 These questions take us back to the engineering ethos described in  section 1.1  above, about explication and rational reconstruction. Language choice, for Carnap, was not an end in itself but was rather in the service of freeing ourselves from the distorted perspective on the world imposed on us by our inherited natural languages. These languages had not evolved to optimize the transparent representation of knowledge, but for very different, primitive practical purposes. For the pursuit of knowledge, and insight into the human condition in the light of that knowledge, better languages are needed. What makes a language “better”? In principle Carnap leaves that open. Everyone has their own values about what they want languages to do for them, and will choose accordingly. But Carnap’s own values were those of the Enlightenment. His value hierarchy placed the value of escaping from the complacent, passive acceptance of authority, or of traditional or folk ideas—and finding something objectively better—near the top. The replacement of knowledge accepted passively from authority or tradition by objective knowledge was his goal just as it had been the goal of the Encyclopédistes. And by “objective” knowledge, Carnap meant essentially scientific and practical knowledge, just as they did.