Wittgenstein's propositions are analytic or synthetic
the verdict
INSUFFICIENT LEANING
refutedsupported
the weight of evidence
2 sources for · 0 against
The retrieved literature notes that Wittgenstein's work engages with the conceptualization of empirical and logical propositions and addresses questions regarding whether certain propositions are analytic or synthetic, but the sources do not fully settle the comprehensive claim that all of Wittgenstein's propositions are analytic or synthetic.
Abstract W.V. Quine and Ludwig Wittgenstein have been compared with regard to the analytic/synthetic distinction, propositions known a priori or a posteriori, mathematical and logical necessity and naturalism, amongst other topics. Following Pieranna Garavaso and Danièle Moyal‐Sharrock, I compare how Quine and Wittgenstein conceptualize a system of beliefs. Overlooked is Wittgenstein's description of the role of propositions and Quine's description of the location of propositions. The difference between the role and location signals a difference in how these frameworks conceptualize the boundary between empirical and logical propositions, and in particular the justificatory status of propositions in the system. The Wittgensteinian framework accommodates a change in the justificatory status of propositions: propositions can play at one time a rule‐like role and at another time an empirical role. For Quine, change in status refers to revising the proposition (or not) in the light of recalcitrant evidence.
The status Wittgenstein accords the kind of propositions under discussion is that of grammatical rules. This makes them as different as mathematical propositions are to psychological or to empirical propositions. The importance of the place occupied by the question of colour in Wittgenstein's philosophical reflections, well before Remarks on Colour, puzzled some of the philosophers who attended his lectures. In the early 1930s, Wittgenstein was convinced he had found the definitive answer to questions such as whether grammatical propositions are a priori or a posteriori, analytic or synthetic, and so on. According to Westphal, Wittgenstein's genius in Remarks on Colour is to have put his finger on a number of typical questions whose solution, if it could be found, would make an essential contribution to the question 'What, in the end, is colour?' The impossibilities they express are nothing more than straight logical contradictions of the standard type, and therefore nothing but logical impossibilities, in the sense of the Tractatus.
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