In the fall of 1956, President Margenau appointed a Committee charged to draw up proposals for a reorganization of the Philosophy of Science Association. This Committee eventually prepared a new Constitution and By-Laws, more in line with the present needs and status of the Association than were those under which it had until then been operating. That Constitution and those By-Laws were adopted by the members at the December 1957 election and are published in the January 1959 issue of Philosophy of Science.

This paper aims to establish three major theses: (1) Not only declarative sentences, but also interrogatives and imperatives, may be classified as true or as false. (2) Declarative, imperative, and interrogative utterances may also be classified as honest or as dishonest. (3) Whether an utterance is honest or dishonest is logically independent of whether it is true or is false.

The establishment of the above theses follows upon the adoption of a principle for identifying what is meant by any sentence, declarative, interrogative, or imperative. The analysis aims to show that meaning is to be attributed to the uttered or written sentence-token, rather to the thereby exhibited sentence-type. Further, the meaning of the sentential token is to be identified with a purpose of the speaker, that the speaker would reveal to the addressee by uttering the sentence.

The to be revealed purpose is analysed into two components: an ultimate concern (that the addressee stand in such and such a relation—e.g., of believing, or informing the speaker about, or making it true that) and an ultimate topic of concern (the state of affairs, i.e., proposition, relative to which the speaker would have the addressee stand in the specified relation).

Sentential utterances “signify” different purposes by “expressing” different ultimate concerns and “indicating ”different ultimate topics of concern. Variations in expressed concern are correlated with variations in sentential form, such as declarative, interrogative and imperative. Variations in indicated topic of concern are correlated with variations in the subject and predicate of the uttered sentence. Thus, for example, utterances of “Johnny will jump in the lake,” “Will Johnny jump in the lake?” and “Johnny, go jump in the lake! ” all indicate one and the same ultimate topic of concern but express different ultimate concerns with this topic.

A sentential utterance is true or false according as its indicated topic of concern is true or false. Hence, declaratives, interrogatives and imperatives may all be classified as true or as false. But honesty or dishonesty is a function (explained in the paper) of the expressed concern, rather than of the topic of concern. Hence, although utterances of all sentential forms are honest or dishonest, their honesty or dishonesty is logically independent of their truth or falsity.

Peirce conceived of methodology, or methodeutic, as he preferred to call it, as one of the three major parts of logic taken broadly—the other two being the theory of signs and formal logic. Unlike these two, however, his theory of methodology remained mostly programmatic, and there is little more than fragmentary suggestions about it scattered through his writings. But by gathering them together and pursuing their insights, it is possible to indicate how he might have divided and developed it: 1) The nature of scientific discourse and how it differs from non-scientific. 2) The logic of inquiry, both heuristic and systematic, according to the modes of argument as deductive, inductive, or abductive (i.e. hypothesis) or a combination or all three. 3) The assurance of science considered in the factors that thwart or promote inquiry.

Definition is viewed in this paper as a cohesive element of theory, providing links between scientific constructs. The problem is approached first in terms of three orders—the historical, the logical, and the heuristic—in which the structure of science may be put together; a study of these is necessary if difficulties about priority of definition are to be resolved. The main part of the paper is devoted to an exercise in theory-construction which illustrates the five principal functions of definition—the grounding of constructs in observation, their descriptive interrelation, the development of logico-mathematical calculi, the interpretation of these calculi, and the provision of precise, quasi-mathematical relations between the constructs themselves. Reference is made throughout to the many names for the defining process found in earlier works, and problems of contextual definition, reduction, stipulative and lexical definition, etc., are dealt with briefly. The theory thus constructed is represented diagrammatically. It is shown that the analysis may be simplified, in general terms, by the use of two new categories, “internal” and “external” definition; and that this innovation may prove helpful in clarifying some traditional obscurities, and in preserving a necessary balance between a purely logical and a purely empirical approach to the philosophy of science.

It is commonly the case that a problem concerning a mathematical or physical system can be solved in two quite different ways—by an internal or an external approach. For example, the area of a triangle can be found by integration or by showing it to be half that of a certain rectangle. In general, the first approach is, to analyse the given system into component parts, and the second approach is to deal with the system as a whole.

It seems that even in cases where solutions to physical problems obtained according to these two approaches are equally valid, and are equally good as explanations, scientists prefer the solution obtained by the internal approach.

The reasons for this preference are examined. And it is suggested that whatever the reasons, this preference may have been partly responsible for the 19th century preference for the Kinetic Theory rather than Thermodynamics.

Two initially different arguments for indeterminism are often based either upon the Uncertainty Relations or the statistical interpretation of the wave equation of quantum mechanics. Both arguments ultimately involve three factors: (1) the assumption that elementary entities are enough like classical particles for it to make sense to say they are either determined or indetermined, (2) the fact that no exact measurements are possible of quantities supposed to characterize elementary entities, (3) the pragmatic supposition that determinism is false unless exact predictions are theoretically possible.

If it is legitimate to use (3) to prove indeterminism, then an equally legitimate argument can be based upon (2) which denies (1). Thus, it is doubtful that quantum mechanics supports indeterminism, though it may show that the concepts of ‘determined’ and ‘indetermined’ are inapplicable to the world.

A new semantical antinomy, the antinomy of designation, is introduced into a metalanguage M with respect to a modal object language L. Carnap's device of restricting the principle of interchangeability for L does not suffice to prevent occurrence of this new antinomy. To achieve this result it seems most natural to replace the rules of designation for L by more complicated rules. This replacement suffices to prevent occurrence of the antinomy with respect to L. Moreover, it seems likely that analogous replacement will suffice to prevent occurrence of the antinomy with respect to languages which in means of expression are richer than L.