I think I get what Williamson's overall picture is behind chapter 3.
Williamson argues against Quine, who would deny the synthetic analytic distinction altogether. What I gather from chapter 3 is that Williamson wants to claim the disjunction of (1) and (2).
1) not all philosophical truths are analytic
2) analytic truths are no less substantial (informative about the world) than synthetic ones
If either (1) or (2) is right than philosophical discoveries are no less substantial than any other discovery. So I take this chapter to be a revolt against philosophical exceptionalism about subject matter.
Seperately, he seems to endorse the disjunction of (1) and (3).
3) analytic truths are not known in any special way in virtue of being analytic
If either (1) or (3) is right then the way we investigate philosophical truths is not necessarily different from the way we investigate any other truths. So I take this point to be a revolt against philosophical exceptionalism about method.
He goes on to argue this (though in what appears to be a sort of jumbled way) about modal analyticity, frege-analyticity and direct reference-analyticity. But generally, as pointed out in the chapter, Kripke has a good defense:
A) ~ (analyticity -> necessity)
B) if (A) then (C)
C) (2)
and
D) ~(analyticity -> a-prioricity)
E) if (D) then (F)
F) (3)

One could deny (B) and (E), but that seems odd. It seems like one motivation for claiming analyticity has a special metaphysical status (of not informative about the world) is because of its correlation with necessity, ditto for its epistemological status and a-prioricity.

In the third chapter Williamson argues that it is false that analytic truths differ from synthetic ones by being true ‘in virtue of meaning’. For Williamson the intended contrast is that synthetic truths are true because a) they mean what they do and b) things are as the meaning requires. However, analytic truths need only to satisfy a) to be true. Williamson believes analytic truths need to also satisfy a) and b) to be true. Williamson believes that if analytic truths are true by only satisfying a) then it is only because we take b) for granted. Williamson claims that “[i]t is no good to say “Never mind whether barristers are lawyers; ‘Barristers are lawyers’ is true simply because it means that barristers are lawyers”.”
1. If analytic truths are true only because a) they mean what they do then ‘barristers are lawyers’ is true simply because it means that barristers are lawyers.
2. ~ Barristers are lawyers’ is true simply because it means that barristers are lawyers.
3. :. ~ Analytic truths are true only because a) they mean what they do.I believe premise 2. is false. The reasons given in support for 2. are that Williamson claims that we take b) for granted and says it is no good to do that. However, b) is not doing anything in the case of analytic truths. For synthetic truths such as ‘Barbara is a barrister’ a) supplies the meaning and b) confirms if the meaning is the case. b) does not confirm if the supplied meaning is the meaning of ‘Barbara is a barrister’. However, for a synthetic truth such as ‘Barristers are lawyers’ a) supplies the meaning again and b) confirms if the meaning is the meaning. Thus ‘Barristers are lawyers’ is true because a) ‘Barristers are lawyers’ means that barristers are a kind of lawyer who are people who have a law degree and passed the bar exam, are lawyers, who are people who have a law degree and passed the bar exam and b) confirms if it is the case that ‘Barristers are lawyers’ means that barristers are a kind of lawyer who are people who have a law degree and passed the bar exam, are lawyers, who are people who have a law degree and passed the bar exam. For synthetic truth b) need not confirm if the meaning (a)) is true, it simply confirms if a) is the case. But, for analytic truths b) simply confirm a) is true, though a) is already claiming to be true. Barrister means lawyer. Consequently analytic truths are true only because a) they mean what they do, which makes 2. false

Williamson's Chapter 3

Williamson claims that because philosophical questions are more conceptual in nature then questions in other disciplines an armchair methodology is necessary because it concerns truths that are less substantial and less world- involving.

1. Philosophical questions are more conceptual in nature then questions in other disciplines.

Because philosophical questions are not about the world but rather about concepts Williamson claims that at the central core of philosophy are conceptual truths. Because analytical truths are also not about words and are also less world- involving Williamson uses the words conceptual truths and analytical truths interchangeably.

2. Analytic truths are not about words or concepts even if words or concepts play a role in the truth.

3. So, philosophy has a central core of conceptual/ analytical truths

4. So, from (2) and (3) Philosophy is not in itself linguistic or conceptual

5. If philosophical truths are analytic then some have features of words or concepts without describing words or concepts.

Williamson wants to know weather the fact that philosophical truths are conceptual or analytic justifies the conceptual or linguistic turn.

Williamson claims that analytic sentences are true in virtue of their meaning, and analytic thoughts are true in virtue of their constituent concepts. Their truth is independent of the world, even the parts which consists of words and concepts. If this is the case then we needn’t get up from the arm chair to investigate them.

6. If every true sentence is true in virtue of both its meaning and how things are then analytic and synthetic truths are not true in radically different ways, this means that there is a component of analytic truths that relies on how things are in the world.

7. We cannot investigate synthetic truths from the armchair

8. If we take the linguistic or conceptual turn then philosophy itself is linguistic or conceptual.

9. From (4) and (8) we should not take the linguistic or conceptual turn.

I know I’m missing parts of his argument but I was trying to get the big picture, it seems as though if we take the definition of analytic to be the same as conceptual Williamson runs into problems but there is also the huge problem of defining analytic, at the end of it I’m not sure which result Williamson wants.

Natalie

The perplexing case of the shifty 'child'.

A bit of a caveat before I begin... I was very undecided as to whether to post this or not. The reason for my indecision is based on the fact that blog posts can be seen by the world. And no one likes to show their weaknesses to the world. Where the weakness in this case is my complete perplexity. Either it is the case that I'm not getting the finer moves of the indexical response that the contextualists offer in cases of vagueness, or I am getting the finer moves and I just think they are bunk, or both. The perplexity is knowing which of the disjuncts is true. Definite weakness... so be kind...

I'm taking this example from the entry on Vagueness from the SEP, which can be used to illustrate the contextualists response of an “analogy between the sorites paradox and indexical sophistries”:

Base Step: A one day old human being is a child.

Induction Step: If an n day old human being is a child, then that human being is also a child when it is n+1 days old.

Conclusion: Therefore, a 36,500 day old human being is a child.

1. If the meaning of 'child' is uniform, then the context-invariant rule for using the term 'child' (its character) is constant.
2. If the context-invariant rule for using the term 'child' (its character) is constant, then the linguistic meaning of a term (its character), which is a function from contexts to contents that delivers the term's content at each context, is consistent.
3. So, if the meaning of 'child' is uniform, then the linguistic meaning of a term (its character), which is a function from contexts to contents that delivers the term's content at each context, is consistent.
4. But, it is false that the meaning of 'child' is uniform.
5. Therefore, it is not the case that the linguistic meaning of a term (its character), which is a function from contexts to contents that delivers the term's content at each context, is consistent.

The contextualist wishes to deny (4), that is to assert that the meaning of 'child' is uniform. So, given (3), the linguistic meaning of a term (its character), which is a function from contexts to contents that delivers the term's content at each context, is consistent.

But this makes no darn sense. If the meaning of 'child' is uniform (its character is consistent) then the contextualist would not only have to accept the induction step, but also the conclusion. Bad news bears!

So what to do? According to the Vagueness entry, it is: to treat the term 'child' like an indexical. That is to say that, because the set of things in which the term 'child', applies (its content) shifts with the context, it can still be claimed that the character remains the same but the content has changed because the context has shifted. “According to the contextualists, the rules governing the shifts prohibit us from interpreting any instance of the induction step as having a true antecedent and a false consequent. The very process of trying to refute the induction step changes the context so that the instance will not come out false.”

This response is really confusing to me (surprise of surprises!!). Is the claim here that in order not to interpret the induction step as having a true antecedent and a false consequent, we treat the term 'child' like and indexical, i.e. say that the content of the term 'child' shifts with the context from the antecedent to the consequent? Is that not what needs to happen in order to derive a false conclusion? If there is any shifting going on, that is any indexical treatment of the term 'child' it would need to be because you have to explain having an induction step that has a true antecedent and a false consequent, in order to derive a false conclusion.

Or is the claim here that there is a shift from the induction step to the conclusion? In which case the term 'child' has a shift in context and thereby content from the induction step to the conclusion. If so, then I am very, very confused because a conclusion can change in truth value, regardless of the truth conditions of the premises in which it is derived, by just simply having a content shift with a context. Perhaps, my confusion comes from a bias on my part (unsure at this point...), but is not the role of the conclusion to tell me something about the premises in which it is derived from? Where that something should be the content of what is at issue. But, if the content can shift from premises to conclusion based on a context, then the content in the premises is different than that in the conclusion. Why would you want that to happen?

Aboutness, Questions and the Original Question.

What we need to have to settle the debate at hand is an analysis of ‘For any given question Q, Q is about X’. One way to start is by examining the components of such an analysis. This entails looking at what questions are, that is what kind of structure/entity they are, and what questions are about, that is what counts as answers to them.
One prominent analysis of questions and answers is given in Belnap and Steel’s The Logic of Questions and Answers. They hold that (for a certain class of questions) the answer to a question depends on what the asker had in mind for an answer. For example, if someone were to ask ‘Why did Ben steal the car?’, it seems that many different but equally acceptable answers could be given depending on the intent of the asker. If the asker was sociologically minded, an acceptable answer might be ‘Ben stole the car because he belongs to the lower-middleclass, is a Catholic and lower-middleclass Catholics are prone to thievery.’ If the asker was street-thugidly minded, an acceptable answer might be ‘Ben stole the car because he was the only person in his gang that could hotwire cars.’ The point here is that the answer to a question and question-aboutness are relative to the reference classes that the enquirer considers relevant.
Now let us apply this sketch of an analysis to the original question (OQ): ‘Was mars always either dry or not dry?’.
1) Presumably, (OQ) is a question like the above and hence depends on the reference classes the asker has in mind.
2) If (OQ) is a question that depends on the reference classes the asker has in mind, then it is easy to see how the question may be about any subclass of a set like {vagueness, matter, the laws of logic, space travel, H2O, language, concepts …}.
3) If (1) and (2), then (4).
4) The majority of questions, including (OQ), could be philosophical ones while also being about things other than language or concepts.
5) If (4) then philosophers are not significantly restricted in the kinds of questions they can pose.
-So far so good for Williamson. On this analysis of questions and answers, philosophical questions needn’t be solely linguistic or conceptual and our methodology has not been restricted at this level. However,…
6) If (1), (2) and (3) [i.e. the inference to (4)] holds, then analogously the questions of chemistry and other non-armchair questions are philosophical questions.
7) It is false that the questions of chemistry and other non-armchair questions are philosophical questions.
8) If (6) and (7), then [either ~(1) or ~(2) or ~(3)].
9) Either, ~(1) or ~(2) or ~(3).
On the analysis of questions given above, it seems like the right move here is to deny (3). Though it is true that questions like (OQ) can be philosophical, they seem to be so only in virtue of the asker fixing the meaning of the question with respect to linguistic or conceptual reference class elements.
I think this argument illustrates a fatal flaw in Williamson’s argument in chapter 2. He presumes that showing (OQ) to be both philosophical and not necessarily about language, is sufficient to show that philosophy is not solely interested in matters of language or concept analysis. However, now that we have seen something about the structure of questions, it is a very live possibility that (OQ) is philosophical in virtue of being asked with a subset of the reference classes {vagueness, the laws of logic, concepts, semantics …} in mind. Alternately, (OQ) is not about language or concepts only in virtue of being asked with respect to a subset of the reference class {matter, space travel, H2O, …}. But now these two ways of asking (OQ) appear disjoint, the latter is no longer a philosophical question. In brief, it is a very live possibility that (OQ) is philosophical only insofar as it is asked with a reference class containing LINGUISTIC or CONCEPTUAL elements. After an in-depth analysis of questions, answers and aboutness, Williamson’s argument is unconvincing.

Objection from non-sucky implicit aboutness standards

Williamson poses an argument to the effect that
(M) Mars was always either dry or not dry
is implicitly about language:

1) (M) is equivalent (truth functionally) to (ML) The sentence "Mars was always either dry or not dry" is true, which is explicitly about language
2) (1) -> (3)
3) (M) is implicitly about language

This argument is bad because truth functional equivalence is much too weak to be a standard for implicit aboutness. A similar argument could be run to the effect that (ML) is implicitly about Mars, or any other truth functionaly equivalent sentence for that matter. So, here's a better argument:

(IA) If a sentence S is truth-functionally equivalent to a sentence about language S', AND the initial justification for S includes the truth of S' then S is implicitly about language
4) (M) meets the conditions for (IA)
5) (M) is implicitly about language

As it turns out, I believe this second argument is also inadequate. In practice, when Williamson presents ways of answering (M), he never explicitly answers (ML). An additional argument would be needed to show that (ML) was implicitly answered and used as a hidden premise in the arguments that answer (M). I'm unconvinced that this is true, and even if it were true I'm not sure it could be shown to be true.

This one is probably a bit obvious at this point but since I am the first to post, here it is.
In the second chapter Williamson does a case study which asks the question “Was Mars always either dry or not dry? He argues that this question is philosophical in nature and not about language or thought, but must be resolved with inquiry into thought and language. This conclusion supports the book’s overall arguments, namely that topical philosophical exceptionalism and methodological philosophical exceptionalism are false. It supports these conclusions because it shows that (at least in some instances) some of the traditional views on the subject matter of philosophy are false, namely the conceptual/linguistic turn. Also that the ways in which philosophical questions are answered are not fundamentally different from the ways other non philosophical questions are answered.

A. The original question is philosophical in nature.
B. The original is not about language or thought.
C. The original must be resolved with inquiry into thought and language.
1. (A & B & C) -> The original question supports the conclusion that topical philosophical exceptionalism and methodological philosophical exceptionalism are false.
2. :. The original question supports the conclusion that topical philosophical exceptionalism and methodological philosophical exceptionalism are false.
I will now argue against A. William claims that “[t]he original question is at least proto-philosophical in character.” He also claims that the sentence “Was Mars always either uninhabited or not dry?” is not philosophical in nature. The only support Williamson provides that the original question is a philosophical in nature is that “when we discuss its answer, we find ourselves invoking recognizable philosophical considerations.” However, by this logic the sentence “Was Mars always either uninhabited or not dry?” would be considered philosophical in nature if it invokes recognizable philosophical considerations.” Williamson himself admits that this question invokes recognizable philosophical considerations in the following passage: “Although philosophical issues can be raised about the words in both questions, it does not follow that merely in using those words one is in any way engaging in philosophy.” Williamson seems to be contradicting himself.
Thanks to Justin and Chris for addressing this in class. Comments?

Comment Paper for 10/15 and Final Paper Draft

We have a week off due to the Thanksgiving break. I am only assigning one comment paper for that period since you have a paper draft to work on. For your comment paper, please email me a summary of Williamson's main points in Chapter 2 and comment on how successful you think his overall arguments for those points have been so far. Several of the comment papers have focused on good things to think about, but they are decidedly "tree"-oriented rather than "forest"-oriented. So I want you to think about how Williamson uses the particular issues he discusses in detail in support of his larger points and how well he's supported those points. This is to help you think about the "forest"--what his goals are and why he's talking about what he's talking about. Please email your comment to me by the usual time on Sunday, Oct. 14. Do not post this one to the blog.

As for the final paper draft: You will receive detailed instructions for the outline once you discuss your topic with me and not a moment before. This is intended to ensure that you will discuss your topic with me. So send me an email regarding your thoughts on particular topics.