Under Carnap's Lamp

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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!" --.

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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).

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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!

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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!