Philosophy as Logical Syntax
Conspicuous between recent attempts to differentiate philosophy from other intellectual enterprises is the one made by the logical positivists. Carnap, who is perhaps at present the most prominent member of the "Vienna circle," in particular has contended that philosophy is the logical syntax of the language of science. It's this contention that we must now examine.
The traditional problems of philosophy might be classified under 3 heads: logical, psychological, and "metaphysical " Metaphysical propositions Carnap defines as "all those propositions which claim to represent knowledge about something which is over or beyond all experience." But no proposition is even theoretically verifiable unless from it are deducible propositions of perception, different if it were true from what they would be if it were false. Propositions metaphysical in the sense of over or beyond all experience are therefore essentially unverifiable. But a proposition which is not even theoretically verifiable is, speaking logically as distinguished from psychologically, without sense - -- meaningless. Propositions that are metaphysical in the latter sense, and therefore nonsense, include, Carnap asserts, nor only the propositions of what has traditionally been called metaphysics, but also those of traditional epistemology and of normative ethics. They're really pseudo-propositions; that is, they seem to express a judgment or assertion, but in fact express only a command or an emotional attitude. Psychological propositions, on the other hand, are not meaningless, since they are empirically verifiable; but to say that they are so verifiable is to say that they belong to empirical science, not to philosophy. This leaves for philosophy only problems of logical analysis.
I'm here concerned only with the thesis that philosophy is logical syntax and I shall therefore nor pause to examine Carnap's dismissal of metaphysics. I might say in passing, but that despite his use of the term metaphysics seems to me unfortunate, I hold that a statement is ambiguous for us if we cann't specify any respect in which our experience (whether perceptual or other) would, under specified circumstances, be different if the statement were false and if it were true. It seems to me, moreover, that many of the statements found in books on metaphysics, epistemology, and other parts of philosophy, are of precisely this kind; that is, we do not know of any test of them which, if applied, would either prove them, or disprove them, or show them either less or more probable than their alternatives. Therefore, for the purposes of anyone seeking knowledge, such statements are wholly negligible. And this, I hope, is substantially what Carnap means when he describes them as "nonsense" or "meaningless."
But what is logical analysis? It is the sort of investigation of which the results are expressed in syntactical sentences -- in sentences of logical syntax. A syntactical sentence is a sentence expressing either a formation rule or a transformation rule of a language system, that is, either a rule for determining how kinds of expressions to be called sentences of that system could be constructed out of the different kinds of symbols or words or a rule for determining how given sentences may be transformed into others. Whether a given word is, a noun, or a verb, etc. is then a matter not of what it stands for but either of the rules for combining it with others or of the form of the word itself. Syntactical sentences thus concern only the form of a language; that is, they do not concern the sense of any sentence of that language or the meaning of any of the words entering into its sentences, but only the arrangements of its words, and the derivation of sentences of it one from another. Using the word "formal" in this sense, the logical syntax of a language may therefore be defined as "the formal theory of that language."
By the language of science, Carnap means "the use of language for making assertions," the part of language consisting of declarative sentences as distinguished from questions, commands, exclamations. Therefore when he defines philosophy as the logical syntax of the language of science, he means that philosophy is concerned exclusively with the rules of formation and transformation of declarative sentences (and the consequences of those rules), wholly without regard to what the words which make up the sentences stand for.
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