Grice on Ramsification

---- 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).