Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-30T05:49:53.106Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Formal and Non-Formal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Richard Rudner*
Affiliation:
Cornell University

Extract

In some ways, I think, the analytic method in philosophy and science suffers from an embarrassment of riches. It has too many distinctions—in the sense that any distinction which is infirm, but which is yet carted about along with the necessary apparatus of a method, is (at its most innocuous) superfluous. In these pages I propose to examine one such distinction.

A principle which is subscribed to by almost all of the “analysers” with whose work I am acquainted is that which is constituted by a certain kind of dichotomization between what we may for the present loosely characterize as the “formal” and the “non-formal.” Sometimes this distinction is presented as one existing between the “formal sciences” and the “non-formal sciences”; more frequently, perhaps, it is taken as a distinction holding between certain kinds of expressions, i.e., analytic and synthetic statements. It will be the thesis of this paper that there are good reasons for believing that this distinction in either of its forms is not a cogent one.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1949

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

(1) Carnap, R., Introduction to Semantics.Google Scholar
(2) Carnap, R., Meaning and Necessity.Google Scholar
(3) Dewey, J., Logic The Theory of Inquiry.Google Scholar
(4) Feigl, H., “Logical Empiricism,” Twentieth Century Philosophy, (ed. D. Runes).Google Scholar
(5) Morris, C., Signs, Language, and Behavior.Google Scholar
(6) Reichenbach, H., Elements of Symbolic Logic.Google Scholar