On the meaning of EPR’s Reality Criterion

This essay has two main claims about EPR’s Reality Criterion. First, we claim that the application of the Reality Criterion makes an essential difference between the EPR argument and Einstein’s later arguments against quantum mechanics. We show that while the EPR argument, making use of the Reality Criterion, does derive that certain interpretations of quantum mechanics are incomplete, Einstein’s later arguments, making no use of the Reality Criterion, do not prove incompleteness, but rather point to the inadequacy of the Copenhagen interpretation. We take this fact as an indication that the Reality Criterion is a crucial, indispensable component of the incompleteness argument(s). The second claim is more substantive. We argue that the Reality Criterion is a special case of the Common Cause Principle. Finally, we relate this proposal to Tim Maudlin’s recent assertion that the Reality Criterion is an analytic truth.

Bolzano’s Definition of Analytic Propositions with Crispin Wright

The chapter begins by drawing attention to some drawbacks of the Frege-Quine definition of analytic truth. With this the definition of analytic propositions given by Bolzano in his Wissenschaftslehre is contrasted. If Bolzano’s definition is viewed, as Bolzano himself almost certainly did not view it, as attempting to capture the notion of analyticity as truth-in-virtue-of-meaning, which occupied centre stage during the first half of the last century and which, Quine’s influential assault on it notwithstanding, continues to attract philosophical attention, it runs into some very serious problems. It is argued that Bolzano’s central idea can, nevertheless, be used as the basis of a new definition which avoids these problems and possesses definite advantages over the Frege-Quine approach.

To believe is to believe true

It is argued that to believe is to believe true. That is, when one believes a proposition one thereby believes the proposition to be true. This is a point about what it is to believe rather than about the aim of belief or the standard of correctness for belief. The point that to believe is to believe true appears to be an analytic truth about the concept of belief. It also appears to be essential to the state of belief that to believe is to believe true. This is not just a contingent fact about our ordinary psychology, since even a non-ordinary believer must believe a proposition that they believe to be true. Nor is the idea that one may accept a theory as empirically adequate rather than as true a counter-example, since such acceptance combines belief in the truth of the observational claims of a theory with suspension of belief with respect to the non-observational claims of a theory. Nor is the fact that to believe is to believe true to be explained in terms of an inference governed by the T-scheme from the belief that P to the belief that P is true, since there is no inference from the former to the latter. To believe that P just is to believe that P is true.

Quine and the Species Problem

The goal of this and subsequent chapters is to convince the reader that there is a significant analogy between biological entities like species, clades, and population lineages and linguistic and semantic ones such as words, meanings, concepts, and languages. This chapter’s first sections review some obvious facts about language communities and speakers and some elementary facts about the ways biology thinks about species, and points out that there is indeed a prima facie case for thinking that things like word meanings are analogous to species. The chapter’s later sections argue that if we take the analogy at face value, we can embrace Quine’s conclusion in ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’—that there is no theoretically interesting notion of analytic truth, no sort of synonymy that can do epistemological work—while still thinking that the notion of meaning can carry a real theoretical load.

The Truth in Modalism

This chapter takes up two further issues about Frege’s attitude towards modality. First, Frege doesn’t simply reject the relativization of truth. He gives amodalist explanations of linguistic phenomena that seem to show that truth is relative to time, and of talk of truth in various circumstances. Second, Frege’s truth-absolutism is not incompatible with two analyses of modality prominent in the history of philosophy: in terms of a priori knowledge and in terms of analytic truth. But Frege construes apriority and analyticity in logical terms. Thus, ultimately, Frege’s view is that if there are any modal distinctions, they amount to nothing more than logical distinctions. An interesting consequence of Frege’s accounts of apriority, analyticity, and modality is that they allow not only for synthetic a priori truths, but also necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori truths.

Die Dichotomie analytisch-synthetisch bei Frege unter Berücksichtigung von Kant

I begin by commenting on Kant’s conception of analytic judgements. I then turn to Frege’s notion of analyticity. I argue that his definition of analytic truth in terms of provability from logical axioms and definitions is incomplete. The requisite analyticity of the logical axioms and the definitions, and accordingly the required justification of acknowledging them as true, must be explained in a non-deductive way. I further argue that analyticity in terms of deductive proof deviates significantly from Kant’s conception of analytic judgements. I conclude with two case studies. The first concerns Frege’s attempted justification of the synthetic nature of the geometrical axioms. The second deals with Hume’s Principle, which in his logicist project Frege must establish as an analytic truth.