W HETHER WE CONSIDER SOMETHING TO BE KNOWLEDGE OR A MATTER

2. W HETHER WE CONSIDER SOMETHING TO BE KNOWLEDGE OR A MATTER

OF CONCEPTUAL CLARIFICATION DEPENDS ON THE CONTEXT OF KNOWLEDGE.

Popper rather casually admits that useful conceptual stipulations in particular have to be factually well-founded when he says that it is not important to over- throw metaphysics but, ‘to formulate a suitable characterization of empirical science, or to define concepts such as “empirical science” and “metaphysics”’ (LD 37). Giving a suitable criterion of demarcation can therefore be regarded as

a factually justified ‘proposal for an agreement or convention’ (LD 37). What Popper does not see is the connection between questions of linguistic meaning and questions of knowledge.

With his explication of the distinction between analytic and synthetic judge- ments, Kant wanted to emphasize that especially in philosophy, many of our judgements that allegedly extend our knowledge are basically not ampliative judgements but merely hidden clarifications of given concepts in the disguise of

ampliative knowledge, a fact we typically tend to overlook. The mere analysis of concepts would therefore often wrongly be regarded as new knowledge. But the extension of knowledge is very different from the clari- fication of concepts and, therefore, the two have to be kept apart.

Kant’s motive for the introduction of the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgements, that is, between conceptual clarifications and factual judgements, was essentially epistemological. He was aiming at a strict distinc- tion between judgements that can rightfully claim to be extensions of knowledge

and those that only clarify given knowledge. In making this distinction of cognitive value between different kinds of judgements Kant was concerned with the cognitive aspect of our route to knowl-

82 H ANS J UERGEN W ENDEL

edge, which is why he distinguished (i) acts of judgement with respect to their cognitive value (for the subject). In Kant’s opinion there exists (ii) a fundamental connection between cognitive judgements and the formation of concepts in such

a way that knowledge simultaneously influences concepts so that cognition always implies at the same time formation of concepts; he therefore demanded that the appraisal of the cognitive value of a judgement always be referred to a particular level of knowledge (iii). Taking into account the dynamic aspect of knowledge which leads us to look at the progress of knowledge as a succession of levels of knowledge, the cognitive value of acts of judgements – in Kant’s view – changes accordingly: what was informative at a former level of knowl- edge (and therefore of the formation of concepts) may now be a mere clarifica- tion (iv).

According to Kant, the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgements refers to the different ways – differing with regard to their cognitive value – in which subject and predicate can be connected with one another in an act of judgement with respect to their content: If the predicate is already inherent in the subject – in the notion I already have l2 – then our knowledge about (the objects subsumed under) the subject cannot be extended by relating it to this predicate; in the act of judgement we have nothing more than a clarification of the subject

in question, an explication of what I already know of it. Whereas if subject and predicate differ with respect to their content inasmuch as the given subject does not already contain the predicate, then both become connected only in the act of

judgement so that in the process the subject comes to be extended through addi- tional determination: thus we have a synthesis in the act of judgement.

In distinguishing between analytic and synthetic judgements, Kant was there- fore mainly concerned with different types of connection as differing cognitive acts and not with the sources of the validity of such connections. For this reason, Kant regards the difference in the possible relation between the content of sub- ject and predicate, that is, the distinction between analytic and synthetic judge-

ments, as fundamental in terms of its cognitive value. 13 The point for Kant was to distinguish judgements that only ‘clarify’ already

given knowledge (the concept that one already has of the object to be cognized) from those that give some new insight (that ‘extend’ our concept of the thing),

and not to assign them to totally different spheres according to their nature so that the one type has to do with semantics and the other with knowledge.

If knowledge – including the process of forming concepts – progresses then newly gained knowledge necessarily becomes given knowledge, which is in turn capable of being further extended and so on. Consequently, Kant explicitly stressed the primary character of synthesis, of the extension of knowledge, as compared with analysis when he says in the ‘Transcendental Deduction’: ‘The reader will easily enough perceive that the possibility of conjunction must be grounded in the very nature of this act, and that it must be equally valid for all conjunction; and that dissection, analysis, which appears to be its contrary, must, nevertheless, always presuppose it; for where the understanding has not previ-

B ETWEEN M EANING AND D EMARCATION 83

ously conjoined, it cannot dissect! 14 . New, newly ‘made’ knowledge, as we might say, leads to a change in the historical level of synthesis, in what is now to

be regarded as a ‘given’ concept with respect to which other (additional) – formerly new – judgements now become analytic judgements; for this concept is capable of a more extensive analysis at cognitive level

than it used to be at cognitive level

The relativity of the analytic-synthetic distinction is thus due to the change in our level of knowledge. Because for Kant, knowledge is essen- tially the same as the formation of concepts empirical concepts always reflect a certain level of knowledge.

The distinction between analytic and synthetic judgements is therefore always related to a respective level of our ‘given’ knowledge and is fixed with regard to this. Thus, the classification of judgements as analytic or synthetic has the character of being relative to a level of knowledge.

So we have the following consequence: The difference regarding the cogni- tive value of judgements results from a) the assumption of already given con- nections in the case of analytic judgements and b) the creation of new knowledge by a previously not given new connection (synthesis) that goes beyond what was

already connected and conceptually ‘sedimented’ (knowledge). The reason for the peculiarity of the cognitive value of empirical judgments (as synthetic) is therefore that they impart new knowledge to us (as opposed to a mere clarifica- tion of what was given already) and not that the one type bears a relation to

knowledge whereas the other does not. Moritz Schlick also emphasized this reciprocal connection between concepts and judgements, according to which our concepts change with knowledge. Thus

in his Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre 15 , he explicitly writes: ‘Judgments and con- cepts stand in a peculiar relationship. Concepts are linked together by means of

judgments, since every judgment designates a joining of two concepts.’ And thus ‘a concept constitutes, as it were, appoint at which a series of judgment meet,

namely, all those in which the concept occurs.’ (p. 46) And concerning defini- tions, Schlick holds ‘definitions of a concept are those judgments that, so to

speak, put it in touch with the concepts nearest it. The concept can be locked upon as a brief expression of these connections.’ (ibid.)

In the progress of scientific knowledge – because this is ‘never strictly self- contained’ – ‘we constantly become acquainted with new properties, so that the concepts of these objects acquire in time an even richer content.’ (p. 47). Con- ceptual contents, to Schlick as to Kant, are relative to knowledge. And for this reason it is not ipso facto clear whether a judgement is a definition or knowledge. Schlick says: ‘Every judgment places a concept in relation to other concepts [...] If the concept in question is already familiar and defined, then we have an ordi- nary judgment. If this is not the case, then the concept is to be regarded as having been created by the judgment. The latter thus becomes the definition [...]’ (p. 47). For Schlick, definitions are basically also factual judgements: ‘theoretically, definitions do not occupy a special position’ (ibid.). With this, the difference between definitions and judgements also changes as knowledge progresses and is

84 H ANS J UERGEN W ENDEL

proven to be relative to knowledge. Insofar as the same linguistic term can stand for different conceptual contents in the course of the progression of knowledge, ‘one and the same sentence may, depending on the particular state of the inquiry,

serve either as a definition or as an instance of knowledge’ (ibid.) 16 . In a similar way, Willard Van Orman Quine later pointed out that it is basi- cally the same whether we speak of the linguistic knowledge of concepts or of

empirically founded knowledge universally shared by a language community. 17 In this respect the distinction made by Quine between universally shared seman-

tic knowledge and empirically attained additional knowledge roughly corre- sponds to the relativity of the distinction between given and constructed concepts in Kant’s philosophy, and to Schlick’s considerations on the cognitive relativity of definition and knowledge. 18

Quine, like the other two, assumed that universally shared knowledge, knowledge about ‘concepts’, originally was additional knowledge. But after its acquisition (by the members of a language community) it is no longer a question of knowledge to be capable of evaluating statements based on such knowledge. In their view, this could also be interpreted as changing the ‘meaning’ of the

terms involved. 19 Thus the distinction between agreement to statements on the basis of knowledge universally shared by the language community and agree-

ment on the strength of additional knowledge corresponds approximately to the understanding of the distinction between analytic and synthetic knowledge according to Kant, as expounded above. 20 Once it has become part of general

background knowledge (formerly) ‘new’ knowledge has nothing more than a clarificatory character.

On closer inspection, Quine does not give up the distinction between analytic and synthetic; rather he places it in an epistemological context with regard to the cognitive value it has in a language community (knowledge universally shared by the members of a language community versus additional information), and in doing so he is building upon Kant’s original intention in making this distinction according to which there exist judgements of fundamentally different cognitive

value with reference to a given level of knowledge. 21 When Quine said that no real distinction can be made between the two types of judgement he took no no-

tice of the fact that, with respect to a given level of knowledge, the distinction is already perfectly clear.

It would thus appear that we can interpret linguistic meaning of descriptive terms as something that is relative to knowledge: It is only with respect to given knowledge that something is informative (synthetic) or not. That is to say, we always have to take into account the given cognitive horizon (of a certain person or language community) before we are able to say something about the merely

‘clarificatory’ or truly ‘knowledge-extending’ character of certain cognitive ele- ments. Therefore we can conclude: concepts demarcate, and factual criteria of demarcation can become components of the meaning of concepts. One might even say that it is especially the most important factual insights into something that are later essential to the defining characterization of a thing. If we see this

B ETWEEN M EANING AND D EMARCATION 85

connection, then our position towards questions concerning conceptual features gets to be quite important factually, as they enter into factual questions. There- fore, linguistic meaning and factual demarcation cannot be separated and, with this, questions of meaning obtain a far greater factual importance than Popper

was willing to concede to them. One might just as well say that in the discussion of conceptual questions we touch on factual questions too and, therefore, they

are not fruitless. In the case of empirical concepts this may be relatively unprob- lematic, but it turns out to be rather far-reaching in the case of epistemological –

and thus philosophical – concepts, because this bears on the question of the possibility of metaphysical knowledge.