Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology
1950 — internal vs external questions
Work
1950 paper on framework-relative existence claims and the internal/external question distinction.
Primary publication. Carnap, R. (1950). Empiricism, semantics, and ontology. Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 4, 20–40. Reprinted widely; DOI for standard reprint context: 10.2307/2020908
Standard access. In Carnap, Meaning and Necessity (2nd ed., 1956), University of Chicago Press.
Claims we use
- Theorems and existence proofs are internal to a stated system (PA, ZFC).
- “Is PA true?” or “Should we adopt ZFC?” are external — governance and meta-mathematics, not tier-2 arithmetic.