Past exam of the philosophy of science supplementary subject of the University of Oxford / 2015 / 5 / Solution

The analytic-synthetic distinction is proposed as a distinction between kinds of truth, not as an empirical discovery about a particular substance or force. An analytic truth is supposed to hold through meaning and logic; a synthetic truth depends additionally on how the world is. The absence of a laboratory discovery establishing that division neither automatically refutes it nor grants it immunity from criticism. Its status depends on whether a clear and useful distinction can be specified.

Consider an explicitly defined language. Let $B(x)$ mean bachelor, $U(x)$ unmarried, and admit the meaning postulateEvery interpretation admitted by that rule makes the sentence true. This is a precise relative notion of analyticity: the rule helps determine what the symbols mean. By contrast, a claim about how many people satisfy $B$ requires information about the population. The latter is not made true merely by adopting a vocabulary. Rudolf Carnap's meaning postulates explain how a chosen language can impose such semantic constraints without reducing every analytic sentence to a visible repetition of its subject.^[ref]

Two further distinctions must be kept separate. Analyticity concerns meaning and truth conditions; knowing something independently of a particular empirical investigation concerns justification. Necessity concerns whether it could have been otherwise. Treating these as interchangeable would assume rather than establish the most controversial part of the account. Even a conventional choice of language can generate nontrivial consequences whose derivation requires considerable reasoning.

Willard Van Orman Quine challenges a sharp, framework-independent boundary. An explanation of analyticity by synonymy may presuppose analyticity when explaining what counts as genuine synonymy. A dictionary records accepted usage; it does not independently establish why substitution preserves truth by meaning alone. The wider argument rejects the assumption that each empirical sentence confronts experience in isolation. Definitions, background assumptions and substantive claims work together in an evidential system. This is a philosophical criticism of proposed accounts, not an experimental finding that two previously measurable truth-types are physically identical.^[ref]

For philosophy of science, the important consequence is that neither logic nor observation should be credited with doing the other's work. In Euclidean geometry, a conclusion can follow from specified axioms; whether physical space satisfies the relevant geometry is a separate issue. Similarly, defining momentum as $mv$ in a model does not alone establish that this quantity is conserved in every physical interaction. A formal relation can be fixed by stipulation while the model's applicability remains empirical.

The best position is therefore neither that science has discovered an absolute cleavage nor that all useful distinctions disappear if an absolute cleavage fails. Analyticity relative to explicit rules is intelligible; an unrevisable division of all scientific language requires further argument. Scientific practice can retain definitions, deduction and a distinction between stipulation and measurement while allowing revision of frameworks and rejecting a simple separation of completely theory-free observations from an eternally fixed conceptual scheme.