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In recent years, a revisionist process focused on logical positivism can be observed. One aspect of this revisionism -defended by authors like Michael Friedman, John Earman and George Reisch - is the thesis that Carnap’s later thought is compatible with that of Kuhn and even that Carnap anticipates some relevant points of Kuhn’s theory of science. In this paper I discuss one of Carnap’s texts most frequently cited by revisionists in favor of their thesis -"Truth and Confirmation" - trying to put it in the context of Carnap’s work. My intention is to analyze revisionist interpretation on the basis of other texts by Carnap and show that revisionists, while assembling their jigsaw puzzle concerning Carnap’s work, have inadvertently forgotten to consider some pieces of importance in the formation of a theoretically and historically cogent picture.

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.

Relatively recent work on Carnap, based on his published papers and books as well as on his unpublished correspondence and other material, has suggested that Carnap and Kuhn might not have been miles apart when it comes to the issue of theory-change (cf. Earman 1993; Irzik & Grunberg 1995). Two prevailing thoughts are that a) Kuhnian ‘paradigms’ might be taken to be very similar to Carnapian ‘linguistic frameworks’ (cf. Irzik & Grunberg 1995, 286) and b) Kuhnian ‘incommensurability’ between competing paradigms is consonant with Carnap’s thesis that when a linguistic framework is replaced by another, there is a change of language and the analytic-synthetic distinction (which is supposed to separate the meaning-fixing from the fact-stating component of a language) needs to be redrawn within the new framework (cf. Irzik & Grunberg 1995, 300-1). Irzik and Grunberg have gone on to note that Carnap endorsed “semantic incommensurability” (op.cit., 286). They base their claim on the theses that a) Carnap endorsed meaning holism; b) Carnap endorsed the thesis of ‘theory-ladenness of observation’. They are certainly right in saying that “without semantic holism semantic incommensurability would be groundless; without theory-ladenness it would be severely restricted to the theoretical terms” (op.cit., 293). But, I think, they are wrong in claiming that Carnap endorsed either meaning holism or the theory-ladenness of observation. The aim of this paper is to show how Carnap avoided the alleged problem of incommensurability. Better put, Carnap’s view about the language of science (the linguistic framework in which theories are cast) is such that this problem does not arise. Drawing on his published and unpublished material, I highlight some connections between his work on semantics (and in particular his method of intension and extension in his Meaning and Necessity) and his mature work on the structure of scientific theories, which was based on his re-invention of the Ramsey-sentences..

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.

The nature of the connection between theory and observation has been a major source of difficulty for philosophers of science. It is most vexing for those who would reduce the terms of a theory to those of an observation language, e.g. Carnap, Braithwaite, and Nagel. Carnap's work, particularly his treatment of physical theories as partially interpreted formalisms, forms the point of focus of this paper. Carnap attempted to make the connection between theory and observation through correspondence postulates. It is pointed out that such postulates depend in critical ways upon theoretical truths. This particular type of theoretical dependence produces serious trouble for Carnap's approach. For reasons given it may make it untenable. Furthermore, this problem when generalized creates difficulty for any similar reductionist program. Not only is this kind of theoretical dependence pointed out, but more important, the logical conditions which produce it are revealed. In this way light is shed upon the formal characteristics of the notion of theory dependence, especially upon the way in which observation terms depend upon theories for their meaning.

"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.

In this paper, a solution to the problem of theoretical terms is developed that is based on Carnap’s doctrine of indirect interpretation of theoretical terms. This doctrine will be given a semantic, model-theoretic explanation that is not given by Carnap himself as he remains content with a syntactic explanation. From that semantic explanation, rules for the truth-value assignment to postulates, i.e. sentences that determine the meaning of theoretical terms, are derived. The logical status of postulates will be clarified thereby in such a way that the problem of theoretical terms disappears.

Carl Hempel introduced what he called "Craig's theorem" into the philosophy of science in a famous discussion of the "problem of theoretical terms." Beginning with Hempel's use of 'Craig's theorem," I shall bring out some of the key differences between Hempel's treatment of the "problem of theoretical terms" and Carnap's in order to illuminate the peculiar function of Wissenschaftslogik in Carnap's mature philosophy. Carnap's treatment, in particular, is fundamentally antimetaphysical—he aims to use the tools of mathematical logic to dissolve rather solve traditional philosophical problems—and it is precisely this point that is missed by his logically-minded contemporaries such as Hempel and Quine.

This is a short introductory paper to the Ramsey-Carnap method, as introduced by Carnap in his "Philosophical foundations of Physics" (1966) to explain the meaning of theoretical terms.

Based on archival material from the Carnap and FeiglArchives, this paper re-examines Carnap's approach tothe issue of scientific realism in the 1950s and theearly 1960s. It focuses on Carnap's re-invention ofthe Ramsey-sentence approach to scientific theoriesand argues that Carnap wanted to entertain a genuineneutral stance in the realism-instrumentalism debate.Following Grover Maxwell, it claims that Carnap'sposition may be best understood as a version of`structural realism'. However, thus understood,Carnap's position faces the challenge that Newmanraised against Russell's structuralism: the claim thatthe knowledge of the unobservable is limited to itspurely structural characteristics is eitheruninformative or unsustainable.