Carnap's Pragmatism

Carnap is widely seen as a founding father of the view that metaphysical debates do not concern any substantive issue. My dissertation argues against this line of interpretation. I propose a reading on which Carnap’s views on metaphysics and language, and in particular, his Principle of Tolerance and verificationism, derive from his pragmatism, i.e., from the thesis that scientific language is an instrument whose function is to aid in the derivation of observational knowledge. I argue that, so understood, various controversial aspects of Carnap’s philosophy are plausible.