The analytic-synthetic distinction

Abstract

This chapter tries to throw light on the first of Gödel’s two main theses in the philosophy of mathematics, namely that mathematical propositions are analytic. To this end, an overview of similar conceptions is presented first in which the views by Frege, Russell Wittgenstein, Carnap and Quine are expounded. Then Gödel’s view is analyzed, both in his publications and in the manuscripts which appear in this edition. The presentation of Carnap’s detailed attempt to define analyticity in his The Logical Syntax of Language (1934) may seem rather long in comparison with the ones devoted to the other authors, but it should be recalled that the Gödel manuscripts appearing here were a direct philosophical reaction to Carnap’s viewpoint, and there is no other sufficiently detailed presentation of this viewpoint in the literature. I am convinced that Gödel’s manuscripts cannot be properly understood without having at least a summary of Carnap’s construction available.