Kant and the Analytic a Posteriori: A Discussion in Philosophy

[3skeletons]

I read over this stuff here & yeah i just watch dr jason j campbells video on the synthetic and the analytic and he and davey hume said analytic propositions are tautological, meaningless and true. so y u say no way jose? Isn't this view canonical ? Can you tell me what.s up with it not being tautological that you argue for here? Also what are the consequences in epistemology for the analytic a posterori if any?

[ianmathwiz7]

@1800cocaine I don't particularly care that much, but I would agree that it's kind of dumb, for a number of reasons.

[somcbean]

@1800cocaine that is to say, provided as a result of the contingency of a statement it remains that the predicate is contained in the subject, it is still an analytic statment. Regardless of whether contingency makes it susceptible to an addition of information, change in truth value, or evolution of definition or meaning.

[somcbean]

to those who mentioned Kripke, when Kripke talks about H20 = water he actually (to my knowledge) makes no reference to it being synthetic but rather says it is a necessary a posteriori identity relation - whether the necessity implies implies analycity or the a posteriori part implies syntheticity is not really the point of what Kripke is talking about :)

[ianmathwiz7]

(cont) having said that, your suggestion does sound interesting; I'll definitely look into it.

[ianmathwiz7]

@1800cocaine Analycity is defined by the relationship between subject and predicate, and it has been since Kant. If I can give an example of something that has the relationship such that the predicate concept refers to the subject concept, I've shown that it's analytic. When we're talking about necessary truths, I think we're talking about a priori ones. For example, mathematics is synthetic a priori, but still necessary. It's the a priori component that makes it necessary.

[ianmathwiz7]

@1800cocaine Yes, the a posteriori part's inductive.  If water were, say, HCl3 or something, then that would be analytic. Since analycity is not defined in terms of necessity, that doesn't undermine my thesis.

[ianmathwiz7]

@1800cocaine No, it doesn't. The law of identity is a component of analytic knowledge, but it can't do anything without the definitions to work with. The law of identity only works with statements of the form "x is x," since that's what the LOI is; e.g. "An unmarried man is an unmarried man." In order to translate "A bachelor is an unmarried man" into the LOI form, you have to know the definition of "bachelor," which is known a posteriori. And no, I don't care to back that up...

[ianmathwiz7]

(cont) since you haven't backed up your claim that it is relevant. How is the distinction between primary and secondary qualities at all relevant to the question of what goes into analytic knowledge? You're the one making the positive claim here.

See, you call me a "god awful jackass," but you've been so hypocritical in this discussion. You repeatedly ignore the justifications I give, and demand that I justify my claims, but you have yet to justify a single claim you've made.

[ianmathwiz7]

@1800cocaine A) you're not giving me an argument that it does have to be inductive, and you're the one who seems to be claiming that it is.

B) you're not giving me an argument deriving the a priori from the analytic, so your previous comment is rather hypocritical.

C) Corollary, your claims that my position is contradictory are unsupported.

[ianmathwiz7]

@1800cocaine No, or rather, I don't think it has to be inductive.

And you're still not getting what I said. You can't logically derive the concept "a priori" from the concept "analytic". Therefore, by definition, if all analytic knowledge were a priori, this could only be known synthetically.

[ianmathwiz7]

@1800cocaine Actually, I'm well aware of statements such as those; in fact, I explicitly stated that Kant thought that the analytic a posteriori was absurd. My goal, in part, in this video was to show that Kant was wrong, by giving examples of analytic propositions that require experience for their verification.

[ReasonsDialectic]

Saul A. Kripke makes a similar remark to yours, but in the context of the meaning of names. That is, he responds to the question of whether a name refers to a thing in the world or how we think of that thing. I recommend checking out the wiki on him. If your still interested, check out Naming and Necessity. That debate is an interesting one and it might help bolster your argument.

[ianmathwiz7]

@ReasonsDialectic Yeah; soon after I posted this video, someone else pointed me to Kripke's argument, as well as an argument by Putnam. I shall definitely look those two up as soon as I'm done with finals. Thanks!

[ianmathwiz7]

@1800cocaine (cont) Yes, by the way, I have heard of secondary qualities. What's your point? That some qualities are fundamental, and others are only the brain's interpretation of certain things, is completely irrelevant to how we know what words mean.

[ianmathwiz7]

@1800cocaine I never once mentioned the law of identity, anywhere in the video. The "this" that I mentioned was the analycity of a given proposition. In order to know that the predicate is contained in the concept of the subject, you have to know what the predicate and subject mean. This is known through the meaning of words, which is a posteriori. If there were no minds, not only would it be meaningless to say that a proposition is analytic, it would be outright false.

[ianmathwiz7]

@1800cocaine How about, instead of commenting as you watch the video, you watch the video and then comment? I explain exactly what I mean by that question, literally seconds later.

[ianmathwiz7]

@1800cocaine Sure. Try the introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason (page 6-7, in my version): the definition is that the subject and predicate are "explicative" to use a technical term; the predicate concept is contained in the subject concept. Nowhere in there is it mentioned that it must be a priori. This fact would, then, necessarily be synthetic, by virtue of the fact that the concept "a priori" is not contained in the concept "analytic".

[InvincibleNumanist]

This is really good, mate.

[ianmathwiz7]

@InvincibleNumanist Thanks.

[horseloverbouquet]

(2) here it goes: i give you a list X with rules Z to construct installation Y from parts W. it is only by the actual action process of xzyw that gives you the definition P its concept . P stands for xzyw and it is only possible to have justification of P's doxa by engagement in the experience. hence knowledge and action are known by its originator and this stand for a complete being, artist, designer. the only person who can act toward analytic a posteriori knowledge is the incomplete being.

[horseloverbouquet]

(1)analytic a posteriori is very simple concept once we make it into a closed system.

this isolation mechanism will frame the consecutive totality to this type of justification.

it is my theory that a first cause paradox and the linguistic community obfuscates its elided dimension which is tacit.

[AEVautomatic]

You didn't use your own words.

[ianmathwiz7]

@AEVautomatic Yeah, I did.

[Evaporator134a]

Sorry this is not interesting. You sound like a texbook. use your own words next time.

[ianmathwiz7]

@Evaporator134a Those were my own words. I was paraphrasing from a script that I'd written up, but I didn't parrot anything. If the arguments in the video are even used elsewhere, I don't know about them, and I came to them completely independently.

As for interesting, several people already disagree with you. I guess it's just in the eye of the beholder.

[AEVautomatic]

@ianmathwiz7 Maybe I prefer when you communicate in a technical way for online. this seems like a technical way for logic class. Don't know if you know the difference.

[ianmathwiz7]

@AEVautomatic Well, I *am* trying to get across a concept in logic (or epistemology), so no, I don't see the difference in this case.

[AEVautomatic]

@ianmathwiz7 And instead of saying whats up you say what other people said whats up.

[ianmathwiz7]

@AEVautomatic At the beginning, I gave an exposition of what other people said, and I criticized what someone else said in one of my arguments, but other than that, I have no idea what you're referring to.

[AEVautomatic]

@ianmathwiz7 I mean i've read this stuff but these people you cite too much didn't know what a cell phone is. You can probably do better yourself.

[ianmathwiz7]

@AEVautomatic The only time I really cited anyone was during the exposition at the beginning, and as a position to criticize during one of my arguments. I *did not* ever use any arguments by the people I cited in my own arguments.

[AEVautomatic]

@ianmathwiz7 You probably understand reality better than Kant did.

[ianmathwiz7]

@AEVautomatic Probably; what's the point?

[AEVautomatic]

@ianmathwiz7 My point is just that you don't have to say he said this he said that. Just say what it is man. Like i could say a toilet flushes or I could say so and so invented the toilet and he said it flushed. the former is just better man.

[ianmathwiz7]

@AEVautomatic For the umpteenth time, I only cited any other philosophers during the exposition, in order to provide the philosophical background for what I was saying. The important part of the video is the part that contains my arguments. In any case, I think the historical background is extremely interesting. If you don't agree, that's fine, but there are others who do.

[AEVautomatic]

@ianmathwiz7 ok then

[InvincibleNumanist]

@AEVautomatic

he had to provide the philosophical background because thats exactly what it was about. he had to talk about Kant. he was responding to someone else.

[Evaporator134a]

idk you didn't say the apple is always red. one could look it it as just saying the apples function is this way in some conditions. its just easier to say it is red even though in green light it might be brown.

[ianmathwiz7]

@Evaporator134a I'm not sure what exactly you're criticizing here; I was arguing that "is a fruit" is part of the definition of apple, while "is red" is not. The former is therefore analytic, the latter synthetic. The fact that green apples exist is proof of that. Your comment doesn't seem to weaken any of that.

[Evaporator134a]

give a skip ahead time for people already educated in this particular subject next time? Skip ahead to your views and past definitions.

[ianmathwiz7]

@Evaporator134a Done; thanks for the suggestion.

[anarchovendean]

I literally just got out of a philosophy of language exam dealing with Putnam and Kripke talking about something pretty similar, with the main difference being that statements such as "water is H2O" describe synthetic a posteriori truths that are nonetheless still necessary truths.

Anyway, if one defines analytic propositions as those whose denial would be a contradiction, then it would seem that everyone who theorized about the internal structure of water (cont-

[anarchovendean]

@anarchovendean -cont) prior to the discovery of the water molecule had been contradicting themselves. However "water is not-water" and "water is comprised of spherical atoms" (Democritus) seem to be rather different things.

However I am sympathetic towards the remarks at the end about the analytic-synthetic distinction not being substantial (or at the very least the terms are two sides of one scale, rather than two qualitatively different concepts)

[drjasonjcampbell]

And the suggestion to collapse the analytic into the synthetic, lol, blasphemy. I may have to do a video response to your video response. The analysis of the water molecule was very convincing, I think you were very successful in your efforts. I absolutely agree that the discussion should begin with the conditions of the possibility for conceptualizing the analytic a posterori. job well done!!

[ianmathwiz7]

@drjasonjcampbell Thanks a lot; I look forward to the video response!

[drjasonjcampbell]

5:42 analysis starts

12:46 Nice!!

WOW!!!