Analytical

In Philosophy, a statement or an analytical proposal is such as its truth can be only given in analyzing its significance. An analytical proposal would be thus true under the terms of its significance alone , or under the terms of its Définition .

The fact of knowing if there exist or not analytical proposals and how to define them are thus important as well for the Philosophie of the language (because of the problem of the significance ) but also for all the Philosophie of knowledge because it would constitute the model of a knowledge a priori (independent of the experiment) and also of a necessary knowledge (because its negation would be impossible).

Emmanuel Kant had distinguished any knowledge in analytical and synthetic judgments but had added that certain synthetic judgments were a priori . The logical empiricism of Rudolf Carnap admitted the cleavage of Kant but affirmed that all a priori was reduced to the analytical statements. Willard Van Orman Quine added an epistemological criticism and more radical logic of this " dogme" while refusing that it is possible to distinguish in a clear way both. The consequences of the abandonment of such a dichotomy are in fact much deeper than it could not seem first of all.

History

Rationalism and empiricism

If term and analytical opposition “- synthetic” were clearly defined by Emmanuel Kant this distinction logical and epistemological had rather close prédédents.

For Gottfried Leibniz, any true proposal would be “analytical” because the predicate “is always included in its subject” ( praedicatum inest subjecto ). But it is necessary to distinguish from the truths from reason which can be the subject of an analysis with a finished number of stages and the truths in fact which must be analyzed in an infinite number of accidents. The first are analytical but necessary a priori , the seconds are analytical but contingent logically (although necessary ex hypothesi as soon as God created Brave New World possible), recognizable only a posteriori except for an infinite understanding.

For David Hume, the mathematical proposals are quite as analytical and “frivolous” that tautologies of the Logique, which are recognizable a priori (with the result that the Empirisme is also a Logicisme). All the other truths are “issues of fact” and have like origin only the practice of the impressions and natural associations of the human spirit. Thus the principle of Causality and the fact that a mobile pushes another mobile are not a principle a priori but an empirical association.

Fault of recutting it fully, the distinctions truth of reason/truth of facts (Leibniz) and relation of idea/relation of facts (Hume) thus precede well analytical/synthetic Kantian division.

Analytical judgments at Kant

The first definition of Emmanuel Kant refers to the inclusion of concepts, so that the subject conceives. “The analytical judgments (affirmative) are those in which the union of the predicate with the subject is conceived by identity” ( Critique of the pure reason , A7/B10).

This definition has the defect to depend only on the form Subject-Predicate of traditional logic. In this case, “has has” is analytical but Kant does not have analysis of conditional clauses as “If has, then has”, without speaking about relations as “If has is higher than B, B is lower than has” or “If has > B and B > C, has > C”.

Gottlob Frege will show moreover in its work Grundlagen der Arithmetik (1884) this type of definition by inclusion not to be logical but psychological (§3, §88). The fact that a subject associates a subject and a predicate is neither necessary nor sufficient so that there is connection.

Kant also had another definition resulting from Leibniz, according to which a proposal is analytical if and only if its negation implies contradiction, or is impossible .

For Kant, the mathematical truths, whatever the definitions, cannot be purely analytical. They rest on pure intuitions (space and time to obtain the geometry and the number) and proceed by “construction”. They are thus synthetic a priori (just like basic principles of physics like causality).

Analytical proposals according to logicism

In the definition of Frege on the contrary, that then Rudolf Carnap will take again, a proposal is analytical if and only if it can be proven while making use only of logical principles and definitions.

According to the Logicism of Frege and Bertrand Russell, all mathematics (or at least the arithmetic one for Frege) can be reduced with analytical statements and thus with the Logique.

Thus

“There does not exist man not-groom who is married. ”

is analytical.

So in addition, there is already the definition of a term like “single person” like “a man not-groom”, then by substitution one will be able to say that

“There does not exist married single person. ”

is also analytical, under the terms of the significance of “single person” and of the analyticity of “a single person is a man not-groom” (but in this case, the definition presupposes the analyticity again that one tries to reduce and to define ).

The Théorème S of the Mathématiques are analytical in the sense that they logically derive from Axiome S in a formal Système, by supposing axioms and rules of inference. It would be then a knowledge a priori although depend on the choice of axioms.

Rudolf Carnap took again the notion logicist but by admitting plurality of possible logics. At his place, logic thus depends on a convention but it preserves separation between a framework formal, analytical, and contents of factual observations.

Methodological monism

Willard Van Orman Quine critical as of “Truth by Convention” (1936) the idea that purely logical convention would enable us to leave the circle between definition and analyticity. For him, it is always possible logically to reduce by an artificially complex number of definitions and abbreviation any fact and synthetic proposal to an analytical proposal without one being able nothing to deduce some from interesting.

It is not possible to reduce logic to a finished succession of conventions because one always presupposes the logical laws in the application of these conventions to an infinity of truths.

Quine proposes to give up the Kantian methodological cleavage of analytical and synthetic which the logical empiricism of Carnap preserved. He refuses in particular the idea of a knowledge a priori which would be completely withdrawn from any revision of the experiment. He proposes to replace this dualism by a methodological Monisme and a epistemological Holisme.

Even the character a priori of logic does nothing but translate the fact that it is simply more diffuse through all our theories but it is not in oneself founded on the experiment or purer than any other knowledge.

Even the vague concepts of “significance” and “proposal” must be replaced by concepts extensionnels of whole of Stimulus and the agreements of the speakers. In this direction, the concept of analyticity at Quine is either empty or psychological: it indicates what the speaker is been willing to admit with another term.

State present of the question

According to the naturalists inspired by Quine, the criticism of the demarcation results in giving up many philosophical theses and the concept even of “significance” and perhaps even the method of the analysis of the concepts even the idea even of a analytical Philosophie with the profit of the observation of sciences.

Certain philosophers remain attached to the idea that there exist analytical statements.

The logician Saul Kripke reproached (in Naming and Necessity , 1980) the tradition of Kant with Quine for having assimilated A priori and Nécessaire.

According to him, a stipulation (as “the standard meter one meter measures”) is A priori but contingent. A natural law (as “water is H2O”) is A posteriori but necessary. He proposes to restrict the use of analytical with what would be at the same time a priori and necessary.

The linguist Noam Chomsky considers that there exist analytical inférences of certain terms which cannot be reduced to the conditions given by Quine.

The question arises if the analytical reflection bequeathed by the Greeks is registered in the human nature or if it is about a cultural product. The Westerners and the Eastern ones are capable of an analytical and holistic way of thinking

References

Carnap, R. (1947), Meaning and Necessity , Chicago: University off Chicago Near.
Chomsky, NR. (2000), New Horizons in the Study off Language .
Coffa, J. (1991), The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap: to the Vienna Station , Cambridge: Cambridge University Near.
Dummett, Mr. (1991), Frege and Other Philosophers , Oxford: Oxford University Near.
Dummett, Mr. (1978), Truth and Other Enigmas , London: Duckworth.
Fodor, J. (1998), Concepts: Cognitive Where Science Went Wrong , Cambridge, MY: MIT Near.
Frege, G. (1884), bases of arithmetic the , the Threshold.
Grice, P. and Strawson, P. (1956), “In Defense off have Dogma,” Philosophical Review LXV 2:141 - 58.
Kripke, S. (1980), Naming and Necessity , Cambridge (MY): Harvard University Near.
Lewis, D. (1969), Convention: Philosophical Study , Cambridge has: Harvard University Near.
Millikan, R. (1984), Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories, Cambridge, MY: MIT Near.
Proust, J. (1986), Questions of form , Beech.
Putnam, H. (1965/75), “The Analytic and the Synthetic,” in Philosophical Papers , vol. 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Near.
Quine, W. (1936), “Truth by Convention,” in Ways off Paradox and Other Essays , 2nd ED., Cambridge, MY: Harvard University Near.
Quine, W. (1953/80), From has off Logical Point View , Cambridge, MY: Harvard University Near.

See too

two dogmas of empiricism

External bonds

Rey, Georges, “The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction”, The Stanford Encyclopedia off Philosophy (Fall 2003 Edition), Edward NR. Zalta (ED.

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