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Neurath and Carnap on Semantics

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Neurath Reconsidered

Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science ((BSPS,volume 336))

Abstract

Carnap is still often portrayed as a “representationalist.” While the genealogy of this prejudice may not actually go back to Neurath’s response to Carnap’s embrace of Tarskian semantics, there is a continuity of motivation and rhetoric. However, based on a reading of the later Neurath-Carnap correspondence reproduced in this volume, it would appear that the apparent dispute between them over semantics really was largely terminological, with certain differences of emphasis amplified by personality differences and the long interruption of personal contact due to the war. Their conceptions of a language of science can be reconciled. Carnap was neither a representationalist nor an anti-representationalist nor an inferentialist (though it may appear that he can legitimately be portrayed as any of these), since ultimately to embrace one of these positions is to endorse an “order of explanation” or ontological primacy, and Carnap rejected ontology.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    There have also been other interpretations of Neurath’s rejection of semantics that are less programmatic than Mormann’s or Uebel’s but seek merely to clarify Neurath’s position while holding out the possibility that it could be worked out more coherently as an alternative to the “mainstream” view of Tarski and Carnap; the best example of this is Mancosu (2008).

  2. 2.

    As I have discussed in much more detail in Carus (2007, 33–37).

  3. 3.

    Hintikka (1991) questions this. But Schiemer (2013) takes a different view, based on a close reading of the hitherto unstudied notes and drafts for the second part of the Untersuchungen zur allgemeinen Axiomatik.

  4. 4.

    This 1937 meeting is also discussed by Mancosu (2008, 215–19), with documentation from the Neurath Nachlass.

  5. 5.

    Mancosu (2008, 209) documents that it was Louis Rougier, in particular, who in his presentation at the Paris conference took Tarski’s account of truth to vindicate Schlick’s position in the controversy between the left and right wings of the Vienna Circle about protocol sentences and “Konstatierungen” (affirmations), and thereby to shift the boundary between metaphysical and scientific language.

  6. 6.

    See Neurath to Carnap, 25 September 1943 (RC 102-55-03); see letter 22. in the present volume.

  7. 7.

    Neurath to Carnap, 1 April 1944 (RC 102-55-05); see letter 26. in the present volume.

  8. 8.

    See the discussion on Neurath and Popper in Cartwright , Cat, Fleck, and Uebel (1996).

  9. 9.

    Neurath to Carnap, 1 April 1944 (RC 102-55-05); see letter 26 in the present volume.

  10. 10.

    Neurath to Carnap, 18 November 1944 (RC 102-55-06); see letter 28 in the present volume.

  11. 11.

    Ina Carnap to Neurath, 24 August 1945 (RC 102-55-10); see letter 33 in the present volume.

  12. 12.

    Neurath to Carnap, 18 November 1944 (RC 102-55-06); see letter 28 in the present volume.

  13. 13.

    A suggestion strongly endorsed by Carus (2007); see the discussion, including an illustrative quotation from Musil , on p. 64. The fundamental kinship between Carnap and Musil has also been addressed by Jacques Bouveresse (e.g. 2001, 2012).

  14. 14.

    It has been known since Reisch (1991) that in his capacity as the editor of the Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Carnap oversaw Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which interested him very much and which he found very compelling; see also Friedman (2003). It is thus hard to believe he would not have been interested in other well researched pieces of recent “descriptive pragmatics” (as he would have classified it) that tended to undermine his default view of a gradual convergence toward deductive unity and transparency, such as Mark Wilson’s work, as I suggest (Carus 2012), where I also suggest how he might have accommodated such news; see also Wilson’s reply (Wilson 2012) in the same volume.

  15. 15.

    Of which an overview up to 2015 is provided in Carus (2015b).

  16. 16.

    Children have in fact been brought up Esperanto-speaking, e.g. George Soros, but apparently there are no known cases of monolingual upbringing in Esperanto; native Esperanto speakers have also, so far, always learned another language from childhood; see the article “Native Esperanto speakers” in Wikipedia.

  17. 17.

    Which is also one reason why the learnability literature (e.g. Steven Pinker) isn’t very empirical.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, Munich, Germany

    A. W. Carus

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  1. A. W. Carus
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Correspondence to A. W. Carus .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Jordi Cat

  2. Institute of Philosophy, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary

    Adam Tamas Tuboly

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I am grateful to the editors, Jordi Cat and Adam Tuboly, for suggesting that I contribute to this volume and for helpful comments. I also thank Thomas Uebel for some valuable suggestions.

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Carus, A.W. (2019). Neurath and Carnap on Semantics. In: Cat, J., Tuboly, A. (eds) Neurath Reconsidered. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 336. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02128-3_12

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