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A Definition of Degree of Confirmation for Very Rich Languages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Hilary Putnam*
Affiliation:
Princeton University

Extract

Carnap's system of inductive logic (1) has very often been criticized on the ground that “degree of confirmation” is defined only for languages which are extremely over-simplified. Allegedly, it would be very difficult—and perhaps impossible—to define it adequately for languages formalized within the higher predicate calculi, or languages equivalent to these in richness, and it is such languages that would be needed were we ever to formalize the language of empirical science as a whole. Thus, this criticism bears not only on Carnap's work, but on all attempts to construct an exact analysis of induction from this particular standpoint; that is, from the standpoint of “logical measure functions.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1956, The Williams & Wilkins Company

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References

1. Carnap, R., Logical Foundations of Probability, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1950.Google Scholar
2. Carnap, R., Introduction to Semantics, Harvard University Press, 1948.Google Scholar
3. Quine, W. V., Mathematical Logic, revised ed., Harvard University Press, 1951.10.4159/9780674042469CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4. Quine, W. V., On Universals (The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 12, 1947, pp. 74–84).Google Scholar
5. Tarski, A., Der Wahrheitsbegriff in den formalisierten Sprachen (Studia Philosophica, vol. I, 1936).Google Scholar
6. Tarski, A., Ueber den Begriff der logischen Folgerung (Actes du Congres international de philosophie scientifique, fasc. VII, Paris, 1936).Google Scholar