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Single Idea 13935
[filed under theme 9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 6. Nihilism about Objects
]
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.
Gist of Idea
We only accept 'things' within a language with formation, testing and acceptance rules
Source
Rudolph Carnap (Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology [1950], 2)
Book Ref
Carnap,Rudolph: 'Meaning and Necessity (2nd ed)' [Chicago 1988], p.208
A Reaction
If you derive your metaphysics from your language, then objects are linguistic conventions. But why do we accept conventions about objects?
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]
|