Abstract
Rudolf Carnap’s 1930s philosophy of logic, including his adherence to the principle of tolerance, is discussed. What theses did Carnap commit himself to, exactly? I argue that while Carnap did commit himself to a certain multitude thesis—there are different logics of different languages, and the choice between these languages is merely a matter of expediency—there is no evidence that he rejected a language-transcendent notion of fact, contrary to what Warren Goldfarb and Thomas Ricketts have prominently argued. (In fact, it is obscure just what Goldfarb and Ricketts claim about Carnap.) Toward the end I critically discuss Michael Friedman’s suggestion that Carnap believed in a relative a priori.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Awodey S., Carus A. W. (2004) How Carnap could have replied to Gödel. In: Awodey S., Klein C. (eds) Carnap brought home: The view from Jena. Open Court, Chicago, IL, pp 203–223
Awodey, S., Klein, C. (eds) (2004) Carnap brought home: The view from Jena. Open Court, Chicago, IL
Carnap, R. (1934/1937). The logical syntax of language (A. Smeaton, Trans.). London: Kegan Paul.
Carnap, R. (1935). Philosophy and logical syntax. Bristol: Thoemmes (1996 reprint of the 1935 edition).
Carnap, R. (1949). Truth and confirmation. In H. Feigl & W. Sellars (Eds.), Readings in philosophical analysis (pp. 119–127). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts (adapted from two articles, one from 1936 and one from 1946).
Carnap, R. (1950). Empiricism, semantics and ontology. Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 4, 20–40. Reprinted with minor changes in Carnap (1956), pp. 205–221.
Carnap R. (1956) Meaning and necessity: A study in semantics and modal logic, enlarged edition. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Eklund M. (2009) Carnap and ontological pluralism. In: David C., David M., Ryan W. (eds) Metametaphysics. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Eklund, M. (forthcoming a). The multitude view on logic. In G. Restall & G. Russell (Eds.), New waves in the philosophy of logic. New York: Palgrave.
Eklund, M. (forthcoming b). Carnap’s metaontology. Noûs.
Field H. (1982) Realism and relativism. Journal of Philosophy 79: 553–567
Friedman, M. (1994). Geometry, convention and the relativized a priori. In W. Salmon & G. Wolters (Eds.), Logic, language, and the structure of scientific theories. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Reprinted in Reconsidering logical positivism, pp. 59–70, 1999, Cambridge.
Friedman M. (2001) Dynamics of reason. CSLI Publications, Stanford
Friedman, M. (2004). Carnap and the evolution of the a priori. S. Awodey & A. W. Carus (Eds.), Carnap brought home: The view from Jena (pp. 101–116). Chicago, IL: Open Court.
Giere, R. N., Richardson, A. W. (eds) (1996) Origins of logical empiricism. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
Gödel, K. (1995). Is mathematics syntax of language? In Collected works (Vol. III, pp. 334–362). Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Goldfarb W. (1996) The philosophy of mathematics in early positivism. In: Giere R.N., Richardson A.W. (eds) Origins of logical empiricism. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp 213–230
Goldfarb W. (1997) Semantics in Carnap: Rejoinder to Alberto Coffa. Philosophical Topics 25: 51–66
Goldfarb W., Ricketts T. (1992) Carnap and the philosophy of mathematics. In: Bell D., Vossenkuhl W. (eds) Science and subjectivity. Akademie Verlag, Berlin
Potter M. (2000) Reason’s Nearest Kin. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Quine W. V. O. (1960) Word and object. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Quine W. V. O. (1964) Carnap and logical truth. In: Schilpp P. A. (eds) The philosophy of Rudolf Carnap. Open Court, La Salle, pp 385–406
Quine W. V. O. (1970) Philosophy of logic. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Richardson A. (1998) Carnap’s construction of the world. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Ricketts T. (1994) Carnap’s principle of tolerance, empiricism, and conventionalism. In: Clark P., Hale B. (eds) Reading Putnam. Blackwell, Oxford, pp 176–200
Ricketts T. (1996) Carnap: From logical syntax to semantics. In: Giere R.N., Richardson A.W. (eds) Origins of logical empiricism. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp 231–250
Ricketts T. (2004) Frege, Carnap, and Quine: Continuities and discontinuities. In: Awodey S., Klein C. (eds) Carnap brought home: The view from Jena. Open Court, Chicago, IL, pp 181–202
Ricketts T. (2007) Tolerance and logicism: Logical syntax and the foundations of mathematics. In: Friedman M., Creath R. (eds) The Cambridge companion to Carnap. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Uebel T. (2005) Learning logical tolerance: Hahn on the foundations of mathematics. History and Philosophy of Logic 26: 175–209
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Eklund, M. Multitude, tolerance and language-transcendence. Synthese 187, 833–847 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-011-9904-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-011-9904-x