Karnak rejected as meaningless any statement that is not grammatically correct or empirically verifiable, a view that emphasized the clarity of scientific inquiry, while Rorty saw language as a product of historical contingency, with no fixed meaning or truth. These two philosophers contrast in their approach to the nature of language and truth, and offer different possibilities for philosophical discussion.
Karnak, a philosopher of linguistic analysis, rejected statements as meaningless if they are not grammatical or reducible to observable empirical sentences, calling them “pseudo-sentences”. For example, consider the following two sentences
Ⅰ. Caesar is and. (Ceasar is and)
Ⅱ. Caesar is a prime number. (Ceasar is a prime number)
The first is ungrammatical, and the second is a “pseudo-statement” in the sense that it is impossible to find observational facts to determine whether it is true or false. In discussing this type of pseudonym, Karnap points out that it is an error for philosophers like Heidegger to assume that language can reveal metaphysical existence. Heidegger’s statement that “nothingness is the nothingness of itself, that which is both being and beyond being,” is meant to suggest that “nothingness” is also an observable object. However, Karnap points out that in Heidegger’s statement, the literal meaning of “nothingness,” which originally meant “nothingness,” has been subtly transformed into the metaphorical meaning of “being and beyond being. In other words, Karnak sees Heidegger’s statement about nothingness as a pseudo-definition in which the literal meaning of nothingness has been inexplicably changed to a metaphorical meaning due to the intervention of metaphor.
Karnak’s position stems from the methodology of scientific inquiry. He saw the goal of science as the pursuit of clear and verifiable truths, and therefore thought that only a language with clear definitions and a strict logical structure was suitable for scientific inquiry. In doing so, Karnack emphasized empirical research based on empirical evidence and away from metaphysical discussions. He also limited the function of language to conveying information and excluded metaphorical language, which is used to express emotions and subjective experiences, from scientific analysis. In this context, Carnap argued that philosophical discussions should be conducted in clear, objective language.
Seeing language as a reflection of the world, Kahneman logically analyzed language in order to uncover truths about the world, and in doing so, he divided language into literal and metaphorical language, with the former belonging to the realm of objective facts, such as science, and the latter to the realm of emotional expression, such as literature. Since Karnak sought to explain the truth of the world within the realm of scientific and objective facts, he considered the metaphorical language of poets to be a meaningless object to be judged as true or false, and literal language was the only way to access the truth of the world.
In contrast to Karnap’s view of language, the pragmatist Rorty shows a pluralist view that language is a product of historical contingency and cannot contain any fixed meaning or transcendent truth. The meaning of language is not determined by the object, but rather by the contingency of the people who use it, and can change depending on the time and circumstances. Rorty believed that there is no clear distinction between objective literal language and subjective metaphorical language, and that there are no criteria to distinguish between them. The distinction is based on the idea that there is one particular language that dictates the nature of an object, which Lorty believed was inconsistent with the contingent nature of language. He also noted that metaphorical language only has meaning in the specific context in which it is used, and that language itself is not metaphorical in nature. Rorty saw language as not reflecting the world, but he did not deny that the world exists. Rather, he was saying that since we have no choice but to use language to tell the truth, we can only compare the rightness or wrongness of linguistic statements, but not the rightness or wrongness of the world.
In his view, the existence of a statement that is deemed right only means that the traditions and communities of a particular time approve of its appropriateness for describing a given situation, but it does not prove that it is absolutely true across cultures and time periods. If we recognize that what we are revealing about the world is not a comparison between the world and language, but between languages that describe the world, then we cannot say that literal language is more true than metaphorical language.
With this view of language, Rorty sought to reveal that the truths we describe are constantly being rewritten and changed by time and circumstance, and in that sense, he sought to understand philosophical work as a literary and poetic endeavor rather than a rigorous, systematic discipline. Rorty saw truth as contingent and relative, with individuals working like poets in private to write about their unique lives in their own vocabulary, and he called individuals who are constantly rewriting themselves ironists. Rorty concluded that the work of the ironist is a path to self-perfection, but it does not guarantee the ideal human being, nor does it allow the ironist to bring his or her personal truths into the public sphere and force everyone to agree with them. In Rorty’s view, many philosophers of the past who sought to discover ultimate truths that everyone could agree on were merely ironists, and therefore sought to confine their truths to the private sphere. However, since ironists can become so confined to the private sphere that they become indifferent to the public, Rorty urged us to do the work of ironists in the private sphere and to be liberals in the public sphere. By liberal, he means someone who practices solidarity, who seeks to reduce the suffering of the disadvantaged by fixing the negative aspects of institutions and customs through dialog and compromise. In this way, Rorty sought to make a clear distinction between the process of truth-seeking and the process of solving social problems by separating the private sphere, where universal standards cannot be applied, from the public sphere, which is governed by the universal standards of the time.
These two philosophers’ positions have become important debates in various currents of modern philosophy. Karnap’s position formed the basis for scientific positivism and logical analytic philosophy, while Rorty’s views were an important foundation for later structuralist, deconstructionist, and pragmatist philosophy. This shows that the nature and methodology of philosophy can vary greatly depending on how it treats language. By comparing and contrasting the views of these two philosophers, we realize that language is more than just a tool of communication, but an important means of understanding and explaining the world.
