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16 - Syntax and truth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2012

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Summary

It is my firm conviction that, if ever a history of the rational philosophy of the earlier half of this century should be written, this book [Carnap's The Logical Syntax of Language] ought to have a place in it second to none. … It was through this book that the philosophical world, to the west of Poland, was first introduced to the method of analysing languages in a “metalanguage,” and of constructing “object-languages” – a method whose significance for logic and the foundations of mathematics cannot be overrated; and it was in this book that the claim was first made, and, I believe, completely substantiated, that this method was of the greatest importance for the philosophy of science.

Popper, Conjectures and Refutations

We now know what Carnap knew early in 1931 when his thoughts on Wittgensteinian grammar and metamathematics finally converged. The product of that fusion was The Logical Syntax of Language, a book that displayed a new theory of mathematical knowledge and offered it as a model for epistemology.

The single most decisive stimulus to the train of thought that culminated in that book was Gödel's 1931 paper on the incompleteness of formal theories of arithmetic, “Uber unentscheidbare Sätze,” which contains a discovery whose intellectual significance was comparable to Einstein's relativity theory.

The relevance of Gödel's conclusions to Hilbert's program are widely acknowledged. But its relevance to what one might call “Wittgenstein's program“ was no less decisive.

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The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap
To the Vienna Station
, pp. 285 - 305
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1991

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  • Syntax and truth
  • J. Alberto Coffa
  • Book: The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap
  • Online publication: 05 March 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139172240.018
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  • Syntax and truth
  • J. Alberto Coffa
  • Book: The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap
  • Online publication: 05 March 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139172240.018
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Syntax and truth
  • J. Alberto Coffa
  • Book: The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap
  • Online publication: 05 March 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139172240.018
Available formats
×