Final Exam Topic

V. CARNAP

Explain what Carnap is saying in the following passage, taking care to clarify the distinction between internal and external assertions, as well as its implications for metaphysics and the semantic doctrines underlying it.

 “The critics of the use of abstract entities in semantics overlook the fundamental difference between the acceptance of a system of entities and an internal assertion, e.g., an assertion that there are elephants or electrons or prime numbers greater than a million. Whoever makes an internal assertion is certainly obliged to justify it by providing evidence, empirical evidence in the case of electrons, logical proof in the case of the prime numbers. The demand for a theoretical justification, correct in the case of internal assertions, is sometimes wrongly applied to the acceptance of a system of entities.”