Deductive Inference and Analysis

Abstract

In the preceding chapter we saw how a philosopher can utilize the results of exhibition analysis and other forms of semantic analysis that we have discussed, in the attempt to answer particular philosophical questions and to resolve — or dissolve — philosophical “puzzles.” We saw that one major way in which the latter may be achieved consists in the construction of deductive arguments logically grounded on the results of accomplished analyses. There is, however, a second, more direct use of deductive arguments in relation to semantic analysis, with which we shall concern ourselves in the present chapter. Certain deductive arguments themselves can, in some cases, reveal or uncover some aspects of the logical grammar (or what Gilbert Ryle calls the logical powers) of one or more of the propositions constituting the premises of such arguments. Since the logical grammar of a proposition is logically a product of the logical powers of the concepts that compose it, as logically related in the particular propositions — or better, the logical grammar of concepts consists in the logical grammar of the propositions into which they enter as logical constituents ¹ — the deductive arguments we have in mind reveal the logical grammar of the concepts which form the propositions serving as their premises