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In tribute to Ludwig Wittgenstein





Wittgenstein said: "A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes."

Here is an example.  At a press conference after an American football game, a reporter asked the coach, "What do you think won this game for you?" The coach, in a puckish mood, replied: "We got more points than the other team." The room laughed.

If you understand that laughter, you may understand the abiding appeal of the analytic/synthetic distinction.  You may also have the beginnings of an understanding of its limits. 

Compare and contrast "we got more points" with "we have a superior offensive line."  

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  1. HenrySeptember 14, 2023 at 4:46 AM

    To what limits do you refer?

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    1. ChristopherSeptember 14, 2023 at 6:41 AM

      The illustration shows how the distinction is context specific. The statement "we won because we got more points" would not be a laughing matter, would be perfectly appropriate, if the coach was using his football experience to explain that scoring is different in football than it is in low-number-wins golf. In general, as Quine explained in some depth, efforts to make the synthetic/analytic distinction both clear and binary fail. It turns out to be more of a spectrum than a dichotomy.

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  2. HenrySeptember 14, 2023 at 8:14 AM

    Thanks, good answer. It has been some 40 years since I read Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," and I've forgotten his reasoning. But I'm not asking you to explain it.

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