The Analytic-Synthetic Distinction

This is a one page handout outlining an interpretation of Simone de Beauvoir which draws heavily upon material from the analytic tradition of philosophy.

In the following we will investigate whether von Mises’ frequency interpretation of probability can be modified to make it philosophically acceptable. We will reject certain elements of von Mises’ theory, but retain others. In the interpretation we propose we do not use von Mises’ often criticized ‘infinite collectives’ but we retain two essential claims of his interpretation, stating that probability can only be defined for events that can be repeated in similar conditions, and that exhibit frequency stabilization. The central idea (...) of the present article is that the mentioned ‘conditions’ should be well-defined and ‘partitioned’. More precisely, we will divide probabilistic systems into object, initializing, and probing subsystem, and show that such partitioning allows to solve problems. Moreover we will argue that a key idea of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (the determinant role of the observing system) can be seen as deriving from an analytic definition of probability as frequency. Thus a secondary aim of the article is to illustrate the virtues of analytic definition of concepts, consisting of making explicit what is implicit. (shrink)

I draw attention to how one of Donald Davidson’s arguments against the claim that others have an alternative conceptual scheme does not look compatible with his rejection of analytic truths – how his rejection of the third dogma of empiricism depends on accepting the first. The appendix contests Davidson’s approach to organizing the Pacific Ocean.

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) → 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 type and A = B 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. (shrink)

Quine seems to maintain that there is no sharp distinction between analytic and synthetic sentences, and also that 'analytic' and 'synthetic' have no meaning. the dependence of these concepts on 'meaning' is used to show the incompatibility of these two interpretations of quine's conception of the analytic and the synthetic, and to show that both have a paradoxical character of their own. that may threat reductionist semantics as a whole. still the need for a totally different (rationalistic, essentialistic) semantics may (...) be obviated by a reasonable explication of a vague distinction between the analytic and the synthetic. (shrink)

According to ordinary language philosophy (OLP), philosophical problems can be solved by investigating ordinary language, often because the problems stem from its misuse. According to ideal language philosophy (ILP), on the other hand, philosophical problems exist because ordinary language is flawed and has to be improved or replaced by constructed languages that do not exhibit these flaws. OLP and ILP together make up linguistic philosophy, the view that philosophical problems are problems of language. Linguistic philosophy is opposed to what may (...) be called, for lack of a better word, ‘traditional philosophy’ (TP), the view that philosophical problems can be solved by discovering non-linguistic facts. In the following, OLP, ILP, and TP are taken to be methodologies, that is, frameworks in which to interpret and evaluate different philosophical methods (i.e., argumentative strategies). The two linguistic methodologies are discussed separately with TP as a foil, and then used to interpret the status of different philosophical methods. While each of the methods discussed here finds a plausible interpretation in each methodology, there are other arguments for and against linguistic philosophy in general, and for and against ILP and OLP in particular. As none of these arguments is decisive, I conclude with a superficial moral about peaceful co-existence. (shrink)

Even after Quine’s critique of the analytic-synthetic distinction in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” Wilfrid Sellars maintained some forms of analyticity or truth in virtue of meaning. This paper aims to reconstruct his neglected account of the analytic-synthetic distinction and the revisability of analytic sentences, its connection to his inferentialist account of meaning, and his response to Quine. While Sellars’s account of how analytic sentences can be revised bears certain similarities with Carnap’s and Grice and Strawson’s accounts, it is still striking (...) in that it is part of his broader picture of how our language develops dynamically in our ongoing inquiry. I aim to show how it relates within his broader picture to his account of how the diachronic continuity in meaning, language, or conceptual framework can be preserved through a revision of analytic sentences, and to his evolutionary account of the development of our language or conceptual framework. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

I argue that Quine’s naturalization of Lewis’s Kantian pragmatism should be understood in terms of Lewis’s attempt to de-psychologize pragmatist epistemology. Lewis wants epistemology to be a priori in order to be distinct from psychology. Quine’s criticisms of Lewis result in a picture that weakens the distinction between epistemology and psychology. Nevertheless, Quine’s naturalized Kantian pragmatism remains far more Kantian than is widely recognized, due to what Quine retains from Lewis.

Quine’s references to his “pragmatism” have often been seen as indicating a possible link to the American pragmatism of Peirce, James, and Dewey. In Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism, and the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction, I argue that the influence of pragmatism on Quine’s philosophy is more accurately traced to C.I. Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism. Quine’s epistemology shares many affinities with Lewis’s view, which depicts knowledge as a conceptual system pragmatically revised in light of future experience. This claim is defended through an examination of several (...) key episodes in Quine’s philosophical development, including his graduate work for Lewis, critical transition in the 1940s, midcentury criticisms of analyticity, and later turn to naturalized epistemology. This historical account highlights an underappreciated element of the epistemological background to Quine’s criticism of the analytic–synthetic distinction. It is further argued that Lewis’s view provides the central epistemological framework for understanding the form and content of Quine’s later naturalized epistemology. (shrink)

Claro R. Ceniza [1927-2001] is arguably one of the best philosophers that the Philippines has ever produced. However, it is quite unfortunate that some of his important contributions are not that well-known. This paper aims to rectify this by presenting an evaluation of his original insights on three outstanding problems in philosophy, viz., the paradoxes of material implication, the nature of probability, and the metaphysics of modality.

The article explains on the two-year experiment after the author’s finalization of dissertation. The thesis of the dissertation was hidden in the last chapter with analytical linguistics. It was done so with the fascist development of the Chinese Communist regime with neo- Nazi characteristics. Since numerous prior warnings on the political downshifts & coup d’état in China was willfully ignored by the university, the linguistic innovations in dissertation found a balance between multilateralism and outer space (security). The experiments were conducted (...) with a combination of physical unit analysis & thermonuclear dynamics analysis. It describes the experiment process in terms of gravitation as gravitational singularity and Bekenstein-Penrose singularity. Detailed research process is elaborated in the article concerning the sociopolitical interactions the research involved. (shrink)

This book provides an in-depth examination of C.I. Lewis's conceptual pragmatism and its influence on Quine's developing views in epistemology. The author shows how Quine's engagement with problems presented by Lewis, such as analyticity and the empirical given, contribute to the development of his conception of naturalized epistemology.

It 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 there is good reason to think (...) that there is no semantic distinction to be drawn between analytic and synthetic sentences. (shrink)

Chalmers has argued that Bayesianism supports the existence of a priori truths, since it entails that scrutability conditionals are not rationally revisable. However, as we argue, Chalmers's arguments leave open that every proposition is rationally deniable, which would be devastating for large parts of his philosophical program. We suggest that Chalmers should appeal to well-known convergence theorems to argue that ideally rational subjects converge on the truth of scrutability conditionals. However, our discussion reveals that showing that these theorems apply in (...) effect requires assuming scrutability. Consequently, Bayesianism doesn't conflict with Chalmers's scrutability framework, but it doesn't support it, either. (shrink)

Meanings as Species, by Mark Richard. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. vii + 212.

A common account of the distinction between analytic and synthetic truths is that while the former are true solely in virtue of meaning, the latter are true also in virtue of the way of the world. Quine famously disputed this characterization, and his skepticism over the analytic/synthetic distinction has cast a long shadow. Against this skepticism, I argue that the common account comes close to the truth, and that truthmaker theory in particular offers the resources for providing a compelling account (...) of the distinction that preserves the basic ideas behind it, and avoids the standard criticisms facing the distinction. In particular, I argue that analytic truths are truths that ontologically depend in no way whatsoever upon what exists. (shrink)

The time of „philosophical systems“ seems to be definitively over since Kant and Hegel. On this background, the publication of the work „Neues System der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundriss“ (New System of Philosophical Sciences in Ground Plan) is a truly spectacular philosophical event: Dirk Hartmann deliberately follows Hegel‘s „Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse“ of 1817 in the title of his work, in order to make clear the intention and claim of his opus magnum: In contrast to the increased fragmentation (...) and specialization of philosophy in the 20th century, Hartmann focuses on the philosophical treatment of the whole: In seven volumes, he discusses the classical philosophical problems in their interdependent context, not cataloguing them one after the other, but by consistently developing them from one another. Volume I deals with central epistemological problems: „What is knowledge?“, „Is knowledge even possible?“, „Are there forms of substantial non-empirical truth?“, „Is there an ideal language?“, „Can logic be reasoned?“ and „What is science?”. Since this is the first volume of the entire system, the question „What is philosophy?“ is raised at the very beginning too, and the reasons why philosophy should begin with epistemology are expounded. Finally, the criterion of meaning guiding the entire work, the principle of knowability, is justified and defended against pertinent objections. (shrink)

Working from Within: The Nature and Development of Quine's Naturalism. By Verhaegh Sander.

Carnap suggests that philosophy can be construed as being engaged solely in conceptual engineering. I argue that since many results of the sciences can be construed as stemming from conceptual engineering as well, Carnap’s account of philosophy can be methodologically naturalistic. This is also how he conceived of his account. That the sciences can be construed as relying heavily on conceptual engineering is supported by empirical investigations into scientific methodology, but also by a number of conceptual considerations. I present a (...) new conceptual consideration that generalizes Carnap’s conditions of adequacy for analytic–synthetic distinctions and thus widens the realm in which conceptual engineering can be used to choose analytic sentences. I apply these generalized conditions of adequacy to a recent analysis of scientific theories and defend the relevance of the analytic–synthetic distinction against criticisms by Quine, Demopoulos, and Papineau. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue from a metasemantic principle to the existence of analytic sentences. According to the metasemantic principle, an external feature is relevant to determining which concept one expresses with an expression only if one is disposed to treat this feature as relevant. This entails that if one isn’t disposed to treat external features as relevant to determining which concept one expresses, and one still expresses a given concept, then something other than external features must determine that one (...) does. I argue that, in such cases, what determines that one expresses the concept also puts one in a position to know that certain sentences are true—these sentences are thus analytic relative to this determination basis. Finally, I argue that there are such cases: some sentences are analytic relative to what determines that we express certain key concepts, and these sentences include ones that have always been thought to be the best candidates for being analytic, namely, stipulative truths, and first principles of mathematics. (shrink)

W. V. Quine’s first philosophical monograph, Word and Object, is widely recognized as one of the most influential books of twentieth century philosophy. Notes, letters, and draft manuscripts at the Quine Archives, however, reveal that Quine was already working on a philosophical book in the early 1940s; a project entitled Sign and Object. In this paper, I examine these and other unpublished documents and show that Sign and Object sheds new light on the evolution of Quine’s ideas. Where “Two Dogmas (...) of Empiricism” is usually considered to be a turning point in Quine’s development, this paper redefines the place of ‘Two Dogmas’ in his oeuvre. Not only does Quine’s book project reveal that his views were already fairly naturalistic in the early 1940s ; Sign and Object also unearths the steps Quine had to take in maturing his perspective; steps that will be traced in the second half of this paper. (shrink)

In this paper, I introduce and defend a notion of analyticity for formal languages. I first uncover a crucial flaw in Timothy Williamson’s famous argument template against analyticity, when it is applied to sentences of formal mathematical languages. Williamson’s argument targets the popular idea that a necessary condition for analyticity is that whoever understands an analytic sentence assents to it. Williamson argues that for any given candidate analytic sentence, there can be people who understand that sentence and yet who fail (...) to assent to it. I argue that, on the most natural understanding of the notion of assent when it is applied to sentences of formal mathematical languages, Williamson’s argument fails. Formal analyticity is the notion of analyticity that is based on this natural understanding of assent. I go on to develop the notion of formal analyticity and defend the claim that there are formally analytic sentences and rules of inference. I conclude by showing the potential payoffs of recognizing formal analyticity. (shrink)

I argue that Quinean naturalists’ holism-based arguments against analyticity and apriority are more difficult to resist than is generally supposed, for two reasons. First, although opponents of naturalism sometimes dismiss these arguments on the grounds that the holistic premises on which they depend are unacceptably radical, it turns out that the sort of holism required by these arguments is actually quite minimal. And second, although it’s true, as Grice and Strawson pointed out long ago, that these arguments can succeed only (...) if there isn’t any principled criterion for meaning change, such a criterion turns out to be hard to come by. David Chalmers has recently argued that such a criterion must exist, since the norms governing belief revision are subject to obvious exceptions that can be explained only by appeal to meaning change. But this, I argue, is incorrect: if choices about how to use language are themselves rationally assessable, then there are no such exceptions to be explained. To show that this is so, I formulate a new kind of coherence norm that may be useful for reasoning formally about the relationship between meaning and evidence. (shrink)

Fine bases his influential conception of essence on a particular account of definitions. And he complements it with a specific account of analyticity. I will argue that Fine's conception of relative analyticity confuses the idea of a sentence's being true in virtue of a term's definition with the idea of a sentence's being true in virtue of a term's meaning. His idea that correct definitions specify essential properties of meanings is mistaken. The correctness of definitions can only be assessed by (...) reference to the actual usage of the terms involved. The resulting conception of definitions leads to a deflationary interpretation of claims about essences. (shrink)

This paper concerns the three great modal dichotomies: (i) the necessary/contingent dichotomy; (ii) the a priori/empirical dichotomy; and (iii) the analytic/synthetic dichotomy. These can be combined to produce a tri-dichotomy of eight modal categories. The question as to which of the eight categories house statements and which do not is a pivotal battleground in the history of analytic philosophy, with key protagonists including Descartes, Hume, Kant, Kripke, Putnam and Kaplan. All parties to the debate have accepted that some categories are (...) void. This paper defends the contrary view that all eight categories house statements—a position I dub ‘octopropositionalism’. Examples of statements belonging to all eight categories are given. (shrink)

In (deRosset, 2015), I argued that there are counterexamples to the claim that the sentences analytically entailed by a claim φ require nothing more of the world for their truth than does φ. The counterexamples involve sentences which, I argued, are analytically entailed by certain truths, but which nevertheless require more of the world for their truth. John Horden has offered two interesting criticisms of this argument. First, he contends that its conclusion is inconsistent. Second, he contends that the argument (...) faces a dilemma, depending on which of two hypotheses about the meanings of the sentences involved in the counterexamples turns out to be true. Here I reply to Horden’s criticisms and briefly indicate what I take their lesson to be. (shrink)

According to one view on analyticity in formal languages, a definition of 'analytic' can be given by semantic notions alone. In this contribution we are going to show that a purely semantic conception of analyticity is inadequate. To do so, we provide a method for transforming theories with a synthetic empirical basis into logical equivalent theories with an analytic ``empirical'' basis. We draw the conclusion that a definition of analyticity is adequate only if it is a pragmatic one.

I argue that code words like “inner city” do not semantically encode hidden or implicit meanings, and offer an account of how they nonetheless manage to bring about the surprising effects discussed in Mendelberg 2001, White 2007, and Stanley 2015 (among others).

У статті висвітлено граматичні особливості й сферу реалізації одного з різновидів подвійного синтаксичного зв’язку, а саме предикативно-кореляційного. Доведено подвійну природу синтаксичного зв’язку в реченнях із займенниковими іменниками другої особи в позиції підмета та звертаннями, аргументовано його предикативно-кореляційний характер, описано механізми його встановлення. З’ясовано роль вокатива в семантико-синтаксичній і формально-граматичній організації таких речень.

Sider offers a new take on a linguistic account of necessity. In this paper, I assess his view’s vulnerability to objections made against more traditional linguistic accounts, especially an argument I call the “indexical problem.” I conclude that the indexical problem has no force against Sider’s approach because the view is able to attribute modal properties directly to propositions, rather than indirectly via analytic sentences that express them. However, Sider also argues that traditional linguistic accounts fail because of two well-known (...) problems, and I argue that the same two problems undermine his own account. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I develop a new theory for distinguishing between analytic and synthetic truths. Despite being a somewhat new combination of views, each individual view in the theory is firmly grounded in a number of earlier theories given throughout the Analytic tradition. For this reason, Chapter 1 gives an introduction to the theories of various Positivists and Wittgensteinians, Quine, and Kripke from a contemporary perspective. Chapter 2 provides an explication and evaluation of the work which began the contemporary discussion (...) on the analytic/synthetic distinction, Paul Boghossian’s distinctions between epistemic/metaphysical analyticity and the analytic theories of the a priori/necessity. Chapter 3 introduces the work of the most important theorist of metaphysical analyticity, Gillian Russell. Here, I work toward a compromise between Boghossian and Russell which involves advocating for epistemic and metaphysical analyticity via a principle which connects implicit definitions and reference-determination. -/- Given that I defend epistemic and metaphysical analyticity—and that Boghossian thinks a defense of epistemic analyticity yields a defense of the analytic theory of the a priori—Chapter 4 turns to a discussion of the analytic theory of necessity. Here, I argue that Russell’s basic problem for the analytic theory of necessity is the most troubling for the proponent of this view, but that there are still potential avenues open for solving it. Finally, in Chapter 5, I bring the earlier chapters together to try to show that, while they do not directly argue for a traditional theory of analyticity, they do undermine various arguments against such a theory. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the view that positing analytic, constitutive connections among concepts best explains certain semantic-cum-conceptual intuitions. Jerry Fodor and Eric Margolis and Stephen Laurence offer alternative explanations according to which such intuitions can be explained without positing analyticities. I argue that these alternative explanations fail. As a partial diagnosis of their failure, I suggest that critics have failed to recognize the extent to which a psychologized notion of analyticity must depart from the traditional notion of ‘truth in (...) virtue of meaning alone’. (shrink)

It is often argued that inferential role semantics (IRS) entails semantic holism as long as theorists fail to answer the question about which inferences, among the many, are meaning-constitutive. Since analyticity, as truth in virtue of meaning, is a widely dismissed notion in indicating which inferences determine meaning, it seems that holism follows. Semantic holism is often understood as facing problems with the stability of content and many usual explanations of communication. Thus, we should choose between giving up IRS, to (...) avoid these holistic entailments, and defending holism against this charge, to rescue IRS. I try to pursue the second goal by analyzing certain patterns of counterfactual reasoning. Wilfrid Sellars and Robert Brandom claim that, to defend IRS, content-constitutive inferences are those counterfactually robust. While it is difficult to assess the goodness of such a view, it nonetheless entails that counterfactually non-robust inferences (which I call “modally ruled out inferences”) are not content-constitutive. If this is true, and if we take certain remarks about the grasp of concepts on board, there is a way to restrict the scope of the holism entailed by IRS to the extent of reshaping problems with the stability of content. (shrink)

In this paper, it is argued that there can be necessary and non-natural desires. After a discussion about what seems wrong with such desires, Epicurus’ classification of desires is treated similarly to Kripke’s treatment of the Kantian table of judgments. A sample of three cases is suggested to make this point.

Contents: 1. Introduction , 2. Overviews , 3.History and major works, 3.1 Gerhard Gentzen and proof-theory, 3.2 Wilfrid Sellars, 3.3 Gilbert Harman, 3.4 Christopher Peacocke, 3.5 Robert Brandom , 3.6 Paul Horwich, 3.7 Major works by other authors, 4. Mental content first vs. linguistic meaning first, 4.1 Content-first views, 4.2 Meaning-first views, 5. Wide vs. narrow CRS, 5.1 Overviews and major works about externalism/internalism, 5.2 Discussions about externalism within CRS, 6. Descriptive vs. normative CRS, 6.1 Overviews and major works about (...) the normativity of meaning, 6.2 The debate on normativity within CRS, 7. Holistic vs. non-holistic CRS, 7.1 Overviews of meaning holism and compositionality, 7.2 Overviews and major works about analyticity, 7.3 Criticisms against holism , 7.4 Replies to the criticisms, 8. Unilateral vs. bilateral CRS , 9. Connections between CRS and meta-ethics. (shrink)

The term ‘continuous’ in real analysis wasn’t given an adequate formal definition until 1817. However, important theorems about continuity were proven long before that. How was this possible? In this paper, I introduce and refine a proposed answer to this question, derived from the work of Frank Jackson, David Lewis and other proponents of the ‘Canberra plan’. In brief, the proposal is that before 1817 the meaning of the term ‘continuous’ was determined by a number of ‘platitudes’ which had some (...) special epistemic status. (shrink)

Containing three previously unpublished papers by W.V. Quine as well as historical, exegetical, and critical papers by several leading Quine scholars including Hylton, Ebbs, and Ben-Menahem, this volume aims to remedy the comparative lack of historical investigation of Quine and his philosophical context.

In this paper I defend the concept of metaphysical analyticity, and argue for the notion of analyticity as truth in virtue of the reference determiner, introduced by Gillian K. Russell. Contrary to Russell, I try to show that necessary a posteriori statements are analytic under this notion. Also, I maintain that contingent a priori statements cannot be properly called analytic.

La rinascita negli ultimi decenni di un nutrito dibattito intorno alla nozione di analiticità dopo le critiche a suo tempo mosse da Quine alla batteria di nozioni utilizzate da Rudolf Carnap (ad esempio, postulati di significato, regole semantiche, definizioni implicite, convenzioni e stipulazioni esplicite) prende le mosse da una riflessione critica sulle argomentazioni di Quine e tenta, da un lato, di approfondire meglio il legame fra analiticità e conoscenza a priori, e, dall’altro, di capire meglio il ruolo che la definizione (...) può svolgere nella costituzione del significato e nella formulazione di verità concettuali. Questa nuova concezione è detta “epistemica” ed ha fra i suoi più autorevoli fautori Crispin Wright, Bob Hale e Paul Boghossian. Boghossian, al pari di molti filosofi critici della nuova concezione epistemica, come Timothy Williamson, conviene però con Quine nel sostenere che gli enunciati analitici hanno portata fattuale e vertono anch’essi sul mondo, oltre che sul linguaggio. Anche per questa ragione essi possono rendere possibile una genuina estensione delle nostre conoscenze. Tuttavia una seconda linea di obiezioni facenti capo dapprima a Paul Horwich, e in seguito agli stessi Wright e Hale, mette in evidenza rispettivamente due difficoltà corrispondenti alle questioni dell’arroganza e dell’accettazione. In questa discussione una parte importante è svolta dalla ripresa e della discussione del condizionale di Carnap, impiegato per rendere conto del ruolo che i termini teorici svolgono nel quadro dell’intera teoria cui appartengono, senza con ciò sposare le conseguenze dell’olismo quineano. La tesi centrale che questo lavoro cerca di rendere plausibile è che una lettura attenta degli ultimi scritti di Carnap mostri come il carattere aperto che egli attribuisce ai termini teorici in ragione, sia dello loro intrinseca indeterminatezza, sia delle revisioni imposte dalle scoperte scientifiche, è perfettamente compatibile con la fattorizzazione del contenuto di una teoria scientifica data in una parte linguistica, il condizionale di Carnap, riguardante la costituzione del significato di un certo termine teorico, e nella sua controparte empirica, che consente di registrare l’impatto dell’esperienza sulla teoria in questione. Se praticabile, questa concezione può a buon diritto entrare nel novero delle teorie epistemiche dell’analiticità, senza accampare alcuna pretesa di far rivivere i fasti della conoscenza a priori classica. (shrink)

Quine’s arguments in the final two sections of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” bring semantic and epistemic concerns into spectacular collision. Many have thought that the arguments succeed in irreparably smashing a conception of a distinctively analytic and a priori philosophy to pieces. In Constructing the World, David Chalmers argues that much of this distinctively analytical and a priori conception of philosophy can be reconstructed, with Quine’s criticisms leaving little lasting damage. I agree with Chalmers that Quine’s arguments do not have (...) the lasting damage some take them to have. However, I do not think that Chalmers has succeeded in explaining why. The core of Chalmers’s error lies in the rational dispositionalism that forms the metasemantics of his Carnapian intensionalism. Responding to Quine requires recognizing conceptions of both concepts and epistemic normativity that go beyond the opposition between irrationality and conceptual change that Chalmers brings to bear on Quine. I explain this expanded conception of concepts and epistemic normativity in terms of another fundamental aim of Constructing the World, namely that of providing an account of Fregean sense, or more generally of defending what Chalmers calls epistemological semantics. (shrink)

A critical survey of Quine's arguments against the analytic/synthetic distinction.

In this paper I concentrate on three issues concerning Williamson’s book The Philosophy of Philosophy: the problem of analytic statements being first-order propositions, the issue concerning aposteriority and the concerns related to the semantic vs. metasemantic distinction.

The Fodorian central objections to Inferential Role Semantics can be taken to include an ‘Analyticity Challenge’ and a ‘Circularity Challenge’, which are ultimately challenges to IRS explanations of concept possession. In this paper I present inferential role theories, critically examine these challenges and point out two misunderstandings to which they are exposed. I then state in detail a rationalist version of IRS and argue that this version meets head on the Fodorian challenges. If sound, these considerations show that there is (...) no problem of principle in the consideration of IRS as a good candidate for a theory of concepts. (shrink)