Hello and welcome to the third session of restructuring enlightenment from Carnap's outbound to conceptual engineering. I'll hand it over to Reza. Go ahead. Thank you everyone. Hello everyone. Sorry, my apologies for cancelling the previous session. So we are a little bit behind. Nothing. I think it's the third session. But we probably won't take too many questions at the beginning. I mean, of course, you know, there will be a presentation and response to that. But after that, we just delve into the materials right away.
And then, you know, when I feel that we have basically covered good amounts, then I will open it to questions and stuff. So, whose presenter is going to be victim today? I think it's Felipe and Ayman. I think Ayman's presenting first. Yes, okay. First or second, doesn't matter. Do you hear me, guys? Okay. Your voice is a little bit, I don't know, kind of the sound quality is not good. It's not good? Because my microphone is not good. And sorry, it's the best. No, don't worry.
We can still hear you. Yeah, don't worry. And, Philippa, if you want to go, that would be perfect. Because if I remember correctly, no? Okay. Okay. So let me share my screen so you wouldn't have to look at my face. I'm going to talk about his conception of Wittgenstein prison for Carus and Audi.
For that to be more clear, let's talk about Wittgenstein, earlier Wittgenstein himself. So picturing, which is the core idea that plays a role in this review of Carnap's logical syntax. for Vienna Circle and not just for Vienna Circle, for formal logic, probably for formal languages, is a step forward with regard to the status of logic in human knowledge, maybe we could say that, or this epistemological status of logic, because for a long
time, mathematics and logic were the main hindrances to the projects of enlightenment, sorry, empirical, empiricism. And these projects of empiricism always try to find a way to explain how mathematics and logic, but primarily mathematics, is nothing but, first of all, Paul Pierson- Nothing but an axiomatic system that is axiom that is axioms come comes from experience and there are nothing. Paul Pierson- synthetic a priori about them and. Paul Pierson- The second.
requirement for an in-person project with regard to mathematics is that the mathematics is doesn't it doesn't differ from any other mode of reasoning. And it's reasoning based on the known logical rules, the logical laws or features. Frigge and Russell were first to show that yes, mathematics can be actually somehow reduced to logic, but with some, how do you say it, with some not very complete axiomatic system
because both Russell and Seryn and Russell, there are still axioms that are left inefable or unable to be definitely explicated. So the problem still is there for the empiricist project of mathematics. They had hell holes for a savior with regard to the first problem. The first problem, if you remember, I said was the problem that yes. Axioms are not synthetic aprilorys. Axioms are, comes come from, come from experience. And Helwold showed something that excited them a lot, especially, especially that that wing of the circle.
circle. What Helmholtz showed was that I'm not going to because you said you said that we had a we had not much time. Anyway, it has to do with perception and how we do how we do geometry and how we perceive our environment at the end doesn't seem that much of a difference that it seemed to count the intuition doesn't play that much of a role that it had seemed to count that it that it is playing. This is the this is the status of mathematics. When Karnap actually becomes because the reader of Wittgenstein of young Wittgenstein. So for Wittgenstein
logic he doesn't talk about mathematics necessarily directly but he talks about logic and for Wittgenstein the logic is something that cannot be shown and it is not showing anything but I'm sorry it cannot be said but it's just showing the relation of things in the world that's for Wittgenstein picturing is necessarily about the world and that is that that is somehow somehow remind reminder of a of a prison conception. Let me talk about that a more, a more, a more, a bit more. What I want to say is that in the picturing as a function of human intellect,
Wittgenstein sees a system, a mechanical system per se. In this mechanical system, in the most basic layer, there are atomic facts. For Wittgenstein, atomic facts famously are facts in the world. For example, the sky is blue, the cat is on the mat, or whatever like that. These layers, this layer are composed of facts that are logically, that are logically independent of another. So they cover, let's, let's say a plane, right? Right, they cover a plane, as if a set.
There is a totality. Totality of what Wittgenstein called the world of cases that are about the facts in the world. What logic does here. What logic here does for Wittgenstein is the transition or the rules for transition of this basic layer to other kinds of vocabulary and other kinds of linguistic practice. practice. So logic is nothing in the world. Logic is something in the, in the joints of the representation. Without logic, there would be no other vocabulary for Wittgeshteyn, there would be no other vocabulary than the vocabulary that are about the state of the facts. But
Wittgeshteyn tried to put, push this, push this further infamously. So he tries to play with two functions. And what he tries to say, and this is the impressive, impressive inspiration. What he tries to say is that any, any truth function of any statement in the language, whether scientific or not, is determinable, with regard to the true function of that, that basic layer that we talked about that basic layer remains in the isomorphic isomorphic I don't I don't know the
I don't know the maybe isomorphic is the right to the board in the isomorphic transition of logic that logic makes possible that layer and to function of those that layer remains remains is constant because logic is truth saving. I don't remember the exact term for it. So that's Wittgenstein's picturing. But what is interesting in this idea for Kahnep and Deimos-Tirkel, as Karrosan already puts the narrative in a very real sense, is that this idea that logic is nothing but the rules of transition. It's a very interesting idea if you want to say that mathematics and basically natural sciences are nothing based on our synthetic a priori or our specific, special kind of reasoning.
It is based on logic, and logic is this. Logic is nothing out in the world. Logic is nothing in ontological sense that we should make sense of. Now, no, this is the wrong question. No, this is the move of our thought. This is the wrong question. This is a super problem. Let's think it over. This is a beautiful situation for Vienna's circle. But what happens, and Karras and Auli again puts it in very clear senses, what happens is the the basic crisis for the foundation of foundationalism in mathematics or in language but Carnap's idea in logical syntax sorry I'm trying to be very short and quick about
it I hope I'm not boring you guys what what what what kind of happens is that the inner dream this idea becomes even more clear. Because what he sees is that you don't even need these basic layers. Why we need these basic layers? What is interesting in picturing? If anything is interesting in picturing, the idea of the transition is very interesting. But the problem with picturing four languages,
is that in Wittgenstein's view, language is already there, language is complete, and we just don't know it. For Wittgenstein, language is as if language is a closed mechanical system, as if all the vocabulary that logic can produce has already been produced, and we just don't know how to apply them, because logic is there and the first layer is there. So the two variables are known to us so that all the language is complete and all of it is known to us. And what Karna tries to do this is bullshit. This is a metaphysical residue in Wittgenstein's thoughts. Let's get rid of one of these that is the facts layer and see what is there, what remains there.
remains there and what remains there interestingly is metalogic is metalanguage because logic is what because logic becomes rules of logic not rules of thought but rules of not even language but constituting a system of conceptual uh manipulating even if you want to call it that you want to call that language fine but now the language now for this new conception of language That is, language is just this mechanism of transformation, the rules for transformation, and these rules for transformation can do beautifully with any axiomatic, any basic layer. We don't need basic layers of correctness, axiomatic of historical
familiarity or something. What we need is the robust structure and the mechanical opening and closing and all those valves. I know everybody hates mechanics for some reason, but I think, oh sorry, you're right at this moment that my father is calling me. Anyway, that was appropriate actually for my father to call me at this moment. What was going to say? I think I covered most of the point that I wanted to say, but sorry if it was a bit disjointed. I would be happy to make conversation about these points and I will try to make myself more clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Arwen. Much appreciated. Very good. I mean, definitely we are going to go through some of these lines of thought that you mentioned. A couple of things though, before I forget. You said that, you know, kind of like that essentially the project of logical syntax ultimately leads to a kind of clarification of it not essentially, this is not what you said, that that's the only result but it kind of what actually would be a kind of um consequences of this move it leads to uh clarification or fleshing out in a better
way the epistemological uh role of logic something like that earlier on in fact it does the reverse it absolutely cuts back on the epistemological facts and it just shows that it is the reverse that we don't need to show the epistemological role of logic rather than the logical. That was what I tried to say. Maybe I said it wrong, but that was what I tried to say, that we get rid of the question of the epistemological role of logic. Okay, okay, okay. That was my point. Maybe I said it wrong. Yes, yes, yes. If that is the case, yes, absolutely, yes. So essentially what Karnap does, because he, after the logical sense, actually after, so we should understand that Carnap,
so he writes this book, 1934, right? It comes, I mean, it gets published in German in 1934. that he had an essay called Attempt of Method Logic. Attempt of Method Logic is completely different from the logical syntax of language, but the thought process that goes into both, to attempt at method logic is the foundation upon which logical syntax of language is written. And one of the things is that we need to understand where he's coming from. So, So, and like how he moves forward with this.
Essentially what he tries to do, he doesn't want, so, so first of all, Aufbau is a fundamentally Neokantian project. I mean, even the idea that it's a meta-philosophy of philosophies, right? Meta-philosophy of philosophy. It is, in fact, the title itself is an ode to Ful Hartmann's classic Neocantian book of a structure of the real world, you know, Ful Hartmann's structure. So this is a fundamentally Neocantian project that, as he mentions early on, first page to second page, is an epistemological project. So, but the aim of it is to kind of formulate, to bring the status of philosophy to the status
of science as the logic of all sciences, right? By purging all the metaphysical boogie men and, you know, the kind of speculative, you know, melodramas that usually associated with nookantianism, right? What he really wants to do is unification of sciences, the project of unification of sciences, to understand the logic of how one can make scientific statements ultimately, and how they can be understood in relation to one another's scientific statements.
So there is this, people want to look into these historical facts about this. I think it's 1934, the same year that he published The Logical Syntax. He actually presents a paper in one of the most famous events in the world of philosophy and science. It's 1934, Paris conference on basically a unification of sciences. He goes there, I think Russell goes there too, they both go there, obviously for a reason, because to this point Russell thinks that, yeah, you know, it's actually interesting to hold to Carnap,
even though Carnap's assault on metaphysics is totally far from Rossellian view. And now with logical syntax, he seemed to not appreciate the epistemological side of philosophy at all anymore. For him, it's not a priority. It's not the same enmity that he has against metaphysics. It's just that he just doesn't think it's actually a really worldwide philosophical question. So we should understand that this whole idea of how he tries to reclaim logic from this epistemological backdrop that is associated with
no Kantianism and philosophy in general constitutes, which we can call that sort of rescuing logic from that epistemological backdrop is what we call, you know, post-epistemological deflationism. So post-epistemological deflationism, we should understand that it plays a role in the grand scheme of Carnap's philosophy, and that's unity of all sciences. To show this concretely that all sciences ultimately have a unity. And this coming back to the idea that,
I mean, one of the the, um, one of the motifs, uh, behind attempt at methodologic or meta-meta language is, on the side of Cora is, comes back from a rather obscure, now obscure, was it, a now obscure idea that was held among some of the greatest mathematicians, scientists of the early 20th century, particularly Poincare.
So the idea is that we can never test a single hypothesis within any field of science. So if you want, for example, test a physical hypothesis A, you're always going to fail. Because the criteria of test and the testing itself should apply to the whole system of physics and not just the single hypothesis. So it should apply to the whole of physics as a system of hypotheses, not just one single hypothesis. Right? So that requires a certain kind of attempt at the meta, meta again, you know, meta in
a technical sense. I mean, I know that these words being used in modern day in a kind of wishy-washy, sloppy way, will matter in a precise technical philosophical language. So yes, so the metalogic is simply like this, generalization, attempt at generalization of axiomatics. You see, it's not that he wants to get rid of axiomatics, he wants to generalize axiomatization, And he can only do that, find the tools by way of Gödel, Tarskian system, so on and so forth, Septiary and so on. He doesn't have those.
But the thing is that it's just like another historical twist. So, Gödel, Kurt Gödel was a student of Karna for a while. And the thing is that Kurt Goyle actually developed the first incompleteness theorem through the early writings of Carnap on this. It's just that it wasn't clear to Carnap what he is trying to do himself. Right? So this generalization of axiomatics is in tandem with that understanding the system of science, not individually, but as a whole.
The science view as a gestalt, as a system of all systems. So all of this now kind of why is that he's trying to do? Why is this whole idea of metalogic, metalanguage is important? I mean, who gives a fuck about this? But actually, no. These are all kind of switch and plugs He has to manipulate in order to create that system, which is basically the grand idea of philosophy, where philosophy becomes the engine of thinking about the unity of sciences system of all systems. So that was that. And of course, he wants to, for that logic coming back to Wittgenstein, he has no choice
to decouple logic from representation in the Kantian sense, right? And logic from most ardently, in fact, post-Wittgenstein fallout, logic from conceptualism and pragmatism. He doesn't want to have anything to do with pragmatism. Any person who, even like Karis, who advanced this idea that Carnap is essentially at heart pragmatist, just doesn't understand what Carnap is trying to do here. You get to these kinds of stuff later on. So yeah, thank you so much. I mean, I have so many other kinds of stuff here, but... Can I just ask a question about the second point? Sure, sure. About the unity of sciences, actually. Do you think about,
do you think that meta-language, or this idea in logical syntax, remains just about the language of scientific theory? Because it seems like you can do anything with it. Yeah, no, you can do everything with it. It's just that, as I mentioned, it's not really interesting at this stage to do anything other that yes in fact so syntax is the beginning he wants and people always say that well that whole idea of syntax reduction to syntax is also failing just like his previous project that was reduction of all human knowledge to sense data phenomenalistic you know kantian core of a power. But no, every time Qanab is quite perceptive of his own flaws, he shows that
there is an analysis of semantics, meaning and necessity, where basically he add the semantic to syntax to show that this logical syntax can actually be made also as the science of language itself. And then the probability, the probability book wouldn't be, wouldn't be possible without the logical syntax. Yes, none of these, no, absolutely. It is, it is such a, it is such a, you know, what he, actually, sometimes philosophers have this kind of bold, yet sometimes wrong kind of decision to burn all the bridges. with every philosopher and every philosopher. What Karnav does, he always burns, he starts his position by burning all the bridges with everyone, literally with everyone. And he
constantly burned the bridges to show himself that his position is always fragile. And the moment that fragility starts to happen in his system of thinking, he starts to make another to reach only to later on birth again. That's absolutely, I think, what our philosophers should do. Philosophers are not supposed to be making wishy-washy greetings with other philosophers. We are not diplomats, right? OK, so you think that you get rid of logical syntax, for example, in logical foundational probability? Yes, yes. And of course, the subsequent works. subsequent works, but yes, absolutely. I mean, really the radicality of logical foundations
of probability is, I don't think that people just understand what it means. The fact he has already deflated epistemology beyond belief, the fact that he has reduced the subject of experience to basically meet puppets of logical syntax and not probability in inductive formal induction that's just this is basically the uh why he should actually get credit for uh many of of AI, AI models today. I mean, Salomonev of course was quite receptive of his ideas, but I don't think that he's still appreciated
for two things. One, precisely because he's considered to be peak headed by burning all these bridges with everyone, right? And he constantly fails in his projects only to, like a phoenix, come back and have a more majestic philosophy. But two, because the later works are extremely technical, probably there wouldn't be a philosopher on the same footing to judge him at that point, or even now. That's a scary thought, that sometimes you go to a certain kind of stage in philosophizing where you
unfortunately deprive yourself of interlocutors who actually understand your work and can build on it. Unfortunately, with Kana, there is no other person other than Kana himself, who can actually understand himself at that point. And that's really the mark of a genuine philosopher who makes history of philosophy rather than consuming it Felipe hey there um i should have gone first because what i did because uh you know i was lucky enough to find a copy of Carnap's autobiography at a very cheap price.
Magnificent. I stuck to an historical graphical account that goes up until Carnap meets Gödel, you know. So apologies for that. I noticed some things. I thought it was interesting that that he almost starts by saying that through Frege, he inherited the preference for a need for an artificial language for analysis. And he says upon meeting Wittgenstein that he did not like Wittgenstein's, he said that
Wittgenstein didn't like his mentions, Wittgenstein's mentions of the language as interpreted as an ideal formalized symbolic language, which Karne was very much into. And he says that this division between them can be construed as the division between the British analytics, who were influenced by Wittgenstein, and the American logical empiricists. Another curious divergence between them is that contrary to Wittgenstein, Carnap and the Vienna Circle said that it is indeed possible to talk meaningfully about language and about the relation between the sentence and the fact described.
On top of that, Otto Neurath, regarding language, was a physicalist. And this is interesting because later Karnap says that he was into a physicalist stance, but Neurath was a physicalist regarding language. And Karna pointed in his autobiography that he preferred structure as what would allow him or what would make, create the conditions of the possibility to construct what he calls a geometry of the written pattern. And I think this phrase is beautiful. And he says that this is what led to the logical syntax of language, searching for this geometry.
I also wanted to add that Einstein curiously. Is there in the autobiography, is there a German phrase for that? Geometry of the written pattern? Yes. No. No? Okay. No. Then I'll give it to our German series. You go on my apologies. Okay, I can understand your question because this sounds like what happens in most languages which are not German, a decomposition of a very complex German word. Yes.
You know, keeping to the point of language, I was astounded to know that Wittgenstein also hated the idea of translation of his work. And he also hated the idea of a universal language like Esperanto, which Karnap was very much into. this was my approach while reading this chapter from 1926 until 1935 looking for proximities and the divergences between Carnap and other people Tarski arrives in Vienna in 1930 and they share an interest in emphasizing both the consistency of axioms and the provability of a theorem, emphasizing that both these things must be expressed in
a meta mathematical language. They bear only one disagreement. Tarski says the distinction between logical and factual statements is only a matter of degree and Carnap says it's there is a very hard distinction between these. very much later, Carnap goes to Warsaw, and he meets Starsky, Kotarbinski, and Lesniewski. And his influence, the latter Lesniewski, is also influenced by Frege. And that gave him the insight that Hilbert's formalism should gain from an additional semantic account, but still demanding the strictly formal rules of inference.
Such demands were fulcral for the mathematics and metalogic in keeping still with a physicalist attitude. And this is kind of saying that he agrees with this in 1930. So he seems he's ready to let go of the myth of the given, which Carl Sachs pointed that the Alphabau suffered from, quite rightly. But I think this was a shock for me, because two pages earlier, he's saying that, no, I'm all structured. I'm sorry, this before his response is getting quite long.
I'm going to finish soon. I was fascinated by the fact that Karnop was quite sad that there was such a strong, there was so much development in philosophy of mathematics in Poland. And this reiterated his intuition of a need for an international language. I close by saying that it's interesting for me that at this point, maybe unbeknownst to him, to them, they were already trying to conceptually engineer logic itself, which is precisely what Wittgenstein did not want to do, and what Carnap did them end up doing
later in a methodical way. That's it. Thank you so much, Uyth. Much thanks. Excellent. Yes, I mean, there are so many good stuff here. One of them is really this whole idea of why is that? So, so why is that I mean it's kind of like well we can't even actually I don't know that was just all where I had this thought I wanted to compare being a circle with the speculative realism, but then I thought that that's probably the most vulgar comparison that I could come up with.
But nevertheless this whole idea that within this single highly you know they come up with same sorts of logical empiricist backdrop. They believe in the same thing, but then it starts to become fragmented. Schisms start to emerge, particularly Carnap and Nurath and Carnap and Schellick. Schellick and Nurath are two sides of the extremes of the Vienna Circle, right? And Karnap begins to sort of diverge from both figures. With regard to Nurath, Nurath
Noroth politically and philosophically is Carnap's ally. He's a socialist, he's a physicalist, so on and so forth. This is why Carnap, for the most part, early on is on the side of Noroth, except for a few issues. The thing is that why is that Nouroth thesis on physicalist language is not interesting to Karnap anymore? Well, even though, as Philippe was saying, that Karnap is endorsing physicalist language. Well precisely because Noorath, he confounds physicalistic language with something
physical in language. There is, you know, meaning that in so far as there is something physical about language, philosophically reformulated in so far as language is in the world and not outside of it, then physicalistic language thesis is interesting because it originates from the physical essence of language itself, from the spoken signs and all of that stuff. To Karnak, this is just goddamn heresy. Karnak actually is not interested in any sort of those sort of something physical about this, something spiritual about language, the sort of stuff that goes particularly toward the end of 20th century in philosophy of language within German society.
There is something ineffable about language. There is something is spiritual about language. Or in case of Roth, there is something basically physical about language. He's not interested in any of this. For him, language is about a structure. The structure of how signs are related to one another. First and foremost, that structure... if we understand language under the rubric of the question of a structure rather than the question of its physicality of science so on so forth spirit these kinds of stuff then we are able
to do what we can start thought is impossible namely we are capable of knowing what language is We can talk about language as opposed to Wittgenstein. We can make language of languages. So that is the significance of Carnap's entire program within logical syntax, beginning with logical syntax. He overcomes what Wittgenstein thought is impossible philosophically on every level that we can never have a theory of language. Carnap shows that once we understand the language as a structure then we can create meta structures of such a structure
and hence know the nature of language. We can actually are enabled finally to talk about what language is and what it's supposed to do for the first time so this is a fundamental revolution that karnak instantiates uh reza yes is there any indication about uh some sort of genetic accounts of language incarnate because if we think of language as a as a structure and you mean acoustics and these kinds of stuff what evolution of acoustics this discretization of sounds and this source of stuff yeah because uh if we uh think that we can attain
an intelligibility of the nature of language, wouldn't it presuppose yet for us to understand how language emerges in any sense? Again, these questions are not really important for him. He might have, you know, look, I mean, this is my idea. Usually philosophers would say these kinds of stuff. it doesn't mean that he doesn't have an account of genetics of the language, right? If you get Karnab drunk, he most probably will tell you about it. All right. But precisely because he intentionally wants, not because of peace-taking other people, he intentionally doesn't want to
emphasize on this thing because he wants to show that any sort of talk about genesis or genetics of language goes through the structure of language itself. That there is no way that we can circumvent the structure of language. That the structure of language is the beginning point of every sort of talk. Anything else outside of the purview of that is just a good old-fashioned metaphysical bloatware. Thank you. Absolutely, my pleasure. Do we have time for another question?
Another long question? Or should we do it at the end? If we can do it at the end, it would be magnificent. Let's have a five to ten minutes break, then come fresh, and we'll start. We'll start now. Ciao, ciao. Bye-bye. Thank you.
how are you and uh yeah not bad i'm okay yeah how are you excellent uh well uh health wise not really good but yeah anything else is fine good great actually i might be getting my vaccine soon they started doing over 30s in the uk now so it's like one good thing about living here is that the vaccine program seems to be oh is this why you are actually having long hair you're waiting for you're getting the vaccine and then cut it i'm doing my best question actually but um yeah
No, no. Yeah, maybe actually. Yeah, I don't know. I just want to like, you know, emerge from my hovel, like completely disheveled. That's sort of my objective. but to be honest with you i mean it's just not going to happen though i mean yes we are all getting vaccinated we have like two or three months of over optimism and then people go on the cruises carnival stocks goes rocket high and then a couple of people get sick and then back to the square one i think we should just like uh i mean anybody who goes on a cruise anyway i mean you know i just i think that they should um you know they should petri dishes
regardless of whether you are you have a pandemic on you it's just a health warning right like cruises like the yeah i don't know why you would voluntarily do that but but to be honest with you i actually like uh finally uh taking cruise always remind me myself of this agatha christie on a cruise, you know, these kinds of old orientalist cruises with a bunch of really esoteric people. It's kind of nice, but unfortunately American cruises are not like that at all. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that there's like a, there's like a very, I wouldn't describe anyone that I know who would go on a cruise as esoteric. I'll put it that way.
yeah yeah yes maybe esoteric in other kinds of qualifications but not esoteric in that kind of yes well but then again maybe you put a bunch of people in that kind of a situation and everybody changes so you never maybe in that maybe now's the time to go on a cruise you know like yeah if you want to have some experience it's kind of i don't know whether i mean any of you know um um Jim uh Huckman uh Poseidon event or something like that Poseidon event or and the other one Juggernaut Juggernaut who actually played in um in uh blow up uh Anton Yunes blow up and also in um you know the the guy became extremely um um was famous uh
blowouts blowouts uh no no blow up or blow up blow up i can understand um David Hemmings. David Hemmings, the best cruise nightmare movie ever. It's called Juggernaut. And I remember it was actually, I was a kid when it was aired, it was still, we were in early revolution kind of like people um i mean they were playing these movies on theater uh arman uh can uh understand they were arman they were calling it juggernaut juggernaut
because every literally he was a heartthrob a david hemmings uh back in the day but of course he became extremely obese. He actually played in, who's that, a Russell Crowe movie, you know, the gladiator, gladiator. Kids don't know anything about these things anymore. No, it's just like things of the past. I think I might have seen this juggernaut film. I was just looking at still images, but like years and years ago i've definitely never seen russell crowe's gladiator nor do i am oh my god it's really good movie to be honest with you just pure sensationalism i love that kind of
movie well maybe you have to offset your carnappian sentiments with something very worldly once in a while or you get sick richard hemming was the guy that was the slave who was free or he was richard hemming no david hemmings no the slave trader was oliver reid okay oliver reid another another hard draw back in the day uh super drunk kind of guy yeah there are so many antiques in that movie okay so uh Okay, let's just start.
So oh, before coming back, I, when I was away, I thought about this with regard to, you know, the geometry of written pattern. I want to say something quickly about this. So as I mentioned, I mean, this new phase of Carnap's project ultimately wants to show the unity of sciences with regard to the projects of enlightenment. One, the first, what you might call it, to be main ambition of the projects of enlightenment,
unity of all sciences. second ambition from chaos to order, from chaos to world. That we have world precisely because we have medium of a structuration, right? So, early Kana, we saw it with Aufbau, the medium of a structuration is a constitution system. It requires a phenomenalistic reduction of all human knowledge to sense data. the givens, right? And these givens are not linguistically or conceptually interpreted. Absolutely, there is no such a, they are given in an axiomatic sense, in a very axiomatic
sense. Karnak is, God forbid, try to say that, oh, well, these sense data have some sort of conceptual element or linguistic element absolutely wants—he actually believes that they don't even have syntactic elements. That's actually really interesting. So these two—these two ambitions of projects of enlightenment that he wants to fulfill from his metafil—meta—philosophical position in off-bow, rejection of that method philosophical position in logical syntax and onwards. Now, so yeah, coming back, so, so with that regard, as I mentioned, geometry of the written pattern
tries to tackle these two ambitions of the Project of Enlightenment that I just mentioned. For that to happen, though, that realization of geometry of written pattern, he starts with Hilbert's viewpoint that espoused by David Hilbert, according to which a logical language is a system of uninterpreted marks rather than meaningful signs. So how does this simple Hilbertian dictum supposed to address the two ambitions or two trends underlying the project of enlightenment,
namely the unity of all sciences, right? The system of all systems, the understanding of the system of systems, unity of all sciences. I mentioned earlier with regard to Poincaré that you never just actually ever work with one science. You always, every science has, basically, you are always working within the system of all systems. You are always working with a system of hypothesis when you are trying to test one hypothesis. So how does this Hilbertian dictum of what logical language is as an uninterpreted Marx, system of uninterpreted Marx, rather meaningful signs,
can one, tackle the first ambition, unity of all sciences, and two, the second ambition, which was basically, Ultimately, can be formulated as understanding what the structure is and a structure here increasingly being revealed as something in the language itself. So Carnap extended this viewpoint to all of knowledge in general, meaning a series of results
in mathematical logic aided Carnap's contention that it was possible to speak about object language in the meta language and then back to object language. So this is essentially what you might say to be this Hilbertian dictum paves the road for the thesis on methodologic, Carnap's thesis on methodologic. That's all philosophy, according to Carnap, that all philosophical problems which have any meaning whatsoever belong to syntax. Because if you cannot explain things by way of a structure,
then you are doing bullshit metaphysics. And what is a structure at its most foundational level? It's no longer sense data. It's syntax. Syntax and syntax at this point is purely meaningless. Doesn't mean that you can't make semantics out of meaning. I mean, out of this purely meaningless system of unmarked, of marks, it simply means that if you try to even smuggle some sort of relata among symbols, these meaningless symbols,
you are actually doing something like the myth of the given. And I think that Sellars doesn't understand this fully. In his theory of picturing, we already get some relations that are absolutely obvious from the start get go among the marks made. For Carnap, he doesn't want to even go to that level. He wants to go to layer zero, layer zero. Arvan, I know that something bugs you. OK, go on. It doesn't bug me. Actually, I agree with you very much.
No, I mean it bugs you in the sense that you have to have this question, otherwise you will destroy the entire class. Thank you. Thank you. Go on. But this was part of my presentation I couldn't get up. I want to say something to the effect of the syntax being a foundation, it being a foundation and replacement for the Wittgensteinian layer, foundational layer. I want to disagree with you on this point actually. Well I would say that Sellars also has that as a replacement of Wittgenstein, but it just doesn't understand how to radicalize syntax, because that's not really Sellars ambition. Completely.
I agree. Sellars doesn't leave the foundation. For Sellars, foundation pictures the nervous system. For- No, no. Another thing is that when I mentioned that you see this whole idea of geometry of written pattern or printed pattern, that Carnot always talks about. It's very simple that he doesn't want to smuggle in one ounce of anything that can be remotely understood linguistically at the level of syntax, not at the level of sense data, because he's not really interested in sense that the sense that the project done gone. That's a
Kantian antique is not going to touch this ever again. Even at the level of syntax, he wants to say that, look, we can't have any sort of meaningful relationship at any part elementary level whatsoever. That that structure that that is whole point that so it was chaos to the world which is a project of enlightenment ultimately and this kind of considered to be fascistic these days you know when you say that chaos to order people think of a bunch of Nazis um so this whole idea of chaos to order with project of of was the chaos of sensations to the order which is the world which is which is the view of the
world as subjects and agents now with logical syntax it is from the chaos of syntax to the picture of language not the language of picturing but the picture of that yes my friend that is my question and that is my objection why do you need the chaos or why do you need no chaos chaos you should understand chaos in german at that time mean simply means something relations that are not determined in the first place that relations should be be determined, but are not given to be at the ground zero of a system.
Yes, should be as it should be constituted, right? That is what I didn't want intentionally I didn't want to use the word constitution to not confuse everyone that it is actually the same as of power. No, no, no, no. It's not really a constitution system, precisely because it has nothing of experience. Constitution, when you're talking about it, is usually of experience as a great zero. And of course, it's a lot of technical jargon that goes into these kinds of words as a background. No, essentially, he kind of wants to show that,
The story of logic, how it comes to being, we are some oracles such as Frigge and so on and so forth. Once we understand it coherently, that even Frigge didn't understand it, becomes the a story of everything else, of all sciences, of all systems, of the world, and how chaos of meaning meaningless signs is the most enabling moment for logic. So the thing is that this
is this is the interesting thing i've only seen a couple of people talk about this so chaos sophie what is chaos in uh german chaos same chaos chaos okay thank you so much so so so this idea that chaos generally understood as a disabling factor in in german philosophy post-german idealism post-neuokantianism that the project of enlightenment should is defined by its impulse to turn this chaos to order turn it into a world right into a structure
Now, with chaos now being at the level of the syntax, the chaos becomes enabling rather than disabling, because this is the chaos that enables you to make a structure. You don't need to add anything extra to it, like the way that in our power we have the chaos of sensory data in a phenomenalistic sense, bundles of sensations, and you want to patch it up, giving it, you know, contribute to it step by step by way of logic, imagination, whatever, in a kind of Kantian vein to create a higher level because it was lower. But no, this is a chaos that is enabling precisely because it is all we have and only through chaos
in the logical sense rather than sensorial epistemological sense can emerge autonomously order the world but this is not the chaos of epistemology or sensation is the chaos of logic uninterpreted science standing in such and such undetermined relations, but progressively determinable relations to one another. So if I... Please go on.
Oh, okay, sorry. To see if I understand it right, those are different projects, right? An epistemological project and the projects of the logical syntax. But the project of a logical syntax already, in some sense, takes for granted that some epistemological apparatus is in place in place for uh as a condition to uh uh in some way uh investigate uh the structure uh the synthetical structure of language uh in a in a generalized way so as to it's not epistemological though uh cassia it's not epistemological it is fundamentally formal and axiomatic this is why
that so what what so basically this is very Hilbertian at the beginning in the sense of what Hilbert wants to show that uh look logicism intuitionism uh I don't know other kinds of people like they're all good they're great what we want to do essentially at the end of the day is to for example we have a formal system uh like mathematics or logic actually logic in this case. We want, we want to see how it behaves, how it basically functions and so on and so forth. So it is not as if an epistemological question can garner any extra insights
onto the workings of logic. That would be, that would be a kind of like an antiquated philosophical project, according to Hilbert. Hilbert wants to show that all we have ever, when talking about these sorts of systems, namely formal systems and structure in that since the Carnapis tries to talk about, begins with a system of uninterpreted marks. And only through working on this system we can determine the structure.
Then that structure can determine our understanding of how the system functions, and then how we can add something to this system to understand why is that the structure behaves like that attempt at meta-logic. So any, any what you might call to be exogenous elements, this is the whole point that they want with regard to the idea of mathematics or logic, they want to make any sort of exogenous elements such as epistemology to go away. If there is a study of mathematics, that study should only occur within the structure of
mathematics as a whole and coming from nowhere else. So this is their mission project to show to basically they want to create a bifurricate assault on one people like french mathematicians epistemologists who always try to talk about mathematics with regard to uh by virtue or by the help of something extra mathematical they want to show that no that sort of extra mathematical component that is required to study the nature of language or study of the nature of mathematics is precisely when you fail, you end up in the metaphysical dukmas.
And two, they want to show that mathematics or logic in Carnar says logic if you purge it from ideas of meaning pragmatism so on so forth you have the most lean meat to make the best source of idea of logic, meaning that by getting rid of all those soft meanings and pragmas and so on and so forth, you will enable logic
to look into itself, that logic becomes a self-consciousness of itself once being purged of those extraneous elements such as meaning, pragmatism, so on and so forth. And that's why Carnap thinks that the majority of his ideas with regard to the status of logic as basically the science of all sciences, the system of all sciences, coincides with Gödel's rectification of Hilbertian viewpoint.
that he thinks that Gödel's viewpoint, the incompleteness theorem, the first incompleteness theorem, is not actually against Hilbert, or at least maybe it's against one specific, you know, version of Hilbertian system. But he thinks that, so Hilbert begins with the idea that everything beyond we can only talk about language or mathematics as this sort of geometry of written patterns or printed patterns. He thinks that this, once he basically hears from Godel, he thinks that Hilbert had paved the road. Ultimately, what was wrong
with Hilbert was that the moment that from a system of uninterpreted mark you arrive at the structure you think that structure is sufficient to create a critical view about what the structure is like for example what the nature of language is but he thinks that what Godel does actually radicalizes Hilbert's thesis of the geometry of unwritten patterns, meaning a system of interpreted marks as the ground zero. If you really take this as the basic assumption and don't add extra assumptions to it from all over the place that are not warranted by this simple rule,
then you can actually arrive at the possibility of making a structure of structures or system of axioms that can look into the workings of the axioms you have been working on, you know, meta-logic, meta-language, so on and so forth. So this is something that I think kind of really takes it to a next level precisely by showing that all you need to talk about language, the nature of language, is just language itself. But you can only do it by purging language from all of those exogenous extraneous materials, such as meaning, semantics, pragmas,
as metaphysical assumptions, a spirit, so on so forth. That was very good, very beautiful way to put it. Wouldn't you say that this idea of language becoming this new kind of language that you just put it is very similar to what happens to the idea of subject, for example, to Aftab. of what do you think these two as parallel what at the end we think of language at the end of logical syntax to think of language and what at the end of alpha we think of subject to be honest with you i haven't thought about this anything that i say about this most probably would
be extremely haphazard i need to think about it i need to think about it My apologies, one second. I have one minute. I'm coming, one second. How do you do? This is the cough of Covid, if you didn't know.
That is the sound, yes. At the beginning I thought it was, to be honest with you, it was a disaster against humanity. don't believe it it's not that it's not that it kills you it makes you crazy drives you crazy it's a constant pain in your neck in your head today i'm really grateful for life and stuff like so you you have a covid and you made a presentation high on covid is that it yes my friend i'm always
high on something the best is covid because it's a good fever did you have a sleepless night by any chance sorry did you have a sleepless sleepless night by any chance because you don't you don't remember what the night is i i went to sleep for for maybe one hour one hour and a half and then i woke up from the sweat, sheer sweating, and all the bed was, sorry, but was dripping with sweat, and so I may, I have to go take a shower and again sleep for one hour and again the same situation. So yes, Thursday, sorry, Tuesday and Wednesday on a revelation. In total, I think I slept for
three hours, four hours, something like that. And you didn't have any revelation to kind of show for it? which is so much my friend so one of the revelation is that reza is wrong wrong on this matter because logic is not the foundation let him go let him come let's not come i have kobe my apologies my apologies i smelled something um my stuff was uh the stove was burning my food is prior to my students thank you very much So, yeah, okay, let's go forward. But yes, I was saying that, yeah.
But ultimately, you know, So the thesis that all philosophical problems which have any meaning at all can only belong to the, to syntax, ultimately, because of all this stuff that I mentioned. Another way to put it is that all meaningful philosophical sentences are sentences about the form of sentences, meaning the structure. I got one thing bugging my head and I'm just going to talk. If logic has this some kind of structural primacy, how does then arise the question
of how exactly we take something to be a mark in the first place? we determine extensively the concept of a mark? Isn't it simply that this is what you might call to be the whole problem of logic, that mark is a difference? I mean, isn't it what Peirce was talking about earlier on, white sheet of assertion, right? the things that what Peirce tries to talk about in the uh in his system you know uh in the in that
diagrammatic mode of logic so you have a blank sheet of assertion the blank sheet of assertion you can think about it this is the level at which experience is not really experience is contentless and it becomes logic itself, meaning that any sort of mark is only a mark in so far as there's a difference on a blank sheet of assertion, a difference, what you might call to be the most minimal thing that you can, that register as a point that can be even determined. So this is where determination begins. something undetermined which ought to be determined precisely because it begs to be determined.
For no Kantianism, the blank sheet of assertion is the mind, is, is, uh, you know, uh, basically sensations come and make differences. But Paris actually being a pragmatist tries to show that precisely if we reduce experience to only this sort of system of unmarked determinations or differences, there is actually no distinction between logic and experience at that point, because we are not actually talking about experience anymore. It is about something, whatever, a mark, that makes a distinction within a system,
such that it leads to the question of determination in the first place. So when you say that, where does the termination begin? How can we determine it? Well, isn't it already a post-eventus, after-the-fact kind of question? Meaning that you already, something has given rise to the impulse of determination. What is that something? I think. That's, so I mean, I'm sure that you people might have some Deleuzian ideas
about this with regards to difference and repetition and identity, you know, at that level of difference, which is prior to everything else. That's essentially what Hilbert tries to work with as its most basic, you know, component of any sort of system that deals with the structure. Because we always have to say, oh, well, how can we determine this? The real question is that how we came about to have this question in the first place.
What did lead us to have the question of determination in the first place? And in that sense, even Deleuze doesn't realize this, that the question of determination is already loaded with presupposition. what led you to determine difference in the first place? Well, of course, Deleuze would say that, well, this is, isn't it that whole idea of the beginning, the kind of metaphor of chiaroscuro, right in difference and repetition, where basically he, he, he compares the idea of difference
with, with, you know, the Renaissance paintings, the Chiaroscuro or Nicoretto, Nicoretto paintings. Nicoretto paintings are essentially, you see, there are certain kinds of paintings. It's It's actually a nice metaphor. It's a painting, Nigredo or Chiaro. Actually, Nigredo is older than Chiaro-Chiro. Nigredo is essentially something like Carvaggio would do that, Carvaggio and early Renaissance, late Middle Ages painters. The technique is simple. You don't actually introduce. So it's always about some sort of figure, like an angel, like a saint coming against a dark backdrop,
appearing to be luminescent, has these kinds of luminous aura around itself. The thing is that they don't actually add any sort of coloration to simulate an illumination. What they do, they use certain sorts of black colors that simulates this effect that as if a figure is emerging from darkness so Deleuze talks about this that it's like what you might call to be void interacting with itself creating a difference a difference is nothing
extrinsic to the void and this is the beginning of difference of repetition if I remember correctly and the same thing about this it's a recognition of something interacting with itself and something that without without the ground zero you can't you cannot imagine anything else. That would be basically anything outside of it would lead to aporia. And for Paris, it's a blank sheet of assertion, you know, the empty sign. The empty sign is the only thing that we can ever have as our first, most primary tool. Empty sign,
of assertion. So yeah, it is, it would be nice then to talk about this source of the stuff that then, what is exactly the mechanics or mechanism that goes within such, you know, of question, questions of void, questions of empty sign, questions of identity in the philosophical sense of Toulouse, and so on and so forth. But that's a different question altogether. That's, these are, these are, I think, the sorts of questions that you You need to be very careful with it,
precisely because they truly seem to be the markers from which any source of construction can ever happen. Essentially, this is when, so obviously this is, these are what you might call to be episodes to be episodes in which philosophy begins to purge itself of all assumptions that it might ever have. So the question of void is like that, blind sheet of assertion, empty signs, so on and so forth. Now, what, of course, entertaining Cassia's question, but is it really the ground zero?
Can we not have even extrinsic assumptions within such ground level, you know, entities like empty sign, you know, identity as identity or blind cheek of assertion, these sorts of stuff. Well, that's a different question. That's fundamentally not the sort of question a logician or a mathematician is interested in at this point. But yeah. I think Maria had a question. Yes, Maria. I had almost the same question. I wanted to ask how we proceed from atomic statements to meaningless,
because atomic statements always have either meaning true or false. They cannot not have meaning. And what is this bridge between void and atomic statements? You see, the thing is that he's not really interested in the idea of meaning versus falsity at this point, Karna. All he's interested in is that semantics is a collateral effect of pure meaningless sign, precisely because purely meaningless sign or syntax is what ultimately makes all of this.
so in tandem with his idea to go back and find the unity of all sciences he's not interested in the meaning of this scientific statement versus that statement to compare them which one is better so he wants to go back to a certain level from which you might be able to create a system where you don't actually classically verify sentences of science, statements of science, but simply through their logical structure, you can already say which one is true or not. true or not not as meanings but which statement actually has a more robust healthier logical
structure right he doesn't want to talk about because otherwise if he wants to go to that sort of scientific stuff then he gets into the rabbit hole of epistemology and facts That is not his business. He just does, he's not interested in facts. I mean FF, Fug Facts, or Cardinal. All he wants to say is that look, facts are basically bastard childs, bastard children of the sorts of logical structuration that is, that permeates the entirety of science. And if we want to talk about real idea of science, we should go back
into this kind of logical structuration. This actually, one, for him to say that a statement of science should be gauged by their logical robustness, right? Number one. Number two, So, he wants to say that anything, any sort of thesis, whether scientific or not, philosophical, scientific or not, that tries to actually think that there is something that can be ever said without language in that formal sense, meaning a system of uninterpreted
Marx is always going to be a metaphysical statement and nothing more. So he wants to kill two birds with one stone. One, all those kinds of lavish ideas that science makes about the world as if they are not dependent upon logic as the constitution of all sciences. One, and two, the idea that you can have a meaningful sentence, sorry, a meaningful statement without, uh, or compare meaningful sentences without, uh, basically taking into account
their logical structure, their syntactical structure, going back to the meaning meaningless signs. So this project might strike some of you as extremely either pigheaded or strange that why someone like Karnam wants to do that. Because he just, because after half power, He thinks that he tried to do his best to make epistemology coherent, epistemological project of science coherent by recreating on a different level. Now he sees that actually it's just
like a dead burden, dead weight. You don't want to do this, nor you want to ever go with this idea of truth versus falsity, fact versus fiction. All you need to deal with all of these antiquated problems is by assessing everything that ever can be be said in terms of their syntax, analysis of the syntax of the statements to see whether they are true or not within one system or not. But then kind of understand that this project also after logical syntax becomes untenable because you absolutely needs to
have an idea of semantic and not just syntax, to move on with such judgments about statements. So then he adds an analysis of semantics. But yes, this is an ongoing project for Karna, but I think that the criticism that he levies against truth and falsity, judgments in sciences, also with the idea that certain kind of statements of judgments are not reliant on language. I think he's right. He's completely right on all of his accounts. It's just that he hasn't found the solution yet, but he actually manages to detect them. Arman, would you be able to hold
your question so I can move on a little bit further? Sure, sure, sorry. No, no, no, absolutely. My apologies. Just because we are a little bit behind. So. By the way, your camera's off. Me? Yes. I don't have no idea. Okay, my apologies. I was talking with my camera off. Why someone didn't say anything? My apologies. So, for example, when it comes back to all meaningful philosophical sentences or sentences about the form of sentences, you can actually think about it in terms of observational statements.
You know, apply to the notion of observation, the thesis, this thesis of, you know, methalanguage It states that philosophical conceptions, this is actually from Oberden, essay on Karner. He says that philosophical conceptions about the nature of observation are properly expressed opinions about the syntactic analysis of the statements describing observations. And to that extent, Carnap distinction between a structural pattern of language or uninterpreted
marks and the physical properties of the ink marks of written language then downplays the the role that language as a system of physical spoken or written events played in his work. And he's actually quite fine with this idea. Coming back to the idea that, you know, syntactic analysis of a statement describing the observation rather than statements about the nature of observation. So this is actually coming back now, now this is something really good. This comes back to the idea that logical foundations of probability, which we are going to talk
about next few sessions. So the problem starts with that, begins with the logic of induction, yeah, induction in the human sense. So Hume's problem, those of you who are familiar with, is about the nature of observations and how we can create or make inductive conclusions from our past observations. And hence the emergence of the Hume's inductive problem, induction problem.
Now, the thing is that I was a stupid back in the day. I thought that Carnap actually, the way that he tries to rescue the problem of induction, rescue induction will find itself in a head-to-head collision with Hume's problem of induction. meaning how can you ultimately draw future consequences from your past observations insofar as Hume's natural problem of induction is about observations as statements about observations now the thing is that I was stupid as I mentioned and I regret that
what Karnab is trying to do in the logical foundations of probability. Hell, it's already got that fucking title. Logical foundation, logical statements about probability. The probability being observational. Like a toss of coin or something like that. So Karnab tries to show that we can rescue the idea of induction by reinventing induction not on statements about observations as human had it, but by describing observations
in a syntactic language exclusive to them, which is logical probability. So you see, this is, Kana basically has these germs of ideas in logical syntax with regard to, you know, meta-language or meta-logic and how we are supposed to interpret all meaningful sentences as sentences about the form of sentences into something even more ambitious, meaning the nature of our inductive observations. That the nature of inductive observations,
every time that we try to understand in terms of statements about observations, is going to fall into pieces as humans show them. But what we can do, and that's what we have always should have done, because the first one is wrong, is that we are never going to make a statement about observations. But we are going to make a statement describing observations as a species of syntactic analysis, such statements. Meaning that we are not even interested in observation anymore. We are only
interested in the logical structure. And logical structure is our key to salvation. Because our ref is re our reference is no longer to actual discrete observations that we have made about the world, but about the structure that happens within the logical probability or the logical language. Reza, I have a quick question. Does the principle of tolerance apply to the logic of describing observations as well? Yes, yes, obviously. You see, the thing is that, so obviously, the first thing,
logic of tolerance, for those of you who are not familiar, we will get to these kinds of stuff later. Logic of tolerance is that everyone can make their own system of logic as long as they can deploy the rules of their own syntax explicitly to everyone, like open source. You can produce a software at this point in ConApp's way if you don't make it open source. Any sort of, what is the antonym of the open source in software industry? Custodial, what is that? Proprietary? Yes. If you make that, then you are actually not making software.
Carnapian idea of logic. You need to make it open source to make it explicit what you have actually used. So, yes, with regard to the question of of he wants to show that there has never been such a thing as observation, really. That ultimately, everything that we take as observation comes back, one, to the logic of statements that we make according to the syntactic analysis
about observation. Two, this is one of his things that he wants to show that we can explicate. If we are in that realm of syntactic analysis, we can explicate even the notion of probability. That is, isn't it, the whole first chapter of the logical foundations of syntax to show that precisely because if we move from the lot from induction to the logic of probability, we can show that we can enable, we can basically do something that's abiding by the logic of observations would have disallowed us.
We now are in this realm where we can explicate the concept of probability and by that we can explicate the concept of observation or observational sentences so this is this is his main um basically what you might call to be uh a strategy to get out of human problem, but also abandon the old empiricist obsession with observational sentences.
End up. My apologies. Go on. So I wanted to clarify whether I have the correct idea here. In a sense, is there not an additional advantage in this move away from kind of sense data experience in the sense we were talking about earlier about kind of the Poincaré ideal of a unification of all sciences, in the sense that that totality is not something that is represented in a kind of in semantic terms. rather it's something that is like um and and and it's only achievable it's only achievable by moving toward the system of unmarked signs meaning the true essence of logic so it and it's not a
it's not an achieved totality and it's not because the of the would would this be true to say because it became... Absolutely, absolutely, yes. There is, precisely because what, at the beginning, he thinks that it is an achieved totality of some sort, unity of science, precisely because that, because of, you see, the Hilbertian completeness of formal, of logic and mathematics coincides with Carnap's idea of achieve totality of all sciences, right? That is already there in a kind of Hegelian move. But after Godel's paper on first incompleteness theorem,
then it becomes something else. It becomes that there isn't that that that that that that incompleteness of any system of logic, formal system of logic, coincides with the fact that the unity of science is always there, but not in its totality. apologies one more time uh i will be back
of a thorough-going empiricism as regards substantive knowledge with the certainty and necessity of mathematics. According to empiricism, in the vein of logical empiricism, sense experience is the only source of substantive knowledge of facts, but sense experience is the only, but sense experience might always have been different from what it actually was. Moreover, anything we extrapolate from what we experience may be falsified by further experiences, right?
So it's a dilemma of empiricism. Knowledge grounded in sense experience is thus knowledge of contingencies. And accept perhaps for knowledge of what is immediately experienced. But even that soon will be shown to be rather on a shaky ground. And what it means by knowledge of what is immediate experience, like read here now. It is revisable on the basis of further experiences. Now, in contrast, knowledge of mathematics appears to be always unrevisably certain.
Substantive knowledge of necessary truths. The contingencies of our sense experience, therefore, seems to afford no basis for knowledge of mathematics. In a word, empiricism must be false because mathematics is substantive a priori knowledge. Right? You can have both. The logical empiricist approach to this dilemma is to deny that knowledge of mathematics is substantive knowledge. The apriority and necessity of mathematics is the apriority and necessity of logic. Logic is in its turn grounded in tacit conventions for the use of certain symbols,
uninterpreted marks that do not themselves stand for anything, like the signs for negation and conjunction. conjunction. As Hans Hahn once put it, logic only deals with the way we talk about objects. Logic first comes into being through language and the certainty and universal validity of proposition of logic flows precisely from this that it says nothing about any objects. We learn by training, as I should like to put it, to assign the designation, red in quotation marks, you know, not a word, not a concept of red, but just red.
You can put another thing like Hermes or Roche or anything in that. It would be just a combination of symbols or just one symbol. to assign the designation red in quotation marks to some of these objects and we make an agreement to assign the designation not red in quotation marks to any others on the basis of this agreement we can now state the following proposition with absolute certainty none of these objects is assigned both to the designation red and the designation who not red which is usually expressed briefly as follows. No object is both red and not red. This hans on 1933.
So this reconciliation was to be achieved by a marriage of Rosso's, Logic and Wittgenstein's Tractatus. So next session I'm going to talk about of the Russell's project, how it influences Karna from outbound logical syntax and how at the end of the logical syntax of language, it fundamentally parts away from Russell's project on every important ground. Uh, and Wittgenstein's Tractatus. And we have a little bit of Wittgenstein, why Carnap's logic idea of logical syntax of language diversions from that of Wittgenstein's, uh, you know, theory of, uh, uh, picturing.
So Vienna's circle took Whitehead and Russell's Principa Mathematica, uh, to make very plausible the reducibility of mathematics to logic. And Wittgenstein have revealed that logical truths are empty tautologies that are true in virtue of language, not in virtue of representing facts. Their basic attitude is that Russell presents us with new and powerful logic, while Wittgenstein decisively clarifies the essence of logic. This marriage, however, as we revealed, is troubled. The derivation of mathematics in Principia is achieved only by the use of three existence,
three existence axioms, whose lack of self evidence arguably disqualified them from the state of logical principles. Nor do these axioms appear to be tractarian tautologies. Indeed, in tractatus, Wittgenstein rejects Regan's and Russell's logicist ambitions and for wars an impenetrably terse account of the equations of arithmetic that distinguishes these equations from the tautologies of logic. Hans Hahn realized that logicism has not yet been fully validated, but is in sanguine about its prospects. He says, of course, the proof of tautological
character of mathematics is not yet complete on all points, yet we have no doubt that the view that mathematics is total logical in character is essentially correct. Now, after finishing his doctoral dissertation, Kana is concerned first and foremost with the application of logic to the formalization of physical theory in order to address issues in philosophy of science and theory of knowledge. Logical structure of the world, or as we have addressed, is Aufbau, is the culmination of Carnap's efforts with disregard, with regard to this, you know,
conundrum. In Aufbau, Kana accepts the simple theory of types as proposed by Russell as formulation of logic and casually assumes that all the mathematics needed for natural science can be developed in this framework. He has at this point no worked out philosophy of logic. In the late 1920s, our Carnap's attention turns to philosophy of mathematics and the difficulties with the version of logicism he has been espousing. He hopes to combine
basically Russell's logic with ideas inspired by Hilbert, metamathematics, to develop an account of mathematics as a formal science rather than a factual science that will nevertheless do justice to its applications in the natural sciences. Now Carnap's efforts here were disrupted by Godel's incompleteness theorem, which asserts that any consistent formalization of elementary arithmetic satisfying certain weak notational conditions is syntactically incomplete. and so fails to decide the truth or falsity of some arithmetic called sentence or sentences.
The philosophy of logic and mathematics in the logical syntax of language is Carnap's striking response to this complicated situation. now I'm going to open it to discussion so we are going to talk about my apologies some reason allergy hit me this is kind of a brief introduction as how these things are emerging as I mentioned next session we talk about Russell get a little bit into nitty-gritty of things. But before I open it to
questions and other kinds of stuff, I just want to read this. So the what Felipe read, I mean mentioned today is a shilp volume of Carnot's autobiography. But Carnot confesses his aversion to the indecisive wrangling that in his opinion has traditionally pervaded philosophy. He says, I was depressed by disputations in which opponents talked at
cross purposes. There seemed hardly any chance of mutual understanding, let alone of agreement, because there was not even a common criterion for deciding the controversy. And for him, You see, what I want to say, so he is a man who always sees problems that are ordinary at different levels, at different scales, right? So he wants to actually start with this idea that in this dialogue between philosophers, we don't even have mutual understanding, let alone agreement. Just forget about agreement, concepts of building. It's not just like, You are not going to have them anytime soon.
The thing is that the most important thing that we need to actually strive for is a common criterion for deciding the controversy. Where the controversy even emerged in the first place, right? So this is at the ordinary level of interlocution, dialogue. think about this at the level of traditional sciences, within systems of science, science, and particular sciences, and among science, scientific community, among the members of scientific community. Then think about it in terms of different strains of logic and mathematics. So you see, that question of finding the common criterion for controversy can also be translated
from this ordinary level of dialogue to the level of controversy, disagreements between strains of sciences, disagreements between members of scientific community, collisions and conflicts between strains of mathematics, of philosophies of mathematics, and ultimately a strains of logic. So this is what you might call to be, um, the main, one of the main, um if not really the central motivations behind logical syntax of language from a very simple
down-to-earth question in terms of that dialogue between philosophers he starts to readdress the same kind of problem on different scales And of course, the consequences of addressing this question at different scales become palpable in logical syntax on words. But that will be a different story, my friends. So. Hey, may I? Sure. Absolutely. I've been thinking about one paper by
Per Martin Lof, the Analytic and Synthetic Yes, sure. Type theory, where it gives the example, well, if it is raining and you say it is raining and your colleague says, no, it's not, what happens there is a a conceptual disagreement because clearly to that person, there is some kind of a complication about what is or is not a situation in which it is raining. And I was thinking, does Martin Love's solution to this problem in saying that to get a synthetic,
to formulate a synthetic judgment you have to uh formulate an analytic one um is this something that was enabled by carnapp's work no i don't think so i i actually to be honest with you i think that carnapp would fundamentally disagree with that approach precisely because he then would tell you that, look, you can't even have that sort of dialogue about this, or all of this is actually meaningless and absurd, whether it's raining or it's not raining, so on and so forth, unless you have understood a language within which the language of these two interlocutors
and their respective concepts and claims taking place. And only in going back to that sort of language of language, you can make sense of what they are actually saying in the first place. Well, the person who's saying that it's raining is not raining, apart from perceptual problems. It might actually be arising from how they interpret concept of rain and making a claim as whether it's raining or not. He wants to say, he wants to make a story that these kinds of claims in themselves are empty of truth value.
Simple as that. Just like, remember the idea that we said about hypothesis. that hypothesis cannot be individually tested, that we can never going to be able to find the truth value of a single hypothesis, that the only way a chance we have is by understanding a systems, an attempt at the systems of hypothesis, because individual hypotheses themselves don't yield truth. the criterion of testability is not applied to an individual hypothesis but always to the system of hypotheses the same thing can be said about these sorts of statements that the criterion
of truth is not applied to such individual sentences but the system that supports them and within which they can be assessed ultimately. So I have a quick question and apologies if this is covering some ground that's just been covered, but I'm curious as to whether we actually can get like a semantically enriched picture from this, you know, more syntactic kind of universality of the sciences, right? Or, you know, in a sense, like, say you've got a theoretical physicist and a biologist who have competing accounts of what that totality is. And this picture that Carnap is giving us eliminates that problem, in a sense, because it kind of it takes away all of the semantically laden sort of vocabulary that is tractable to experience that would go into either of those competing accounts and tries to develop a common one via syntax.
But my question is then whether we're just left with that common language of the syntax, even if we might be interested in questions of semantics at the level of like universality, can we still get that kind of, can we still get any kind of salient information in terms of like questions of meaning or questions of about-ness? And my sense is like Carnap isn't going to do that, but I wonder whether then that kind of, what the sort of value of such a project would be vis-a-vis the sciences which are trying to find out information about the world. So I mean, Sure, sure. One thing and the most important thing, it's not he wants to get rid of syntax because it has some sort of resolutions of experience and those sorts of no-kathy and stuff.
I mean semantics. Semantics. Semantics. Semantics. Not because it has some sort of residuals of experientialism of human agential experience. No, it's actually, as I said, is that the truth of semantic statements cannot be applied directly to the truth of those statements In order for you to actually assess the truth of them, you need to go back to one level below, the level of syntax. Like as I mentioned, the truth of single hypothesis cannot be determined in terms of those hypotheses alone.
You need to go to a system of hypothesis, holistic view. The same thing that Connacht wants to do with the attempt at meta-logic and here logical syntax. It just is not, yeah, maybe that semantics for him at some point early has some sort of experiential, pragmatic load that he wants to be done with. But it's not really that. It simply thinks that any sort of assessment or verification of semantic statements already assumes too much and it's already too narrow of an enterprise.
He wants to go back to a more, you know, generalized view, which is the syntactic view. So that's one. But then he noticed that he can't do, he can't explain all scientific statements by way of the sort of attempt at syntax. hard to say historically why, but he thinks that whether he thinks that it actually pigeonholes the idea of science or that sooner or later that sort of syntactic reduction of all semantic statements run into a dead end. I really, to be honest with you, I don't have any answer for that
and I'm still trying to explore why to relinquish this project. Not relinquish this project, but simply ameliorate it by adding his own version of semantics. To have Kana hard fanboy, this looks like a goddamn compromise. But yeah, well, I, to be honest with you, I really have, I've read so many, I can actually introduce, I can put something, if you can email me tomorrow, I will, tomorrow, day after
tomorrow, Sunday, I can actually share a couple of links that I have, I mean, essays and stuff on this issue. It's really, I haven't seen any sort of really convincing answer to this. Hard to say, really hard to say what prompted Carnap to basically relinquish that sort of really hard stance on syntax. To be honest with you, I really think right now that he had to compromise.
I mean, his philosophy wasn't being taken seriously at all at that point. So he had to basically, yeah, I want a little bit of embodiment in my syntactic coldness, just to be friends with other people. I can see that Dale Shaw is going on the lap of his life. I'm going to go ahead and ask you a question. Connor has a question, yes. So my headphones just died. I'm sorry. So I'm sorry if there's any echo. So to preface this, I was watching the lectures from last year's seminar over Carnap.
and um it was i think it was like the first first seminar first session and the dill shot presented and uh he used a phrase that's been sticking with me since then um and it's like um but it's relates relates to this this question of um at least um you're portraying of carnap is trying to like maybe gut logic of any sort of like pragmatic or like meaning relation or what have you right I might be misunderstanding this. It might be sometimes human facts. Yeah. And he said it was frictionless spinning in the void. And I, my question was, if we decide to follow Carnap in, you know, doing away with use or meaning, I guess, and then just
focus on the, like the, at least as I understand it, like the relation of logic to itself or something like that. Like one, how do we, there seems to be at least like a problem of regress in a sense. In what sense, in what sense regress? Wouldn't it be like, okay, so we have our logical syntax describing an object language and then, Um, object language as a species of metal language that allows to convert metal like metal linguistic statements back into object language. Hmm. Okay. Um, I'll have to read on that more because I'm having I'm that's kind of it's it's kind
of throwing my head for my own chain mind for a loop. But the second problem I wanted to bring up was where it is. does the um how can logic develop or anything like where where does it meet where's the friction at if that makes any sense so it's not just like okay logic doesn't develop anything so it's just a tautology no logic is a platform okay a scaffolding of all the human sciences And essentially, he wants to basically, Karnak wants to show ultimately that development, developing this scaffolding ultimately leads to development of all sciences.
just think about this that so you have windows i don't know god damn windows three point whatever that affords such and such apps right it's just a platform and it just has interface it's not it doesn't syntax doesn't even have interface it's a pure and empty form of signs So you can plug certain kinds of what you can do with this sort of platform into it, right? These are kind of apps, semantic pragmatic apps and so on and so forth. But the thing is that he's not Hilbertian and he's not Wittgenstein and he thinks that this scaffold can be expanded
by a science of scaffolding, meaning the science of logic or the science of language, such that if you expand the capabilities of this platform, this scaffolding, you can plug higher, more advanced developed apps into it. This is kind of like a metaphor that I have for this. Oten- Noirath has a very famous quote that Nourath Buddhist wrapping. Oten- Yes, exactly. Noirath or Noirath Buddhist wrapping, right? Yeah, Oten- Noirath Buddhist wrapping. Oten- I suppose that something to the same effect can be said about Karna, but does with
Syntax or logic, as if for Wittgenstein's prison that was my presentation basically. If this is Wittgenstein prisons guy. If this is it, this is made of logic. Do you understand what I'm saying? If my hand is the plane of observational sentence, this is the plane, it's billions of any, any any possible observational synthesis is written in my hand. What logic does is that plugs into this and my hands become something flexible, can have some other shapes.
But at the end, all of these shapes are the transition shapes of my hand. So my hand becomes the tribunal of experience. My but found this is foundation, but what what kind of tries to say is that this is metaphysical, this is nothing. What we are talking about actually it's all about these clubs. Look what these clubs do. Look, we can do this and this and this and this and ultimately what he says that all language is what these clubs can do. do. Look for all the languages, all the possible language, the general syntax at the end of the syntax, logical syntax of language is the claim that we have this syntax. We have a
syntax, a uniform of minimal minimal requirement for for for foundation of any kind of language. So this is a beautiful claim. But it doesn't go far from But Arman, there is a certain thing though, he doesn't want to simply describe language in terms of what it can do. Essentially he wants to say language is capable of doing all of these things precisely because its nature is such and such. Coming back to the idea that, you know, that it is essentially a system of unmarked, uninterpreted marks. And that, that recognition of language opens the door for a study of language such that
we can finally understand that this is what language can do. And anything that we can say the language cannot do is most probably a metaphysical bullshit. That's what we do with our language with language is as unfathomable as what it can do to ourselves. I completely agree. Who am I to agree? Yes, but my problem, what goes in what boils up my blood is that you represent the stuff as if there's a war between good and bad. and here we have syntaxes and here we have semantics and syntaxes are winning and no
they have to go and understand this is very beautiful yes yes yes it's a kind of a titanic battle at this point yeah what do you you agree that this is not the case huh no i mean it is but i mean from the people who are on the sidewalk right from the perspective of people who are in in the sidewalk. For Karnam, probably it's not really. For him, he just wants, as I mentioned, he just wants to burn the bridges with all sorts of philosophy in order to say what philosophy can do more than what we thought philosophy can do, precisely because we were addicted
to a version of philosophy that assumes too much about its capacities but when it comes to the concreteness it doesn't do anything it is is a organome of disablement that's a traditional idea of philosophy Karnap wants to purge that image but precisely a step by step begin to burn philosophy, resurrect it again, see how much it can survive. And this is actually really, of course, it is fundamentally, you know, kind of romantic image. And I talked about this earlier on.
Kana never relinquished that spirit of romanticism that it was in his philosophy. Maybe his methods are cold. His experience is extremely romantic. Of course. He's come from the romanticism. His romanticism, what I love about him is that his romanticism comes from Nietzsche. And the greatest insight that I took from reading Karnab, which was your, of course, influence, influence was that the whole idea, the whole idea, this is an object, this is a subject, is a perceptual idea. And this, this, this, from somebody that has wrote Afua in what, 30, when he was 30 years old or something like that. And the quote for this idea is
Nietzsche's, is Nietzsche's idea of how do we do syntax. How this is it that we do syntax. And Nietzsche has this very beautiful saying that as an adult, I also love it, that I'm afraid we're not going to, I'm not sure if this is the exact saying, I'm afraid we're not going to get rid of the God as long as we have the syntax. We're going to do something about the syntax, something like this. And I think Cardam's understands it extremely well, extremely beautifully. And what he does is exactly this Nietzsche, for me, I have no understanding, deep understanding of historical philosophy, but for me, this idea comes from Nietzsche, and it's very beautiful,
beautifully implicated. And in the probability, in the foundation, the logical foundation of probability of language, also, I think, the credentials, we're going to talk about this, I'm sure, but the credentials function function, the credential function are the result of logical syntax. Without logical syntax and without this understanding of analyticity and contradiction, we cannot have credential functions in probability. But also, as a little bit of another objection to what you said, I think as it is obviously logical, financial probability, the points of observation never, never becomes known, unfortunately, but he tries to do something with it and
nullify the mystification of observation, not the transcendental part of observation. Yeah, sure, sure, absolutely. Yes, yes, definitely. So we will talk about this when we get to it. Yeah, absolutely. Yes, it's a demystification of observation. Absolutely so. Yes, yes, definitely. Yes. Anyway, we are running late. Next person and the respondent, I mean, next two presentations. We haven't saw it. I think it's Brian. And I can't remember who's responding, but I'll double check with them as well in case can't do it but i'm pretty sure we have it okay okay and and cassia i think this yeah okay excellent excellent um so next next session we are going to read this this chapter uh in andre caros uh book
um um you know uh and light uh what's that um uh explication as enlightenment is chapter nine called liberation how many more sessions we have now five five more sessions right i think we are fine okay my dear friends i don't want to see any of you until next week uh thank you so much for all the discussions excellent inputs by all of you