The Poverty of Conceptual Truth
Kant's Analytic/Synthetic Distinction and the Limits of Metaphysics
- Publisher's listprice GBP 122.50
-
55 308 Ft (52 675 Ft + 5% VAT)
The price is estimated because at the time of ordering we do not know what conversion rates will apply to HUF / product currency when the book arrives. In case HUF is weaker, the price increases slightly, in case HUF is stronger, the price goes lower slightly.
- Discount 10% (cc. 5 530 Ft off)
- Discounted price 49 778 Ft (47 408 Ft + 5% VAT)
Subcribe now and take benefit of a favourable price.
Subscribe
55 308 Ft
Availability
printed on demand
Why don't you give exact delivery time?
Delivery time is estimated on our previous experiences. We give estimations only, because we order from outside Hungary, and the delivery time mainly depends on how quickly the publisher supplies the book. Faster or slower deliveries both happen, but we do our best to supply as quickly as possible.
Product details:
- Publisher OUP Oxford
- Date of Publication 22 January 2015
- ISBN 9780198724575
- Binding Hardback
- No. of pages428 pages
- Size 240x163x30 mm
- Weight 792 g
- Language English 0
Categories
Short description:
R. Lanier Anderson presents a new account of Kant's distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments, and provides it with a clear basis within traditional logic. He reconstructs compelling claims about the syntheticity of elementary mathematics, and re-animates Kant's arguments against traditional metaphysics in the Critique of Pure Reason.
MoreLong description:
The Poverty of Conceptual Truth is based on a simple idea. Kant's distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments underwrites a powerful argument against the metaphysical program of his Leibnizian-Wolffian predecessors--an argument from fundamental limits on its expressive power. In that tradition, metaphysics promised to reveal the deep rational structure of the world through a systematic philosophy consisting of strictly conceptual truths, which flow from a logically perspicuous relation of 'containment' among concepts. That is, all truths would be 'analytic,' in Kant's sense. Kant's distinction shows to the contrary that far reaching and scientifically indispensable parts of our knowledge of the world (including mathematics, the foundations of natural science, all knowledge from experience, and the central principles of metaphysics itself) are essentially synthetic and could never be restated in analytic form. Thus, the metaphysics of Kant's predecessors is doomed, because knowledge crucial to any adequate theory of the world cannot even be expressed in the idiom to which it restricts itself (and which was the basis of its claim to provide a transparently rational account of things). Traditional metaphysics founders on the expressive poverty of conceptual truth.
To establish these claims, R. Lanier Anderson shows how Kant's distinction can be given a clear basis within traditional logic, and traces Kant's long, difficult path to discovering it. Once analyticity is framed in clear logical terms, it is possible to reconstruct compelling arguments that elementary mathematics must be synthetic, and then to show how similar considerations about irreducible syntheticity animate Kant's famous arguments against traditional metaphysics in the Critique of Pure Reason.
This book is a masterpiece on Kant's theory of analyticity. It culminates in a new story of how Kant arrived at his mature view... With thirteen chapters and three substantial appendixes, the book is remarkably rich in content. Most impressively, Anderson weaves all the complex interpretive and philosophical issues together in such a masterful way that the big picture is always clearly in sight and the reader is constantly enticed to read on. A supremely edifying read indeed.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Containment Analyticity and Kant's Problem of Synthetic Judgment
Part I--The Traditional Logic of Concept Containment and its (alleged) Metaphysical Implications
Containment and the Traditional Logic of Concepts
The Wolffian Paradigm
Narrowness and Trade-offs: Conceptual Truth in the 'Leibnizian-Wolffian' Philosophy
Part II--A Difficult Birth: the Emergence of Kant's Analytic/Synthetic Distinction
Three Versions of Analyticity
Methodological Beginnings: Analysis and Synthesis in the Published pre-Critical Works
Making Synthetic Judgments Analytic: Kant's Long Road toward Logical Analyticity in the Reflexionen
Part III--Ineliminable Synthetic Truth in Elementary Mathematics
The Logic of Concepts and a 'Two Step' Syntheticity Argument
Kant on the Syntheticity of Elementary Mathematics
Part IV--The Poverty of Conceptual Truth and the Master Argument of the 'Transcendental Dialectic'
The Master Argument
The Soul and the World: the Master Argument in Kant's 'Paralogisms' and 'Antinomy'
The Master Argument in the Critique of Rational Theology
Epilogue
Empirical Concept Formation and the Systematic Role of Logical Division
Appendix 1: Kant's Criticisms of the Ontological Argument in 1763
Four Strands of Reflexionen on the Emerging Analytic/Synthetic Distinction
Friedman and the Phenomenological Reading
