Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editor's preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I The semantic tradition
- Part II Vienna, 1925–1935
- 9 Schlick before Vienna
- 10 Philosophers on relativity
- 11 Carnap before Vienna
- 12 Scientific idealism and semantic idealism
- 13 Return of Ludwig Wittgenstein
- 14 A priori knowledge and the constitution of meaning
- 15 The road to syntax
- 16 Syntax and truth
- 17 Semantic conventionalism and the factuality of meaning
- 18 The problem of induction: theories
- 19 The problem of experience: protocols
- Notes
- References
- Index
14 - A priori knowledge and the constitution of meaning
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editor's preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I The semantic tradition
- Part II Vienna, 1925–1935
- 9 Schlick before Vienna
- 10 Philosophers on relativity
- 11 Carnap before Vienna
- 12 Scientific idealism and semantic idealism
- 13 Return of Ludwig Wittgenstein
- 14 A priori knowledge and the constitution of meaning
- 15 The road to syntax
- 16 Syntax and truth
- 17 Semantic conventionalism and the factuality of meaning
- 18 The problem of induction: theories
- 19 The problem of experience: protocols
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
The great problem round which everything that I write turns is: Is there an order in the world a priori, and if so what does it consist in?
Wittgenstein, NotebooksTo a necessity in the world there corresponds an arbitrary rule in language.
Wittgenstein, Lectures, 1930–32Wittgenstein said that “there are no true a priori propositions” (Lectures, 1930–32, p. 13; Tractatus, 2.225), Carnap tirelessly denied the synthetic a priori, and Schlick went so far as to define empiricism as the rejection of synthetic a priori knowledge. In spite of all this there can be no doubt that the major contribution of Wittgenstein's and Carnap's epistemologies in the early 1930s was their interpretations of all a priori knowledge, both analytic and synthetic. Their theories of philosophical grammar and of logical syntax may well be regarded as the first genuine alternatives to Kant's conception of the a priori.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, no philosopher of consequence was satisfied with Kant's solution to the problem of the a priori. Many had come to understand far better than Kant what was involved in particular instances of a priori knowledge; but efforts to build general accounts of what that form of knowledge was and the way it was grounded were far less successful. In Part I we examined some of the alternatives to Kant's theory that had been put forth by Kantians or anti-Kantians.
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- Information
- The Semantic Tradition from Kant to CarnapTo the Vienna Station, pp. 259 - 271Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991