Carnap and Quine on Truth by Convention

Sign and Object: Quine’s forgotten book project

“…Some scholars believe that Quine is also arguing against Carnap's view in "Truth by Convention" (1936), arguably Quine's most influential philosophical contribution in the 1930s. For an alternative interpretation of "Truth by Convention", see Ebbs (2011) Logistic (1934a) and Mathematical Logic (1940). 16 The outline is simply titled "Book".…”

“…developing a 'logic of science' in which metaphysical statements are 1 See Floyd (2009). For examples of some pivotal first steps toward the study of Quine's development, see Hylton (2001), Isaac (2005), Ebbs (2011), Frost-Arnold (2011, Sinclair (2012), and Morris (2015). 2 Quine to Nelson Goodman (December 19, 1944, item 420).…”

Quine against Lewis (and Carnap) on Truth by Convention

“…But then logic is needed already in the metatheory to infer the individual logical truths from the general conventions. Hence, convention cannot provide an account of how the logical truths are true (Ebbs, , p. 195; Quine, , pp. 103–104, 1963, pp.…”

“…According to Ebbs, Quine directs his observation against himself: ‘Quine's criticisms of the thesis that logic is true by convention are not directed against a truth‐by‐convention thesis that Carnap actually held, but are part of Quine's own project of articulating the consequences of his scientific naturalism’ (Ebbs, , p. 193). According to Ebbs, the kind of truth by convention thesis that Quine's observation actually has force against is a view that Quine himself was tempted by at the time of writing ‘Truth by Convention’ (Ebbs, , p. 223).…”

“…According to Ebbs, Quine directs his observation against himself: ‘Quine's criticisms of the thesis that logic is true by convention are not directed against a truth‐by‐convention thesis that Carnap actually held, but are part of Quine's own project of articulating the consequences of his scientific naturalism’ (Ebbs, , p. 193). According to Ebbs, the kind of truth by convention thesis that Quine's observation actually has force against is a view that Quine himself was tempted by at the time of writing ‘Truth by Convention’ (Ebbs, , p. 223). As Ebbs explains this thesis,

The logical truths of a language system LS are all and only those sentences of LS that are true‐in‐ LS solely in virtue of the linguistic conventions for LS , where a sentence s of language system LS is true by convention if and only if the conventions laid down for LS and the inference rules and logical truths of the metalanguage in which those conventions are specified together imply that s is true and thereby explain why s is true, in some scientifically legitimate sense of ‘explain’ (2011, p. 219; Ebbs's italics).

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