The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy is Not Rational

My opponent argues that, since “bachelor” can be substituted for “unmarried man” in the proposition “a(n) bachelor is an unmarried man”, the proposition is true by definition, and, therefore, tautological. He then goes on to say that “all bachelors are messy” is not analytic because “bachelor” cannot be replaced with “messy person”. However, this distinction fails if this notion of symmetry is shown to be based on observation of existents – if it can be shown that the very justification for believing that “bachelor” is defined as “an unmarried man” is no different from the justification for believing that “bachelor” is equivalent to “messy person”, then the dichotomy between analytic and synthetic propositions falls. To be able to claim that a statement is synonymous with another, it must be able to be substituted with the other in all propositions while maintaining the truth values of said propositions. To say otherwise is absurd – if “bachelor” = “unmarried man”, to say that “bachelor” couldn't be substituted for “unmarried man” in the proposition “an unmarried man is an unmarried man”, “bachelor” and “unmarried man” would, necessarily, not be synonymous. How, then, do you determine synonymity? It is not merely enough to say that “bachelor” and “unmarried man” are synonymous because they are synonymous, even assuming that they are – that statement is meaningless and tells us nothing about the actual nature of synonymity. Why are they able to be substituted for each other? What makes “bachelor” necessarily equivalent to “unmarried man”? The answer surely can't be “because people have said so” - that's a very unsatisfying answer, since it would be divorcing truth completely from reality (concepts must mean something for them to be true concepts) and making truth arbitrary. The only legitimate basis for a concept, something which describes reality, is in reality – anything else would be literally unintelligible (the unreal is not able to be described or conceptualized by virtue of the fact that it is unreal). If one must look at reality to form any concept, then it follows that concepts are fundamentally dependent on existents and can do nothing but describe them. Nothing exists but existents – that is axiomatic. If this is so, and if concepts must describe reality for the notion of “symmetry”, and, thus, the notion of “analyticity”, to make sense, then all analytic statements must, to make any sense, describe existents. In this sense, the term “bachelor” is only reasonable because there exists existents which have the qualities that “bachelor” describes, or, in other words, only because bachelors exist. It is impossible to imagine a characteristic divorced from an existent - “red” must always be accompanied by “object”, since “red” is meaningless unless attached to something that is able to be red. As such, “bachelor” does not just describe qualities that exist in some abstract way – it describes qualities which exist in existents. These existents are the referents of the concept, and, if they did not exist, the concept would cease to be meaningful. Existents are what they are. A is A. What is... is. To quote Peikoff, “In the present issue, the basic error […] is the view that facts, some or all, are contingent. As far as metaphysical reality is concerned (omitting human actions from consideration, for the moment), there are no "facts which happen to be but could have been otherwise as against "facts which must be." There are only facts which are.“ [1] A fact is just the recognition of the identity of an entity. At the very basic level, the metaphysical level, existents are just what they are, regardless of anything else. For a fact to be contingent and not necessary is to say that A could possibly not be A, which is obviously absurd. The “essential characteristics” of an existent do not erase all the others – the “accidental/essential” split is only valid epistemologically, when talking about particular concepts. Accidental qualities are no less real than essential qualities and a concept which subsumes an entity with “accidental qualities” does not escape from those being a part of it. The arbitrary selection of essentials cannot wash out anything else about the existents in question. To quote Quine, “it may indeed be conceded (if only for the sake of argument) that rationality is involved in the meaning of the word 'man' while two-leggedness is not; but two-leggedness may at the same time be viewed as involved in the meaning of 'biped' while rationality is not. Thus from the point of view of the doctrine of meaning it makes no sense to say of the actual individual, who is at once a man and a biped, that his rationality is essential and his two-leggedness accidental or vice versa.”[2] “Essentials” are entirely relative based on epistemological concepts and do not actually exist apart from such concepts, so they cannot have any influence on what the existents actually are. If this is so, then all things are themselves. If all concepts are based on these things, they are based on the tautological necessity of their referents – they are based on the fact that A = A. Therefore, all propositions made up of meaningful concepts must be analytic, since concepts describe and encompass existents which tautologically are – if they are, and if they have certain qualities, these qualities are necessary and immutable, and it follows that a statement like “some bachelors are messy” can logically be substituted for “'some existents that are subsumed by the concept “bachelors”' are 'some existents that are subsumed by the concept “messy'”, which is either tautologically true by the nature of those existents or entirely self-contradictory. Therefore, any statement can be reduced to tautologies, and, as such, all statements are either false or “true by definition”, making the distinction between analytic and syntethic statements absolutely meaningless. My opponent says that adopting the “ridiculous position that philosophers […] are actually just guessing [if a proposition is analytic or synthetic]” hurts my case. This argument does nothing to further his BOP – no matter how many philosophers have said something, if it does not agree with reality, it is wrong. No matter how consistent they are, if there is no logical basis for what they're consistent about, then the consistency must have been the result of guesswork, no matter what. This point can only stand if the rest of my case falls, meaning that it's irrelevant to any judge, since it can only sway the debate to his favor if I've already lost.I've addressed my opponent's arguments about concepts vs. existents earlier this round (at least implicitly), but let me go over one point: the thought experiment my opponent proposes to prove the independency of concepts from entities fails to recognize that, even if “bachelor” =/= “human” in terms of essentials, both groups do overlap and the existent man both lends the qualities of a “bachelor” to the concept of “human” and vis-versa. It can be said that a bachelor is human or that a human is a bachelor, which is the extent of what I am arguing. If no human nor bachelor existed, then both concepts would be entirely meaningless. I agree that it's contradictory to say “faeries might exist” if the proposition both means “faeries may exist” and “faeries may not exist”. Obviously faeries either exist or they do not – either one of these possibilities would contradict one of the meanings of the proposition. So what? My opponent has just offered this point with no explanation – he hasn't said why this is a problem, so I'm not quite sure what its purpose was. [1] Leonard Peikoff, The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology [2] Quine, The Two Dogmas of Empiricism [http://www.ditext.com...]