Abstract
This paper concerns the issue of whether the so-called left wing of the Vienna Circle (Carnap, Neurath, Frank) can be understood as having provided the blueprint for a bipartite metatheory with a formal-logical part (the “logic of science”) supporting and being supported by a naturalistic-empirical part (the “behavioristics of science”). A claim to this effect was recently met by a counterclaim that there was indeed an attempt made to broaden Carnap’s formalist conception of philosophy by the pragmatist Morris, but that this initiative failed and that Carnap showed no interest in it. To defend the original claim this paper provides an analysis of Carnap and Morris on the subject matter of pragmatics in order to show that and how Carnap adopted Morris’s proposals in so far as they agreed with bipartite metatheory conception.
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Notes
This was how far Uebel (2001) pressed the matter in light of some well-known differences between Carnap and Neurath; in Uebel (2007, 435) the analysis was extended to the attribution of a “broadly shared program for a bipartite metatheory serving as a joint replacement for [traditional] philosophy”.
See, e.g., Carnap et al. (1929/1973, 306). Hahn belonged to the left wing but is not mentioned further here since due to his early death there are no published contributions of his to the debates under investigation.
“The failure of constructing a comprehensive ‘scientific empiricism’ in Morris’s sense should be taken into account when we seek to assess the chances of Uebel’s ‘bipartite metatheory’, even if the parallelism between Uebel’s and Morris’s proposals is limited” (Mormann 2010, 38). Mormann now speaks of Morris’s “Paris programme for scientific philosophy”; for a sympathetic portrayal of it, see his (forthcoming).
By “behavioristics” Neurath meant to designate theories that accounted in physicalistically acceptable ways for human behavior and to indicate a critical distance from Watson’s behaviorism (see 1933, §5). His own examples over the years indicate that a non-reductive physicalism was intended (see, e.g., 1936/1983, 162).
This is not to say that Carnap did not think that some aspects of meaning could be treated syntactically. For a brief while in 1932, Carnap used “logical syntax” and “semantics” as cognates (see 1932/1959, 177) and even fancied “Semantik” as the title for his (1934/2002). And since Coffa (1977) it is known that in Logical Syntax Carnap used supposedly syntactic means to accomplish tasks we now regard as semantic.
From Bühler’s essay, but not from Carnap, one can learn that “Semasiologie” stems from Heinrich Gomperz. For a description of Gomperz’s “Semasiologie” in his (1908) see Ogden and Richards (1923/1936, 274–277). See Carnap (1942, 238–239) for an updating of his own 1934 terminological remarks on “semantics”.
Thus Morris declared that “formalism, empiricism and pragmatism are complementary phases of the scientific temper. I propose to recognize this fact by designating the implied philosophical attitude as scientific empiricism” (1935c/1937, 21, emphases dropped).
Morris also recommended adding “empirical axiology” and “empirical cosmology” (1935c/1937, 14 and 16). I do not discuss these here as they represent that aspect of Morris’s proposal that was not taken up by either Carnap or Neurath or Frank.
While “semiotic” was used from Locke through Peirce to Morris and his collaborators, the current usage—which I shall follow outside of quotations—favors “semiotics”; see Sebeok (1971).
Elsewhere Morris had written: “Philosophy as organon becomes general semiotic.” (1937, 5).
Morris’s expression “the study of the relation of signs to scientists” resonates both with Carnap’s talk of investigating science as an activity (see above) and Neurath’s “behavioristics of scholars” which comprises (according to examples given at 1936/1983, 160) the history and the psychology of science but contrasts with logic of science.
Note that Morris’s later characterization of pragmatics as “that portion of semiotic which deals with the origin, uses, and effects of signs within the behavior in which they occur” (1946/1971, 302) would still allow for similar expansion, depending on what is specified as the relevant behavior in which the signs occur.
Neurath can be seen to be motivated by a related worry when he replied to Ake Petzäll’s reply to his delineation of the bipartite metatheory conception (in response to Petzäll’s earlier criticism of Vienna Circle philosophy): “The two disciplines, logic of science and behavioristics of scholars which Petzäll mentions in connection with my article are therefore to be seen only as examples; here could be other examples from other disciplines.” (1936/1983, 168) What Neurath meant to stress was that a great variety of disciplines make up the empirical science of science. On related concerns expressed by Neurath in the correspondence with Morris, see Dahms (1997, 54–63) and Reisch (2003a, 206–207) and Sect. 8 below.
Previous discussions of Morris’s semiotics tend to neglect this “wide” aspect of his pragmatics.
It is the axiological aspect of Morris’s program that Mormann stresses as distinctive in his (forthcoming).
Martin wrote that in these “splendid paragraphs we encounter a characterization of the modern trivium of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics arising from the sea almost fully blown like Venus herself” (1987, 303). This clearly overlooks the influence of Morris even though, as we saw, Carnap was indeed already favorably disposed towards it.
Carnap’s reference was Morris (1938a) not (1938b). Three years later he noted that Morris defined pragmatics as “the field dealing with the relations between speakers (or certain processes in them) and expressions” but added that “in practice there does not seem to be a sharp line between investigations of this kind and those which refer also to designata” (1942, 9–10).
Carnap gave a sustained defense of the method of abstraction underlying the logic of science in (1950a, 215–219).
Though he did not engage in doing so after 1932, Carnap never renounced the possibility that the logic of science could construct private protocol languages, for instance.
“As I now understand Quine, I would agree with his basic idea, namely, that a pragmatical concept, based upon an empirical criterion, might serve as an explicandum for a purely semantical reconstruction, and that this procedure may sometimes, and perhaps also in the present case, be a useful way of specifying the explicandum. On the other hand, I would not think that it is necessary in general to provide a pragmatical concept in order to justify the introduction of a concept of pure semantics.” (Carnap 1963, 919).
In response to Morris, Carnap admitted in later years: “In the case of pragmatics, I was mainly thinking of empirical investigations” (Carnap 1963, 861). In fact, it is difficult to see how there could be a pure pragmatics of the kind envisaged by Morris for the wide understanding of pragmatics that Carnap appears to have taken over from Morris: Morris’s own remarks about pure pragmatics apply to the narrow understanding of it as concerned with linguistic rules. When Carnap in later years conceded a role for pure pragmatics, it was likewise limited to systematize the employment of meaning-related and psycho-linguistic notions.
The reason Morris gave was that “in pragmatics too we can distinguish between formative and lexicative ascriptors, and so generalize the distinction between pure and descriptive semiotic” (1946/1971, 329). The relevant distinction was one between the “formative discourse of semiotic and its designative discourse, that is, between semiotic as logic and semiotic as scientific discourse” (ibid., 303), such that the former discourse spelled out what the semiotic relations were that were taken for granted in the latter.
What Carnap and Morris must have been aware of were their very different views on metaethics, but these were not discussed by them in publications until Morris’s contribution to the Schilpp volume (Dewey had raised the matter without naming names in his (1939, 6–19).) This point has been highlighted recently by Mormann (2007) and Richardson (2007). That in respect of their metaethics quite generally not much convergence between logical empiricists and pragmatists can be discerned is true but irrelevant to the issue at hand, namely, whether a shared adherence to the blueprint for the conception of a bipartite metatheory can be discerned in Carnap (and Neurath and Frank) and Morris.
Since Richardson (2003) discussed the far-reaching agreements between Carnap and Morris (albeit from the perspective of the reception of Carnap’s views by Morris, not of Morris’s by Carnap), it should be noted that the implicit distinction or unnoticed tension between the narrow and the wide conception of pragmatics here focused upon does not coincide with the difference that Richardson rightly diagnosed between, on the one hand, Quine’s understanding of what is pragmatic and Carnap’s and Morris’s understanding on the other (ibid., 17). It also does not coincide with the difference Richardson rightly sees Carnap drawing between the theoretical and the practical (2007, 299): both the narrow and the wide sense of pragmatics are theoretical.
See Carnap (1938, 42). Once he also provided the following illustration of pragmatics: “the study of the methods of testing hypotheses or theories by first deriving predictions from observation sentences with their help, and then comparing these predictions with new observation sentences which report the results of experiments.” (Carnap 1939b, 222).
The corrections and additions made for the 1950 reprint of “Testability and Meaning” published under the aegis of the Graduate Philosophy Club of Yale University (see the entry in the Arthur Benson’s bibliography of Carnap in Schilpp 1963, 1039) were taken account of (where applicable) in the partial reprint of the paper in Feigl and Brodbeck (1953). (None of the changes made were substantive). Carnap had engaged in similar updating of his terminology when already in February 1938 he mentioned to Quine that some of the examples in Logical Syntax, §75, most of which he now regarded as belonging to semantics—not syntax—actually belong to “pragmatics” (in Creath 1990, 244).
See Carnap (1963, 1003) and compare fn. 16 above.
Kasher correctly pointed out that Carnap’s theoretical pragmatics “does not supply us with a general framework for presenting constitutive rules of use, but rather with a segment of a metalanguage” (1975, 272). Carnap’s theoretical pragmatics did not completely answer to Morris’s demand for pure pragmatics.
This contradicts the letter of a claim by André Carus who attributes to the mature Carnap the “dialectical conception” of an “applied discipline of ‘conceptual engineering’” serving as “the successor to philosophy” (2007, 20). For Carus, Carnap’s logic of science was paired with what he calls “pragmatics”: “Carnap never got very far in characterizing the kind of external discourse in which ‘theoretical investigations and practical deliberations and decisions with respect to an acceptance or a change of frameworks’ would be carried on. He gave it a name, ‘pragmatics’, but remained vague about details.” (Ibid., 266) Note that Morris (1963, 88–90) claimed to recognize Carnap’s appeal to “pragmatics” in (i) his designation of the concepts “observable, realizable, confirmable, and testable” as “descriptive concepts”—not logical ones—in “Testability and Meaning”; in (ii) the not further specified decisions that go into setting up the meaning postulates for linguistic frameworks; and in (iii) the settlement of framework questions by expedience, simplicity and fruitfulness. (See also his (1964, 46).) This supports Carus’s claim, but like him Morris fails to engage with Carnap’s own terminology on this point. A discussion of Carus’s Carnap interpretation from the perspective taken here is offered by Uebel (forthcoming).
To be precise, when he wrote “Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology”; as we saw, he still adhered to it when he added correction to a reprinting of “Testability and Meaning”.
Note the convergence with Richardson’s claim that for Carnap the distinction between the theoretical and the practical, of “the realm of representation and belief” and “the realm of decision and the will” is “fundamental” (2007, 299 and 297).
In his correspondence with Morris Neurath objected more generally to the threefold division of metatheoretical inquiries as prematurely systematic and harboring the danger that phenomena that do not easily fit into the schema get neglected (letter of 10 January 1938, quoted in Dahms 1997, 58). This complaint was remembered—and conceded to have been justified in retrospect—by Morris as Neurath’s fear that it “would engender pseudo-problems and distract attention from genuine problems” (1946/1971, 301).
Earlier Frank had put matters thus: “Carnap does not investigate elaborately the pragmatic component but does not, on the other hand, deny its existence and relevance” (1963, 164).
“The events around Galileo make it clear that the passionate conflicts connected with a physical theory have nothing to do with its suitability to represent natural processes but much more with their relationships to the political and social events of the time. Therefore there is no need to amplify the positivist conception of science by a metaphysical concept of truth but only by a more comprehensive study of the connections that exist between the activity of the invention of theories and the other normal human activities.” (1932b/1998, 14).
In Uebel (2011) it is argued that recognition of this subscription is crucial to understanding Carnap’s appreciation of Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
I wish to thank Thomas Mormann for many discussions and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticisms which much improved this paper.
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Uebel, T. Pragmatics in Carnap and Morris and the Bipartite Metatheory Conception. Erkenn 78, 523–546 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-011-9352-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-011-9352-5