Analytic-synthetic Distinction Research Articles

জন লকের জ্ঞানতত্ত্বে কান্টীয় বৈশ্লেষিকতা-সংশ্লেষিকতার ধারণা

British philosopher John Locke provides a definition of knowledge at the beginning of the fourth part of his famous book, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. According to this definition, knowledge is the perception of agreement or disagreement between ideas. In this part, he mentions three types of knowledge according to degree: intuitive, demonstrative, and sensitive. Furthermore, propositions are divided into two classes based on idea-containment: trifling and instructive. On the basis of conformity to archetypes, he identifies two other types of propositions, namely chimerical and real. The primary objective of this article is to provide a description of such key issues in Locke’s epistemology, which will serve as the basis for discussing the Kantian framework of the analytic-synthetic distinction underlying his epistemology. Through this discussion, it is possible to demonstrate, contra Lex Newman, that there is an aspect of Locke’s epistemology equivalent to the Kantian synthetic proposition. As Brian Chance puts it more specifically, Locke can be regarded as a philosopher who believes that knowledge can be both analytic and synthetic. Trifling propositions are primarily analytic, but propositions that are both instructive and real are synthetic. This interpretation renders Lockean demonstrative and sensitive knowledge as synthetic. The above argument constitutes the main contribution of the present essay to the debate among Locke scholars regarding the analyticsynthetic proposition in the context of Locke’s epistemology.

The Objectivity of Analyticity: Quine's Two Dogmas Argument Revisited

From a classical view, analyticity entails objectivity, as opposed to syntheticity. With "Two Dogmas" and other essays, the traditional analytical aprioricity is dead, various attempts for seeking recourse to conventions also reveal to be insufficient to account for the leak from subjective experiences about the external world and objective knowledge reserved in a law-governed sphere. Although Quine cast doubt on a traditional analytic-synthetic distinction and a priori truth obtained by virtue of meaning and disapproved of Carnap's logical empiricism, i.e., logical truth in the sense of conventions that defined by linguistic structrue, it is clear that he has never refused the possibility of seeking a common picture of our external world, a kind of objectivity neither based on a transcendental Kantian approach of a priori intuition, nor the one that relies on a logical framework and certain structural properties that are isomorphic between private experiences. Quine opposed these views mainly by providing a holistic approach which states that confirmation is holistic where interdeterminancy sets the accountability of every single given expression. However, this claim eventually resuscitates the question of the relation between objectivity and the questioned analyticity, i.e. truth by virtue of meaning. This essay argues that in fact, a new kind of objectivity has emerged with the Quinean approach, namely the analytical objectivity.

Grace de Laguna’s 1909 critique of analytic philosophy: presentation and defence

Grace A. de Laguna was an American philosopher of exceptional originality. Many of the arguments and positions she developed during the early decades of the twentieth century later came to be central to analytic philosophy. These arguments and positions included, even before 1930, a critique of the analytic-synthetic distinction, a private language argument, a critique of type physicalism, a functionalist theory of mind, a critique of scientific reductionism, a methodology of research programs in science and more. Nevertheless, de Laguna identified herself as a defender of the speculative vision of philosophy, a vision which, in her words, ‘analytic philosophy condemns’. I outline her speculative vision of philosophy as well as what is, in effect, an argument she offers against analytic philosophy. This is an argument against the view that key parts of established opinion, e.g. our best theoretical physics or most certain common sense, should be assumed to be true in order to answer philosophical questions. I go on to bring out the implications of her argument for the approaches to philosophy of Bertrand Russell, Willard V. Quine and David Lewis, and I also compare the argument to recent, related arguments against analytic philosophy. I will suggest that de Laguna offers a viable critique of analytic philosophy and an alternative approach to philosophy that meets this critique.

Quine’s critique of C. I. Lewis: pragmatism, psychologism, and naturalism—a response to Quine, conceptual pragmatism, and the analytic-synthetic distinction (Robert Sinclair, 2022)

Quine’s critique of C. I. Lewis: pragmatism, psychologism, and naturalism—a response to Quine, conceptual pragmatism, and the analytic-synthetic distinction (Robert Sinclair, 2022)

ANALYTICITY AND SYNTHETICITY IN TYPE THEORY REVISITED

Abstract I discuss problems with Martin-Löf’s distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments in constructive type theory and propose a revision of his views. I maintain that a judgment is analytic when its correctness follows exclusively from the evaluation of the expressions occurring in it. I argue that Martin-Löf’s claim that all judgments of the forms $a : A$ and $a = b : A$ are analytic is unfounded. As I shall show, when A evaluates to a dependent function type $(x : B) \to C$ , all judgments of these forms fail to be analytic and therefore end up as synthetic. Going beyond the scope of Martin-Löf’s original distinction, I also argue that all hypothetical judgments are synthetic and show how the analytic–synthetic distinction reworked here is capable of accommodating judgments of the forms $A \> \mathsf {type}$ and $A = B \> \mathsf {type}$ as well. Finally, I consider and reject an alternative account of analyticity as decidability and assess Martin-Löf’s position on the analytic grounding of synthetic judgments.

Lewis and Quine in context

Robert Sinclair’s Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism, and the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction persuasively argues that Quine’s epistemology was deeply influenced by C. I. Lewis’s pragmatism. Sinclair’s account raises the question why Quine himself frequently downplayed Lewis’s influence. Looking back, Quine has always said that Rudolf Carnap was his “greatest teacher” and that his 1933 meeting with the German philosopher was his “first experience of sustained intellectual engagement with anyone of an older generation” (1970, 41; 1985, 97-8, my emphasis). Quine’s autobiographies contain only a handful of biographical references to Lewis and he regularly soft-pedaled the latter’s influence in private correspondence. In this note, I discuss some archival evidence that helps us better understand Quine’s reluctance to acknowledge Lewis’s influence. I contextualize the relation between Lewis and Quine and argue that the latter viewed his teacher as a retrograde force in modern epistemology, impeding the more rigorous approach that Carnap had been developing in Europe. Next, I briefly discuss Lewis’s contribution to the development of scientific philosophy in the United States and argue that Quine underestimated his teacher’s role in this process. In doing so, I argue that Quine’s zealous commitment to Carnap’s approach negatively affected his assessment of Lewis’s influence, thereby supplementing Sinclair’s praiseworthy reconstruction with an explanation of why Quine himself underestimated Lewis’s role.

Hintikka’s conception of syntheticity as the introduction of new individuals

In a series of papers published in the sixties and seventies, Jaakko Hintikka, drawing upon Kant’s conception, defines an argument to be analytic whenever it does not introduce new individuals into the discussion and argues that there exists a class of arguments in polyadic first-order logic that are to be synthetic according to this sense. His work has been utterly overlooked in the literature. In this paper, I claim that the value of Hintikka’s contribution has been obscured by his formalisation of the original definition. Therefore, I provide (i) a brief reconstruction of the historical framework of the problem and the revolutionary import of Hintikka’s contribution, (ii) a clarification of the most complicated steps of Hintikka’s elaboration of his insight, (iii) a criticism of several features that play a fundamental role in Hintikka’s formalisation and (iv) a selection from Hintikka’s own material of some valuable suggestions towards a clear and workable formalisation. As for the pars construens, I isolate in the approach of depth-bounded first-order logics (D'Agostino et al. 2021) an alternative formalisation of the notion of syntheticity as the introduction of new individuals in the reasoning, and I show that it is not affected by the same difficulties as Hintikka’s proposal. In so doing, I hope to have contributed to the realisation of the project of rehabilitating Kant’s analytic–synthetic distinction in the context of modern first-order logic with the purpose of showing, against the logical empiricist movement, that logic is not analytic.

Behavior, valuation, and pragmatism in C.I. Lewis and W.V. Quine

I explore three points about the relationship between C.I. Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism and W.V. Quine’s naturalized epistemology inspired by Robert Sinclair’s Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism, and the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction. First, I highlight Lewis’s long-standing commitment to Platonism about meaning and its connection to his reflective philosophical method and rejection of a linguistic account of analyticity. Second, I consider Sinclair’s claim that “Lewis’s epistemology provides no indication concerning how, despite different sensory experiences, we still come to agree on what we are talking about and what counts as evidence” (2022, 113). I find more hints, especially in Lewis’s account of how we verify that two people share meaning in common. However, some of the pragmatic and broadly empirical factors Lewis appeals to are not part of Quine’s naturalized epistemology. Finally, I relate these points to Quine’s (1953/1980) claim to advance a more “thorough pragmatism” than Lewis. Quine does not say much about action, value, and ethics, but these are central parts of Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism and a source of his reluctance to abandon those parts of his epistemology that Sinclair argues Quine found dispensable.

How to Make Analytic Science-Engaged Theology an ASSET

This paper explores the relationship between analytic theology and science-engaged theology through a historical lens, connecting contemporary disagreements between analytic metaphysicians and philosophers of science to a disagreement about philosophical method between Carnap and Quine. After discussing philosophical issues of meaning and verification in early positivism, the paper goes on to suggest that the analytic-synthetic distinction underlying much work in analytic theology is difficult to maintain when engaging with empirical methods of knowledge production such as science. To move forward, then, analytic theologians who wish to pursue science-engaged theology need a constructive methodology that embraces a blurring of the analytic-synthetic distinction. A rough sketch of one such research program, analytic-synthetic science-engaged theology, is offered as a potential ASSET for systematic theologians who wish to engage with natural and human sciences.

Grace de Laguna’s Analytic and Speculative Philosophy

ABSTRACT This paper introduces the philosophy of Grace Andrus de Laguna in order to renew interest in it. I show that, in the 1910s and 1920s, she develops ideas and arguments that are also found playing key roles in the development of analytic philosophy decades later. Further, I describe her sympathetic, but acute, criticism of pragmatism and Heideggerian ontology, and situate her work in the tradition of American, speculative philosophy. Before 1920, we will see, de Laguna appeals to multiple realizability to undermine reductionism in science, to support perspectival, scientific realism and, with help from a private language argument, to favour the view that mental states are classified by behavioural, teleological roles over what came to be called ‘type physicalism’. Her view of speech, mostly developed in the 1920s, tells us that its primary role is coordinating group behaviour rather than expressing thoughts. Belief is understood in terms of its causal role, including its causal relations to other kinds of mental states, when coordinating group behaviour. Thought is similarly understood. In developing her theory of mind, de Laguna rejects the pragmatist claims that belief can be reduced to dispositions to behaviour and that thought’s function is to address specific, rather than general, problems. She also favours meaning holism and rejects the analytic–synthetic distinction. In later work, de Laguna argues that individuals’ activity of self-maintenance brings universals, conceived of as irreducible potentialities, into being and makes them increasingly determinate. Further, she identifies the existence of all individuals with forms of self-maintenance and takes the existence of people to include maintenance of the cultural world. Such a unified treatment of existence, she holds, permits making its evolution intelligible. Heidegger’s view of being is rejected for not permitting this. All de Laguna’s work, we will see, fits a vision of philosophy as the systematic, imaginative and naturalistic examination of being as well as a source of criticism of science.

Epistemic Analyticity Reconsidered

AbstractIt is nowadays standard to distinguish between epistemic and metaphysical analyticity. Metaphysical analyticity has been widely rejected, while epistemic analyticity has been widely endorsed. I argue that we also have good reason to reject epistemic analyticity. I do so by considering all the plausible ways of characterizing epistemic analyticity and of drawing the epistemic analytic–synthetic distinction. I argue that on all of them, the distinction fails to carve at the semantic joints. I conclude that that there is good reason to think that there is no semantic distinction to be drawn between analytic and synthetic sentences.

Fuzzy Logic in the Quantum Mechanical Worldview; Related to Zadeh, Wittgenstein, Moore, Saussure, Quine, Lewis Carroll, etc.

Recently we proposed the linguistic Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is called quantum language or measurement theory. This theory is valid for both quantum and classical systems. Thus we think that quantum language is one of the most powerful scientific theories, like statistics. In this paper we justify Zadeh’s fuzzy sets theory in quantum language, that is, fuzzy propositions are identified with binary measurements. This implies that the definition of “proposition” is, for the first time, acquired in the field of non-mathematics. Further, we assert that fuzzy logic is more natural than crisp logic in science. And furthermore, we discuss and solve Saussure’s linguistics, Moore’s paradox, Quine’s analytic-synthetic distinction and Lewis Carroll’s logical paradox. Therefore, from the philosophical point of view, our result gives a complete answer to Wittgenstein’s problem: “Why does logic work in our world?” and “What is a scientific proposition?” in his picture theory. That is, we simultaneously justify both Zadeh’s fuzzy sets and Wittgenstein’s picture theory in the quantum mechanical worldview.

Rorty’s Rejection of Philosophy

Abstract I argue that the real puzzle about Richard Rorty’s intellectual development is not why he gave up on ‘analytic’ philosophy-he had never been much committed to that research agenda, even before it became moribund-but why, beginning with Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (PMN), he gave up on the central concerns of philosophy going back to antiquity. In addition to Rorty’s published works, I draw on biographical information about Rorty’s undergraduate and graduate education to support this assessment, and contrast his rejection of philosophy with Nietzsche’s. Many contemporary philosophers influenced by Quine’s attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction and Sellars’ attack on ‘the Myth of the Given’ (the two argumentative linchpins of PMN) did not abandon philosophical questions about truth, knowledge, and mind, they just concluded those questions needed to be naturalized, to be answered in conjunction with the empirical sciences. Why didn’t Rorty go this route? The paper concludes with some interesting anecdotes about Rorty that invite speculative explanations.

Chomsky on Analytic and Necessary Propositions

My aim is to critically discuss Chomsky’s position concerning the analytic-synthetic distinction and necessary propositions. To do so, I present Chomsky’s objection to Quine’s criticism of the analytic-synthetic distinction, and I point out that Chomsky’s defense of such a distinction can be efficacious only under the assumption of conceptual innateness. I then focus on Chomsky’s analysis of necessary propositions. In particular, I present Chomsky’s objection to Kripke’s essentialism, and Chomsky’s hypothesis that the distinction between necessary and contingent truths is determined by the structure of the conceptual system and its relations with other systems of common-sense understanding. I highlight that this hypothesis is not compatible with Chomsky’s own objection to Kripke.

Sellars and Quine on empiricism and conceptual truth

ABSTRACTI compare Sellars’s criticism of the ‘myth of the given’ with Quine’s criticism of the ‘two dogmas’ of empiricism, that is, the analytic–synthetic distinction and reductionism. In Sections I to III, I present Quine’s and Sellars’s views. In IV to X, I discuss similarities and differences in their views. In XI to XII, I show that Sellars’s arguments against the ‘myth of the given’ are incompatible with Quine’s rejection of the analytic–synthetic distinction.

Metaontological De ationism in the Aftermath of the Quine-Carnap Debate

Abstract With metaphysical philosophy gaining prominence in the af- termath of the Quine-Carnap debate, not only has it become assumed that the Quinean critique leaves ontological pluralism behind as an untenable approach, but also that the same is true of deationism more generally. Building on Quine's criticisms against the analytic-synthetic distinction and the notion of quantifier variance, contemporary metaphysicians like van Inwagen and Sider continue to argue for the untenability of deflationary approaches to metaontology. In this paper I will argue that Quine's criticisms do not provide sufficient grounds for revitalizing metaphysics, as the aforementioned metaphysicians conceive them as doing, and that they also don't eliminate all hope for Carnapian pluralism. Furthermore, Carnap's initial position may even yield the most promising route for the pluralistically inclined. Moreover, pluralism is often conceived as being equivalent with the narrower notion of quantifier variance, often associated with Hirsch and Putnam. As this notion often is attributed not only to Carnap and other pluralists, but also is taken to be an essential feature of deationism, explicating how their merits in fact don't necessarily coincide with those of quantifier variance will clarify matters. I will conclude by noting how neither pluralism nor deationism is committed to quantifier variance, and thus how arguments against the latter don't entail a refutation of the former.

Locke, Kant, and Synthetic A Priori Cognition

AbstractThis paper attempts to shed light on three related issues that bear directly on our understanding of Locke and Kant. The first is whether Kant believes Locke merely anticipates his distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments or also believes Locke anticipates his notion of synthetic a priori cognition. The second is what we as readers of Kant and Locke should think about Kant’s view whatever it turns out to be, and the third is the nature of Kant’s justification for the comparison he draws between his philosophy and Locke’s. I argue (1) that Kant believes Locke anticipates both the analytic-synthetic distinction and Kant’s notion of synthetic a priori cognition, (2) that the best justification for Kant’s claim draws on Locke’s distinction between trifling and instructive knowledge, (3) that the arguments against this claim developed by Carson, Allison, and Newman fail to undermine it, and (4) that Kant’s own justification for his claim is quite different from what many commentators have thought it was (or should have been)

Some Remarks on Putnam's Contributions to Semantics

AbstractAfter a critical discussion of Putnam's early work on the analytic–synthetic distinction, this article discusses seven contributions that Putnam has made to the philosophy of language. These contributions are (1) to understanding the role of definitions in science and in ordinary discourse; (2) to recognizing the role of stereotypes in explaining meaning; (3) to acknowledging the minimal role of explicative understanding in having linguistic competence with natural kind words; (4) to distinguishing sharply between identifying natural kinds and determining their more fundamental natures; (5) to exploring a division of linguistic labour – a role for social interaction in determining reference, especially of natural kind terms; (6) to establishing a broadly unified causal account of the reference of ordinary natural kind terms and scientific physical magnitude terms; and (7) to reviving a conception of scientific language that allows for trans‐theoretical reference and one sort of trans‐theoretical meaning.

Metaphysical Motives of Kant’s Analytic–Synthetic Distinction

The paper identifies metaphysical motives underwriting Kant’s analytic-synthetic distinction. Kant denies the reducibility of his synthetic to analytic judgments by conceptual analysis. Leibniz upholds general reducibility, presenting the Principle of Sufficient Reason as its instrument. I argue that Kant’s irreducibility doctrine involves a threefold metaphysical critique of Leibniz’s PSR. First, this principle is described as incompatible with the metaphysics of experience. Second, Kant claims it is incompatible with the metaphysical contingency of free agency. I find here a crucial and neglected motivation underpinning Kant’s doctrine of synthetic causal judgment. Finally, Leibniz’s principle supposedly entails an untenable metaphysics of divine necessity.

Truth by analysis: games, names, and philosophy

Preface 1. Philosophy and Analysis 2. Definition and Family Resemblance 3. Sufficiency and Circularity 4. The Paradox of Analysis 5. Psychologism and the Linguistic Turn 6. The Analytic-Synthetic Distinction 7. The Whole of Philosophy 8. The Sense of Names 9. Naturalism and Philosophical Method 10. Philosophy as Play 11. The Possibility of Ontology 12. The Concept of Instantiation Bibliography