Second Response to Ken Matheson Simon Holmes, Texas A&M University

Second Response to Ken Matheson Simon Holmes, Texas A&M University

I enjoyed the way you created a dialogue regarding Ayer’s views on metaphysics and his argument for why they created nonsense statements. It was especially interesting to read the ending where you did to Ayer what he did to metaphysics, in that you called his argument nonsense. Something I do wonder is what would Ayer say to the idea of synthetic a priori statements?

As we know, “a priori” statements are those statements that are true from “merely understanding or thinking about that proposition” which are different from 1 a posteriori because those types of statements require experience. An example of an a priori statement could be “all bachelors are unmarried men”. We know this to be true based on the definition of the constituent terms. The fact that we can know the truth based on the constituent terms is also the indicator for it to be an analytic judgement, a further delineation for the types of judgements and statements that Immanuel Kant notes in his Critiques on Pure Reason. Synthetic judgements are those whose truth “depends also upon the facts about the world that the sentence represents.”2 So, what Kant and subsequently Ayer will pull from are the following four types of categories relating to judgments/propositions: analytic a priori, synthetic a priori, analytic a posteriori and synthetic a posteriori. Analytic a posteriori statements are counter intuitive because as we now understand, analytic judgements are those whose truth can be determined from the definitions of the constituent terms, whereas a posteriori statements require looking out into the world. This category is a contradictory and inherently irrelevant because if something is analytic then we would not need to look outside of the statement itself. The analytic a priori and synthetic a posteriori statements are ones that are fairly common place as we noted the analytic a priori statement earlier regarding the bachelor definition. Synthetic a posteriori statements could be those such as “all bachelors in the United states are taxed at a different rate from married men”. We would need to look outside of the statement itself to determine the truth to that judgment and combine our knowledge of the various facts about the world in

Russell, Bruce, “1 A Priori Justi/ication and Knowledge”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Rey, Georges, “The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction”, 2 The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).

regards to the different terms of that proposition, thus making it a synthetic a posteriori statement. Now for the new category that Kant introduced, and Ayer could have considered, I am curious how Ayer would have worked with the idea of synthetic a priori statements or those whose “necessary truths would not be a contradiction to deny [such as] ‘7+5=12’ (Kant, Critique on Pure Reason, 193). Synthetic a priori statements are those statements that conform to our modes of experience because we can only know appearances and if these are necessarily true statement, then they must appear in such a way that we can perceive them.

So, when you write that Ayer comments about a priori statement’s role in passing an empirical test on the end of page 7 and 8, how would Ayer reconcile the idea of synthetic a priori statements in terms of literal significance? What I mean by this is that the idea that 7+5=12 is something we learn by combining our facts of the world, making it synthetic. We inherently know each of the constituent terms based on some innate intuition, meaning we know what 7 or 5 or 12 is without having to experience it. We know its truth based on its definition and by combining those we get 7+5=12. So, how do you believe Ayer would respond to the idea of synthetic a priori propositions in terms of literal significance if they seemingly refuted his idea of the literal significance of a metaphysical idea as something like 7+5=12 plays a foundational role in the rest of our world experience? Also why did he not consider this previously in his original writings if Kant established this idea hundreds of years before Ayer wrote?