Carnap, Syntax & Inferentialism

APSE-IVC Talks
The Institute Vienna Circle and the Unit for Applied Philosophy of Science and Epistemology APSE (of the Department of Philosophy of the Universtiy of Vienna) are jointly organising a series of talks this term

Date: 25/03/2021

Time: 15h00

Online Plattform: The meeting will be online via ZOOM | Talks in Philosophy of Science and Epistemology PSE

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Abstract:

During his Vienna Circle years, Carnap was devoted to his study of logical syntax of language. It was only later, under the influence of Tarski, that he turned his attention also to semantics. This development is often seen as his awakening from an unwarranted semantics-blindness.

However, from the viewpoint of current inferentialism it can be seen also very differently: as a foresightful herald of the inferentialistic views, which Carnap, unfortunately later abandoned. So was Carnap originally a (proto)inferentialist? In the talk I anatomize Carnap's construal of "syntax" to conclude that as Carnap's logical syntax focused the relation of inference, his analyses did significantly contribute to the studies of inferential structure of language and hence to inferentialism. Yet, I claim, Carnap was never an inferentialist in the sense of the conviction that the study of inference can replace semantics. He always thought that logical syntax leaves something aside (though there are ways in which we can approach this something in an indirect way)."