Discussion: Of Selection Operators and Semanticists

Abstract

As anyone who has ever seriously attempted to analyze the semantico-epistemological status of scientific theories has soon discovered, it is not easy to reconcile the belief that theoretical terms (i.e., terms which cannot be explicitly defined in the observation language) have genuine cognitive properties with the empiricist tenet that all knowledge derives from experience. Even if it be granted that knowledge can originate in experience without being about experience, it still remains to develop a coherent metalinguistic account of the truth-conditions of theoretical propositions and the designata of denotative expressions in the theory language. In a recent article, “On the use of Hilbert's e-operator in scientific theories” [1], Carnap has broadened his analysis of theories to include provision for the referential properties of individual theoretical terms. But while his account focuses more closely than ever upon the fundamental semantical problems of a theory language, his specific proposals amount to a repudiation of the very logical empiricism which he has so strongly championed these many years. In what follows, I use Carnap's notation and terminology throughout (including a pejorative sense of the term “metaphysics” borrowed from Carnap's earlier writings).