Carnap, “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology”

Major Premise: Accepting the existence abstract entities involves a pragmatic decision to use a certain linguistic framework and not a theoretical assertion of the independent existence of a system of entities.

Sub-premise: The external question of the independent existence of a system of entities is not cognitively significant.

Sub-sub-premise: No evidence that would be deemed relevant by competing parties favors any answer to an external question about the independent existence of a system of entities.

(Minor Premise): Empiricists can consistently make a pragmatic decision to use a certain linguistic

framework.

Thesis: Empiricists can consistently accept the existence of abstract entities.

Late Carnap and Early Logical Positivists

Some Similarities:

1. Cognitively significant statements are either empirically testable or logical tautologies

2. Deflated merely linguistic function for philosophy

3. Main principle/framework is ultimately (if implicitly) pragmatically justified

Some Differences:

1. Certain questions/statements that early positivists would simply deem to be nonsense Carnap could claim to be significant if read as internal.

2. Carnap would seem to leave open as a function for philosophy deciding the pragmatic adequacy of linguistic frameworks—traditional philosophical debates are not so much dissolved as re-cast

3. Carnap’s machinery of linguistic frameworks and the internal-external question distinction does not seem to merely presuppose empiricism as does the positivist’s verification principle