Abstract
Carnap’s development from the “syntactic phase” of his Logical Syntax of Language to the “semantic phase” of his Introduction to Semantics and Meaning and Necessity is often seen as an awakening from a dogmatic semantics-blindness. In this paper we look at the development from a different visual angle, indicating that seeing it as simply a progress might be misleading. We point out that from the viewpoint of many contemporary philosophers it is no longer clear that meaning is not a matter of “syntax” in Carnap’s original sense of the word. Aside of this, Carnap’s contribution to the understanding of rules, and especially inferential rules, with respect to syntax, semantics, and language in general, was profound. Therefore, we suggest that Carnap’s investigations from his “syntactic phase” are much more interesting than even the later Carnap himself would have appreciated.
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Notes
- 1.
Rudof Carnap, Logische Syntax der Sprache. Wien: Springer 1934. Revised English edition The Logical Syntax of Language, London: Kegan Paul 1937.
- 2.
Rudolf Carnap, Introduction to Semantics. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press 1942.
- 3.
Rudolf Carnap, Meaning and Necessity. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1947.
- 4.
J. Alberto Coffa , The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991, p. 304.
- 5.
John R. Searle , Minds, Brains, and Science. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press 1984.
- 6.
Ludwig Wittgenstein , Philosophische Untersuchungen. Oxford: Blackwell 1953. English translation Philosophical Investigation, Oxford: Blackwell 1953.
- 7.
Friedrich Waismann, Wittgenstein und der Wiener Kreis. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1984, p. 105. See also Jaroslav Peregrin, Inferentialism: Why Rules Matter. Basingstoke: Palgrave 2014, Chap. 3.
- 8.
Wilfrid Sellars , “Language, Rules and Behavior”, in: Sidney Hook (Ed.), John Dewey: Philosopher of Science and Freedom. New York: Dial Press 1949, pp. 289–315; “Some Reflections on Language Games”, in: Philosophy of Science 21, 1951, pp. 204–228; “Language as Thought and as Communication”, in: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 29, 1969, pp. 506–527.
- 9.
Robert Brandom , Making it Explicit. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press 1994; and Peregrin, Inferentialism: Why Rules Matter, op. cit.
- 10.
Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language, op. cit., p. 1.
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
All of this is merely implicit in LSL; Carnap only discusses it explicitly in his subsequent writings, especially in Formalization of Logic, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press 1943. There he uses the term mirroring. He writes (p.3): “Thus e.g. the fact that a certain sentence S1 is true is itself of a semantical, not a syntactical, nature. But it can be formalized, i.e. mirrored in a syntactical way, if a calculus K is constructed in such a way that S1 is C-true in K.” Thus it was only later that Carnap came to duly appreciate this intricacy of the syntax-semantics relationship. (However, even then he restrict himself to hints and does not give any thorough discussion of this intricate problem.)
- 14.
Arthur N. Prior, “Conjunction and Contonktion Revisited”, in: Analysis 24, 1964, p. 191.
- 15.
Viz. are “mirrored” by syntactic properties – see footnote 13.
- 16.
Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language, op. cit., p. 5.
- 17.
Carnap, Introduction to Semantics, op. cit., pp. 8–9.
- 18.
Hence we will also not discuss this problem here. I have done so elsewhere: Peregrin, Inferentialism: Why Rules Matter, op. cit., Chap. 2.
- 19.
Kurt Gödel , “Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme I”, in: Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik 38, 1931, pp. 173–198.
- 20.
Jaroslav Peregrin, “Gödel, Truth and Proof”, in: Journal of Physics: Conference Series 82, 2007. http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/82/1/012006
- 21.
True, if we formalize arithmetic as a first-order theory, the unprovable sentence will not come out as a consequence of the axioms, and derivability will coincide with consequence. But this is just because first-order logic is a priori set up so that any consistent theory has a model – in other words, that consequence in it will duplicate derivability. This is different when we formalize arithmetic within second-order logic.
- 22.
Alfred Tarski , “O pojeciu wynikania logicznego”, in: Przeglad Filozoficzny 39, 1936, pp. 58–68. English translation “On the Concept of Following Logically”, in: History and Philosophy of Logic 23, 2000, pp. 155–196,
- 23.
“Far from having been written in ignorance of Gödel’s results, Carnap’s LSL was inspired by an appreciation of the significance of Gödel’s work that only a handful of logicians could match at the time,” as Coffa (op. cit., p. 286) puts it.
- 24.
John Dawson, “The Reception of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems”, in: Thomas Drucker (Ed.), Perspectives on the History of Mathematical Logic. Boston: Birkhäuser 1991, pp. 84–100.
- 25.
Coffa , op. cit., p. 288.
- 26.
Tarski , “On the Concept of Following Logically”, op. cit.
- 27.
Coffa, loc. cit.
- 28.
Alfred Tarski, Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1956, p. 295.
- 29.
Moreover, it seems that natural languages, though they certainly do not contain names of everything that is, potentially, in their universe of discourse, incorporate mechanisms that allow for creating such names (and indeed it would seem that to be in the universe is to be a potential referent of such a name).
- 30.
See Philippe de Rouilhan, “Carnap on Logical Consequence for Languages I and II”, in: Pierre Wagner (Ed.), Carnap’s Logical Syntax of Language. Basingstoke: Palgrave 2009, pp. 121–146.
- 31.
See, e.g., Heinrich Wansing (Ed.), Dag Prawitz on Proofs and Meaning. Dordrecht: Springer 2014.
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Work on this paper has been supported by Research grant No. 13-21076S of the Czech Science Foundation.
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Peregrin, J. (2020). Rudolf Carnap’s Inferentialism. In: Schuster, R. (eds) The Vienna Circle in Czechoslovakia. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook, vol 23. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36383-3_5
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