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Language, Ontology, and the Carnap-Quine Debate

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Language, Ontology, and the Carnap-Quine Debate

Preprint; final version published in Philosophia

Jonathan Reid Surovell


Texas State University, San Marcos
jonathansurovell@gmail.com
sites.google.com/view/jonathanreidsurovell

Abstract

On a widespread reading, the Carnap-Quine debate about ontology concerns the

objectivity and non-triviality of ontological claims. I argue that this view

mischaracterizes Carnap’s aims in “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology” (ESO):

Carnap’s fundamental goal is to free up decisions about scientific language from

constraints deriving from ontological doctrine. The contention, based on his

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

conception of scientific language, I will suggest an alternative approach on his behalf.

1
1. Introduction

When a metaphysician argues that some kind of entity—material bodies or abstract

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

and substantive insight? One of the primary debates in contemporary metaontology

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

ontological anti-realism traces back to Carnap’s internal/external (i/e) distinction, which

reckons philosophers’ ontological questions meaningless or trivial, while ontological

realism traces back to Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment, which reveals

ontological claims to be existential generalizations, and therefore as potentially objective

and interesting as any other kind of claim. On this received view, Quine won the debate

due to perceived problems with Carnap’s i/e distinction.1

There are grains of truth in this view of the Carnap-Quine debate. Yet, the view

rests on a mischaracterization of the aim of Carnap’s critique of ontology, a

mischaracterization of which Carnap himself was often guilty: Carnap’s fundamental

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

abandoned. Second, a more general rejection of conservatism in theory choice is essential

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

his commitment to an empiricist criterion of cognitive significance not obscured it from

his view. I conclude by briefly contrasting my Carnapian position with contemporary

‘mainstream metaphysics’ (Manley 2009, 3).

2. Carnap’s Aim in ‘Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology’: The Priority of

Language to Ontology

For Carnap, languages for science, or ‘linguistic frameworks’, are of fundamental

importance for inquiry. Frameworks codify bodies of scientific knowledge and

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

to numbers, the question, ‘Do the posited entities exist?’

must be raised and answered before the introduction of the new language forms.

The latter introduction, [his opponents] believe, is legitimate only if it can be

justified by an ontological insight supplying an affirmative answer to the question

of reality. (1956a, 214)

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

to adopting a framework that posits objects of the kind.

This ontology-before-language approach that Carnap rejects amounts to the

proffering of an argument of the following kind:4

1.   There are no Fs.

2.   The language LF posits Fs.

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

should not adopt it.

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

ESO can, then, be reformulated as that of rebutting ontology-before-language arguments

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

example, in place of (1), we might find

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

variations on (1) (and (2)).

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

logical analysis of scientific theories, including the construction of artificial languages

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’

(Carnap 1956a, 221);

[t]he history of science shows examples of such prohibitions based on prejudices

deriving from religious, mythological, metaphysical or other irrational sources,

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

those forms which have no useful function. Let us be cautious in making

assertions and critical in examining them, but tolerant in permitting linguistic

forms. (1956a, 221)

This passage’s concluding reference to ‘tolerance’ in the adoption of languages is

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

general idea is central to Carnap’s celebrated Principle of Tolerance (Carnap 1937).

Tolerance denies that deviations from the dominant logic—classical logic, as it

happens—‘must be proved to be ‘correct’ and to constitute a faithful rendering of ‘the

true logic’ (Carnap 1937, xiv). Instead,

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

instead of philosophical arguments. (Carnap 1937, 51-52)

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

Principle of Tolerance. In ESO, Carnap formulates his conception of cognitive

significance in terms of his distinction between internal (meaningful) and external

(meaningless) sentences. He then maintains that ontology-before-language arguments

face a dilemma. Premise (1) is either internal or external. If it is internal, then it is

trivially obvious. If it is external, on the other hand, it is either a cognitively meaningless

pseudo-statement or a disguised practical proposal of the form, ‘Let’s structure our

language in such-and-such a way’. If it is cognitively meaningless, it cannot, of course,

serve as a premise in an argument. If it is a practical proposal, then it must be justified by

evidence that its adoption would advance the ‘purposes for which the language is

intended to be used’ (1956a, 208). However, metaphysicians who give ontology-before-

language arguments do not give the required practical justifications, but instead rely on

unpersuasive ‘appeal[s] to ontological insight’ (1956a, 221).

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.

Neither considers what I believe to be the most straightforward interpretation, viz.

that Carnap took linguistic frameworks to be languages composed entirely of sentences

7
that meet the empiricist criterion of cognitive significance; in Carnap’s (1936-7)

terminology, linguistic frameworks are (fragments of) empiricist languages. The

empiricist criterion appealed to here holds that a statement is cognitively significant, or

truth-apt, if and only if it is either empirically confirmable or analytically true or false.5

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

associated internal questions can be answered by either empirical or logical methods

(1956a, 206-213).6

What about Carnap’s claim that philosophers’ ontological questions would be

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

suggests a controversial doctrine of quantifier variance to explicate it.7 According to

quantifier variance, the different candidate languages contain different quantificational

concepts but are nonetheless able to describe the facts of the world ‘equally well and

fully’ (Eklund 2009, 137).

Carnap’s discussions of the triviality of internal ontological claims seem to me

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

analytic statement ‘five is a number’ and is therefore itself analytic. Moreover, it

is rather trivial (in contradistinction to a statement like ‘There is a prime number

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

variables. (1956a, 209)

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

easy to establish once the relevant framework rules are granted.

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-

empiricist languages. But if Carnap’s requirement that philosophers’ existence claims be

internal is understood as the requirement to formulate such claims within an empiricist

language, then the resulting view would be an intolerant, ‘dogmatic prohibition’ against

non-empiricist languages.

I am unsure whether, as this objection assumes, Carnap intended for Tolerance to

extend to non-empiricist languages. But even if he did, this would not be a problem for

my interpretation. This is because construing the linguistic frameworks of ESO as

empiricist languages does not constitute intolerance of non-empiricist languages. The

freedom to use a non-empiricist language is not the freedom to assert cognitively

significant claims within such a language; rather it is the freedom to use a language

devoid of cognitive significance.8

4. What Carnap Does Not Argue Against in ESO

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.

The centerpiece of ‘On What There Is’ is Quine’s celebrated criterion of

ontological commitment, according to which we are committed to the existence of an

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

in all of the mature sciences.

Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment tells us what there is according to a

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

desiderata: empirical adequacy, simplicity, and conservatism. Empirical adequacy is, of

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

minimize the alterations; if our current theory is falsified by a recalcitrant observation,

then, all things being equal, we should adopt the alternative that preserves the most of our

current theory’s most central tenets.

There is nothing in Quine’s criterion of ontological commitment, nor in his

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-

language approach or to assume anything that Carnap would take to be an external

pseudo-statement. As I discuss in greater detail in §7, Quine’s conservatism would, on

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

understanding of philosophical intuitions as a species of belief in synthetic a priori

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

language choice is not straightforwardly a kind of conservatism.

Another important strand in the Carnap-Quine debate about ontology is the

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

Quine’s rejection of intensions, which are generally understood to be abstract. To assess

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

quantified modal logic, respectively, according to Quine, these approaches are

unacceptable, and we are unable to individuate intensions. So by his second premise, we

must not posit intensions.

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

1991), which he used to individuate intensions. Carnap took two intensions to be

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

does not address either premise of Quine’s rejection of intensions.

5. What Carnap Does Argue Against in 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,

Tarski, and others developed in the 1940s.

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

philosophers, positing abstract objects amounted to an unacceptable ‘hypostatization’

(1963a, 65). However, for Carnap, their objections seemed ‘to involve metaphysical

pseudo-questions’ (1963a, 65). Carnap recalls giving these objections ‘careful and serious

consideration’ in ESO (1963a, 66).

While I have so far focused on Carnap’s rejection of ontology-before-language

arguments, ESO addresses other arguments that the nominalists gave during the 1940s.

Quine gives one such argument in a 1943 letter to Carnap:

I argued, supported by Tarski, that there remains a kernel of technical meaning in

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

objects]. Such an orientation seems unsatisfactory as an end-point in

philosophical analysis, given the hard-headed, anti-metaphysical temper which all

of us share. (Creath 1986, 295)

To adopt a language that is committed to universals, according to Quine, is to espouse

Platonism. And Platonism is the kind of bad metaphysics that ‘hard-headed’ empiricists,

like he and Carnap, should avoid.

Carnap responds to this argument in ESO, arguing that ‘acceptance of a language

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

cases, mathematical consensus) without conceding the existence of classes or numbers.

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

kinds of statements, identity, mereological parthood, and a few other descriptive

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

way as meaningless inscriptions whose use by mathematicians obeys syntactical rules.

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

language for science. This is essentially the conclusion of an ontology-before-language

argument. But why shouldn’t we countenance abstract objects? ‘Fundamentally this

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

we have the first premise of an ontology-before-language argument (specifically, (1′)).

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

their language is an ontology-before-language argument.11

Carnap’s (1963a, 65-66) remarks about Goodman and Quine’s nominalism

indicate how he thought the i/e distinction applied to their argument: their premise (1′)

was external (it is a response to ‘metaphysical pseudo-questions’ (Carnap 1963a, 65)),

and therefore cognitively meaningless.

6. Carnap’s Finitistic-Constructivist Requirements on the Observation Language

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

argue, Carnap’s later advocacy of ‘finitistic-constructivist’ requirements on the

observation language are consistent with his opposition to nominalistic prohibitions on

language forms. Furthermore, his adoption of these requirements was a misstep.

Carnap’s views on this issue presuppose his division of a language for science

into observational and theoretical sublanguages. The theoretical sublanguage axiomatizes

general laws that posit unobservable entities (such as electrons), while the observational

sublanguage is charged with the ‘description of observable events’ (Carnap 1956c, 41),

including both the recording of observations and the formulation of predictions.

Carnap’s Principle of Tolerance unambiguously asserts our freedom to construct

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

positively advocated nominalistic restrictions on the observation language. Carnap’s

advocacy of nominalistic observation languages first appears in print in his 1956 paper

‘The Methodological Character of Theoretical Concepts’. There, he maintains that if we

want a language to be ‘completely interpreted’, then we should adhere to ‘some’ of the

following finitist-constructivist (‘f-c’) requirements:

1.   Requirement of observability for the primitive descriptive terms.

2.   Requirements of various degrees of strictness for the nonprimitive descriptive

terms.

17
(a)   Explicit definability.

(b)  Reducibility by conditional definitions (e.g., by reduction sentences as

proposed in [(Carnap 1936-7)]).

3.   Requirement of nominalism: the values of the variables must be concrete,

observable entities (e.g., observable events, things, or thing-moments).

4.   Requirement of finitism, in one of three forms of increasing strictness:

(a)   The rules of the language L do not state or imply that the basic domain

(the range of values of the individual variables) is infinite. In technical

terms, L has at least one finite model.

(b)  L has only finite models.

(c)   There is a finite number n such that no model contains more than n

individuals.

5.   Requirement of constructivism: every value of any variable of L is designated by

an expression in L.

6.   Requirement of extensionality. The language contains only truth-functional

connectives, no terms for logical or causal modalities (necessity, possibility, etc.).

(Carnap 1956c, 41)

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

‘must be nominalistic’ in order to meet ‘the requirement of complete understandability’.

Carnap’s advocacy of f-c conditions on understandability for the observation

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

philosophers rejected any reference to abstract objects as unintelligible (and counter-

intuitive), Carnap endorsed nominalistic restrictions on the observation language alone.

Carnap denied that the theoretical language—the part of the language for science that

deals with unobservable entities and processes—had to be completely interpreted or

understandable. He maintained, rather, that a ‘partial interpretation’ (1956c, 46),

consisting of ‘correspondence rules’ connecting the theoretical sentences to observation

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

response to their proposed across-the-board prohibitions of abstract object terms.

Nonetheless, Carnap’s acceptance of f-c conditions on the observation language

constitutes a dramatic reversal of his well-known views on meaning. Frost-Arnold (2013,

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

a Tarskian truth definition in the meta-language should be sufficient for understanding

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

complete understandability requires that Carnap reject his previous conception of

meaning, according to which logico-mathematical claims may be completely interpreted.

The f-c requirements also constitute a radical reversal of Carnap’s longstanding

conception of observability as sufficient for cognitive significance. The f-c requirements

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

abstract object will have a completely understandable observational sublanguage. If,

following Carnap, we decide to formulate our scientific theories in a language that posits

numbers, properties, or propositions, then to meet the nominalist requirement, we would

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

requirement on languages for science.

The consequences of the f-c requirements, just discussed, seem to me to suggest

that Carnap’s adoption of them was a mistake. The conception of meaning for which he is

known, which ties cognitive significance specifically to observability (via empirical

significance) and logicality, is a deep and relatively stable aspect of logical empiricism,

and of empiricism more generally. Moreover, this conception is already demanding

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

notions of ‘complete understandability’ or ‘complete interpretability’. At least in 1941,

Carnap himself indicates in an unpublished note that he ‘did not know what is meant by

verständlich’ (Frost-Arnold 2013, 29), i.e. by ‘complete understandability’ in this

context.

7. Two Problems For Carnap’s Argument

Returning, now, to the main thread: I have argued that in ESO, Carnap attempted to show

that Quine and Goodman’s intuition-based argument for nominalism rested on an

external and therefore meaningless pseudo-statement. A serious problem with Carnap’s

objection, then, is that its central notion—the i/e distinction—presupposes an empiricist

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

an empiricist criterion takes to be sufficient for cognitive significance. Moreover, the

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

that an empiricist criterion requires a precise definition of ‘empirically significant

sentence’, that is, a criterion of empirical significance, but empiricists have been, and

will continue to be, unable to provide one.

A second problem is that even if we were to grant that there is an acceptable

empiricist criterion, Carnap’s nominalistic targets may be interpreted as speaking

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),

which we may do on grounds of temporal proximity, interpretive charity, or rational

reconstruction, then we conclude that Quine would have intended for his appeals to

nominalistic intuitions to belong to his naturalistic conceptual scheme, i.e. to ‘the

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

this is to be empirically significant, in Carnap’s sense, and so internal.12

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

possibility that he did.

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

is trivially obvious within Quine’s framework or conceptual scheme. As we have recently

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

questions in mind. If my argument is sound, however, the Quinean might assert an

internal ontological claim as part of an ontology-before-language argument. That this

ontological claim is trivially obvious to the Quinean does not detract from its contribution

to her argument.

conceptual scheme cannot count as a linguistic framework and so the statements


belonging to it cannot be internal.
There are two possible responses to this objection. The first, and most direct,
maintains that the statements of a linguistic framework need not be divided into analytic
and synthetic classes. A linguistic framework is composed of sentences that are either
empirically significant or analytic; so a language that is composed entirely of empirically
significant sentences is composed of internal sentences, even if we eschew meta-
linguistic analyticity and syntheticity predicates.
The second response is to argue that Carnap should, in light of the controversies it
has generated, abandon his empiricist criterion of cognitive significance, including the a/s
distinction. In its place, he could take a pragmatic approach to delimiting the class of
empiricist languages and drawing the i/e distinction. I briefly discuss this option in §§6-7.

23
But how could Quine give his intuitions so much say in theory choice? On the

most charitable reading, Quine was moved by a radical conservatism. Adherence to

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

presupposes conservatism. On this interpretation, premise (3) of Quine’s ontology-

before-language argument is a special case of his conservatism.

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

conservatism. Both of these arguments strike me as convincing. However, the weakness

of Quine’s intuition-based argument, as I have interpreted it, is not a drawback of my

interpretation. Goodman and Quine’s appeal to intuition will be a slender motivation for

such a radical nominalism on just about any background methodological presuppositions.

My interpretation of the role of conservatism and intuition in Quine’s nominalism

is bolstered by the fact that Quine’s abandonment of nominalism in the years after 1947

coincided with his ascribing decreasing importance to conservatism relative to simplicity.

One of Quine’s earlier discussions of conservatism (1980b, 46; originally published in

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

contrast, Quine takes simplicity to trump conservatism, at least when we are

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

nominalism and realism are to be adjudicated on such grounds, nominalism’s claims

dwindle’ (1960, 237); here, intuition no longer plays a role.

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,

is to rebut ontology-before-language arguments. Establishing the meaninglessness of

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

conservative appeals to intuition presuppose that language should conform to ontology,

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

irrelevant to language choice even when internal.

8. Background to a Solution: Carnap’s Pragmatism

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

ontology-before-language arguments is not salient to language choice. While Carnap did

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

of ESO and of his broader philosophy.

I have already touched on Carnap’s conception of language choice as practical, to

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

science? While the question seems fundamental to Carnap’s philosophy, interpreters

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

‘eschews in Logical Syntax [(Carnap 1937)]’ (1994, 196-197). Nonetheless, I contend

that Carnap’s purpose in language construction and choice is the derivation of accurate,

intersubjectively communicable observation statements. For Carnap, then, the only

desiderata guiding our choice of a language should be those that contribute to language’s

efficiency in this task. I call this conception of scientific language Carnap’s

26
pragmatism.13

Carnap articulated his pragmatism in terms of three major sublanguages into

which he divided languages for science. He saw the first, formal or logico-mathematical

sublanguage, as an instrument for facilitating derivations to and from synthetic, empirical

sentences: ‘[f]ormal science has no independent significance, but is an auxiliary

component introduced for technical reasons in order to facilitate linguistic

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

language, so the theoretical language is auxiliary to the observation language; for

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

observed events’ (Carnap 1956c, 45).

The foregoing discussion does not, of course, amount to a complete exposition of

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

critique of ontology that I propose in the following section.

9. How Carnap’s Pragmatism Solves the Problems

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

acceptability of reference to abstract objects by arguing against Quine’s conservative

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

which we (should) use scientific language.

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

express a desideratum for languages; premise (3) of ontology-before-language arguments

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

stating or deriving observation reports.

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

arguments as cognitively meaningless in order to block the conclusion. An upshot of this

28
is that he does not need the empiricist criterion that was supposed to imply, in various

contexts, the cognitive meaninglessness of premise (1).

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

could fill in Goldfarb and Ricketts’s (1992) sketch of a conception of cognitive

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

internal questions are possible, through a case-by-case process of elimination, removing

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

those [criticisms] that would be generated by a general criterion of testability [i.e., a

criterion of empirical significance]; for even a general criterion could have only

pragmatic sanction’ (1992, 75). Where the systematic formulation of Carnap’s

pragmatism (§7) can help here is in providing the basis for the pragmatic criticisms that

weed out the non-empiricist languages.

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

objects. However, to establish the superiority of nominalist languages, the nominalists

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

irrelevant ontological considerations. However, he has not quite appreciated this

argument’s independence from empiricist criteria; he seems to understand the

unconvincing ‘appeals to ontological insight’ to be invariably external.14 Thus, in the

following paragraph, he asserts that in the past, ontological ‘dogmatic prohibitions’ were

‘based on prejudices deriving from religious, mythological, metaphysical, or other

irrational sources’ (1956a, 221). Carnap’s deep and long-standing commitment to

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

accustomed to performing derivations. However, conservatism is not merely a preference

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

Quinean nominalist might employ a system of mereological axioms in place of elements

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.

The Carnapian pragmatist’s rejection of conservatism has important consequences

for contemporary metaontology. David Manley discusses an approach to ontology that he

calls ‘mainstream metaphysics’, which was, he writes, ‘recommended by Quine’ (2009,

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

strays from current practice or belief.

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

rejecting the conservative methodology it presupposes. This further proposal is neutral on

the question of the reliability of intuition.

10. Conclusion

I have argued that Carnap’s primary aim in ESO is to rebut ontology-before-language

arguments and that the rejection of external ontological questions as cognitively

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

contexts, and the i/e distinction presupposes an unpopular semantic version of

empiricism. For these reasons, I suggested an alternative argument on Carnap’s behalf.

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

that does not rely on an empiricist criterion of cognitive significance. Carnap’s

pragmatism thus answers in the affirmative what Manley calls the ‘crucial question’ for

Carnapian metaontology: ‘whether Carnap’s critique of metaphysics can be articulated

without’ assuming an empiricist criterion of cognitive significance (Manley 2009, 7).

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