Heidegger, Carnap and Quine at the Crossroads of Language, by Wanda Torres Gregory, Ph.D.

Heidegger, Carnap and Quine at the Crossroads of Language

Wanda Torres Gregory, Ph.D.

Heidegger once compared his position to that of analytic philosophy in terms of the importance assigned to language. As he saw it in 1964, “both positions recognize language as the realm within which all thinking can move and repose, and neither are concerned with philosophy of language as a separate province.”^[1] He also made a point of contrasting both as “extreme counterpositions (Carnap-Heidegger) ... the technical-scientistic view of language and the speculative-hermeneutical experience of language.”^[2]

            Carnap’s scathing critique of Heidegger in “The Overcoming of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language” (1931) more than three decades earlier was itself a vivid example of their mutual opposition on the battleground of language. In Carnap’s view, the development of quantificational logic rendered the possibility of radically overcoming metaphysics. He defines metaphysics as “the field of alleged knowledge of the essence of things which transcends the realm of empirically founded, inductive science.”^[3] The logical analysis of the language of metaphysics --its vocabulary and syntax-- proves the meaninglessness of metaphysics. While Carnap defines “meaningfulness” in terms of the verificationist principle,^[4] “meaning” is explicitly understood as “cognitive” in contrast with “expressive” meaning.^[5]  Rather than yielding “statements” (meaningful sentences with cognitive meaning or “assertive content”), then, metaphysics produces “pseudo-statements.”

            Carnap selected passages from Heidegger’s “What is Metaphysics?” (1929) as examples of pseudo-statements where, as he puts it, “the violation of logical syntax is especially obvious, though they accord with historical-grammatical syntax.”^[6]  He also insisted that he could have selected any other text, but Heidegger’s simply serve to illustrate his point “especially well.”^[7] However, given what  Heidegger says there, it is difficult to take this disclaimer at face value, for Heidegger contests fundamental tenets of logical positivism, in particular, what he terms the “rule” or “reign” of logic^[8] and the measuring of philosophy “by the standard of the idea of science.” ^[9]

            Heidegger’s reflections on the problem of the nothing hit a central nerve running through Carnap’s logical positivist project. The question “How is it with the nothing?” is, Heidegger insists, a metaphysical question, not a question of logic. The nothing is “more original than” the logical concepts of the “not” and negation.^[10] The fundamental mood of anxiety reveals the nothing in a way that is primordial, or more original than the avenues of thought proscribed by logic and followed by science. Thus, in his 1943 “Postscript,” Heidegger insisted that one of the chief “misconceptions” of his position is that it “declares itself against ‘logic’.”^[11] 

Carnap had interpreted Heidegger as explicitly taking a “counter logical” position that declares itself “irreconcilable with logic and the scientific way of thinking.”^[12] Moreover, though Heidegger explicitly acknowledged the logical impossibility and absurdity of approaching the question of the nothing as one would with a being or an object,^[13]  Carnap reads him as treating the word “nothing” as a noun or particular name of an entity.^[14]  However, he goes to the heart of Heidegger’s reflections on the nothing in its connection to Being when conjecturing that “the majority of the logical mistakes that are committed when pseudo-statements are made, are based on the logical faults infecting the use of the word ‘to be’ in our language.”^[15]  For Carnap, the ambiguity of the word ‘to be’ (as a copula and as a verb used to designate existence) and the misconception of existence as a predicate are what have led metaphysicians astray. Carnap also diagnoses the general metaphysical word-forms “Being” and “Not-Being” as having “the same origin.”^[16]

            These radical oppositions between Heidegger and Carnap regarding the nothing are framed explicitly within what each defines as the problem of metaphysics. Obviously, each philosopher situates the other within that general problematic. From Heidegger’s perspective, Carnap holds on to the traditional metaphysical interpretation that is based on the forgetfulness of Being. From Carnap’s standpoint, Heidegger’s metaphysical claims must be dissolved through logical analysis. Yet, both see metaphysics as a problem. For Carnap, metaphysics is an obstacle in the way of a “scientific philosophy,” that is, of a method for the logical analysis of science.^[17]  As Heidegger sees it, metaphysics  “is Dasein itself,” so that the truth of metaphysics is constantly close to the “possibility of the deepest error.” Thus, for him, “no amount of scientific rigor attains to the seriousness of metaphysics.”^[18]

            The philosophy proposed by Heidegger, the thinking of Being, is a “metaphysics’ getting under way.”^[19] His contrast between the traditional and “genuine” metaphysical interpretations of Being and the nothing indicates the direction of this unfolding. His characterization of our existence as one that is “determined by science” clearly suggests that science is one of “those idols” from which me must “liberate ourselves” to let philosophy come to itself.^[20]  Evidently, from this Heideggerean perspective, Carnap’s scientific philosophy is idolatry. Yet, both philosophers attach particular importance to logic in relation to metaphysics, though for opposing reasons. Interestingly enough, their views on the relation between logic and metaphysics also coincide in the importance given to grammar, though, again, for conflicting reasons; Heidegger’s proposal, from Being and Time on, is to have grammar break away from logic, while Carnap’s is to have logic break away from grammar.

            Both Carnap and Heidegger trace relatively firm distinctions between common sense or ordinary thinking and their ideals of philosophy. Carnap focuses on the expression of common sense in everyday, “natural” language as the source of confusions, errors and misconceptions in metaphysics. However, everyday language is not a problem in itself, for its semantic wealth and syntactic lassitude have their function in everyday conversation. Rather, as Carnap sees it, what is “expedient for the ordinary use of language” may have “unfortunate consequences in metaphysics.”^[21] Talking specifically about the problems of the verb “to be,” Carnap insists that: “The circumstance that our languages express existence by a verb (“to be” or “to exist”) is not itself a logical fault; it is only inappropriate, dangerous.”^[22]  Everyday language represents a danger for philosophy. It is inappropriate for the philosophy that aims to be “scientific.” The development of a “logically correct” language is thus of utmost importance for the fulfillment of its tasks.

            Heidegger begins his essay with Hegel’s famous remark on the common sense view of philosophy as an “inverted world.”^[23]  In this same vein, he claims that the fundamental mood of anxiety or dread that discloses the nothing occurs, not in the “quite common anxiousness” of our everydayness, but “only in rare moments.”^[24] Though it is “usually repressed” and “seldom springs,” it is “always ready” in our everyday comportment.^[25] The nothing, he proposes, “nihilates incessantly without our really knowing of this occurrence in the manner of everyday knowledge.”^[26]  The essence of the nothing as it “oppresses Dasein in its anxiety” is the “wholly repelling gesture toward beings that are submerged as a whole.”^[27]

            In Being and Time, Heidegger approached the question of Dasein’s existential  nullity [Nichtigkeit] recognizing that its “ontological meaning” was still obscure, as was the “ontological essence of the nullity in general.”^[28]  His “What is Metaphysics?” thus appears to be on the way toward a reflection on this ontological meaning and essence. Hence, he states there that: “In the Being of beings the nihilation of the nothing occurs.”^[29] He also formulates his proposition “from the nothing all beings as beings come to be” as one that is “appropriate to the problem of Being itself.”^[30] With this change of focus --from the existential to the ontological essence of the nothing-- Heidegger’s distinction between the everyday understanding and philosophy as “metaphysics getting way” appears enhanced or intensified in its significance.

            In spite of Heidegger’s comments on the centrality of the problem of language in his and Carnap’s opposing philosophies, it is Carnap, not Heidegger, who begins by expressly placing language at the center of his reflections. If language is the battleground for these “extreme counterpositions,” then Carnap initiated the first formal battle. The question of language lies at the heart of Carnap’s logical positivist project in its confrontations with Heidegger’s reflections on the nothing. Carnap’s distinction between natural language and a logically correct language points to the source of such problem and to its solution.

            If we look to Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927), the problem of language is but one small step in the development of the central question of his fundamental ontology and Dasein analytic. However, in his “Dialogue on Language” (1953-54), Heidegger explains that because “reflection on language and on Being” determined his “path of thinking from early on,” he left their discussion “as far as possible in the background.”^[31]  Moreover, in his “Letter on Humanism” (1946), he claims that the “only reason” Section 34 contained a reference to “the essential dimension of language” was because reflection on language could no longer be a “mere philosophy of language” with the thinking of Being.^[32]  In any case, the question of the ontological essence of language (“What kind of Being goes with language in general?”) is, like that of the nothing, left open in Being and Time,  where his objective is “merely to point out the ontological ‘locus’ of language” in Dasein.^[33] In “What is Metaphysics?,” there is little mention of the problem of language as such, though the common approach to the nothing is described in terms of idle talk,^[34] and the fundamental mood of anxiety is characterized as a silencing of the “is.”^[35] Language is not yet where “things first become and are”^[36] and where Being “speaks.”^[37] The “extreme counterpositions” on language are thus developed progressively as Heidegger takes his turn.

            The question of meaning, however, has a special place in these oppositions from the start. In his attempt to prove the meaninglessness of metaphysics, Carnap focuses on the problem of meaning in language. His verificationist conception of meaning, and his distinction between cognitive and non-cognitive meanings, concentrate on language as the instrument for describing states of affairs and as the medium for expressing attitudes toward life.

            In Being and Time, Heidegger pointed to the existential-ontological character of meaning as fundamental. Language plays a decidedly derivative role there as the “worldly expressedness of discourse” and the “putting into words” of the “totality-of-significations.” The silencing that occurs in the fundamental mood of anxiety is thus a reflection of Dasein’s experience of the meaninglessness of its Being-in-the-world, of  the withdrawal of the “upon-which of intelligibility” or, more precisely, of the totality-of-significations. Since the world as such is that in the face of which one has anxiety, it is an experience of the world’s “insignificance” [Unbedeutsamkeit].^[38] Clearly, the “uncanniness” experienced in anxiety is connected to this. These features of anxiety reappear in “What is Metaphysics?” as Heidegger begins to reflect on the ontological essence of the nothing.

            Carnap’s response to Heidegger proved to be a landmark for analytic readings of Heidegger.^[39] Quine, who disagreed with Carnap on important issues within analytic philosophy, followed Carnap’s understanding of Heidegger’s term “the nothing” as a noun. Thus, Quine concluded that Heidegger was “beguiled” by the “confusion” of the indefinite singular term “nothing” with a definite singular term.^[40]  Quine’s rendering of terms such as “being” and “nothing” is, like Carnap’s, quantificational.^[41] Moreover, Quine has objected to what he calls the distinction between “being, as the broadest concept and existence as the narrower” as a departure from their common sense usage in ordinary language that creates much confusion in ontological issues.^[42]

            While Carnap used the term “ontological” to designate the “pseudo-questions” of metaphysics concerning the existence or reality of a system of entities as a whole, for Quine, ontology is simply a theory of what there is --of what things or objects exist. His notion of semantic ascent --the “shift from talk about objects to talk about words”^[43]-- aims at the linguistic question of what we say there is. Quine has insisted that ontological and linguistic questions deal with separate issues; the former with facts, the latter with language.^[44] When problems arise in ontology, such as controversies over the existence of certain entities, semantic ascent is simply a way to translate these questions into linguistic terms.

            It is on the linguistic or semantic plane that the formula “To be is to be the value of a bound variable” plays its role of  establishing what Quine calls the “ontic” or “ontological” commitments of our discourse, or the entities we assume or presuppose.^[45] He has phrased a similar formula in grammatical terms: “To be is to be in the range of reference of a pronoun.”^[46] The difference between these canonical notations is basically one of degree; the former adheres to the rigors of scientific ontological studies concerned with issues of “objective reference,” the latter pertains to the layperson’s ontology with the typical “untidiness” and “vagaries” of ordinary language. Ordinary language is for the most part “indifferent” to ontological issues, while quantification is, as Quine sees it, “just linguistic evolution gone self-conscious, as science is self-conscious common sense.”^[47] This evolution does not reveal a shortcoming of ordinary language or common sense, for, as Quine explains: “Ontological concern is not a correction of lay thought and practice; it is foreign to lay culture, though an outgrowth of it.”^[48]

            Quine’s notion of semantic ascent parallels Carnap’s distinction between the material and the formal modes of speech, that is, between sentences concerning facts and linguistic form.^[49] For Carnap, the shift to the formal mode is a way to prove the meaninglessness of metaphysical sentences (as his reading of Heidegger shows us). His distinction serves to assign to “scientific philosophy” the pragmatic task of dealing exclusively with linguistic or formal issues, while science deals with theoretical questions concerning matters of fact.

             Quine, however, has objected to these applications. He argues that the whole of science depends on both language and experience, but such duality, he stresses, “is not significantly traceable” into individual sentences.^[50]  From this holistic standpoint, science as a whole is empirically underdetermined, as it meets with experience only along its edges. Quine characterizes his holism as “moderate or relative,” because those individual sentences closest to that edge (observation sentences) do have their own empirical content. Thus, he retains the spirit of the verificationist principle of meaning as applied to these single sentences where, as he puts it, “meaning remains firmest.”^[51] However, according to his naturalist reading, meaning is not an essence or an abstract intermediary entity, but a property of human behavior.^[52]

            For Quine, science is metaphysical in its attempt to answer the ontological question. Moreover, as a system of sentences about the world, it deals with theoretical questions as well as pragmatic questions of linguistic policy. The difference between philosophical and scientific questions is one of degree, for both are concerned with matters of fact and language. The main thesis of Quine’s naturalized epistemology is, then, that science is only answerable to itself in its ontological inquiries or its question of reality. There is no first philosophy or supra-scientific tribunal. Science is, for Quine, the “last arbiter of truth.”^[53] Given that there is no pou sto, no place to stand outside theory, truth and ontology are immanent.^[54] However, questions concerning the correspondence of scientific theory with the unassailable reality are themselves transcendent.^[55]

            Attentive to the oppositions between Heidegger and the analytic tradition, others have developed critical Heideggerean readings of the analytic interpretations of “nothing” and “being” in terms of objectification and quantification.^[56] Though aware of Quine’s departures from Carnap, they have remained focused on their shared analytic approach via logic. These critiques do point to some of the radical differences between Heidegger and Quine, as a representative of the analytic tradition. As a proponent of the “technical-scientistic view of language,” Quine, like Carnap, is in an “extreme counterposition” to Heidegger. However, we can also see conspicuous differences between the two analytic philosophers, and engaging similarities between Quine and Heidegger.

            Quine differs from both Carnap and Heidegger in that he does not see metaphysics as a problem. He understands metaphysics as a natural human drive to go beyond the physical evidence provided by sense experience. Common sense, philosophy and science are all theories about the physical world. Common sense is the basic, second-nature theory of ordinary thought from which philosophy and science evolve as deliberate theoretical systems. All are forms of what Quine calls “conceptual schemes” that serve to interpret our sense experience by fitting and arranging it into a structured reality.^[57]  Ordinary language is our inherited conceptual scheme or world-theory, while philosophy and science are constructed or invented on its basis. They are all metaphysical, though the latter offer more rigorous theories. Science, in particular, is what provides us with warranted belief.^[58]

            From this point, it follows that, unlike Carnap and Heidegger, Quine does not envision a philosophy in a marked contrast with common sense and science. From the perspective of his naturalized epistemology, there is no first philosophy. Moreover, Quine argues that the philosopher has “no vantage point outside the conceptual scheme,” for there is “no such cosmic exile.” Quine has insisted that we are all aboard the same ship, navigating on the empirical subdeterminacy of our theories. As he puts it, the “Humean predicament is the human predicament,” so that the Cartesian quest for certainty is a “lost cause.”^[59]  However, it is clear that Quine does uphold what Heidegger would call a “scientistic position,” insofar as science is the most effective way to navigate those waters. It is also transparent that naturalist philosophy is nonetheless Quine’s ideal. This is revealed even in his critique of what he labeled the “dogmas of empiricism.”

            Quine’s notion of conceptual scheme offers an important insight into his conception of ontology. For him, an ontology is “basic to the conceptual scheme by which [one] interprets all experiences.”^[60]  Conceptualization includes what Quine calls “objectification,” that is, the positing or talking of things or objects. Ordinary language in particular is, for him, an implicit form of entification that is an invariable and unconscious trait of human nature.^[61] Things or objects are, for Quine, constructs. He uses terms such as “myth,” “hypothesis,” and “cultural posit” to characterize entities of all kinds, physical or abstract, common or scientific.

            Language is thus the conceptual scheme through which entities are formed as entities. Such entification or objectification is part of our “common fund of conceptualization.” Different languages may have different “objectifying patterns,” and this reflects what Quine calls “ontological or ontic parochialism.”^[62] Within the given ontology of a conceptual scheme, the entities acknowledged as existent are trivial. As Quine sees it: “Structure is what matters to a theory, and not its choice of objects.”^[63] With this, he is not denying reality to objects because they are theoretical, but highlighting their place and role as posits within a given theory. In the end, the choices will depend on what works and what doesn’t, that is, ontology is guided by a “pragmatic standard” because, for Quine, “the purpose of concepts and language is efficacy in communication and in prediction.”^[64]

            In his “What is Metaphysics?,” Heidegger rejects Hegel’s view that Being and nothing are the same because of their conceptual immediacy and indeterminacy. Rather, he says, it is because “Being is essentially finite and reveals itself only in the transcendence of Dasein which is held out into the nothing.”^[65] Moreover, he insists that the indeterminacy that is revealed in anxiety is  “no mere lack of determination, but rather the essential impossibility of determining it.”^[66] Heidegger would have rejected the Quinean indeterminacy perhaps even more strenuously than the Hegelian. Yet, though Quine remains at the level of the Heidegerrean “present-at-hand,” language still functions by determining what is in principle indeterminate. Heidegger’s “from the nothing all beings as beings come to be” operates in Quine’s epistemological conception of beings. Language is for Quine, as it is for the later Heidegger, where “things first become and are.”

            The predominant tendency has been to stress the differences between “continental” and “analytic” philosophy. Since these have been often construed as incommensurable discourses, exchanges between their respective adherents have been minimal and usually hostile. However, by comparing or combining features from these two currents of thought we may open up fresh perspectives and offer new directions for philosophy in the twenty-first century. This emerging intercourse between philosophical traditions will expand our horizon and deepen our insight into the problems, such as language,  pursued by philosophers across and beyond the “continental/analytic” division. There are many questions yet to be answered regarding Heidegger, Carnap and Quine as they stand at the crossroads of language.

© 2000 Wanda Torres Gregory

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