Carnap on Truth

Abstract

Defining Technology and the Engineering Sciences

Mary Kate McGowanAssistant Professor of Philosophy at Wellesley College. She works in metaphysics, philosophy of language and philosophy of science. Forthcoming articles include ‘Gruesome Connections’ in Philosophical Quarterly and ‘Privileging Properties’ in Philosophical Studies.Anthony SkillenRecently retired as lecturer in the Philosophy Department of the University of Kent at Canterbury.Charles D. TarltonProfessor of Political Science at the University of Albany. In recent years he has written on Locke, Machiavelli, and Hobbes. He is currently engaged in an analysis of the structural ambiguities of Rousseau's Discours sur l'origine et les fondaments de l'inegalité parmi les hommes.Stephen J. BoulterSenior Lecturer in Philosophy at Oxford Brookes University. His research areas include the philosophy of language, the philosophy of science and medieval philosophy.Gabriele De AnnaA tutor in the Philosophy Department at St Andrews and research fellow at the University of Padua, Italy. He has published papers in American, British and Italian journals and is the author of the forthcoming book, Realismo Metafisico e Rappresentazione Mentale (Padua: Il Poligrafo).Roy SorensenRoy Sorensen seeks Fame and Fortune as a Dartmouth College philosophy professor. He is the author of Blindspots, Thought Experiments and Pseudo-Problems, and most recently Vagueness and Contradiction.David BeiseckerAssistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He has published articles in the philosophy of mind and language, with an eye towards writing a book on the metaphysics of mind and meaning.

Volume I: 1. Idealist Origins: 1920s and Before by Martin Davies and Stein Helgeby.- 2. John Anderson Arrives: 1930s by Mark Weblin.- 3. The Influence of Wittgenstein: 1940s by Graeme Marshall.- 4. Reconstruction and Enthusiasm by Brian F. Scarlett.- 5. Political Polarisation: 1960s by John Burnheim and Paul Crittenden.- 6. Turbulent Times: 1970s by Aubrey Townsend.- 7. Achievements of the 1980s by Lynda Burns.- 8. The Canberra Plan and the Diversification of Australasian Philosophy: 1990s by John Quilter.- 9. Philosophers in Schools: 2000s by Graham Oppy. Volume II: 10. From Conventionalism to Scientific Metaphysics by Brian Ellis.- 11. Metaphysics by John Bigelow.- 12. Epistemology by Stephen Hetherington.- 13. Philosophy of Language by Frederick Kroon with Appendix: The University of Melbourne, Philosophy of Language, and the Oxford Connection by Denis Robinson.- 14. Philosophy of Religion in Australasia: Philosophy of Religion in Australia by Peter Forrest and Philosophy of Religion in New Zealand by John Bishop & Ken Perszyk.- 15. Aesthetics and Philosophy of Music in Australasia: Aesthetics in Australasia: 1945-2005 by Ismay Barwell and Philosophy of Music in Australasia by Justine Kingsbury.- 16. Moral Philosophy in Australasia by Justin Oakley.- 17. Environmental Philosophy by Freya Matthews.- 18. Feminist Philosophy by Catriona Mackenzie.- 19. Black Swan: A History of Continental Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand by Robert Sinnerbrink & Matheson Russell.- 20. Logic by Ross Brady & Chris Mortensen.- 21. History and Philosophy of Science by Brian Ellis, Rod Home, David Oldroyd, Robert Nola, Howard Sankey, Keith Hutchison, Neil Thomason, John Wilkins, John Forge, Philip Catton & Ruth Barton.- 22. Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science since 1980 by Elizabeth Schier & John Sutton.

Model theory is used in every theoretical branch of analytic philosophy: in philosophy of mathematics, in philosophy of science, in philosophy of language, in philosophical logic, and in metaphysics. But these wide-ranging appeals to model theory have created a highly fragmented literature. On the one hand, many philosophically significant results are found only in mathematics textbooks: these are aimed squarely at mathematicians; they typically presuppose that the reader has a serious background in mathematics; and little clue is given as to their philosophical significance. On the other hand, the philosophical applications of these results are scattered across disconnected pockets of papers. The first aim of this book, then, is to consider the philosophical uses of model theory, focusing on the central topics of reference, realism, and doxology. Its second aim is to address important questions in the philosophy of model theory, such as: sameness of theories and structure, the boundaries of logic, and the classification of mathematical structures. Philosophy and Model Theory will be accessible to anyone who has completed an introductory logic course. It does not assume that readers have encountered model theory before, but starts right at the beginning, discussing philosophical issues that arise even with conceptually basic model theory. Moreover, the book is largely self-contained: model-theoretic notions are defined as and when they are needed for the philosophical discussion, and many of the most philosophically significant results are given accessible proofs.

Notes on Contributors

The abbreviation and generalization functions served by the concept of truth can be sustained, it is claimed, only if we allow Aristotle’s Principle to provide a circular definition of truth and only if we treat circular definitions in the manner of the Revision Theory. This chapter provides an introduction to this theory and sets out the argument for the claim. Several different readings are distinguished of Aristotle’s Principle and of the Content Redundancy and Definability Theses, which underpin deflationism about truth. It is argued that no viable reading of these theses sustains deflationary restrictions on functions served by the concept of truth.

Nietzsche's Pragmatism: A Study on Perspectival Thought

Logic, Logic, and Logic collects some thirty papers of the late George Boolos. The exoteric 'Gottlob Frege and the Foundations of Arithmetic' appears for the first time; the reprint of 'Must We Believe in Set Theory?' has beaten its first appearance. The plan for the book was conceived by Boolos shortly before his death, and his editor and sometime co-author, Richard Jeffrey, has stuck to it save for repositioning one paper. The book has three parts, each of them logic. But this is logic for philosophers, philosophical logic, if you like, and in three senses. First, it is logic with philosophical significance: almost every paper combines some logic with philosophical reflection upon it, including fundamental questions about the intension and extension of 'logic' and 'logical truth'. Second, the logic can be understood by philosophers, no surprise for those brought up on the pedagogically astute Computability and Logic (Boolos and Jeffrey [1980]). Third, a theme that runs throughout the collection, but only occasionally wells up, is the discovery of philosophy within logic itself. Of course, like physicists, logicians can get by without much philosophical examination of their practice. But Boolos's point is that logical investigations can, if appropriately directed, be a contribution to a kind of philosophical analysis. More on this, and the missing middle term, mathematics, in Section 4.

The Southern Journal of PhilosophyVolume 18, Issue 4 p. 447-462 HUME'S EMBODIED IMPRESSIONS* Earl R. MacCormac, Earl R. MacCormac Davidson College Earl R. MacCormac, a professor of philosophy at Davidson College, North Carolina, received a Ph. D. from Yale. In 1971 he received a Thomas Jefferson award (McConnell Foundation) for distinguished teaching. He has published Metaphor and Myth in Science and Religion, Duke University Press, 1976 and numerous articles on the philosophy of religion, language and science in such journals as The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Foundations of Language, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, and Religious Studies.Search for more papers by this author Earl R. MacCormac, Earl R. MacCormac Davidson College Earl R. MacCormac, a professor of philosophy at Davidson College, North Carolina, received a Ph. D. from Yale. In 1971 he received a Thomas Jefferson award (McConnell Foundation) for distinguished teaching. He has published Metaphor and Myth in Science and Religion, Duke University Press, 1976 and numerous articles on the philosophy of religion, language and science in such journals as The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Foundations of Language, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, and Religious Studies.Search for more papers by this author First published: Winter 1980 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-6962.1980.tb01398.xCitations: 3 * I am indebted to Dr. Donald T. Campbell, Albert Schweitzer Professor at Syracuse University, and to anonymous referees of this journal for their extremely helpful criticisms of an earlier version of this paper. AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume18, Issue4Winter 1980Pages 447-462 RelatedInformation

Nanoscience and nanotechnology are two interrelated fields of study centred on designing, synthesising, analysing, and investigating nanoscale materials, their properties, and their behaviours. Nanoscale materials are materials with at least one spatial dimension confined to the nanoscale, which is roughly one to 100 nanometres. A nanometre, abbreviated nm, is one billionth of a metre, and is approximately 1/200th the width of a human hair. Nanoscale materials exhibit properties and behaviours that are distinct from macroscopic, i.e. bulk, materials made of the same type of matter, and they also exhibit properties and behaviours that are distinct from molecular materials of similar sizes. For instance, nanoscale carbon materials are touted for their functionality as semiconductors, while bulk carbon is not a conductor at all and is rather an insulator. Likewise, large carbon-based molecular materials, such as proteins, exhibit structure, properties, and functions distinct from those of carbon nanomaterials. The unusual and scale-dependent properties and behaviours of matter at the nanoscale are the main source of scientific interest in nanoscale materials. These changes also raise a variety of puzzles within the philosophy of science and technology. While many of these puzzles are interrelated, they can be divided into six main categories: (1) puzzles related to the applied or synthetic character of nanomaterials, nanoscience, and nanotechnology (2) puzzles about how to classify and model nanoscale materials in relation to bulk materials, (3) puzzles related to reduction and emergence in physics and the quantum–classical interface, (4) puzzles arising from the interdisciplinary nature of nanoscience and nanotechnology research, (5) puzzles arising from technological peculiarities in the detection instruments, simulations, and experimental techniques that are used to study nanomaterials, and (6) ethical, legal, and social puzzles about the societal impact of nanoscale materials. These puzzles are united by a common interest in reckoning with the very basic challenge of trying to make sense of what nanoscale materials are and how they fit into the existing fabric of scientific thought about the nature and behaviour of matter. The very act of shrinking a material down to the nanoscale can profoundly change its physical and chemical properties. This challenges a widely held scientific and philosophical assumption that the composition of a material dictates its properties. As such, nanoscale materials can inspire thought experiments and examples relevant to a wide range of areas of philosophical thought even outside the philosophy of science and technology, including metaphysics and the philosophy of language.

Introduction: Information is What Information Does

Deceptionchallenges readers to think about their own lies – from their first lies in childhood to the clever, provocative ones they told just recently.Scouring a number of texts in philosophy, poetics, literature and theory, both western and eastern, the book urges that, at a time when phrases like ‘fake news’ ‘gaslighting’ and ‘false narratives’ have become an intrinsic part of global vocabulary, an interdisciplinary discussion on the intertwined future of the twins ‘lying’ and ‘truth-telling’ is an urgent imperative. Rukmini Bhaya Nair explores the distinction between lies, metaphor and narrative performativity, presenting them as part of an interactive continuum informing how cultures engage with the concept of truth. With an engaging intellectual energy, Nair’s discussion traverses an impressive diversity of writers and thinkers including Paul Grice, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Paul De Man, Noam Chomsky, the Natyashastra of Bharata, Sylvia Plath and Salman Rushdie. She argues that literary texts permit a re-evaluation of truth-telling conventions and offer a space to theorize and understand crises and problems in the world. Augmenting observations on philosophy, fiction, poetry and literary theory with scholarship in cognitive linguistics, the book shows how metaphors, fictions, and lies can function as potent cognitive stimulants. Deceptionlays the groundwork for a truly inter-disciplinary account of lying as a deep-rooted form of linguistic behavior, which will appeal to anyone interested in research on developmental psychology, philosophy of language, literary and cultural studies, and linguistics.

The distinction has occasioned a long controversy between Carnap and W.V. Quine. The latter distinguishes two sorts of analytic statements: the logical truths, characterized by their remaining true under all reinterpretations of the descriptive terms; and the statements, which reduce to logical truths with the help of definitions or by substitution of synonyms for synonyms. In “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, he directs his criticism mainly against the latter arguing that the explications so far provided move in a circle, since, in the end, the concept of synonymy is explained in terms of analyticity. He reaches the conclusion that the only form of synonymy not exhibiting this deficiency is that introduced by explicit conventions. But according to him, this procedure is of no avail, because the philosophically interesting content of the general term “analytic in L” (with variable L) cannot be grasped with its help. Carnap’s suggestion of defining a new basic concept “analytic in L0” does not solve the problem since we could just as well designate this with a neutral word, say “K”, thus avoiding the illusion of an explanation. The attempt to define synonymy with the help of semantic rules fails in a similar way: it accomplishes nothing more than to place certain statements under the rubric “Semantic rules” — a notion which is no clearer than the explicandum. Carnap replies that his definition of “analytically true” is given with regard to artificial or formalized languages for which we can determine syntactic and semantic rules in such a way that the concept of truth, in Tarski’s sense, can be applied to them. Analytic statements other than logical truths will thus be distinguished by means of so-called meaning postulates which serve to make the truth-value of such statements independent of empirical matters. I share Carnap’s astonishment that Quine finds the term “semantic rule” unintelligible while formulating no complaint against similar notions such as that of a syntactically well-formed formula, or that of an axiom etc. It appears that he cannot be satisfied with rules, because he expects a theory which would give us an empirical, i.e., a behavioristic, criterion of analyticity for natural languages. His chief dissatisfaction seems to come from the fact that no clear explicandum has been put forward — in contrast, e.g., with the notion of truth, where we have a sufficiently clear pre-theoretical concept. Thus, according to him, there is nothing that could be clarified by an explication.

The conceptual dichotomy of Erklaren and Verstehen (explaining vs. understanding) has a revealing dual status. On the one hand, it has something of an antiquated air to it, as we loosely associate its origins with the work of Wilhelm Dilthey and other nineteenth-century German philosophers who are not widely read any more, at least not within contemporary Anglo-American history and philosophy of the human sciences. At the same time, however, remnants of the dichotomy still come up in various guises and in various areas of contemporary philosophy and philosophy of science. One example is the long-standing debate over the logical status of action explanations (“reasons vs. causes”) in philosophy of mind (Davidson 1980), and associated issues of “teleological explanations” and the explanatory status of laws of nature in the philosophy of the human sciences (Dray 1957; Hempel 1965; von Wright 1971). Another is the question of whether the subject matter of the social sciences requires a special type of interpretative, hermeneutic, or perhaps even empathetic, “access” (Collingwood 1946; Winch 1964; Taylor [1971] 1985). More recently, there has been renewed interest in the question of how to explicate our capacity to interpret another person’s actions (see the recent suggestion that the “theory-theory” vs. “simulation theory” distinction is similar to some aspects of the Erklaren/Verstehen distinction) (Kogler and Stueber 2000). And within mainstream analytical philosophy of the social sciences, one of the central topics has long been the question of whether social facts/events can be reduced to the explanations of the actions of individuals (e.g., Kincaid 1997), raising questions about the units at which explanatory and/or interpretive efforts ought to be directed. (“individualism” vs. “holism”). This question can be traced back to early twentieth-century debates in economics and other emerging social sciences (Udehn 2001).