The Linguistic and the Epistemological Basis of the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction

Logical positivism assumes an intimate connection between language and epistemology. This is clearly reflected in its stand on epistemology which is largely shaped and structured by its theory of language. The discussion of the latter is thus crucial to the understanding of the former. To do this we will be exploring the language-epistemology nexus of the positivism.

It is a well-known thesis of the positivists that scientific knowledge consists of two parts. The first part consists of empirical knowledge and the second consists of mathematical and theoretical knowledge. Accordingly, the epistemological status of the respective parts is grounded on different conceptions. The former may be said to be grounded in traditional empiricist theory whereas the epistemological status of the later is explained by the positivists by their notion of analyticity. It is a notion which in many respects is similar to that of Kant's notion of a priori. However, there is one fundamental difference which sharply distinguishes positivist's notion of analyticity from Kant's notion of a prioricity. Analytic statements for positivists do not say anything about the real world and in this sense they are contentless. It is this contentless nature of analytic statements that distinguishes them from synthetic apriori statements of Kant. Also it is important to note that being contentless these statements are immune to experience. As a result, they can never be criticized on the ground of any empirical consideration. They do not make any claim about the empirical world. It is due to this reason, analytic statements are treated separately with having a privileged epistemological status with scientific theories. For positivists, the notion of analyticity which is co-extensive with contentlessness is thus epistemologically analogous to what is traditionally conceived as a priori.

Positivists derive their notion of analyticity from their theory of language and meaning. Analytic statements are defined as true on the ground that they are true by virtue of their meaning alone. But how do the positivists arrive at this notion? This is where we come to the notion of language or linguistic framework which allows the notion of analyticity to be derived as the part of its logical compulsion. Language is indispensable to talk about the world. But to do this we need to choose a language which in actual terms implies selecting a certain linguistic framework, i.e., grammar. Grammar is a system consisting of a set of syntactic and semantic interpretation rules. If a sentence is true by virtue of these syntactic and semantic rules, then the sentence is analytic. Since the truth of such sentences is determined by the framework itself, they are true independently of what the world is. In this sense, as we have said earlier, analytic sentences are contentless. Their contentlessness follows from two considerations. First, they owe their existence to linguistic framework alone. Second, the choice of linguistic framework itself is not based on any cognitive consideration. The considerations that play a major role in deciding a linguistic framework are pragmatic. How efficient a particular language is from some scientific purpose, for example, becomes important in choosing a linguistic framework. The question of truth does not figure prominently at all in this exercise. This is where we see that there is a sharp contrast between a linguistic framework and a theory. The choice of a theory is guided by truth or the actual/cognitive consideration whereas the choice of a linguistic framework is guided by the notion of efficiency.