States of affairs and the evolution of Carnap’s semantics. (English) Zbl 0836.01018

Quesada, Daniel

Log. Anal., Nouv. Sér. 36, No. 141-142, 149-157 (1993).

In his early semantic theory as presented in his ‘Introduction to semantics’ [Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. (1942)]R. Carnap used the Wittgensteinian notion “state of affairs” for expressing semantical values of sentences, focusing on an intensional way to semantics. This use was criticized by A. Church in his review of Carnap’s book [Philos. Rev. 52, 298-305 (1943)]using the “slingshot” argument which the author regards as fallacious but which nevertheless led Carnap to abandon the notion “state of affairs” from his semantics.

Reviewer: V.Peckhaus (Erlangen)

MSC:

01A60	History of mathematics in the 20th century
03-03	History of mathematical logic and foundations

Keywords:

state of affairs; semantics; slingshot argument