Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Hastings Rashdall, Rudolph Carnap and Carl Hoefer

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1 idea

9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 6. Nihilism about Objects
We only accept 'things' within a language with formation, testing and acceptance rules [Carnap]
     Full Idea: To accept the thing world means nothing more than to accept a certain form of language, in other words, to accept rules for forming statements and for testing, accepting, or rejecting them.
     From: Rudolph Carnap (Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology [1950], 2)
     A reaction: If you derive your metaphysics from your language, then objects are linguistic conventions. But why do we accept conventions about objects?