Questions tagged [analytic-synthetic-divide]
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Is there any reason to believe that there are things which science cannot tell us?
Science can only tell us a posteriori synthetic truths, can this category extend to all propositions about the world. Surely the only things which can by known ONLY by a priori analytic are tautologies and relations of ideas.
Could you give me…
user12096
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What's the current status of the "paradox of analysis"? And are there any strong and widely accepted resolutions?
It would seem that figuring out a solution to the paradox of analysis would be of prime importance to philosophers, especially considering the fact that conceptual analysis seems central to philosophical practice.
The wiki page, however, seems to…
Pete1187
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Quine - two dogmas of empiricism
I'm trying to understand this paper. Seems to me like it all stems from a rejection of "meaning"... ie: Quine is saying statements don't mean anything. And this is what leads to the rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction. But if meanings do…
Ameet Sharma
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Did the Logical Positivists accept synthetic a priori knowledge?
My understanding of Logical Positivists is that, following Wittgenstein, they accepted only 2 types of proposition as meaningful:
Propositions based on formal logic (i.e. tautologies)
Empirically verifiable statements
It seems to me that these…
Alexander S King
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What would be gained philosophically if logicism succeeds?
Any logic similar to predicate logic (which Frege and Russell used?) is already a pretty complicated system. Its axioms don't seem to have something to do with analyticity as conceived by Kant (“predicates are contained in the concept”), which…
viuser
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If one agrees with Quine's dissolution of the Analytic/Synthetic distinction, what is left of Kant's epistemology?
One of Kant's most important (if not the most important) result is his argument (proof?) that synthetic a priori knowledge is possible.
If one agrees with Quine's argument against Analyticity as being circular and the subsequent dissolution of the…
Alexander S King
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Kant's analytic/synthetic propositions
In the Critique of Pure Reason, an example of an analytic proposition is that all bodies are extended, and an example of a synthetic proposition is that all bodies are heavy (A7|B11), however in the Prolegomena, an example of a synthetic proposition…
user24368
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How might a modern defender of positivism classify a "speech act"?
A few people here have wondered whether positivism is really dead. I was under the impression that it was for a long time; but there seem to be some sympathizers with positivism here, and I'd be interested to hear their take on the notion of "speech…
senderle
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Why can we not reduce necessity to analyticity?
Why can’t we eliminate talk of necessity and possible worlds, for talk of analyticity and (non-modal) logical consistency? Has there been any attempt in recent times to do this? I'm not 100% sure, but I think this is what logical positivists…
Adam Sharpe
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Did Kant believe that the a priori truths don't coincide with the necessary truths?
I just started to read about Kant's metaphysical distinction between analytic vs synthetic truths (necessary vs contingent) and his epistemological distinction between a priori vs a posteriori truths. I'm reading about this from a book that explores…
Michael Novak
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Is Quine's epistemology really just a linguistic reinterpretation of Kant's?
Kant's epistemology: There are facts out there, but we can never access them directly, we can only perceive them the way they are presented to us by our own minds.
Quine: There are facts out there, but we can never access them directly, we can only…
Alexander S King
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Is it possible to argue that ideas don't exist, only facts exist?
I was thinking that even Hume, or the Logical Positivists, despite being the standard bearers of empiricism, still hold on to a lingering rationalism, since they believe the independent existence of relations of ideas and rules of logic.
A true…
Alexander S King
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Kant - analytic/synthetic propositons
I attend a small gathering of philosophers and guest speakers in my local town where we are sometimes lucky enough to get a professor from some university or college to come to give guest lectures.
Recently, we had one such lecturer, but after he…
ViRALiC
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Why does it matter whether knowledge is synthetic or analytic?
I have done some reading around Kant's idea of splitting knowledge into synthetic and analytic. I don't understand why does this split matter, knowledge could be split in other way by different criteria - not only by channel of acquisition and its…
Matas Vaitkevicius
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Does Plato think we can have synthetic a posteriori knowledge?
I understand that Plato thinks our knowledge of universals is innate, and therefore synthetic a priori knowledge. However, does he think we can have any knowledge that is synthetic and a posteriori? For example, is my knowledge that "the weather is…
dav
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