The Poverty of Conceptual Truth: Kant's Analytic/Synthetic Distinction and the Limits of Metaphysics

Oxford, England: Oxford University Press (2015)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

R. Lanier Anderson presents a new account of Kant's distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments, and provides it with a clear basis within traditional logic. He reconstructs compelling claims about the syntheticity of elementary mathematics, and re-animates Kant's arguments against traditional metaphysics in the Critique of Pure Reason

Categories

Keywords

Reprint years

2017

Call number

B2799.M5.A53 2015

ISBN(s)

0198801408   9780198724575   9780198801405   0198724578   9780191792199

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 91,349

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

My notes

Chapters

The Wolffian Paradigm

The logical ideas in Chapter 2 played a starring role in Wolff’s metaphysical system, which was an important source of their contemporary interest. For Wolff, logical form provides the decisive guide to the deep structure of the world. The true system of philosophy can be represented as a ... see more

Making Synthetic Judgments Analytic

This chapter explores Kant’s appeals to epistemological conceptions of the analytic and the synthetic in his unpublished Reflexionen of the late 1760s. That conception of analyticity proves to be vulnerable to the “recuperation strategy” discussed in Chapter 6, just as the essentially meth... see more

The Logic of Concepts and a “Two-Step” Syntheticity Argument

Kant insists that mathematics is synthetic, and if he is right, the dream of expressing all scientific knowledge via containment relations among concepts must fail. Recent scholars have explained Kant’s syntheticity claim by focusing on mathematical intuition, which is supposed to permit m... see more

The Master Argument

This chapter considers the “master argument” animating Kant’s critique of traditional metaphysics. Kant’s argument for the syntheticity of mathematics (explored in Chapters 8 and 9) demonstrates the expressive limits of mere concepts in a precise way. It thereby supplies suggestive materia... see more

The Soul and the World

This chapter explains the role of the master argument (described in Chapter 10) in Kant’s critiques of rational psychology (in the “Paralogisms”) and rational cosmology (in the “Antinomy”). In rational psychology, metaphysical reason fallaciously infers the existence of a substantial soul ... see more

Similar books and articles

Kant's Synthetic and Analytic Method in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Distinction between Philosophical and Mathematical Syntheses.Gabriele Gava - 2013 - European Journal of Philosophy 23 (3):728-749.
The analytic-synthetic distinction and the classical model of science: Kant, Bolzano and Frege.Willem R. de Jong - 2010 - Synthese 174 (2):237-261.
The synthetic a priori in Kant and German idealism.Seung-Kee Lee - 2009 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 91 (3):288-328.
The analytic-synthetic distinction and the classical model of science: Kant, Bolzano and Frege.Willem R. De Jong - 2010 - Synthese 174 (2):237 - 261.
A Kantian Response to Bolzano’s Critique of Kant’s Analytic-Synthetic Distinction.Nicholas F. Stang - 2012 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 85 (1):33-61.
Kant's syntheticity revisited by Peirce.Sun-joo Shin - 1997 - Synthese 113 (1):1-41.
Metaphysical Motives of Kant’s Analytic–Synthetic Distinction.Desmond Hogan - 2013 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 51 (2):267-307.
On an Analytic-Synthetic Distinction.Bruce Aune - 1972 - American Philosophical Quarterly 9 (3):235 - 242.
Analytic/synthetic.Richard Swinburne - 1984 - American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1):31 - 42.
Synthesis, Sensibility, and Kant's Philosophy of Mathematics.Carol A. van Kirk - 1986 - PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1986:135-144.
Science and the Synthetic Method of the Critique of Pure Reason.Melissa McBay Merritt - 2006 - Review of Metaphysics 59 (3):517-539.
A Critique of the Kantian View of Geometry.Allan F. Randall - unknown
How are Synthetic Judgments Possible A Priori?Seung-Kee Lee - 2008 - Proceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 16:171-180.
The underdetermination/indeterminacy distinction and the analytic/synthetic distinction.A. W. Moore - 1997 - Erkenntnis 46 (1):5-32.
Kant’s Conception of Analytic Judgment.Ian Proops - 2005 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (3):588–612.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-04-06

Downloads
36 (#431,270)

6 months
14 (#170,850)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

World and Logic.Jens Lemanski - 2021 - London, Vereinigtes Königreich: College Publications.
Can Metaphysics Become a Science for Kant?Gabriele Gava - 2023 - In Robb Dunphy & Toby Lovat (eds.), Metaphysics as a Science in Classical German Philosophy. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 150-166.
On the Necessity of the Categories.Anil Gomes, Andrew Stephenson & Adrian Moore - 2022 - Philosophical Review 131 (2):129–168.
Kant on the original synthesis of understanding and sensibility.Jessica J. Williams - 2018 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26 (1):66-86.
What a maker’s knowledge could be.Luciano Floridi - 2018 - Synthese 195 (1):465-481.

View all 25 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

The Senses and the Fleshless Eye: The Meditations as Cognitive Exercises.Gary Hatfield - 1986 - In Amelie Rorty (ed.), Essays on Descartes' Meditations. University of California Press. pp. 45–76.
The cognitive faculties.Gary Hatfield - 1998 - In Daniel Garber & Michael Ayers (eds.), The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. pp. 953–1002.

Add more references