Metaphysics - Carnap on Ontology

This video outlines Rudolf Carnap's deflationary approach to ontological questions, presented in his article "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology", then discusses some challenges to the Carnapian approach.
I offer private tutoring in philosophy. For details please email me: [e-mail]
Support me on Patreon: / kanebaker91
Donate to my PayPal: paypal.me/kanebaker91
My Discord: / discord
0:00 - Introduction
2:48 - Linguistic frameworks
6:27 - Internal and external questions
12:33 - Pragmatic-external vs factual-external
17:52 - Objects, properties, etc
25:48 - Fictionalism
32:41 - Conflicting frameworks
41:05 - Norms for selecting frameworks
47:34 - The regress problem

[@KaneB]

Platonism in philosophy of mathematics: kzbin.info/www/bejne/j6nKeWivoKyqmrM Ordinary objects: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Zmizi2SXYsyNrtk

[@timothytiberius487]

The lecture is very nice. I wanted to ask do you have any plans of making a video about a concept of rationality? Like observing views and problems connected to questions like “what counts as rational?”. In many of your lectures it sounds like the concept is an important part of arguments

[@KaneB]

@@timothytiberius487 I'd say most of my videos on epistemology are concerned with the question of rationality in one way or another.

[@Ansatz66]

It is extremely important to clarify precisely what we mean by words. That seems to be the origin of Carnap's issue. Mathematics has a usage of the word "exists" that may or may not align with the platonic usage of "exists" and we can only know if these two usages are actually the same or critically different by clarifying the semantics of our linguistic framework. In the same way, in the children's game, pixies "exist" but they do not mean that word in the same way they would if they were saying "exist" outside of the game. The children do not expect to see pixies with their eyes. That would be entailed by their ordinary usage of "exist" but it is not entailed by the same word as it is used in the game. Mathematics also has a usage of the word "real" that is quite distinct from how that word is used in any other context.

[@Eta_Carinae__]

Carnap is very underrated. Dunno about you, but I actually had a lot of fun reading LSW. It's very tempting to read what people like Sellars, Quine (who actually was tbf) and Tarski were doing in the context of Carnap. Also, as far as conflicting frameworks, I think Quine kinda addresses something like this, using a trick (in the case of logical contradiction) he credits Davidson with.

[@onion4062]

What’s the trick

[@DS-bx5il]

It seems that the norms selection and regress problem are pretty easily solved if we accept that the initial framework is, in fact, arbitrary. Which should be easy to buy into, since we can't consciously choose our brain's initial synaptic layout.

[@custos_]

Is 'synaptic layout' a term or is it something otherwise readily understandable?

[@DS-bx5il]

@@custos_ I'm just referring to the overall network in our brains, i.e. the "layout" of the synapses connecting our braincells together. There must be some arbitrary way this network is layed out at birth, so that's what I'm calling the "initial" layout.

[@orangereplyer]

@@custos_ I don't think it's a term, but I'm guessing they mean, like, which connections between which neurons are present at the start of inquity.

[@brandonsaffell4100]

Another great one. Thanks for covering it, was really interesting to hear.

[@noot5087]

lovely video, thank you Kane!

[@justus4684]

Thanks dawg This comes in handy as I'm doing logical positivism course in university👍

[@KaneB]

Hope it's helpful!

[@SorenReaper7339]

damn right when I was starting to study carnapian metaontology you upload this, btw you're the best content creator on this site, legitimately it's not even close

[@GottfriedLeibnizYT]

Kudos to logical positivists for undermining BS and making everyone mad.

[@KaneB]

Gottfried Leibniz stanning for the logical positivists? WTF happened to you, man? Your monads used to be beautiful.

[@GottfriedLeibnizYT]

@@KaneB Empiricism happened :(

[@GottfriedLeibnizYT]

@@thotslayer9914 Yes. I appreciate Kant a lot, but don't much like Hegel and the rest of the tradition. I prefer analytical naturalistic approaches in philosophy.

[@GottfriedLeibnizYT]

@@thotslayer9914 I happen to care a lot about language and clarity .. maybe that's why. I take it that scientific theories and, possibly, common sense theories of the average Joe inform us about what exists .. that's my ontology. My focus is analytic, so no continental, PM, PPM..etc.

[@GottfriedLeibnizYT]

@@thotslayer9914 I read just a bit. I lost all interest in a priori theorizing about the world. But, hey, if you know someone who makes a good case for non-naturalism or against naturalism, then I'm open for possibilities.

[@garrettp8225]

This is awesome. Ty

[@aulus6]

Great video! I first learned about Carnap and his later debate with Quine in Amie Thomason's "Ontology Made Easy", which provides a great overview of this debate, but also her own defence and further development of neo-carnapian approach to ontology. Don't know if you read that, and what your views on it are?

[@abdulrahmanalhamali1707]

Thanks!

[@KaneB]

Thanks dawg!

[@exalted_kitharode]

Great presentation as always, especially of those unintuitive consequences. Could you please tell, who raised those objections originally and where I could find more literature of this sort?

[@examiningkubrickphilosofia1530]

A lot of what Carnap is doing is responding to Wittgenstein - there's unfortunately no simple guide to the Vienna Circle / LW controversy. I do some philosophy videos but have to finish a few things. Alas the most detailed entry point is Ray Monk's bio but IT IS MASSIVE I may be able to do a somewhat intermediate guide in a few weeks A (relatively) briefer way into the issues is to read Wittgenstein's Vienna but it is still a bit big Hope that helps

[@KaneB]

In addition to Carnap's original paper, I read Eklund, "Carnap and ontological pluralism" and Steinberger, "How tolerant can you be? Carnap on rationality", plus the SEP page on Carnap. I've also read a bunch of papers on more contemporary Carnapian approaches, which is where I originally encountered some of these objections, but unfortunately that was a while ago and I don't recall the specific papers now. Amie Thomasson, David Chalmers, and Huw Price are often considered to be neo-Carnapians.

[@childintime6453]

yees more Carnap please

[@dingoo1971]

carnaps assertion "external factual assertions are meaningless" is external factual meaningless ❤

[@ryam4632]

I wonder why this problem of self-reference was not picked up by commentators. It seems that some of the later objections mentioned in the video are manifestations of such self-reference issue. I.e., the question of where logically speaking Carnap is when he says that external statements are meaningless?

[@maxmax9050]

Exactly. Carnap's entire project here reaks of self-defeat.

[@MrGustavier]

Super interesting ! Next video on Tarski ?

[@KaneB]

Maybe at some point... I don't have any specific plans for that.

[@orangereplyer]

IIII LOOOOOOVE CARNAAAAP

[@k.s.9400]

Thank you for this. It actually relates to something I’ve been thinking about lately, which is if concepts like God or Technology have existence in some form that is “existent” but not in the same way that we think concrete objects do. Or, is the division of things into “really exists” and “exists conceptually” just based on our perspective? This is basically the old nominalistic debate but it’s interesting to see Carnap’s take. Do you know if he said anything about God existing in a pragmatic sense?

[@KaneB]

Carnap was a logical positivist. His to goal was to develop frameworks that could serve scientific inquiry, i.e. the construction of systematic predictive and explanatory theories. Religious language doesn't have any useful role to play in that.

[@k.s.9400]

Yes I am aware, it’s more that your discussion on pragmatic language structures at the beginning made me wonder if a similar approach had ever been taken toward belief in God. In other words not treating it as an external question as to whether God “really exists” but as to whether such a being exists internally to human existence or language. I am rambling a bit but maybe you understand what I’m getting at.

[@KaneB]

@@k.s.9400 Ah, right. I'm not very familiar with philosophy of religion. However, I think some of the Wittgensteinian philosophers of religion, such as D.Z. Phillips, might be interpreted as making a claim along these lines. It might also be worth checking out the literature on religious fictionalism.

[@k.s.9400]

Thanks, I will check those out

[@GigasnailGaming]

Well covered.

[@user-ek2zx8tt2k]

How do you know when you can't have watched the video yet?

[@KaneB]

@@user-ek2zx8tt2k Seems like a straightforward application of enumerative induction to me 😉

[@GigasnailGaming]

@@user-ek2zx8tt2k not sure what you mean I watched it yesterday when it came out.

[@d.guillermo2163]

What are the differences and similarities between Carnaps Linguistic Frameworks and Wittgensteins Language Games? Thanks for the video! Great content.

[@antoinerauzy]

Hello. I think you did not get fully what Carnap is intending to say. It is hard to explain in a few sentences, but let me give you a rough idea. The first point is that there is a reality out there, but we can only describe this reality and reason about it via our language, i.e. linguistic frameworks. Because the reality out there is immensely complex and we can only know a part of it, no linguistic framework is able to grasp the totality of this reality. You can find this argument already in Spinoza's ethic. Here in Norway, people have a good dozen of words to describe the snow. In my mother tongue (French), we have only one (neige). For a good reason: there is a lot of snow in Norway, much less in France. The choice amongst linguistic frameworks is not arbitrary: we basically have one linguistic framework that we adjust continuously based on our physical experience. Namely, we use the framework that matches the best with our experience of the reality. Hence I learned Norwegian words for snow. Now, we known that and we can play games imagining other frameworks, i.e. other realities and other frameworks that describe these realities. This is exactly what kids are doing when they play the pixies game, but also what Tolkien is doing when writing the tale of Bilbo. More: we can fool ourselves and use (involuntary) frameworks that do not match the reality on certain points. But all frameworks, are eventually embodied. Even when we use metaphors of metaphors of metaphors, this stack of metaphors is eventually grounded on our physical experience, as Lakoff showed so brilliantly. It remains that some culture have many words to describe snow, while some other have only one. But in all cases, these words are just proxies to describe an physical object that none of them describes in its whole complexity. At a more abstract level, the modus ponens is widely accepted in all cultures, because it is very helpful to build coherent frameworks that match the reality. The rule of excluded middle is much less frequent, for the very reason that it is possible to build logics that exclude it (Brower's intuitionist logic for instance). Thank you such much for your nice videos.

[@edu8252]

Are you going to speak about Quine's On what there is in following videos?

[@GottfriedLeibnizYT]

Good idea.

[@KaneB]

I don't have any particular plans for the next video but it would make a good follow-up, yeah.

[@alejandroperea98]

And the natural movement then would be grounding theorists! Id really like to hear what K has to say about grounding. It would make sense with other videos involving metaphysics of science levels etc

[@justasimplemathematicallye3917]

You've just earned a sub

[@maxmax9050]

So how would Carnap analyze the cogito? Does the cogito point to any genuine external factuality, namely, the existence of one's own self (or, more broadly, of reality)? To my knowledge, which I admit is limited, Carnap never talks about this, though the obvious answer is that the cogito does point to a meaningful external factuality that transcends whatever particulat linguistic framework you want to use. Carnap's entire project seems utterly pointless and self-defeating. Though, I might live to eat those words.

[@exalted_kitharode]

And also, how would you respond to all these objections? You don't think they are insurmountable I suppose.

[@KaneB]

If you're just asking for my view... well first, I don't endorse a Carnapian approach to ontology; I doubt that the internal/external distinction does the work that he wants it to. But if I were to put on a Carnapian hat, this is what I would say to the objections: -- Fictionalism: I'd just embrace global fictionalism. This pretty much already is my view, so I don't see it as a problem if Carnap's view entails this. -- Conflicting frameworks: (1) I'll say that Xs exist relative to F1 and Xs don't exist relative to F2, so sometimes I'll say that Xs exists and sometimes I'll say that they don't. Since I already embrace global fictionalism, I don't see a problem with adopting and dropping beliefs like this. (2) Regarding the second issue raised by conflicting frameworks, here's one possible response. We can define two types of external questions. A question might be external relative to a given framework, or it might be absolutely external, i.e. framework-independent. When, in the ordinary object framework, I say, "the pixie framework is false", this is external relative to the pixie framework, but it's not absolutely external since it's internal to the ordinary object framework. Then we can say that only absolutely external questions are problematic. (One issue with this response is that, if frameworks are just fragments of a language, then it's not clear how to conceive of a framework-independent question. How could one ask a question without a language? In the end, I'm not sure I have a satisfying response to this problem.) -- Norms: I think it's fine to adopt a framework just on a whim. However, with respect to the point that it seems that a selection framework could tell us what we ought to do, and thus the assessment of frameworks just becomes an internal question, again I'm not sure there is a satisfying response. -- The regress problem: Perhaps we could say that the general rules of inference actually are already part of the original frameworks, so there is no need to take the first step to the other framework that tells us what the original framework says? I'm not sure. At least if we buy Carnap's principle of tolerance, there doesn't seem to be anything to stop anybody taking that step, and this seems to be enough to set up the problem. Since I'm sympathetic to meaning skepticism, meaning indeterminacy, etc., I'm not troubled by just embracing that there is no fact of the matter what frameworks really say.

[@ryam4632]

I hate Carnap's position, but I concede that there's something to it. Some concepts are tools, so clearly it's mistaken to ask what do they denote. And even descriptive concepts are coined partly for the grip that they allow on certain subject matters. I sense a false dichotomy...

[@italogiardina8183]

If what matters now will not matter in a million years it seems logical positivism appeal is to generate meaning through frame works grounded as higher order frameworks qua experts that differ to public as will of the people or democracy, therefore circular in this niche of the universe, and thereafter the laws become anarchic where even arithmetic breaks down into infinites. Generally the problem of infinites that Carnap avoided through the methodology of 'shut up and calculate' was part and parcel of the general intellectual climate of the times with Niels Bohr and the "Copenhagen interpretation". Logical positives focus of a narrow band of interpretations pertaining to the famous double slit experiment where the wave-particle duality baffled observers. In this sense Carnap belongs to the shut up and calculate camp of interpretation of the Copenhagen camp as in "don't worry about what's happening on a granular level just apply it to the military industrial complex and modernisation in general.

[@InventiveHarvest]

You already know what I'm going to say. What matters is whether the language frameworks in question are progressive or degenerate. In other words, the pragmatism of maths indicates that the belief that numbers exist is justified. Now, what one might ask is "well then, what about the pragmatism of fairy tale language? Does that imply that pixies exist?" Ok. So while the fairy tale language is progressing, it is not progressing into the real world. The progress that fairy tale language makes is into new stories, so it is justified to believe that faeries exist in stories. Now, analyzing language frameworks in this fashion does create a language framework for analyzing language frameworks. Let's call it Lakatos framework. Trivially, we could make a second identical framework called Lakatos B framework, and use it to analyze the first framework. But, this seems to cheat away from the problem of internal self-analysis. So circularly, we could just use Lakatos Framework to analyze itself. This would look like "analyzing frameworks in terms of progressiveness is a progressive framework". While I do not see any inherent contradictions or Russell brand paradoxes there, it does seem to be avoiding explaining why valuing progressive frameworks is justified - progressive frameworks are preferred because progressive frameworks are preferred. But, if we use the Lakatos definition of progressive, it makes more sense. Language frameworks that produce new pragmatic uses are preferred because they produce new pragmatic uses. Because pragmatism is in pursuit of achieving a given goal, those who have that goal will prefer pragmatic frameworks. Yes, it is still circular, but given the choice between infinite regress, relying on axioms, or circular logic, circular logic is the best choice. Self-referring questions like "which language framework is the best for analyzing language frameworks?" are going to have circular answers.

[@Kentrosauruses]

This is a great video, but I really felt unimpressed by the challenges. A lot of them seem to be resolved with a coherentist or pragmatic theory of truth.

[@KaneB]

Hmm. I think a lot of these problems just tend to recur for coherentist and pragmatist approaches to truth. Both coherentism and pragmatism are often accused of entailing a more radical kind of relativism/constructivism than intended; both coherentism and pragmatism struggle to account for the possibility of conflicting ideal theories. Of course, coherentists and pragmatists do have answers to these objections, and maybe the Carnapian could appeal to those resources.

[@giorgidzuliashvili]

Big fan of you from 🇬🇪. Please make a video on communism. (Of course not about its history but how it whould work, main aspects and so on, as you did about other political ideologies).

[@KaneB]

I don't really know enough about it... I'm not sure hot on political philosophy. I've been intending to read more about it for a long time but other things keep coming up.

[@examiningkubrickphilosofia1530]

This is not as in-depth as what Kane does - but this is an introductory video on Marx and the c-issue I've done videos on Rand and others and will do more just trying to figure out how to frame them Give them a try kzbin.info/www/bejne/m3u6eZeMl5h3iLc

[@ignotumperignotius630]

Ah now we're getting based

[@Dmantip1]

In virtue of what are some frameworks more useful than others? Im a relativist with respect to truth and dont believe in any objective laws of logic but cant help but wonder why there are frames of reference and logical systems at all. So although there is no privileged way of conceptually dividing up the world, it seems the like this family of possible interpretations is somewhat fixed. There are two responses to this that immediately come to mind to me. The first is to say that I am implicitly appealling to some sort of modal properties in talking about the possible interpretations and that this is misguided. The second is to say that I am right but only in my frame of reference; this family will not necessarily be the same or exist at all from different perspectives. Now I understand and cant help but agree with this take but theres something a bit unsatisfying about it. Wittgensteins quip about throwing away the ladder always annoyed me for the same reason; its trying to have your cake and eat it too. If asked why we mereologically classify ordinary objects the way we do, the relativist/pragmatist can appeal to things like how it makes life easier when all the parts of an object appear to be visually continuous, biology, evolution, etc. Of course, this explanation only makes sense within our general framework of truth but there is no objective answer. This just irks me a bit, does it not bother you...? It seems fully coherent so I guess theres nothing wrong with rejecting any demand for further explanation, Im not sure what other kind of response I could even expect. Im just a bit weary of when positions are almost irrefutable apriori. It feels like external skepticism in that sense; it wins no matter what. But maybe thats just a consequence of being right...

[@low3242]

oh no no no no positivism is cringe

[@KaneB]

I don't think you have to be a positivist to endorse Carnap's approach here. The notion of linguistic frameworks, the distinction between internal and external questions, and suspicion of factual-external questions can all be held independently of positivism. There are philosophers today who are not positivists but who are sympathetic to a Carnapian approach to ontology (e.g. David Chalmers and Amie Thomasson). Also, positivism is cool.

[@justus4684]

@@KaneB Positivism is cool cause then you can play the "The sex was great for her, how was it for me?" scene in real life

[@LarryLongleg]

Isn't that behaviorism?