Carnapian Linguistic Frameworks: brief notes on tolerance and hierarchical structure

Abstract

This paper examines Carnap’s conception of linguistic framework in light of the Principle of Tolerance and its constitutive role in the architecture of scientific rationality. To this end, it engages with the recent scholarly debate involving the interpretations advanced by Steinberger, Eklund, and Broughton. Steinberger seeks to reconcile Carnap’s voluntarism with prescriptive norms of rationality; Eklund adopts a pluralist perspective, construing frameworks as linguistic fragments; and Broughton conceives them as formal systems endowed with a primarily normative function. Although the interpretations of Steinberger and Eklund capture essential aspects of Carnap’s project, they overlook a fundamental feature: the hierarchy among the pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic levels. It is within this hierarchical structure that the essential tension between convention and empiricism is articulated, thereby granting the concept its full philosophical significance. The paper concludes with an analysis of this pragmatic–semantic–syntactic hierarchy.