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11 - Logical Truth by Linguistic Convention

from Part III - Logics of Mathematics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2021

Geoffrey Hellman
Geoffrey Hellman
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
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Summary

In his influential paper, “Truth by convention,” Quine subjected the linguistic doctrine of logical truth (LD) to a critique that, to many, has seemed devastating. Having granted the conventionalist (what Quine took to be) his starting points, Quine caught his opponent in a vicious regress: to proceed from the linguistic stipulations to the (full class of) logical truths requires logical rules themselves in addition to any of the stipulations. What Lewis Carroll’s tortoise said to Achilles (on the need to appeal to modus ponens to justify any application of it) seemed an arrow in Carnap’s heel.

Carnap seems never to have taken the critique very seriously. His reply to Quine’s “Carnap and logical truth,” which repeated the upshot of “Truth by convention,” is couched in irony. Quine had found LD “empty” and “without experimental meaning”; moreover, he had found it “implying nothing not already implied by’’ the assertion – which he surely accepted – that logic is obvious.

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Mathematics and Its Logics
Philosophical Essays
 , pp. 175 - 190
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Carnap, R. [1937] The Logical Syntax of Language (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul).Google Scholar
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Putnam, H. [1962] “The analytic and the synthetic”, in Mathematics, Matter, and Method: Philosophical Papers, Volume 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 33–69.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. [1936] “Truth by convention,” reprinted in The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays, revised edn. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 77–106.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. [1953] “Mr. Strawson on logical theory,” reprinted in The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays, revised edn. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 137–157.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. [1960a] “Carnap and logical truth,” reprinted in The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays, revised edn. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 107–132.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. [1960b] Word and Object (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. [1963] “Carnap and logical truth,” in Schilpp, P. A., ed., The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (La Salle IL: Open Court), pp. 385–406.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. [1969] “Ontological relativity,” in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 26–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quine, W. V. [1970] Philosophy of Logic (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall).Google Scholar
Strawson, P. F. [1971] “Book review: Philosophy of Logic by W. V. Quine,” Journal of Philosophy 68(6): 174–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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