PHILOS 2 Study Guide - Final Guide: Hermeneutic Circle, Logical Biconditional, Fat Man
Document Summary
A conceptual analysis should take the logical form of a universally quanti ed biconditional, be informative, a necessary and conceptual truth, and a knowable a priori. A conceptual, or analytic, truth is a fact that holds in virtue of the meanings of the words. Conceptual truths are necessary, it is our concepts or words themselves. Conceptual truths are knowable a priori, we know conceptual truths via re ection on meanings without empirical evidence or data. For example, a brother is a male sibling, a square has four equal sides: the paradox of analysis is meant to show that a philosophical (conceptual) analysis is either false or uninformative. The paradox of analysis is doubly paradoxical because the paradox is derived from an analysis of the concept of analysis. 1) an analysis of a concept, x, should say what x is identical or equivalent to. 2) suppose a given analysis of concept x says that it is identical to the concept y.
