The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy


Dragonfly

Recommended Posts

I agree with you that all truths are empirical (and so does Peikoff), because, being any empiricist, I say that all concepts are empirical, and it seems absurd to me to say that a truth derived from analysis of an empirical concept (such as "All bachelors are unmarried") is to be classed as non-empirical simply because it is true by conceptual analysis.

The error in your reasoning is that the term "empirical" in "empirical truth" does not refer to the fact that the subject in the statement is an empirical concept, but to the way the "truth" is inferred. Therefore the statement "all bachelors are unmarried" is definitely not an empirical statement (which in principle could be falsified: "hey, there is a white crow, ehm I mean a married bachelor!")

BTW, perhaps I've missed it, but I think you still haven't answered my question "is heavy water a kind of water?"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 699
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

I agree with you that all truths are empirical (and so does Peikoff), because, being any empiricist, I say that all concepts are empirical, and it seems absurd to me to say that a truth derived from analysis of an empirical concept (such as "All bachelors are unmarried") is to be classed as non-empirical simply because it is true by conceptual analysis.

The error in your reasoning is that the term "empirical" in "empirical truth" does not refer to the fact that the subject in the statement is an empirical concept, but to the way the "truth" is inferred. Therefore the statement "all bachelors are unmarried" is definitely not an empirical statement (which in principle could be falsified: "hey, there is a white crow, ehm I mean a married bachelor!")

BTW, perhaps I've missed it, but I think you still haven't answered my question "is heavy water a kind of water?"

Heavy water is a kind of water. It consists of an oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms at least one of which is a heavy isotope of ordinary hydrogen.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello Stephen!

Thank you for mentioning my book.

Hello and Welcome, Greg Browne!

From Amazon, we learn of:

Necessary Factual Truth

Gregory M. Browne

"In this book Gregory Browne rejects the views of David Hume and the Logical Positivists, and argues that there are necessary factual truths, which include a wide range of truths from many fields of knowledge. Browne argues for the necessity of Newton's Laws and truths about natural kinds, and for the factuality of definitional truths and truths of logic and mathematics. Browne synthesizes the work of Kripke, Putnam, Quine and others, but goes beyond the usual discussions of the meanings and definitions of terms to discuss the references of various kinds of terms, and specifically to develop a theory of kinds, distinguishing "Deep Kinds" (roughly, natural kinds) and "Shallow Kinds" (e.g., triangles, bachelors). His theory of Deep Kinds does not accept all of the assumptions commonly associated with a theory of natural kinds."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"In this book Gregory Browne....goes beyond the usual discussions of the meanings and definitions of terms to discuss the references of various kinds of terms, and specifically to develop a theory of kinds, distinguishing "Deep Kinds" (roughly, natural kinds) and "Shallow Kinds" (e.g., triangles, bachelors). His theory of Deep Kinds does not accept all of the assumptions commonly associated with a theory of natural kinds."

Some of this is similar to a topic in my Appendix B of Understanding Imaginaries, which begins: "Appendix B: Taxonomy of Concept Types / Concepts may be categorized by type of referent, such that the category of any given concept suggests whether its definition is open to change and under what conditions. The types I have noticed so far are:" Etc.

This sounds very interesting. I'll have to pick it up.

You may be interested to know that similar distinctions to mine were made by Leibniz and J. S. Mill.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Michael,

I am trying to reply to Cal point by point, inserting my replies to statements as I go along, but there doesn't seem to be any way to do that shown in the tutorial. Apparently I'll have to give up using the quote system in the website and just indicate quotations in the traditional way.

Greg

Greg,

I thought of correcting your quote code errors like I did once, but since the problem has reappeared over several posts, I suggest you take a look at the following tutorial (it is short and sweet and should take no more than 5 minutes or so):

Inserting quotes from other posts

You will probably find where the error is and it should make posting for you and others reading your posts easier. If you have any doubts, please ask (online or off).

Michael

Edited by Greg Browne
Link to comment
Share on other sites

CAL: Greg, ...I'll address the points that in my opinion are the most relevant.

"I chose the ice example, as it is an example brought up by Peikoff himself.

....Now if you define "truth" as the absolute definitive truth, the real state of the physical world, then you're right that "ice floats on water" is not strictly a truth. But Peikoff thought it was!"

GREG: It doesn't matter: since it is not true, it cannot be a synthetic or a contingent truth and so cannot be used to prove the existence of such truths.

That is if you use your definition of truth.

GREG: And what one are you using?

CAL: But with that definition you'll never know if a statement is really true (except analytical truths and the trivial cases I mentioned in my previous post), ...

GREG: But all truths are analytic. You are assuming that only some are, but that is a controversial claim that must be proved.

CAL: ...as we are not omniscient. That is exactly the reason I gave this example, as Peikoff no doubt was absolutely convinced of the truth of his statement and yet he was wrong! With your definition of truth you can never know whether a synthetic or a contextual "truth" is really a truth.

GREG: Again, you are assuming that all analytic truths are certain, and that all contextual truths are synthetic, but both Peikoff and I deny this, and so you must argue for it

CAL: "The problem with this strict definition of "truth" is that, apart from analytical truths, which are not dependent on empirical evidence,"

GREG: Again, Peikoff and I would not concede this, even if we believed that only some truths are analytic. Even truths based on analysis of concepts can be known empirically, if the concepts are empirical, and, being an empiricist, I say that all concepts are.

CAL: Which is definitely wrong, mathematical concepts are not empirical, even if some of them are derived from an analysis of empirical evidence.

"truth would be unknowable, as we would have to be omniscient to be able to say whet,er a certain statement is true.

GREG: I disagree. I believe that we can have certain knowledge of general truths about kinds, if we can perceive a necessary connection between subject and predicate.

CAL: That is a bit vague.

GREG: Yes, the post was getting long, so I did not elaborate. Now I assume you will concede that we can perceive the necessary connection between triangles and 3-sidedness in 'All triangles are 3-sided' and between bachelors and unmarriedness in 'All bachelors are unmarried'. Well I would make the same claim about Newton's Axioms of Motion. I would go on to say that chemistry can be reduced to physics and biology to chemistry, so truths in these 3 sciences would all be as necessary as truths in math.

CAL: It is necessary to make a distinction here between analytical truths and synthetic truths.

GREG: No: this is precisely what Peikoff wrote his article to deny (!) You are assuming what you are trying to prove: that the distinction is valid. That is the Fallacy of Circular Reasoning (Begging the Question).

CAL: The first is logically true, that is, it follows logically from the definitions.

GREG: One one sense of the term "logically true", Peikoff and I would say that all truths are logically true, because all falsehoods are self-contradictory, because all falsehoods predicate of a subject a predicate which is not part of the meaning of the subject term and not part of its concept. We say this because we deny that concepts and meanings are the same as essences or definitions.

In any other sense of the term "logically true", even truths which follow logically from definitions, such as "All bachelors are unmarried" is not logically true, because in these sense only truths of logic (roughly, those truths which you can know merely by using a logic book, without a dictionary, such as "All bachelors are bachelors"). See Quine on this.

CAL: But the definitions do not necessarily correspond to physical reality. If iI'd define a bachelor as an unmarried man that is at least 3 meters tall,

GREG: Then your definition would be incorrect, because that is not what 'bachelor' means in English. Even though that language is a product of arbitrary linguistic convention, there is still a correct and incorrect way of defining terms in it, which is not arbitrary.

So you use should come with a new term to describe an unmarried man that is at least 3 meters tall.

But I will grant your definition for the sake of argument.

CAL: then the statement that a bachelor is larger than 2,5 meters is an analytical truth, which doesn't correspond to a truth in the physical world.

GREG: Yes, it is analytic. And though the subject class is empty, if any bachelor comes along who is that tall it will apply to him. It is a necessary truth, and necessary truths talk about possibilities, and so are about possible worlds, including the acutal world.

CAL: This is a deliberately absurd example, but the same principle applies to situations where the error is far from obvious. You may deduce logically a "truth" from some empirical premises, but you can never be certain that it is a truth in your definition, as you never can be 100% certain of the correctness of your premises.

GREG: Again I, and Peikoff, would deny this. Some empirical premises are certain. I would say that 2 kinds of empirical claims can be certain:

1. Those about our own mental states (including those about the way things appear).

2. Those where we can perceive a necessary connection (see above).

GREG: Synthetic truths are not the same as truths which are not known with certainty (nor are contingent truths the same as truths which are not known with certainty). The classic definitions (the first two from Kant, the third from Logical Positivists) are:

(1) truths whose predicates are not contained in their subjects;

(2) truths which can be denied without contradiction;

and

(3) truths which are not true merely in virtue of the meaning of the words in them.

CAL: If such truths don't follow from the definitions, they can only be verified empirically, which automatically means that you never can be certain that they correspond to a truth in your definition (which I'll call for convenience a "real truth").

GREG: Again, Peikoff and I deny that empirical truths cannot be know with certainty.

Also, you are assuming that we Peikoff and I would concede that definitional truths are not empirical. Again, we deny this.

CAL: Peikoff calls them "contextual truths"

GREG: He would not equate contextual truths with synthetic truths, since he does believe in the analytic-synthetic distinction.

CAL: Of course he doesn't do that, but that's his problem. The point is that he may use a different term, but in fact it boils down to the same thing.

GREG: He does more than use a different term: he denies that they are the same thing, as do I. So you need to make an argument that these things are the same.

CAL: Instead of empirical statements a set of axioms is created

GREG: Discovered rather than created---or at least only created in the sense of being manufactured from what is discovered.

CAL: Certainly not. Take for example Euclid's fifth axiom. There are geometries with a different axiom, which are equally consistent and logical as Euclidean geometry. It is a matter of empirical research to find out what geometry can best used to describe the physical world.

GREG: And in the 20th century physicists declared the space is not Euclidean, and that therefore the 5th axiom is false. They discovered that non-Euclidean geometry was true.

Also, they did it empirically.

GREG: Mathematicians talk of space with more than 3 dimensions, but that is changing the meaning of the term "space". They should have come up with a new term.

CAL: Why?

GREG: Because it is part of the traditional meaning of the term 'space' that is 3-dimensional, as it is part of the meaning of the term 'bachelors' that they unmarried and part of the meaning of the term 'triangles' that they are 3-sided.

CAL: It's the power of mathematics that enables us to see that our 3-dimensional space is only one particular example of a much wider class.

CAL: Mathematics which deals with non-actual situations deals with possible worlds.

By the way, even physics does this: Newton's First Axiom of Motion describes the behavior of a body that is not acted on by any forces. But no body is ever not acted on by any forces.

CAl:(what is for example the physical reality of a 254306-dimensional sphere? Mathematically it is very well defined.)"

GREG: What is the definition?

CAL: The set of points x(1), x(2),...x(254307) in a 254307-dimensional vectorspace that is defined by R^2 = sumx(i)^2, where R is the radius of the sphere.

GREG: I will say more on this in another post.

CAL: a logical statement can be true without any reference to the real world. For example the proposition NOT (p AND NOT p) is true, regardless of whether p is true or false. This statement is completely independent of the real world (of course it can be applied to real-world problems).

GREG: That proposition is a factual truth, about the real world; indeed, it is true about all possible worlds. The fact that you don't need to know which possible world you are in doesn't change the fact that it gives information about each and every one of those possible worlds.

CAL: A possible world is not a real world.

GREG: One of the possible worlds is the actual world (i.e., the real world).

CAL: So the statement is indeed independent of the real world.

GREG: But it still says something about the real world, and so it is factual.

This will become clearer if we consider Aristotle's original formulation of that law: (roughly)

a being cannot both have and not have an attribute at the same time in the same respect.

GREG: I agree with you that all truths are empirical (and so does Peikoff), because, being any empiricist, I say that all concepts are empirical, and it seems absurd to me to say that a truth derived from analysis of an empirical concept (such as "All bachelors are unmarried") is to be classed as non-empirical simply because it is true by conceptual analysis.

CAL: The error in your reasoning is that the term "empirical" in "empirical truth" does not refer to the fact that the subject in the statement is an empirical concept, but to the way the "truth" is inferred. Therefore the statement "all bachelors are unmarried" is definitely not an empirical statement (which in principle could be falsified: "hey, there is a white crow, ehm I mean a married bachelor!")

GREG: The term 'empiricism' refers to two different claims: conceptual empiricism and propositional empiricism.

Conceptual Empiricism is the claim that all our concepts (or ideas) come from experience. This what is usually meant by 'empiricism'. In this sense, Aristotle, most of the Scholastics, and most English-speaking philosophers from Hobbes onwards, including Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Mill, the Logical Positivists, the Ordinary Language Philosophers, and Quine, as well as Rand, Peikoff and I, are empiricists. I assume that you are a Conceptual Empiricist too, but feel free to disagree

Propositional Empiricism is the claim that all true propositions (or sentences or statements) are known empirically (when they are known). It is a more controversial position, held by Mill, Quine, Rand and Peikoff, and myself.

Those Conceptual Empiricists who are not Propositional Empiricists, such as Locke, Hume, and the Logical Positivists, will say that all concepts are empirical but some truths, such those of math, are not known empirically; the usual ground for the latter claim nowadays is that those truths are conceptual truths, and they assume that conceptual truths are a priori (i.e., non-empirical). But that means that a truth known by analysis of an empirical concept is not known empirically, i.e., from experience, and this seems absurd to me. The databased used is experience; the fact that it is processed by logic doesn't change that fact.

CAL: BTW, perhaps I've missed it, but I think you still haven't answered my question "is heavy water a kind of water?"

GREG: I haven't answered it, but I will, and that is a key question. But I will save it for a later post.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am trying to reply to Cal point by point, inserting my replies to statements as I go along, but there doesn't seem to be any way to do that shown in the tutorial. Apparently I'll have to give up using the quote system in the website and just indicate quotations in the traditional way.

Greg, it isn't that difficult. Take for example your post #63. It starts with a "quote" code, but there is no corresponding "/quote" code, probably while you accidentally deleted it while editing your message. If you ensure that there are exactly as many "quote"s as "/quote"s, and these are properly nested, then everything should be ok. Just be careful when you delete parts of the text, that you don't disturb the quote - /quote balance. If the preview isn't correct, check if every "quote" has a corresponding "/quote" and add or delete codes if necessary.

BTW that happened also with this message in the first version. I'd deleted the second half of your message, but thereby I had also deleted the "/code" at the end, so the preview didn't look good. After inserting a "/quote" code at the end of your text everything is fine, as you can see.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Greg,

Here is how to do it if you want to respond to different points in a post. I have to put this in a CODE box, otherwise it will execute the code. Take your post to me from before as an example (I am eliminating my embedded quote for simplicity.) It should read like this:

[quote name='Greg Browne' date='May 27 2007, 06:25 PM' post='28862']I am trying to reply to Cal point by point, inserting my replies to statements as I go along, but there doesn't seem to be any way to do that shown in the tutorial.  Apparently I'll have to give up using the quote system in the website and just indicate quotations in the traditional way.[/quote]

Say you want to use this 3 times. You will have to copy/paste the code header so that it appears at the beginning of each section (meaning another 2 times). This is the code header:

[quote name='Greg Browne' date='May 27 2007, 06:25 PM' post='28862']

Don't forget the end code must be at the end of each section, otherwise it will not work properly. Your post should read like the following:

[quote name='Greg Browne' date='May 27 2007, 06:25 PM' post='28862']I am trying to reply to Cal point by point, inserting my replies to statements as I go along... [/quote]
This is your first comment. This is your first comment. This is your first comment. This is your first comment. This is your first comment. This is your first comment.

[quote name='Greg Browne' date='May 27 2007, 06:25 PM' post='28862']... but there doesn't seem to be any way to do that shown in the tutorial.[/quote]
This is your second comment. This is your second comment. This is your second comment. This is your second comment. This is your second comment. This is your second comment. This is your second comment.

[quote name='Greg Browne' date='May 27 2007, 06:25 PM' post='28862']Apparently I'll have to give up using the quote system in the website and just indicate quotations in the traditional way.[/quote]
This is your third comment. This is your third comment. This is your third comment. This is your third comment. This is your third comment.

After you preview the page or post it, it should look like the following:

I am trying to reply to Cal point by point, inserting my replies to statements as I go along...

This is your first comment. This is your first comment. This is your first comment. This is your first comment. This is your first comment. This is your first comment.

... but there doesn't seem to be any way to do that shown in the tutorial.

This is your second comment. This is your second comment. This is your second comment. This is your second comment. This is your second comment. This is your second comment. This is your second comment.

Apparently I'll have to give up using the quote system in the website and just indicate quotations in the traditional way.

This is your third comment. This is your third comment. This is your third comment. This is your third comment. This is your third comment.

Did that help?

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That depends. Has it been proven? I will let a mathematician answer that one. What I do know is that it can't simply be "defined" as true.

Yes, it is true. Euclid gave one of the earliest proofs. Book IX prop 20. Circa 300 B.C.E.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Greg:

>Even though that language is a product of arbitrary linguistic convention, there is still a correct and incorrect way of defining terms in it, which is not arbitrary.

Hi Greg

I am curious: what exactly is the method for defining terms as "correct" or "incorrect"? (Other than referring to a dictionary of course)

Edited by Daniel Barnes
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dragonfly, you remarked in #75:

"A possible world is not a real world. So the statement [not (A and not A)] is indeed independent of the real world."

That sounds strange. It would be more natural to say “A possible world is not the actual world.” Possibilities have various degrees of realness, even among possibilities other than the actual. It is very sensible to say, as we often do, that such and such is a real possibility.

Also, among possibilities that we currently think are not real ones, there seem to be various depths of impossibility. In the Principia, Newton is able to demonstrate what would be the form of the central force law if we were to observe the planets executing ovals or spirals about the sun rather than ellipses around the sun. He uses the geometry of Euclid (and Apollonius) and his own laws of mechanics in his demonstrations both for actually observed orbital shapes and for merely possible shapes. The thinking is that a solar system in which geometry and the laws of mechanics are different from the actual ones is more deeply impossible than a solar system in which those elements are the same, but the law of gravitation is different.

Coming forward to Einstein’s geometrization of gravitation, a similar sort of variation in depth of impossibility is quickly seen. Here the variation is among what we would call real (though improbable) possibilities. Consider the application of Einstein’s field equation to the universe as a whole. The distribution of mass-energy density and of the motions of matter and energy in the universe is evidently isotropic in the large. We can intelligently consider a universe which is instead anisotropic. The thinking is that a universe in which the field equation still applies, but the spatial hypersurfaces are anisotropic, is a possibility less radically different from the actual than would be a universe in which the field equation itself were inapplicable. To be sure, that doesn’t stop us from continuing to test the applicability of the field equation to our actual world (e.g., we continue to test for the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass). But that doesn’t change the evident fact that there are sometimes objective relative levels of depth among the departures of the possible from the actual.

Edited by Stephen Boydstun
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Greg:

>Even though that language is a product of arbitrary linguistic convention, there is still a correct and incorrect way of defining terms in it, which is not arbitrary.

Hi Greg

I am curious: what exactly is the method for defining terms as "correct" or "incorrect"? (Other than referring to a dictionary of course)

Hi Daniel.

Aside from dictionaries and being told what a word means by a speaker, the method for coming up with the correction defintion would be to observe how the term is used by speakers. This can be done even in the case where you are one of the speakers. You can then ask yourself "Would we [the members of our linguistic community--in our case, English speakers] apply this term to this class of referents". So with "bachelor" we would ask questions like "Would we apply this to non-human animals?", "Would we apply to females?" "Would we apply this to children?" "Would we apply this to married men?" We might then say 'bachelor' meant 'unmarried adult male human'. But then we might think of whether we would call widowers bachelors, and conclude that we would not, and so decide that 'never married' should replace 'unmarried' to make the definition correct. Then we might realize that in some societies children can marry at a certain age. So then we might replace 'adult' with 'of a marriageable age'. So 'never-married male human of a marriageable age' seems to the be correct definition of bachelor, in current English.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dragonfly, you remarked in #75:

"A possible world is not a real world. So the statement [not (A and not A)] is indeed independent of the real world."

That sounds strange. It would be more natural to say “A possible world is not the actual world.” Possibilities have various degrees of realness, even among possibilities other than the actual. It is very sensible to say, as we often do, that such and such is a real possibility.

Also, among possibilities that we currently think are not real ones, there seem to be various depths of impossibility.

A good point, Stephen, and an interesting discussion.

There are indeed degrees of impossibility, and so degrees of necessity (since a fact is necessary if and only if its opposite is impossible).

There is indeed a status of truth between a purely necessary fact and a purely contingent fact. These are the hypothetically necessary facts. For example, if a Congressional act is a matter of undetermined contingent free will, then if Congress increas the minimum wage it will be a contingent fact, while the laws of economics are necessary facts, and they that the increase will tend to increse unemployment. The tendency to increase unemployment itself will be hypothetically necessary: it was not necessary, because Congress could have chosen otherwise, but having chosen otherwise, the consequences had to follow.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That is if you use your definition of truth.

GREG: And what one are you using?

For a synthetic truth that what is to our best knowledge the truth according to your definition. In other words, I call a truth that what I'm convinced of that it is the "real truth", but admitting the possibility that I may be wrong.

GREG: But all truths are analytic. You are assuming that only some are, but that is a controversial claim that must be proved.

There is nothing controversial about it, it's just a matter of definition. Like Peikoff you define truth in such a way that only analytical truths remain. However, the price you have to pay for that is that your analytical truths are unknowable (with the usual exceptions, which I won't mention every time). In fact Peikoff must have realized that, as he smuggles the notion of a synthetic truth back into his theory under the name of "contextual truth".

GREG: Again, you are assuming that all analytic truths are certain, and that all contextual truths are synthetic, but both Peikoff and I deny this, and so you must argue for it

An analytic truth is by definition always certain, as it logically follows from the definitions. However, it doesn't necessarily correspond to a truth about the physical world. Using the usual definitions of a unicorn, the statement "a unicorn has a horn on its head" is an analytical truth, it follows from the definition, but it probably doesn't correspond to anything in reality. The same for mathematical statements.

GREG: Yes, the post was getting long, so I did not elaborate. Now I assume you will concede that we can perceive the necessary connection between triangles and 3-sidedness in 'All triangles are 3-sided' and between bachelors and unmarriedness in 'All bachelors are unmarried'. Well I would make the same claim about Newton's Axioms of Motion. I would go on to say that chemistry can be reduced to physics and biology to chemistry, so truths in these 3 sciences would all be as necessary as truths in math.

No. Truth statements in science are statements about the real world, which may be based on mathematical models. If you only look at the mathematical part, you could say that the result follows analytically from the premises. But these are based on empirical models which can at best only give an approximation of the real world. So yes, you could say that Kepler's laws follow analytically from Newton's laws. That doesn't make them analytical truths however, as the ultimate purpose in physics is to give an accurate description of reality and as the derivation makes several idealizing assumptions (apart from the fact that we even can't be sure of the basic premises), the result can only be an approximation. That is the difference between physics using mathematics as a tool and mathematics as a self-contained discipline. This is summarized by Einstein's famous dictum: "Insofar as the laws of mathematics are true, they do not apply to reality. And insofar as they apply to reality, they are not true".

CAL: It is necessary to make a distinction here between analytical truths and synthetic truths.

GREG: No: this is precisely what Peikoff wrote his article to deny (!) You are assuming what you are trying to prove: that the distinction is valid. That is the Fallacy of Circular Reasoning (Begging the Question).

Now wait a moment... My original article was a refutation of Peikoff's argument, so I don't have to prove anything. It's up to you or Peikoff to refute my refutation. As long as you haven't done that, the distinction between analytical and synthetic statements stands.

GREG: He does more than use a different term: he denies that they are the same thing, as do I. So you need to make an argument that these things are the same.

You are denying a lot. Merely denying isn't always sufficient... But I'll explain it. Peikoff's contextual truths are statements about the world that follow logically from all the available knowledge in a certain context (I deny that this is possible, so I can also deny something...). They may be amended in a different context, when more knowledge becomes available. A well-known example is Newton's theory. But this is nothing else but a synthetic truth: a statement about the world using the best available knowledge, which may be proved wrong, as has happened with Newtons' theory: gravitation is for example not transmitted instantaneously and the notion of an absolute time is incorrect.

GREG: And in the 20th century physicists declared the space is not Euclidean, and that therefore the 5th axiom is false. They discovered that non-Euclidean geometry was true. Also, they did it empirically.

Certainly not! The 5th axiom isn't false, a mathematical axiom cannot be false (at most it can be incoherent or inconsistent with other axioms), therefore it is an axiom! Euclidean geometry is a perfectly valid mathematical theory, just like other geometrical theories. You are confusing the application of mathematics with the mathematical theory itself.

CAL: a logical statement can be true without any reference to the real world. For example the proposition NOT (p AND NOT p) is true, regardless of whether p is true or false. This statement is completely independent of the real world (of course it can be applied to real-world problems).

GREG: That proposition is a factual truth, about the real world; indeed, it is true about all possible worlds. The fact that you don't need to know which possible world you are in doesn't change the fact that it gives information about each and every one of those possible worlds.

CAL: A possible world is not a real world.

GREG: One of the possible worlds is the actual world (i.e., the real world).

CAL: So the statement is indeed independent of the real world.

GREG: But it still says something about the real world, and so it is factual.

That is the same as my statement that it can be applied to the real world. But it is independent of the real world. The concept water can be applied to the ocean, the statement that the ocean consists of water is factual. But that doesn't imply that water can't be something independent of the ocean.

Those Conceptual Empiricists who are not Propositional Empiricists, such as Locke, Hume, and the Logical Positivists, will say that all concepts are empirical but some truths, such those of math, are not known empirically; the usual ground for the latter claim nowadays is that those truths are conceptual truths, and they assume that conceptual truths are a priori (i.e., non-empirical). But that means that a truth known by analysis of an empirical concept is not known empirically, i.e., from experience, and this seems absurd to me. The databased used is experience; the fact that it is processed by logic doesn't change that fact.

To me an empirical statement is a statement that in principle can be falsified. Statements that in principle cannot be falsified are not empirical statements, whether they use symbols like a or x, or words derived from empirical observations, like "bachelor".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dragonfly, you remarked in #75:

"A possible world is not a real world. So the statement [not (A and not A)] is indeed independent of the real world."

That sounds strange. It would be more natural to say “A possible world is not the actual world.”

I don't see any difference between the "real world" and the "actual world".

Possibilities have various degrees of realness, even among possibilities other than the actual. It is very sensible to say, as we often do, that such and such is a real possibility.

That only means that we don't know what the real world is or what will happen. It is in fact the basis of the confusion about "free will": we don't know in advance what choices we're going to make, so we talk about different possibilities that are open to us. But in fact there is only one real possibility, that which is in fact realized.

About the different possible worlds: we can think of worlds in which the fundamental constants of physics have different values. Even small deviations from the known values could lead to very different universes, like universes without any stars. This is the well-know fine-tuning problem, which has lead to several notions of multiverses, combined with a Darwinian evolution and/or the anthropic principle. As this all is of course highly speculative, there is no way to attribute probabilities (or depth of impossibilities in your terms) to the different kinds of worlds.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cal,

I folllowed the instructions you and Michael gave me, but the preview has no white quote areas.

Anyway, here is what I got:

That is if you use your definition of truth.

GREG: And what one are you using?

For a synthetic truth that what is to our best knowledge the truth according to your definition. In other words, I call a truth that what I'm convinced of that it is the "real truth", but admitting the possibility that I may be wrong.

Usually a distinction is made between truth and knowledge: something can be true even if no one knows it to be true, or even believes it to be true, and something can be false even if everyone believes it to be true.

(Similarly, there is a distinction between necessary truth and certain knowledge of it: a necessary truth may be known only with probability, or may not be known at all, or may not be believed at all).

GREG: But all truths are analytic. You are assuming that only some are, but that is a controversial claim that must be proved.

There is nothing controversial about it, it's just a matter of definition.

It certainly is controversial: I deny it. That alone makes it controversial, and the fact that I am the one debating you makes it especially so. You need to persuade your opponent, and the opponent cannot be rationally persuaded by an argument based on premises the opponent does not already believe.

Also, it is not just a matter of definition, even to the Logical Positivists, whose views your views seem closest to: they define a synthetic truth is one which is not true merely because of the meanings of the words it. That definition does not tell you whether there are any such truths.

Like Peikoff you define truth in such a way that only analytical truths remain.

AH! We may getting to the heart of your misunderstanding. :D We do not narrow the meaning of 'truth'. We apply the word 'truth' to all the things that most people do, and, I assume, that you do. But we say that all of these are analytic. So I say that all of these are analytic:

'All bachelors are unmarried'

'All triangles have 3-sides'

'Water is H20'

'Dogs are warmblooded'

'G. W. Bush was president of the U.S. in 2006'

However, the price you have to pay for that is that your analytical truths are unknowable (with the usual exceptions, which I won't mention every time). In fact Peikoff must have realized that, as he smuggles the notion of a synthetic truth back into his theory under the name of "contextual truth".

I don't remember Peikoff ever using the term "contextual truth", at least in "The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy", though he and Rand talk a lot about definitions being contextually absolute. I'm sure he didn't contrast it with non-textual truth, since he was not inclined to introducte new dichotomies.

That is if you use your definition of truth.

GREG: Again, you are assuming that all analytic truths are certain, and that all contextual truths are synthetic, but both Peikoff and I deny this, and so you must argue for it

An analytic truth is by definition always certain, as it logically follows from the definitions. However, it doesn't necessarily correspond to a truth about the physical world. Using the usual definitions of a unicorn, the statement "a unicorn has a horn on its head" is an analytical truth, it follows from the definition, but it probably doesn't correspond to anything in reality. The same for mathematical statements.

GREG: Yes, the post was getting long, so I did not elaborate. Now I assume you will concede that we can perceive the necessary connection between triangles and 3-sidedness in 'All triangles are 3-sided' and between bachelors and unmarriedness in 'All bachelors are unmarried'. Well I would make the same claim about Newton's Axioms of Motion. I would go on to say that chemistry can be reduced to physics and biology to chemistry, so truths in these 3 sciences would all be as necessary as truths in math.

No. Truth statements in science are statements about the real world, which may be based on mathematical models. If you only look at the mathematical part, you could say that the result follows analytically from the premises. But these are based on empirical models which can at best only give an approximation of the real world. So yes, you could say that Kepler's laws follow analytically from Newton's laws. That doesn't make them analytical truths however, as the ultimate purpose in physics is to give an accurate description of reality and as the derivation makes several idealizing assumptions (apart from the fact that we even can't be sure of the basic premises), the result can only be an approximation. That is the difference between physics using mathematics as a tool and mathematics as a self-contained discipline. This is summarized by Einstein's famous dictum: "Insofar as the laws of mathematics are true, they do not apply to reality. And insofar as they apply to reality, they are not true".

And Einstein was wrong: that claim is the sort of claim that Peikoff and I wrote to refute.

CAL: It is necessary to make a distinction here between analytical truths and synthetic truths.

GREG: No: this is precisely what Peikoff wrote his article to deny (!) You are assuming what you are trying to prove: that the distinction is valid. That is the Fallacy of Circular Reasoning (Begging the Question).

Now wait a moment... My original article was a refutation of Peikoff's argument, so I don't have to prove anything. It's up to you or Peikoff to refute my refutation. As long as you haven't done that, the distinction between analytical and synthetic statements stands.

I made some replies to the post containing your original article where you believe you have refuted Peikoff, but I will go back and post a point-by-point reply. (Can I assume that the post contains your full article?)

That is if you use your definition of truth.

GREG: He does more than use a different term: he denies that they are the same thing, as do I. So you need to make an argument that these things are the same.

You are denying a lot. Merely denying isn't always sufficient... But I'll explain it. Peikoff's contextual truths are statements about the world that follow logically from all the available knowledge in a certain context (I deny that this is possible, so I can also deny something...). They may be amended in a different context, when more knowledge becomes available. A well-known example is Newton's theory. But this is nothing else but a synthetic truth: a statement about the world using the best available knowledge, which may be proved wrong, as has happened with Newtons' theory: gravitation is for example not transmitted instantaneously and the notion of an absolute time is incorrect.

GREG: And in the 20th century physicists declared the space is not Euclidean, and that therefore the 5th axiom is false. They discovered that non-Euclidean geometry was true. Also, they did it empirically.

Certainly not! The 5th axiom isn't false, a mathematical axiom cannot be false (at most it can be incoherent or inconsistent with other axioms), therefore it is an axiom! Euclidean geometry is a perfectly valid mathematical theory, just like other geometrical theories. You are confusing the application of mathematics with the mathematical theory itself.

....

GREG: One of the possible worlds is the actual world (i.e., the real world).

CAL: So the statement is indeed independent of the real world.

GREG: But it still says something about the real world, and so it is factual.

That is the same as my statement that it can be applied to the real world. But it is independent of the real world. The concept water can be applied to the ocean, the statement that the ocean consists of water is factual. But that doesn't imply that water can't be something independent of the ocean.

The question is not whether is independent of the real world, but rather it says anything about the world. Hume says that math is non-factual, and the Logical Positivists say this about both math and logic; they explain 'non-factual' as meaning 'not about the world'.

Those Conceptual Empiricists who are not Propositional Empiricists, such as Locke, Hume, and the Logical Positivists, will say that all concepts are empirical but some truths, such those of math, are not known empirically; the usual ground for the latter claim nowadays is that those truths are conceptual truths, and they assume that conceptual truths are a priori (i.e., non-empirical). But that means that a truth known by analysis of an empirical concept is not known empirically, i.e., from experience, and this seems absurd to me. The databased used is experience; the fact that it is processed by logic doesn't change that fact.

To me an empirical statement is a statement that in principle can be falsified. Statements that in principle cannot be falsified are not empirical statements, whether they use symbols like a or x, or words derived from empirical observations, like "bachelor".

Again, you are assuming that falsificationism is true, but Peikoff and I deny it. If you addressed it in your original post I will include my comment in my reply to that post; if you did not address it there you will need to argue for it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Greg,

I have to go to the CODE field again so the code will not execute.

If you have [quote] and [/quote]+[/quote], it will not execute. You have one start code and two stop codes.

If you have [quote]+[quote] and [/quote], it will not execute. You have two start codes and one stop code.

Every [quote] must have a corresponding [/quote]. There must be an equal number of start codes and stop codes.

If you should have 14 start codes and 13 stop codes, it will not work. There would need to be 14 start codes and 14 stop codes, or 13 start codes and 13 stop codes.

Even when you have other information like
[quote name='Dragonfly' date='May 28 2007, 03:16 PM' post='28927']
in your start code, this counts as if it were [quote].

Does that help?

I take long posts by block and make sure each block has the same number of start and stop codes.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Michael,

I think I figured out what happened: I forgot to click the quote button first.

I'm working on a reply to Cal now and think it's going to work.

Greg

Greg,

I have to go to the CODE field again so the code will not execute.

If you have [quote] and [/quote]+[/quote], it will not execute. You have one start code and two stop codes.

If you have [quote]+[quote] and [/quote], it will not execute. You have two start codes and one stop code.

Every [quote] must have a corresponding [/quote]. There must be an equal number of start codes and stop codes.

If you should have 14 start codes and 13 stop codes, it will not work. There would need to be 14 start codes and 14 stop codes, or 13 start codes and 13 stop codes.

Even when you have other information like
[quote name='Dragonfly' date='May 28 2007, 03:16 PM' post='28927']
in your start code, this counts as if it were [quote].

Does that help?

I take long posts by block and make sure each block has the same number of start and stop codes.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is a reply to Cal's original post:

Here is a reproduction of the article I wrote for the NB list:

What follows is your exposition of the first part of Peikoff's article (namely his exposition of the dichotomy), which is accurate enough for our purposes

In the second part of the article Peikoff starts his attack on this distinction by elaborating on the concept of "a concept". His position is that a concept of a thing (for example "ice") contains all the characteristics of that thing, in the case of ice all the physical and chemical properties of ice, even those that are still unknown. ...

Peikoffs conclusion is then that it isn't possible to distinguish between analytical and synthetic statements, as any characteristic that is deemed a synthetic truth (like: "ice floats on water"), is already part of the concept itself, so it follows logically from the definition of ice.

This conclusion is fallacious, however. You may define concept to imply all the characteristics, known and yet-to-be-discovered, but a definition necessarily gives only a few essential characteristics. Peikoff silently assumes however that a limited definition of a concept automatically implies all the characteristics of that concept, even those that are still unknown. But a definition isn't the same as the concept, it's only a label on a box, it doesn't tell us what is in that box.

Peikoff does not believe this, and in fact he is strongly opposed to it. He says: "on an objective, contextual view of essences, a concept does not mean only the essential or defining characteristics of its units" (p. 103 in IOE, Expanded 2nd ed., 1990), and such a view is his view. The view that the concept means only its definition is a view of the Nominalists (p. 97) , but they are among the people whose views he is criticizing, along with the Platonists, as the discussion from 94 to 105 makes clear. This is one of the most important point he makes in the article, and perhaps the most important.

If you want to equate the definition with the concept, you'll have to state all the properties of that concept explicitly in your definition. In that case you could say that any characteristic follows logically from the definition. But it is of course impossible to give such a complete definition, therefore the characteristics don't follow logically from that definition. You have to determine empirically what those characteristics are (get out of your armchair!).

Peikoff doesn't think that all knowledge can be gained from the armchair, and in fact the only kind of knowledge-gathering he talks about is the kind that involves getting out of your armchair: for example, he says "the content of the concept--i.e., the characteristics of entities it integrates--must be discovered and validated before any "analysis" is possible."

Even if we assume for the sake of argument that the definition of a concept does imply all the characteristics of that concept, Peikoff's argument fails. He emphatically states that not only all known characteristics belong to the concept, but also all the characteristics that still have to be discovered. This is indeed a crucial part of his argument, as there otherwise would be always room for doubt, which is incompatible with an analytic deduction.

No, Peikoff doesn't say that all analytic truths are certain, nor do I. We say that a concept contains all of the attributes of the things subsumed under it. To put it another way, analytic truths are supposedly truths that are true because of the meaning of the words in them. Well Peikoff and I say that the meaning of a term is the things is refers to, including all of their attributes, known and unknown, so of course we can fail to have certain knowledge of them.

Now this is a good example of what you may call a giant floating abstraction bearing no relationship to reality, a kind of Platonic construction. We can't derive anything from this Platonic concept, as it is in principle unknowable, man isn't omniscient, there ain't no such thing as perfect complete knowledge. We can only derive conclusions from a concept that subsumes all the current knowledge about the subject. This may be largely correct, but we can't be sure and it's always possible that what is now accepted as a correct description of characteristics may ultimately turn out to be wrong or may even be wrong while we'll never know it's wrong. We can of course live very well with the fact that 100% certainty can't be attained in real life, but it's fatal to Peikoff's argument. All the statements derived from a certain definition are synthetic statements if they are not derived from the explicit definition but from the implied characteristics of the defined concept. We can't make deductions from a Platonic unrealizable concept, only from a concept that we use in real life, including all the errors and omissions.

The purpse of this the opposite: to tie terms and concepts to reality. The term 'gold' means real pieces of gold, including all of their attributes, the known and the unknown. That's why fool's gold is not gold: there is more to gold than just the attributes we may know. At one time we did not know the inner structure of gold, and many people today still don't know it. But it has that structure all the same, and the term 'gold' refers to the whole thing, not just to a subset of its attributes.

Let us illustrate this with the ice example. Suppose you define ice as the solid form of water. A logical deduction from that definition would be "ice is a solid". But you can't logically deduce from that definition that ice floats on water. If that would be possible, one logically deduction would be that the statement "ice sinks in water" is wrong, right? Wrong! Ice can have 13 different types of crystal structure. One of them, very high density amorphous ice, in fact sinks in water. This shows the fallacy in Peikoff's reasoning: we can't deduce a synthetic truth logically from a definition while man isn't omniscient. In this example the synthetic truth is only known to a limited number of people, so most people would incorrectly deduce that the statement "ice sinks in water" is wrong. This shows that there is a sharp division between an analytic statement that logically follows from the definition like "ice is a solid", this can never be proved wrong, and a synthetic statement that can only be verified empirically, like "ice floats on water" (which is only strictly true when a necessary condition is added to the statement, like "ice with a hexagonal crystal structure").

Peikoff says that, in one sense, all truths are analytic---and so implies that no truths are synthetic.

You believe that some truths are synthetic.

To refute him, you must come up with an example of a synthetic truth.

But your example shows that 'Ice sinks in water' is false, so it cannot be a synthetic truth.

Also, you have given a nice example of another truth about ice that is analytic and also necessary: 'Ice with a hexagonal crystal structure floats on water'.

Now we could of course adapt our definition like this: ice is the solid form of water that floats on water. In this case the statement "ice floats on water" would follow logically from the definition. The kind of "ice" that sinks in water would according to that definition not be ice. How you exactly define "ice" is in fact arbitrary - with a minimal definition (solid form of water) the concept includes more than with a more specified definition (solid form of water that floats on water). There is no exact criterion for that, it is a matter of convenience and here is room for fuzziness (classification and separation of concepts). This is in itself no problem as long as people know what definition is exactly used.

Again, Peikoff denies that analytic truth = definitional truth, so you need to argue for it.

It will help if you give your definition of the phrase 'analytic truth".

The last part of your post applies the above to the ethics debate.

Edited by Greg Browne
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It may clarify things if I make a few general remarks.

Cal seems to have a strong science back. Scientists in the 20th/21th centuries have gotten most of their statements of methodology from Logical Positivists, who were the dominant philosophical school in the English speaking world from the 1920s to the 1940s (and in philosophy of science until the 1960s). Philosophers of science since then have often modified or rejected the Logical Positivist views (and I think they should go even further), but scientists have not wholly caught up with these changes. Logical Positivist thinking, even in a watered-down form, is stil so engrained in scientists that many have trouble even conceiving that somebody could disagree with these views in a major way.

So Cal's views seem closest to those of the Logical Positivists, and their philosophical ancester, David Hume.

The believed in the dichotomies Peikoff and I attack (except that the analytic-synthetic one was not yet invented in Hume's time.) These, I believe, are the most important:

contingent v. necessary

factual v. non-factual

a posteriori (empirical) v. a priori

synthetic v. analytic

Moreover, they believed these 4 distinctions lined up:

they thought that logic and math are necessary, non-factual, a priori and analytic,

and all truths are contingent, factual, a posteriori and synthetic.

I call this view "Dichotomism".

This views have been attacked: Quine tended to deny the distinctions, Kripke moved them out of alignment (making many truths necessary but factual and presumably a posteriori and synthetic) and Putnam did a combination of the two.

Peikoff and I deny all of these dichotomies, except the contingent-necessary, and even their we move it way over, as Kripke did, to include a lot of empirical, factual truths about chemistry and biology (and Peikoff says it is a distinction between facts, not truths, and doesn't even like the terminology).

The mistakes which I believe led up to Dichotomism are 3:

1. Descartes (early 1600s) thought that concepts about what I call "Deep Kinds"---such as those in biology and chemistry--are unclear and so stopped looking for necessary truths there.

(Locke elaborated this, believing that the essence consisted only of the attributes of the nominal definition, and this ruled out any kind being truly deep).

2. Locke and Newton (late 1600s) apparently didn't think there were necessary truths in physics, either (perhaps reacting to Descartes' mistakes there). Still, this positions allowed ethics and the social sciences, as well as logic and math, to be necessary.

3. Hume said that necessary truths are merely relations of ideas (he presumably thought that ideas are in the mind and assumed that this meant that the relations between them are in the mind, too, or he thought that ideas products of the mind and assumed that this meant the relations between them are products of the mind, too). In any case, he concluded that such truths are "non-factual", since a mere relation of ideas could tell us nothing about the world outside the mind.

The Logical Positivists gave a linguistic rather than mentalistic version of this view: they believed that necessity depends upon the relationship between meanings rather than the relationship between ideas.

These errors arose from misunderstanding the facts about the subject terms of the statements in question. The subject terms can refer to:

I. Individuals

II. Classes

A. What I call "Narrow Classes"--roughly, random collections of things (e.g., the set whose members are Bill Clinton, the Eiffel Tower and Mt. Everest); these are uninteresting and unimportant for philosophy, science and everyday life, but I mention them for completeness

B. What I call "Wide Classes" or "Kinds"---roughly, classes bound together by sharing certain attributes.

1. What I call "Deep Kinds"--"--kinds whose fundamental attributes are too many for us to form a concept and definition of them when we learn the meaning of the term; rather, some of the attributes may be unknown and need a lot of investigation to discover; these are include biological and chemical kings

2. What I call "Shallow Kinds"--kinds whose fundamental attributes are few enough that we can form a concept and definition of them when we learn the meaning of the term. I believe that these include not only kinds in logic and math, but also in the social sciences, ethics and mechanics.

It is because Shallow Kinds are so shallow that we are often misled into thinking that their attributes are not known empirically (as most philosophers from Descartes and Hobbes onward thought) and even that truths about them are products of our minds or language and so non-factual (as Hume and the Logical Positivists thought).

It is because Deep Kinds, and individuals and Narrow Classes, are so deep that we are often misled into thinking that their attributes are contingent or synthetic

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It certainly is controversial: I deny it. That alone makes it controversial, and the fact that I am the one debating you makes it especially so.

That is no reason. Suppose I say that the earth is round and you deny that and claim that it is flat; that doesn't make the notion that the earth is round (and not flat) controversial. Merely denying a notion doesn't make it controversial.

Also, it is not just a matter of definition, even to the Logical Positivists, whose views your views seem closest to: they define a synthetic truth is one which is not true merely because of the meanings of the words it. That definition does not tell you whether there are any such truths.

Peikoff writes: "A 'synthetic' proposition is defined as one which cannot be validated merely by an analysis of the meanings or definitions of its constituent concepts." Take a proposition of the form: "on planet X the composition of the soil is Y". Can the proposition be validated by an analysis of the meanings or definitions of its constituent concepts? The answer is no if we haven't means (yet) to study planet X closely enough. Peikoff would probably say that the meanings of the concepts include all future knowledge about these concepts, but that is of course an empty shell, it's equivalent to saying: yes, we could validate that proposition merely from the meanings of it constituent concepts if we were omniscient. But as we are not omniscient, it cannot be validated that way. The only way to validate it is to get out of that armchair and to have a thorough look at planet X, in other words, it is a synthetic proposition. In fact science is all about synthetic propositions. Analytical statements are either mathematical results, which may be useful in our models of reality, but which don't give us any new knowledge about reality, they make only hidden knowledge visible, or they are trivial tautologies which have no scientific importance in themselves.

Like Peikoff you define truth in such a way that only analytical truths remain.

AH! We may getting to the heart of your misunderstanding. :D We do not narrow the meaning of 'truth'. We apply the word 'truth' to all the things that most people do, and, I assume, that you do. But we say that all of these are analytic. So I say that all of these are analytic:

'All bachelors are unmarried'

'All triangles have 3-sides'

These statements follow logically from the definitions, so yes, these are analytic.

'Water is H20'

Is D2O water?

'Dogs are warmblooded'

Depends on your definitions. If 'warmblooded' is part of the definition of dog, either directly or indirectly (for example "dog" is defined as a kind of mammal and the definition of "mammal" contains 'warmblooded' then it would be an analytic statement. But with different definitions it would not be an analytic statement. As there are many different definitions possible which may all be acceptable, the status of the proposition is undecided.

'G. W. Bush was president of the U.S. in 2006'

Depends again on your definitions. Only if you define G.W. Bush as the president of the U.S. in a period that contains the year 2006, it would be an analytic statement. Usually the curriculum vitae is not used to define a person, however; president, U.S and 2006 in themselves do not imply logically the correctness of the proposition. It's negation would be a false statement but not a self-contradictory statement.

And Einstein was wrong: that claim is the sort of claim that Peikoff and I wrote to refute.

I deny that. Einstein was right.

To me an empirical statement is a statement that in principle can be falsified. Statements that in principle cannot be falsified are not empirical statements, whether they use symbols like a or x, or words derived from empirical observations, like "bachelor".

Again, you are assuming that falsificationism is true, but Peikoff and I deny it. If you addressed it in your original post I will include my comment in my reply to that post; if you did not address it there you will need to argue for it.

I don't know whether my statement is the same as "falsificationism". Perhaps Daniel Barnes could tell us more about that, he's a specialist in that field... But the falsification principle is accepted by all scientists, so if you think it is wrong it's up to you to argue for your viewpoint and not to ask me to argue for the commonly accepted viewpoint.

Your other posts will have to wait until tomorrow.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Peikoff says that, in one sense, all truths are analytic---and so implies that no truths are synthetic.

You believe that some truths are synthetic.

To refute him, you must come up with an example of a synthetic truth.

Mt. Everest is higher than Mt. McKinley. This has been shown to be the case empirically. One cannot -deduce- that Mt. Everest is higher than Mt. McKinley. One must go and measure.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Greg wrote:

>>Again, you are assuming that falsificationism is true, but Peikoff and I deny it. If you addressed it in your original post I will include my comment in my reply to that post; if you did not address it there you will need to argue for it.

Dragonfly replied:

>I don't know whether my statement is the same as "falsificationism". Perhaps Daniel Barnes could tell us more about that, he's a specialist in that field...

Hi all

I don't really regard myself as a specialist at all in this area, but I am happy to chip in. Obviously I cannot comment at all on Greg Browne's book or theories as I am not familiar with either of them. But I am quite happy to comment on Peikoff's essay on the "Analytic/Synthetic Dichotomy" as I have read that. This is some time ago, so I will have to refresh my memory before commenting fully.

Here are the points I would make to start:

1) Peikoff's essay impressed me as basically incompetent. As a demonstration of this, I would agree with two points that are handily available on-line until I can get around to re-reading it myself. Firstly, Gary Merrill in his well known post here provides a compelling case that Peikoff can only be either dishonest or ignorant in his discussion of the problem. I do not see how Merrill's argument can be reasonably refuted. Secondly, Kelley Ross over at Friesian.com highlights a typical Peikoffian confusion here: "Peikoff ("The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy," in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Meridian, 1990) even confuses Kant's definition of synthetic propositions with the Logical Positivist interpretation that all synthetic propositions are contingent. Since Kant would not accept such a trivialization of his theory for a minute (he would even regard it as a misunderstanding of Hume), Peikoff cannot even begin to address the substance of the issues that Kant considers." This will do for now. I will add my own remarks later, but it is increasingly clear that Peikoff is very far from reliable on these matters.

2) Peikoff may well "deny" something called "falsificationism" but I do not recall where or how he does so with any effective or even specific argument. Perhaps my memory fails me. Can someone cite any?

3) It pays to remember right from the start that Ayn Rand confessed she did not solve the problem of induction. From her few remarks on the subject (ITOE p304), it is not clear she even understood it. As this is the starting point for Kant's Analytic/Synthetic distinction, there is good reason to suspect the whole situation is not well understood in Objectivism. (Peikoff claims he has not added anything of significance to Rand's philosophy, and thus it seems unlikely he has resolved it either).As Kelley Ross remarks, "Objectivist" epistemology has not been awakened, as Kant was by Hume, from its "dogmatic slumber."

Edited by Daniel Barnes
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now