentzen was all over the place. Grice relies on Mates, Elementary Logic. However, the spirit is pretty much 'axiomatic' in this sense Carnap is alluding to here.

Set theory and arithmetic (sections 31 and 32). AS [Axiom system] of set theory. Peano's axiom system for the natural numbers. Geometry (sections 33 - 35). Axioms of topology (axioms of surroundings). Axioms of projective geometry (first form: planes as classes). Axiom system of projective geometry (second form: planes as relations). Physics (sections 36 - 37). Axiom system of space-time topology. Determination and causality. Theory of relationship [Verwandtschaft] (section 38). Axiom system of relationship-relations [Verwandtschaftsbeziehungen] among people.

---- This sounds interesting, "among people". I don't think Grice went as far as to symbolise people like that, but people I know (Rosenschein, Levinson, etc, me on a good day) did!

Analysis of knowledge (section 39). The lowest levels of the constitution system. Analysis of language (sections 40 - 43). Logical semasiology of a definite language. Exhibition of the logical skeleton of presented sentences. Mass numbers. Situations and events. Place and time. Appendix (sections 44 -50). Exercises. Overview of the most important logistical symbols. Bibliography. Suggested reading. Index of people and topics, with comparitive terminology. List of logical constants.

3. A notice of Adolf Fraenkel, Einleitung in die Mengenlehre 3. Auflage Annalen der Philosophie und philosophischen Kritik (Leipzig) Band 8 Heft 1/2 (15 May 1929), page 10 of separately paged "Literatureberichte."

4. Tagung fuer Erkenntnislehre der exakten Wissenschaften. In Prag, von Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank, Hans Hahn und Hans Reichenbach. Annalen der Philosophie und philosophischen Kritik Band 8 Heft 4/5 (31 July 1929) pp. 113-114.

-- the idea of 'epistemology' as erknenntinislehre is an interesting one. Grice himself did not expand on 'epistemology' as such, since he focused on general psychological attitudes (judicative attitudes, perceptual attitudes) and rarely on larger issues regarding the _truth_ of these attitudes!

Proceedings of this congress were published in Erkenntnis (Band 1 Heft 2/4, pp. 89-339).

5. Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung: Der Wiener Kreis Von Hans Hahn, Otto Neurath, und Rudolf Carnap. Veröffentlichung des Vereines Ernst Mach Heft I. (Wien: Artur Wolf Verlag, 1929). 64 pages.

--- good for an early ref. to the Vienna Circle (Coffa has written extensively on this).

Contents: Preface (Vienna, August 1929). The Vienna circle of the scientific world-view. Prehistory. The Circle around Schlick. The scientific world-view. Problem areas. Foundations of Arithmetic. Foundations of physics. Foundations of geometry. The problem of foundations in biology and psychology.

--- this is topical. The problem of Emergentism, I assume. You talk to a philosophical biologist and they are so onto telos and against mechanism. I am expecting Carnap took the idea of a mechanistic reduction seriously enough!

Foundations of the socal sciences. Review and outlook. Suggested readings. Bibliography. The members of the Vienna Circle. Authors closest to the Vienna Circle. Leading representatives of the scientific world-view. Index of names.

---- I like the 'adolescent' idea that you have a circle with members. Grice was like that. He has notes where he writes:

"Anscombe, no; Murdoch, no; Dummett, no" -- people NOT accepted as members of Austin's kindergartens (they were called Kindergartens because everyone had to be younger than Austin, b. 1911).

6. Review of Adolf Fraenkel, Einleitung in die Mengenlehre 3. Auflage Kant Studien (Berlin) Band 34 Heft 3/4 (1929), pp. 428-429.

7. Review of Karl Menger, Dimensionstheorie in ibid., pp. 457-458.

************************************

The 1930s.

1930

1. Notice. Herbert Feigl Theorie und Erfahrung in der Physik, Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik (Leipzig) Band 37 Heft 1 (1930), p. 6 of seperately paged "Literatureberichte."

2. "Die alte und die neue Logik" Erkenntnis (Leipzig) Band 1 heft 1 (1930), pp. 12 - 26.

---- Grice was at odds when doing history of logic. While Carnap speaks of old and new, Grice speaks of: traditionalism, modernism, neo-traditionalism, neo-modernism. Confusing!

---

3. "Einheitswissenschaft auf physischer Basis. Ibid., p. 77.

4. Review of Felix Kaufmann, Das Unendliche in der Mathematik und seine Ausschaltung, Deutsche Literaturzeitung (Leipzig), 51. Jahrgang (3. Folge, 1. Jahrgang) Heft 35 (August 30, 1930), cols. 1674-1678.

5. "Die Mathematik als Zweig der Logik" Blätter für deutsche Philosophie (Berlin) Band 4 Heft 3/4 (1930), pp. 298 - 310.

6. "Diskussion über Wahrschenlichkeit." Von Edgar Zilsel und anderen. Erkenntnis (Leipzig) Band 1 Heft 2/4 (1930) pp. 260 - 285.

verosimilitude (wahrschenlichkeit).

7. Bericht über Untersuchungen zur allgemeinen Axiomatik. Ibid., pp. 303 - 307.

8. A bibliography of Rudolf Carnap in Ibid., pp. 315 - 317.

1931

1. "Ergebnisse der logischen Analyse der Sprache" Forschungen und Fortschritte (Berlin) 7. Jahrgang, Nummer 13 (May 1, 1931), pp. 183 - 184.

2. A review of A.N. Whitehead and Bertrand Russell Principia Mathematica, 2nd ed. Erkenntnis (Leipzig) Band 2 Heft 1 (1931), pp. 73 - 75.

--- Grice often speaks (WoW:RE) of the 'heirs of PM' so we know who he is talking about now.

3. A review of Eino Kaila, Der logistische Neupositivismus. Ibid., pp. 75 - 77.

The idea of the logical positivists as neo-positivists is appealing. Grice has Positivism (and see the -ismus ending in German here) when he is really onto neo-Positivismus.

4. "Die logizistische Grundlegung der Mathematik" Ibid. Band 2 Heft 2/3 (1931), pp. 91 - 105.

5. "Diskussion zur Grundlegung der Mathematik" Von Hans Hahn und anderen. Ibid., pp. 135 - 149.

1932

1. "Überwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache" Erkenntnis (Leipzig) Band 2 Heft 4 (1932), pp. 219 - 241.

*****************This is the Classic, where ueberwindung was perhaps too grossly tr. as 'rejection'.

2. "Die Sprache der Physik" Ibid., p. 311.

3. "Psychologie in physikalischer Sprache" Ibid., p. 311.

4. "Die physikalische Sprache als Universalsprache der Wissenschaft" Ibid. Band 2 Heft 5/6 (1932), pp. 432 - 465.

--- this is referred to by Roger Bishop Jones in a post to HIST-ANAL. Physicalist speech as universal speech of science. This is fascinating in that the idea of the universalsprache is so ... well debabelized! Speranza has studied different attempts at 'characteristica universalis', and here is one of the most important ones! It will become Americanised, of course, as the idea of a unified science.

5. "Psychologie in physikalischer Sprache" Ibid. Band 3 Heft 2/3 (December 30, 1932), pp. 107 - 142.

6. "Erwiderung auf die vorstehenden Aufsätze von E. Zilsel und K. Duncker" Ibid., pp. 177 - 188.

7. "Über Protokollsätze" Ibid., pp. 215 - 228. A reply to Neurath's article in the same issue of Erkenntnis on pp. 204 - 214.

---- this is interesting, as it concerns O-T terms, observational and theoretical. To what extent are protokollsaetze observational and to what extent are they theory-laden? Grice deals with some of these questions in his Method repr. 1991.

1933

1. A review of Philipp Frank, Das Kausalgesetz und seine Grenzen in Kant-Studien (Berlin) Band 38 Heft 1/2 (1933), p. 275.

He had spoken of Kausalitaet, now it's kausalgesetz, where gesetz is ambiguous as to law, principle, what have you. Not to be confused with the synthetic a priori, "Every event has a cause" beloved of Oxonians like Pears.

2. "L'Ancienne et la Nouvelle Logique" Trad. du generale Ernest Vouillemin. Introd. de Marcel Boll. Actualites scientifiques et industrielles, 76. (Paris: Hermann & Cie., 1933). 36 pages.

Revised translation of 1930-2.

3. Review of Bertrand Russell and A. N. Whitehead, Einführung in die mathematische Logik, Erkenntnis (Leipzig) Band 3 Heft 4/6 (September 5, 1933), pp 436 - 437.

1934

1. "On the Character of Philosophic Problems," translated by W.M. Malisoff, in Philosophy of Science (Baltimore) volume 1 number 2 (April 1934), p. 251.

2. A review of Walter Dubislav Die Philosophie der Mathematik in der Gegenwart, Erkenntnis (Leipzig), Band 4 Heft 1 (May 8, 1934), pp. 64 - 65.

3. A review of C.I. Lewis & C.H. Langford Symbolic Logic, Ibid., pp. 65 - 66.

---- This is intersting in that Lewis supersedes the material implication and enters metaphysical waters with his strict implication. So we are not talking of common or garden truth-functionalists here.

4. The Unity of Science, translated and with an introduction by Max Black in Psyche Miniatures, General Series no. 63 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1934). 101 pages.

--- Black will have occasion to discuss Grice at large ("Literary Theory", 1970).

Contents: Introduction by M. Black. Author's introduction (Prague, January 1934). Advice to the reader. Physics as a universal science. The heterogeneity of science. Languages. Protocol language. The physical language as an intersubjective language.

--- this topic is anti-Wittgensteinian. I don't think discussed by Grice, but by Griceans, e.g. Colin McGinn, in Woodfield, Thought and Object: to what extent can an intention-based semantics respond to the solipsistic challenge?

The physical language as a universal language. Protocol language as a part of physical language. Unified science in physical language.

5. Die Aufgabe der Wissenschaftslogik Einheitswissenschaft, schriften hrsg. von Otto Neurath in Verbindung mit Rudolf Carnap und Hans Hahn. Heft 3. (Wien: Verlag Gerold & Co., 1934). 30 pages.

6. Logische Syntax der Sprache Schriften zur wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung, hrsg. von Philipp Frank und Moritz Schlick, Band 8 (Wien: Verlag von Julius Springer, 1934). 274 pages.

Contents: Introduction--What is Logical syntax? Languages as calculi.

-- the use of the term 'calculus' here is interesting in that it predates the OED for 'predikatkalkuel' that Grice uses.

Part I--The definite language I. Formation and transformation rules, and remarks on definite forms of language.

The ref. to transformational rules is Chomskyan apres la lettre.

Part II--Formal construction of the syntax of language I. Part III--The indefinite language II. Formation and transformation rules, along with further investigations. Part IV--General syntax. Object language and syntax language.

This must be a development of Russell, who speaks of object-language and meta-language. People often drop 'object-' but they shouldn't.

The syntax of an arbitrary language (in general; variables; arithmetic; translation; extensionality). Part V--Philosophy and Syntax. On the form of the sentences of the logic of science. Logic of science as syntax. Bibliography and Index.

The English translation of Logische Syntax appears here also as 1937-1.

7. "Meaning, Assertion, and Proposal" Philosophy of Science (Baltimore) vol. 1 no. 3 (July 1934), pp. 359 - 360. This is a reply to Dewey's article of the same title in Ibid., pp. 237 - 238.

--- Grice gave a John Dewey Lecture. Carnap will get Gricean when he expands on 'assertion' as the basic statement for pragmatics (within what he calls semiosology).

8. La Science et la Metaphysique devant L'Analyse Logique du Langage Trad. du general Ernest Vouillemin. Introd. de Marcel Boll. Actualites scientifiques et industrielles, 172. (Paris: Hermann & Cie., 1934). 44 pages. Revised translation of 1932-1.

9. "Theoretische Fragen und praktische Entscheidungen" Natur und Geist (Dresden) 2. Jahrgang Nummer 9 (September 1934), pp. 257 - 260.

--- excellent dichotomy that will figure large in the later Carnap. The questions are theoretical, but the decisions as to what the ANSWERS to such questions are are practical. Inconsistency there?

10. "The Rejection of Metaphysics" Psyche: An Annual of General and Linguistic Philosophy (Cambridge and London), vol. 14 (1934), pp. 100 - 111.

---- This has Cantab. connection. No wonder he was not so well known in Oxon.

11. "Die Antinomien und die Unvollständigkeit der Mathematik" Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik (Leipzig) Band 41 Heft 2 (1934), pp. 263 - 284.

1935

1. Philosophy and Logical Syntax [Psyche Miniatures, General Series no. 70] (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1935). 100 pages.

A revised version of three lectures given on the 8th, 10th, and 12th of October 1934 at the University of London. See 1934-10 and 1944-1.

Contents: Preface (Prague, Nov. 1934). The rejection of metaphysics.

--- this is interesting. The title of his early essay. Heidegger in mind: Nothing noths. Nicht nichtet.

Verifiability.

--- excellent in that it is considering Confirmationism and Inductivism as the offspring of Positivism, and is preparing his criticisms to Popper.

Metaphysics. Problems of reality. Ethics. Metaphysics as expression. Psychology. Logical analysis. Logical syntax of language. "Formal" theory. Formation rules. Transformation rules. Syntactical terms. L-terms. Content. Pseudo-object sentences. The material and the formal modes of speech. Syntax as the method of philosophy. The material mode of speech. Modalities. Relativity in regard to language. Pseudo-questions. Epistemology. Natural philosophy. What physicalism asserts. What physicalism does not assert. The unity of Science. Literature.

2. "Formalwissenschaft und Realwissenschaft" Erkenntnis (Leipzig) Band 5 Heft 1 (March 31, 1935), pp. 30 - 37.

--- the problem that Carnap must face is that if his thing is a formal one (formalwissenschaft), how does it deal with 'empirical' questions of, say, physics?

3. "Les Concepts psychologiques et les concepts physiques sont-ils foncierement differents?" Trad. par Robert Bouvier. Revue de synthese (Paris), t. 10, no. 1 (April 1935), pp. 43 - 53.

The original German version of this article was not published.

4. "Ein Gültigkeitskriterium für die Sätze der klassischen Mathematik" Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik (Leipzig) Band 42 Heft 1 (1935), pp. 163 - 190.

5. A bibliography of Carnap in Erkenntnis (Leipzig) Band 5 Heft 2/3 (June 18, 1935), pp. 187 - 188.

6. A review of Willard van Orman Quine A System of Logistic, in Ibid., Band 5 Heft 4 (July 31, 1935), pp. 285 - 287.

--- Quine knew well and wrote about both Carnap and Grice. The correspondence Quine/Carnap now available, "Dear Van", he called him.

7. A review of Walter Dubislav, Naturphilosophie, in Ibid., pp. 287 - 288.

8. A review of Arend Heyting, Mathematische Grundlagenforschung, in Ibid., pp. 288 - 289.

9. A review of Karl Popper, Logik der Forschung, in Ibid., pp. 290 - 294.

cfr. Verifiability above.

10. "Le Probleme de la logique de la science. Science formelle et science du reel." Trad. due general Ernest Vouillemin, Actualites scientifiques et industrielles 291. (Paris: Hermann & Cie., 1935). 37 pages.

Translation of 1934-5 and 1935-2.

1936

1. "Discussion" in Actes du huiteme Congres international de philosophie a Prague 2 - 7 septembre 1934 (Prague: Comite d'organisation du Congres, 1936). Despositaire: Orbis, S.A., Prague. 1103 pages.

Work by Carnap and Neurath appears on pp. 244 - 245.

2. "Die Methode der logischen Analyse" appears in Ibid., pp. 142 - 145. There is a discussion by Carnap and others on pp. 158 - 159.

3. "Von der Erkenntnistheorie zur Wissenschaftslogik" in Actes du Congres international de philosophie scientifique et empirisme logique Actualites scientifiques et industrielles, 388. (Paris: Hermann & Cie., 1936). pp. 36 - 41.

4. "Über die Einheitssprache der Wissenschaft: Logische Bemerkungen zum Projekt einer Enzyklopädie" Ibid., [fasc.] 2. Unite de la science Actualites scientifiques et industrielles, 389. Pp. 60 - 70.

5. "Wahrheit und Bewährung" Ibid., [fasc.] 4. Induction et probabilite. Actualites scientifiques et industrielles, 391. Pp. 18 - 23.

6. "Truth in Mathematics and Logic" The Journal of Symbolic Logic (Menasha, Wisconsin), volume 1 number 2 (June 1936), p. 59.

This is an abstract of a paper Carnap presented on September 1, 1936 at the Harvard Tercentenary Conference of Arts and Sciences. The full paper was not published.

7. "Truth in Mathematics and Logic" Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (Menasha, Wisconsin and New York), volume 42 number 9, part 1 (September 1936), p. 642.

The same as the preceding item.

8. "Existe-t-il des premisses de la science qui soient incontrolables?" Trad. par Henri Buriot-Darsiles. "Scientia" (Rivista di scienza) (Bologna). Volume 60, Number 293 (September 1 1936), pp. 166 - 188.

Carnap's original German paper was never published.

9. "Über Extremalaxiome" Von Rudolf Carnap und Friedrich Bachmann. Erkenntnis (Leipzig) Band 6 Heft 3 (October 31, 1936), pp. 166 - 188.

10, "Testability and Meaning" Philosophy of Science (Baltimore) Volume 3 Number 4 (October 1936), pp. 419 - 471; Volume 4 Number 1 (January 1937), pp. 1 - 40.

cfr. Verifiability above, but also semantic range of 'provability'. To test, to prove. What is it that is proved?

Contents: Introduction (sections 1 - 4)--Our problem: Confirmation. Testing and meaning. The older requirement of veriafiability. Confirmation instead of verification. The material and the formal idioms. Logical analysis of Confirmation and testing (sections 5 - 10)--Some terms and symbols of Logic. Reducibility of confirmation. Definitions. Reduction sentences.

--- important vis a vis Grice's reductionism (bete noire) and his caveats regarding a healthy reductive analysis but a more dangerous reductionist eliminationist agenda.

Introductive chains. Reduction and definition. Empirical analysis of confirmation and testing (sections 11 - 16)--Observable and realizable predicates. Confirmability. Method of testing. Testability. A remark about positivism and physicalism. Sufficient bases. The construction of a language-system (sections 17 - 28)--The problem of a criterion of meaning. The construction of a language-system L. Atomic sentences; primitive predicates. The choice of a psychological or a physical basis.

--- the choice here is interesting. I would have expected, 'phenomeanlist' vs. physicalist, but Carnap is talking 'pscyhological' tout court (this suggest he saw, sense-datum sentences as psychological complete with empirical psychological subjects attached to them ("I see that...")).

--- Introduced atomic predicates. Molecular sentences. Molecular languages. The critical problem: Universal and existential sentences. The scale of languages. Incompletely confirmable hypotheses in physics. The principle of empiricism.

--- Interesting vis a vis Grice's Empiricism as bete noire.

Confirmability of predictions. Bibliography.

1937

1. The Logical Syntax of Language Translated by

*************************************
Amethe Smeaton, Countess von Zeppelin.
**************************************

The poor woman. I imagined her frustration,

"Dear Rudolf,
I'm on p. 2 and can't understand.
What _is_ a pirot. The Count does
not know.
Merry Christmas."

--

International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method, gen. ed., C. K. Ogden. (London: Kegan Paul Trench, Trubner & Co., 1937). 352 pages.

Revised and enlarged translation of 1934-6.

Contents [to be linked here] -- in comments.

Index of Carnap's Syntactic Variables with Page References -- to be linked here -- in comments.

2. "Logic" in Factors Determining Human Behavior by Edgar Douglas Adrian and others. Harvard Tercentenary Publications. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1937). Pp. 107 - 118.

3. "Einheit der Wissenschaft durch Einheit der Sprache" in Travaux du IXe Congres international de philosophie, Congres Descartes [fasc.] 4. L'Unite de la science: La Methode et les methodes, [Ier partie]. Actualites scientifiques et industrielles, number 533. (Paris: Hermann & Cie., 1937). Pp. 51 - 57.

4. Notes For Symbolic Logic Chicago, 1937. Distributed by the University of Chicago Bookstore. 37 mimeographed pages.

Notes for a course in logic at the University of Chicago.

----

But of course there's zillions more -- but do not despair.

If you have been good and followed Carnap's developments this far, the rest is, as he would say, a piece of apfelstrudel.

"The barrage of Vienese bombshells", remembered by Grice

2010-02-15T16:26:00.000-08:00

"In the later 1930s Oxford was rudely
aroused from its semi-peaceful
semi-slumbers by the barrage of
Viennese bombshells hurled at it
by A. J. Ayer, at the time the
enfant terrible of
Oxford philosophy".

Gr86:48

He adds, interestingly -- and see above how RHETORIC he can wax!

"Many people,
including MYSELF,
were greatly interested by the
methods, theses and problems
which were on display."

"And some [not hisself -- sic -- now]
were, at least momentarily,
inspired by what they saw and heard"

-- can't say I can name a bunch other than Ayer.

He ends his passage of Oxford in the 1930s with a reference to a Dogmatism:

"For _my_ part, my reservations
were never laid to rest: the crudities
and dogmatisms seemed to pervasive. And
then everything was more or less
brought to a halt by the war"

--- Speranza has researched quite a bit of what we may call "the beginnings of ordinary language philosophy in Oxford".

Grice self-appointed as having been brought "up on the wrong side of the tracks" so he never really socialised with Ayer much (who was meeting with Austin, Hampshire, Hart, and 6 more -- on Tuesday evenings at All Souls).

Grice as a much more standard Lit. Hum. student with associations with the classics programme at Corpus, and he was just as much involved in cricket and football. His early papers from this years are a manuscript on Plato's theory of negation, and on Locke and the 'rational, intelligent parots', which transpired as _Mind_ 1942.

A counterfactual (I hate them) springs: what if the war had not been declared? It seems OBVIOUS that _after the war_ Grice sided with Austin, and against Ayer. Grice was now part of the playgroup with Austin. Ayer kept his club at All Souls (Some but very few belonged to both: if you can run with the hare and hunt with the hounds sort of thing: D. F. Pears one of them).

Etc.

"pirots (which, as Russell and Carnap have told us,...)"

2010-02-15T15:41:00.000-08:00

By J. L. Speranza

for the Carnap Corner

"My creatures I call pirots (which, as Russell and Carnap have told us are things which karulize elatically")
Grice, Method, 1975 repr. Gr91:140

And cfr. Ch06:122, who's relying on an unpublication (transcript from a tape) by Grice, which he wanted to entitle, "How pirots karulize elatically: some simpler ways".

In "Method" he actually refers (in this order) to "Russell and Carnap" -- but we haven't been able to find the earlier Russellian reference. It is possible that Carnap learned of the pirots via correspondence with Russell (vide Roger Bishop Jones/J. L. Speranza, "The Carnap-Grice Conversation", ch. ii -- Student Years and beyond).

The pirots acquired some fame after Grice re-hashed them in this 1970s lectures, then. He writes in 1975a:

----"My creatures I call pirots (which Russell and Carnap have told us are things which karulize elatically)"

In Grice they play a methodological role in what we may see as an ideal-observer theory. Note the poetic license Grice takes in considering the pirot is a 'thing'.

For, as Chapman notes, as directly per Carnap 1937 -- all that write (tr. Smeaton) writes is:

"For instance, given an appropriate RULE, it can be PROVED
that the word-series, 'Pirots karulize elatically' is
a sentence, provided only that 'Pirots' is known to be
a substantive (in the plural),"

-- Cfr. Alice's first reaction to her "Jabberwocky": "Well, it seems pretty obvious that something did something very nasty to someone". And cfr. 'All mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe.')

-- but we are not told they are _things_ unless we consider properties, e.g. to be things, too--.

"Tempers boil Italianly"

Carnap goes on:

"'karulize' a verb (in the third person plural) and 'elatically' an adverb... The meaning of the words [i.e. the roots, PIROT, KARULISE and ELATICAL) are quite Inessential to the purpose, and need not be known".

As Chapman notes, the agenda of regimenting FL vs. NL is already there in the Intro to this book (Cfr. Carnap's two lectures in London):

"In the introduction to The Logical Syntax of Language", Chapman expands, "Carnap presents a typically LOGICAL POSITIVIST accont of the PHILOSOPHER's reason for taking language seriously."

Seriously? This seems like the antonymy of seriousness to me, but I see her point.

"A suitably rigorous language will provide the necessary tools for logical and SCIENTIFIC exposition. This language is to be a FORMAL SYSTEM, concerned with types and orders of symbols but paying no attention to MEANING."

Chapman goes on to quote directly from Carnap here:

Carnap writes:

"The unsystematic and logically IMPERFECT structure
of the natural word-languges" makes them unamenable
to such formal analysis, but in a

"well-constructed language" it is possible to formulate and undestand syntactic rules".

Roger Bishop Jones is right here, as Chapman agrees: "Carnap does no more with his invented language, proposing instead to stick to symbolic languages".

----

But yes, the pirot reaches maturity then with Grice. (And if Speranza may add so, he uses them pretty freely in his Speranza, The Feast of Reason, to provide a transcendental justification of survival mechanisms!)

Etc.

JL

Refs.
Carnap, The logical syntax of language, 1937.
Chapman, _Grice_. Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006.
Grice, Method in philosophical psychology, 1975, Proc. APA, repr. 1991.
Speranza, JL. The feast of conversational reason, in M. J. Palacios.

The Pirot Talk

2010-02-14T07:26:00.000-08:00

By J. L. Speranza, F. R. S. (failed) &c
of The Grice Club,
for The Carnap Corner.

It is a pleasure to be invited to correspond on pirot talk and others. Roger should note that it is pretty good, when one posts things to blogs to leave the first line of the post you are writing blank. Then add "By Roger Bishop Jones, of the Carnap Corner". In this way, when people (and pirots) read the blog "Carnap Corner", they see it as a magazine, or something, with contributions by different people (I am sorry that my blog, GriceClub, is not working too smooth on that front, seeing that contributions are mainly from yours truly). The bad-side of this is that comments, usually highly entertaining and informative, are otherwise buried at a 'click' distance that many pirots (I know) will not (click) -- and thus left unread.

So what we should aim at is good posts, or at least good titled post (or goodly titled posts) and threads of comments. Comments are not hierarchized, if that's the word. One after the other. That's good if it's just two people (or pirots) joining in, but if you get a third party, you may need to mark who you are addressing your comment to. (So far, I don't think I've had that problem in GriceClub at all!).

Anyway, the pirot-talk then. Pirot is a term used by Carnap as early as 1937, as tr. by Smeaton. The word has an early occurrence in the OED2, but we can ignore that, for the time being. Grice took it up and abused it!

Carnap Bio

2010-02-14T07:21:00.001-08:00

Surely I don't have to mention that this blog is devoted to Carnap?

Well, I'm just going through his "Intellectual Autobiography" at
present, writing another precis, pulling out the important bits for
our "Conversation between Carnap and Grice".

So maybe I'll post some of it here.

Anyway, I am impressed by how much new I get whenever I reread
something with a different purpose in mind (this is just a nice way of
saying how selective and minimal my retention is).

On this read, I look for it and I see, just what an important part of
the philosophical outlook of Carnap is already in place, even before
he comes to Vienna (let alone before Wittgenstein's influence kicks
in).

Carnap Corner joins the Grice Club

2010-02-14T06:44:00.000-08:00

J.L. Speranza and I are colluding in the writing of a tiny book about Carnap and Grice.

I have been trying to understand how to work his blog, "The Grice Club", of which he made me an author, without much success.
I thought I might understand the workings better if I had one of my own, however desultory.

And thus it is bound to be, for I am the tortoise to Speranza's hare, and while he spills out Gricean entertainment by the second, I meditate and cogitate over exactly what should be said until one day I forget that topic and wake up thinking of anotherm leaving nothing said.

Anyway, less anon.

RBJ

Carnap Corner

Presupposition

Meaning Postulates for "Refudiate"

Under Carnap's Lamp

Carnap and Goguen

Review of "Metametaphysics"

Quine/Carnap on Ontology (CFP)

The Aufbau and Neutral Monism

More Reck on Carnap

R. B. Jones's System C-R

Carnap and Grice in the history of logic (KEYWORD: "History of Logic")

Carnap and Grice on constructivism

Awody and Reck on Categoricity

Carnap and Modern Logic

Categoricity and "The Fraenkel-Carnap Question"

Chalmers' John Locke Lectures

Categoricity in Carnap and Grice

Jan Dejonzka does Carnap (He did Grice)

From Vienna to Santa Fé, from Oxford to the Eternal City

Martin Firiedman on Carnap and Grice

Gustav Bergmann on Carnap and Grice

Essays by Carnap and Grice in J. Baillie, ed. "Contemporary Analytic Philosophy"

Blurb for Ostertag's book that combines Carnap and Grice

Russell, Carnap, Grice: the 'self' -- making sense of it via 'logical construction'

Carnap and Grice on 'pragmatic' -- and what the inventor of it all thought about things: Morris -- via Sharpless

Carnap and Quine

Carnap and Grice on Deviant Logics

Carnap scholarship - a curates egg?

Carnap and Wittgenstein : Truth Functional ~ Truth Conditional

Ramsey, Carnap, and Grice on the ι-operator

Grice Refines Carnap's Ramsey Sentences (?)

Ramsey, Carnap, and Grice on Θ

Grice on Ramsification

Carnap, Grice, and the Theory of Everything

Ramsey: Shared Love of Carnap and Grice

The Carnap We Love

Monism: What Variety? (Give Me A Sweet Break)

Demons, No Ghosts

Monism Comes In One Variety

Ontology: Monism vs. Pluralism

neo-Carnapian

The Carnap-Grice Conversation (cf. The Carnap-Strawson Conversation)

Carnap and Grice on Linguistic Naturalism

Good online link for Carnap on metametaphysics!

"More Carnapian than Austinian"

Grice's "More Positivistic Vein"

Überwindung

Carnap and Grice on nonsense

"Caesar is a prime number"

The Go-Between: Carnap, Grice -- and Sir Freddie

He is teavy

Das Nichts Nichtet

Asserting

Carnap and Grice on the internal-external distinction

LSS §17

LSS §17

The Implicatures of Tolerance

Cassirer Lecture -- *CANCELLED*

Husserlian prairies, Meinongian jungles

Under Carnap's Lamp

Under Carnap's Lamp

Peppered With Carnaps

Carnap and Grice on 'analytic'

Implicit Definitions in Carnap and Grice

My Kind of Hero

Carnap and Grice on 'true' as redundant

Carnap and Grice on "logical" versus "non-logical"/"descriptive"

Carnap and Cooley on "postulate"

Something to Consider: The "Elatically"

System CR and System GHP

Carnapiana, Griceana

System C, System G

Carnap and Grice on Morris

A Fantasy World: Was Carnap's Pirots Gricefied

Chapman and Carnap's "Meaningless" systems

Gricean Look at Carnap Biblio

A Gricean Look at Carnap's Publications

"The barrage of Vienese bombshells", remembered by Grice

"pirots (which, as Russell and Carnap have told us,...)"

The Pirot Talk

Cassirer Lecture -- CANCELLED