Truth in Virtue of Meaning

Abstract

AbstractThe analytic/synthetic distinction looks simple. It is a distinction between two different kinds of sentence: synthetic sentences are true in part because of the way the world is, and in part because of what they mean, whereas analytic sentences — like all bachelors are unmarried and triangles have three sides — are different; they are true in virtue of meaning and so, no matter what the world is like, as long as the sentence means what it does, it will be true. The distinction seems powerful because analytic sentences seem to be knowable in a special way; one can know that all bachelors are unmarried, for example, just by thinking about what it means. But many 20th-century philosophers, with Quine in the lead, argued that there were no analytic sentences, that the idea of analyticity didn't even make sense and that the analytic/synthetic distinction was therefore an illusion. Others couldn't see how there could fail to be a distinction, however ingenious the arguments. But since the heyday of the debate, things have changed in the philosophy of language. Tools have been refined, confusions cleared up, and most significantly, many philosophers now accept a view of language — semantic externalism — on which it is possible to see how the distinction could fail. One might be tempted to think that ultimately the distinction has fallen for reasons other than those proposed in the original debate. This book argues that it hasn't. It uses the tools of contemporary philosophy of language to outline a view of analytic sentences which is compatible with semantic externalism, and defends that view against the old Quinean arguments. It then goes on to draw out some surprising epistemological consequences.