B.2 Pseudo-Questions and the Reconstruction of Philosophy
B.2.4 Problems: Application to Informal Discourse
How successful is Carnap’s reconstruction of philosophical inquiry and disputes as a syntactical enterprise? Wagner (2009b, p. 195) observes that historically Carnap’s scheme had “a limited impact, to say the least” on discussions in the philosophy of mathematics. And this is certainly true, even with regard to ontological questions. On the other hand, in his contribution to the Carnap-Schilpp volume Bar-Hillel takes at least the general idea of Carnap’s method to be of the utmost importance:
If I had to point out what I regard as the greatest single achievement of Logical Empiricism (and of Analytical Philosophy in general), I would not hesitate to declare that this greatest achievement consists in estab- lishing and corroborating the thesis that many, if not most, philosophical controversies are not, as they are commonly regarded by participants and onlookers alike, theoretical disagreements on questions of fact (of a scien- tific, or ethical, or aesthetical, or . . . nature ) but rather disagreements [. . . ] on the kind of linguistic framework to be preferably used in a certain context and for a certain purpose. (Bar-Hillel, 1963, p. 533)
What Bar-Hillel is endorsing here is really just a statement of Carnap’s logical pluralism—that philosophical assertions should be formalized and relativized to some language or set of languages—rather than the particular formal procedures just de- scribed for identifying and translating material mode sentences into the formal mode.
Problem: Discourse Involving Reference
There are at least two significant problems with these formal procedures. The first regards the unnaturalness of its translations in certain cases. Although the transla- tions we have encountered as examples so far may be quite plausible, other examples stretch credibility. This is especially the case with pseudo-object sentences involving
10As Carnap says: “All pseudo-questions of this kind disappear if the formal instead of the
material mode of speech is used, that is, if in the formulation of questions, instead of universal words (such as ‘number’, ‘space’, ‘universal’), we employ the corresponding syntactical words (‘numerical expression’, ‘space-co-ordinate’, ‘predicate’, etc.)” (Logical Syntax, p. 311)
reference or other semantic concepts.11 Part (b) of Carnap’s thesis reviewed above
is that the logic of science is the syntax of the language of science. So Carnap can treat sentences including the notion of reference in one of three ways: (i) As non- sense like certain ill-formed metaphysical statements, which seems incorrect; (ii) As object-sentences, which strongly implies many of the ontological theses (or at least questions about them) that Carnap develops his program specifically to avoid; or (iii) As translatable into the formal mode, which thus seems the only reasonable option. Carnap’s favourite example is the sentence ‘Yesterday’s lecture was about Baby- lon’ (Logical Syntax, p. 286). This is a pseudo-object sentence because, according to Carnap, it appears to assert something about Babylon the city. Carnap argues that this is not so, since our knowledge of the immediate properties of the actual town of Babylon cannot be affected by the truth-value of this sentence. The proposed formal mode translation of the sentence is:
In yesterday’s lecture either the word ‘Babylon’ or an expression synony- mous with the word ‘Babylon’ occurred. (Ibid.)
This translation is striking in its inadequacy. It is simply not the case that the syntactical sentence captures anything like the intent of the original material mode sentence. For example, the word ‘Babylon’ may not have been uttered once in yesterday’s lecture, although the lecture may yet have been about the city. Similarly, one may utter the word ‘Babylon’ simply to state that it is a topic not to be covered in the lecture.
As noted above, the problem is just that some formal mode translation is required so that semantical sentences are not considered nonsense. Translations such as these do seem the best possible given the constraints of Carnap’s concepts in general syntax. But in the end they are inadequate, and so this speaks to a problem with naturalness of Carnap’s reconstruction. We will see below that Carnap’s eventual “semantic turn” is welcome in this regard.
11It is important to note that the concept of truth is a special exception. In Logical Syntax
Carnap rejects the notion of reference in philosophical discourse because he thinks it leads to pseudo-questions and can be eliminated via translation into the formal mode. His rejection of truth is quite different. As mentioned in the Logico-Mathematical Interlude, Carnap develops all of the machinery necessary to construct an equivalent to Tarski’s truth-definition, but he does not do so. This seems to be because he requires his meta-languages inLogical Syntax to be entirely analytic. Thus Carnap had no way to develop a criterion of adequacy for a truth-definition that could include descriptive expressions, and seems to have not seen how his meta-languages might be extended to incorporate a full truth-definition. This causes him to reject the concept truth as non-logical, and so an illegitimate syntactical concept. It is not that questions of truth are apt to mislead, it is rather that Carnap thinks the concept ‘truth’ has no syntactical correlate.
Problem: Pseudo-Object Sentences in Informal Discourse
The second problem with Carnap’s procedure regards our ability to identify pseudo- object sentences. The machinery Carnap utilizes for this purpose—the notion of a quasi-syntactical sentence and the distinction between the material and formal modes—are concepts constructed in general syntax for a variety of purposes.12 When
they are applied in Part V of Logical Syntax to the identification and analysis of pseudo-object sentences however, we are then applying these concepts designed for a formal system to our regular, informal language—the language of discourse for most philosophy, even as practiced in the Logic of Science. Carnap is clear about this:
Since the original sentence, in most cases, cannot be understood uni- vocally, a particular translation into the formal mode of speech cannot univocally be given; it cannot even be stated with certainty that the sen- tence in question is a pseudo-object-sentence and, hence, a sentence of the material mode of speech. The translation given here is accordingly no more than a suggestion and is in no way binding. (Ibid., p. 302)
The problem is that our informal language does not have a well-defined set of for- mation rules. Thus there is no definite answer as to whether a sentence is quasi- syntactical, or as to whether a particular expression is a universal word.
This situation has the potential to limit the applicability of Carnap’s reconstruc- tion of philosophy. Again, Carnap is clear about this limitation:
Since the rules of syntax of the word-language are not exactly estab- lished, and since linguistic usage varies considerably on just this point of the generic classification of words, our examples of universal words must always be given with the reservation that they are valid only for one particular use of language. (Logical Syntax, p. 293)
However, Carnap maintains his stance that translatability into the formal mode is the criterion for meaningful philosophical discourse. While our translations will not be completely determined, it is the responsibility of the philosopher forwarding a philosophical thesis to make that thesis as clear as possible:
12Carnap puts these concepts to use first in the analysis of intensional sentences, arguing that they
can be treated extensionally (§68). This analysis is then extended to modal sentences (§69) in a way similar to Carnap’s later treatment of modal operators inMeaning and Necessity ([1950]1956) using C-Terms (‘S is logically impossible’ is taken as equivalent to ‘S is contradictory’, ‘S is physically necessary’ is equivalent to ‘S is P-Valid’, etc.).
It is the task of anyone who wishes to maintain the philosophical thesis in question to interpret it by translating it into an exact sentence. This latter may be sometimes be a genuine object-sentence (that is to say, not a quasi-syntactical sentence); and, in that case, no material mode of speech occurs. Otherwise it must be possible to give the interpretation by means of translation into a syntactical sentence. (Ibid., p. 302)
Carnap’s stance here can be interpreted as an appeal to the Principle of Tolerance, which suggests that we make our theses clear by presenting them in the form of syntactical rules. Interpreted in this way, Carnap’s definitions in Part V of Logical Syntax provide a schema for applying this methodology to philosophical debates, and showing us by example how we might transform philosophical theses into questions of logic or language choice.
Tolerance in Philosophy
How does this compare to the Deflationary reading? Goldfarb and Ricketts focus their attention on Carnap’s philosophy of mathematics, saying very little about Car- nap’s project as applied to traditional philosophical statements (insofar as those statements are not about mathematics). Extending their reading somewhat, it is natural to suppose that Carnap is indeed appealing to Tolerance by suggesting the use of the translation schema we have just presented. Carnap’s idea is to discard wearisome philosophical controversies by acquiescing to an attitude of Tolerance, and so suggesting we propose linguistic frameworks instead. However, as with Carnap’s philosophy of mathematics, this is not the most persuasive interpretation of what Carnap is suggesting, especially to one not already on board with the project.
In lock-step with our understanding of Carnap’s philosophy of mathematics from chapter 2, we can alternatively interpret Carnap’s work here as a reconstruction of the practice of philosophy, or at least that part of philosophy which can be done in a scientific mode. The goal is the methodologically motivated explication of philo- sophically legitimate concepts and practices, which we saw Carnap construe rather narrowly both in our first chapter and directly above. Object questions, including those epistemic and semantic questions which can be treated by psychology and lin- guistics, are best handled by empirical science according to Carnap. The examples and concepts developed in Part V of Logical Syntax then aim to make plausible the idea that we might formally treat the remainder. Metaphysical questions are ban- ished from Logical Syntax without much argument, as we saw. What is important
is that the analysis of these questions occurs before any appeal to the Principle of Tolerance. Regarding the problem of determining whether some use of a universal word really is quasi-syntactical, on this reading Carnap would acknowledge that it is inevitable that we will encounter ambiguity and vagueness in our language at some level of our inquiry. Rather than being a problem however, on our interpretation confrontation of our informal discourse becomes an element of Carnap’s program, since explications by definition work to rigorize some informal domain.
I thereby take Carnap’s discussion of philosophy in Part V to serve three related purposes: (i) The formal concepts he develops for the identification and analysis of pseudo-object sentences act as his explicata; (ii) His examples and discussions serve to demonstrate the adequacy of this characterization of philosophical inquiry— that his scientific philosophy is suitable and translation of philosophical assertions into the formal mode capture the essence of these debates; and (iii) To justify the application of Tolerance in philosophical debates by making plausible the idea that such debates can indeed be treated syntactically rather than as object-level inquiries. So as with his philosophy of mathematics, we again find that Carnap’s program need- not rest upon the Principle of Tolerance directly, but instead upon an appeal to the methodological structure of science—in this case philosophy. It is the plausibly formal nature of this domain which then licenses the use of Tolerance.