 Carnap differed fundamentally from the western philosophical tradition in his conception of philosophy and his attitude toward philosophical problems. These supposed problems, he thought, were largely artifacts of our inadequate tools—they originate in confusions due to the languages our species has evolved over millennia to deal with the practical problems of a pre-scientific and pre-technological everyday life. These primitive tools leave us unequipped even to express, let alone to address, the traditional problems of philosophy coherently; our inherited languages distort the picture too badly, and to see things more adequately we need to devise new concepts and organize our thoughts in less parochial categories. Just as we have devised new concepts and vocabularies to find out about the world in systematic scientific inquiry, so we have to leave behind our traditional ways of articulating how everything fits together, how we should understand our place in the world, and how we should shape our lives in response. 