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- H. G. Callaway (1985). Meaning Without Analyticity (Reprinted in Callaway, 2008 Meaning Without Analyticity). Logique et Analyse 109 (March):41-60.In a series of interesting and influential papers on semantics, Hilary Putnam has developed what he calls a “post-verificationist” theory of meaning. As part of this work, and not I think the most important part, Putnam defends a limited version of the analytic-synthetic distinction. In this paper I will survey and evaluate Putnam’s defense of analyticity and explore its relationship to broader concerns in semantics. Putnam’s defense of analyticity ultimately fails, and I want to show here exactly why it fails. However, I will also argue that this very failure helps open the prospect of a new optimism concerning the theory of meaning, a theory of meaning finally liberated from the dead weight of the notions of analyticity and necessary truth. Putnam’s work, in fact, makes valuable contributions to such a theory.In my reading list | Discuss this article | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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This article is an invited overview of contemporary issues connected with meaning and the analytic-synthetic distinction.
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| | Other links: interscience.wiley.com ingentaconnect.com | Scholar | More.. Standard approaches to possible-world semantics allow us to define necessity and logical truth, but analyticity is considerably more difficult to account for. The source of this difficulty lies in the received model-theoretical conception of a language interpretation. In intuitive terms, analyticity amounts to truth in virtue of meaning alone, i.e. solely in virtue of the interpretation of linguistic expressions. In other words, an analytic sentence should remain true under all variations of ‘extralinguistic reality’ as long as the interpretation is kept (...)
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