Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

It is often hinted that the difficulty in separating analytic statements from synthetic ones in ordinary language is due to the vagueness of ordinary language and that the distinction is clear when we have a precise artificial language with explicit "semantical rules.

For artificial languages and semantical rules we look naturally to the writings of Carnap.

His semantical rules take various forms, and to make my point I shall have to distinguish certain of the forms.

Let us suppose, to begin with, an artificial language L0 whose semantical rules have the form explicitly of a specification, by recursion or otherwise, of all the analytic statements of L0.

Let us then turn to a second form of semantical rule, which says not that such and such statements are analytic but simply that such and such statements are included among the truths.

A semantical rule of this second type, a rule of truth, is not supposed to specify all the truths of the language; it merely stipulates, recursively or otherwise, a certain multitude of statements which, along with others unspecified, are to count as true.

Derivatively, afterward, analyticity can be demarcated thus: a statement is analytic if it is (not merely true but) true according to the semantical rule.

Instead of appealing to an unexplained word 'analytic,' we are now appealing to an unexplained phrase 'semantical rule.'

Not every true statement which says that the statements of some class are true can count as a semantical rule -- otherwise all truths would be "analytic" in the sense of being true according to semantical rules.

Semantical rules are distinguishable, apparently, only by the fact of appearing on a page under the heading 'Semantical Rules'; and this heading is itself then meaningless.