Exactly what is the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions?
If we say 'all bachelors are unmarried', that's an analytic proposition, because 'unmarried' is contained within the definition of 'bachelor'.
But how is this different from saying 'all cakes have icing'? If I've only ever seen cakes with icing, when I say 'cake' I surely must be referring to something that has icing, so the statement is necessarily true.
When we come to see a cake that doesn't have icing, we revise our definition of 'cake', and remove 'has icing' from the list of predicates of the thing we refer to when we say 'cake' - but we couldn't do this with 'bachelor'. Why not?
( Comma, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 21:51, archived)

( BILL DOOR - MOON-MASTER, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 21:52, archived)

yur wel cleva, innit

( (|D[ekionplexis B3ta.com: fictional child porn is OK, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 21:53, archived)

The alternative would be to say that even if I haven't ever seen cakes without icing,
they're still in the set of things I refer to when I say 'cake'. But that's just crazy.
( Comma, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 21:53, archived)

Or that when I say something
I refer to a rough amalgamation of all of the predicates, but a few are dispensible. But that seems crazy too.
( Comma, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 21:57, archived)

the present king of France is bald

( mr horrible up yours, dickface, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:00, archived)

Well in this case 'iced' is a dispensible predicate.
The reason being it's not a necessary predicate that's generally associated with cakes. If everyone else agreed that cakes must be iced, then it would be in the same category as batchelor.
( my other username is a porsche , posting shit pictures so you don't have to, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:01, archived)

If 'cake' necessarily entailed icing
you wouldn't have chosen it as your example.

If no-one had any significant experience of cakes without icing, the word 'cake' would necessarily entail icing.
( Flapjack I spay a little mare for you, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:01, archived)

That's what I'm saying.
But doesn't that seem weird and wrong?
( Comma, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:04, archived)

No. Why?
Only because you choose something you know and then give it a "weird and wrong" definition.

If all blee consists of crawt and fleem, then blee without fleem is just crawt. Or fleemless blee.
( Flapjack I spay a little mare for you, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:07, archived)

Oh, who the fuck cares
Stop reading into what people say and mean so much and get on with your fucking like
( TY&GN, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 21:53, archived)

I missed the question mark out on purpose,
to frustrate you!
( TY&GN, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 21:54, archived)

And misspelt "life"

( BILL DOOR - MOON-MASTER, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 21:55, archived)

Ha
That was unintentional
( TY&GN, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:01, archived)

:)

( BILL DOOR - MOON-MASTER, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:03, archived)

*gets on with her fucking*

( Comma, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 21:55, archived)

This is like
touch my bum.
( Undulating Tentacles of Love getting fun down to acceptable levels, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:28, archived)

so i hear you're a philosophy student

( ArthurTheRat, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 21:54, archived)

possibly because the word "bachelor" is unique; its only definition being an unmarried man
you could never see a married bachelor that could give you the option to revise your definition. However, you've presumed the meaning of cake by observation, as the word "Cake," is effectively meaningless because its dictionary definition doesnt tell us whether to expect meringue, black-forest gateau or cheesecake.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 21:56, archived)

The cake is a...
I can't say it
( TY&GN, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:01, archived)

Revision of definition is important.
Until I see an uniced cake, when I say 'cake' I refer to things that are iced. The statement 'all cakes have icing' is true, because when I say 'cake' I refer to something that has icing.
After I see an uniced cake, I revise my definition of cake, so the statement 'all cakes have icing' is false. But the two statements mean different things, so it's perfectly okay for the one to be true and the other to be false. They pick out different things, but using the same symbols.

This *isn't satisfactory*. It doesn't seem right. But I don't see how it can't be.
( Comma, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:03, archived)

Are you still going?
Wow. I admire your dedication.
( TY&GN, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:05, archived)

It's perfectly satisfactory to me.
That kind of statement will always depend on your own definition. In this case 'true' only really means 'consistent with my definition'.
( my other username is a porsche , posting shit pictures so you don't have to, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:06, archived)

But in that case we don't know anything empirically, because all statements are analytic.
Which is just intuitively wrong.
( Comma, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:10, archived)

Intuition doesn't always go very far.
We know it well enough to interact quite happily with the world, but I'd argue it's always subjective.
( my other username is a porsche , posting shit pictures so you don't have to, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:13, archived)

Intuition is, it seems to me, massively important to philosophy.
Most of what philosophy does is to try to come up with a definition of a thing that is both logically consistent and roughly fits in with our intuition.
( Comma, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:16, archived)

I thought the exact opposite (my first degree was part philosophy).
I never saw any reason to assume that the logical conclusion would coincide with my intuitive beliefs.
( my other username is a porsche , posting shit pictures so you don't have to, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:19, archived)

nothing is intuitively anything
again, intuition is just based on a historical pattern of previous experiences driving expectation; it's not really a hardwired genetic expectation that you're born with.
But if we're talking about abstract names of things, like bachelor and cake, then of course they can be analytic. Remember there are elements hypothesized and calculated to exist but never empirically proven to exist, but they still have names and weights and other definitions.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:14, archived)

is there any way you could revise your definition of bachelor?
could bachelor ever include another variable than "married/unmarried?" No. Hence the distinction of the two types.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:10, archived)

Okay. I think that's right.
Can we say why one is revisable and the other isn't?
( Comma, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:12, archived)

The only distinction I can see is that we can't imagine how batchelor would be extended.
I don't think it's logically impossible to extend the definition of batchelor, just unlikely and hard to see why it would be done.
As cake covers such a wide variety of objects, it's easy to see it expanding as a definition.
( my other username is a porsche , posting shit pictures so you don't have to, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:15, archived)

because bachelor is just a classification of an already existing object; a man, a male, a human.
Whereas cake isn't even a foodstuff; it's such a broad spectrum of objects that its multi-variable nature (icing yes/no; cream yes/no; egg yes/no; hot yes/no;) means that it can still be revised down until there is only one variable. Hence, cake is revisable, but black forest gateau isn't ("was this made with cherries, cream and cocoa sponge yes/no?"), and until you reach that point, all other variables are dispensible.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:17, archived)

I'm not sure if i see the distinction between 'iced, yes/no' and 'brown/blonde/red haired' for a batchelor.
Is it just that we're assuming we can recognise a man much better than we can regonise a cake?
( my other username is a porsche , posting shit pictures so you don't have to, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:25, archived)

Because 'unmarried' is a necessary condition to call someone a batchelor, it's a part of the definition.
'iced' is not necessary to call something a cake. You could easily define it as such, and discard uniced 'cakes' from that group, but that wouldn't fit with the common definition.
( my other username is a porsche , posting shit pictures so you don't have to, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 21:56, archived)

But suppose nobody had ever seen a cake that didn't have icing.
Wouldn't 'has icing' be part of the definition of the cake? Why would it be a more dispensible predicate than the predicate 'unmarried' is of 'bachelor'?
If I (and suppose for convenience everybody else) have only ever seen iced cakes, how can I be referring to anything other than a set of things that contains the predicate 'has icing'?
( Comma, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 21:59, archived)

because you've developed your own meaning of "cake"
whereas you didn't develop your own meaning of "bachelor" from observation, as there is only one variable to bachelor; married or unmarried. Cakes have many, many variables, which is why icing is not an intrinsic part of their dictionary definition
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:02, archived)

It wouldn't be more dispensible.
Unless society or some social group decided to extend their definition to include uniced cakes, then the definition would be unchanged.
In the same way, if society for whatever reason decided to include 'men with brown hair' or something in their definition of batchelor, then 'unmarried' would be dispensible.
( my other username is a porsche , posting shit pictures so you don't have to, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:03, archived)

Iced bachelor?

( The Cat's Mother Not a People Person., Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:04, archived)

To answer your original point
a cake without icing wouldn't lose the predicate; it would not be called a cake.
( Flapjack I spay a little mare for you, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:06, archived)

But that can't be right. We revise our meaning of words all the time to account for new experiences.
If I saw something that was exactly like a cake in all respects except that it wasn't iced, I'd remove 'is iced' from my list of cakey predicates, and from then on I'd mean something different when I said 'cake'.
( Comma, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:09, archived)

not really
if I saw a human body that had absolutely everything except a leg, I wouldn't call it a human. It's a cripple. A fucking one-legged spacker cripple cunt.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:11, archived)

Who else would?
No-one would have a clue what you were talking about. Until you popularised it, and then cake would not require icing.

Bachelor is an existing widely-used word for [man] + [is married]. The reason you don't talk about a married bachelor is because it's not useful communication.

Words are for communication, there's no logos behind them. They're only meaningful because they're useful; their meaning is their use.
( Flapjack I spay a little mare for you, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:19, archived)

On the flip side
some nouns have so many predicates that if you try to analyse them they all but disappear. "Game" is one. Yet people use them every day and know exactly what a game is.
( Flapjack I spay a little mare for you, Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:24, archived)

i've to see icing on
a urinal cake
(rigby happened on (and with added toothache), Tue 23 Jun 2009, 23:02, archived)

Have you really never seen a cake without icing?

( JessAction Give me all your expensive brandy and hubcaps., Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:08, archived)

Not even a victoria sponge?

( JessAction Give me all your expensive brandy and hubcaps., Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:23, archived)

Surely you've seen a jaffa cake?

( JessAction Give me all your expensive brandy and hubcaps., Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:30, archived)

YOU'VE NEVER WATCHED JURASSIC PARK?!??!

( JessAction Give me all your expensive brandy and hubcaps., Tue 23 Jun 2009, 22:35, archived)