Carnap, Tarski, and Quine at Harvard

Carnap, Tarski, and Quine at Harvard
Author: Greg Frost-Arnold
Publisher: Open Court
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2013-08-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0812698371

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During the academic year 1940-1941, several giants of analytic philosophy congregated at Harvard: Bertrand Russell, Alfred Tarski, Rudlof Carnap, W. V. Quine, Carl Hempel, and Nelson Goodman were all in residence. This group held regular private meetings, with Carnap, Tarski, and Quine being the most frequent attendees. Carnap, Tarski, and Quine at Harvard allows the reader to act as a fly on the wall for their conversations. Carnap took detailed notes during his year at Harvard. This book includes both a German transcription of these shorthand notes and an English translation in the appendix section. Carnap’s notes cover a wide range of topics, but surprisingly, the most prominent question is: if the number of physical items in the universe is finite (or possibly finite), what form should scientific discourse, and logic and mathematics in particular, take? This question is closely connected to an abiding philosophical problem, one that is of central philosophical importance to the logical empiricists: what is the relationship between the logico-mathematical realm and the material realm studied by natural science? Carnap, Tarski, and Quine’s attempts to answer this question involve a number of issues that remain central to philosophy of logic, mathematics, and science today. This book focuses on three such issues: nominalism, the unity of science, and analyticity. In short, the book reconstructs the lines of argument represented in these Harvard discussions, discusses their historical significance (especially Quine’s break from Carnap), and relates them when possible to contemporary treatments of these issues. Nominalism. The founding document of twentieth-century Anglophone nominalism is Goodman and Quine’s 1947 “Steps Toward a Constructive Nominalism.” In it, the authors acknowledge that their project’s initial impetus was the conversations of 1940-1941 with Carnap and Tarski. Frost-Arnold's exposition focuses upon the rationales given for and against the nominalist program at its inception. Tarski and Quine’s primary motivation for nominalism is that mathematical sentences will be ‘unintelligible’ or meaningless, and thus perniciously metaphysical, if (contra nominalism) their component terms are taken to refer to abstract objects. Their solution is to re-interpret mathematical language so that its terms only refer to concrete entities—and if the number of concreta is finite, then portions of classical mathematics will be considered meaningless. Frost-Arnold then identifies and reconstructs Carnap’s two most forceful responses to Tarski and Quine’s view: (1) all of classical mathematics is meaningful, even if the number of concreta is finite, and (2) nominalist strictures lead to absurd consequences in mathematics and logic. The second is familiar from modern debates over nominalism, and its force is proportional to the strength of one’s commitment to preserving all of classical mathematics. The first, however, has no direct correlate in the modern debate, and turns upon the question of whether Carnap’s technique for partially interpreting a language can confer meaningfulness on the whole language. Finally, the author compares the arguments for and against nominalism found in the discussion notes to the leading arguments in the current nominalist debate: the indispensability argument and the argument from causal theories of reference and knowledge. Analyticity. Carnap, Tarski, and Quine’s conversations on finitism have a direct connection to the tenability of the analytic-synthetic distinction: under a finitist-nominalist regime, portions of arithmetic—a supposedly analytic enterprise—become empirical. Other portions of the 1940-41 notes address analyticity directly. Interestingly, Tarski’s criticisms are more sustained and pointed than Quine’s. For example, Tarski suggests that Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem furnishes evidence against Carnap’s conception of analyticity. After reconstructing this argument, Frost-Arnold concludes that it does not tell decisively against Carnap—provided that language is not treated fundamentally proof-theoretically. Quine’s points of disagreement with Carnap in the discussion notes are primarily denials of Carnap’s premises without argument. They do, however, allow us new and more precise characterizations of Carnap and Quine’s differences. Finally, the author forwards two historical conjectures concerning the radicalization of Quine’s critique of analyticity in the period between “Truth by Convention” and “Two Dogmas.” First, the finitist conversations could have shown Quine how the apparently analytic sentences of arithmetic could be plausibly construed as synthetic. Second, Carnap’s shift during his semantic period toward intensional analyses of linguistic concepts, including synonymy, perhaps made Quine, an avowed extensionalist, more skeptical of meaning and analyticity. Unity of Science. The unity of science movement originated in Vienna in the 1920s, and figured prominently in the transplantation of logical empiricism into North America in the 1940s. Carnap, Tarski, and Quine’s search for a total language of science that incorporates mathematical language into that of the natural and social sciences is a clear attempt to unify the language of science. But what motivates the drive for such a unified science? Frost-Arnold locates the answer in the logical empiricists’ antipathy towards speculative metaphysics, in contrast with meaningful scientific claims. I present evidence that, for logical empiricists over several decades, an apparently meaningful assertion or term is metaphysical if and only if that assertion or term cannot be incorporated into a language of unified science. Thus, constructing a single language of science that encompasses the mathematical and natural domains would ensure that mathematical entities are not on par with entelechies and Platonic Forms. The author explores various versions of this criterion for overcoming metaphysics, focusing on Carnap and Neurath. Finally, I consider an obstacle facing their strategy for overcoming metaphysics: there is no effective procedure to show that a given claim or term cannot be incorporated within a language.

Carnap, Tarski and Quine's Year Together

Carnap, Tarski and Quine's Year Together
Author: Gregory G. Frost-Arnold
Publisher:
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2006
Genre:
ISBN: 9780542857553

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During the academic year 1940-1941, several giants of analytic philosophy congregated at Harvard: Russell, Tarski, Carnap, Quine, Hempel, and Goodman were all in residence. This group held both regular public meetings as well as private conversations. Carnap took detailed diction notes that give us an extensive record of the discussions at Harvard that year. Surprisingly, the most prominent question in these discussions is: if the number of physical items in the universe is finite (or possibly finite), what form should the logic and mathematics in science take? This question is closely connected to an abiding philosophical problem, one that is of central philosophical importance to the logical empiricists: what is the relationship between the logico-mathematical realm and the natural, material realm? This problem continues to be central to analytic philosophy of logic, mathematics, and science. My dissertation focuses on three issues connected with this problem that dominate the Harvard discussions: nominalism, the unity of science, and analyticity. I both reconstruct the lines of argument represented in Harvard discussions and relate them to contemporary treatments of these issues.

Quine in Dialogue

Quine in Dialogue
Author: Willard Van Orman Quine
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2008-11-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780674030831

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Quine was one of the 20th century’s great philosophers. This volume begins with a number of interviews Quine gave about his perspectives on 20th-century logic, science and philosophy, the ideas of others, and philosophy generally. Also included are his most important articles, reviews, and comments on other philosophers, from Carnap to Strawson.

Dear Carnap, Dear Van

Dear Carnap, Dear Van
Author: W. V. Quine
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2023-11-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780520909823

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Rudolf Carnap and W. V. Quine, two of the twentieth century's most important philosophers, corresponded at length—and over a long period of time—on matters personal, professional, and philosophical. Their friendship encompassed issues and disagreements that go to the heart of contemporary philosophic discussions. Carnap (1891-1970) was a founder and leader of the logical positivist school. The younger Quine (1908-) began as his staunch admirer but diverged from him increasingly over questions in the analysis of meaning and the justification of belief. That they remained close, relishing their differences through years of correspondence, shows their stature both as thinkers and as friends. The letters are presented here, in full, for the first time. The substantial introduction by Richard Creath offers a lively overview of Carnap's and Quine's careers and backgrounds, allowing the nonspecialist to see their writings in historical and intellectual perspective. Creath also provides a judicious analysis of the philosophical divide between them, showing how deep the issues cut into the discipline, and how to a large extent they remain unresolved.

Carnap, Quine, and Putnam on Methods of Inquiry

Carnap, Quine, and Putnam on Methods of Inquiry
Author: Gary Ebbs
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2017-06-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1107178150

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This volume critically examines the work of three eminent twentieth-century philosophers, Carnap, Quine, and Putnam, engaging with and developing their answers to key methodological questions.

From Stimulus to Science

From Stimulus to Science
Author: Willard Van Orman Quine
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 125
Release: 2009-07-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674042476

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W. V. Quine is one of the most eminent philosophers alive today. Now in his mid-eighties he has produced a sharp, sprightly book that encapsulates the whole of his philosophical enterprise, including his thinking on all the key components of his epistemological stance--especially the value of logic and mathematics. New readers of Quine may have to go slowly, fathoming for themselves the richness that past readers already know lies between these elegant lines. For the faithful there is much to ponder. In this short book, based on lectures delivered in Spain in 1990, Quine begins by locating his work historically. He provides a lightning tour of the history of philosophy (particularly the history of epistemology), beginning with Plato and culminating in an appreciative sketch of Carnap's philosophical ambitions and achievements. This leads, in the second chapter, to an introduction to Quine's attempt to naturalize epistemology, which emphasizes his continuities with Carnap rather than the differences between them. The next chapters develop the naturalistic story of the development of science to take account of how our conceptual apparatus is enhanced so that we can view the world as containing re-identifiable objects. Having explained the role of observation sentences in providing a checkpoint for assessing scientific theories, and having despaired of constructing an empirical criterion to determine which sentences are meaningful, Quine in the remaining chapters takes up a variety of important issues about knowledge. He concludes with an extended treatment of his views about reference and meaning and his attitudes toward psychological and modal notions. The presentation is distinctive, and the many small refinements of detail and formulation will fascinate all who know Quine's philosophy.

The Philosophical Project of Carnap and Quine

The Philosophical Project of Carnap and Quine
Author: Sean Morris
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2023-02-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1108660142

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Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) and W. V. O Quine (1908–2000) have long been seen as key figures of analytic philosophy who are opposed to each other, due in no small part to their famed debate over the analytic/synthetic distinction. This volume of new essays assembles for the first time a number of scholars of the history of analytic philosophy who see Carnap and Quine as figures largely sympathetic to each other in their philosophical views. The essays acknowledge the differences which exist, but through their emphasis on Carnap and Quine's shared assumption about how philosophy should be done-that philosophy should be complementary to and continuous with the natural and mathematical sciences-our understanding of how they diverge is also deepened. This volume reshapes our understanding not only of Carnap and Quine, but of the history of analytic philosophy generally.

The Ways of Paradox, and Other Essays

The Ways of Paradox, and Other Essays
Author: Willard Van Orman Quine
Publisher:
Total Pages: 358
Release: 1976
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

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A respected Harvard logician and philosopher gathers together twenty-nine writings dealing with the foundations of mathematics, Rudolf Carnap, lin-guistics, truth, analyticity, modal logic, propositional attitudes, and ontology.

The Development of Quine's Philosophy

The Development of Quine's Philosophy
Author: Murray Murphey
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2011-12-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9400724241

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This book covers W. V. Quine's philosophic career from his early radical empiricism and behaviorism through his development of a series of skeptical doctrines regarding meaning, reference, and science. It shows what problems he tried to solve and what his solutions were. Result has been a series of highly controversial claims that have won him international fame. His work is still a center of controversy and has lead to an enormous literature of commentary.

The Philosophical Project of Carnap and Quine

The Philosophical Project of Carnap and Quine
Author: Sean Morris
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2023-03-31
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1108494242

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This book reassesses Carnap and Quine by presenting them as sharing philosophical motivations despite their notable differences.