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Carnap’s 1934 Objections to Wittgenstein’s Say/Show Distinction

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Abstract

In sections 18 and 73 of Carnap’s Logical Syntax of Language, Carnap famously presents what he understands to be decisive objections to Wittgenstein’s Tractarian distinction between saying and showing. However, Carnap has been criticized in recent literature for severely misinterpreting that distinction. Against this criticism it is argued that Carnap reads that distinction as applying to two distinct classes of expressions (Unsinn and sinnlos) that he holds to emerge from his reading of Tractatus 4.1212 and related Tractarian theses. It is then argued that Carnap’s counterexamples to Wittgenstein’s theses are successful given his reading, and that our analysis of his counterexamples puts us in a unique position to reevaluate his conventionalism.

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Notes

  1. Carnap (2002, p. 53).

  2. Friedman (1999, p. 193ff.), argues that Carnap’s thesis that logical syntax is capable of precise linguistic formulation and Wittgenstein’s denial of a “similar-sounding sentence” have little to do with one another. Part of Sect. 3 addresses Friedman’s claim.

  3. Other than in quotes from the Pears and McGuinness translation, uniformly “sentence” rather than “proposition” is used throughout the explication in this paper. If this seems to be inappropriate when applied to Wittgenstein, then it ought to suffice to note that for him a symbol is always an interpreted sign.

  4. Sullivan (2001, p. 96).

  5. See, for example, Diamond (2001); or Conant (2000).

  6. Carnap (1963, p. 29).

  7. Carnap (2002, p. 281).

  8. Carnap (2002, p. 282).

  9. Carnap (2002, p. 282)

  10. Carnap (2002, p. 283).

  11. Carnap (2002, pp. 294–295).

  12. Carnap (2002, p. 294).

  13. Carnap (2002, pp. 297–298).

  14. Carnap (2002, p. 296 [my italics]).

  15. Carnap (2002, p. 283).

  16. Carnap (2002, p. 295).

  17. Carnap (2002, p. 282).

  18. Carnap (2002, pp. 282–283).

  19. Carnap (1963, p. 60).

  20. Carnap (2002, p. 53).

  21. We might also interpret this move of Carnap’s as a rejection of a forerunner to the contemporary reading of Wittgenstein that maintains that all attempts at expressing what can only be shown produce nonsense. To make this more plausible, consider the fact that in the early 30s, the Vienna Circle’s assimilation of and debate over the interpretation of many of the main themes of the Tractatus was part of the source of a well-known polarization within the Circle, its so-called left and right wings. By the time LS appeared, Carnap was the most prominent member of the left wing, while Schlick was the right’s representative. Schlick remained in the right wing partly because of his reading of the above Tractarian themes. He took them, in particular, to imply that because there is one language that imposes a fixed structure on thought, which in turn is about a determinate reality, it is impossible to communicate in language the structure of logical form and the content of the given. Thus, the conjecture suggests itself that in denying that the thesis that there is only one language and the thesis that syntax is inexpressible in language are logically dependent upon one another, Carnap was responding to and rejecting Schlick’s reading of the Tractatus. See Mancosu (2007, p. 9) for discussion of Carnap’s engagement with Schlick, Neurath and Tarski on this and similar issues. See also Friedman (1999, pp. 29–30 and pp. 34ff).

  22. Friedman (1999, p. 193).

  23. Carnap (2002, p. 53).

  24. Carnap (2002, ibid.)

  25. Carnap (2002, p. 7).

  26. Carnap (2002, ibid.). This is not to deny that Carnap also takes Wittgenstein’s say/show distinction to apply to what Carnap calls “descriptive syntax” in LS. Here discussion of the relationship between descriptive syntax and pure syntax is omitted only for reasons of space.

  27. Carnap (1963, p. 29).

  28. Carnap (2002, p. 57).

  29. Carnap (2002, p. 58).

  30. Carnap (2002, p. 68).

  31. Carnap (2002, p. 58).

  32. Lavers (2004, pp. 305ff).

  33. Carnap (2002, p. 141).

  34. Lavers (2004, p. 305).

  35. Lavers (2004, p. 306).

  36. Carnap (2002, pp. 78ff).

  37. Carnap (2002, ibid.).

  38. Carnap (2002, p. 284).

  39. Carnap (2002, p. 297).

  40. Carnap (2002, p. 299).

  41. The use of scare quotes indicates that we make no specific commitment to the sense of entailment but that our use of it should be consistent with the best or most popular sense currently used by supervenience-theorists.

References

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  • Mancosu, P. (2007). Tarski, Neurath, and Kokoszynska on the semantic conception of truth (unpublished).

  • Sullivan, P. (2001). A version of the picture theory. In W. Vossenkuhl (Ed.), Ludwig Wittgenstein: Tractatus logico-philosophicus. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

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  • Wittgenstein, L. (2001). Tractatus logico-philosophicus (D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness, Trans.). New York: Routledge Press.

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Acknowledgments

I’m grateful to professors Mancosu and Sluga for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, as well as Solomon Feferman, Michael Friedman, Gregory Lavers, William Demopoulos, and the anonymous referees for helpful comments and criticisms of earlier drafts.

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  1. Stanford Philosophy Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA

    Alexei Angelides

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  1. Alexei Angelides
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Angelides, A. Carnap’s 1934 Objections to Wittgenstein’s Say/Show Distinction. Erkenn 76, 147–169 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-011-9327-6

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