摘要
repudiates the two commandments of Quine and Carnap:(a)Empiricism denies any autonomyto conceptual knowledge;(b) Logic is the center of philosophy,but analyticity canonly mean truth by convention.The author points out that these two commandmentshave rendered analytical empiricism unable to give an adequate account of mathemat-ics, thus becoming an unresolvable difficulty for analytic empiricists.Carnap triedto resolve the difficulty by equating 'analytic' with 'tautological,'but could notmake himself plausible.If mathematics can be reduced to logic and logic is analytic,then logic should include set theory while 'analytic' applies to statements that areultimately unprovable.As a result, mathematics might not be as Carnap said 'voidof content.'Quine avoided the problem and obliterated the basic distinction be-tween analytic and synthetic propositions.As he put it,all major distinctions becomea matter of differences 'in degree.'He failed to give an adequate account of con-ceptual knowledge in mathematics.The author concludes that it is impossible to saywhat mathematics is without giving up empiricism and recognizing knowledge based on conceptual intuition.
repudiates the two commandments of Quine and Carnap:(a)Empiricism denies any autonomy to conceptual knowledge;(b) Logic is the center of philosophy,but analyticity can only mean truth by convention.The author points out that these two commandments have rendered analytical empiricism unable to give an adequate account of mathemat- ics, thus becoming an unresolvable difficulty for analytic empiricists.Carnap tried to resolve the difficulty by equating "analytic" with "tautological,"but could not make himself plausible.If mathematics can be reduced to logic and logic is analytic, then logic should include set theory while "analytic" applies to statements that are ultimately unprovable.As a result, mathematics might not be as Carnap said "void of content."Quine avoided the problem and obliterated the basic distinction be- tween analytic and synthetic propositions.As he put it,all major distinctions become a matter of differences "in degree."He failed to give an adequate account of con- ceptual knowledge in mathematics.The author concludes that it is impossible to say what mathematics is without giving up empiricism and recognizing knowledge based on conceptual intuition.
