182 Environments of intelligence
contrast to straightforward conceptual knowledge about the truth of analytic a
priori statements and empirical knowledge about the truth of synthetic a posteriori statements. Carnap (1928), as before him Gottlob Frege (1884), subsumed
mathematical propositions of the aforementioned kind under analytic a priori
statements, by extending the notion of analyticity so as to comprise elementary
logical relations such as symmetry, transitivity and negation. They sought to thus
avoid some of the logical problems that arose from Kant’s otherwise reasonable
and relevant definition. By implication, 2 + 2 can now count as being contained
in the definition of 4. The domain of analytic statements is thus enlarged, so as
to include a number of non-trivial conceptual relations in logic and mathematics,
whereas the entire domain of synthetic a priori statements, and with it the domain
of metaphysics, is called into question.
On the grounds of that revision of Kant’s distinction, the analytic philosophers
hoped to be able to delimit the domain of philosophy with surgical precision, as
the exercise of demarcating the extension of what can be meaningfully said by
exclusively logico-mathematical means. One would admit to that domain only
the first, analytic a priori kind of statements, and thus the propositions of logic
and mathematics, plus some foundational concepts in the experiential sciences. It
would have been a small but solidly founded domain for philosophy to work in,
helping the empirical sciences to treat their empirical domains with conceptually
sharpened tools, and committing metaphysics to oblivion with a few surgical cuts.
Conceptual analysis, then, could have been a therapy for (or, in a more pessimistic
vein, a cure against) philosophy – not necessarily in accordance with the surgical
analogy that I have chosen but as something more akin to a psychotherapy against
common linguistic delusions, as one interpretative paradigm of Wittgenstein’s
work has it (see Crary and Read 2000).
Alas, this hope did not come true, for various reasons, which to recapitulate
in detail I cannot endeavour here. I will leave it at a few hints. It has been suggested, most prominently by W.V.O. Quine (1961), that the analytic/synthetic
distinction is artificial to begin with, and itself a metaphysical proposition. In
a slightly less fundamental version of that critique, the domain of statements
that can be unequivocally demonstrated to be analytic a priori is considered
too small to be entirely useful, and perhaps not much larger and not much more
interesting than what Kant originally envisioned. It certainly was helpful to
debunk as meaningless concepts such as “the Absolute” or “der Weltgeist” but
having little more than logical tautologies such as “all Fs that are G are F”
as one’s incontestable home ground might make the analytic endeavour look
philosophically toothless. After all, debunking those metaphysical statements as
meaningless did little to stop them from being uttered and consumed by many
philosophers with abandon. Still, a popular, watered-down vestige of the analytic endeavour is to be found in one definition of the task of philosophy as
being the clarification of concepts of various sorts: logical, scientific or even
ordinary linguistic ones.
Given my appraisal of the analytic philosophers’ quest for conceptual clarity
and their dismissal of metaphysics, what status within the analytic/synthetic – a
contrast to straightforward conceptual knowledge about the truth of analytic a
priori statements and empirical knowledge about the truth of synthetic a posteriori statements. Carnap (1928), as before him Gottlob Frege (1884), subsumed
mathematical propositions of the aforementioned kind under analytic a priori
statements, by extending the notion of analyticity so as to comprise elementary
logical relations such as symmetry, transitivity and negation. They sought to thus
avoid some of the logical problems that arose from Kant’s otherwise reasonable
and relevant definition. By implication, 2 + 2 can now count as being contained
in the definition of 4. The domain of analytic statements is thus enlarged, so as
to include a number of non-trivial conceptual relations in logic and mathematics,
whereas the entire domain of synthetic a priori statements, and with it the domain
of metaphysics, is called into question.
On the grounds of that revision of Kant’s distinction, the analytic philosophers
hoped to be able to delimit the domain of philosophy with surgical precision, as
the exercise of demarcating the extension of what can be meaningfully said by
exclusively logico-mathematical means. One would admit to that domain only
the first, analytic a priori kind of statements, and thus the propositions of logic
and mathematics, plus some foundational concepts in the experiential sciences. It
would have been a small but solidly founded domain for philosophy to work in,
helping the empirical sciences to treat their empirical domains with conceptually
sharpened tools, and committing metaphysics to oblivion with a few surgical cuts.
Conceptual analysis, then, could have been a therapy for (or, in a more pessimistic
vein, a cure against) philosophy – not necessarily in accordance with the surgical
analogy that I have chosen but as something more akin to a psychotherapy against
common linguistic delusions, as one interpretative paradigm of Wittgenstein’s
work has it (see Crary and Read 2000).
Alas, this hope did not come true, for various reasons, which to recapitulate
in detail I cannot endeavour here. I will leave it at a few hints. It has been suggested, most prominently by W.V.O. Quine (1961), that the analytic/synthetic
distinction is artificial to begin with, and itself a metaphysical proposition. In
a slightly less fundamental version of that critique, the domain of statements
that can be unequivocally demonstrated to be analytic a priori is considered
too small to be entirely useful, and perhaps not much larger and not much more
interesting than what Kant originally envisioned. It certainly was helpful to
debunk as meaningless concepts such as “the Absolute” or “der Weltgeist” but
having little more than logical tautologies such as “all Fs that are G are F”
as one’s incontestable home ground might make the analytic endeavour look
philosophically toothless. After all, debunking those metaphysical statements as
meaningless did little to stop them from being uttered and consumed by many
philosophers with abandon. Still, a popular, watered-down vestige of the analytic endeavour is to be found in one definition of the task of philosophy as
being the clarification of concepts of various sorts: logical, scientific or even
ordinary linguistic ones.
Given my appraisal of the analytic philosophers’ quest for conceptual clarity
and their dismissal of metaphysics, what status within the analytic/synthetic – a