Abstracts

Epistemic Analyticity and Intuition
Paul Boghossian

This talk will explore the relations between the notions of analyticity and intuition.  Can we explain our a priori knowledge of certain propositions exclusively in terms of our grasp of those propositions, or must we also call upon the notion of intuition?    

Inferentialism and Understanding
Julien Murzi & Florian Steinberger    

In recent publications, Timothy Williamson (2003, 2006, 2007) has influentially argued against criterial accounts of understanding — accounts according to which a subject understands an expression only if she is disposed to use it according to the rules for its correct use. He presents a series of putative counterexamples: competent speakers who understand a given expression while at the same time rejecting some of the basic rules for its correct use. The counterexamples are meant to cast doubts on inferentialist accounts of understanding and, more generally, on key notions such as epistemic analyticity and a priori knowledge. We argue that Williamson’s counterexamples are only apparent. 
Works cited
Williamson, T., 2003. Blind reasoning: understanding and inference. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 77(1), 249–293.
Williamson, T., 2006. Conceptual truth, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 80, 1–41.
Williamson, T., 2007. The Philosophy of Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Understanding De Iure Coreference
Manuel García-Carpintero    

Several philosophers (Perry 1988, Fine 2007, Heck 2012) have pointed out that the difference between statements formalized as a = a and those formalized as a = b lies in that the latter state the obtaining a relation of de facto or external coreference, while the former presuppose one of de iure or internal coreference, expressed in natural languages by relations of anaphoric dependence; the same can be said about other cases used to pose Frege's puzzles, such as the validity of 'Hesperus is a planet, therefore Hesperus is a planet or a star' vs. the non-validity of 'Hesperus is a planet, vs. Phosphorus is a planet or a star'. Relations of de iure coreference are usually picked out by appeals to the understanding (Schroeter 2007, Fine 2007, Pinillos 2011), and they are to be counted as analytic under a natural characterization of that notion. In my paper, I will discuss some questions raised about analyticity and the a priori around these issues: (i) I will engage arguments by Fine (2007) and Heck (2012) that Fregean senses are not needed to account for de iure coreference, and by Pinillos (2011) that they are unable to explain them; (ii) I will examine Schroeter (2012) arguments that two-dimensional semantics, in its different varieties, cannot account for de iure coreference, and (iii) I will offer the present discussion to provide further reasons in favor of what Peacocke (2004) calls a "metasemantic" account of aprioricity.
Works cited:
Fine, Kit (2007). Semantic Relationalisms, Oxford: Blackwell.
Heck, Richard G. Jr. (2012). “Solving Frege’s Puzzle,” Journal of Philosophy 109, 132-174.
Perry, John (1988). “Cognitive Significance and New Theories of Reference”, Noûs 22, 1-18.
Peacocke, Christopher (2004). The Realm of Reason, Oxford: Oxford University Press.   
Pinillos, N. Ángel (2011). “Coreference and Meaning”, Philosophical Studies 154: 301-324.
Schroeter, Laura (2007). “The Illusion of Transparency”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85, 597-618.
Schroeter, Laura (2012). “Bootstrapping Our Way to Samesaying”, Synthese Online First, DOI 10.1007/s11229-012-0099-6.    

The Significance of Epistemic Analyticity
Magdalena Balcerak Jackson

While broadly Quinean concerns have led many to abandon the metaphysical conception of analyticity, philosophers continue to embrace the epistemic conception of analyticity, following Boghossian. On the epistemic conception of analyticity a true thought is analytic if and only if understanding it puts one in a position to know it. On the standard elaboration some thoughts are epistemically analytic because they are such that whoever understands the relevant concepts and the way they are composed assents to them, or is at least in some robust sense disposed to assent to them. The epistemic conception of analyticity has gained popularity because it offers the chance to explain (some) a priori knowledge, in particular a priori knowledge that is the goal of philosophical enquiry. The crucial question any epistemic conception has to answer is the question what it takes to understand concepts and thoughts. In this paper, I want to present a dilemma for an epistemic account of analyticity: If we construe understanding thinly – such that being able to communicate with a word within a relevant linguistic community suffices for understanding the concepts the word expresses - we get a defensible conception of analyticity that is grounded in linguistic/semantic considerations, but one that is only able to account for trivial a priori knowledge. If we construe understanding thickly – as everything that a rational subject needs to be able to do to apply her concepts to actual and hypothetical cases – then we plausibly do get non-trivial analytic truths, but it becomes unclear whether analyticity can explain a priority rather than the other way around.

Bolzano’s Definition of Analytic Propositions
Bob Hale

As is well known, Bolzano’s definition of logically analytic propositions anticipates by more than 100 years the definition of logical truth given by Quine, according to which a true statement is logically true if it contains only logical words essentially. Starting with Frege, modern explanations of analyticity have taken logical truth as the starting point, and sought to explain a more inclusive notion of analytic truth in terms of it. Part of the interest of Bolzano’s definition of analyticity is that it reverses this procedure – logical analyticity is for him a special case of a more general notion. This promises to avoid some obvious shortcomings of the Frege-Quine approach. But it runs quickly into some seemingly fatal objections. This paper explores the possibility of modifying Bolzano’s definition to overcome these objections, and suggests that, while a very considerable departure from anything that he could reasonably be taken to have intended is required, there remains an essential core of his approach which can enrich and advance our understanding of analyticity.   

Analyticity and the Epistemology of Logic
Gillian Russell

Recent work on analyticity distinguishes two kinds, metaphysical and epistemic.  I’ll argue that the distinction allows for a new view in the philosophy of logic according to which the claims of logic are metaphysically analytic and have distinctive modal profiles, even though their epistemology is holist and in many ways rather Quinean. I’ll argue that such a view combines some of the more attractive aspects of the Carnapian and Quinean approaches to logic, whilst avoiding some famous problems.

Concepts and Epistemic Normativity Beyond Revisability and Conceptual Change
Gurpreet Rattan 

Quine’s arguments in the final two sections of ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ bring semantic and epistemic concerns into spectacular collision. Many have thought that the arguments succeed in irreparably smashing a conception of a distinctively analytic and a priori philosophy to pieces. In Constructing the World (OUP, 2012), David Chalmers argues that much of this distinctively analytical and a priori conception of philosophy can be reconstructed, with Quine’s criticisms leaving little lasting damage. I agree with Chalmers that Quine’s arguments do not have the lasting damage some take them to have. However, I do not think that Chalmers has succeeded in explaining why. The core of Chalmers’s error lies in the rational dispositionalism that forms the metasemantics of his Carnapian intensional semantics. Responding to Quine requires recognizing a conception of both concepts and epistemic normativity that goes beyond the opposition between rational revisability and conceptual change that Chalmers brings to bear on Quine. I explain this expanded conception of concepts and epistemic normativity in terms of another fundamental aim of Constructing the World, namely that of providing an account of Fregean sense.    

Grounding and Metaphysical Analyticity
David Liggins

Paul Boghossian (1997: 334–5) distinguishes two notions of analytic truth. A truth is epistemologically analytic if mere grasp of its meaning justifies one in believing it; metaphysically analytic if it is true in virtue of its meaning alone. At the time of ‘Two Dogmas’, precise discussion of the notion of one thing being the case in virtue of another was hard to come by. In contrast, there is currently an explosion of work on this topic, much of it sparked off by Rosen (2010). In this ‘plea for ideological toleration’, Rosen argues that we have no reason to avoid using the notion in philosophical theorizing: the tendency to avoid it in our most careful statements is a mistake. I will assume that Rosen is right. One of the starting-points of this literature is the idea that ‘in virtue of’ connections cannot be understood in purely modal terms. As Fine (1995) emphasizes, the dependence of Socrates’ singleton on Socrates is more than a merely modal matter: the modal connection between the two is symmetrical – necessarily, the existence of one suffices for the existence of the other – but the ‘in virtue of’ connections is not: it is not the case that Socrates exists in virtue of his singleton (or in virtue of his singleton’s existence). In what follows, I assume that ‘in virtue of’ connections cannot be understood in purely modal terms, and I revisit a celebrated argument about metaphysical analyticity in the light of this. According to Boghossian, Quine refuted the idea that there are metaphysical analyticities; indeed, Boghossian claims that this refutation is one of Quine’s most significant achievements. Accordingly, Boghossian presents a Quine-inspired argument against the existence of metaphysical analyticities. I will argue that Boghossian’s argument is not entirely successful, because it avoids the notion of ‘in virtue of’ – and that, once we allow ourselves to reply on that notion (as Rosen recommends), the argument is repaired. My objective, then, is to join Boghossian in the task of articulating and defending Quine’s insight. Having repaired the argument, I show how it can be defended from two objections.
Works cited
Boghossian, Paul 1997. Analyticity. In Bob Hale and Crispin Wright (eds) A Companion to the Philosophy of Language. Oxford: Blackwell: 331–368.
Fine, Kit 1995. Ontological dependence. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 95: 269–290.
Rosen, Gideon 2010. Metaphysical dependence: grounding and reduction. In Bob Hale and Aviv Hoffmann (eds) Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford University Press).