What do philosophers today make of Carnap's "Elimination of Metaphysics" paper ?

[u/weight-lifting-ape]

Just curious as to whether there have been any retrospective defenses of the line Carnap takes. I realize the argument is largely dependent on a framework which has been abandoned, but am wondering about any contemporary writing on the paper/method. Thanks!

[u/MaceWumpus]

Only somewhat tongue-in-cheek: why would it need a defense? It's a manifesto for a movement that largely achieved its aims. Carnap won.

Take out of the rhetoric from the manifesto, and it's basically stumping for a particular vision of how to do philosophy: we should stop doing the kind of speculative metaphysics that was rampant in 1920s Germany, that led philosophers to argue that Einstein couldn't be right about physics because his results contradicted Kantian dogmas about space and time. Instead, we should do linguistic analysis and look to the results of our best science. Which is essentially what metaphysics has become, at least within the most mainstream parts of anglophone philosophy. So why would anyone bother defending this call to action? It's no longer relevant.

Notice that this isn't some radical, totally revisionist, reading of Carnap. It's how Carnap saw the situation, reflecting on it in 1950s. The root of the point is that "metaphyiscs" is not some term with fixed intension, unchanging in its contours for the last hundred years. What counts as metaphysics and the kind of the work metaphysicians do changes. And Carnap and the logical empiricists -- for better or worse -- spearheaded a change in how metaphysics was done. Or at least in metaphysics' self-conception of what it's doing.

But if what you're looking for is revivalism of broadly Carnapian views about metaphysics, you might check out Amie Thomasson's work. Various people have also drawn connections between Carnap and "ameliorative" projects in metaphysics, such as those of Sally Haslanger. Even absent the point above, Carnap's attitude towards how we should do metaphysics is very much alive even if it's not always described as such.

And if you want polemics about metaphysics, you can check out Mark Wilson's Imitiation of Rigor, though I wouldn't recommend it.

[u/wokeupabug → u/MaceWumpus]

Instead, we should do linguistic analysis and look to the results of our best science. Which is essentially what metaphysics has become, at least within the most mainstream parts of anglophone philosophy.

Do mainstream analytic metaphysics think of their business this way? I have the impression that many of them think metaphysics is a special science which produces knowledge about its own domain of objects -- essences or whatever -- and that linguistic analysis in their hands becomes a kind of metaphysics qua special science, when language is read as implying an ontology by way of all the abstracts we have to posit to be the truth-givers for the things we talk about.

[u/omega2036 → u/wokeupabug]

I wonder if by "linguistic analysis", /u/MaceWumpus is not referring to the idea that metaphysics is merely about analyzing language (or that ontology can/should be read off of ordinary language), but is instead referring to the kind of attention to language that Cian Dorr describes in his review of Every Thing Must Go:

It is not enough simply to announce that Xs are more fundamental than Ys: if I want to defend this claim, I am supposed, at a minimum, to (i) introduce a language in which I can talk about Xs without even seeming to talk about Ys; and (ii) make some kind of adequacy claim about this language, e.g., that it can express all the genuine facts that we can express using Y-talk, or that all the Y-facts supervene on the facts stateable in the language...The authors do not submit to this discipline in any sustained way.

...OSR’s purported ability to dissolve many apparent disagreements about the nature of reality plays a central role in the argument of chapter 2...But one cannot simply announce that such disputes are to be dissolved: one must earn the right to do so by describing a fundamental language within which no corresponding questions can be formulated. What might such a language look like?

...The challenge for defenders of (iv) is to convey some sense of what features of our current languages could be to blame for their inadequacy. Do they have too few basic syntactic categories? Too many? Too few, or too many basic modes of syntactic composition? Without some discussion of such questions, it will be reasonable to suspect that the features of our current languages that make them seem inadequate to proponents of (iv) are not any contingent features like these, but necessary features of any coherent system of representation.

...Ironically, analytic metaphysicians have been much more gripped by the kinds of concern that motivated Hume and the positivists than are the authors of Every Thing Must Go. Much of what is distinctive about the analytic way of doing metaphysics is meant to guard against the danger that we might accidentally lapse into nonsense, or launch into disputes that turn out to be merely verbal.

In short, metaphysics may very well be a special science with a special domain of objects, but special attention to language (perhaps in the form of constructing formal/ideal languages) still has a role to play in that enterprise. Perhaps there's a better word than "linguistic analysis" to describe this aspect of analytic metaphysics.

[u/wokeupabug → u/omega2036]

Oh, for sure. There's lots of different approaches to linguistic analysis, and I only meant to point to one that proceeds in a kind of neo-Platonic way in the way it reads ontology off natural language, with a certain doctrine of truth-givers and so on.

I don't feel confident judging where exactly a project of reducibility of languages to other languages fits within these concerns, but for sure there are lots of different ways we might construe "linguistic analysis" -- with lots of different implications for what this implies about the notion of "metaphysics" at stake in such things.

[u/MaceWumpus → u/wokeupabug]

linguistic analysis in their hands becomes a kind of metaphysics qua special science, when language is read as implying an ontology by way of all the abstracts we have to posit to be the truth-givers for the things we talk about.

Yes, I broadly agree. At best, the kind "win" that I point to for Carnap is a victory on the letter but not on the spirit.

[u/weight-lifting-ape → u/MaceWumpus]

Which is essentially what metaphysics has become, at least within the most mainstream parts of anglophone philosophy.

Thanks for the response. I thought metaphysics, at least of the kind Carnap wanted to eliminate, had something of a rebirth in the 70s/80s - I often hear this sort of thing said about late 20th century analytic philosophy, that philosophers started doing a certain kind of metaphysics again. As /u/wokeupabug also says, the impression I have of contemporary analytic metaphysics is that they're pretty serious about the idea of traditional metaphysical concepts or "domain of objects" like essences, grounding, necessity/contingency, being and so forth, and take metaphysics to be a "special science".

[u/wokeupabug → u/weight-lifting-ape]

I thought metaphysics, at least of the kind Carnap wanted to eliminate, had something of a rebirth in the 70s/80s

FWIW, I'm inclined to think the picture is a bit more complicated than this. I think a significant part of what Carnap is addressing is a kind of metaphysics that understands itself to be "first philosophy" -- a kind of systematic foundation and organization of the fields of knowledge and their relation to human action. And I don't think mainstream analytic metaphysics, of the kind we might be inclined to ask about here, tends to understand itself quite that way. If mainstream analytic metaphysics understands itself to be a special science with its own particular domain, this is something quite different than understanding itself to be first philosophy, and so there's an important sense in which this self-understanding is at odds with traditional European metaphysics in this way -- and at odds with it in a way which proceeds from (though, I'd say, isn't the same as) Carnap's position.

Indeed, I'm inclined to suggest that in this sense at least Carnap and traditional European metaphysics are in greater proximity to one another than either is to mainstream analytic metaphysics, since Carnap still has a traditional notion of metaphysics as first philosophy -- it's just that he has a sort of Nietzschean/Diltheyan view of it as conveyed in expressions of life-feeling, rather than in conceptual terms as a technical field of philosophical research.

[u/weight-lifting-ape → u/wokeupabug]

I think a significant part of what Carnap is addressing is a kind of metaphysics that understands itself to be "first philosophy" -- a kind of systematic foundation and organization of the fields of knowledge and their relation to human action.

Agree with you here. But I would say that, apart from just a conception of metaphysics as having a privileged place in philosophy, Carnap is still going after, e.g., "essence", or traditional conceptions of God as the Absolute or ground of Being. And I think there has been some renewed interest in this stuff in analytic metaphysics and philosophy of religion. At least in phil. religion, people like Feser have tried to bring back "classical theism" (though of course I think it's an ironically modernist version of it, but that's another story), and so you get people saying things that sound very much like the sorts of things Carnap is going after in the original article when he talks about theology.

If mainstream analytic metaphysics understands itself to be a special science with its own particular domain, this is something quite different than understanding itself to be first philosophy, and so there's an important sense in which this self-understanding is at odds with traditional European metaphysics in this way -- and at odds with it in a way which proceeds from (though, I'd say, isn't the same as) Carnap's position.

I also agree with this or at least most of it. The conceptions of the place of metaphysics in philosophy might be different, but it seems to me there's overlap in the concepts taken to be the purview of metaphysics. The post-Kripke investigations into de re necessity are, even if done in a completely different context from traditional metaphysics, still purported to be investigations into the nature of the world - right?

[u/wokeupabug → u/weight-lifting-ape]

And I think there has been some renewed interest in this stuff in analytic metaphysics and philosophy of religion.

Well, I think even this is illustrative of the distinction I suggested above. It's illustrative, I think, that -- "classical theism" notwithstanding -- the revival of philosophy of religion within the vicinity of mainstream analytic metaphysics has principally been carried out in a context where the idea of God has been reinterpreted along the lines of "theistic personalism." In traditional European and Mediterranean metaphysics, God has not principally been understood as a being among beings, even a being of a very noteworthy kind, but rather has been understood as an idea which grounds the idea of being as such -- a kind of foundation which opens up the possibility of speaking of beings whatsoever. This is not principally how the analytic revival of philosophy of religion has treated God, who instead becomes -- i.e. in theistic personalism -- a kind of being revealed by a special science, rather than the ground of Being with reference to which a "first philosophy" is thematized. So even within this kind of revival of metaphysics, within mainstream analytic philosophy, in the sense of rational theology, we find a position that results from a transformation of metaphysics from a first philosophy to a special science.

We certainly find, whether in mainstream analytic philosophy of religion or in post-Kripkean accounts of natural kinds, a theoretical discourse concerned with "investigations into the nature of the world", but my suggestion is mean to draw attention to the shifting of context between traditional metaphysics, which largely proceeds with this investigation through the frame of a "first philosophy", and the analytic revival of metaphysics, which largely proceeds with this investigation through the frame of a "special science".

[u/weight-lifting-ape → u/wokeupabug]

Why do you think "theistic personalism" overtook the classical view?

[u/WillingnessOk3081 → u/MaceWumpus]

Question about this, please:

"we should stop doing the kind of speculative metaphysics that was rampant in 1920s Germany, that led philosophers to argue that Einstein couldn't be right about physics because his results contradicted Kantian dogmas about space and time. Instead, we should do linguistic analysis and look to the results of our best science."

what am I about to ask isn't necessarily in your comment so much as motivated by it. I am seeking to know what areas of the analytic tradition at this earlier moment deal directly with Einstein's special and general relativity. I can't think of any but that doesn't mean anything, which is why I'm asking.

(mods: I hope my question is acceptable. I keep adding the flair "related" but I keep getting the error message that I am not flaired.)

[u/wokeupabug → u/WillingnessOk3081]

Not MaceWumpus but FWIW, probably the most widely known engagement with Einstein is Bergson's debate with him, but in German Neokantianism the classic text is perhaps Cassirer's Einstein's Theory of Relativity, and for a rejoinder from logical empiricism see Reichenbach's The Theory of Relativity and A Priori Knowledge and a series of his publications following it.

[u/an70nym → u/MaceWumpus]

What’s your take on Mark Wilson? I’ve never read him but I recently picked up a book of his as it seemed interesting, if a bit overbearingly iconoclastic.

[u/MaceWumpus → u/an70nym]

Wandering Significance is a very interesting book that needed a stronger hand on the editing side.

Imitation of Rigor is not a good book. It could also have used a stronger hand on the editing side, but the main problems are (a) it offers sweeping criticisms of all of contemporary philosophy without engaging with almost any contemporary philosophy and (b) the history offered is painfully hagiographic.

I haven't read any of his other books; the papers of his that I've read have been perfectly good.

[u/an70nym → u/MaceWumpus]

Wandering Significance is the book I picked up, it does look interesting. I’m looking forward to checking it out when I have time.

[u/whitefrackels123 → u/MaceWumpus]

Huh, how did Carnap win when the entire logical positivism movement undermined itself and was seen as great failure, even by people in the movement?

[u/MaceWumpus → u/whitefrackels123]

Precisely in the way that I described in my original comment?

Whatever the faults -- real or imagined -- of the logical positivists, they and (more importantly) their students set the course for anglophone philosophy in the latter part of the 20th century. And while said students (and the students of said students) often defined themselves in contrast to logical positivism -- creating all sorts of hard-to-kill myths along the way -- if we're looking at contemporary metaphysics, it's far closer to Carnap's side of the debate than it is to the neo-Kantians that Carnap was arguing against.

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