Carnap, Tarski, and Quine at Harvard

Carnap, Tarski, and Quine at Harvard
Author: Greg Frost-Arnold
Publisher: Open Court
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2013-08-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0812698371

During the academic year 1940-1941, several giants of analytic philosophy congregated at Harvard: Bertrand Russell, Alfred Tarski, Rudlof Carnap, W. V. Quine, Carl Hempel, and Nelson Goodman were all in residence. This group held regular private meetings, with Carnap, Tarski, and Quine being the most frequent attendees. Carnap, Tarski, and Quine at Harvard allows the reader to act as a fly on the wall for their conversations. Carnap took detailed notes during his year at Harvard. This book includes both a German transcription of these shorthand notes and an English translation in the appendix section. Carnap’s notes cover a wide range of topics, but surprisingly, the most prominent question is: if the number of physical items in the universe is finite (or possibly finite), what form should scientific discourse, and logic and mathematics in particular, take? This question is closely connected to an abiding philosophical problem, one that is of central philosophical importance to the logical empiricists: what is the relationship between the logico-mathematical realm and the material realm studied by natural science? Carnap, Tarski, and Quine’s attempts to answer this question involve a number of issues that remain central to philosophy of logic, mathematics, and science today. This book focuses on three such issues: nominalism, the unity of science, and analyticity. In short, the book reconstructs the lines of argument represented in these Harvard discussions, discusses their historical significance (especially Quine’s break from Carnap), and relates them when possible to contemporary treatments of these issues. Nominalism. The founding document of twentieth-century Anglophone nominalism is Goodman and Quine’s 1947 “Steps Toward a Constructive Nominalism.” In it, the authors acknowledge that their project’s initial impetus was the conversations of 1940-1941 with Carnap and Tarski. Frost-Arnold's exposition focuses upon the rationales given for and against the nominalist program at its inception. Tarski and Quine’s primary motivation for nominalism is that mathematical sentences will be ‘unintelligible’ or meaningless, and thus perniciously metaphysical, if (contra nominalism) their component terms are taken to refer to abstract objects. Their solution is to re-interpret mathematical language so that its terms only refer to concrete entities—and if the number of concreta is finite, then portions of classical mathematics will be considered meaningless. Frost-Arnold then identifies and reconstructs Carnap’s two most forceful responses to Tarski and Quine’s view: (1) all of classical mathematics is meaningful, even if the number of concreta is finite, and (2) nominalist strictures lead to absurd consequences in mathematics and logic. The second is familiar from modern debates over nominalism, and its force is proportional to the strength of one’s commitment to preserving all of classical mathematics. The first, however, has no direct correlate in the modern debate, and turns upon the question of whether Carnap’s technique for partially interpreting a language can confer meaningfulness on the whole language. Finally, the author compares the arguments for and against nominalism found in the discussion notes to the leading arguments in the current nominalist debate: the indispensability argument and the argument from causal theories of reference and knowledge. Analyticity. Carnap, Tarski, and Quine’s conversations on finitism have a direct connection to the tenability of the analytic-synthetic distinction: under a finitist-nominalist regime, portions of arithmetic—a supposedly analytic enterprise—become empirical. Other portions of the 1940-41 notes address analyticity directly. Interestingly, Tarski’s criticisms are more sustained and pointed than Quine’s. For example, Tarski suggests that Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem furnishes evidence against Carnap’s conception of analyticity. After reconstructing this argument, Frost-Arnold concludes that it does not tell decisively against Carnap—provided that language is not treated fundamentally proof-theoretically. Quine’s points of disagreement with Carnap in the discussion notes are primarily denials of Carnap’s premises without argument. They do, however, allow us new and more precise characterizations of Carnap and Quine’s differences. Finally, the author forwards two historical conjectures concerning the radicalization of Quine’s critique of analyticity in the period between “Truth by Convention” and “Two Dogmas.” First, the finitist conversations could have shown Quine how the apparently analytic sentences of arithmetic could be plausibly construed as synthetic. Second, Carnap’s shift during his semantic period toward intensional analyses of linguistic concepts, including synonymy, perhaps made Quine, an avowed extensionalist, more skeptical of meaning and analyticity. Unity of Science. The unity of science movement originated in Vienna in the 1920s, and figured prominently in the transplantation of logical empiricism into North America in the 1940s. Carnap, Tarski, and Quine’s search for a total language of science that incorporates mathematical language into that of the natural and social sciences is a clear attempt to unify the language of science. But what motivates the drive for such a unified science? Frost-Arnold locates the answer in the logical empiricists’ antipathy towards speculative metaphysics, in contrast with meaningful scientific claims. I present evidence that, for logical empiricists over several decades, an apparently meaningful assertion or term is metaphysical if and only if that assertion or term cannot be incorporated into a language of unified science. Thus, constructing a single language of science that encompasses the mathematical and natural domains would ensure that mathematical entities are not on par with entelechies and Platonic Forms. The author explores various versions of this criterion for overcoming metaphysics, focusing on Carnap and Neurath. Finally, I consider an obstacle facing their strategy for overcoming metaphysics: there is no effective procedure to show that a given claim or term cannot be incorporated within a language.

Carnap, Quine, and Putnam on Methods of Inquiry

Carnap, Quine, and Putnam on Methods of Inquiry
Author: Gary Ebbs
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2017-06-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1107178150

This volume critically examines the work of three eminent twentieth-century philosophers, Carnap, Quine, and Putnam, engaging with and developing their answers to key methodological questions.

The Philosophical Project of Carnap and Quine

The Philosophical Project of Carnap and Quine
Author: Sean Morris
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2023-02-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1108660142

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) and W. V. O Quine (1908–2000) have long been seen as key figures of analytic philosophy who are opposed to each other, due in no small part to their famed debate over the analytic/synthetic distinction. This volume of new essays assembles for the first time a number of scholars of the history of analytic philosophy who see Carnap and Quine as figures largely sympathetic to each other in their philosophical views. The essays acknowledge the differences which exist, but through their emphasis on Carnap and Quine's shared assumption about how philosophy should be done-that philosophy should be complementary to and continuous with the natural and mathematical sciences-our understanding of how they diverge is also deepened. This volume reshapes our understanding not only of Carnap and Quine, but of the history of analytic philosophy generally.

Oxford Studies in Metaphysics

Oxford Studies in Metaphysics
Author: Dean Zimmerman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2008-05-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199542988

The fourth volume of a series that acts as a forum for new works in the field of metaphysics. The collection offers a broad overview of the subject & features traditional topics as well as questions from neighbouring fields such as the philosophies of mind & science.

Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism, and the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction

Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism, and the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction
Author: Robert Sinclair
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2022-08-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1793618216

W. V. Quine’s occasional references to his ‘pragmatism’ have often been interpreted as suggesting a possible link to the American Pragmatism of Peirce, James, and Dewey. Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism, and the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction argues that the influence of pragmatism on Quine’s philosophy is more accurately traced to his teacher C.I. Lewis and his conceptual pragmatism from Mind and the World Order, and his later An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. Quine’s epistemological views share many affinities with Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism, where knowledge is conceived as a conceptual framework pragmatically revised in light of what future experience reveals. Robert Sinclair further defends and elaborates on this claim by showing how Lewis’s influence can be seen in several key episodes in Quine’s philosophical development. This not only highlights a forgotten element of the epistemological backdrop to Quine’s mid-century criticism of the analytic-synthetic distinction, but Sinclair further argues that it provides the central epistemological framework for the form and content of Quine’s later naturalized conception of epistemology.

Quine’s Philosophy

Quine’s Philosophy
Author: Gary Kemp
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2023-08-24
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 135034205X

W.V. Quine is one of the leading figures of 20th century analytic philosophy, and still among the most influential. But his work can be challenging and complex, and indeed often misunderstood. In this updated introduction to Quine's thought, Gary Kemp examines his seemingly disparate views as a unified whole and offers a valuable guide for anyone approaching Quine for the first time. Informed by current debates and updated throughout, this edition now includes: · Thoroughly revised and expanded text · More references to commentaries, secondary literature and works by Quine · Suggestions for further reading · Newly introduced material on Empirical Content, Explication, Nominalism, The Purported Third Dogma, Theoreticity, Natural Selection and Linguistics. · Historical notes on Quine's relation to his predecessors and contemporaries Paying close attention to Quine's seminal works including Word and Object and Philosophy of Logic, Kemp explains how his philosophy relates to thinkers including Rudolf Carnap and Wittgenstein, as well as to more recent figures such as Donald Davidson and Noam Chomsky. Kemp clearly and accurately emphasizes the systematic nature of Quine's thought as one of naturalism. He advances our understanding of Quine and attests to his ongoing influence in philosophy of science, logic, language, ontology and epistemology. This unique introduction to Quine's philosophy is recommended for any student interested in Quine and the history of analytic philosophy.

W.V.O.Quine

W.V.O.Quine
Author: Alex Orenstein
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2014-12-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317489896

The most influential philosopher in the analytic tradition of his time, Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) changed the way we think about language and its relation to the world. His rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction, his scepticism about modal logic and essentialism, his celebrated theme of the indeterminacy of translation, and his advocacy of naturalism have challenged key assumptions of the prevailing orthodoxy and helped shape the development of much of recent philosophy. This introduction to Quine's philosophical ideas provides philosophers, students and generalists with an authoritative analysis of his lasting contributions to philosophy. Quine's ideas throughout are contrasted with more traditional views, as well as with contemporaries such as Frege, Russell, Carnap, Davidson, Field, Kripke and Chomsky, enabling the reader to grasp a clear sense of the place of Quine's views in twentieth-century philosophy and the important criticisms of them.

Working from Within

Working from Within
Author: Sander Verhaegh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2018-11-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0190913185

During the past few decades, a radical shift has occurred in how philosophers conceive of the relation between science and philosophy. A great number of analytic philosophers have adopted what is commonly called a "naturalistic" approach, arguing that their inquiries ought to be in some sense continuous with science. Where early analytic philosophers often relied on a sharp distinction between science and philosophy--the former an empirical discipline concerned with fact, the latter an a priori discipline concerned with meaning--philosophers today largely follow Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) in his seminal rejection of this distinction. Sander Verhaegh here offers a comprehensive study of Quine's groundbreaking naturalism. Building on Quine's published corpus as well as a wealth of unpublished letters, notes, lectures, papers, proposals, and annotations from the Quine archives, Verhaegh aims to reconstruct both the nature and the development of his naturalism. As such, Working from Within aims to contribute to the rapidly developing historiography of analytic philosophy, and to provide a better, historically informed, understanding of what is philosophically at stake in the contemporary naturalistic turn. Transcriptions of five unpublished papers, letters, and notes are included in the appendix.

Logical Empiricism and Naturalism

Logical Empiricism and Naturalism
Author: Joseph Bentley
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2023-06-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3031293282

This text provides an extensive exploration of the relationship between the thought of Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap, providing a new argument for the complementarity of their mature philosophies as part of a collaborative metatheory of science. In arguing that both Neurath and Carnap must be interpreted as proponents of epistemological naturalism, and that their naturalisms rest on shared philosophical ground, it is also demonstrated that the boundaries and possibilities for epistemological naturalism are not as restrictive as Quinean orthodoxy has previously suggested. Both building on and challenging the scholarship of the past four decades, this naturalist reading of Carnap also provides a new interpretation of Carnap’s conception of analyticity, allowing for a refutation of the Quinean argument for the incompatibility of naturalism and the analytic/synthetic distinction. In doing so, the relevance and potential importance of their scientific meta-theory for contemporary questions in the philosophy of science is demonstrated. This text appeals to students and researchers working on Logical Empiricism, Quine, the history of analytic philosophy and the history of philosophy of science, as well as proponents of naturalized epistemology.

The Significance of the New Logic

The Significance of the New Logic
Author: Willard Van Orman Quine
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2018-05-10
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1316836320

W. V. Quine was one of the most influential figures of twentieth-century American analytic philosophy. Although he wrote predominantly in English, in Brazil in 1942 he gave a series of lectures on logic and its philosophy in Portuguese, subsequently published as the book O Sentido da Nova Lógica. The book has never before been fully translated into English, and this volume is the first to make its content accessible to Anglophone philosophers. Quine would go on to develop revolutionary ideas about semantic holism and ontology, and this book provides a snapshot of his views on logic and language at a pivotal stage of his intellectual development. The volume also includes an essay on logic which Quine also published in Portuguese, together with an extensive historical-philosophical essay by Frederique Janssen-Lauret. The valuable and previously neglected works first translated in this volume will be essential for scholars of twentieth-century philosophy.