71
lexicographer and abbreviational for the chemist; it may constitute an explanative definition for the student and may not “serve as a definition” at all for the child. If there appear to be changes in analytic- synthetic status among these various contexts, it seems more reasonable to suppose that they inhere in statements about these uses and attitudes rather than that they simultaneously apply to the single definition in question. (Bohnert, 1963, p. 424)
So, Quine’s worry about there being no ‘natural kind’ that can be called ‘analytic sentence’ is of no concern to the Carnapian account of analytic truth. It is not an objection, it is simply a description of something Carnap would happily concede.
72
stipulated within the metalanguage and, furthermore, there is no factual basis for these rules. They are rules which have been adopted for pragmatic reasons, i.e. because they do the work required of them.
They are rules like the rules of rugby; they work, but could have been other rules. Sometimes they even change. But they do not change because we find empirical facts which show us these rules were wrong and what would be correct rules for rugby, they change because there are practical reasons for why the new rules for the game are better. Unlike empirical reasons for revising rules, pragmatic reasons are always just reasons among many possible reasons.
In this section I offer a further explanation of why the synthetic-analytic distinction is made within a metalanguage for formal reasons by establishing conventions. I then explain that the truth of such sentences is a function of the conventions which draw the synthetic-analytic distinction as well as the conventions, or definitions, which determine the meanings of the constituent terms of an analytic sentence.
But if ‘analytic’ is determined in the metalanguage of a linguistic framework and there are many different linguistic frameworks then there is every possibility that there might be many different explications of ‘analytic’. And this is indeed the case, according to Carnap. There is no generic
formulation of what ‘analytic’ means. ‘Analytic’ is defined when determining the conventions specific to the metalanguage in a linguistic framework. This, of course, has the further consequence that what counts as ‘analytic concepts’ in the object language will also be relative to a specific linguistic framework (Bohnert, 1963, pp. 416, 420, 421).
To be sure, stating and proving theorems at each stage requires the logical apparatus of the
metalanguage, which may involve its own analyticity concept but confusion will arise only if it is assumed that “analytic-for-Lᵣ” is the same as for “analytic-for-Lᵣ˖₁” are necessarily both instances of some more generic concept of analyticity. Whatever deliberate similarities there may be, each concept is autonomous and sufficiently defined in precisely the way that “sentence-in-L” must be for each language L. (Bohnert, 1963, p. 416)
Despite the plurality of the concept ‘analytic’ I continue the discussion focusing on what the salient features of analytic truth are, for Carnap. For instance, all analytic sentences will be sentences of which the truth is logically determined within a particular linguistic framework – even though the postulates comprising one linguistic system are different from the postulates comprising another. By ‘logic’ is meant the system of rules and conventions governing how we use terms and make inferences between sentences which contain these terms. A linguistic framework always has a logical system associated with
73
it. In the case of a natural language this will be grammar, of course. An analytic sentence will be
constructed from syntactical postulates (i.e. grammar) and meaning postulates (i.e. definitions). None of this depends in any way on what the world is like. This, of course, means that what make the analytic sentence true are merely the things which ‘make it up’, making it a tautology. To accept a tautology, by using it, is to adopt a convention.
1. Tautologies are understood as conventional stipulations.
2. Tautologies are governed by the use of a specific language. 28 This language would tell us what words mean and what statements can be inferred from what statements, based on the rules of inference stipulated for that language.
3. Tautologies are known a priori, but only because they express conventions of language.
(Juhl, C. and Loomis, E., 2010, pp. 27 - 28)
But if analytic sentences are knowable a priori, which they are for Carnap, then they cannot convey facts about reality, whether empirical or not.29 And this means that we take them to not refer to either material or non-material matters of fact if these are considered to be independent of a constructed system such as a linguistic framework. The meaning ‘facts’ pertaining to analytic sentences are
constructed or “invented” (Hale and Wright, 2003) meaning ‘facts’. 30 They are not the sort of meaning facts which settle truth, but are known a priori.
It is acknowledged by Carnap that if ‘fact’ designates something like definitional facts, or facts stated by sentences “about the system”, the analytic sentences are factual in this regard. But we have established that it is not these sorts of facts which are at the centre of the debate about whether or not analytic sentences are founded in objective facts about meaning. The debate is usually about whether all
understood terms can be taken to refer to reality – whether this is to empirical reality or to some sort of
28 “Language” is here understood not as merely a natural language, e.g. English, but more specifically as the English as fully constituted by a specified set of rules and conventions for use, as well as its entire lexicon, including what terms are synonymous with each other.
29 See the introduction for an explanation (Dummett, 2006) of the distinction between empirical and non-empirical facts. Non-empirical facts, if they are, say, facts about meaning, are Platonic.
30 I look in detail at the notion of meaning as invented and truth as stipulated in Part 2, sections 2 and 4 and again in Part 3
74
Platonic meaning fact. Carnap cautions that an ability to use words properly does not secure the existence either of these types of facts.
In using such words as “crystal”, “cancer”, “salt”, we have the words in mind and are familiar with them and with many other aspects of, and facts about, what they designate and this constitutes our
understanding. It should come as no surprise if these terms are defined in terms unfamiliar to us. We must not assume that just because we use a word successfully we have some neat, fixed mental something that corresponds to it and that we merely need to sit down and analyse to arrive at a full definition. (Bohnert, 1963, p. 430)
Analytic sentences meet the following criteria and these criteria are nothing more than part of a constructed linguistic framework or system:
Roughly speaking, I take it that we expect analytic sentences to be true but have no content, to provide no genuine information, to hold in all possible worlds, to be provable without evidence or at least to be true independently of fact, and we expect a proposition designated by an analytic sentence to be
necessary and one designated by the negation of an analytic sentence to be impossible. (Bohnert, 1963, p.
415)
The implication of accepting all of the above is that analytic sentences are tautologies. To put it graphically: an analytic sentence expresses things about itself. And in doing so it also says things about the linguistic framework to which it belongs and which is part of determining. To do this it is required of the sentence that it does nothing more than express the logical properties of its constituent terms or between itself and other analytic sentences in the same linguistic framework.
Analytic truths could be treated as ‘tautologies’, statements which do not say anything about the world, but which instead express logical properties among concepts or among statements. (Juhl, C. and Loomis, E., 2010, p. 27)
To be clear: the way in which ‘tautologies’ is used in the above statement is broader than perhaps the standard understanding of a tautology, i.e. as a statement which explicitly repeats the same term/s to make a statement which results, for this reason, as overtly circular, e.g. “Beautiful things are beautiful”.
So a statement such as “Good actions are virtuous actions”, according to Carnap, might also be considered tautological. But “Good actions are virtuous actions” is only considered a tautology if any competent speaker, i.e. one who understands the rules and conventions governing a language, understands that “good” is taken to be synonymous with “virtuous”. According to Carnap,
75
understanding the tautology is to understand the conventions of the language in which the statement is a tautology. Conventions do not, says Carnap, to our knowledge, refer to anything beyond the
understanding and use or application of that convention. Consequently any attempt to justify rules and conventions – and relationships of synonymity between terms – by facts external to the language itself is considered futile.
The justification of empirical sentences cannot be done merely by understanding the logical
relationships between words and sentences in a particular linguistic framework. The only correct way, according to Carnap, of determining the meaning of sentences with empirical content is to produce reduction sentences which consist of the translations of the purportedly empirical language into
“sensation language” (i.e. observation sentences, which are sentences where their content makes direct and explicit reference to observable features of empirical reality). Here he uses the example of empirical sentences in scientific language. Carnap advocates the reduction of sentences with empirical content into “observables”. This is the thesis of physicalism.31
The thesis of physicalism […] says roughly: Every concept of the language of science can be explicitly defined in terms of observables; therefore every sentence of the language of science is translatable into a sentence concerning observable properties. I suggested that the reducibility to observation predicates need be required by scientific concepts, since this requirement is sufficient for the confirmability of sentences involving those concepts. (Carnap, 1963, p. 59)
And what makes a sentence confirmable is when the observation sentence to which it has been reduced or into which it has been translated, can contribute to establishing whether the sentence is true or false. On the other hand, if the sentence is either not translatable into an observation sentence, e.g. the laws of nature (Carnap, 1963, p. 57), then there is no way which an observation sentence can contribute to settling its truth or falsity.
A sentence is regarded confirmable if observation sentences can contribute either positively or negatively to its confirmation. (Carnap, 1963, p. 59)