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Full Idea
The acceptance of new linguistic forms about entities cannot be judged as being either true or false because it is not an assertion. It can only be judged as being more or less expedient, fruitful, conducive to the aim for which the language is intended.
Gist of Idea
New linguistic claims about entities are not true or false, but just expedient, fruitful or successful
Source
Rudolph Carnap (Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology [1950], 3)
Book Ref
Carnap,Rudolph: 'Meaning and Necessity (2nd ed)' [Chicago 1988], p.214
A Reaction
The obvious problem seems to be that a complete pack of lies might be successful for a very long time, if it plugged a critical hole in a major theory. Is success judged financially? How do we judge success without mentioning truth?
| 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] |
| 13939 | No possible evidence could decide the reality of numbers, so it is a pseudo-question [Carnap] |
| 13938 | A linguistic framework involves commitment to entities, so only commitment to the framework is in question [Carnap] |
| 13940 | All linguistic forms in science are merely judged by their efficiency as instruments [Carnap] |