Carnap's handy bullshit-detector

_db

Rudolf Carnap published a short piece in the 1920's entitled The Elimination of Metaphysics Though Logical Analysis of Language, which, as its title suggests, attempts to disintegrate the rationalist metaphysics at and before his time. His targets were the rather flamboyant metaphysics of Hegel, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Leibniz, and even Kant (as well as others), and he criticized these metaphysics as meaningless or sterile. According to Carnap, these metaphysical theories don't even count as a theory, because they are simply poetic metaphorical fictions.

Carnap explains that for a word to be meaningful, it must be used in a fixed syntax (and elementary statement), and this elementary statement must be able to answer these various questions:

1.) What sentences is S deducible from, and what sentences can be deduced from S?
2.) Under what conditions is S true or false?
3.) How is S to be verified?
4.) What is the meaning of S?

In other words, for a word a and an elementary sentence S(a) in which a occurs:

1.) The empirical criteria for a are known
2.) It is known from what more basic sentences (protocol sentences) S(a) is deduced from
3.) The truth conditions of S(a) are fixed
4.) The method of verification of S(a) is known

When we use the word "God", it derives its meaning from a mythological concept. Gods reside in heaven, or on Mt. Olympus, or what have you, and thus can be empirically investigated and found to be missing. However, once we use the word "God" in the metaphysical sense, we lose all meaning of it. The concept of a metaphysical "God" is dependent upon other metaphysical concepts, like "The Absolute" or "The Unconditioned" or "The Primordial Basis", none of which are able to be meaningful themselves.

If grammatical syntax corresponded with logical syntax, there would be no way of creating pseudo-statements, and thus this kind of metaphysics would not arise. And if the meaning of a word cannot be articulated, or the grammatical syntax not properly assigned, then no question is even asked! It would be like asking "Is the number 7 holy?" or "Is this table teavy?" The hell does teavy even mean?! The metaphysician might reply and say that all things are teavy - in which case it becomes redundant - or say that some things are teavy - in which case that is an empirical claim that still requires some meaning to be able to identify what is teavy and what is not.

So all meaningful questions reside within an internal linguistic scheme (the "rules" of language and meaning), and external questions must only be pragmatic (should we adopt this framework?, etc...). Thus, metaphysical theories are attempting to answer an external question by use of an internal framework, which makes them meaningless.

So Hegel's statement that "pure Being is one and the same as pure Nothing" amounts to just that...nothing. It's gibberish. When we imagine "Being as Nothing" we end up thinking about some kind of vast black void, or a feeling of emptiness. But that is simply poetry. For most metaphysics, then, these statements are pseudo-statements: they bastardize the meaning of a word and use it in a fictional way.

This criticism extends to Kant's "thing-in-itself", Schopenhauer's "Will", Nietzsche's "Will" (although Nietzsche wasn't really that concerned with being rigorous with his metaphysics), and the thought of the vast majority of theologians. These metaphysical concepts have no basis in reality, cannot be verified, and make sense only within an internal "fantasy" land where vague ideas float around and pretend to be legitimate. Our concepts involve us modelling reality - what is not empirical cannot be modelled. Thus any metaphysical modelling ends up being a quasi-empirical fiction involving invisible agents, forces, and other "behind-the-scenes" stuff that, if it were truly behind-the-scenes, would not be able to be modelled.

I'm not sure if Carnap's criticism applies to all metaphysics...surely Plato knew his Allegory was a metaphor but meant to establish a point that could not be explicated by a meaningful word. Or Aristotle or Piece's systematic metaphysics might be meaningful. But I do think that Carnap has a valid point, in that the almost "mystical" metaphysics of the various Rationalist and Idealist camps are meaningless pseudo-statements.

And contrary to the popular belief against Logical Positivism, Carnap's verification principle applies to synthetic statements, not analytic statements, and the verification principle is an analytic statement.

Shawn

fixed syntax (and elementary statement) — darthbarracuda

Those are metaphysical statements unto itself. Remember what happened to logical atomism and logical hinges?

_db

↪Question

If we're to call them metaphysical, then we ought to distinguish between the metaphysics Carnap was criticizing and his apparent "metaphysics" that bears so little resemblance to the aforementioned metaphysics that it might as well be called something else. More like linguistic analysis.

Thorongil

Hegel, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Leibniz, and even Kant — darthbarracuda

Hegel and Leibniz are the only "flamboyant" ones here to me. The other three are all careful immanentists.

The concept of a metaphysical "God" is dependent upon other metaphysical concepts, like "The Absolute" or "The Unconditioned" or "The Primordial Basis", none of which are able to be meaningful themselves. — darthbarracuda

Hence, ignosticism.

surely Plato knew his Allegory was a metaphor but meant to establish a point that could not be explicated by a meaningful word — darthbarracuda

But if he has a "point" capable of being understood then it isn't strictly meaningless....

Carnap's verification principle applies to synthetic statements, not analytic statements, and the verification principle is an analytic statement. — darthbarracuda

"The verification principle" is not a proposition. It becomes one when a predicate is attached, such as, "The verification principle is true." But when you do this, it becomes circular. The truth that the verification principle is true cannot be verified and so cannot be said to be true. This is to say that the verification principle presupposes another principle, the principle of sufficient ground.

apokrisis

So Hegel's statement that "pure Being is one and the same as pure Nothing" amounts to just that...nothing. It's gibberish. When we imagine "Being as Nothing" we end up thinking about some kind of vast black void, or a feeling of emptiness. But that is simply poetry. For most metaphysics, then, these statements are pseudo-statements: they bastardize the meaning of a word and use it in a fictional way. — darthbarracuda

Alternatively, Hegel was making a deeply logical point that Carnap's brand of logic fails to describe.

Carnap's metaphysics presumes all logical possibilities to be crisp or counterfactual. Things are either one or the other. And from that reductionist axiom, all his deductions may proceed.

But Hegel, like Peirce, was introducing the further grounding category of the vague or indeterminate. So pure being and pure nothing were the same in their - logical - absolute lack of determination. A state of everythingness and a state of nothingness are in effect the same in their lack of of any somethingness.

So Hegel was simply pointing out the further category of the indeterminate that grounds all the happy logical apparatus of reductionist logic - the kind of logic that simply then presumes everything that is, does fit its Procrustean binary A/not-A format.

TheWillowOfDarkness

According to Carnap, these metaphysical theories don't even count as a theory, because they are simply poetic metaphorical fictions. — darthbarracuda

Given that metaphysics are fictions, I'd say that Hegel, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant would agree that they don't even count theories to one degree or another. The section of Hegel you quoted alludes to this. What is has less to do with existing states than Nothing? Even the void of space is something.

Carnap is right about metaphysics having nothing to do with the world, but the rationalists in question agree with him about that. While all of them, except Spinoza, misapply the metaphysical fictions they talk as if they talk about the world in some way, they are aware what they are speaking of is not a mere state of existence. Here Carnap is making the mistake of suggesting fictions must mean the same as existing states. As if a metaphysical truth requires empirical properties to mean anything. Carnap is making a category error.

In an effort to tackle the misapplication of metaphysics to the world (which Hegel, Schopenhauer, Leibniz, and Kant do to a degree), he's erroneously concluded the fictions of metaphysics are meaningless.

Nils Loc

What is an example of a useful metaphysical fiction?

Ciceronianus

Well, there's nothing wrong with poetry, and poetry can evoke insights which may be considered philosophical and metaphysical. Philosophy is prosaic by nature, though. Philosophers who try to be poetic in their philosophy necessarily fail as a result. They write something which is neither philosophy nor poetry. Poets can be philosophical, however; Wallace Stevens for example.

The Great Whatever

The desire to limit language to an artificial subset of its expressive power isn't very enchanting, since you have to decide and make up what expressive capacities you want it to have, presumably using a more powerful meta-language for your new impoverished object language. The problem with this is that by the time we're done defining what we can say, we've said so much more, and much more interesting things. The artificial languages philosophers have traditionally been concerned with are just nowhere near as powerful or interesting as natural languages, and the latter's many features that were once considered 'defects,' like vagueness, have arisen as interesting features 'by design' in their own right. It is very hard to model these features formally, even though we all understand them intuitively, and it is hard to see what an artificial language can do for us except recapitulate that intuitive understanding.

You could create a technical language for specific purposes, which is basically what math is. But then, you probably aren't doing what you set out to do, which is limit the expressive power of language that can make metaphysical claims to something manageable and verifiable.

The logical positivist approach is unappealing in that it can only work by stipulating an arbitrary restriction on expressive power externally to that which it's trying to criticize. I agree that many ideas are worthless or gibberish, and am sort of a positivist at heart, but the best thing to do is first ignore these statements if already no one takes them seriously, and second, once they become influential enough to criticize, to do so internally, on their own terms. A positivistic reduction of language just isn't capable of this. To get the expressive power you need to show something is nonsense from the inside out, you need to adopt the expressive powers that our opponents (take themselves to) have.

tom

1.) What sentences is S deducible from, and what sentences can be deduced from S?
2.) Under what conditions is S true or false?
3.) How is S to be verified?
4.) What is the meaning of S? — darthbarracuda

Given general relativity as it was first published it seems.

1.)That GR is not deducible from any sentence.
2.)It is impossible to determine under what conditions GR is true.
3.)GR cannot be verified.
4.)At it's inception, the full meaning of GR was unknown, and still is.

So it seems that science is meaningless.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Logical positivism is dead.

Carnap's handy bullshit-detector

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