Recovering a Kantian analytic/synthetic distinction through incompatibility
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation seeks to recover a viable analytic/synthetic distinction that retains a distinctly Kantian heritage. It is formulated with distinctly metametaphysical intent, to be part of another philosophical project that Kant initiated: the critique of metaphysics. In my view, to take or treat a claim as analytic is to, at least implicitly, to undertake a commitment to its being deducible merely from our commitments about object-general, non-localized incompatibility and entailments claims; to treat a claim as synthetic is, at least implicitly, to undertake an implicit commitment to its not being so deducible. The account of the analytic/synthetic divide I provide is cleaved in terms of alethically modal concepts which, traditionally, have been seen as metaphysically-loaded and hence problematic for my purposes. This is because the dominant philosophical tradition for understanding alethic modality rests its account on the metaphysically and epistemically fraught notion of a continuum of inter-accessible possible worlds. To avoid this, my account draws on resources found in Robert Brandom's incompatibility semantics, which offers an alternative account of necessity and possibility in terms of the less-problematic notion of incompatibility (Brandom 2008). My appropriation of Brandom's incompatibility semantics incorporates several changes. First, I reinterpret Brandom's semantics using an intensional notion of schematic generality, which helps me to clarify the semantic interdependence of general and particular therein and resolve several epistemological and methodological concerns. I also discuss the complicating factor of nonmonotonicity by reference to the Michael Thompson's work on "natural-historical judgments" (2008), showing how the generality and modality expressed in nonmonotonic, modally-sophisticated claims can fit within my revised understanding of incompatibility semantics and the analytic/synthetic divide. Next, I modify Brandom's incompatibility semantics by formally extending it to equal the expressive power of Kripke Semantics by incorporating an analog of accessibility relations therein, and thereby rectifying formal and intuitive impoverishments of Brandom's formalism. I also provide an interpretation of what accessibility relations, transposed into incompatibility semantics, can be taken to mean by invoking a logical notion of meta-compatibility, and I provide a pragmatic explication of what linguistic practitioners must do in order to take or treat matters as meta-compatible.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2016 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Lewin, Micah |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Philosophy. |
| Primary advisor | Taylor, Kenneth Allen, 1954-2019 |
| Thesis advisor | Taylor, Kenneth Allen, 1954-2019 |
| Thesis advisor | Crimmins, Mark |
| Thesis advisor | Lawlor, Krista |
| Advisor | Crimmins, Mark |
| Advisor | Lawlor, Krista |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Micah Lewin. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Philosophy. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2016. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2016 by Micah Todd Lewin
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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