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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/9/2020, SPi
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/9/2020, SPi
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ,
United Kingdom
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It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Paul Boghossian and Timothy Williamson
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/9/2020, SPi
Contents
Preface ix
Publisher’s Acknowledgements xiii
. Analyticity Reconsidered
Paul Boghossian
. Blind Reasoning
Paul Boghossian
. Understanding and Inference
Timothy Williamson
. Williamson on the A Priori and the Analytic
Paul Boghossian
. Reply to Boghossian on the A Priori and the Analytic
Timothy Williamson
. Inferentialism and the Epistemology of Logic: Reflections on Casalegno
and Williamson
Paul Boghossian
. Boghossian and Casalegno on Understanding and Inference
Timothy Williamson
. How Deep is the Distinction between A Priori and A Posteriori
Knowledge?
Timothy Williamson
. Do We Have Reason to Doubt the Importance of the Distinction
between A Priori and A Posteriori Knowledge? A Reply to Williamson
Paul Boghossian
. Reply to Boghossian on the Distinction between the A Priori and the
A Posteriori
Timothy Williamson
. Williamson on the Distinction between the A Priori and the
A Posteriori Once Again
Paul Boghossian
. Knowing by Imagining
Timothy Williamson
. Intuition, Understanding, and the A Priori
Paul Boghossian
. Reply to Boghossian on Intuition, Understanding, and the A Priori
Timothy Williamson
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/9/2020, SPi
viii
Bibliography
Index
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/9/2020, SPi
Preface
x
Aristotelian Society. The chairman was Crispin Wright; we both owe him an apology,
since it was almost impossible for him to get a word in edgeways. Paul’s paper
represented a stage in a line of thought about analyticity and knowledge of logic
that he had been pursuing for some years previously, and on which he had already
published several articles. Tim had written much less directly on these matters, but
was glad of the opportunity provided by a sharp foil against which to clarify,
develop, and articulate his views on them. His contribution to the symposium,
‘Understanding and Inference’, drew him into a new line of research on analyticity
and the methodology and nature of philosophy, which led to his Blackwell
Brown lectures at Brown University and his resulting book The Philosophy of
Philosophy (Blackwell). Paul was then invited to contribute to a symposium on the
book in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, published in , with Tim
replying as author. Paul’s contribution was ‘Williamson on the A Priori and the
Analytic’. That exchange was a natural follow-up to the one in Belfast.
A further round followed soon after. We were both invited to speak at a memorial
conference in Milan in April for the leading Italian analytic philosopher Paolo
Casalegno, whose views on many issues in the philosophy of logic and language were
similar to Tim’s, though reached independently and by different arguments. Paul’s
paper was ‘Inferentialism and the Epistemology of Logic: Reflections on Casalegno
and Williamson’. Given how much he agreed with Casalegno, Tim chose to make his
contributions to the conference be replies in defence of Casalegno to Paul and to
Crispin Wright, who also contributed a paper critical of Casalegno. His response to
Paul was ‘Boghossian and Casalegno on Understanding and Inference’. The pro-
ceedings of the conference, including our papers, were published as the June
issue of dialectica.
Meanwhile, Tim had been invited to contribute by Albert Casullo and Joshua
Thurow to a collection of papers they were editing, The A Priori in Philosophy
(Oxford University Press), published in . He took the opportunity to develop
some sceptical remarks in The Philosophy of Philosophy about the significance of the
a priori–a posteriori distinction into a more detailed critique, in the paper ‘How Deep
is the Distinction between A Priori and A Posteriori Knowledge?’ In June , we
were both speakers at a conference on the a priori that was held in New York
University’s Villa La Pietra in Florence. Paul presented an early version of his
response to the above-named paper, which had been available pre-publication. Tim
responded informally.
Herman Cappelen had already suggested to Paul the idea of a volume based on our
exchanges, with some further rounds. Paul mentioned it to Tim in January , and
we agreed to try out the idea on Oxford University Press. Peter Momtchiloff and
several anonymous referees were supportive, so we went ahead. Since then we have
been working towards this volume, though slowed down by many other commit-
ments; each of us has had to balance the needs of various different writing projects.
We have also had several more public exchanges of ideas since then. Paul presented a
paper on intuition and the a priori to the Oxford Philosophical Society in June ,
with Tim in the audience, and ‘Understanding, Intuition and the A Priori’ to a
conference on Conceptual Truth, Analyticity, and Conceptual Competence at the
University of Oslo, to which Tim replied, in June .
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/9/2020, SPi
xi
Publisher’s Acknowledgements
We are grateful for permission to include the following copyright material in this
book.
Chapter is reprinted from Paul Artin Boghossian, ‘Analyticity Reconsidered’,
Noûs, Volume , Issue , pp. –, Copyright © Wiley, by permission of
Wiley, doi: ./.
Chapter is reproduced from Paul Boghossian, ‘Blind Reasoning’, The Aristotelian
Society Supplementary Volume, Volume , Issue , pp. –, Copyright © ,
doi: ./-.. Reprinted by courtesy of the Editor of the Aristotelian
Society: © , https://academic.oup.com/aristoteliansupp. Chapter is reproduced
from Timothy Williamson, ‘Understanding and Inference’, The Aristotelian Society
Supplementary Volume, Volume , Issue , pp. –, Copyright © , doi:
./-.. Reprinted by courtesy of the Editor of the Aristotelian
Society: © , https://academic.oup.com/aristoteliansupp.
Chapter is reprinted from Paul Boghossian, ‘Williamson on the A Priori and the
Analytic’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume , Issue , pp. –,
Copyright © Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LLC, by permission
of Wiley, doi: ./j.-...x.
Chapter is reprinted from Timothy Williamson, ‘Reply to Boghossian’,
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume , Issue , pp. –,
Copyright © Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LLC, by permission
of Wiley, doi: ./j.-...x.
Chapter is reprinted from Paul Boghossian, ‘Inferentialism and the Epistemology
of Logic: Reflections on Casalegno and Williamson’, dialectica, Volume , Issue ,
pp. –, Copyright © , by permission of Wiley, doi: ./j.-.
..x.
Chapter is reprinted from Timothy Williamson, ‘Boghossian and Casalegno on
Understanding and Inference’, dialectica, Volume , Issue , pp. –, Copyright
© , by permission of Wiley, doi: ./j.-...x.
Chapter was first published as Timothy Williamson, ‘How Deep is the
Distinction between A Priori and A Posteriori Knowledge?’, in Albert Casullo and
Joshua Thurow (eds.), The A Priori in Philosophy, pp. –, Copyright © , and
is reprinted here by permission of Oxford University Press (https://global.oup.com).
Chapter was first published as Timothy Williamson, ‘Knowing by Imagining’,
in Amy Kind and Peter Kung (eds.), Knowledge through Imagination, pp. –,
Copyright © , and is reprinted here by permission of Oxford University Press
(https://global.oup.com).
The publisher and authors have made every effort to trace and contact all
copyright holders before publication. If notified, the publisher will be pleased to
rectify any errors or omissions at the earliest opportunity.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/9/2020, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/9/2020, SPi
Analyticity Reconsidered¹
Paul Boghossian
This is what many philosophers believe today about the analytic–synthetic distinction:
In his classic early writings on analyticity—in particular, in ‘Truth by Convention’, ‘Two
Dogmas of Empiricism’, and ‘Carnap and Logical Truth’—Quine showed that there can
be no distinction between sentences that are true purely by virtue of their meaning and
those that are not. In so doing, Quine devastated the philosophical programs that
depend upon a notion of analyticity—specifically, the linguistic theory of necessary
truth, and the analytic theory of a priori knowledge.
Quine himself, so the story continues, went on to espouse far more radical views about
meaning, including such theses as meaning-indeterminacy and meaning-skepticism.
However, it is not necessary, and certainly not appealing, to follow him on this trajectory.
As realists about meaning, we may treat Quine’s self-contained discussion in the early
papers as the basis for a profound insight into the nature of meaning-facts, rather than
any sort of rejection of them. We may discard the notions of the analytic and the a priori
without thereby buying in on any sort of unpalatable skepticism about meaning.
Now, I don’t know precisely how many philosophers believe all of the above, but
I think it would be fair to say that it is the prevailing view. Philosophers with radically
differing commitments—including radically differing commitments about the nature
of meaning itself—subscribe to it: whatever precisely the correct construal of mean-
ing, so they seem to think, Quine has shown that it will not sustain a distinction
between the analytic and the synthetic. Listen, for example, to Bill Lycan:
It has been nearly forty years since the publication of ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism.’ Despite
some vigorous rebuttals during that period, Quine’s rejection of analyticity still prevails—in
that philosophers en masse have either joined Quine in repudiating the ‘analytic/synthetic’
distinction or remained (however mutinously) silent and made no claims of analyticity.
This comprehensive capitulation is somewhat surprising, in light of the radical nature of
Quine’s views on linguistic meaning generally. In particular, I doubt that many philosophers
accept his doctrine of the indeterminacy of translation . . .
Lycan goes on to promise that in his paper, he is going to
make a Quinean case against analyticity, without relying on the indeterminacy doctrine. For
I join the majority in denying both analyticity and indeterminacy . . . ²
Debating the A Priori. Paul Boghossian and Timothy Williamson, Oxford University Press (2020).
© Paul Boghossian and Timothy Williamson.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198851707.001.0001
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 2/9/2020, SPi
Now, my disagreement with the prevailing view is not total. There is a notion of
‘truth by virtue of meaning’—what I shall call the metaphysical notion—that is
undermined by a set of indeterminacy-independent considerations. Since this notion
is presupposed by the linguistic theory of necessity, that project fails and must be
abandoned.
However, I disagree with the prevailing view’s assumption that those very same
considerations also undermine the analytic explanation of the a priori. For it seems to
me that an entirely distinct notion of analyticity underlies that explanation, a notion
that is epistemic in character. And in contrast with the metaphysical notion, the
epistemic notion can be defended, I think, provided that even a minimal realism
about meaning is true. I’m inclined to hold, therefore, that there can be no effective
Quinean critique of the a priori that does not ultimately depend on Quine’s radical
thesis of the indeterminacy of meaning, a thesis that, as I’ve stressed, many philo-
sophers continue to reject.
All of this is what I propose to argue in this paper. I should emphasize right at the
outset, however, that I am not a historian and my interest here is not historical. Think
of me rather as asking, on behalf of all those who continue to reject Quine’s later
skepticism about meaning, Can something like the analytic explanation of the a
priori be salvaged from the wreckage of the linguistic theory of necessity?
Occupying the other horn was the option of saying that Euclidean and
non-Euclidean geometries are talking about different geometrical properties—
attaching different meanings to, say, ‘distance’—and so not disagreeing after all.
But this option threatens the doctrine of Flash-Grasping. Suppose we grant that a
Euclidean and a non-Euclidean geometer attach different meanings to ‘distance’. In
what does the difference in the respective psychological states consist? Officially, of
course, the view is that one primitive state constitutes grasp of Euclidean distance,
and another that of non-Euclidean distance. But absent some further detail about
how to tell such states apart and the criteria that govern their attribution, this would
appear to be a hopelessly ad hoc and non-explanatory maneuver.
The important upshot of these considerations was to make plausible the idea that
grasp of the indefinables of geometry consists precisely in the adoption of one set of
truths involving them, as opposed to another. Applied to the case of logic, it generates
the semantical thesis that I shall call
Implicit Definition: It is by arbitrarily stipulating that certain sentences of logic are
to be true, or that certain inferences are to be valid, that we attach a meaning to the
logical constants. More specifically, a particular constant means that logical object, if
any, which makes valid a specified set of sentences and/or inferences involving it.
Now, the transition from this sort of Implicit Definition account of grasp, to the
analytic theory of the apriority of logic, can seem pretty immediate. For it would seem
that the following sort of argument is now in place:
. If logical constant C is to mean what it does, then argument-form A has to be
valid, for C means whatever logical object in fact makes A valid.
. C means what it does.
Therefore,
. A is valid.
I will return to various questions regarding this form of justification below.²⁷ For
now I want to worry about the fact that neither Carnap nor Wittgenstein was content
merely to replace Flash-Grasping with Implicit Definition. Typically, both writers
went on to embrace some form of antirealism about logic. Intuitively, the statements
of logic appear to be fully factual statements, expressing objective truths about the
world, even if necessary ones, and even if (on occasion) highly obvious ones. Both
Carnap and Wittgenstein, however, seemed inclined to deny such an intuitive realism
about logic, affirming in its place either the thesis of logical Non-Factualism or the
thesis of logical Conventionalism, or, on occasion, both theses at once.
By logical Non-Factualism,²⁸ I mean the view that the sentences of logic that
implicitly define the logical primitives do not express factual claims and, hence, are
not capable of genuine truth or falsity. How, on such a view, are we to think of their
semantic function? On the most popular version, we are to think of it as prescriptive,
as a way of expressing a rule concerning the correct use of logical expressions. By
contrast, logical Conventionalism is the view that, although the sentences of logic are
factual—although they can express truths—their truth values are not objective, but
are rather determined by our conventions.
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P. 48, l. 23: Taride.—Mss. A 1 à 6, 20 à 22: Tarde. Fº 112.—Mss. A
15 à 17: de la Taride. Fº 114.—Mss. A 11 à 14: de la Barde. Fº 107.
P. 48, l. 27: Richars.—Mss. A 20 à 22: Guichart. Fº 165 vº.
P. 49, l. 5: Boskentin.—Mss. A 1 à 6: Bosquetin. Fº 112.
P. 49, l. 5: Chastielneuf.—Mss. A 1 à 6: Neufchastel. Fº 112.
P. 49, l. 6: Chastielbon.—Mss. A 1 à 7, 11 à 14, 18 à 33:
Chastillon. Fº 112.
P. 49, l. 6: Lescun.—Mss. A 1 à 6, 18, 19: Lescoit. Fº 112.
P. 49, l. 8: restel.—Mss. A 1 à 7, 18, 19, 30 à 33: rastel, rastiel.
Fº 112.—Mss. A 8 à 17, 23 à 29: ratel. Fº 103.—Mss. A 20 à 22:
grosse trappe. Fº 165 vº.