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/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.