Manuel Liz

There is a widespread view in philosophy of language and in philosophy of mind according to which the «quinean» rejection of analyticity can be made compatible with some sort of realism about meaning. Against such compatibilist claim, Paul Boghossian has recently held the thesis that one cannot coherently reject the analytical/synthetical distinction maintaining at the same time a meaning realism. His arguments are very pervasive, but they can be replied. The main objective of this paper is to show that in fact it is possible to reject analyticity being at the same time a meaning realist, even a meaning realist of a non-holist kind. The prevailing view is basically right. Moreover, it is possible to go on maintaining the compatibilist claim in its most radical form. In short, even if we adopt a non-holist meaning realism, we must reject analyticity because language is always conceptually motivated and engaged with reality. There is no linguistic arbitrariness. That forces us to go far from classical conceptions of meaning and to have a much more pluralistic one. With respect to it, for instance, to say that some statements are true once their meanings are fixed would not entail that they are true by virtue of meanings. The problem to get such a conception of meaning remains open. However, the reasons against analyticity do not force us to any irreductible meaning holism

In this paper, we analyze a way of valuing positively something which rarely has been taking into account in the literature: to value positively something because it could be valued positively by someone else. The main features of that way of valuing something are really very suggesting. Here, we would not have instrumental valuations, nor valuations directly sensitive to intrinsic values either. However, there would be cases in which valuations made in that way would make us able to detect things that can be valued in an inconditional way. When we imagine or conceive what could be value positively, our motivational structures face us with something that is valued without evaluative conditions and, therefore, with something that is a good candidate to have an intrinsic value.