Cogprints

Psychosemantic analyticity

Horsey, Richard (2001) Psychosemantic analyticity. [Journal (On-line/Unpaginated)]

Full text available as:

[img]
Preview
 PDF
141Kb

Abstract

It is widely agreed that the content of a logical concept such as and is constituted by the inferences it enters into. I argue that it is impossible to draw a principled distinction between logical and non-logical concepts, and hence that the content of non-logical concepts can also be constituted by certain of their inferential relations. The traditional problem with such a view has been that, given Quine’s arguments against the analytic-synthetic distinction, there does not seem to be any way to distinguish between those inferences that are content constitutive and those that are not. I propose that such a distinction can be drawn by appealing to a notion of ‘psychosemantic analyticity’. This approach is immune to Quine’s arguments, since ‘psychosemantic analyticity’ is a psychological property, and it is thus an empirical question which inferences have this property.

Item Type:Journal (On-line/Unpaginated)
Keywords:logical vocabulary analyticity
Subjects:Philosophy > Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy > Logic
Linguistics > Pragmatics
ID Code:3254
Deposited By: Horsey, Richard
Deposited On:29 Oct 2003
Last Modified:11 Mar 2011 08:55

References in Article

Select the SEEK icon to attempt to find the referenced article. If it does not appear to be in cogprints you will be forwarded to the paracite service. Poorly formated references will probably not work.

Block, N. (1993) Holism, Hyper-analyticity and hyper-compositionality. Mind and Language, 8: 1–26.

Boghossian, P. A. (1993) Does an inferential role semantics rest upon a mistake? Mind and Language, 8: 27–40.

Boghossian, P. A. (1994) Inferential role semantics and the analytic/synthetic distinction. Philosophical Studies, 73: 109–122.

Boghossian, P. A. (1997) Analyticity. In B. Hale & C. Wright (eds) A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, 331–368. Oxford: Blackwell.

Fodor, J. A. (1975) The Language of Thought. New York: Crowell.

Fodor, J. A. (1987) Psychosemantics. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Fodor, J. A. (1994) The Elm and the Expert: Mentalese and its Semantics. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Fodor, J. A., M. F. Garrett, E. C. T. Walker & C. H. Parkes (1980) Against definitions. Cognition, 8: 263–367.

Fodor, J. A. & E. Lepore (1991) Why meaning (probably) isn’t conceptual role. Mind and Language, 6: 328–343.

Horwich, P. (1992) Chomsky versus Quine on the analytic–synthetic distinction. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 92: 95–108.

Horwich, P. (1998) Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Quine, W. V. O. (1935/1966) Truth by convention. In Quine 1966: 77–106.

Quine, W. V. O. (1953) Two dogmas of empiricism. In From a Logical Point of View, 20–46. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Quine, W. V. O. (1954/1966) Carnap and logical truth. In Quine 1966: 107–132.

Quine, W. V. O. (1966) The Ways of Paradox. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Sperber, D. & D. Wilson (1995) Relevance, 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell.

Metadata

Repository Staff Only: item control page

Cogprints is powered by EPrints 3 which is developed by the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. More information and software credits.