The Limits of Logical Empiricism

Arthur Paps work played an important role in the development of the analytic tradition. This role goes beyond the merely historical fact that Paps views of dispositional and modal concepts were influential. As a sympathetic critic of logical empiricism, Pap, like Quine, saw a deep tension in logical empiricism at its very best in the work of Carnap. But Paps critique of Carnap is quite different from Quines, and represents the discovery of limits beyond which empiricism cannot go, where there lies nothing other than intuitive knowledge of logic itself. Paps arguments for this intuitive knowledge anticipate Etchemendys recent critique of the model-theoretic account of logical consequence. Paps work also anticipates prominent developments in the contemporary neo-Fregean philosophy of mathematics championed by Wright and Hale. Finally, Paps major philosophical preoccupation, the concepts of necessity and possibility, provides distinctive solutions and perspectives on issues of contemporary concern in the metaphysics of modality. In particular, Paps account of modality allows us to see the significance of Kripkes well-known arguments on necessity and apriority in a new light.