Using Concepts
Using a concept involves applying it to the real world. Since possessing a concept involves being able to use it, it follows that the possession of a concept commits us to applying that concept in various ways, and that these applications must be generally reliable and accurate in order for us to possess the concept at all. And from this it follows that one must assent to certain factual propositions employing the concept in order to count as possessing it in the first place, so that no "analytic' use of a concept is intelligible unless it is embedded in a network of "synthetic" uses of that same concept. Hence "propositions of the form of empirical propositions, and not only propositions of logic, form the foundation of all operating with thoughts (with language)” (Wittgenstein). But in this case it no longer makes sense to ask whether conceptual truths are "analytic" or "synthetic." The analytic/synthetic distinction itself presupposes a se