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Single Idea 13934

[filed under theme 7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 3. Reality ]

Full Idea

To be real in the scientific sense means to be an element of the system; hence this concept cannot be meaningfully applied to the system itself.

Gist of Idea

To be 'real' is to be an element of a system, so we cannot ask reality questions about the system itself

Source

Rudolph Carnap (Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology [1950], 2)

Book Ref

Carnap,Rudolph: 'Meaning and Necessity (2nd ed)' [Chicago 1988], p.207

The 20 ideas from Rudolph Carnap

16252 Metaphysics uses empty words, or just produces pseudo-statements [Carnap]
8748 Logical positivists incorporated geometry into logicism, saying axioms are just definitions [Carnap, by Shapiro]
8960 Internal questions about abstractions are trivial, and external ones deeply problematic [Carnap, by Szabó]
13932 Empiricists tend to reject abstract entities, and to feel sympathy with nominalism [Carnap]
13933 Existence questions are 'internal' (within a framework) or 'external' (concerning the whole framework) [Carnap]
13934 To be 'real' is to be an element of a system, so we cannot ask reality questions about the system itself [Carnap]
13936 Questions about numbers are answered by analysis, and are analytic, and hence logically true [Carnap]
13935 We only accept 'things' within a language with formation, testing and acceptance rules [Carnap]
13937 New linguistic claims about entities are not true or false, but just expedient, fruitful or successful [Carnap]
13938 A linguistic framework involves commitment to entities, so only commitment to the framework is in question [Carnap]
13939 No possible evidence could decide the reality of numbers, so it is a pseudo-question [Carnap]
13940 All linguistic forms in science are merely judged by their efficiency as instruments [Carnap]
13048 Good explications are exact, fruitful, simple and similar to the explicandum [Carnap, by Salmon]
12131 All concepts can be derived from a few basics, making possible one science of everything [Carnap, by Brody]
18699 Carnap tried to define all scientific predicates in terms of primitive relations, using type theory [Carnap, by Button]
13251 Each person is free to build their own logic, just by specifying a syntax [Carnap]
13342 Carnap defined consequence by contradiction, but this is unintuitive and changes with substitution [Tarski on Carnap]
11968 The intension of a sentence is the set of all possible worlds in which it is true [Carnap, by Kaplan]
14305 In the truth-functional account a burnt-up match was soluble because it never entered water [Carnap]
18285 All translation loses some content (but language does not create reality) [Carnap]