On analytic and synthetic dichotomy in standard interpretation of the scientific theory

One of the most famous programs for substantiating scientific knowledge proposed in the 20th century is the program of logical positivism. Its distinguishing feature is the systematic use of rich formal logical tools to explicate and solve a number of traditional philosophical and methodological problems. Within the framework of this program, the so-called standard (“propositional”) interpretation of scientific theory was proposed, which involved formulation of the certain natural scientific theory in a determined formal language and its presentation in the form of a partially ordered set of sentences connected by the deductive derivability relation. Such representation was considered as a tool in discovering fundamental and undoubtedly true foundations of the scientific knowledge, formulating procedures for reducing theoretical knowledge to the empirical knowledge, as well as criteria in distinguishing between analytical and synthetic sentences within the theory. Subsequently, the last two tasks were recognized as unrealizable and were declared by the critics of this program to be two dogmas of the logical empiricism. The present study makes an attempt to analyze the main critical arguments put forward against the technique of distinguishing between analytic and synthetic sentences within the theory. The conclusion was made about their insolvency.

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