Bradley, D (2018) Carnap’s epistemological critique of metaphysics. Synthese, 195 (5). pp. 2247-2265. ISSN 0039-7857
Abstract
Many who take a dismissive attitude towards metaphysics trace their view back to Carnap’s ‘Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology’ (1950a). But the reason Carnap takes a dismissive attitude to metaphysics is a matter of controversy. I will argue that no reason is given in ‘Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology’, and this is because his reason for rejecting metaphysical debates was given in ‘Pseudo-Problems in Philosophy’ (1928). The argument there assumes verificationism, but I will argue that his argument survives the rejection of verificationism. The root of his argument is the claim that metaphysical statements cannot be justified; the point is epistemic, not semantic. I will argue that this remains a powerful challenge to metaphysics that has yet to be adequately answered.
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Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2017, The Author(s). This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
Keywords: | Carnap; Confirmation; Prior probability |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (Leeds) > School of Philosophy (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number EU - European Union 656441 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 22 Feb 2017 10:36 |
Last Modified: | 23 Jun 2023 22:24 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Verlag |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s11229-017-1335-x |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:112624 |
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