Flocke (V.)

Back to Flocke and Carnap’s supposedly metaphysical methodology

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Before I move on to more current things, I want to go back and respond to Vera Flocke’s response to my post about her 2024 paper “Carnap is not against metaphysics” in the Interpreting Carnap volume. That was over two years ago, and I rudely left her without a reply. At the risk of responding to things she no longer believes (or has any interest in), I will now finally do her the rudimentary courtesy of responding to her objections to my post. I apologize for the tardiness of this follow-up.

She makes two main points: First, that — contrary to my critique — she did in fact (implicitly) make the principle of tolerance a criterion for distinguishing between the earlier and later Carnap, and second, that Carnap was not against metaphysics but against certain meta-metaphysical connotations of metaphysical positions. (I’m less sure about this second one.)

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Carnap’s “distinctive metaphysical methodology”?!

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A new book from Cambridge University Press, Interpreting Carnap, edited by Alan Richardson and Adám Tuboly, contains some interesting papers that I hope I will get around to discussing here. I will start with one whose title is calculated to arouse, well, interest, shall we say: “Carnap is not against metaphysics” by Vera Flocke. (Just as one’s attention would naturally be drawn to a headline “Pope advocates contraception” or “Mike Johnson to propose mandatory teaching of evolution in public schools.”)

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