scholarly journals Truth and justification for deductive systems: on the primary postulates and analyticity of justification

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 26-40
Author(s):  
Valentin N. Karpovich
Keyword(s):  
Existence And Uniqueness ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Definite Descriptions ◽  
Modern Logic ◽  
Traditional Logic ◽  
Deductive Systems ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Synthetic A Priori

The concept of analyticity plays an important role in establishing truths. Both in the traditional logic of terms and modern logic of predicates, similar approaches are used to reconstruct the idea of reliable substantiation. Kant used the categories of synthetic a priori, Frege relied on the features of terms (individual constants and functions) to formulate the conditions for the application of definitions. As a result, primary statements as the beginning for substantiation presuppose the existence and uniqueness of a defined subject (definite descriptions), similar to the localization of objects in space and time by Kant’s synthetic apriori judgments.

Reichenbach, Hans (1891–1953)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wesley C. Salmon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Philosophy Of Physics ◽  
Theory Of Relativity ◽  
Sense Experience ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
The World ◽  
Synthetic A Priori ◽  
And Mathematics

Philosophy of science flourished in the twentieth century, partly as a result of extraordinary progress in the sciences themselves, but mainly because of the efforts of philosophers who were scientifically knowledgeable and who remained abreast of new scientific achievements. Hans Reichenbach was a pioneer in this philosophical development; he studied physics and mathematics in several of the great German scientific centres and later spent a number of years as a colleague of Einstein in Berlin. Early in his career he followed Kant, but later reacted against his philosophy, arguing that it was inconsistent with twentieth-century physics. Reichenbach was not only a philosopher of science, but also a scientific philosopher. He insisted that philosophy should adhere to the same standards of precision and rigour as the natural sciences. He unconditionally rejected speculative metaphysics and theology because their claims could not be substantiated either a priori, on the basis of logic and mathematics, or a posteriori, on the basis of sense-experience. In this respect he agreed with the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle, but because of other profound disagreements he was never actually a positivist. He was, instead, the leading member of the group of logical empiricists centred in Berlin. Although his writings span many subjects Reichenbach is best known for his work in two main areas: induction and probability, and the philosophy of space and time. In the former he developed a theory of probability and induction that contained his answer to Hume’s problem of the justification of induction. Because of his view that all our knowledge of the world is probabilistic, this work had fundamental epistemological significance. In philosophy of physics he offered epoch-making contributions to the foundations of the theory of relativity, undermining space and time as Kantian synthetic a priori categories.

Modern Logic and the Synthetic A Priori

1949 ◽  
Vol 46 (8) ◽  
pp. 243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irving M. Copi
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Modern Logic ◽  
Synthetic A Priori

Coincidences and Konstatierungen. Aspects of Methodological Creativity in Schlick's Science-Oriented Philosophizing

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Ingolf Max
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Space Time ◽  
Theory Of Relativity ◽  
General Theory Of Relativity ◽  
Rudolf Carnap ◽  
Relativity And Gravitation ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Synthetic A Priori

Moritz Schlick (1882–1936)—the integrating figure of the Vienna Circle—is an inspiring thinker who philosophizes in the immediate vicinity of contemporary physics in particular and other empirical sciences including psychology as well as ethics. In the context of interpreting Einstein’s (general) theory of relativity he wrote his „Space and time in contemporary physics, an introduction to the theory of relativity and gravitation“ [“Raum und Zeit in der gegenwärtigen Physik: zur Einführung in das Verständnis der Relativitäts- und Gravitations­theorie”]—first published in 1917. Schlick developed his conception of space-time coincidences of events. For the second edition he added the new chapter “X. Relations to Philosophy” using coincidences methodologically to connect terms which belong to different spaces of meaning. Starting in 1934—in the context of the debate on protocol sentences mainly with Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap—he offered his approach of Konstatierungen[1] to answer the question: “What is to be regarded as our fundament of knowledge?” I will shortly discuss Schlick’s term coincidence, move on to Konstatierungen and show some interrelations between them. I will argue for the methodological creativity in Schlick’s science-oriented philosophizing by explicating the inner structure of Konstatierungen within my 2-dimensional language of analysis. Finally, I will compare Schlick’s Konstatierungen with Kant’s synthetic a priori judgments and Frege’s thoughts as interrelated cases of two-dimensionally structured intermediate cases.

Self and Selves

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph C.S. Walker
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Synthetic A Priori

Kant is committed to the reality of a subject self, outside time but active in forming experience. Timeless activity is problematic, but that can be dealt with. But he holds that the subject of experience is not an object of experience, so nothing can be known about it; this raises a problem about the status of his own theory. But he ought to allow that we can know of its existence and activity, as preconditions of experience: the Critique allows that synthetic a priori truths can be known in this way. However, its identity conditions remain unknowable. Kant’s unity of apperception shares much with Locke’s continuity of consciousness, but does not determine the identity of a thing. Personal identity is bodily identity. Only Kant’s moral philosophy justifies recognizing other selves; it could warrant ascribing a similar status to animals.

The Logicism of Frege, Dedekind, and Russell

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Demopoulos ◽  
Peter Clark
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
The Core ◽  
Common Thread ◽  
Synthetic A Priori ◽  
The Common

This article is organized around logicism's answers to the following questions: What is the basis for our knowledge of the infinity of the numbers? How is arithmetic applicable to reality? Why is reasoning by induction justified? Although there are, as is seen in this article, important differences, the common thread that runs through all three of the authors discussed in this article their opposition to the Kantian thesis that reflection on reasoning with mere concepts (i.e., without attention to intuitions formed a priori) can never succeed in providing satisfactory answers to these three questions. This description of the core of the view differs from more usual formulations which represent the opposition to Kant as an opposition to the contention that mathematics in general, and arithmetic in particular, are synthetic a priori rather than analytic.

Ursprünge transzendentaler Ästhetik. Zum Wandel von Kants Raum- und Zeitargumentation von derInauguraldissertation zurKritik

Kant-Studien ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 111 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-385
Author(s):  
Christian Martin
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Representations Of Space ◽  
Widespread View

AbstractAccording to a widespread view, the essentials of Kant’s critical conception of space and time as set forth in the Transcendental Aesthetic can already be found in his 1770 Inaugural Dissertation. Contrary to this assumption, the present article shows that Kant’s later arguments for the a priori intuitive character of our original representations of space and time differ crucially from those contained in the Dissertation. This article highlights profound differences between Kant’s transcendental and his pre-critical conception of pure sensibility by systematically comparing the topic, method and argumentation of the First Critique with that of the Inaugural Dissertation. It thus contributes to a better understanding of the Transcendental Aesthetics itself, which allows one to distinguish its peculiar transcendental mode of argumentation from considerations made by the pre-critical Kant, with which it can easily be conflated.

Three Kantian Routes to the Synthetic A Priori

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Robert Audi
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Insufficient Attention ◽  
Synthetic A Priori ◽  
The One ◽  
Philosophical Importance

Abstract Kant influentially distinguished analytic from synthetic a priori propositions, and he took certain propositions in the latter category to be of immense philosophical importance. His distinction between the analytic and the synthetic has been accepted by many and attacked by others; but despite its importance, a number of discussions of it since at least W. V. Quine’s have paid insufficient attention to some of the passages in which Kant draws the distinction. This paper seeks to clarify what appear to be three distinct conceptions of the analytic (and implicitly of the synthetic) that are presented in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and in some other Kantian texts. The conceptions are important in themselves, and their differences are significant even if they are extensionally equivalent. The paper is also aimed at showing how the proposed understanding of these conceptions—and especially the one that has received insufficient attention from philosophers—may bear on how we should conceive the synthetic a priori, in and beyond Kant’s own writings.

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