Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!hao!gatech!udel!princeton!phoenix!greg
From: greg@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Gregory Nowak)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Classifying the Axiom of Choice
Message-ID: <1924@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 2 Mar 88 23:22:37 GMT
References: <7123@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <8768@sunybcs.UUCP> <9734@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <1937@mind.UUCP> <1938@mind.UUCP> <1186@sjuvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: greg@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Gregory Nowak)
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 25

In article <1186@sjuvax.UUCP> jserembu@sjuvax.UUCP (J. Serembus)
writes: 
> Greg,
>	How would you classify the following the
following proposition:
>	"Water is H2O."?  
	It certainly seems to be one gotten from experience and thus 
>a posteriori; yet there also seems to be something necessary about it, hence 
>analytic.


H2O is a chemical compound of three atoms; water is a substance I'm
familiar with from everyday experience. If I introduce a spark into a
combination of hydrogen and oxygen, a substance will be produced, but
I have no way of knowing that it's "water" unless I check. Conversely,
none of my experiences of water lead me to conclude that it HAS to be
formed of molecules which have two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom
each. I would consider this statement to be synthetic a posteriori.  I
suppose I question the assertion that necessary truths are necessarily
analytic, and there are some people who have the same doubts about
Kripke.  (He's in Princeton; maybe I'll go ask him.) I would take as
an example of a necessary analytic truth the fact that I am not a
nonexistent colorless green dream; as an example of a necessary
synthetic truth the fact that the speed of light is 298XXX (I forget
the last three digits) meters per second. (We've defined the meter so
this is true.)