[hist-analytic] Aune's objections to Jones on the analytic (1)

[Bruce Aune]

I am always astonished at Roger's criticism: he always seems to miss  
the point of what I say, no matter how hard I try to be clear.  I  
will try one more time to clarify the point of my earlier claim about  
Kant's definition of analyticity.  Here it is:

   1.     The standard criticism of Kant's definition of analyticity  
is that it applies at best to subject-predicate judgments and does  
not apply to judgments of other kinds, such as the one Frege's  
mentioned when he made this criticism of Kant.  Frege's example was,  
" “If the relation of every member of a series to its successor is  
one- or many-one, and if m and y follow in that series after x, then  
either y comes in that series before m, or it coincides with m, or it  
follows after m.”  Frege thought this judgment deserves to be  
considered analytic, but Kant’s test for an analytic truth—that its  
predicate is contained in the concept of its subject—does not cover  
this case.

2.    Roger specified a way of converting any judgment into one of  
subject-predicate form.  I didn’t object to this maneuver.  We can  
indeed convert Frege’s example into a subject-predicate statement by  
making use of Roger’s maneuver.

3.    But--and here is the difficulty with Roger’s claim that the  
standard criticism of Kant’s definition is untenable because any  
judgment can be put into subject-predicate form—the predicate of the  
transformed judgment is not contained in the concept of its      
subject.  The subject of the transformed example is “=x,”  and the  
predicate is "x = x & if the relation of every member of a series to  
its successor is one- or many-one, and if m and y follow in that  
series after x, then either y comes in that series before m, or it  
coincides with m, or it follows after m.’  I take it as obvious that  
this last predicate is NOT contained in the concept of the subject,  
‘= x’.

4.  If you think, Roger, that the predicate here is contained in the  
concept of the subject, PROVE IT.  That is all you have to do.



Bruce
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