Re: On the etymology of the word "functor"

[Steve Awodey <awodey@cmu.edu>]

> On Feb 20, 2024, at 9:57 AM, Julian Rohrhuber <rohrhuber@protonmail.com> wrote:
>
...
> What I would be interested in would be in what sense Carnap's mistakes, according to Mac Lane,
> corresponded to the concept of functor. Or, perhaps, how Carnap's failed attempt to define analyticity
> corresponds to a wrong concept of functor.
>

Dear Julian,

the “mistakes” that Mac Lane refers to are not related to Carnap's use of the word “functor”, which was just what we would now call a "function symbol” in a formal language.  Rather, they had to do with Carnap’s attempt to define logical validity syntactically, which Saunders showed in his review was mathematically defective.  The connection between that and the “purloining” of the word “functor” was, I think, just a playful reminiscence.

Steve



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