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

--- 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

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

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".

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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:

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"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."

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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.

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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).

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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?

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"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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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?

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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

--- 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?

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

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.

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

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

Speranza.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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).

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So what has this to do with Carnap?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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RBJ

Ramsey, Carnap, and Grice on the ι-operator

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

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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

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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. ...