[hist-analytic] The Annals of Analysis

[Jlsperanza at aol.com]

Analytic Analysandum -- Analysans
Sorry for the mouthful of philosopher's worst jargonese, but it does sound  
more 'pro' than "Davies and his ilk".
 
"Analysandum", is that a word? That would suggest a Latin verb,  "analysare'! 
Although not necessarily. We can assume that -andum and -ans are  productive 
conjugational expressions that apply directly to the English verb,  'analyse'. 
 The OED first cites Hodgson for 'analysans' in 1907. The first  quote for 
analysans includes also analysans and is dated 1944 (_Mind_ article).  All 
below. M. K. Davies, and his trend. 

In a message dated 1/28/2009  7:14:16 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, 
danny.frederick at tiscali.co.uk  writes:

>Third, I can suggest a text to consult about the issue of necessary  truth
>and interpreted versus uninterpreted sentences, namely, Martin  Davies,
>'Meaning, Quantification, Necessity.'

------ It is good of  D. Frederick to recall M. K. Davies. I did some 
research on him, too -- for my  PhD on Grice! Anyway, found out this Davies, most 
people think Australian; but  from what I recall, he does his DPhil from Oxford 
herself, from what I  recall.  I tended to place Davies, and others (notably 
Loar, and Peacocke)  within the same 'Gricean' category. Their readings shared 
to me a feature --  which I don't know who was the first to introduce. To me, 
this feature is best  seen as a development out of Grice. If we recall, in 1948 
('Meaning'), Grice  does distinguish between what we may call 

(i) _utterer_  meaning

and what, for lack of a better expression, we can call,  namely,

(ii) _expression_ meaning.

This _expression_ meaning is  double in that, in Grice's parlance, it may be: 
"x meaning", i.e. meaning of a  _token_ of an expression -- which for _me_ 
*is* an expression simpliciter, or "X  meaning", i.e. meaning of a _type_ of an 
expression. What I saw in these authors  -- we know Loar's thesis advisor at 
Oxford had been G. J. Warnock, colleague of  Grice, and Peacocke had attended 
Grice's seminars at Berkeley) is the idea of a  

_population_.

I am enough of a libertarian to avoid that word at  all costs. For one, I 
cannot fail to imagine Grice having an immersion foam  bubble bath, and 
'designing a High Way Code', to use his example (WOW, ch. 6)  --. This melts for me any 
idea of a 'population'. But Loar, Peacocke, and  Davies, will speak of a 
_population_ of speakers, from what I recall.  In  the case of Loar (both his book 
and his contribution to the Truth and Meaning  OUP ed. by Evans/McDowell) it 
is understandable that he wants to reach to the  stage of specifying the 
meaning of a _special_ type of 'expression': the  'sentence'. Indeed, his D.Phil 
Oxon bears that title, "Sentence meaning".   It may be thought that it is at 
_this_ level of 'sentence meaning' that the  analytic/synthetic distinction 
starts to make sense.
These authors then, would seem to follow some 'population-based', and thus  
_very_ 'synthetic', or contigent, if you wish, account of 'analytic' -- which  
looks very much like the line that R. B. Jones is essaying now (I failed to 
read  with detail his firsts posts on this thread). The formulae like the one 
that D.  Frederick seem to be pointing out may well have variables for "P" for  
population. "In a population of speakers P, such that they share Language L, a 
 sentence of type Sigma will be analytic if and only if..."
------- My  previous post on Grice's "Underdogma" contained what I may view 
as some  historical development in my thinking about the history of analytic 
philosophy  -- and I extend here my congratulations to both Bayne and Jones for 
allowing  this forum to _exist_ and _continue_ --. In my earlier paper I made 
a reference  to, I was commenting on J. F. Bennett's explanation.  In his 
"Linguistic  Behaviour" -- and my paper bears the subtitle to the effect, "the 
motivation of  Grice", or something -- Bennett guesses what the motivation for 
Grice's  intention-based analysis of meaning may have been. He considers that it 
is  possibly no coincidence that Grice's Meaning appeared in print in 1957, 
one year  after Grice/Strawson's defense of the analytic/synthetic distinction 
(1956) in  reply to Quine's attack to the 'underdogma'. Bennett infers (but 
fails to  mention that 'Meaning' had been written 9 years before and was only 
sent to the  editors of "Philosophical Review" by Strawson, Grice not knowing) 
that Grice's  motivation (but it turs out this is more like _Strawson's_ 
motivation, then) was  to escape the 'intensional' circle. If there is a way to 
explain 'meaning' in  non-semantic terms (belief, those were the days), then it's 
in terms of  "...means..." that we can explain away (in a legitimate way) what 
"to be true in  virtue of its meaning..." may mean. As it  happens, I now see 
Grice's  "Meaning" as being more on the 'semiotic' line of Peirce, and his 
"Defense of a  dogma" as a mere exercise in paradigm-case-argument (alla 
Urmson). In my paper I  brought Grice's "Reply to Richards" and specific comments on 
his 'valedictory'  view, as it were, on the legitimacy of the 
analytic-synthetic distinction. It  showed a pragmatist-bent Grice not really concerned as to 
whether a system has a  necessary need to incorporate the distinction or not. 
For good measure, in my  paper I did mention that this was a "pragmatist" 
(rather than 'pragmatic') view  of analyticity and quoted D. E. Cooper on 
"Pragmatics and Pragmatism" to back my  rather obtuse views up! 
 
Now for the history of analytic philosophy bit. The first cite for  
'analysandum', the OED has it, is: 

1907 S. H. HODGSON in Proc. Arist. Soc. VII. 117 
 
"But in whichever way we define apperception..
we have by no means surmounted the difficulty of distinguishing, 
in that universal panorama which is our analysandum, 
what is due to conation from what is due to perception."
 
Later cites include
 
1932 Proc. Arist. Soc. XXXIII. 77 
 
"The kind of analysis that is possible..depends upon the kind of  
combination, or complex, which the analysandum is. 
 
1944 Mind LIII. 73 
 
"He suspects that the statement of an analysis must, in some sense, be  about 
the expressions used for the analysandum and the analysans, as well as  about 
these concepts.:

1956 J. O. URMSON Philos. Analysis iv. 53 
 
"To say ‘p is equivalent to q’ where p is the analysis and q the  
analysandum is to utter a tautology if true." [This book above is interesting --  Grice 
makes use of some of the examples one finds in Urmson, "He took of his  
trousers and went to bed" as meaning the same as "He went to bed and took of his  
trousers", Grice, 'Further notes on logic and conversation', and 'Presupposition 
 and Conversational Implicature', not in the WOW reprint)] 
 
Finally, 
 
1960 in  Concise Encycl. Western Philos. 18/1. 
 
"An analysis..is a sort of definition, a kind of equation with the puzzling  
expression, the analysandum, on the left-hand side and the new expression,  
sometimes called the analysis, sometimes the analysans, on the right."
 
The cites for 'analysans' are two: the first the 1944 pasted above ("He  
suspects that the statement of an analysis must, in some sense, be about the  
expressions used for the analysandum and the analysans, as well as about these  
concepts") and the second the 1960 from the Encycl. 

Cheers,

JL
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