In philosophy one runs the risk of two kinds of criticism: that the answer one gives to a question is false or otherwise inadequate; or, perhaps worse, that the question one is trying to answer is itself misconceived. Carnap has directed a criticism of the second kind against traditional ontological disputes; the supposed issue between nominalists and realists is, according to him, devoid of cognitive content. This view is, of course, of a piece with Carnap’s general antipathy to metaphysical questions: (...) nevertheless, Carnap employs some specific arguments against ontological questions in particular, and does not rely on standard verificationist arguments against metaphysics in general. My object in this paper will be mainly to get clear the issues raised by Carnap in ‘Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology’,’ in the hope that this will clear the way for a positive account of the status of ontological issues. In the final section I shall offer some- inevitably sketchy - suggestions towards such an account. (shrink)

Suppose now that two philosophers, McX and I, differ over ontology. Suppose McX maintains there is something which I maintain there is not. McX can, quite consistently with his own point of view, describe our difference of opinion by saying that I refuse to recognize certain entities. I should protest of course that he is wrong in his formulation of our disagreement, for I maintain that there are no entities, of the kind which he alleges, for me to recognize; but (...) my finding him wrong in his formulation of our disagreement is unimportant, for I am committed to considering him wrong in his ontology anyway. When I try to formulate our difference of opinion, on the other hand, I seem to be in a predicament. I cannot admit that there are some things which McX countenances and I do not, for in admitting that there are such things I should be contradicting my own rejection of them. (shrink)

This is a translation of Carnap's early classic, Der Logische Aufbau der Welt and his less technical but also important article from the same period, Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie. It is no secret that Carnap abandoned the phenomenalism of the Aufbau for the physicalism of Logische Syntax der Sprache, but there is no doubt that the real message of the Aufbau—which is punctuated with the Messianic spirit of early logical positivism—is the program of "rational reconstruction" which becomes, on an inverted (...) reading and with the addition of a bias in favor of the universal descriptive and explanatory power of scientific discourse, the program of scientific reductionism. In this light, the continuities between the Aufbau and Carnap's later work completely dwarf in importance the discrepancies between these two periods of his creative output. The Aufbau remains an important book in its own right, and is not simply a detailed manifesto of a now defunct program; it is a pleasure to have it in English.—E. A. R. (shrink)

(1) Abstract objects. The nominalist (as the label is used today) denies that there exist abstract objects. The platonist holds that there are abstract objects. One example is numbers. The nominalist denies that there are numbers; the platonist typically affirms it.

The paper is an extended discussion of what I call the ‘dismissive attitude’ towards metaphysical questions. It has three parts. In the first part, I distinguish three quite different versions of dismissivism. I also argue that there is little reason to think that any of these positions is correct about the discipline of metaphysics as a whole; it is entirely possible that some metaphysical disputes should be dismissed and others should not be. Doing metametaphysics properly requires doing metaphysics first. I (...) then put two particular disputes on the table to be examined in the rest of the paper: the dispute over whether composite objects exist, and the dispute about whether distinct objects can be colocated. In the second part of the paper, I argue against the claim that these disputes are purely verbal disputes. In the third part of the paper, I present a new version of dismissivism, and argue that it is probably the correct view about the two disputes in question. They are not verbal disputes, and the discussion about them to date has not remotely been a waste of time. At this stage, however, our evidence has run out. I argue that neither side of either dispute is simpler than the other, and that the same objections in fact arise against both sides. (For example, the compositional nihilist does not in fact escape the problem of the many, and the one-thinger does not in fact escape the grounding problem.). (shrink)