Online research in philosophy

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.

In an important recent discussion of analyticity, Paul Boghossian (1997)1 argues for the following three claims: (i) While Quine’s well-known arguments against analyticity do undermine one type of analyticity (what Boghossian calls metaphysical analyticity), they fail to undermine another type (what he calls epistemic analyticity). (ii) Epistemic analyticity explains the a prioricity of logic and perhaps even the a prioricity of conceptual truths.

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.

The view that analytic propositions are those which are true in virtue of rules of use is basically correct. But there are many kinds of rules of use, and rules of some of these kinds do not generate truth. There is nothing like a grammatical analytic, though grammatical rules are rules of use. So, this rules-of-use view falls short of being an explanatory account. My problem is to find what it is that is special about those rules of use which do generate truth. I shall argue that they are distinguished from others by their purpose rather than their content. Given their special purpose, one can explain how they generate truth. It will follow that linguistic regularities, considered apart from the purposes of those who use language, fail to provide a basis for understanding analyticity. On my account of it, analyticity turns out to be a less important characteristic of propositions than necessity. This is be- cause necessity, unlike analyticity, has its roots, not just in a contemporary system of usage, but in a wide family of systems of belief and usage. My efforts to deflate the philosophical value of the analytic will be summed up in the conclusion that analytic propositions can be contingent. I think this conclusion is behind the feeling that the propositions of logic and arithmetic are not merely analytic. For, if they were merely analytic, that is, true only in virtue of transitory conventions, then they would be contingent. Justice can be done to this feeling by the view that they are both analytic and necessary.

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.

THE PAPER BEGINS BY CONSIDERING THREE ALTERNATIVE DEFINITIONS OF "ANALYTIC," ONE IN TERMS OF LOGICAL TRUTH, ONE IN TERMS OF THE MEANINGS OF WORDS, AND ONE IN TERMS OF SELF-CONTRADICTION OR INCOHERENCE. NEXT, FIVE DEFINITIONS OF "NECESSARY" ARE CONSIDERED, ONE IN TERMS OF ANALYTICITY, AND ONE PICKING OUT THE BROADER KIND OF LOGICAL NECESSITY DISCUSSED BY KRIPKE AND PLANTINGA. FINALLY, THREE DEFINITIONS OF "A PRIORI" ARE CONSIDERED. ONLY ON A FEW OF THESE DEFINITIONS DO THE CATEGORIES OF ANALYTIC, NECESSARY, AND A PRIORI COINCIDE.

At the time that Quine wrote "Two Dogmas" an attack on analyticity was considered a simultaneous attack on the very idea of necessary truth. This all changed with Kripke's revival of a non-epistemic, non-linguistic notion of necessity. My paper discusses the question whether we can take Kripke one step further and free analyticity from its epistemic ties, thereby reinstating a notion of analyticity that is immune to Quine's attack, and compatible with his epistemic holism. I discuss this question by examining Tyler Burge's claim that truths of meaning depend on features of the external environment and are a posteriori. I argue that although Burge's construal of analyticity circumvents Quine's objections, it is not well-motivated philosophically and has problematic implications. Kripke's strategy with respect to necessity, I conclude, is not easily transferable to analyticity.

This paper argues that there are true synthetic modal claims and that modal questions in philosophy are to be interpreted not in terms of logical necessity but in terms of synthetic necessity. I begin by sketching the debate about modality between logical empiricism and phenome-nology. Logical empiricism taught us to equate analyticity and neces-sity. The now common view is that analytic statements are necessary in the narrow sense but that there is also necessity in a wider sense. I argue against this that we should distinguish analyticity and necessity more strictly.