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In recent years, a revisionist process focused on logical positivism can be observed, particularly regarding Carnap's work. In this paper, I argue against the interpretation that Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions having been published in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, co-edited by Carnap, is evidence of the revisionist idea that Carnap "would have found Structure philosophically congenial". I claim that Kuhn's book, from Carnap's point of view, is not in philosophy of science but rather in history of science (in the context of a sharp discovery—justification distinction). It could also explain the fact that, despite his sympathetic letters to Kuhn as editor, Carnap never refers to Kuhn's book in his work in philosophy of science.

InWord and Object W. V. Quine argues that there is no uniquely correct way to assign referents to the terms of a language; any claim about the reference of a term is implicitly relative to a manual of translation. To Rudolf Carnap this must have seemed familiar. BeforeWord and Object was written Carnap had been saying the same thing inMeaning and Necessity: under the assumption of the method of the name-relation, any claim about the reference of a term is implicitly relative to what Carnap calls a conception of the name-relation. Yet Carnap is often taken to be a victim of Quine's relativistic notion of reference. Drawing on Carnap's discussion of the name-relation inMeaning and Necessity, it is argued that Carnap's and Quine's views on reference are not so far apart as is usually perceived.

The purpose of this paper is to undermine Paul Feyerabend's claim, which is crucial to the success of his analysis of Positivism, that the Pragmatic Theory of Observation was first developed by Rudolf Carnap in his early discussions of protocol sentences. Rather, it will be argued that Carnap's conception of protocols was founded on considerations drawn from his conception of language so that Carnap's reasons for endorsing certain aspects of the Pragmatic Theory are nothing like Feyerabend's. Moreover, Carnap never approved the final conclusion of the Pragmatic Theory, that observational reports are distinguished by their causes. These historical conclusions provide the basis for arguing that, despite Feyerabend's critique, Carnap's later views (in "The Methodological Character of Theoretical Concepts") clearly countenance theoretical influences on observational statements.

Value judgments are meaningless. This thesis was one of the notorious tenets of Carnap’s mature logical empiricism. Less well known is the fact that in the Aufbau values were considered as philosophically respectable entities that could be constituted from value experiences. About 1930, however, values and value judgments were banished to the realm of meaningless metaphysics, and Carnap came to endorse a strict emotivism. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the question why Carnap abandoned his originally positive attitude concerning values. It is argued that his non-cognitivist attitude was the symptom of a deep-rooted and never properly dissolved tension between conflicting inclinations towards Neokantianism and Lebensphilosophie. In America Carnap’s non-cognitivism became a major obstacle for a closer collaboration between logical empiricists and American pragmatists. Carnap’s persisting adherence to the dualism of practical life and theoretical science was the ultimate reason why he could not accept Morris’s and Kaplan’s pragmatist theses that cognitivism might well be compatible with a logical and empiricist scientific philosophy.

By the early 1970s, and continuing through 2001, David Lewis and Saul Kripke had taken over W.V.O. Quine’s leadership in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophical logic in the English-speaking world. Quine, in turn, had inherited his position in the early 1950s from Rudolf Carnap, who had been the leading logical positivist -- first in Europe, and, after 1935, in America. A renegade positivist himself, Quine eschewed apriority, necessity, and analyticity, while (for a time) adopting a holistic version of verificationism. Like Carnap, he placed philosophical logic and the philosophy of science at the center of philosophy.

Recent Carnap scholarship suggests that the received view of the Carnap-Quine analyticity debate is importantly mistaken. It has been suggested that Carnap’s analyticity distinction is immune from Quine’s criticisms. This is either because Quine did not understand Carnap’s use of analyticity, or because Quine did not appreciate that, rather than dispelling dogmas, he was merely offering an alternate framework for philosophy. It has also been suggested that ultimately nothing of substance turns on this dispute. I am sympathetic to these reassessments and their rejection of the received view, but argue that they fail to pay proper attention to Carnap’s metaphysical deflationism. For it is there that Quine’s arguments ultimately make contact with Carnap, undermining his metaphysical deflationism. Moreover, the viability of deflationism is directly related to the viability of Carnap’s view of philosophy as methodologically distinct from science. Hence, Quine’s criticisms make contact with the deepest aspects of Carnap’s views.

Rudolf Carnap defended two quite different critiques of traditional philosophy: in addition to the much discussed verifiability criterion, he also proposed a critique based upon "formalizability." Formalizability rests upon the principle of tolerance plus an acceptance of a linguistic methodology. Standard interpreters of Carnap (e.g., [7] and [8]) assume that the principle of tolerance (and, hence, formalizability) gains its argumentative support from verificationism. Carnap, in fact, kept the two critiques separate and independent. Indeed, verificationism is even, in spirit, inconsistent with tolerance. If the formalizability approach is emphasized, traditional metaphysics is reconstructed, not banished. Philosophical disputes remain rationally decidable, but metatheoretical in nature. Two results follow: Carnap's metaphilosophy cannot be rejected merely on the basis of rejections of verifiability. Second, Carnap's conclusion that all philosophy concerns language provides no reason for despair.

"Homage to Rudolph Carnap."--Hempel, C. G. Rudolf Carnap, logical empiricist.--Wedberg, A. How Carnap built the world in 1928.--Eberle, R. A construction of quality classes improved upon the Aufbau.--Carnap, R. Observation language and theoretical language.--Kaplan, D. Significance and analyticity: a comment of some recent proposals of Carnap.--Wójcicki, R. The factual content of empirical theories.--Williams, P. M. On the conservative extensions of semantical systems: a contribution to the problem of analyticity.--Winnie, J. A. Theoretical analyticity.--Wedberg, A. Decision and belief in science.--Bohnert, H. G. Carnap's logicism.--Hintikka, J. Carnap's heritage in logical semantics.--Partee, B. H. The semantics of belief-sentences.--Kasher, A. Pragmatic representations and language-games.--Carnap, R. Notes on probability and induction.--Jeffrey, R. C. Carnap's inductive logic.--Hilpinen, R. Carnap's new system of inductive logic.--Kuipers, T. A. F. A generalization of Carnap's inductive logic. Essler, W. K. Hintikka versus Carnap.--Hintikka, J. Carnap and Essler versus inductive generalization.--Shimony, A. Carnap on entropy, introduction to "Two essays on entropy" by Rudolf Carnap.

According to the “received view” of Rudolf Carnap’s philosophy, he attempted (and failed) to establish phenomenalistic foundations for science and wielded the verificationist criterion of cognitive significance against traditional metaphysics, religion and values. This characterization of Carnap’s philosophy has come to us primarily through A. J. Ayer’s introduction of positivism to the English-speaking world in his Language, Truth and Logic1 and the preliminary sketches of positivistic doctrine with which many of W.V. Quine’s essays begin (and go on, inevitably, to repudiate).2 It is now largely taken for granted that the various objections leveled at verificationism—that none of its many reformulations draws the intended line between meaningful science and meaningless metaphysics and that it is meaningless according to itself--are devastating.3 As a result, Carnap’s work has been allotted a largely historical role, if a significant one: contemporary views are often identified and distinguished by what in his and the positivist’s account of philosophy, science, language, and.