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3 Metaphysical Conceptions of Analyticity

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“Philosophical questions are more conceptual in nature than those of other disciplines”: that can easily pass for a statement of the obvious.¹ Many philosophers consciously seek conceptual connections, conceptual necessities, conceptual truths, conceptual analyses. In effect, they present themselves as seeking far more general and less obvious analogues of “Vixens are female foxes.” The suggestion is that an armchair methodology is appropriate to their quest because it concerns truths in some sense less substantial, less world-involving than those of other disciplines: in Humean terms, relations of ideas rather than matters of fact. Our conceptual or linguistic competence, retained in the armchair, is to suffice for a priori knowledge of the relevant truths.

      As already argued, philosophical truths are not generally truths about words or concepts. However, analytic truths are not supposed to be always about words or concepts, even if words or concepts are supposed to play a special role in explaining their truth. The sentence “Vixens are female foxes” is in no useful sense about the word “vixen” or any other words; it is about vixens, if anything. Its meaning is not to be confused with that of the metalinguistic sentence “ ‘Vixens are female foxes’ is true.” Similarly, the thought vixens are female foxes is not about the concept vixen or any other concepts; it too is about vixens, if anything. It is not to be confused with the metaconceptual thought the thought VIXENS ARE FEMALE FOXES is true.

      How can a sentence which comes as close as “Vixens are female foxes” does to being a definition of “vixen” be about vixens rather than about the word “vixen”? Uttering it in response to the question “What does ‘vixen’ mean?” normally enables the questioner to work out the answer to the question, by pragmatic reasoning, even though the literal meaning of the sentence does not directly answer the question, just as does uttering “That is a gnu” while pointing at one in answer to the question “What does ‘gnu’ mean?.” If core philosophical truths are analytic, they may exhibit significant features of words or concepts without describing them.

      Does the conception of philosophical truths as analytic or conceptual vindicate a form of the linguistic or conceptual turn without misrepresenting the subject matter of philosophy as itself linguistic or conceptual? The case study in the previous chapter gave no support to such a conjecture. Nevertheless, let us examine the matter more systematically.

      Many philosophically relevant truths are clearly not conceptual truths in any useful sense. For instance, in arguing against subjective idealism, a defender of common sense metaphysics says that there was a solar system millions of years before there was sentient life. Similarly, a defender of common sense epistemology says that he knows that he has hands; that he knows that he has hands is no conceptual truth, for it is consistent with all conceptual truths that he lost them in a nasty accident. Some philosophers of time argue that not only the present exists by appeal to Special Relativity. Philosophers of mind and language dispute whether there is a language of thought; whatever the answer, it is no conceptual truth. Naturalists and anti-naturalists dispute whether there is only what there is in space and time; again, the answer is unlikely to be a conceptual truth. Moral and political philosophers and philosophers of art appeal to empirically discovered human cognitive limitations, and so on. Such philosophical arguments cannot be dismissed on general methodological grounds. One must engage with them on their merits, in the normal way of philosophy.

      Despite such examples, philosophy may be thought to have a central core of truths which are all conceptual; perhaps the rest of philosophy counts as such through its relation to the central core. Let us charitably read this restriction into the appeal to analyticity or conceptual truth in the epistemology of philosophy.

      Notoriously, the idea of analyticity has been under a cloud ever since Quine argued that “a boundary between analytic and synthetic statements simply has not been drawn” (1951: 34). Nevertheless, the idea is still active in contemporary philosophy, often under the less provocative guise of “conceptual truth.” The terms “analytic” and “conceptual” will henceforth be used interchangeably.

Quine’s arguments are generally found much less compelling than they once appeared. Although he may succeed in showing that “analytic” is caught in a circle with other semantic terms, such as “synonymous,” he does not adequately motivate his jump from that point to the conclusion that the terms in the circle all lack scientific respectability, as opposed to the contrary conclusion that they all have it. Given any science, someone may insist that it define its terms, and the terms used to define them, and so on until it is driven round in a circle. By itself, that hardly demonstrates the illegitimacy of the science. Every discipline must use undefined terms somewhere or other. “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” does not explain why we should regard the undefined terms of semantics as worse off than the undefined terms of other disciplines, except by dogmatic charges of unclarity. After all, semantics is now a thriving branch of empirical linguistics. It is not to be trashed without very good reason.²

      Some terms may be so unclear by ordinary working standards that no circle of definitions will render them scientifically useful. But semantic terms are not like that. By ordinary working standards, the word “synonymous” is quite clear enough to be useful. Although it is not perfectly precise – surely it

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