Abstract
In his “Epistemology Naturalized,” Quine embraces a form of Humeanism. In this paper, I try to work out the significance of this Humeanism. In particular, I argue that it represents an anti-metaphysical position that Quine shares with Carnap. Crucial to my account is that contrary to much contemporary thinking on metaphysics, Carnap, and Quine following him, recognize both an ontological and an epistemological sense of metaphysics. As commentators have frequently acknowledged, Carnap and Quine disagree over rejecting metaphysics in the ontological sense. I will argue, though, that they agree in rejecting metaphysics in their shared epistemological sense of the term.
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Notes
Quine’s empiricist reading of Carnap has since been treated to a good deal of criticism, particularly as a way to read the Aufbau. For examples of this, see Friedman (1999), ch. 5, and (2006); and Richardson, (1990), (1997b), and (1998). These reading emphasize the neo-Kantian origins of the Aufbau, and Friedman especially reads Carnap in general as being part of a Kantian philosophical tradition. I think this approach to Carnap is, on the whole, correct. I do not think my urging of a Humean component to Carnap’s philosophy is in conflict with these readings. Rather, I think my paper merely brings to light another aspect of Carnap’s work and an important connection to Quine.
This point has been made in various ways by various authors. It first came to my attention in Dreben’s (1990), where he aims, he says, to “depict the quintessential Quine, the sort of metaphysician Quine was and continues to be. And I use the word ‘metaphysician’ deliberately” (82). Later in the article he makes the memorable exclamation, “We shall never know if Carnap groaned, sotto voce, ‘Ontology? Just what did my young friend “reap” in Prague?” (85). Hylton describes what he calls Quinean metaphysics, or metaphysics naturalized, contrasting it with Carnap’s approach, where again, Quine focuses on ontological concerns; see Hylton (2004), sec. 3, Hylton (2007), ch. 9, and Hylton (2014a), 156–61. More recently this point has been made by Janssen-Lauret in her (2017). Distinctive of her view are the connections she draws between Quine and David Lewis concerning causality. Verhaegh makes the point in his (2018), ch. 3, building on Hylton’s notion of naturalized metaphysics.
There are indications that Quine held something like this view before meeting Carnap too, but he only comes to characterize it as anti-metaphysical after meeting Carnap.
In his 1935, Philosophy and Logical Syntax, Carnap attaches names to the various principles he identifies, for example, Thales with water and Plato with form (16).
See, for example, his Philosophy and Logical Syntax, Ch. III; and The Logical Syntax of Language, Section 72–81.
For example, major works of the period such as Logical Syntax of Language and “Testability and Meaning” focus much more on epistemological issues such as proof and justification in the mathematical and empirical sciences than on concerns over their ontologies. I think Carnap believes that ontological issues have largely been vanquished by this time, though he will be forced to return to them, largely at Quine’s prodding, in his 1950 “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology.”.
Some version of this view of some epistemological approaches as metaphysics goes back at least to the Aufbau, though there Carnap’s aim is not so much the more radical complete rejection of metaphysics but neutrality among metaphysical positions; see Carnap, (1928), Section 175–182. For more on Carnap’s views on metaphysics in the Aufbau, see Michael Friedman’s “The Aufbau and the Rejection of Metaphysics.”.
Some of the texts from this period, though relevant to this point, I will discuss later in Sect. III in connection with Carnap’s Humeanism.
After “The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language,” Carnap tends to mention knowledge gained by pure thought or intuition less than he did in previous works. It is prominent in, for example, the Aufbau as well as in the co-authored, with Hans Hahn and Otto Neurath, 1929 Scientific Conception of the World. Perhaps this is because Carnap reports in his 1935 paper “Von der Erkenntnistheorie zur Wissenschaftslogik” that the synthetic a priori has been overcome and replaced with an empiricist epistemology (1935b, p. 36). Exactly when and how this happened is not made clear in Carnap’s account, but this is what he believes. For more on his claim here, see Creath (2004), pp. 280–3.
The full quote comes from The Time of My Life, where Quine reports that at the December 1935 meeting of the American Philosophical Association, “We [himself along with David Wight Prall, Nelson Goodman, and Henry Leonard] moved with Carnap as henchmen through the metaphysicians’ camp. We beamed with partisan pride when he countered a diatribe of Arthur Lovejoy’s in his characteristically reasonable way….” (Quine, 1985, p. 122).
Hylton in his (2001) observes that already in the Carnap lectures, we can see some central points of disagreement between Carnap and Quine, though Quine did not seem aware of them. Quine’s attitude towards the analytic/synthetic distinction in his early work also requires careful understanding. It is true that Quine had misgivings about analyticity, but he did not see this yet as a reason to reject the distinction. Rather, he saw this as a call for further work to be done on the topic and did so himself until sometime in the mid to late 1940s. For more on Quine’s history with the analytic/synthetic distinction see Creath (1987) and Frost-Arnold (2011).
Dreben (1990) draws this point out of these otherwise seemingly purely technical works (81, 84–5).
Carnap reviewed A System of Logistic for Erkenntnis in 1935. Dreben notes, though, that Carnap read Quine charitably and excused Quine’s use of the material mode of speech instead of the more exact formal mode. Carnap also notes, “Of course, Quine himself at no point is seduced through the use of the material mode of speech; however, his formulations in many places are such that some philosophers will attempt to relate them to pseudoquestions” (Dreben, 1990, p. 85 and endnote 52).
One could question whether Quine’s views on ontology really should be characterized as metaphysics, but I will not do so here. I will merely follow Quine’s own conception of his ontological concern.
Remarks such as these are crucial to Janssen-Lauret’s interpretation of Quine as a metaphysical philosopher in her (2017). Reading this paper led me to carefully distinguish between the more traditional ontological sense of metaphysics and Carnap and Quine’s less standard epistemological sense.
Although a version of it was not published until 1960 and then again in 1963.
Quine later remarked, “I now perceive that the philosophically important question about analyticity and the linguistic doctrine of logical truth is not how to explicate them; it is the question rather of their relevance to epistemology” (Quine, 1986, p. 207). Even if he only fully realized this sometime after “Two Dogmas,” Quine always situated the analytic/synthetic distinction in an epistemological context. For more on this point, see Andrew Lugg (2012).
I take it that this is the significance of Quine’s remark that “Appeal to hypothetical languages of an artificially simple kind could conceivably be useful in clarifying analyticity, if the mental or behavioral or cultural factors relevant to analyticity—whatever they may be—were somehow sketched into the simplified model” (Quine, 1951a, p. 36).
See Dear Carnap, 239; and “Carnap’s Positivistic Travail,” 119.
We have seen Carnap suggest intuition in a number of places already. Quine talks instead, for example, of some sort of “a priori insight,” as we saw in “Truth by Convention.” He does mention intuition specifically in his “Lectures on David Hume’s Philosophy” (53–4). Later in his career he tends to talk of clairvoyance. Creath (1990) draws the connection between intuition and clairvoyance and also adds Russellian acquaintance to the list.
At least with regard to current science. Quine is careful to note that even empiricism is revisable in light of new findings; see his (1990), pp. 20–1. Carnap has an analogous position at least in light of the adoption of the principle of tolerance and is careful to note that empiricism is only a proposal for a certain kind of language; see his (1937), p. 33. Also, I am not claiming that Carnap and Quine’s claims about what is unscientific would be convincing to believers in clairvoyance or intuition. I am only trying to make the point that Carnap and Quine are united in rejecting such extra-sensory powers as unscientific, that is, as metaphysical in a pejorative sense.
Many years earlier, in 1947, exactly this issue arose in correspondence between Carnap and Quine. Commenting on a logic manuscript that Quine had sent to Carnap, Carnap stated that an important question that Quine must answer is
What is the nature of questions like: “Are there classes (properties, propositions, real numbers, etc.)?” and of the true answers to them? You call them ontological & even frankly metaphysical. I suppose that this means that you regard them neither as analytic (purely logical) nor as empirical. Are they then synthetic apriori, so that you abandon empiricism? Or what else? More specifically, what is the method of establishing their truth? Supposedly neither purely log. analysis nor the scientific method of confirmation by observation. (Quine and Carnap, 1990, p. 406; my emphasis).
At the time, Quine did not yet have an answer that he was satisfied with. But he suggested, “Perhaps a typical feature of ontological truths is that they are analytic statements of a kind which would be too trivial to invite assertion or dispute except for doubt of disagreement as to adoption or retention of special features of the language on which their truth depends” (Quine and Carnap, 1990, p. 410). In 1948, in “On What There Is,” Quine would maintain the triviality of such truths while dropping all talk of their analyticity (Quine, 1948, p. 10).
The preface to the first edition of this work gives a good summary of this approach.
I do not intend here to fully endorse Quine’s reading of Carnap as the high point of the empiricist tradition, especially with regard to the Aufbau, where I think Friedman and Richardson’s emphasis on Carnap’s neo-Kantian background almost certainly provide us with a more accurate understanding of Carnap. I will in Sect. III, however, endorse one aspect of Quine’s Humean reading of Carnap.
Here, I follow Paul Roth’s interpretative strategy for understanding “Epistemology Naturalized,” which emphasizes that we cannot ignore Quine’s opening the essay by considering the epistemology of mathematics; see his extremely helpful (1999).
A useful way of thinking about Quine’s point here is provided by the title of one of his papers focused specifically on his naturalism: “Naturalism, or Living within One’s Means;” see Quine, (1995).
Hylton, in his (2007), makes this point specifically with regard to induction, remarking that “Of particular interest here is the fact that any justification of our knowledge as a whole would presumably have to appeal to some sort of principle of induction. On Quine’s account, Hume showed that no such principle can be justified by experience; nor does Quine think that a priori justification will fill the gap. Hence: ‘The Humean predicament is the human predicament’ [fn. Excluded]” (83).
I believe that this is the first place that Quine sketches such it a history, though versions of it will appear throughout his works to varying degrees up through at least his 1995 From Stimulus to Science. Indeed, in terms of degree of details and historical context, the 1946 presentation is probably closest to the 1995 presentation in From Stimulus to Science. It is this history, probably most familiar from “Epistemology Naturalized,” that situates Carnap’s Aufbau in a long line of empiricist attempts to come to terms with the external world, the reading of the Aufbau that Friedman and Richardson place their work against.
In the 1946 Hume lectures, Quine gives no account of Berkeley’s commitment to spirit, only noting that Hume rejected it. Just about fifty years later in From Stimulus to Science, rehearsing a version of this same history, Quine explains Berkeley’s view further, remarking, “He admitted souls; we perceive ours. And somehow he admitted God. This done, Berkeley provides for the persistence of things irrespective of whether or when they are perceived by man or beast; for they remain faithfully perceived by God. Berkeley’s disavowal of matter, then, would seem to be a matter of words” (Quine, 1995, p. 5).
Again, Quine is not as explicit as he could be on this point in the Hume lectures. He does make this clear later in both “Epistemology Naturalized,” (71) and in From Stimulus to Science, (5). I should also add that in the Hume lectures, Quine states that Hume also went beyond Locke and Berkeley in rejecting causality as a consequence of empiricism (Quine, 1946a,b, p. 67). This point drops out in the two later works mentioned here. I take it that the rejection of causality was a consequence of the more general point of rejecting substance. Without substance there is just the succession of one sense impression after another.
By the time of Quine’s arrival in Vienna on Sept. 11, 1932, Carnap had already left for Prague. Quine would not meet Carnap in person until March 1933. For details of his trip, see Quine (1985) ch. 15–18.
Carnap published “Pseudoproblems in Philosophy” in 1928, the same year as the Aufbau. In the preface to the second edition of the Aufbau, Carnap describes this slightly later work, written at the end of 1927, as the beginning of his more radical anti-metaphysical position, stating of it that its “condemnation of all theses about metaphysical reality … is more radical than that in the Aufbau, where such theses were merely excluded from the domain of science” (Carnap, 1928, x–xi). Friedman (2007) states that most of the work on the Aufbau was done in the period of 1922–25 before Carnap came directly under the influence of the Vienna Circle and Wittgenstein (132).
Friedman discusses the anti-metaphysical position of the Aufbau in his (2007).
Creath emphasizes that elements of intuition remain even in Frege and Russell’s views on the epistemology of logic and mathematics; see Creath (1990).
I should be careful to emphasize that this is a co-authored work, so we do not know exactly what Carnap contributed to it. It is quite possible that, as one anonymous referee suggested, that the references to Hume came from Neurath. I will show below, however, that regardless of the origins of the Hume references, Carnap continued to include them in nearly all his discussions of his anti-metaphysical standpoint over the next several years. Alan Richardson notes about the work, “Primary authorship for the Vienna Circle’s call to arms is still disputed. Most authorities claim Neurath as the principal author but assert that Hahn and Carnap had veto rights for anything they did not like. The list of historical predecessors for logical empiricism claimed in the work is, I think, misleading. It certainly does not apply in any clear way to Carnap….” (Richardson, 1998, 10, fn. 9). The list of historical predecessors may be misleading, but again, I will just say that Hume is one that Carnap continues to include in his own works in the several years following the manifesto.
This holds for any of the topics listed, not just empiricism and logistic. The others are foundations, aims, and methods of empirical science; axiomatics; and hedonism and positivist sociology.
Both Friedman and Richardson trace the origins of the scientific movement in philosophy—which includes such figures as Helmholtz, various positivists, Husserl, Russell, and the logical empiricists—back to Kant’s philosophy but are careful to note that Kant’s aim was not the rejection of metaphysics but rather to bring it into line with scientific thinking. See, for example, Friedman (2012) and Richardson (1997a). I agree with all of this. My point here is only that Kant does not appear here explicitly as inspiring or representing the anti-metaphysics of Carnap and the Vienna Circle.
Carnap emphasizes this point in various other places as well. For one such statement in the relevant time period, see his (1935c), 36.
Not that this focus was ever entirely absent from his work in the intervening years. It appeared in relation to more specialized topics, and of course Carnap’s most famous, or infamous, paper on the topic, “The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language,” appeared in 1932.
Hume is left out of Carnap’s “The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language,” but this is also published in 1932 before Quine met Carnap. I am more interested in considering the views that Carnap was still developing during the period that Quine first met him.
Logical Syntax of Language provides the full technical working out of Carnap’s anti-metaphysical views, but they are not always as immediately identifiable or digestible in the very technical setting of this work. I take it that many of the surrounding publications are intended to make these anti-metaphysical views more accessible to philosophers lacking the mathematical training to confront Logical Syntax of Language head on.
Carnap quotes this passage in (1934b) on p. 61; and in (1935a) on pp. 34–5. In (1934a), Carnap begins with the same sentence but then just quotes about half of that paragraph continuously. In a letter to Quine, Carnap indicates that the quoted passage was the wrong one, perhaps a mistake made by the translator; see Quine and Carnap, (1991), p. 127. Indeed, in the next issue of Philosophy of Science, a correction is printed with the full quote from Hume used in Carnap’s other works from the period. I should add that Hume is also mentioned in Logical Syntax of Language, though briefly, but it is when Carnap comes to discussing his anti-metaphysical position (Carnap, 1934/1937, p. 280).
I take it that this Humean condition is what is intended by the remark quoted above from the earlier manifesto that “man is the measure of all things.”.
Creath in his (2012), from a slightly different perspective, also emphasizes how close Carnap’s views of the early 1930s were to Quine’s and that they shaped Quine’s understanding of Carnap for the rest of Quine’s career.
Sander Verhaegh reports that John Cooley first introduced Quine to the Aufbau, describing it to Quine as an attempt to work out by way of symbolic logic the empiricist reconstructive project of Russell’s Our Knowledge of the External World. Verhaegh presented this information at the Chicago Central Division Meeting of the APA in February 2020. His paper is now forthcoming as “Carnap and Quine: First Encounters (1932–1935).” I thank an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to this as yet unpublished work of Verhaegh’s. Carnap’s emphasis on Hume in his anti-metaphysical statements then would have only served to reenforce Quine’s preexisting understanding of the Aufbau as a reconstructive project in the empiricist tradition. As I have indicated elsewhere, I think that Quine’s general Humean reading of Carnap is incorrect and that the Aufbau is better understood in its neo-Kantian context. Late in his career, Quine did consider an alternate reading of the Aufbau, particularly at the urging of Neil Tennant, as something other than as a phenomenological reconstructive project but continued to resist this, urging instead that Carnap’s claim that he adopted a phenomenological basis over a physicalistic one as merely a pragmatic decision was only a late concession to criticisms from Neurath. See, for example, Quine (1984), p. 119; Quine (1994), pp. 216–17; and Quine (1995), pp. 15–16.
Here, I am accepting Quine’s criticism uncritically. I want merely to state his view of the situation, not argue for it as being the correct understanding of Carnap’s project as a whole.
Quine cites “the old empiricist Peirce” as holding this view (Quine, 1969b, p. 78).
Again, see the citations in the previous footnote. Carnap (1934/1937) is especially clear on this point.
I thank the anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions. The paper changed significantly as a result of them and is much improved. I also thank the guest editors for their patience and encouragement.
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This article belongs to the topical collection "Humeanisms", edited by Tamás Demeter, László Kocsis, Iulian D. Toader.
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Morris, S. Carnap, Quine, and the humean condition. Synthese 199, 13283–13312 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03376-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03376-1