Abstract
If everything that we find to be true of the objects subsumed under a given concept should be made part of that concept, so that all relevant judgments in which that concept appear would thereby be rendered analytic, then all knowledge of those objects would be destroyed. For synthetic judgments contain all the real knowledge we have about the objects of our inquiries, and from analytic judgments alone no synthetic judgment can follow. Analytic judgments have one logical function: to allow for inference without losing track of what we are talking about. This principle allowed Kant to reveal the different work done in geometry by definitions (analytic) and by axioms (synthetic).
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Notes
- 1.
The attentive reader will recognise the similarity of Nelson’s difficulty with the epistemological conundrum so sharply formulated at the beginning of Frege (1892).
- 2.
This was also in fact Aristotle’s conception of scientific knowledge. In the terms used by Nelson in Chapter “Lecture VI”, which of course hark back to Aristotle, the definition of the concept has to be a complete statement of the essence of the object (for a recent study see Deslauriers 2007). Barnes (1969) explained that the Aristotelian conception was didactic in nature: once the research was finished, the definition would contain everything, so that the teacher would deploy the knowledge attained in such a way that the student might understand it (compare Hintikka 1972). The reductio ad absurdum that follows would then apply to Aristotle’s conception as well.
- 3.
Most examples given by Nelson of analytic judgments have the form of subject-predicate sentences, as were Kant’s original ones. This paragraph makes clear, however, that he has in mind the concept of tautological, as introduced by Wittgenstein the very same year Nelson’s course of lectures took place (see Wittgenstein 1921). Note that Nelson himself, a few paragraphs back, had used the same word, ‘tautology’, in a closely related context. The appropriation, for logical, or rather metalogical, technical purposes of this old rhetorical term (cf. Martin 1974, 301) must somehow have been in the air at the time.
- 4.
To wit, ‘In all judgments in which the subject-predicate relation is thought…, that relation is possible in two ways. Either predicate B belongs to subject A as something that is (in a hidden manner) contained in concept A, or B lies completely outside of concept A, even though it is united with it. In the first case I call the judgment analytic, in the other synthetic.’ See Critique of Pure Reason A6, B10.
- 5.
These questions were already crucial for Kant’s Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality of 1763 (see First Reflection, Walford 1992, 248–255). They occupy pride of place in the Critique of Pure Reason, A712–738 B740–766.
References
Barnes, Jonathan. 1969. Aristotle’s theory of demonstration. Phronesis 14(2): 123–152.
Deslauriers, Marguerite. 2007. Aristotle on definition. Leiden: Brill.
Frege, Gottlob. 1892. Über Sinn und Bedeutung. Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 100:25–50. [English translation: Sense and reference, The Philosophical Review 57(3):209–230, 1948].
Hintikka, Jaakko. 1972. On the ingredients of an Aristotelian science. Noûs 6(1): 55–69.
Martin, Josef. 1974. Antike Rhetorik: Technik und Methode [Ancient Rhetoric: Technique and Method]. Munich: Beck [=Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, II.3].
Walford, David., ed. and transl. 1992. Immanuel Kant: theoretical philosophy, 1755–1770. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1921. Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung. Annalen der Naturphilosophie 14(3–4): 185–262. English translation: 1922. Tractatus logico-philosophicus, vol. 14. London: Kegan Paul.
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Nelson, L. (2016). Lecture VII. In: A Theory of Philosophical Fallacies. Argumentation Library, vol 26. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20783-4_8
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