Analyticity and the Challenge of Open Texture

In the following, I will explore the significance of the threat and challenge open texture can pose to analyticity. I take it that this challenge is very serious but has not been taken seriously enough so far. I will first discuss in some detail (Sect. 1) whether and, if yes, how there still can be necessary or sufficient conditions for some open textured concept or predicate expressing that concept. It turns out that the idea of synonymy does not apply in any straightforward, bivalent way to predicates expressing such a concept. The same holds for the idea of analyticity if it is explained via the idea of synonymy. All this does not mean that there is no tenable conception of analyticity without indeterminacy left (Sect.2). This discussion will also lead to a distinction between different levels of open texture: open texture can be iterated and spread across a system of concepts. The general conclusion is not that the analytic-synthetic distinction cannot be upheld but rather that, given how pervasive open texture is, there might be so few analytic truths that the distinction turns out to be much less significant than perhaps assumed. I end by raising some further questions for further inquiry. An appendix indicates further reasons, independent of open texture, to doubt that there are many analytic truths at all.