Re: Rudolf Carnap and A. J. Ayer
Some contemporary, relevant expositions bearing upon logical atomism,
positivism, analysis and related themes:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analysis/index.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analysis/s1.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analysis/s2.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analysis/s3.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analysis/s4.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analysis/s5.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analysis/s6.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logical-construction/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logical-form/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/states-of-affairs/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-correspondence/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-coherence/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-deflationary/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-identity/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-revision/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existence/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-unity/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analytic-synthetic/
From the last:
"A particularly vivid way to feel the force of Quine's challenge [to
analyticity] is afforded by a recent case that came before the Ontario
Supreme Court concerning whether laws that confined marriage to heterosexual
couples violated the equal protection clause of the constitution (see
Halpern et al 2001). The question was regarded as turning in part on the
meaning of the word 'marriage', and each party to the dispute solicited
affidavits from philosophers, one of whom claimed that there was a sense of
the the word that was analytically tied to heterosexuality, the other that
there wasn't. Putting aside the complex socio-political issues, Quine's
challenge can be regarded as a reasonably sceptical request to know
precisely what the argument is about, and how on earth any serious theory of
the world might settle it. It certainly wouldn't seem to be any help to hear
philosophers simply claim that they know marriage is/isn't necessarily
heterosexual on the basis of 'an act of rational insight [into] the
propositional content itself,' or because they found the inference from
marriage to heterosexuality 'primitively compelling'! "
Jay
----- Original Message -----
From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@BESTWEB.NET>
To: "cg" <cg@CS.UAH.EDU>; <standard-upper-ontology@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG>
Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 2004 21:30
Subject: Rudolf Carnap and A. J. Ayer
> I received an offline note about Carnap and Ayer and the
> implications of their version of logical positivism to
> the various issues of logic and ontology that we have been
> discussing. Following is the question:
>
> > I found a copy of the 1946 edition of Alfred Jules Ayer's
> > "Language Truth and Logic" (Dover), which looks pretty
> > interesting. It states on the back cover:
>
> First published in 1936, this first full-length presentation
> in English of the Logical Positivism of Carnap, Neurath, and
> others has gone through many printings to become a classic
> of thought and communication. It not only surveys one of the
> most important areas of modern thought; it also shows you how
> to apply analytical methods to your own field of work and
> dispel the confusion that arises from imperfect understanding
> of the uses of language. [...]
>
> > Without wanting to take up too much of your time, what in a
> > nutshell was your criticism of Carnap, such that when I read
> > this I'll be looking out for the issues you've raised?
>
> Following is my response.
>
> John Sowa
> _________________________________________________________________
>
> Before I say anything critical about Carnap, let me say
> that I learned a great deal from his books, I admire him
> very much for his work on logic, ontology, and related
> issues, and I highly recommend his books as very good
> treatments of many topics related to logic & ontology.
>
> Re Ayer's Language Truth & Logic: That is an enthusiastic
> treatment of logical positivism written by young Englishman
> who visited the Vienna Circle and came back to preach the
> exciting new religion he had just adopted. That book became
> a best seller (as philosophy books go), and I, along with many
> of my fellow students, was very impressed when I read it at
> MIT in 1960. But as Ayer matured, he realized the limitations
> of that approach and admitted that it was a young man's book
> that had to be seriously qualified and revised.
>
> To use Peirce's terminology, the fatal flaw of logical
> positivism (and Russell's related verision of logical atomism)
> is that it ignores Thirdness and tries to explain everything
> (including human language and behavior) in terms of Firstness
> and Secondness.
>
> In non-Peircean vocabulary, the logical positivists either
> ignored purpose, intention, meaning, and value or tried
> to replace them with pale imitations derived from purely
> observational statements about what exists. As Peirce would
> say, those concepts can only be defined in terms of irreducible
> triadic relations that involve a mind-like interpreter. That
> mind need not be human. Animals (and perhaps robots) could
> play the third role in those relations.
>
> Wittgenstein wrote his first book after spending three years
> studying with Russell and working with him on the development
> of logical atomism. (W's Tractatus is actually a better
> presentation of logical atomism than anything that Russell
> wrote on the topic.) But after spending a couple of years
> teaching elementary school in an Austrian mountain village,
> Wittgenstein realized that people (especially children)
> don't think that way. There is more to life than what can
> be derived from purely observational statements. I recommend
> Ray Monk's biography as an excellent presentation of how
> Wittgenstein's ideas grew and developed over the years.
>
> In his later work, Wittgenstein explicitly repudiated his
> earlier work, which he still believed was important. He said
> that he would like his later book _Philosophical Investigations_
> bound with his earlier book so that readers could compare the
> two. Ayer didn't repudiate his earlier work as thoroughly as
> Wittgenstein, but he did change his views quite a bit (as did
> Carnap, who added many qualifications to his earllier work).
>
> I believe that all three of them (Wittgenstein, Carnap, and
> Ayer) would have benefitted from studying Peirce. In fact,
> there is some evidence that Wittgenstein was indirectly
> influenced by Peirce through his discussions with Frank
> Ramsey; see the paper by Jaime Nubiola on that point:
>
>
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/nubiola/scholar.htm
> Scholarship On The Relations Between Wittgenstein And Peirce