Meet the MCMPer: Andreas Frenzel

Title:

Carnapian Frameworks and Conceptual Pluralism

Abstract:

In this talk I will give an overview over my research, particularly over the topics of my dissertation and the parts of it that I am currently working on.

My dissertation is about the use of formalizations in philosophy. It consists of two main parts. In the first part, I consider a variety of metatheoretical issues pertaining to formalizations and formal languages. In the second part, I conduct a series of case studies by explicitly constructing fragments of formal languages. The aim is to investigate the usefulness of the features of these languages for achieving a number of philosophical goals.

The topic that I am currently working on is the relationship between Carnapian linguistic frameworks and conceptual pluralism. According to Carnap, different frameworks can be chosen for different applications in science and philosophy, depending on the goals that are pursued. In a sense, this amounts to a conceptual pluralism about whole systems concepts. Moreover, according to Carnap, ontological questions must always be asked within a framework, since one needs a way to specify the acceptance conditions of
entities. This amounts to a kind of ontological pluralism where the existence of entities is always relative to a framework. I will investigate the plausibility of this Carnapian pluralism, while also considering the question of how one can decide which framework to use.