[lit-ideas] Re: "Sphera Infinita Cuius Centrum Est Ubique, Circumferentia Vero Nusquam"
- From: Robert.Paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Robert Paul)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 05 Sep 2004 16:04:48 PDT
Mike Chase writes:
'By "synthetic" I take it you refer to the distinction between
propositions that are analytic and those that are synthetic. It was my
understanding - and here I hope Robert Paul will correct me - that the
validity of this distinction was demolished by Quine in the 1950's.'
The implication is surely that Mike hopes I will correct him if he's
mistaken--but of course this would seem to be analytically true.
Quine did, of course, try to demolish this distinction, along with the notion of
what he called 'reductionism' in 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism' [Philosophical
Review, 1951]:
'Modern empiricism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is a
belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic, or
grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact and truths which are
synthetic, or grounded in fact. The other dogma is reductionism: the belief that
each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms
which refer to immediate experience. Both dogmas, I shall argue, are ill
founded. One effect of abandoning them is, as we shall see, a blurring of the
supposed boundary between speculative metaphysics and natural science. Another
effect is a shift toward pragmatism.'
The entire article, together with Quine's 1961 revisions and annotations can be
found at
http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html
Whether Quine succeeded in showing that the distinction is untenable is still
disputed, but not very vigorously. Most philosophers believe that Quine
succeeded at _something_ but continue to use the distinction themselves in the
classroom and probably in ordinary life--as when they try to explain to children
that there are no eight-legged bipeds, something they often have occasion to do.
The consensus seems to be though that if there is such a distinction it is a
_local_ one; that there are no statements that are unqualifiedly, always and
everywhere, one or the other. What is analytic for Einstein may be something the
rest of us would need to see evidence for; and while it may be analytic to a
Platonic geometer that the sums of the interior angles of certain three-sided
plane figures are whatever they are, it is also a result one can get from
measuring and addition.
In 'In Defense of a Dogma' [Philosophical Review, 1956] Grice and Strawson urge
that 'it is unlikely that so intuitively plausible a distinction should turn out
to have no basis in fact.' I think this is right. But it hardly matters.
Philosophers by and large treat Quine's results in the way that economists treat
Tversky and Kahneman's findings about how people perceive risk: they acknowledge
that some important work has been done and proceed to ignore it.
Georges Rey has written an extremely good summary of the issues involved in the
analytic/synthetic distinction for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analytic-synthetic/#3.6
Robert Paul
Reed College
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