Philosophy

This is a philosophical review of the exhibition dedicated to Literature â Art titled Mukhaputa (Cover page) held on occasion of the Manipal International Literature and Arts Platform 2017 in Manipal, India. The curatorial strategy of the exhibition explores the intersectional relationships between literature and visual arts at large. The context of this critical review is the recent past of modern literature journals in print that encouraged artists and illustrators to converse with literature and in turn poets and authors to be artists in their own right. Through a reflection on the nature of new forms of art works submitted by various artists to the exhibition, the review situates new methods of interdisciplinary curating which is highly contingent and speculative. Curation, thus, demands a new reading in terms of its role in interdisciplinary creative practice.

© AesthetixMS 2018. This Open Access article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For citation use the DOI. For commercial re-use, please contact email@example.com. Review article Curating Interdisciplinarity in Literature-Art: a Review of Mukhaputa Srajana Kaikini Research Scholar (PhD), Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities, Manipal University, Karnataka. ORCID: 0000-0002-1955-5482. Email: firstname.lastname@example.com Received October 30, 2017; Revised February 28, 2018; Accepted March 20, 2018; Published May 26, 2018. Abstract This is a philosophical review of the exhibition dedicated to Literature – Art titled Mukhaputa (Cover page) held on occasion of the Manipal International Literature and Arts Platform 2017 in Manipal, India. The curatorial strategy of the exhibition explores the intersectional relationships between literature and visual arts at large. The context of this critical review is the recent past of modern literature journals in print that encouraged artists and illustrators to converse with literature and in turn poets and authors to be artists in their own right. Through a reflection on the nature of new forms of art works submitted by various artists to the exhibition, the review situates new methods of interdisciplinary curating which is highly contingent and speculative. Curation, thus, demands a new reading in terms of its role in interdisciplinary creative practice. Keywords: Curatorial philosophy, interdisciplinarity, literature, arts, illustration, literature-art 1. Introduction The tradition of illustrations and art for literature has a rich history across cultures. Literary history has also seen a legacy of creative collaborations between artists and writers. There are artists who write and writers who draw. And then there are those who are neither and yet are artists in their own right. Mukhaputa, an exhibition dedicated to literature – art, explored all these facets of literature's symbiosis with art and creative expression. Mainstream art journals such as Journal of Arts and Ideas (Kapur, 1983) and others brought together criticism and writing on art to print which continues till date through art magazines such as Art India (Sardesai, 2006), Take on Art (Kakar, 2010), Marg (Jain and Ahuja, 1946), Art and Deal (Tagore 1998) and others. Literary journals on the other hand have had a different intersectional approach to art. While the academic journals accommodate little or no space for art and are purely text-based, the regional magazines and fortnightlies, for instance in Kannada, have a more inclusive stance to illustrative art, though these spaces are also overtaken by advertising images. However, it is important to notice that fewer literary publications accommodate for what this paper refers to as literature-art which will be discussed in the detail in the subsequent sections. In the light of the exhibition Mukhaputa, hosted by the K K Hebbar Gallery and Arts Centre, Manipal, this review interrogates the process of curating interdisciplinary art, with a specific focus on literature-art as Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities (ISSN 0975-2935), Vol. 10, No. 2, 2018 [Indexed by Web of Science, Scopus & approved by UGC] DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v10n2.24 Full Text: http://rupkatha.com/V10/n2/v10n224.pdf 252 Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2018 an interdisciplinary genre. In the process, it gives an account of what could constitute literatureart and thereby offer insights into new methods of curating interdisciplinary work. 2. What is it to Curate the Word and the Image? The relation between the word and the image has been the focus of philosophical enquiry since antiquity. Matilal (1992, p.3) in his reflection of the nature of philosophy in the Indian traditions, notes how the world and the word and intrinsically connected. Language becomes integral to our conception and construction of the world. Our perception is informed by our language, and our experiences are constrained by our conceptual grounding. Matilal further emphasizes on grammarians like Bharṭṛhari (Matilal, 1992, p.120) whose ṥabda theory is influential in his own exposition on translatability of language. Such a language centric discourse of philosophy argues for the inevitable way in which our world is sliced through our vocabulary whereby language becomes a primary tool through which we can discern one thing from another in the world and therefore any experience of the world becomes possible. This view is upheld by Sarukkai (2016) who dwells on problems of translatability in the sciences. Sarukkai (2016, p.107) maintains that translation gives insight into the structures of different languages and thereby also tests the 'meaning-bearing' capacity in between languages. This, when taken to its extreme effect resonates with the theories of effability which purport that everything that is knowable and experiential is sayable or explicable (Katz, 1978). These theories become foundational when considering the intersection between literature, visual arts and their interdisciplinarity. Literature is concerned with words and language, while visual art can be said to be concerned with the images and senses. In classical notions of 'pure' aesthetics, the image feels threatened by the word and vice versa. Katz M. (1998) observes this tension between the verbal and the visual as a 'mutual haunting of the verbal and the visual, a process in which they both perpetually evoke and perpetually repel one another.' The field of comparative studies has aimed at blurring these standpoints but often ended up 'privileging the linguistic over the pictorial' (Katz M., p.110). The place where these two meet on an equal standing is in the domain of interdisciplinarity. This interdisciplinary entity in turn belongs to the domain of experience where translation becomes a foundational method in creation where 'art as an experience is rendered translatable at the boundaries of itself' (Kaikini, 2016, p.17). What one feels when one is reading a piece of literature, manifests in the form of an image. On the other hand, what one feels when one is looking at a piece of visual art, a painting or a drawing, manifests in the form of an expression of it through words. Thus, our intrinsic relation to both the media, i.e. of literature and of visual arts is interdisciplinary in that the experience of a discipline is conveyed by another discipline. Moran (2002, pp15-17) states that the term 'interdisciplinary' is a rather slippery word in that it can be a means to establish a 'kind of undisciplined space in the interstices between disciplines'. The term emerged within the context of educational reforms in the social sciences in the 1920's and presented a 'radical questioning of the nature of knowledge' and was thus interlocked 'with the concerns of epistemology' (Moran, 2002). Pickering (2013) on the other hand, argues for the affinity of ontology with interdisciplinarity and anti-disciplinarity. Considering these interpretations, it is evident that though interdisciplinarity emerges from epistemological concerns, it is driven phenomenologically and thereby belongs to the domain of experience which is inherently outside of disciplinary confines. This makes the case for interdisciplinarity all the more viable in the fields of arts and in the context of this paper, literature and art. 253 Review article: Curating Interdisciplinarity in Literature-Art Keeping in mind, this symbiosis between knowledge and experience in interdisciplinarity and between literature and art, curating literature-art therefore requires an understanding of the locus of experience in the cohesive field of literature-art. Literature-art can be broadly considered as the art that is inspired from, in conversation with or derived from literature. The hyphen is important in the word as it distinguishes it from other terms such as 'literary art' or 'literal art' in which, the word art is qualified by literature. Literature-art, thus, becomes a definition emergent from an interdisciplinary vocabulary, where retaining the hyphen between the two words emphasizes the in-betweenness of the genre. Often, the first instances of literature-art that come to our minds are those of calendar art works and magazine illustrations, works that can be found in every household and is part of our lived experience. Beyond this, literature-art manifests in many forms as will be discussed in the next section of the paper. Historically, there have been several instances of poets influencing artists and artists influencing poets. Cases abound of literary figures who are known to draw and doodle and artists who used the word as their medium. These exchanges and intersections healthily blur the boundaries of both disciplines in order to pay attention ultimately to the experience that they wish to convey to the viewer/reader/audience. 3. The Relation between the Word and the Image: Forms of Literature-Art One can see early forms of these intersections in calendar art, art on matchboxes, designs on stamps, art work on the labels of school books and the illustrations in children's story books that are so integral to any child's formative years. Children's book illustrations can be seen as a significant first encounter with art. Internationally renowned illustrators have created entire worlds for children. Maurice Sendak (2013), Beatrix Potter (2002), Christoph Neimann (2016) are a few names from across the world who have universally captured the child's imagination and perception of the world and brought text to life. Meanwhile, in the Indian context, we have several publishers such as Tara Books, Tulika Books, Children's Book Trust, Pratham Books among others who are bringing to the fore several new contemporary illustrators with distinct styles and encouraging artists regionallyi. The hand figures prominently in all of these relays between words and images, the touched and the felt, the seen and the expressed. Poet Arun Kolatkar was also known for his doodles and is said to have been very particularly involved in the designs of his books. History abounds with references to artists and poets who nurtured each other (Nerlekar, 2016). One of the most prominent literary figure in Indian literary history is that of Rabindranath Tagore whose poem doodles and drawings have been widely acclaimed. Poet Imtiaz Dharkar's drawings also accompany some of her poetry publications. These poets are among the few multilingual sensibilities (be it between languages or between media) who not only have been craftsmen of words but also finetuned expressionists through their lines, drawings and collagesii. 4. Mukhaputa's Curatorial Premise The exhibition Mukhaputa explored different facets of literature-art by including paintings, drawings, caricatures, book coverpage art as well as multimedia installations and word based worksiii. The curatorial team of Mukhaputa sent out an open call for literature art submissions, all of which were put on display in the gallery. The art works submitted reflected a wide range of creative and philosophical engagement with the word and with books at large. These were 254 Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2018 accompanied by archival research material featuring two prominent and now discontinued literary journals, Bhavana and Deshakaala in Kannada which were closely associated with writers, artists and designersiv. The nature of the curating kept only a certain amount of control on the content and premise of the show while the nature of the art-works produced and submitted were open ended and beyond any curatorial purview. Importantly, the call for submissions refrained from any selection process and claimed to put on display all work that was submitted, thus posing a unique challenge to the curators. In the process, the format attempted to subvert any criteria of taste, coherence of form and narrative prominence. What emerged, as a result, was a constellation of creative responses not only from professional artists but also professionals from other disciplines like astrophysics, medicine, philosophy etc as are discussed below. The Works at Mukhaputa Medical doctor and artist Mary Mathew worked on a wordle – a fusion of 'word' and 'doodle' based on Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech 'I have a dream' (King, 1968) used phrases from the speech to construct the portrait of Martin Luther King. Sambit Dash's work Chha Mana Atha Guntha (Six Acres and a Third) took the chapter titles from Odia author Fakir Mohan Senapati's eponymous book and created what he called a 'word cloud'(Senapati, 2005). A Chinese ideogram was also part of the exhibition, which brought forth the visual quality of the word in its most explicit form. Artist and ethnographer Rajyashri Goody's work 'Is hunger gnawing at your belly?' entailed a set of poems written in response to Lakshman Gaekwad's novel Uchlya (1999) striving to bring out 'the strong relationship between caste, food, access and hunger' (Goody, 2017). These works attempted to take the word out of its textual frame and employ it in a contextually, making words building blocks of perception rather that building blocks of meaning. Another work 'Bh vakṛti' by Tapaswi H. M (2017) animated the word through a mixed media installation by addressing the import of M. Gopala Krishna Adiga's poem Bhoota (Past) (2015) digitally projecting the words onto a slab of unpolished stone. The words appeared and disappeared in succession, thus performing the poem to the viewer with a form that is reminiscent of the ancient historical stone edicts, evoking a sense of the past in the medium of the present. The connection between the mind and the hand was another motif that kept recurring in some of the other featured works. Prominent amidst these was an installation work by Meera Baindur, whose work 'Ready at Hand' trans-created a passage from Heidegger on the intrinsic connection between the hand and the mind. Baindur (2017) says in the description of her work, 'The installation itself is a text of a text, firstly representing the word, then inviting the spectator into 'handling' the sculpture and meanings of the hands in different ways through thinking, moving from thinking to hand to thinking again.' This auto-poesis of the hand which makes the case of creativity to be essentially situated in the realm of action and performance rather than in the realm of conceptual thinking, is crucial in the shifting of the locus of experience of literature-art from within the disciplines to the outside, in between the viewer and the work and in the activity of interpreting, reading, perceiving and re-creating the work in the presence of the spectator. This pre-supposition also then allows for craft and design to enter into the artist's realm. The craftsman, merely by virtue of her labour put into her work, becomes an artist by recognizing the labour and attributing a conceptual frame and value to it. This is evident also in the work of another artist Faiza Hasan's 255 Review article: Curating Interdisciplinarity in Literature-Art work whose medium is mostly the hand, drawing or embroidering. Faiza Hasan's 'Fictional Anatomy' (2017) series speaks quietly of a tussle between reason, sense, speech and silence in oblique and evocative ways. Through her work gestures become frozen and made available for experience. The hand figures in these continuous relays and movements between words and images, the touched and the felt, the seen and the expressed. Hasan's work 'Haath lagake toh dekho'(2015) which is a mixed medium work involving embroidery on kurta embellished and displayed with found objects and polaroid photographs, again alludes to a certain sense of domestic craftmanship that consume the days and hours of ennui in many women's lives. Here too, the narrative that Faiza expresses through the image and through the handiwork of the image is fragile and delicate. 5. The Translated Image The most prevalent medium of literature-art that emerged in the process of this exhibition pertains to what we term as illustrations. Etymologically, Webster's dictionary traces the word 'illustration' to its Latin root 'illustratio' which means to illuminate, to light up or to clarify. An illustration works comes close to can be called a translated image, in that a certain quality of experience from the piece of literature or poem is translated into the form of a drawing or painting or image. Thus, the image becomes a work of translation, the reference point always alluding to a locus in the literary piece that inspired it. However, the point where the illustration transforms into an art-work in its own right is when it moves away from being a mere translated image into a new image, one which becomes the artist's own expression of his experience of the corresponding literature and in turn augments the text in a way which is uniquely possible only through that particular medium, of line, colour or images. Literature-art, therefore, must not be confused or conflated with 'literal art', a genre that is used syntactically and subversively in most works of conceptual art and in forms of concrete poetry. Thus, an illustration transforms the literary work by moving the locus of experience from a purely textual interpretation towards a new form of perceiving a particular text, in a way that was otherwise impossible to have in a purely textual reading of it. In this context some insights into the practice from book designer and illustrator Raghu Apara in the Kannada publishing industry help us understand the processes that are underway from the artist's point of view. When asked about how he sees the role of translation in the process of making cover-page designs, Apara says, 'I usually mix and match most of the times. On few occasions, I work on a particular idea. A photograph of a temple taken a few years back somehow fits the cover page for the book I am currently designing which is a collection of essays on childhood. Then there is another photograph of a bunch of watches immersed in bath tubs [...] another one of the footpaths of Delhi that I had taken years ago. All of these become the cover page of a collection of political column writings. Some how they work. That magic is what I enjoy [..]'v. Apara's design practice reflects a certain democratic and speculative method to enable literature-art professionally, one which works with associationism closely linked with an ethics of inclusion. This is reflected in the magazine's editorial approach of accepting autonomous artworks by artists which would be juxtaposed with works of literature sent to the magazine, thereby giving both the disciplines a significant value on an equal footing and not subjugating the artworks to be merely at the service of literature. By shifting the role of the illustration from being a 256 Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2018 merely supportive feature within literature to an element of equal reckoning as the piece of poem or story, the art work becomes a space of re-discovering and finding literature in a new way. Apara worked as designer for the monthly magazine Bhavana between 2000 and 2001. In the context of this association, he describes his first insights into a new kind of editorial strategy of synergizing art and literature into the journal to form an image-centric, non-textual aesthetic of the magazine. He says, 'I am not a big fan of using drawings in combination with poetry inside a book, but we can use two to three sketches in the beginning of the book if they can set the mood and tone for that book. Sometimes we use a couple of images as section separators but that's it. For magazines, one is familiar with using illustrations or drawings related to the story or poem. In Bhavana, however, completely unconnected images were used with the text and one could see how in some magical way, a new type of connection would happen! I like that idea even today. More than meaningful art, what we need in these contexts is a good use of white space or some space for the eyes to rest and to break the monotony of seeing a sea of letters. At the same time, the art should not distract the reader. All this said, whenever I see a beautifully designed literary magazine, I fall in love with it.'vi The illustration's role grows from merely being a literal image to an evocative image, one that evokes and suggests with the text instead of being a flat reflection of it. This, I argue, can be called the first step into abstraction, a process without which any new form of interdisciplinary creation is not possible. This resonates with the point of view in art history that sides with crafts and design who make a strong case for considering engineering, design and crafts and product design as disciplines worthy of being lauded as art works in their own right.vii Further when asked about his process of designing for magazines, newspaper and making book designs, Apara says, 'Unlike painting or music, one need not officially learn anything before she designs a book cover. There are world famous designers who cannot even draw a stick figure. It is all about the idea and arrangement of elements like images and fonts and white space on the page.' The process of abstraction makes possible, firstly a sensitive listening or reading on part of the reader/artist and thereby an autonomous and reflexive creation of work on part of artist/mediator. This process of abstraction finds a new locus in the space in-between the text and image and it becomes the curator's prerogative in this case to identify and locate and sensitize the viewer to this newly situated locus of experience. Thus, I argue, that curating inter-disciplinarity is a contingent condition, one that works in a manner similar to utterance and iterations instead of tangible replicable objects. Thus, the ontology of inter-disciplinary curating is as implicated in its epistemology as it is contingent to its particular space, time and conditions. In other words, the essences of the literature-art works when displayed in particular formations and arrangements in an exhibition setting evoke new and variable effects of the works depending on the neighbourhood of the art objects and the neighbours i.e. the other literature-art works. 6. What is it to Curate the Word-Image? The paper has hitherto outlined the nuances of what can constitutes the genre of literature-art, the aesthetic of which is distinctly different from any form of 'literal art' and is a result of active interdisciplinarity which demands a new sensitivity towards the form in order to curate works of literature-art. This sensitivity, I argue, emerges in relation to a locus of experience that is neither situated in the work of literature or the work of art but is instead situated in the space between 257 Review article: Curating Interdisciplinarity in Literature-Art the two, in turn, becoming an art-work which augments the intentions of the artist both from the point of view of a sensitive reader and from the point of view of a creative art-maker. The curatorial strategies employed in the context of interdisciplinarity, thereby, hinge critically on speculative contingency, i.e. in the highly contextual and open-ended process of coming together which results in the works affecting and influencing the experience of the other art works, in the process making that particular curatorial approach emerge from the nature of the works involved. In the case of Mukhaputa, the non-fixity of form within the predetermined constraints of medium can be understood as a conscious curatorial strategy in order to accommodate the interdisciplinary nature of literature-art and its various possibilities outside of any generic definition of the form. Endnotes i For more information on these publishers refer following links. Tara Books : https://tarabooks.com/ , Tulika Books : http://www.tulikabooks.com/ , Children's Book Trust : http://www.childrensbooktrust.com/ , Pratham Books : http://prathambooks.org/ . ii See Kolatkar (2005), Dharkar (2001), Chitrabhanu (2010) iii See Nandakumar(2017).The exhibition was part of the Manipal International Literature and Arts Platform 2017 held from September 1517, 2017 at Manipal University and organised by the K K Hebbar Gallery and Arts Centre. Retrieved from https://milaplitfest.com/art-exhibition/. iv Bhavana, the literary monthly magazine was published between (add year) edited by author and poet Jayant Kaikini, was based on the formats used by other counterparts like Kasturi and Mayura. Through its publishing stint, it broke from the traditional construct of not assigning a designated illustrator. The magazine sent out open calls for art works and in the long run helped create a new breed of illustrators and artists. Deshakala, a fortnightly literary journal edited by Vivek Shanbhag worked closely with artist and theatre practitioner G Chennakesava as the designer who created a textual aesthetic to the journal. v Interview conducted with designer Raghu Apara in the context of research for the exhibition Mukhaputa (2017). vi Interview conducted with designer Raghu Apara in the context of research for the exhibition Mukhaputa (2017). vii Important movements include the Arts and Crafts Movement, de Stijl in Europe. See: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/the-arts-and-crafts-movement/ Acknowledgements The author acknowledges all artist contributions in the Mukhaputa exhibition with the special gratitude to Dr Meera Baindur , Tapaswi H.M and Vivek Kumar R for their inputs and reflections through the process of research around the exhibition and the paper. Deep gratitude to Jayant Kaikini, Raghu Apara, Vivek Shanbhag and G Chennakesava for their inputs and reflections on their practice. 258 Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2018 Citations and References Adiga, M Gopala Krishna. (2005). Past. Selected Poems , M. Gopala Krishna Adiga. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. 29. Baindur, Meera. (2017). Ready at Hand [ mixed media installation ]. Mukhaputa. Manipal: Manipal University. Chitrabhanu, K.C. (2010, 06, 04).Tagore, the Artist. The Hindu: Friday Review. Retrieved from http://www.thehindu.com/features/friday-review/art/Tagore-the-artist/article16240906.ece Dharkar, Imtiaz. (2001). I Speak for the Devil. New Delhi: Penguin Gaikwad, Laxman (1999). The Branded (Uchalya). New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi Goody, Rajyashri. (2017). Is Hunger Gnawing at Your Belly? [Printed booklet] Mukhaputa. Manipal: Manipal University. Retrieved from http://www.rajyashrigoody.com/is-hunger-gnawing-at-your-belly/ Hasan, Faiza (2015) Haath lagake toh dekho [ mixed media work in digital print reproduction]. Mukhaputa. Manipal: Manipal University. Hasan, Faiza. (2017) Fictional Anatomy [ drawing on paper ]. Mukhaputa. Manipal: Manipal University. Jain, Jyothindra & Naman. P. Ahuja (Eds.). (1946). Marg. Mumbai: The Marg Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.marg-art.org/ Kaikini, Srajana. (2016) The Return of the Translator : From the Edge of Meaning to the Edge of Sense. Translation as Method, Kunstlicht Journal for Visual Art, Visual Culture and Architecture, 3(4), 10 – 25 Kakar, Bhavna (ed.) (2010). TAKE on art. New Delhi: Bhavna Kakar. Retrieved from http://www.takeonartmagazine.com/taketeam Kapur, Geeta, Ashish Rajadhyaksha et al. (eds.) (1983). Journal of Arts and Ideas. New Delhi: Tulika . Retrieved from http://dsal.uchicago.edu/books/artsandideas/ Katz, Jerrod. (1978). Effability and Translation, in Guenthner, Reutter (eds.) Meaning and Translation: Philosophical and Linguistic Approaches. London: Duckworth Katz, Marc. (1998). Wim Wenders on the Verbal and Visual. Pacific Coast Philology, 33(2) Convention Program Issue. Penn State University Press. 109 – 111. https://doi.org/10.2307/1316840 King, Martin Luther, Jr. (1968). I Have a Dream, Quotations of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York : Grosset. Kolatkar, Arun. (2005). The Policeman. Mumbai: Pras Prakashan. Matilal, Bimal Krishna. (1992). The Word and the World: India's Contribution to the Study of Language. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Moran, Joe. (2002). Interdisciplinarity. London: Routledge. Nandakumar, Pratibha. (2017, 10, 21). The Symbiotic Relationship between Art and Literature. The Times of India. Retrieved from https://epaperlive.timesofindia.com/TOI/BLR/20171021#display_area Neimann, Christoph. (2016) Sunday Sketches. [Multimedia graphic design work]. Retrieved from http://www.christophniemann.com/ Nerlekar, Anjali. (2016). Bombay Modern : Arun Kolatkar and Bilingual Literary Culture. New Delhi : Speaking Tiger Publishers. Pickering, Andrew. (2013). Ontology and Antidisciplinarity. in Eds. Barry, Andrew & Georgina Born (Eds.). Interdisciplinarity:Reconfigurations of the Social and Natural Sciences. London:Routledge. 209 225 Potter, Beatrix. (2002). The Tale of Peter Rabbit. London: Frederick Warne 259 Review article: Curating Interdisciplinarity in Literature-Art Sardesai, Abhay (ed.). (2006). Art India. Mumbai: Art India Publishing Company. Retrieved from http://www.artindiamag.com/Volume21-Issue-3/about.html Sarukkai, Sundar. (2016). Translation as Method: Implications for History of Science, Indian Journal of History of Science, 51(1), 105-117. https://doi.org/10.16943/ijhs/2016/v51i1/48382 Senapati, Fakir Mohan. (2005). Six Acres and a Third: The Classic Nineteenth-Century Novel about Colonial India. California: University of California Press Sendak, Maurice. (2013). Where The Wild Things Are. New York: Harper Collins Publishers Solt, Mary Ellen. (1970). Concrete Poetry: A World View. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1970 Tagore, Siddhartha (ed.). (1998). Art and Deal. New Delhi: Siddhartha Tagore. Retrieved from http://artanddeal.in/cms/


Carnapâs epistemological critique of metaphysics

Philosophy

Synthese DOI 10.1007/s11229-017-1335-x Carnap's epistemological critique of metaphysics Darren Bradley1 Received: 20 July 2016 / Accepted: 8 February 2017 © The Author(s) 2017. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract Many who take a dismissive attitude towards metaphysics trace their view back to Carnap's 'Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology' (1950a). But the reason Carnap takes a dismissive attitude to metaphysics is a matter of controversy. I will argue that no reason is given in 'Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology', and this is because his reason for rejecting metaphysical debates was given in 'Pseudo-Problems in Philosophy' (1928). The argument there assumes verificationism, but I will argue that his argument survives the rejection of verificationism. The root of his argument is the claim that metaphysical statements cannot be justified; the point is epistemic, not semantic. I will argue that this remains a powerful challenge to metaphysics that has yet to be adequately answered. Keywords Carnap * Confirmation * Prior probability 1 Introduction Metaphysics can induce frustration. Many philosophers would have had the experience, perhaps early in graduate school, of listening to a metaphysics debate and wondering whether anything was really at issue. The feeling of frustration has an esteemed history. One of the central ideas of logical positivism was that there is something wrong with metaphysical debates. Despite the rehabilitation of metaphysics in recent years, the worry that there is still something wrong with metaphysical debates has not gone away. Following Bennett (2009), we'll call this deliberately loose idea B Darren Bradley firstname.lastname@example.com 1 Philosophy Department, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds University, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK 123 Synthese dismissivism.1 Many dismissivists trace their view back to Carnap's 'Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology' (1950a). But the reason Carnap takes a dismissive attitude to metaphysics is a matter of controversy. I will suggest that no reason is given in 'Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology', and this is because his reason for rejecting metaphysical debateswas given in 'Pseudo-Problems in Philosophy' (1928). The argument there assumes verificationism, which is why Carnap claims that there is no fact of the matter about the answer to metaphysical questions-any candidate answer would be meaningless. But I will argue that his argument survives the rejection of verificationism. The root of his argument is the claim that metaphysical statements cannot be justified; the point is epistemic, not semantic, and remains a challenge to metaphysics. To be clear, I am not a historian and my interests are not primarily historical. I extensively discuss Carnap because I think the best argument against metaphysics can be found in his writings. Think of me as asking, on behalf of those who are suspicious of metaphysics: can an argument against metaphysics be salvaged from the wreckage of verificationism? The thrust of this paper is that it can be; the metaphysics-induced feeling of frustration is appropriate. Furthermore, the Carnapian argument applies to much of philosophy, not just metaphysics. I'm also coming at the question from this direction because 'Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology' plays a large role in the background of many contemporary criticisms of metaphysics, for example Chalmers (2009), Hirsch (2002, 2005), Price (1997, 2009), Putnam (1987), Sidelle (2002), Thomasson (2007, 2009) and Yablo (2000). If 'Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology' doesn't contain the core of Carnap's argument however, those criticisms are based on shaky foundations. Instead, I think the epistemic arguments of Bennett (2009), Kreigel (2013) and others, rather than expressing a new worry for metaphysics, are returning the debate to the issues that motivated Carnap. Part 2 argues that 'Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology' is enthymematic. In part 3, I reconstruct Carnap's (1928) epistemological argument and in part 4 I formulate an improved version. I consider interpretational objections in part 5 and philosophical objections in part 6. In part 7 I apply the argument to some metaphysical debates. Part 8 concludes. 2 Linguistic frameworks Why did Carnap dismiss metaphysics? Here is what he says in a well-known passage: If someone wishes to speak in his language about a new kind of entities, he has to introduce a system of new ways of speaking, subject to new rules; we shall call this procedure the construction of a linguistic framework for the new entities in question. And now we must distinguish two kinds of questions of existence: first, questions of the existence of certain entities of the new kind within the framework; we call them internal questions; and second, questions concerning the existence or reality of the system of entities as a whole, called external questions. (1950a/1991, p. 86, italics original) 1 It is important to keep this as a loose idea for now because the best formulation of dismissivism is one of the things at stake in this paper. 123 Synthese Carnap then claims that there is something wrong with external questions: From these [internal] questions we must distinguish the external question of the reality of the thing world itself. In contrast to the former questions, this question is raised neither by the man in the street nor by scientists, but only by philosophers. Realists give an affirmative answer, subjective idealists a negative one, and the controversy goes on for centuries without ever being solved. And it cannot be solved because it is framed in a wrong way. (1950a/1991, p. 86) So the debate between idealists and realists should be dismissed because they are framed in the wrong way. But why are they framed in a wrong way? Carnap continues the passage: To be real in the scientific sense means to be an element of the system; hence this concept cannot be meaningfully applied to the system itself. (1950a/1991, p. 86) But this raises many questions. First, why should we distinguish scientific from nonscientific senses of real? Second, even if we do, why think that to be real in a scientific sense is to be an element of the system? Third, even if it is, why can't the concept be meaningfully applied to the whole system? Fourth, even if it can't, why not invent a new, philosophical, concept that can be meaningfully applied to the whole system? A little later Carnap says: ...[T]he thesis of the reality of the thing world...cannot be formulated in the thing language or, it seems, in any other theoretical language. (1950a/1991, p. 87, Italics added) And this gets to the heart of the matter. Carnap's dismissivism seems to rest on the semantic claim that the thesis of the reality of the world cannot be formulated. But why can't the thesis of the reality of the thing world be formulated? Dismissivists have tended to assume that 'Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology' provides an argument, but when we look there is little to be found. Hirsch (2009) is commendably blunt: 'I do not understand Carnap's explanation of why ontological issues reduce to linguistic choices.' (2009, p. 231).2 I think the reason is that no explanation is given in 'Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology'. In fact Carnap is explicit that his only aim in that paper is to explain how one can quantify over abstract objects without giving up one's empiricist scruples.3 Yet Carnap seems to have an argument in mind. 2 Sidelle agrees: 'I have not really found-verificationism aside-a real argument in Carnap.' (2016, p. 79) 3 He is explicit about this from the first sentence, and especially at the end of his introductory section: 'The nature and implications of the acceptance of a language referring to abstract entities will first be discussed in general; it will be shown that using such a language does not imply embracing a Platonic ontology but is perfectly compatible with empiricism and strictly scientific thinking...It is hoped that the clarification of the issue will be useful to those who would like to accept abstract entities in their work in mathematics, physics, semantics, or any other field; it may help them to overcome nominalistic scruples.' This also answers Eklund's (2013, p. 237) question of why Carnap (1950a) doesn't discuss nominalistic languages-nominalistic languages do not conflict with nominalistic scruples. 123 Synthese I think Carnap has in mind the argument given in his (1928). In fact the relevant argument is given in the final 5 pages of his 1928 monograph, an argument which, I think, remains a powerful challenge to metaphysics. 3 Pseudo-problems in philosophy In this section I will reconstruct and update Carnap's argument for dismissivism. Carnap (1928) first defends the following principle: A statement p is said to have "factual content", if experiences which would support p or the contradictory of p are at least conceivable. (p. 327) We can simplify this principle as follows,4 and, for obvious reasons, call it Verificationism: Verificationism If sentence S has factual content then evidence which would support S or −S is conceivable Carnap then applies Verificationism to the realism controversy using the following story: Two geographers, a realist and an idealist, who are sent out in order to find out if a mountain that is supposed to be somewhere in Africa is only legendary or if it really exists, will come to the same (positive or negative) result. ... There is disagreement between the two scientists onlywhen they no longer speak as geographers but as philosophers, when they give a philosophical interpretation of the empirical results aboutwhich they agree. Then the realist says: "thismountain, which the two of us have found, not only has the ascertained geographical properties, but is, in addition, also real"... The idealist on the other hand says: "on the contrary, the mountain itself is not real, only our (or in the case of the "solipsist" variety of idealism: "only my") perceptions and conscious processes are real"... These two theses which are here in opposition to one another go beyond experience [i.e. evidence] and have no factual content. Neither of the disputants suggests that his thesis should be tested through some joint decisive experiment, nor does any one of them give an indication of the design of an experiment through which his thesis could be supported. Our example can easily be generalized. What is true for the mountain is true for the external world in general. Since we consider only factual content as the criterion for the meaningfulness of statements, neither the thesis of realism that 4 Fourminor changes have beenmade. First, the direction of the conditional has been reversed. The direction from factual content to conceivable experiences is the one supported by the argument Carnap gives which we'll come to below. (Carnap almost certainly endorsed the bi-conditional.) Second, 'statement' has been changed to the less ambiguous 'sentence'. Third, 'factual content' no longer appears in quotes. Fourth, 'experiences' has been replaced with 'evidence'. This is to fit better with modern terminology, and to avoid any connotations of certainty, or immunity to doubt-Carnap seems to use 'experience' and 'evidence' interchangeably. The key point is that evidence is a posteriori. As long as this is kept in mind, feel free to replace 'evidence' with 'experience' or 'observation'. 123 Synthese the external world is real, nor that of idealism that the external world is not real can be considered scientifically meaningful, pp. 333–334. [Italics original] The two key claims are, first, that for any sentence S that expresses a metaphysical hypothesis (realism, idealism, etc...), S (and −S) go beyond evidence and, second, it follows that there is no conceivable evidence that would support S or −S. Letting S express a metaphysical hypothesis, we can put these two claims into the following principle: 2. It is not the case that evidence which would support S or −S is conceivable. Combining this with Verificationism produces the following argument. Carnapian Argument 1. If sentence S has factual content then evidence which would support S or −S is conceivable (Verificationism). 2. It is not the case that evidence which would support S or −S is conceivable. 3. Therefore, S does not have factual content. This is my reconstruction of Carnap's argument for dismissivism. We can finally state Carnap's version of dismissivism: metaphysical sentences have no factual content. Is this interpretation of Carnap controversial? Somewill say no-it is widely agreed that Carnap's verificationism played a role in his critique of metaphysics. Even if this reconstruction is uncontroversial, I will use it to argue that the appeal to verificationism is not essential. But some will think this is a controversial reconstruction of Carnap, as it is incompatible with two widely held theses about Carnap's critique of metaphysics. First, some hold that there is a close connection between Carnap's critique of metaphysics and either the internal/external distinction or the analytic/synthetic distinction (or both).5 But the Carnapian Argument doesn't rely on the analytic/synthetic or the internal/external distinction.6 Second, the quote above shows that Carnap allows that external questions could be acceptable if there is possible evidence that might settle them; this suggests that 5 E.g. Quine (1951a, b). 6 The terminology of 'internal' and 'external' can be used to mark many different distinctions e.g. (i) use versus mention (ii) metaphysical versus non-metaphysical (iii) subset of entities versus whole system of entities (iv) within a language versus not within a language (v) grammatical versus ungrammatical (vi) cognitive versus pragmatic. Thus I think the internal/external terminology is best avoided. Reasons for the confusion can be traced to Carnap (1950a), in ways that do not seem to have been noticed. He says in the first quote above: 'first, questions of the existence of certain entities of the new kind within the framework; we call them internal questions; and second, questions concerning the existence or reality of the system of entities as a whole, called external questions.' In the first clause, it is unclear whether it is the entities that are within the framework or the questions. That is, we could parse the sentence as 'questions of the [existence of certain entities of the new kind within the framework]' or as '[questions of the existence of certain entities of the new kind] within the framework. Also, internal and external questions are defined in such a way that they are compatible-a question could be within the framework and about the reality of the system of entities as a whole. There are two distinctions to keep track of: (a) between questions that are within the framework and questions that are not within the framework (b) between questions about the reality of the system of entities as a whole and questions not about the reality of the system of entities as a whole. 123 Synthese interpretations of Carnap on which external questions are ungrammatical are mistaken.7 4 Updating Carnap's argument Is the argument convincing? Not as stated, but I will argue that both premises can be improved. Premise 1 would certainly be rejected by contemporary philosophers, as verificationism has long been rejected,8 and such Carnapian arguments are usually dismissed on the grounds that they presuppose verificationism. But we can now see the key point: verificationism is a dispensable part of the argument. At the heart of Carnap's argument is a claim about justification. I think this is what Carnap was really getting at, but, more importantly, it improves the argument. If we go back to Carnap's example of the two geographers, the root of the unease about the dispute between realism and idealism is that 'these two theses...go beyond experience [evidence]', and disputes that go beyond evidence are problematic because it is unclear howwe can have justification to believe one side over the other. So I suggest we replace: 1. If sentence S has factual content then evidence which would support S or −S is conceivable (Verificationism) with: 1'. If we can have justification for S then evidence which would support S over −S is conceivable.9 Let's move on to premise 2: 2. It is not the case that evidence which would support S or −S is conceivable. At this point we need to say something about the concept of support. Fortunately, there is wide agreement that the best analysis of the concept of support (confirmation) is the Bayesian probability raising account that, where P expresses an agent's degree of belief, E supports S iff P(E|S) > P(E| − S)10,11 7 E.g. Price (2009). 8 Russell (1947) and Magidor (2009). 9 S and T are restricted to non-tautologies. Carnap thought that tautologies had no factual content, and so had no need to restrict his argument in this way. But I will remain neutral on whether tautologies have factual content, and whether we can have justification to believe them. Thanks to Daniel Nolan for raising this issue. 10 The agent's background beliefs are contained in the credence function P and will be left implicit. These will be relevant to the inequality and account for confirmation holism (see below). 11 Salmon (1975). Salmon actually discusses P(S|E) > P(S), but this is equivalent to the inequality in the text assuming that 0 < P(S) < 1. The only Bayesian tenets we need are that beliefs should not violate the axioms of probability. 123 Synthese (Whether P can stand for rational belief will be a key issue later.) So premise 2 says that for any conceivable evidence E,P(E|S) = P(E| − S). We can think of premise 2 as saying that S is immune to evidence. But now we face a problem. Which sentences are immune to evidence? Plausibly, none, due to confirmation holism. That is, given the right background information, any sentence can confirm any other sentence. For example, take a paradigm sentence that looks immune to evidence: '19 angels can dance on the head of a pin'. And suppose our background information includes 'if I see a red flash then 19 angels can dance on the head of a pin'. Now '19 angels can dance on the head of a pin' is not immune to evidence. This is a toy example, but the point should be clear-given the right background information, for any sentence, there is some evidence that would confirm it12,13. Thus, few, if any, candidates for S satisfy premise 2. I think this objection can be answered. The key is to notice, first, that in many metaphysical debates a sentence is contrasted, not with its negation, but with an alternative.14 And second, the alternatives are usually intended to predict all the same evidence. For example, consider the debate between the realist and the idealist above: H1 = The mountain is real (and goes beyond our perceptions) H2 = Only our perceptions are real. The realist and the idealist will both set up their hypotheses so that they predict the same evidence.15 H1 and H2 are empirically equivalent i.e. they predict exactly the same evidence, so for any E,P(E|H1) = P(E|H2). If follows that no conceivable evidence supports H1 over H2. Given a debate that has been carefully circumscribed in this way, the point about confirmation holism will have no force. We can grant that any sentence can be confirmed by any other (given particular background beliefs), but no evidence will support realism over idealism or vice versa (given that they predict exactly the same evidence). To put it another way, for any two theories, if conceivable evidence E confirms one over the other, the two theories cannot be realism and idealism. 12 This is famously part of Quine's (1951a) attack on logical positivism. 13 Van Fraassen faces complications here. He claims (1980, p. 12) that science does not aim to show that theories are true, but he does seem to allow that science can show that they are false (1998, p. 215). It's not obvious how this asymmetry is to be explained; see alsoHájek (1998),Monton (1998).My suggestion is that when the issue is S versus −S, science can confirm or refute S. When the issue is S versus (a well-chosen) T, science can neither confirm nor refute S. 14 Sober (1990) calls a similar position 'contrastive empiricism'. My position differs from Sober's in two main respects. First, he thinks that hypotheses cannot be compared with their negation; they must be contrastedwith an alternative. I don't endorse this claim. I use S and T (rather than−S), only because S and T are more often empirically equivalent. Second, the reason Sober thinks that claims cannot be compared with their negation is his denial of rationality constraints on priors. I don't rule out rationality constraints on priors. 15 For a more scientific example, compare Putnam's (1983, pp. 42–43): H1 = Space–time consists of points H2 = Space–time consists of extended space–time neighbourhoods. 123 Synthese Applying this to premise 2, the improved version says that the target sentences are empirically equivalent. So we replace: 2. It is not the case that evidence which would support S or −S is conceivable with: 2C. It is not the case that evidence which would support S over T is conceivable. In many cases, metaphysicians engaged in a debate intend that their competing hypotheses should be empirically equivalent. However, if hypotheses are not empirically equivalent then 2C will not apply, and the range of debates for which evidence is relevant is highly contentious. For example, consider the debate about whether numbers exist. If there could be evidence confirming that there is a prime number between 4 and 6 (e.g. a proof that 5 is not divisible by 2, 3 or 4), then 2C will not apply. Similarly, if finding a best theory of the world that quantifies over numbers would be evidence for the existence of numbers, then 2C will not apply.16,17 So the epistemological argument we are developing deflates debates that can not be resolved by evidence and vindicates debates that can be resolved by evidence; whether a debate is scientific, philosophical or metaphysical does not come into it.We'll come back to this in Sect. 6, where the upshot will be that whether our argument applies will have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis, varying with the topic, and even with the philosopher. One final modification. In order for 2C to fit the first premise, we have to compare S with T in the first premise too. So we replace 1′. If we can have justification for S then evidence which would support S over −S is conceivable. with 1C. If we can have justification for S over T then evidence which would support S over T is conceivable.18 Putting these together, we arrive at the challenge to contemporary metaphysics. Epistemological Argument 1C. If we can have justification for S over T then evidence which would support S over T is conceivable. 2C. It is not the case that evidence which would justify S over T is conceivable. 3C. Therefore we cannot have justification for S over T. This argument is not semantic, but epistemic. Insteadof saying thatmetaphysical theses can't be stated, it says that we can have no justification to believe them. The result 16 Quine (1948), Field (1980). 17 Alternatively, if we grant that there are analytic sentences, we could hold that it is analytic that numbers exist. But I want to remain neutral on the analytic/synthetic distinction. 18 The phrase 'justification for S over T' is a bit awkward but just means that in a rational credence function, PE(S) > PE(T), where E is (possibly empty) background evidence. We might more naturally talk about justification to believe S over T, but this might be misinterpreted as referring to traditional all-or-nothing belief, or as requiring a high posterior. 123 Synthese is almost as devastating for metaphysics. If we can have no justification to believe a metaphysical hypothesis, there is no point trying to have a rational metaphysical debate-so there is no point doing metaphysics.19 To recap, Carnap's argument ran: Verificationism + Metaphysics can't be justified = Metaphysics has no content Oncewe reject verificationism, the conclusion thatmetaphysics has no content can't be defended. But the heart of the argument, that metaphysics can't be justified, remains. To reject the Epistemological Argument we'd have to argue either that some metaphysical theses can be justified by the evidence (thus rejecting 2C) or that we can have non-evidential justification for some metaphysical hypothesis (thus rejecting 1C). I'll come back to this in part 6. Before moving on I'll briefly compare three recent works by Karen Bennett, Ted Sider and Uriah Kriegel that make related points.20 Bennett (2009) suggests a similar epistemic conclusion, but for different reasons. She suggests that often 'there is little justification' (p. 42) for opposing metaphysical hypotheses. Her reasoning is that as most metaphysicians want to minimize the difference between their own view and their opponent's, the resulting views end up so similar that arguments against one view rebound against the other view.21 She seems to grant that we do have nonevidential justification, but thinks this justification often ends up being weak. In my terms, Bennett denies 1C, but offers a different path to 3C (or perhaps a weaker version of 3C). Sider (2011) notes a similar challenge in passing: One complaint [about metaphysical disputes, and in Sider's example about extended simples] is purely epistemic. It admits that the dispute is substantive, but claims that the considerations offered by the enthusiasts [metaphysicians] are inadequate to resolve it. We do not knowwhether there exist extended simples, it is alleged, and the enthusiasts [metaphysicians] arguments aren't helping. (p. 80) Although Sider quickly dismisses three other complaints (p. 82) there is no quick dismissal of this one.22 19 Wilson (2011) is the closest forerunner I have found as an interpretation of Carnap. See also Biggs and Wilson (2016). 20 See also Merricks (2001), p. 9, Ladyman and Ross (2007), Maclaurin and Dyke (2012), Donaldson, (2015). Van Fraassen's (1980) influential defence of empiricism also coheres with this approach; he claims we should be agnostic about unobservable entities, which is an epistemological claim. 21 Here's one of Bennett's examples: 'One of van Inwagen's main arguments for nihilism is the conjunction of the claim that (a) all of the nonextreme answers to the Special Composition Question are unacceptably arbitrary, with the claim that (b) the extreme answer 'always' is not acceptable for other reasons (1990, pp. 74–80). Nihilism is the only remaining option. However, the nihilist is actually threatened with arbitrariness just as much as the believer is. The nihilist does indeed have a straightforward answer to the...question 'when, if ever, do some things compose an F?'...[T]he nihilist will say 'never'. But there is a question closely analogous to the second of those two, to which the nihilist does not have a straightforward answer-namely, 'when, if ever, are some things arranged Fwise?', p. 66 22 This is not to say that Sider has no answer. He answers it using the samemethodological principles about theory choice as science, a Quinean strategy he endorses in ch. 2. He is explicit in his (2013): 'Nihilism is an ideologically simpler theory, and so is more likely to be true' p. 239. This is a specific version of the 123 Synthese Kreigel (2013) provides the most detailed discussion of this epistemic challenge, and his discussion is in the same spirit as my own. In my terms, he defends 1C and 2C, but ends up suggesting that there must be some way to avoid 3C. I will briefly suggest a way in part 6, which discusses objections to the Epistemological Argument. But in the intervening part I will discuss objections to this interpretation of Carnap. 5 Objections: interpretational issues Consider two prongs of attack to my interpretation of Carnap. First, is there textual evidence to support it? Second, is there textual evidence against it? Is there textual evidence to support this interpretation that Carnap's argument against metaphysics was given in 1928? This reconstruction is supported by the brief commentsCarnapmakes in 'Empiricism, Semantics andOntology'.Whenmentioning his rejection of 'both the thesis of the reality of the external world and the thesis of its irreality as pseudo-statements'(1950a/1991, p. 91) he cites his 1928 monograph. Furthermore, towards the end of 'Empiricism, Semantics andOntology' he says, regarding the 'problematic' external questions: I cannot think of any possible evidence that would be regarded as relevant by both philosophers, and therefore, if actually found, would decide the controversy or at least make one of the opposite theses more probable than the other...Therefore I feel compelled to regard the external question as a pseudo-question, until both parties to the controversy offer a common interpretation of the question as a cognitive question; this would involve an indication of possible evidence regarded as relevant by both sides. Italics added. (1950a/1991, p. 96) Notice that Carnap does not say that these external questions are meaningless, or ungrammatical. All he says is that both parties need to agree about what evidence would be relevant to the question. This epistemic point is in perfect agreement with his earlier 1928 monograph. And in his intellectual autobiography Carnap explicitly refers back to his 1928 monograph: Grünbaum regards phenomenalism as a "profound error"; we are entirely in agreement with him in this rejection, but we should prefer to say "pseudostatement" instead of "error". Furthermore, Grünbaum says that he does not know of any refutation or even an adequate treatment of the arguments for realism. If "realism" is understood as preference for the reistic language over the phenomenal language, then I am also a realist. However, if "realism" is understood, in the customary sense, as an ontological thesis, then the arguments against it were given inmymonograph [1928]; I do not know of any refutation or even a thorough critical discussion of my arguments. (1963, p. 870) Italics added Footnote 22 continued strategy I defend. I claim only that there is non-evidential justification for metaphysical sentences; I don't claim that the same principles operate as in science, nor that different ones do. 123 Synthese This is a remarkable passage.Writing in his old age, Carnap refers back to an argument he gave some 45 years earlier in order to defend one of the most important theses in his philosophy. And in a detailed discussion of the development of Carnap's thought, Lutz (2017) notes the similarity of the criteria of empirical significance defended in 1928 and 1963 and concludes: 'It seems, then, that Carnap's philosophical position has changed very little, although decades of technical work lie between these two statements of empiricism.' Onto the second prong-is this interpretation compatible with Carnap's other writings? A worry is that the received wisdom is that Carnap underwent a radical shift in his views in 1935, marking the transition from the syntactic period to the semantic period. However, there is little agreement on exactly what this shift amounted to. Carnap's own understanding (1963) is that he adopted Tarski's theory of truth, allowing him to talk about semantic notions such as truth and reference. If so, this won't be in conflict with his 1928 argument, which is epistemological. Recent discussions of Carnap's shift have downplayed its significance (Creath 1999; Tuboly ms). I can't see any reason to think that this shift would stop him from relying on his 1928 argument in later work. Are other works of Carnap problematic for my interpretation? A referee suggests that Carnap offers numerous arguments against metaphysics between 1928 and 1950. But somewhat surprisingly this is not the case. The most relevant discussions are (1934a) "TheRejection ofMetaphysics" and (1934b) "On theCharacter of Philosophic Problems". His 1934a is in the same spirit as his 1928, but goes into considerably less detail. His 1934b is more significant. In a key passage, he claims that content can be reduced to syntax: For what...do we want to know when we ask concerning the content...of a proposition S? We wish to know what S conveys to us; what we experience through S. p. 12 This passage clearly presupposes verificationism (non-verificationists can hold that the content of a proposition goes beyond our experiences). But notice that Carnap is explicit once again that at root he is interested in the relation between the sentence and the experiences that would confirm it. So we can still get off the boat before the verificationism and make an epistemological point: 'what do we want to know when we ask concerning whether we have justification for a proposition S? We wish to know...what we experience through S'. More naturally put, we wish to know what experiences are predicted by S. Thus, all justification is through experience.23 23 Some philosophers (most explicitly Hylton 1982, but compare Ricketts 1982) have taken the dispute between Quine and Carnap to involve a methodological dispute about how we should decide between incompatible theories that agree with our evidence. If a methodological dispute is understood as a dispute about whether we can have justification that goes beyond evidence, then my interpretation coheres with theirs. Thanks to Vera Flocke for emphasizing this. 123 Synthese 6 Objections: philosophical issues Let's move on to the philosophical objections. Howmight metaphysical debates avoid the argument? We would have to deny either 1C or 2C. Start with 2C, which says that no conceivable evidence would justify S over T. It might be argued that there is conceivable evidence that would favour some metaphysical hypotheses over others. There are two moving parts here-the specific metaphysical debate at issue, and our conception of evidence. Regarding the first moving part, many philosophical debates are not intended to disagree about the evidence; think of Carnap's example of realism versus idealism, the Special Composition Question,24 the debate between endurantists and perdurantists,25 or whether the whole universe is prior to its parts.26 Suppose a confirmation holist points out that there are possible background beliefs that would allow evidence to favour realism over idealism, such as 'if you see a red flash then realism is true'. How should the realist and idealist respond? Presumably they should respond that such a background belief could not be justified by any conceivable evidence. And this would follow from realism and idealism being empirically equivalent i.e. P(red flash|realism) = P(red flash|idealism). But in some debates it is more plausible that one side can cite some evidence in support-for example, some think that our experience of the passage of time supports a 'moving now' theory of time.27 Or perhaps common sense gives us evidence.28 I'm inclined to think that evidence is rarely relevant to metaphysics. And in fact I think that evidence is rarely relevant to any area of philosophy (thus I am on Bennett's (2016) side in her debate with Hofweber (2016)). This would make 2C widely applicable in philosophy, but others will disagree. (I'll continue to talk only about metaphysical hypotheses.) The extent to which evidence could favour competing metaphysical hypotheses depends on the other moving part-our conception of evidence. For example, if the evidence of agents in a physical world is different from the evidence of agents in a mental world, then our evidence might favour physicalism over Berkeleyean idealism.29 Relatedly, some hold that we have intuitions that count as evidence and favour some metaphysical hypotheses over others.30 More generally, the more expansive our concept of evidence, the easier it is for evidence to justify metaphysical hypotheses. Indeed, part of the motivation for developing an expansive concept of evidence is to make metaphysical debates tractable. So whether the Epistemological Argument described above applies to a debate depends on contentious issues regarding the nature of evidence and whether the competing theories are empirically equivalent. 24 van Inwagen (1990). 25 Hawley (2015). 26 Schaffer (2010). Koslicki (2016) makes a similar point in relation to Carnap. See Huemer (2009) and Benovsky (2016) for a detailed discussion of various cases. 27 Thanks to Al Wilson for this example. See Prosser (2011), Benovsky (2013, 2016). 28 Korman (2015). 29 E.g. Williamson (2000), Campbell (2002) and other versions of disjunctivism. 30 E.g. Bealer (1998) and Chudnoff (2011). 123 Synthese I am inclined to accept a narrow notion of evidence31 that would make 2C widely applicable in philosophy; again, others will disagree. Let's move on to 1C, which says that if we can have justification for S over T then evidence which would support S over T is conceivable. To reject this premise is to hold that we can have justification for S over T even when there is no conceivable evidence either way. At this point we need to distinguish epistemic justification from pragmatic justification. Epistemic justification is connected to evidence and truth; pragmatic justification is based on usefulness, the type of justification you have for believing in God on the grounds that God rewards believers. Carnap suggests in 'Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology' that we can have pragmatic (but not epistemic) justification for S over T.32 But mere pragmatic justification is not very satisfying. Moreover, how could we know which theory will be most useful if we have not established that there is an external world, or that the future will resemble the past? The rest of the paper will be concerned with only epistemic justification. I want to sketch how we could have epistemic justification for S over T. As no conceivable evidence canprovide epistemic justification,weneedpriori considerations favouring S over T. I think this is the best place to block the argument and defend metaphysics. Furthermore, this approach can be supported by Carnap's later work. So in the next section I will run through how some a priori justifications might be applied to some well-known debates. The aim is to bring out the assumptions the metaphysician needs, and explain why dismissivists may find the resulting debate frustrating. 7 Applications 1C says that ifwe can have justification for S over T then evidencewhichwould support S over T is conceivable.We deny 1C if we hold that we can have justification for S over T independently of evidence. Such justification works on the prior. This concept of a prior is familiar fromBayeisan epistemology, where the prior is often written as P(S)33 and the posterior as P(S|E). So, what determines which hypotheses have the highest prior? A natural answer is to appeal to the theoretical virtues, for example, simplicity, scope, unification and fruitfulness (Kuhn 1977). So the metaphysician has to tell a story about what these virtues are exactly, and how they are balanced against each other. Skipping part of this debate, let's suppose that simplicity has been identified as the sole basic theoretical virtue. 31 See Wedgwood (2002) and Hedden (2015). 32 'The acceptance or rejection of abstract linguistic forms, just as the acceptance or rejection of any other linguistic forms in any branch of science, will finally be decided by their efficiency as instruments, the ratio of the results achieved to the amount and complexity of the efforts required.' (Carnap 1950a/1991, p. 95) Quine, rejecting the analytic/synthetic distinction, extends this to all hypotheses: 'Carnap maintains that ontological questions...are questions not of fact but of choosing a convenient scheme or framework for science; and with this I agree only if the same be conceded for every scientific hypothesis.' (1951b, p. 72) 33 Somehold that theremust be a place for backgroundknowledge, inwhich case the backgroundknowledge is empty here. 123 Synthese I think metaphysical debates can often be understood as a search for the simplest theory that explains the data. Consider two examples. First, the debate between Platonists (there are universals) and nominalists (there are no universals) often turns on whether the nominalist can account for all the data e.g. the truth of the sentence 'there are undiscovered properties'.34 The shared implicit assumption is that if the nominalist can account for the data, then the nominalist wins. Why? Because the nominalist's theory is simpler, positing one type of fundamental thing (objects) rather than two (properties and objects/substrata).35 Second, consider the debate between physicalists and dualists in the philosophy of mind. This debate often turns onwhether the physicalist can account for all the data e.g. thatMary learns something when she sees colour for the first time (Jackson 1986). The shared implicit assumption is that if the physicalist can account for the data, then the physicalist wins. Why? Because the physicalist's theory is simpler, positing one type of fundamental thing (the physical) rather than two (the physical and the mental).36 Even granting that we should prefer simpler theories, the metaphysician still has more to do. There is a distinction between ontological (things in the world) and ideological (concepts needed to describe the world) simplicity; and ontological simplicity then divides into quantitative (number of things) and qualitative (number of types of thing) simplicity.37 Consider the debate about the foundations of modality. On what we'll call the Lewisian hypothesis, facts about modality are based on facts about concrete worlds, and are best stated by quantifying over these worlds.38 On what we'll call the Priorian hypothesis, facts about modality are primitive, and are best stated using primitive operators such as possibly.39 The disagreement between Lewisian and Priorian views is plausibly rooted in disagreement about how to weigh up these different types of simplicity. The Lewisian hypothesis scores well on qualitative ontological simplicity and ideological simplicity. The qualitative ontological cost of the Lewisian hypothesis is zero, as it posits only types of thing thatwe already take to exist, namely concreteworlds. The Lewisian hypothesis is also ideologically simple, as we don't need primitive modal concepts. The cost comes in quantitative ontological complexity, as the hypothesis posits a possibly infinite number of concrete worlds. 34 Armstrong (1980). 35 The bundle theory also posits only one type of thing-properties (see Paul 2017). 36 See Huemer (2009) for a detailed discussion, and opposition. Appeals to simplicity are increasingly explicit,e.g. in arguments for mereological nihilism (Sider 2013; Brenner 2015), presentism (Tallant 2013), external world realism (Vogel 1990; Huemer 2016) and necessitism (Williamson 2013). See also Biggs (2011) and Biggs and Wilson (2016, 2017). 37 Perhaps ideological simplicity also divides into quantitative and qualitative (Cowling 2013), but I'll set this aside. 38 Lewis (1986). 39 Prior (1957). Thanks to John Divers for discussion. 123 Synthese The Priorian hypothesis scores well on qualitative and quantitiative ontological simplicity. The ontological cost of the Priorian hypothesis is zero, as it posits no new entities, nor types of entity. The cost comes in ideological complexity, as the hypothesis posits primitive modal concepts. Granting that this is part of what goes on in metaphysical debates, we can now account for the frustration of the dismissivist. In fact there are four different ways someone might get frustrated with these debates. The first comes merely from the fact that the disagreement in these metaphysical debates is of an unusual kind-it is based on disagreement about the prior. Most disagreements are based on disagreement about the evidence, with the prior tucked away in the background. Arguments normally proceed by each side presenting evidence; being faced with a disagreement that cannot be resolved by evidence is a disconcerting experience that might induce the feeling that something has gone wrong. This kind of frustration is not a challenge to metaphysics however. The mere fact that the disagreement is unusual is no threat, in itself, to the standing of the debate. But this could be developed into the next source of frustration. A second source of frustration will come from those who think that there is no fact of the matter about what our priors ought to be. For example, a central strain of Bayesianism, subjective Bayesianiam, holds that there are no rationality constraints on priors. As long as the agent's credences obey the rules of probability (and update by conditionalization), that agent is rational.40 Anyone who has subjectivist intuitions is going to find metaphysical debates baffling, as they think there is no fact of the matter about rational priors, so no rational debate to be had. Subjectivists ask: why should we expect the world to be simple? Metaphysicians are making an implicit assumption that the subjectivist rejects.41 A third source of frustration comes ifwegrant thatwe shouldprefer simpler theories, but deny that there is any fact of thematter about how these different types of simplicity should be traded off. That is, one can grant that we should prefer the simpler theory when there is a clear verdict about which theory is simpler, but deny that we should prefer, say, ontological over ideological simplicity. A fourth source of frustration comes even if we grant that there are rational constraints on priors of scientific hypotheses. It doesn't follow that there are rational constraints on priors for metaphysical hypotheses. The metaphysician has to argue that there are constraints on priors for the whole range of debates she engages in. So even objective Bayesians can get off the boat at this final step and hold that metaphysical debates are pointless, because neither side can justify their answer.42 The burden on the metaphysician can now be sharply put. Firstly, they have to argue that it makes sense to argue about rational priors. Secondly, they have to defend the 40 I share Sider's surprise: 'Fascinatingly, this descendent of Hume's notorious attitude toward induction is not uncommon in contemporary formal epistemology. Is this because the field draws the formally inclined, and the problem of constraining priors has proved formally intractable?' Sider (2011, p. 37). 41 Compare Magnus and Callender (2004). 42 Bennett (2009), Huemer (2009), Shalkowski (2010), Kreigel (2013) and Willard (2014) all seem sympathetic to this objection. See Brenner (2016) for some responses. 123 Synthese objective Bayesian position that there are rational constraints on priors that (thirdly) give precise judgments based on various types of simplicity. Fourthly, they have to argue that these constraints apply to philosophy. Ironically, the locus classicus of objective Bayesianism is often taken to be Carnap's (1950b) 'Logical Foundations of Probability' (see also Maher 2006).43 So the metaphysician trying to discharge the burden of making their subject respectable can take solace from the fact that they can draw on some parts of Carnap's own work. The extent to which they can do so remains an open question. 8 Conclusion I have argued that Carnap's rejection of metaphysics stems from his view that all justification is based on evidence; the received wisdom that Carnap's argument relies on his verificationism is based on a misunderstanding. But this isn't only a historical point. I have argued that an updated version of the epistemological argument given in 1928 remains a powerful challenge to metaphysics, and one that has not been answered. The recent epistemological problems for metaphysics raised by Bennett (2009), Kreigel (2013) and others are a return to the core of the traditional challenge. One answer to this challenge turns on whether there are constraints on priors. And the feeling that there are not goes someway to explaining the frustration that metaphysical debates often induce. To allay this frustration, themetaphysician has to argue that there are rational constraints on priors for metaphysical hypotheses. And it is not obvious how this is to be done. Acknowledgements I am grateful to audiences at the University of Leeds, the University of Birmingham, the ANU, the University of Melbourne, the University of Sydney, the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, to Hannes Leitgeb, Vera Flocke Daniel Nolan and especially Robbie Williams for detailed comments on an earlier draft. This work has been funded by EUMarie Curie Re-integration Grant #656441. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. 43 Of course, things are not so straightforward. In 'Logical Foundations of Probability' Carnap only defended constraints that were relative to a language, and were much weaker than that needed by the contemporary objective Bayesian. Nevertheless, the considerations Carnap offers for his constraints can be co-opted by the objective Bayesian. Furthermore Carnap seems to have changed his mind about inductive probability. Salmon (1967) says: 'Carnap's views on the traditional problem of justification of induction have undergone considerable change. 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