Online research in philosophy

This paper investigates the relation between Carnap and Quine’s views on analyticity on the one hand, and their views on philosophical analysis or explication on the other. I argue that the stance each takes on what constitutes a successful explication largely dictates the view they take on analyticity. I show that although acknowledged by neither party (in fact Quine frequently expressed his agreement with Carnap on this subject) their views on explication are substantially different. I argue that this difference not only explains their differences on the question of analyticity, but points to a Quinean way to answer a challenge that Quine posed to Carnap. The answer to this challenge leads to a Quinean view of analyticity such that arithmetical truths are analytic, according to Quine’s own remarks, and set theory is at least defensibly analytic.

There seems to be something special about sentences like ‘all bachelors are unmarried’ and ‘red is a colour’. Philosophers have claimed that this is because they are analytic, where this is to say that they are true in virtue of meaning, and that anyone who understands one can know that it is true. Some have also claimed that the notion of analyticity can be used to solve problems in epistemology. However, in the last century the work of Quine and Putnam led many to doubt such claims, and to suspect that there is no analyticity, only an illusion of analyticity to be explained.

Quine criticised the semantic notion of analyticity that is often attributed to Frege and Kant for presupposing an essentialist theory of meaning. In what follows I trace back the notion from Quine via Carnap to Frege and Kant, and eventually examine Kant's distinction between analytic and synthetic judgements in more detail. It turns out that the so called Frege-Kant-notion of analyticity can not be attributed to Kant. In contrast, Kant had a distinctly pragmatic notion of analytic judgements. According to him analytic propositions elucidate certain presuppositions of our conceptual scheme, thereby serving the anti-metaphysical project of transcendental philosophy.

Conceptions of analytic truth -- Hume's fork -- Kant and the analytic/synthetic distinction -- Synthetic a priori propositions -- Bolzano and analyticity -- Analyticity in frege -- Russell's paradox and the theory of descriptions -- The Vienna circle -- Carnap and logical empiricism -- Carnap and Quine -- Demise of the aufbau -- Philosophy as logical syntax -- Logical and descriptive languages -- Physical languages -- Analyticity in syntax -- Carnap's move to semantics -- Explications -- Analyticity in a semantic setting -- Eliminating metaphysics : Carnap's final try -- W.V. Quine : explication is elimination -- Behaviorists ex officio -- Analyticity in the crosshairs -- Analyticity and its discontents -- Questioning analyticity -- Quine's two dogmas of empiricism -- Objections to the coherence of analytic -- Quine's coherence arguments : Carnap's reply -- Other responses to the coherence objection : Grice and Strawson on Quine -- A second dogma of empiricism -- Responses to the existence objections to analyticity -- Analyticity by convention -- Quine's developed attitude toward analyticity -- Analyticity and ontology -- Quine's naturalized ontology -- The indeterminacy of translation -- Some consequences of the indeterminacy arguments : ontological relativity and analyticity -- Responses to Quine's indeterminacy arguments -- Carnap's empiricism, semantics, and ontology -- Some Quinean and other responses to empiricism, semantics, and ontology -- Some recent connections between conceptual truths and ontology -- Quine's criterion of ontological commitment, causality, and exists -- Eli Hirsch and Ted Sider on mereological principles -- The Canberra Project : a resurrection of Carnap's aufbau -- Analyticity and epistemology -- Analytic truths and their role in epistemology : the classical position -- Objecting to the classical position -- Bonjour on moderate empiricism -- Quine's epistemology naturalized -- Quine and evidence : responses to circularity -- Kripke on a priority, analyticity, and necessity -- Analyticity repositioned -- The concept analytic -- One type of statement that might be reasonably called analytic -- Aside on two dimensionalism -- Analyticity and T-analyticity -- How analyticity avoids many common objections to analyticity -- Some brief comments on two other approaches to analyticity -- Mathematical claims as T-analytic -- A further potential application : pure and impure stipulata.

Conceptions of analytic truth -- Hume's fork -- Kant and the analytic/synthetic distinction -- Synthetic a priori propositions -- Bolzano and analyticity -- Analyticity in frege -- Russell's paradox and the theory of descriptions -- The Vienna circle -- Carnap and logical empiricism -- Carnap and Quine -- Demise of the aufbau -- Philosophy as logical syntax -- Logical and descriptive languages -- Physical languages -- Analyticity in syntax -- Carnap's move to semantics -- Explications -- Analyticity in a semantic setting -- Eliminating metaphysics : Carnap's final try -- W.V. Quine : explication is elimination -- Behaviorists ex officio -- Analyticity in the crosshairs -- Analyticity and its discontents -- Questioning analyticity -- Quine's two dogmas of empiricism -- Objections to the coherence of analytic -- Quine's coherence arguments : Carnap's reply -- Other responses to the coherence objection : Grice and Strawson on Quine -- A second dogma of empiricism -- Responses to the existence objections to analyticity -- Analyticity by convention -- Quine's developed attitude toward analyticity -- Analyticity and ontology -- Quine's naturalized ontology -- The indeterminacy of translation -- Some consequences of the indeterminacy arguments : ontological relativity and analyticity -- Responses to Quine's indeterminacy arguments -- Carnap's empiricism, semantics, and ontology -- Some Quinean and other responses to empiricism, semantics, and ontology -- Some recent connections between conceptual truths and ontology -- Quine's criterion of ontological commitment, causality, and exists -- Eli Hirsch and Ted Sider on mereological principles -- The Canberra Project : a resurrection of Carnap's aufbau -- Analyticity and epistemology -- Analytic truths and their role in epistemology : the classical position -- Objecting to the classical position -- Bonjour on moderate empiricism -- Quine's epistemology naturalized -- Quine and evidence : responses to circularity -- Kripke on a priority, analyticity, and necessity -- Analyticity repositioned -- The concept analytic -- One type of statement that might be reasonably called analytic -- Aside on two dimensionalism -- Analyticity and T-analyticity -- How analyticity avoids many common objections to analyticity -- Some brief comments on two other approaches to analyticity -- Mathematical claims as T-analytic -- A further potential application : pure and impure stipulata.

At least since W. V. O. Quine's famous critique of the analytic/synthetic distinction, philosophers have been deeply divided over whether there are any analytic truths. One line of thought suggests that the simple fact that people have 'intuitions of analyticity' might provide an independent argument for analyticities. If defenders of analyticity can explain these intuitions and opponents cannot, then perhaps there are analyticities after all. We argue that opponents of analyticity have some unexpected resources for explaining these intuitions and that, accordingly, the argument from intuition fails.

It would be ever so nice if there were a viable analytic/synthetic distinction. Though nobody knows for sure, there would seem to be several major philosophical projects that having one would advance. For example: analytic sentences2 are supposed to have their truth values solely in virtue of the meanings (together with the syntactic arrangement) of their constituents; i.e., their truth values are supposed to supervene on their linguistic properties alone.3 So they are true in every possible world where they mean what they mean here.4 So they are necessarily true. So if there were a viable analytic/synthetic distinction (‘a/s distinction’ often hereafter), we would understand the necessity of at least some necessary truths. If, in particular, it were to turn out that the logical and/or the mathematical truths are analytic, we would understand why they are necessary. It would be ever so nice to understand why the logical and/or mathematical truths are necessary (cf. Gibson 1998; Quine 1998). Any account of necessity would be welcome, but one according to which necessary truths are analytic has special virtues. Necessity isn’t, of course, an epistemic property. Still, suppose that the necessity of a sentence arises from the meanings of its parts. It’s natural to assume that one of the things one knows in virtue of knowing one’s language is what the expressions of the language mean (cf., e.g., Boghossian 1994). A treatment of modality in terms of analyticity therefore connects the concept of necessity with the concept of knowledge; and knowledge is, of course, an epistemic property. So maybe if there is an a/s distinction, we could explain why the necessary truths, or at least some of the necessary truths, are knowable a priori by anybody who knows a language that can express them (cf. Quine 1991). It bears emphasis that not every theory of..

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 constant. However, the received conception of an interpretation as a mapping from language to a model frame hinders keeping the interpretation constant while varying other components of the model. To make room for analyticity, the concept of an interpretation should therefore be revised. The latter should be made richer in content than it has usually been assumed. As a by-product, this revision also gives us a one-dimensional analogue of the influential two-dimensional account of a priori. We are thus able to map out the network of formal connections between the notions of analyticity, apriority, logical truth and necessity.

This is what many philosophers believe today about the analytic/synthetic distinction: In his classic early writings on analyticity -- in particular, in "Truth by Convention," "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," and "Carnap and Logical Truth" -- Quine showed that there can be no distinction between sentences that are true purely by virtue of their meaning and those that are not. In so doing, Quine devastated the philosophical programs that depend upon a notion of analyticity -- specifically, the linguistic theory of necessary truth, and the analytic theory of a priori knowledge.

The paper criticizes epistemological conceptions of analytic or conceptual truth, on which assent to such truths is a necessary condition of understanding them. The critique involves no Quinean scepticism about meaning. Rather, even granted that a paradigmatic candidate for analyticity is synonymy with a logical truth, both the former and the latter can be intelligibly doubted by linguistically competent deviant logicians, who, although mistaken, still constitute counterexamples to the claim that assent is necessary for understanding. There are no analytic or conceptual truths in the epistemological sense. The critique is extended to purportedly analytic inference rules. An alternative account is sketched on which understanding a word is a matter of participation in a linguistic practice, while synonymy and concept identity consist in sameness of truth-conditional semantic properties. Although there are philosophical questions about concepts, the idea that philosophical questions in general are conceptual questions generates only an illusion of insight into philosophical methodology.