Truth in Virtue of Meaning
A Defence of the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction
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Product details:
- Publisher OUP Oxford
- Date of Publication 28 February 2008
- ISBN 9780199232192
- Binding Hardback
- No. of pages256 pages
- Size 223x145x20 mm
- Weight 443 g
- Language English 0
Categories
Short description:
The distinction between analytic and synthetic sentences - the idea that some sentences are true or false just in virtue of what they mean - is a famous focus of philosophical controversy. Gillian Russell reinvigorates the debate with a challenging new defence of the distinction, showing that it is compatible with semantic externalism.
MoreLong description:
The analytic/synthetic distinction looks simple. It is a distinction between two different kinds of sentence. Synthetic sentences are true in part because of the way the world is, and in part because of what they mean. Analytic sentences - like all bachelors are unmarried and triangles have three sides - are different. They are true in virtue of meaning, so no matter what the world is like, as long as the sentence means what it does, it will be true.
This distinction seems powerful because analytic sentences seem to be knowable in a special way. One can know that all bachelors are unmarried, for example, just by thinking about what it means. But many twentieth-century philosophers, with Quine in the lead, argued that there were no analytic sentences, that the idea of analyticity didn't even make sense, and that the analytic/synthetic distinction was therefore an illusion. Others couldn't see how there could fail to be a distinction, however ingenious the arguments of Quine and his supporters.
But since the heyday of the debate, things have changed in the philosophy of language. Tools have been refined, confusions cleared up, and most significantly, many philosophers now accept a view of language - semantic externalism - on which it is possible to see how the distinction could fail. One might be tempted to think that ultimately the distinction has fallen for reasons other than those proposed in the original debate.
In Truth in Virtue of Meaning, Gillian Russell argues that it hasn't. Using the tools of contemporary philosophy of language, she outlines a view of analytic sentences which is compatible with semantic externalism and defends that view against the old Quinean arguments. She then goes on to draw out the surprising epistemological consequences of her approach.
Russell's book is impressive and richly argued... she has brought the debate on analyticity to a new level. In her book she presents us with an alternative, well-developed and highly original way of thinking about truth in virtue of meaning, one that cirumvents many of the difficulties that plague traditional analyticity. This makes the book a must-read by anybody interested in the topic of analyticity, and the nature of meaning generally.
Table of Contents:
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
I: The Positive View
The 'in virtue of' Relation
Meaning
Beyond Modality
The Formal System
II: A Defence
The Spectre of "Two Dogmas"
Definitions
More Arguments Against Analyticity
III: Work for Epistemologists
Analytic Justification
