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13737
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The empiricist says that metaphysics is meaningless, rather than false [Schlick]
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Full Idea:
The empiricist does not say to the metaphysician 'what you say is false', but 'what you say asserts nothing at all!' He does not contradict him, but says 'I don't understand you'.
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From:
Moritz Schlick (Positivism and Realism [1934], p.107), quoted by Jonathan Schaffer - On What Grounds What 1.1
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A reaction:
I take metaphysics to be meaningful, but at such a high level of abstraction that it is easy to drift into vague nonsense, and incredibly hard to assess what is meant, and whether it is correct. The truths of metaphysics are not recursive.
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13342
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Carnap defined consequence by contradiction, but this is unintuitive and changes with substitution [Tarski on Carnap]
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Full Idea:
Carnap proposed to define consequence as 'sentence X follows from the sentences K iff the sentences K and the negation of X are contradictory', but 1) this is intuitively impossible, and 2) consequence would be changed by substituting objects.
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From:
comment on Rudolph Carnap (The Logical Syntax of Language [1934], p.88-) by Alfred Tarski - The Concept of Logical Consequence p.414
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A reaction:
This seems to be the first step in the ongoing explicit discussion of the nature of logical consequence, which is now seen by many as the central concept of logic. Tarski brings his new tool of 'satisfaction' to bear.
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13251
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Each person is free to build their own logic, just by specifying a syntax [Carnap]
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Full Idea:
In logic, there are no morals. Everyone is at liberty to build his own logic, i.e. his own form of language. All that is required is that he must state his methods clearly, and give syntactical rules instead of philosophical arguments.
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From:
Rudolph Carnap (The Logical Syntax of Language [1934], §17), quoted by JC Beall / G Restall - Logical Pluralism 7.3
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A reaction:
This is understandable, but strikes me as close to daft relativism. If I specify a silly logic, I presume its silliness will be obvious. By what criteria? I say the world dictates the true logic, but this is a minority view.
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