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Abstract
internal/external (i/e) distinction, that ontological claims are either meaningless or trivial
was Carnap’s means to achieving this more fundamental goal. Setting the record straight
on this point brings out three important and often overlooked features of Carnap’s views
on ontology. First, the target of Carnap’s critique in ESO is not Quine’s mature views on
ontology, as laid out in “On What There Is”. Rather, Carnap is responding to arguments
for nominalism that were given by Tarski, Goodman, and Quine in the 1940s. Second, a
more general rejection of conservatism in theory choice is essential to Carnap’s aims and
is implicit in his fundamental views on language. Third, even if it turns out to be tenable,
the i/e distinction is not adequate for Carnap’s aim in ESO. Drawing on his basic
1
1. Introduction
objects, e.g.—do not exist, is her thesis objective and non-trivial? Or has a linguistic
mistake somewhere along the way disguised a piece of nonsense or a triviality as a deep
centers on these questions. This debate is generally believed to originate, in large part, in
a debate between Rudolf Carnap and W.V.O. Quine. On this reading, contemporary
and interesting as any other kind of claim. On this received view, Quine won the debate
There are grains of truth in this view of the Carnap-Quine debate. Yet, the view
goal in ‘Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology’ (ESO)—the locus classicus of his critique
of ontology—is not to show that ontological claims are meaningless or trivial, but rather
to show that they are irrelevant to the choice of a language for science. The contention
that ontological claims are meaningless or trivial was Carnap’s means to achieving this
more fundamental goal. Setting the record straight on this point brings out three
1
For this view of the Carnap-Quine debate about metaontology, see, for example, David
Chalmers (2009, 77-78) and David Manley (2009, 3-5). For further citations and
discussion, see Matti Eklund (2013, 229-231).
2
important and often overlooked features of Carnap’s views on ontology. First, the target
of Carnap’s critique in ESO is not Quine’s mature views on ontology, as laid out in ‘On
What There Is’. Rather, Carnap is responding to arguments for nominalism that were
given by Alfred Tarski, Nelson Goodman, and Quine in the 1940s, but that Quine later
to Carnap’s aims and is implicit in his basic views. Third, even if it turns out to be
tenable, the i/e distinction is not adequate for Carnap’s aim in ESO. In what follows, I
will clarify ESO’s aim and explain the three consequences, just mentioned, of my
interpretation. I will also propose an argument that is more suited to Carnap’s aim, that is
more plausible from the contemporary perspective, and that Carnap might have given had
Language to Ontology
methodological presuppositions. They provide the rules for evaluating inferences for
validity and statements for truth or confirmation. The postulates of a framework also
determine the meanings of its component expressions. Unless a debate occurs within an
agreed upon framework of this kind, therefore, the disputants are likely to talk at cross-
purposes.
3
From the perspective of Carnapian philosophy the decision to settle on a
particular framework is therefore an important one. But what are the criteria for selecting
a framework in the first place? One of Carnap’s fundamental aims in ESO is to establish
that conformity to (putative) ontological facts is not among the criteria.2 According to the
view he rejects, if we want to alter our language in a way that would commit us to the
existence of new entities, in the way that adopting mathematical axioms might commit us
must be raised and answered before the introduction of the new language forms.
Carnap rejects this approach to ontological questions and instead holds that ‘the
introduction of the new ways of speaking [for example, the use of variables putatively
ranging over abstract objects] does not need any theoretical justification’ (1956a, 214).3
On this view, we are not required to establish the existence of a given kind of object prior
2
Another aim is to show that reference to abstract objects is compatible with empiricism.
I briefly return to this concern in §5.
3
Though such an introduction is, according to Carnap, subject to practical (instrumental)
justification.
4
Carnap (1963b, 873) illustrates the target of his critique of ontology through the
example of an argument of this kind against a language that posits classes of classes.
4
3. If a language posits things that do not exist, then, all things being equal, we
Therefore,
4. All things being equal, we should not adopt LF as our language for science.
In this argument, the speaker begins with her beliefs about what there is and takes non-
conformity to these beliefs to count against a candidate language, LF. Carnap’s aim in
like (1)-(4).
Carnap sometimes articulates the target of his rebuttal along the lines of (1)-(4).
There are variations on this argument that he would find equally objectionable. For
1ʹ′ . I (or we) have an intuition (or ontological insight) that there are no Fs.
Or
1ʹ′ ʹ′ . We are not justified by our current theory or language for science in
positing Fs.
(Another kind of variation on premises (1) and (2) claims that there are Fs but that a
language L~F doesn’t posit any.) Premise (3) could be easily adjusted to accord with these
Carnap’s reason for opposing ontological intrusion into language choice is his
worry that it impedes scientific progress. He is optimistic about the potential for the
that axiomatize scientific knowledge, to clarify and improve scientific concepts (Stein
1992, 279). And he sees ‘dogmatic prohibitions’ of language forms with deviant
5
ontologies as ‘positively harmful because [they] may obstruct scientific progress’
which slowed up the developments for shorter or longer periods of time. Let us
learn from the lessons of history. Let us grant to those who work in any special
field of investigation the freedom to use any form of expression which seems
useful to them; the work in the field will sooner or later lead to the elimination of
telling. The idea that language should be kept independent of ontology is an instance of
the general idea that it should be kept independent of traditional metaphysics. And this
In logic, there are no morals. Everyone is at liberty to build up his own logic, i.e.
his own form of language, as he wishes. All that is required of him is that, if he
wishes to discuss it, he must state his methods clearly, and give syntactical rules
6
3. The Internal/External Distinction and Cognitive Significance
While Carnap believed that ontological constraints would inhibit scientific progress, his
objection to them was not to simply say as much. Instead, he used his distinction between
cognitively meaningful and meaningless discourse, which predates in some form even his
evidence that its adoption would advance the ‘purposes for which the language is
language arguments do not give the required practical justifications, but instead rely on
But what are linguistic frameworks, and why are statements that are external to
them meaningless, and statements that are internal to them trivial? Susan Haack (1976)
and Matti Eklund (2009; 2013), among others, see this as a difficult interpretive question
with no answer that is at the same time suitable for Carnap’s aims and exegetically and
philosophically plausible.
7
that meet the empiricist criterion of cognitive significance; in Carnap’s (1936-7)
The internal questions, then, are existence questions whose answers are either empirically
significant or analytically true or false. Carnap is explicit that he intends the distinction in
this way, saying of the internal questions that their answers are ‘either empirical or
logical; accordingly a true answer is either factually true or analytic’ (1956a, 214). The
external questions, then, are the existence questions whose answers are not susceptible to
either logical or empirical methods. Further evidence for this interpretation comes from
Carnap’s claims, in relation to each of the particular frameworks he considers, that the
(1956a, 206-213).6
trivial if interpreted as internal? Eklund (2009, 137) sees this claim as a loaded
5
Barry Stroud (1984) also understands Carnapian linguistic frameworks in terms of an
empiricist criterion of cognitive significance, though he takes such criteria to treat
empirical confirmability as necessary for cognitive significance; see his (1984, 171).
6
Carnap sometimes takes various frameworks to contain their own distinctive kind of
typed variable. Seizing on these passages, Quine argues that the i/e distinction ‘is of little
concern to us apart from the adoption of something like the theory of types’ (1976b, 132).
However, Carnap later draws the distinction with respect to a language for classes that
contains ‘one kind of variable, which are not type-restricted’ (1963b, 872). For further
objections to Quine’s interpretation of the i/e distinction, see Bird (2003).
It is worth noting another misinterpretation running through Quine’s (1976b)
criticisms of ESO. Quine read Carnap as maintaining that we can use language that is
ontologically committed, in Quine’s sense, to abstract objects (among other things)
without ‘really’ positing such objects. I am convinced by Alspector-Kelly’s (2001)
objections to this interpretation.
8
philosophical thesis to the effect that ontological claims are ‘shallow’; he tentatively
concepts but are nonetheless able to describe the facts of the world ‘equally well and
straightforward and to in no way call for a quantifier variance interpretation. Here is what
Carnap says about the triviality of the internal claim that there are numbers:
[The internal statement ‘There is an n such that n is a number] follows from the
greater than a million’, which is likewise analytic but far from trivial), because it
does not say more than that the new system is not empty; but this is immediately
seen from the rule which states that words like ‘five’ are substitutable for the new
As Carnap makes clear here, the internal statements per se are not trivial, as some are not
trivial at all. Rather, some are trivial in the unobjectionable sense of being easily derived
within the framework to which they belong. Carnap suggests that metaphysicians’
ontological claims, if they were interpreted as internal, would be among the claims that
are trivial in this sense. His thought, I take it, is that metaphysicians’ ontological claims
are relatively basic and general (‘Numbers exist’), and these will tend to be especially
7
Sider (2001, xx-xxi) and Fine (2009, 164 n. 2) also read Carnap as a quantifier
variantist.
9
I anticipate the objection that my interpretation of the i/e distinction conflicts with
Carnap’s Principle of Tolerance. The worry is that Tolerance instructs us to tolerate non-
language, then the resulting view would be an intolerant, ‘dogmatic prohibition’ against
non-empiricist languages.
extend to non-empiricist languages. But even if he did, this would not be a problem for
significant claims within such a language; rather it is the freedom to use a language
According to the received view, ESO uses the i/e distinction to criticize Quine’s ‘realist’
metaontology as developed in ‘On What There Is’. But as I will now argue, the central
tenets of the ontological realism laid out in the latter paper are consistent with ESO’s
8
Is this real freedom? Carnap (1959, 79-80) thinks so. He argues that lyrical poetry and
traditional metaphysics are both often composed of cognitively meaningless inscriptions.
But this doesn’t mean the lyrical poet is doing anything wrong. Carnap sees poetry as an
‘expression’ of the author’s attitudes towards life—to be contrasted with an assertion
about her attitudes—and believes that non-cognitive discourse can be an effective vehicle
for this kind of expression. The metaphysician, by contrast, gives arguments and attempts
to assert theses. It is this combination of cognitive goals with non-cognitive language in
traditional metaphysics that Carnap opposes. Traditional metaphysics, according to
Carnap, ‘pretends to be something that it is not’ (1959, 79).
10
critique of ontology.
entity if and only if inclusion of the entity in our variables’ range is necessary for the
truth of our total theory, that is, of the best integrated formulation of the leading theories
given theory. To determine what we should think there is, then, we would need to
combine his criterion with an account of which theory we should adopt. By the late
1940s, Quine had an explicit account of this kind. This account centered on three
course, consistency between the theory’s observational predictions and the observational
record. Simplicity is the minimization of kinds of entities posited and of concepts and
postulates employed. Conservatism instructs us, when we must alter our total theory, to
then, all things being equal, we should adopt the alternative that preserves the most of our
account of theory choice, that necessarily conflicts with ESO’s critique of ontology. To
adopt the simplest of the empirically adequate theories, and to then read our ontological
commitments off this theory, does not seem to in any way involve the ontology-before-
11
occasion, put ontology ahead of language if put on a par with the other desiderata: the
conservative edict to preserve our beliefs implies that we should preserve our current
ontological beliefs or intuitions, and if this edict were allowed to outweigh simplicity or
empirical adequacy, then ontology would exercise excessive authority over language
choice. But conservatism need not function in this way, and I see no evidence that, by the
time of ‘On What There Is’, conservatism played any role in Quine’s rejection of
properties or propositions.9
I should note that the foregoing argument, and related ones to follow, assume an
propositions. While this understanding is influential and widely held, it is not the only
game in town. On a rival account, intuitions are taken to be intellectual seemings (Bealer
1998). On this view, intuitions are a kind of datum, in the same way as are perceptual
observations. The idea that consistency with such putative data is a desideratum of
admissibility of intensions per se, such as properties and propositions, in semantics. One
might think that ESO’s defense of the use of abstract objects in semantics engages with
this interpretation, we must examine the nature of Quine’s rejection of intensions and of
Carnap’s defense of their use in semantics. Quine’s rejection of intensions was based on
two premises. The first was his rejection of the analytic/synthetic (a/s) distinction and of
9
Many years later, in Word and Object, Quine maintains that, if we are being
conscientious about our methodology, empirical adequacy and simplicity should trump
conservatism (1960, 20-21). Carnap would not oppose settling ties this way any more
than by coin toss.
12
quantifying into modal contexts, and the second was his prohibition against positing
entities for which no acceptable individuation conditions are given (Quine 1969, 23).
Since the leading approaches to individuating intensions involve the a/s distinction and
ESO does not engage with either premise of Quine’s objection to intensions.
Moreover, Carnap did not deny Quine’s ‘no entity without identity’ principle, but rather
elsewhere maintained the legitimacy of the a/s distinction (Carnap 1956d; 1963b; and
identical just in case the terms expressing them were analytically equivalent (Carnap
1956b, 18; 23). But note that Carnap does not defend the a/s distinction in ESO. So ESO
If ESO does not object to Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment, nor to his
rejection of intensions, which of his views, if any, does it object to? Curiously, ESO does
not contain an explicit answer to this question.10 Nonetheless, as I will now argue, there is
good evidence that ESO takes aim at a dogmatic nominalism that Quine, Goodman,
10
The only examples of the wrong approach to ontology that Carnap gives are Bernays
(1935) and Nagel (1948). He does not discuss either paper in any detail. However, it is
clear that Carnap sees the approach to ontology that he wants to rebut as widespread. For
this reason, his failure to cite Goodman and Quine (1947) is not, in my view, strong
evidence that this paper was not among his intended targets in ESO.
13
Carnap (1963a, 65) explicitly identifies Quine, Goodman, and Ernest Nagel as the
offending nominalists whom ESO tried to rebut. He notes that, according to these
(1963a, 65). However, for Carnap, their objections seemed ‘to involve metaphysical
pseudo-questions’ (1963a, 65). Carnap recalls giving these objections ‘careful and serious
arguments, ESO addresses other arguments that the nominalists gave during the 1940s.
the old controversy about reality and irreality of universals, and that in this respect
we find ourselves on the side of the Platonists insofar as we hold to the full non-
finitistic logic [which includes variables that putatively range over abstract
Platonism. And Platonism is the kind of bad metaphysics that ‘hard-headed’ empiricists,
referring to abstract entities… does not imply embracing a Platonic ontology but is
perfectly compatible with empiricism and strictly scientific thinking’ (1956a, 206). His
strategy is to show that statements about abstract objects could be analytic or empirical: a
14
statement like ‘these tomatoes are of the same color’, which makes reference to a color
property, may be internal to the framework of thing properties and would then be ‘of an
empirical, factual nature’ (1956a, 212). Other statements about properties are analytic—
for example, ‘the word ‘red’ designates a property of things’ (1956a, 216-217).
The most well known published statement of this 1940s nominalism is Goodman
and Quine’s influential ‘Steps Toward a Constructive Nominalism’ (1947), which was
published three years before ESO, and which opens with an ontology-before-language
argument. Goodman and Quine (1947) try to account for mathematical truth (or, in some
They argue that mereology can replace portions of mathematics by showing how to
translate various kinds of statements seemingly about numbers or classes into statements
that are entirely about concrete (material, physical) objects. In particular, for specific
predicates can do the work that is usually reserved for cardinality and class membership.
They then propose to treat the portions of mathematics that cannot be analyzed in this
Goodman and Quine argue that these syntactical rules can be formulated within a
nominalistic meta-language. In this meta-language, the nominalist can talk about the
mathematical discourse that resists nominalistic translation and thereby ‘account for the
fact that mathematicians can proceed with such remarkable agreement as to methods and
results’ (1947, 111), even though their utterances are strictly speaking meaningless.
What is important for my discussion of ESO, though, is how Goodman and Quine
argue for their nominalistic language. Goodman and Quine take acceptance of abstract
15
objects to be philosophically impermissible: ‘[a]ny system that countenances abstract
entities we deem unsatisfactory as a final philosophy’ (1947, 105). This means that
‘predicates and other words that are often taken to name abstract objects’, such as
‘variables that call for abstract objects as values’ (1947, 105), are to be avoided in the
refusal [to countenance abstract objects] is based on a philosophical intuition that cannot
be justified by appeal to anything more ultimate’ (Goodman and Quine 1947, 105). Here
And of course, the move from this premise to the rejection of languages that refer to
abstract objects presupposes that languages should, all things being equal, accord with
our ontological intuitions—all things being equal, our language should posit all and only
the things we believe in. And so Goodman and Quine’s ‘fundamental’ motivation for
indicate how he thought the i/e distinction applied to their argument: their premise (1′)
11
Goodman and Quine give a secondary and independent argument, stating that their
renunciation of abstract objects is ‘fortified’ by the fact that ‘[e]scape from [the class-
theoretic] paradoxes can apparently be effected only by recourse to alternative rules
whose artificiality and arbitrariness arouse suspicion that we are lost in a world of make-
believe’ (1947, 105).
16
Although Carnap opposed nominalistic restrictions on the language for science as a
whole, in his later work, his attitude towards these restrictions is complicated and aspects
of it may seem to contradict the interpretation of the preceding sections. As I will now
Carnap’s views on this issue presuppose his division of a language for science
general laws that posit unobservable entities (such as electrons), while the observational
sublanguage is charged with the ‘description of observable events’ (Carnap 1956c, 41),
and use nominalistic languages for science, provided they ‘[achieve] by simpler means
essentially the same results as the other methods’ (1956a, 221). However, later in his
career, Carnap not only recognized the freedom to use nominalistic languages, but
advocacy of nominalistic observation languages first appears in print in his 1956 paper
terms.
17
(a) Explicit definability.
(a) The rules of the language L do not state or imply that the basic domain
(c) There is a finite number n such that no model contains more than n
individuals.
an expression in L.
Carnap does not at this point indicate which of the requirements are salient to ‘complete
interpretability’, but opts for an observation language that meets 1, 2(a), 3, 4(a), 5, and 6.
Later, in his (1963a, 79), Carnap more explicitly claims that the observation language
language constitutes a limited point of agreement with Tarski, Quine, and Goodman
18
concerning nominalistic languages. The agreement is limited in that whereas the latter
Carnap denied that the theoretical language—the part of the language for science that
sentences, sufficed for the theoretical sub-language (Frost-Arnold 2013, section 3.1). For
this reason, his limited agreement with Tarski and Quine does not obviate his need for a
section 2.1.3) argues, rightly, I believe, that for Carnap (1939), to understand a sentence
is to know its meaning, and to know its meaning is to know its truth conditions. On this
view, the provision of a semantic interpretation for a language through the construction of
the language’s sentences. But a language can be semantically interpreted in this way, and
thus understood, without meeting the f-c requirement; such is the case when we construct
semantical rules for a language of mathematics. In this way, the f-c conception of
19
treat observability as just one requirement among many on complete understandability. In
fact, the requirement of nominalism implies that no first order language that posits any
following Carnap, we decide to formulate our scientific theories in a language that posits
have to prevent the variables in the observation language from ranging over the entire
domain; the range of the observation language variables would need to be restricted to
some subclass of the full language’s domain. Carnap of course endorsed the use of
distinct types of variables for these kinds of purpose: in ESO he suggests that, at least for
certain kinds of entity (properties, propositions, numbers, material objects, etc.), the
framework for such a kind consists in variables of a distinctive type together with a
general term whose extension encompasses everything in the range of the new kind of
variable. However, he does not seem to have regarded the use of typed variables as a
that Carnap’s adoption of them was a mistake. The conception of meaning for which he is
significance) and logicality, is a deep and relatively stable aspect of logical empiricism,
enough for Carnap’s vision of an austere scientific enterprise that is sharply demarcated
from metaphysics. The further requirement of typed variables contributes nothing to his
basic empiricist project. It strikes me as at least unwise for Carnap to revise the basic
foundations of his philosophical viewpoint in this way without substantial discussion and
20
motivation. But no such motivation is ever given; Carnap offers no explanation of the
Carnap himself indicates in an unpublished note that he ‘did not know what is meant by
context.
Returning, now, to the main thread: I have argued that in ESO, Carnap attempted to show
criterion of cognitive significance. This means that the objection begged the question
against Quine, who rejected the notion of analytic truth (Quine 1976a; 1980b) that such
appeal to an empiricist criterion will also seem dubious in the broader, contemporary
context, in which the project of formulating such a criterion is widely seen as discredited.
There are a number of influential objections that are responsible for this assessment. One
of them is Quine’s objection to the a/s distinction. Another is the widespread impression
sentence’, that is, a criterion of empirical significance, but empiricists have been, and
21
internally when they disavow abstract objects. This is particularly so in regards to Quine.
His rhetoric in 1947 (‘philosophical intuition’) might encourage the assumption that he is
‘intuition-mongering’ (Alspector-Kelly 2001, 103), and one might take this practice to
amount to the making of external claims. But in the light of broader views that Quine
would articulate within the space of a year, a different picture emerges. According to
Quine, ‘[o]ne’s ontology is basic to the conceptual scheme by which he interprets all
experiences, even the most commonplace ones. Judged within some particular scheme—
and how else is judgment possible?—an ontological statement goes without saying’
(1980a, 10; originally published in 1948). By at least 1948, then, Quine had adopted his
naturalistic view that there is no perspective that is external to an evolving, total theory;
one ‘cannot study and revise the fundamental conceptual scheme of science and common
sense without having some conceptual scheme, whether the same or another no less in
need of philosophical scrutiny, in which to work’ (Quine 1960, 275-276). If we read this
idea back into the nominalist papers of 1947 (Quine 1947; Goodman and Quine 1947),
reconstruction, then we conclude that Quine would have intended for his appeals to
simplest conceptual scheme into which the disordered fragments of raw experience can
be fitted and arranged’ (Quine 1980a, 16). The statements belonging to such a scheme
will stand in logical relations to possible observation reports. They are therefore likely to
‘[make] a difference for the prediction of an observable event’ (Carnap 1956c, 49). But
12
An objection to this line of interpretation is that without an a/s distinction, Quine’s
22
These considerations do not, of course, decisively establish that, as a matter of
historical and psychological fact, Quine intended his appeals to intuition to be internal.
But even if he did not so intend them Carnap would anyway need to address the
Carnap might at this point respond that on this interpretation, Quine is impaled on
the internal horn of the i/e dilemma, i.e. that Quine’s appeal to his nominalistic intuition
seen, Quine seems to have agreed that his ontological views were trivial in roughly this
sense. In a recently cited passage, he states that the ontological claims of interest to
philosophers will tend to be trivially obvious, i.e. to ‘[go] without saying’ for those who
accept the relevant framework or conceptual scheme. Carnap, recall, believed that this
showed that philosophers who ask existence questions could not have the internal
ontological claim is trivially obvious to the Quinean does not detract from its contribution
to her argument.
23
But how could Quine give his intuitions so much say in theory choice? On the
philosophical intuition is not mandated by the other theoretical desiderata that Quine
acknowledged, i.e. by simplicity or empirical adequacy. This leaves two possibilities: that
he relied on his third desideratum, i.e. conservatism, or that he deviated from the
methodology, described in §4, which governed much of his work. Moreover, even if
Quine did not consciously see his appeal to intuition as conservative, a philosophical
intuition is, after all, a belief or an element of current practice, which the conservative
would prefer to preserve; any appeal to intuition for justificatory purposes in this way
Quine’s line of reasoning will be found unconvincing for two reasons. First, it
will be argued that the place of classes within the mathematical tradition tips the scale of
conservatism in favor of commitment to classes and against his intuition. Second, it will
be argued that the theoretical gains that classes afford outweigh considerations of
interpretation. Goodman and Quine’s appeal to intuition will be a slender motivation for
is bolstered by the fact that Quine’s abandonment of nominalism in the years after 1947
24
1951), treats it as a theoretical virtue on par with simplicity, without indicating any
general procedure for deciding between the two when they pull in opposite directions.
Sometimes simplicity might win out in such a conflict, and sometimes conservatism
might—and indeed, on the interpretation I have suggested, conservatism did win out
against simplicity, in Quine’s 1947 view, in the case of classes. In Word and Object, by
conscientious about our methodology (1960, 20-21)—in such cases, no degree of match
with belief can outweigh even a quantum of increased simplicity. In this same work,
Quine clearly states his reasons for accepting classes (sections 43, 48, 55). In what should
have been music to Carnap’s ears, Quine writes that the decision to posit classes should
be a matter of ‘considerations of systematic efficacy, utility for theory’, and that ‘if
The foregoing argument that Quine’s appeals to intuition are internal might be
taken to suggest that Carnap and Quine don’t really disagree about Quine’s 1947
arguments for nominalism. But this would be too hasty. Carnap’s aim in ESO, remember,
philosophers’ ontological questions is his means to this end; it is not itself the end. But I
have shown that, whether they were meant in an internal or external sense, Quine’s 1947
and so their repudiation falls under Carnap’s aim in ESO. What this shows is that the i/e
distinction, even if it can be successfully drawn, would only subvert the authority of
external ontological doctrine over language. To show that ontology per se has no such
25
authority, Carnap needs, in addition, to show that conservative appeals to intuition are
For the remainder of the paper, I will offer, on Carnap’s behalf, solutions to the problems
for his critique of ontology discussed in the preceding section. My strategy will be to
identify the purpose for which Carnap thought we should use languages for science, and
to then argue that, given this purpose, the conservatism embodied in premise (3) of
not himself bring his conception of language choice into his critique of ontology in this
direct way, as will be clear, my solution to the problems he faced is entirely in the spirit
be made on the basis of how the various candidates contribute towards the purpose for
which we would use them. What, according to Carnap, was the purpose of a language for
rarely attempt any kind of systematic answer; indeed, according to Ricketts to attempt to
provide such a systematic account would amount to the kind of philosophy that Carnap
that Carnap’s purpose in language construction and choice is the derivation of accurate,
desiderata guiding our choice of a language should be those that contribute to language’s
26
pragmatism.13
which he divided languages for science. He saw the first, formal or logico-mathematical
transformations in the factual [i.e. empirical] sciences’ (Carnap 1953, 127). Carnap in
turn divides this empirical component of language into observational and theoretical
sublanguages (§6). For Carnap, just as the formal language is auxiliary to the empirical
someone to accept a theoretical postulate T of empirical physics is just for him to use T
for ‘guiding his expectations by deriving predictions about future observable events from
Carnap’s pragmatism. For that, we would need, in addition, to spell out the notion of an
observation sentence, as it occurs here, and of what it is to accept a purpose for language.
However, I hope that I have at least said enough for the purposes of the Carnapian
I have introduced Carnap’s pragmatism with the aim of solving on his behalf two
13
This may seem like a counterintuitive conception of science. One might think that we
rather use scientific language to correctly describe the world. Presumably there is a more
basic motivation that leads Carnap away from this view and towards his pragmatism; but
to probe the structure of these motivations lies beyond the scope of this essay.
27
problems for his critique of ontology, discussed in §7, viz. that Quine’s 1947 appeals to
ontological intuition were internal and therefore immune to arguments deriving from the
i/e distinction, and that the empiricist criterion on which the i/e distinction rests is
untenable.
To begin with the first of these problems, if Carnap cannot reject Quine’s appeal
to a nominalistic intuition as external, he could instead block the conclusion regarding the
edict that we should aim to preserve such ontological intuitions in our chosen languages.
This response does not presuppose that appeals to intuition are meaningless; rather, the
idea is to argue that such appeals are irrelevant to language choice, given the aims with
Carnap’s pragmatism equips us to give an objection of this kind. Given the aims
for which the Carnapian pragmatist uses scientific language, conservatism does not
is false. Suppose that, from our current vantage point, there were no abstract objects. For
the Carnapian pragmatist, this would not detract from introducing (putative) reference to
them into the language of mathematics, since having postulates from which we would
currently dissent does not, in and of itself, make a language a less effective instrument for
This rejection of conservatism also takes care of the second problem for Carnap’s
argument, i.e. that empiricist criteria of cognitive significance are untenable. As we have
just seen, Carnap does not need to construe premise (1) of ontology-before-language
28
is that he does not need the empiricist criterion that was supposed to imply, in various
Furthermore, a sharp formulation of his pragmatism might allow him to draw the
i/e distinction without relying on an empiricist criterion. The idea is that pragmatism
meaningfulness that does not rely on an empiricist criterion. Goldfarb and Ricketts
(1992) point out that the Carnapian could pick out the empiricist languages, in which
from consideration those languages that possess various pragmatic defects. The
languages that survive this ‘weeding out’ process would serve as the linguistic
frameworks within which internal questions could be posed. Goldfarb and Ricketts note
that such a pragmatic approach to drawing the i/e distinction would have the same kind of
grounding as Carnap’s attempted uses of empiricist criteria. They write that the pragmatic
criticisms by which frameworks are weeded out would ‘have no different status from
criterion of empirical significance]; for even a general criterion could have only
pragmatism (§7) can help here is in providing the basis for the pragmatic criticisms that
Though Carnap never quite articulates it, the closing passages of ESO seem to me
to contain the germs of this pragmatic argument. There, Carnap allows that ‘the
nominalistic critics may possibly be right’ to prefer a language that does not posit abstract
29
would ‘have to show that it is possible to construct a semantical method which avoids all
references to abstract entities and achieves by simpler means essentially the same results
as the other methods’. But, he maintains, ‘[a]ppeal to ontological insight’ will not show
this (1956a, 221). In these passages, as in the pragmatic argument alluded to above,
Carnap criticizes the nominalists’ case against reference to abstract objects for raising
following paragraph, he asserts that in the past, ontological ‘dogmatic prohibitions’ were
empiricist criteria here seems to have blinded him to the real source of the dogmatic
prohibitions, viz. conservatism, and to the natural antidote to them, viz. his pragmatism.
In response to my pragmatic argument, one might argue that match with current
practice really is of pragmatic value. I grant that we are frequently more familiar with
languages that match our current practices, and this kind of familiarity will count in favor
14
This quotation comes from a passage in which Carnap asserts that ‘[a]ppeal to
ontological insight will not carry much weight’ (1956a, 221). This assertion might be
taken to suggest that, contrary to my interpretation, ontological insight does carry some
weight. I believe that Carnap’s use of ‘much’ here is simply unnecessary. Earlier in the
paper, Carnap contrasts the view on which adding a new entity to our ontology ‘is
legitimate only if it can be justified by an ontological insight supplying an affirmative
answer to the question of reality’ with his view that ‘the introduction of the new ways of
speaking does not need any theoretical justification because it does not imply any
assertion of reality’ (1956a, 214). The upshot of these remarks is that, not only is
ontological insight unnecessary for adding an entity to our ontology, but such insights do
not justify such an addition at all—the decision to add to our ontology is not the kind of
thing that is subject to the kind of justification that ontological insights putatively
provide.
30
of these languages from the Carnapian pragmatist’s perspective. We will, in general, be
better able to derive predictions within a familiar language, within which we are
for the familiar, as the former, but not the latter, advocates preserving current practice
even in cases where we are equally familiar with a deviant alternative.15 For example, a
of class theory, and yet be, as a result of her training, as familiar with class theory as with
mereology. The conservative will maintain that a mereological framework’s match with
the nominalist’s current practice provides a defeasible reason for the nominalist to
employ it. For the Carnapian pragmatist, since the nominalist is no more familiar with the
mereological than with the class-theoretic framework, and since match with her current
practice does not, therefore, secure any pragmatic advantage, the match with current
practice does not provide a defeasible reason for the nominalist to use the mereological
framework.
4). Manley takes the following passage from Theodore Sider to characterize mainstream
metaphysics:
competing positions are treated as tentative hypotheses about the world, and are
assessed by a loose battery of criteria for theory choice. Match with ordinary usage
and belief sometimes plays a role in this assessment, but typically not a dominant
15
Quine (1960, 20) overlooks this distinction.
31
one.16 (Sider 2009, 385; quoted in Manley 2009, 3)
If the argument of the preceding paragraphs is sound, then the Carnapian pragmatist does
not recognize match with ordinary belief as a desideratum of theory choice at all. She
advocates adoption of the most efficient ‘prediction machine’, regardless of how much it
Carnap’s pragmatism thus reveals a new basis for rejecting appeals to intuition in
philosophy. Many skeptics about intuition argue that intuition is somehow unreliable or
defective (Creath 1992; Alspector-Kelly 2001). While the Carnapian pragmatist may
concur with this assessment, she further proposes to remove intuition from philosophy by
10. Conclusion
meaningless was a means—and, in fact, not the most effective means available—to this
end. Carnap did not, then, disagree with Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment, but
rather with the conservatism that underpinned Quine’s earlier nominalism. However,
Carnap’s use of the i/e distinction to object to this aspect of Quine’s views is
16
While Sider somewhat downplays the role of match with belief in this passage, it is
worth noting that he leaves open the possibility that it can outweigh other desiderata.
Sider (2001, xv-xvi) does not downplay the role of match with belief in the same way,
writing ‘[o]ne approaches metaphysical inquiry with a number of beliefs…. One then
develops a theory preserving as many of these ordinary beliefs as possible, while
remaining consistent with science.’
32
unpersuasive, as Quine is plausibly interpreted as speaking internally in the relevant
My proposal relied on Carnap’s pragmatism, which holds that the languages used in
science are instruments for facilitating inferences to and from observation reports. Match
with our ontological intuitions or ‘ordinary beliefs’ (Sider 2001, xvi) would not make a
language more effective at fulfilling this function, and consequently, from the Carnapian
pragmatist’s perspective, is not salient to decisions about the structure of our language for
science. Furthermore, Carnap’s pragmatism might ground a version of the i/e distinction
pragmatism thus answers in the affirmative what Manley calls the ‘crucial question’ for
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