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commitment to language dependent truth conditions, i.e. “linguistic necessities”. I repeat the above quote here:
Part of the answer derives from the fact that the positivists didn’t merely want a theory of a priori knowledge; they also wanted a reductive theory of necessity. The motivation wasn’t purely
epistemological, but metaphysical as well. Guided by the fear that “objective, language-independent, necessary connections” would be metaphysically odd, they attempted to show that all necessities could be understood to consist in linguistic necessities, in the shadows cast by conventional decisions
concerning the meanings of words. (Boghossian, 2006, p. 336)
So, in summary, Boghossian does not think the positivists’ account of analytic truth is indefensible because they endorse the analytic-synthetic distinction, as Quine does. But he thinks their mistake is related to the fact that truth, for them, can be determined by anything else than what is the case in the world. To hold this against the positivists is to misconstrue the importance of their distinction between logical and factual truth; no logical positivist would endorse a view of factual truth not being determined by facts (Ebbs, 2011).
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Both Carnap and Boghossian argue that knowledge of logical principles is a priori. But Boghossian evidently cannot think that Carnap’s view of a priori knowledge is the same as his, since Carnap is a conventionalist and non-factualist about, respectively, the truth and meaning of logical principles and terms. This is how he differs from Carnap: he takes the view that analytic sentences are identified by their being knowable a priori as being in line with Frege’s view of analyticity; that there are meaning facts which warrant our belief in analytic truth. However, he says that Frege’s account is “incomplete”
(Boghossian, 2006, p. 337). This is because even though Frege holds that analytic truth is achieved by substituting synonyms for synonyms, and also holds that such substitutions will be “objectively”
determined, he does not make explicit the need for facts about synonymy (Boghossian, 2006, p. 337).
Furthermore, in Frege’s case, being justified or knowable a priori, is for the truth to be logically provable.
It is for this reason that analytic sentences are “transformable into a logical truth by substituting synonyms for synonyms” (Boghossian, 2006, p. 337). But, argues Boghossian, not all sentences which are knowable are logically provable or are transformable into logical truths by replacing synonyms with synonyms. So, it must therefore be the case that we sometimes have a priori knowledge of the truth of sentences which are evidently not logical truths in the way Frege wants them to be.
Two classes come to mind. On the one hand, a priori statements that are not transformable into logical truths by the substitution of synonyms for synonyms; and, on the other hand, a priori statements that are trivially so transformable. (Boghossian, 2006, p. 338)
An account of a priori knowledge should be able to accommodate such sentences. In the cases where there is no possibility of logical substitution there must be facts which are known a priori, where the use of such facts is not just trivial. Since we have a priori knowledge of the truth of such statements, there must be some facts about meaning which obtain that are not simply a product of logical workings.
Boghossian suggests that perhaps the mistaken view of truth yielded by adopting conventionalism and non-factualism, follows in the wake of Frege’s incomplete account of analytic truth; and this is perhaps a result of Frege’s assumption of the a priority of logic (Boghossian, 2006, p. 346) without giving an account of the facts which are known in this way. Boghossian argues that if there is a fact about a term,
‘M’, meaning ‘cow’ and another term, ‘C’, meaning ‘cow’ then there is fact about ‘M’ and ‘C’ meaning the same thing (Boghossian, 2006, p. 343).
In short, Boghossian position is this about why facts of the non-trivial kind are required for an explanation of our knowledge of logic: ‘Frege-analyticities’ are “facts” which support the claim that some terms are synonymous with each other. Without the existence of ‘Frege-analyticities’ we can make
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no theoretical or principled sense of synonymy and therefore meaning. Boghossian’s epistemic account then follows from this principled point of view about the existence of Frege-analyticities. Boghossian thinks that since there is an overwhelming theoretic requirement for the existence of ‘Frege-
analyticities’ there is no good reason to doubt that we know logical principles and therefore logical truth a priori.
If the preceding considerations are correct, then there is no principled objection to the existence of Frege- analyticities, and hence no principled objection to the existence of statements that are knowable a priori if logical truth is. (Boghossian, 2006, p. 345)
Boghossian’s defence of meaning realism is of course premised on whatever his defence of factualism about meaning is premised on. And his endorsement of the existence of Frege-analyticities can also only take hold once his realism, via his factualism, has received the appropriate justification. What does he offer us? He, correctly, says that a defence of premise 2 of the following proof is what will offer justification for his meaning realism:
(1) If C is to mean what it does, then A has be valid, for C means whatever logical object in fact makes A valid (2) C means what it does
(3) A is valid
(Boghossian, 2006, p. 359)
(By ‘A’ Boghossian means any logical principle)
He then goes on to say that the truth of the proof, of course, depends on whether there are facts about
‘C’ meaning what it does. And to say that the meaning of ‘C’ is part of determining the stipulation of truth of A is not to give any reason for believing that C actually means what it does. The validity of ‘A’
follows from C’s meaning and cannot therefore also be the reason for taking it to mean what we think it does. This is to offer a circular argument in support of C’s meaning. The meaning of C cannot be
embedded in a conditional (i.e. ‘If C means what it does then A is valid’) whilst no conditional can actually say whether C means what it does. So, concludes, Boghossian, following Harman (Boghossian, 2006, p. 359), there must be some further fact about the matter of the meaning of C.
Even if conventional assignments of truth or falsity determine meaning, it does not follow that a sentence is true by virtue of convention. It does not follow that the convention is even true. (Boghossian, 2006, p.
359)
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We leave aside any immediate worries about the fact that Boghossian marshals support from Harman despite the fact that Harman places ‘truth’ as the antecedent in the conditional and Boghossian places
‘meaning ‘ as the antecedent.
Boghossian holds that we know that there are facts about the meanings of logical terms (e.g. the meaning of ‘C’ above) because we cannot “coherently doubt” the meanings of logical terms. To not be able to coherently doubt their meaning entails, for him, there must be facts about their meaning because to not coherently doubt their meaning means that we do not have the option of them meaning something other than what they are standardly taken to mean. This is exactly what meaning realism is.
This is how Boghossian proceeds in justifying his realist commitments: He acknowledges that the a priori knowledge of the truth of logical principles does not guarantee that there are meaning facts
(Boghossian, 2006, p. 360). But he says that it is not possible to “coherently doubt” (Boghossian, 2006, p. 360) that logical principles are meaningful. In other words, suggests Boghossian, there is no way for us to doubt the meaning of logical principles and still be warranted in believing in the elementary truths of logic – which we evidently do. It, therefore, follows says Boghossian that there are no options for logical principles to be invalidated or simply made redundant. They are “real” in this sense; they are objective.
But could this not just be explained by some sort of pragmatism; that they are secured by the fact that they are an effective means to an end or that they are consistent with other already accepted linguistic frameworks? And in this sense they are ‘real’ but not real in the proper, inflated, mind-independent sense. Boghossian rejects this explanation. He says that they are not simply real in the reduced sense, as when yielded by some type of winning pragmatism. They are real in the sense that they are not just a matter of the most preferred even effective conventional choice. They are ‘real’ in the sense that they are the only possibility. For Boghossian it seems unlikely, no, even incoherent, to think that logic could be any other way than what it is.
Is this merely a pragmatic result, or something stronger? Tentative answer: Something stronger. To sustain the claim that the result is merely pragmatic, one would have to make sense of the claim that, although we cannot rationally doubt that our constants are meaningful, it is nevertheless possible that they aren’t. (Boghossian, 2006, p. 362)
Boghossian’s realism about the facts which warrants our knowledge of logic and our understanding of the analytically true sentences which comprise it places him in a starkly different position to the
positivists’ about analytic truth. He sees himself as opposed to the logical positivists despite not being in line with Quine. His account of truth and knowledge puts him diametrically opposed to the usual non-
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factualist and conventionalist positions associated with a priori accounts of logic, associated with irrealist positions about logic.