Abstract

Philosophers often divide Carnap's work into syntactic, semantic, and later periods, but this disguises the importance of his early syntactical writing. In Logical Syntax Carnap is a thoroughgoing conventionalist and pragmatist. Once we see that, it is easier to see as well that these views were retained throughout the rest of his life, that the breaks between periods are not as important as the continuities, and that our understanding of such Carnapian notions as analyticity and probability needs reevaluation.