| This essay attempts to determine why Carnap abandoned the attempt to develop a purely formal language of logical syntax and moved into semantic studies. The events surrounding this turn in thought, as well as the logical syntax project itself, are placed in their historical contexts. Logical syntax is shown to be defined as a language without a signifying function. Without this function, it is impossible for truth to be defined within this language. An ad hoc addition to the project, the rule of evaluation, is shown, with help of several thinkers, to resemble Tarski's T-schema. This structure is semantic in nature, and it is argued that this in turn undermines the logical syntax project, which in turn led to its abandonment. |
