[analytic] Quine, Carnap, Ontology, and Modified Realism
Rodrigo Vanegas
> > > > But Carnap is hesitating between differening ontologies all of which
> > > > (or both of which) would make him a modified realist, if I understand
> > > > you correctly. So he is hesitating between forms of modified realism,
> > > > or at least suggesting that we might tolerate multiple realist
> > > > ontologies for multiple purposes. But whenever Carnap would `step
> > > > into' one of these notations and use it, he becomes a modified realist
> > > > of one variety or another. And when stepping back and speaking of
> > > > these various notations, he must treat them as mind independent, so
> > > > even then he is a modified realist (I would assume this is one of the
> > > > points you are making in response to Speranza). I still find it
> > > > difficult to see him as the relativist you want him to be.
>
> #####This is a misunderstanding. Carnap is not hesitating between
> forms of modified realism, because neither methodological
> phenomenalist nor methodological physicalism is a form of modified
> realism. As I explain in my book, they are not even forms of
> methodological modified realism! You are a methodological modified
> realist if your method commits you to accepting both real entities and
> entities that are less than fully real. Quine is a methodological
> modified realist, and more. But for Carnap, all ontological statements
> such as "There are real entities" and "There are LESS than fully real
> entities" are not statements about the world at all. They are about
> language as opposed to the world. Therefore he cannot be even a
> methodological modified realist. He cannot be any kind of realist,
> modified or not, because he cannot legitimately say about the world
> that it has real entities. Taken as a statement about the world,
> "There are real entities" would be unverifiable and cognitively
> meaningless, because it would be a statement "external" to our
> linguistic framework, and that Carnap views as literally
> nonsensical. In my book, I describe Carnap's fundamental distinction
> between "external" and "internal" questions and how Quine totally
> rejects that distinction. It's right in the excerpt I sent to
> analytic. To sum up, Carnap can make sense of "There are real
> entities" only as an empty analytic truth which is not about the world
> but is a linguistic proposal within our linguistic framework. This is
> so on either his methodological phenomenalism or his methodological
> physicalism. Ontology is the rational science of assigning ontological
> statuses to things, such as "real," "less real than things of category
> x," "mere mental idea," "nonexistent object," "logical fiction," and
> so on. In ontology, it is not enough to provide a mere list of tables
> and trees. That is not doing ontology. Carnap is expressly
> repudiating the whole traditional enterprise of ontology as an attempt
> to answer nonsensical external questions. That includes all the
> varieties of modified realism. This is the heart of Carnapian logical
> positivism. In sharp contrast, Quine embraces and affirms ontology as
> being about the world as much as, or almost as much as, natural
> science is. Quine even affirms his ontology as expressing the core of
> traditional ontology. The difference could hardly be more glaring.
The difference between Carnap and Quine, as I see it, is that for Quine all
questions, including those of ontology, are internal, Carnap's
sense. Every question is answered with respect to a background theory (in
place of Carnap's "linguistic framework"). But this suggests greater
differences than are there. Carnap may have insisted that traditional
questions of ontology were metaphysical nonsense. But he would also
readily admit to sensical internal questions of the form, "Are there
X's?". He did not recognize these questions as ontological because he
considered them internal to a linguistic framework. In my view their
difference amounts to a verbal difference in their use of the word
"ontology". Carnap accepts the term as describing a metaphysical inquiry,
external to science and evidence. Quine doesn't admit to there being
*anything* outside of science and evidence, so he co-opts the term to just
mean inquiry into what there is, whatever the nature of the inquiry. Both
Carnap and Quine agree that there is only one kind of inquiry into what
there is, and that is empirical inquiry in search of truths of the form
"(Ex)(Fx)". Carnap just doesn't call this "ontology" and Quine does.
A question: Did Quine ever write about ontological hierarchies, with some
things more real than others? It strikes me as unlike him. What is
there? Everything. He was very matter of fact about the simplicity of being.
> > > *****I don't read him that way. I don't see him as becoming a modified
> > > realist unless he commits himself to real things that are mind- and
> > > language-independent. There's no commitment if he treats his systems
> > > as merely provisional or merely methodologically more useful than
> > > other systems. That's miles away from Quine, who repeatedly proclaims
> > > his unswerving commitment to there existing physical objects even as
> > > he admits different theories as empirically equivalent and argues that
> > > it is inscrutable exactly which physical objects "There are rabbits"
> > > refers to.
> >
> > I am with Murphy in doubting that Carnap is, on the point of ontology,
> > so dramatically different from Quine as you paint him. To begin with
> > Quine, I am not so sure of his "unswerving commitment" to physical
> > objects. For example, he writes, "So we assume abstract objects over
> > and above the physical objects." (_Theories and Things_, p. 15.) In
> > this essay, he reduces physical objects to, of all things, sets. Is
> > this consistent with the views of a "modified realist" or
> > "metaphysical substance realist"?
>
> #####"Unswerving commitment to physical objects" is a direct quote
> from _Theories and Things_. CHECK QUOTE I think reduction, as opposed
> to elimination, is very easily possible for a modified realist. Are
> you saying modified realists cannot give theoretical definitions of
> anything? Are you saying that in reducing numbers to logical objects,
> Frege ceases to be an extreme Platonic realist concerning abstract
> entities?
I don't doubt that he expressed unswerving commitment. It did not swerve,
after all. I just meant that his commitment was not a priori.
> Also note that in assuming abstract objects over and above the
> physical objects, Quine goes on to make it clear that abstract objects
> less paradigmatically real than physical objects. _Theories and
> Things_, also in my book. ADD CITE. This is an ontological statement
> about what is in the world that would be unintelligible and
> nonsensical to Carnap.
I am not convinced that it would be nonsense. As for physical objects
being paradigmatically real, yes, they set the standard by example, I would
say. But is this talk of ontological foundations, or just guides by which
to judge our theories?
> > Concerning Carnap, I think you are
> > making far too much of his "methodological" commitments. Note that he
> > considered himself a "methodological solipsist" as well as a
> > "methodological phenomenalist". Would you conclude that Carnap
> > believed himself to be the only existing mind? Carnap was no more a
> > metaphysical phenomenalist than he was a metaphysical solipsist. Here
> > he makes the distinction explicitly, "Even before I came to Vienna, I
> > emphasized in my book _Der logische Aufbau_ that, although I
> > constructed the language on a phenomenalistic basis, taking sense-data
> > or experiences as starting points, this construction did not imply an
> > acceptance of the metaphysical thesis of phenomenalism." (_Philosophy
> > of Rudolf Carnap_, p. 863.)
>
> ##### You are only proving my point. Carnapian methodology is such
> that belief in ontological theories is pointless or senseless, in that
> ontological statements are not even about the world, but are mere
> linguistic proposals. In contrast, Quine can believe and even have
> unswerving belief in the ontological statements he regards as true
> because for him ontological statements are about the world, and
> empirical evidence is relevant to belief or disbelief in them. It is
> precisely because I would not conclude that Carnap did not actually
> believe in solipsism, and given his theory of frameworks, logically
> could not believe in it as true about the world, any more than he did
> not and logically could not believe in phenomenalism or physicalism,
> that I see him as a mere methodologist and therefore sharply different
> from Quine.
> If I were making too much of Carnap's methodological commitments
> as you claim, I would be making him a modified realist when he is
> not. If you want to make Carnap out to be similar to Quine, you should
> be claiming the opposite, that I am making too little of Carnap's
> methodological commitments because you think he really is a modified
> realist like Quine.
To clarify, I meant not that his commitments should be doubted. Carnap
never called himself a phenomenalist, only a methodological
phenomenalist. Never a solipsist, only a methodological solipsist. It is
critical that we understand what this qualifier was meant to express. My
interpretation is that, a priori, he acted epistemologically as a
phenomenalist or solipsist would, but that a posteriori, his commitments
would change. Implicitly, instead of a phenomenalism, he would conclude
with physicalism, and instead of solipsism, he would believe in other
minds. The reason he didn't outright adopt these positions metaphysically
was basically his opposition to metaphysics. He thought it was meaningless
to adopt any position a priori. He only adopted, provisionally,
phenomenalism and solipsism as epistemological starting points if you will,
because they seemed ideally free of metaphysical baggage and because he had
to start somewhere.
Quine's innovation was to start in the middle, thereby obviating the
necessity for "methodological" commitments. Quine's "method", if you will,
was just as physicalist and realist as his conclusion, but not because he
had the a priori metaphysical commitments that Carnap lacked, rather it was
because he didn't start with the a priori, preferring to deny its
availability altogether.
> > Returning to the main question: How was Carnap any less serious about
> > his ontological commitments? How was Quine more so? While I agree
> > that Carnap's commitment to physical objects was "merely" provisional,
> > from this it doesn't follow that Carnap was any less, or Quine any
> > more, serious about their ontological commitments. Physical objects
> > are vital to Quine's philosophical views and they are not similarly
> > vital to Carnap's philosophical views. However, Carnap, unlike Quine,
> > regarded his philosophical views as separable from and prior to his
> > scientific views. It may seem that Quine is more centrally committed
> > to physical objects than Carnap when only Carnap allows for a neutral
> > philosophical stance from which such a commitment has not been made.
> > It would be a mistake, however, to think that for this reason Quine's
> > commitment is any greater or more serious than Carnap's. Quine's
> > commitment to physical objects is *identical* to Carnap's. It is
> > motivated and defended by the empirical science of physics, no more
> > and no less. Quine differs only in not allowing for a philosophy
> > prior to empirically motivated ontological commitments. For Quine,
> > this is not a recognition that an ontological commitment to substance
> > is prior to anything else, and in particular prior to basic physics
> > and psychology. Rather, it is a denial that there is any prior first
> > philosophy at all.
>
> ##### This is a misunderstanding. Carnap does not regard "his
> philosophical views as separable from and prior to his scientific
> views." Rather, Carnap repudiates ontological views, as asserted by
> ontological statements purporting to be about the world, as literally
> nonsensical.
You're right, but I was referring to philosophical views other than
ontology. I was referring to his views on language, meaning, evidence,
truth, etc., even his views of being, but only in the abstract, since he
didn't make any a priori (read: metaphysical) ontogical commitments.
> > Who are the neo-Quineans? I wonder whether I would fall in
> > with this group.
>
> ##### I'm now too far away from the secondary literature on Quine to
> try to specify names. I would look to major pragmatist-irrealists who
> develop Quinean issues, for example "twin worlds" examples as a means
> of discussing what Quine would call empirical equivalence.
Let me know if any names come to mind. I have _Twin Earth Chronicles_ in
case there's something in there.
> > And yet, if no one is, in fact, a radical relativist one can only
> > wonder what is the point of the classification. You may as well write
> > a book arguing that no great philosopher was truly ever a radical
> > skeptic.
>
> ##### Again, a classificatory concept's application is always
> informative even if nobody in fact falls under it. But there are
> radical relativists. More importantly, there are great analysts who
> are mistakenly thought to be radical relativists, who are taken as
> models to be emulated, and who are taken as providing foundational
> justification for the genuine radical relativities of the later
> philosophers who believe they are following in their footsteps. In my
> opinion, this is a big scholarly mistake that needs correcting,
> especially about Wittgenstein but also about Quine. The point of my
> book is to show that these great analysts are not fully understood
> apart from their realist aspects, and that the basic themes of their
> forms of modified realism develop out of the modified realisms of
> Frege and Russell, which in turn has highly generic origins in
> traditional ontology. You may find no point to that, but other people
> have found my book's message unbelievable and too hard to accept
> (Arthur Falk), or on the upbeat side, a major revision of our
> understanding of the analytic tradition (Bob Barnard). But my hope is
> that in retrospect, years from now, people will see my scholarly
> interpretations as not only true but so obvious that there *should*
> have been no need to write the book in the first place. Of course,
> what is obvious to someone who has actually read a great deal of
> Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine might not be obvious to
> others.
Well, I've only read about half of Russell and Frege, but just about all of
Wittgenstein and Quine, excluding whatever Wittgenstein remains
untranslated into English. From what I had read, it seemed clear that all
were realists of some moderate variety or other. If this is surprising to
anyone, then I suppose your book needs to be widely read. I am less sure
of how easily these views connect with the metaphysical realism that
preceeded the analytical period, but on this point I really don't have the
background.
> ##### I'm glad you raised the question of how Quine and Carnap differ
> in how they construe the whole enterprise of ontology, since your
> raising it is a sure sign that more explanation is needed by everyone!
> Pleae allow me to elaborate on Carnap and Quine.
> There are only three essays of any real importance: Carnap's
> "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology," which Quine singles out as
> highlighting especially clearly what Quine is criticizing in his major
> critique of Carnap on ontology, "Carnap's Views on Ontology," and "Two
> Dogmas on Empiricism," which stated Quine's critique of Carnap's
> analytic-synthetic distinction, which critique is the basis of Quine's
> critique of Carnap on ontology in "Carnap's Views on Ontology."
> Everything else, including Quine's robust realism, rests on Quine's
> views in "Two Dogmas" and "Carnap's Views."
> There are at least seven main reasons why Quine is a modified
> realist and Carnap is not.
I know these essays well, and have just now reread "Carnap's Views on
Ontology". The other two should be fresh enough.
> First, Quine expressly affirms that he is a robust realist, and
> goes into abundant detail on the point. You won't find any such
> affirmations linguistically permissible to Carnap, I think for obvious
> reasons.
Perhaps not so obvious. For Carnap, it goes without saying that we are all
realists when it comes finally to scientific theory. Since he is at such
pains to show that metaphysical claims are meaningless, he would
understandably hesitate to claim robust realism, lest he be mistaken for a
metaphysical realist.
Quine, on the other hand, handily disavows traditional metaphysics as
easily as he holds to "robust realism". Only, it must be noticed that for
Quine, unlike for Carnap's targetted metaphysicians, this realism is
supported by physics.
> Second, for at least 21 years Quine not only admitted robustly
> real entities, but he admitted some as more real than others. He found
> physical objects paradigmatically real and logico-mathematical objects
> real only by analogy. This is slam dunk modified realism, and broadly
> speaking along very traditional lines following Aristotle. See my
> book, p. 267. But an analogical degrees-of-reality ontology, asserted
> in an ontological statement construed as being about the world, would
> be anathema to Carnap, who would find any such talk literally
> nonsensical.
That logico-mathematical objects are real only by analogy does ring a
bell. Maybe I do remember reading this. However, again I ask whether this
reification by analogy results in a lesser status of being. I don't think
so. Rather, he was just detailing the process by which, starting with
hard-line nominalism, one yet must accept some abstract entities.
> Third, four main positively realist aspects of Quine can be
> documented (my book, pp. 266-69). As elaborations of Quine's robust
> realism, they too would be impermissible to Carnap.
I'll save this point for whenever I read the book.
> Fourth, Quine has a realist private language-argument because he
> carries it through to its realist conclusion, but Carnap does not and
> cannot.
I grant that Carnap does not arrive at his realism via a private-language
argument. And yet, he arrives.
> Fifth, Quine can and does believe some ontological statements are
> true about the world, because for him all ontological statements have
> some minimal empirical content. (This includes the degrees-of-reality
> ontology, the four main realist aspects, and the realist conclusion of
> the private language argument.)
"Degrees-of-reality" ontology?
> But Carnap cannot and does not believe
> many ontological statements are true (*or* false) about the world,
> because for him such statements, construed as being about the world,
> are literally nonsensical on his verificationist theory of
> meaning. The best Carnap can do for such statements is treat them as
> analytic truths which are not about the world, but which are covert
> linguistic proposals which are part of the linguistic framework we
> accept for talking about the world. Carnap, "Empiricism, Semantics,
> and Ontology."
This applies only to the external questions. There are also internal
questions of the form, "Are there so-and-so's?" He would call these
ontological questions, but perhaps we can.
> Sixth, Carnap makes "There are physical objects," which is on its
> face a synthetic a posteriori statement, into an analytic a priori
> truth-- and true depending only on our choice of "linguistic
> framework"! I see that as preposterous. Quine, in contrast, correctly
> makes "There are physical objects" an ontological statement to which
> empirical evidence is relevant. What I see as preposterous in Quine is
> his making even "There are numbers" an ontological statement to whose
> truth-value empirical evidence is relevant.
I consider it no accident that you find preposterousness in both Carnap and
Quine along such similar lines. I, by contrast, find nothing disagreeable
or preposterous about either claim. I only distance myself from Carnap's
due to my not subscribing to the a/s distinction which is what underwrites
the whole internal/external distinction to begin with. To the degree,
however, that it makes sense to speak of truths, analytic in degree, I also
agree with Carnap.
> Seventh and underlying all the rest, the basis for Carnap's
> anti-realism is the analytic-synthetic distinction. Quine expressly
> rejects that distinction, and expressly rejects Carnap's anti-realism
> on that basis, though remaining otherwise similar to Carnap in
> outlook. See Quine, "Carnap's Views on Ontology" on this radical
> rejection of Carnap's position. The distinction is the basis of
> Carnap's distinction between "external" and "internal" questions,
> which I emphasize in my book. I did not think it necessary to mention
> the analytic-synthetic distinction, because the connection is so
> express and obvious, and gets too far away from my mission of showing
> *that* Quine is a realist, by getting too far into the *why*.
I agree, citing the very same essay, that the a/s distinction is
underwriting their differences. I only disagree that Carnap is anti-realist.
Rodrigo <Van...@yahoo.com>
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T P Uschanov
> Well, I've only read about half of Russell and Frege, but just
> about all of Wittgenstein and Quine, excluding whatever
> Wittgenstein remains untranslated into English. From what
> I had read, it seemed clear that all were realists of some
> moderate variety or other.
I think that if asked whether he was a realist or not, Wittgenstein
himself would have been liable to dismiss the dispute between realists
and anti-realists as one of mere "war cries" (compare his discussion
of solipsists and realists in Zettel, secs. 413-414).
In her paper, "Realism and the Realistic Spirit," Cora Diamond has
suggested that Wittgenstein wanted to replace both realism and anti-
realism with what she calls "the realistic spirit". The paper is for
the most part a gloss on Wittgenstein's remark "Not empiricism and yet
realism in philosophy, that is the hardest thing. (Against Ramsey)"
(Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, part 6, sec. 23).
Diamond reads this as showing that for Wittgenstein, empiricism and
realism are two sides of the same coin, viz., failing to look and see
whether the grammar of ordinary language commits one to any substantive
metaphysical doctrine (the answer, for Diamond's Wittgenstein, is of
course "no"). To put it shortly, the realistic spirit is a "realism"
in Webster's sense 1 ("concern for fact or reality and rejection of
the impractical and visionary") and accordingly accuses supporters of
"realism" in Webster's sense 2 ("a doctrine that universals exist
outside the mind"), e.g. Wittgenstein's friend Ramsey, of failing
to be realistic in sense 1 in their excessive concern for sense 2.
I don't know whether you would extend your notion of "realism of
some moderate variety or other" to include this kind of realism,
but it would certainly be nice to be able to discuss this further.
T P Uschanov
University of Helsinki
<tusc...@cc.helsinki.fi>
P.S. Another hint for those seeking on-line versions of classics:
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Mind, Philosophical Quarterly, Noűs, etc. Needless to say, I have
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Rodrigo Vanegas
>some moderate variety or other" to include this kind of realism, ...
No, I wouldn't. The indications are that you, Wittgenstein, Diamond, and
Webster, are all talking about traditional metaphysical realism. It is
precisely realism about universals that calls for moderation. A more
moderate realism requires only an ontological independence of things from
mind. What did Wittgenstein have to say about universals? By not
admitting them at all, one could have it both ways.
At 08:01 AM 1/27/2001 -0600, Kurt Wischin wrote:
>To me 'There are rocks even if we have no conceptualization of rocks'
>sounds like a senseless statement. By means of what would we judge it to
>be true? The only way it seems to me we can make a statement like this,
>would be to define some artificial language that is contained in normal
>English and for which normal English functions as metalanguage. Then the
>statement 'There are rocks' would be true independent of our
>conceptualizations in our artificial language, if we define it the right
>way (supposing we have no problem to say what the right way is), and given
>that 'There are rocks' is a meaningful statement in ordinary English.
>
>The counterfactual statement in a counterfactual world can only mean, that
>there would be rocks, even if we had no conceptualization of them, in that
>counterfactual world. And we can say this, because in the real world we DO
>have conceptualizations of rocks. But in the real world, such a statement
>seems to make no sense. I do not think that the distinction between use
>and mention can bring us around that obstacle.
I haven't understood your objection just yet.
A few reactions: (1) The sentence "There are rocks even if we have no
conceptualization of rocks" is at least false, and maybe also senseless,
but the statement in question is another, namely, "There would be rocks
even if there were no conceptualization of rocks", which you do consider
later. (2) The counterfactual statement is *about* a counterfactual world,
not *in* a counterfactual world. (3) Yes, we can say it because in the
actual world we do have conceptualizations of rocks. Why, again, doesn't
it make sense in the actual world?
>I believe Hans-Johann Glock says in some place "Ontology is a hopeless
>business", at least, if it tries to get rid of the limits language imposes
>on us, I feel inclined to add.
I agree. But I am not trying to be rid of limits. Rather, I am trying to
show how we do not so easily exceed them.
>I'm sorry, if I misunderstood the point of your argument.
>
>I am neither a full-time philosophy student, nor a philosopher. Just a
>simple guy trying to make up his mind on some difficult issues.
Just like me.
Rodrigo <Van...@yahoo.com>
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