Analytic - Synthetic Distinction

is impossible for an empiricist to ever apply because an empiricist does not have access to the non-empirical notion of ‘meaning’ (since it’s not in experience) which is required to validate whether a proposition like ‘all bachelors are unmarried’ is in fact analytic.

the classic attack on the analytic synthetic distinction was given in an essay two dogmas of empiricism by willard van orman Quine. Quine's argument is complicated and i think there are many different interpretations of exactly what he's doing in that essay here i'll just say that he thinks that an empiricist really has no right to that distinction now why not well essentially he says to understand analyticity you have to understand meaning it's a matter of having your truth value determined by the meanings of the terms but how can you understand meaning he thinks that meaning is not something that we can really have access to in experience and so he doesn't see how an empiricist can really draw this distinction given that they really don't have a grasp of meaning

is problematic because a statement like “everything green is extended in space and time” is not exactly true by definition (analytic) or true by experience (synthetic).

for quine everything has to depend on experience another way in which he seems to object is that there are certain propositions that it's very hard to classify his example in the essay is everything green is extended that is to say extended in space and time has some spatial extension some width some breadth um is that true by definitions of the terms he says i'm not sure

is problematic because a statement like "a thing cannot be red all over and green all over" is a seeming definitional (analytic) assumption but it is incoherent as an experiential (synthetic) distinctions [since it can’t be conceived].

there was a similar debate going on at the time among various philosophers who are contemplating propositions like this nothing could be both red and green all over not i'm not talking about a red and green plaid or something like that i mean red all over and green all over well that seems true nothing could be both red all over and green all over but what kind of truth is that is that something we learn from experience is that something that's true by virtue of the meanings of the terms when we reflect on it we realize we can't intuit it we can't grasp or imagine or even conceive of maybe a situation where something is both red all over and green all over but are we willing to say gosh that's true by virtue of the meanings of the terms we'd have to understand the meanings of terms like red and green and it's not clear that we understand them in a way that would make them incompatible

is problematic because, paradoxically, it is in fact a synthetic truth (i.e. dependent upon empirical linguistics) that "all bachelors are unmarried" is an analytic truth.

Another objection that quine seems to raise in the essay is how do we end up drawing the distinction we can sometimes give a semantic theory that is to say a theory of meaning but that is itself an empirical theory that is to say it rests on experience well if that's true then you might say the very basis for declaring certain things to be truths of semantics truths by virtue of meaning to take certain things as semantical rules is itself part of a theory that rests on experience that would be a way of focusing on what i call a boundary question not saying something like is everything green is extended analytic but suppose we have a proposition about analyticity something like bachelor's or unmarried is an analytic truth is that itself analytic or synthetic that is to say when we describe something as analytic or as synthetic is that itself an analytic statement or is that a synthetic statement it's not that easy to say traditionally i think people thought of it as an analytic statement after all you understand the meaning of the term analytic its truth value is determined by the meanings of its terms and then you understand for example bachelor and unmarried and are and you put those together and you say yes it is true that in fact it's true by virtue of meanings not only that bachelors are unmarried but that it's analytic that bachelors are unmarried but quine is saying wait a minute that depends on a theory of meaning and a theory of meanings in empirical linguistic theory so actually we have to understand such classifications separating the analytic from the synthetic as themselves synthetic in other words one way of looking at his attack is to say it is a synthetic truth that bachelors are unmarried is analytic and if we think of it that way we realize hold on a second this whole thing is part of an empirical theory of the world so actually we can't separately from that take some sentences and put them aside and say they're just true by virtue of meanings or false by virtue of meanings

is problematic because even to determine whether so-called analytic statements like "all bachelors are unmarried" are in fact analytic statements requires experience (synthetic) criteria to evaluate the statement's truth value.

is approached, after a fashion, first by Aquinas when he talks about things that are true because the predicate is contained in the subject.

like this in aquinas when he talks about things that are true because the predicate is contained in the subject what he really means is that there is one concept that is contained in another concept

is approached, after a fashion, by Leibniz who talks about containment as the basic relationship among concepts

leibniz later developed an entire calculus of concepts it talks about containment as the basic relationship among concepts

is first addressed systematically by John Locke who refers to logical truths (lead is a metal) as trifling propositions, telling us nothing about the world but rather about logic or language.

this notion gets developed and really recognized independently for the first time by john locke who refers to certain propositions as trifling propositions propositions that tell us nothing about the world but may express something about logic or about the nature of language so for example if i say a soul is a soul that isn't a very helpful answer to the question what is a soul but it is true a soul is a soul lead is lead water is water and so forth those things are logical truths and some of these are truths by definitions he thought that lead is a metal is a good example of this or that gold is yellow those aren't great examples in my view but there are other kinds of examples things that would be true by definition like bachelors or unmarried for example

analytic synthetic distinction, n.All

analytic synthetic distinction