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Representational Analyticity
Author(s) -
Lyons Jack C.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/j.0268-1064.2005.00293.x
Subject(s) - vagueness , epistemology , analytic philosophy , representation (politics) , philosophy , mental representation , philosophy of language , psychology , metaphysics , contemporary philosophy , linguistics , cognition , fuzzy logic , neuroscience , politics , political science , law
The traditional understanding of analyticity in terms of concept containment is revisited, but with a concept explicitly understood as a certain kind of mental representation and containment being read correspondingly literally. The resulting conception of analyticity avoids much of the vagueness associated with attempts to explicate analyticity in terms of synonymy by moving the locus of discussion from the philosophy of language to the philosophy of mind. The account provided here illustrates some interesting features of representations and explains, at least in part, the special epistemic status of analytic judgments.