Who’s a Good Dogma?!?: Perspectives on Quine’s Critique of Analyticity

Thomas J. Brommage

Abstract

From Plato, who acknowledges conceptual truths as a more genuine way of knowing than sense impressions, to Descartes relied on the self-justifying notion of the cogito, an onwards to Hume, Leibniz and Kant—all of whom explicitly rely on it: epistemology had largely been rooted in the division between analytic and synthetic propositions. Quine’s celebrated argument in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951) purports to demonstrate that there is no non-circular way to define analytic propositions. No types of claims are qualitatively different, he argues, and in principle all propositions are subject to the tribunal of sense experience. It just that happens, as he argues, that some are more ‘convenient’ to us—that is, more central to our “web” of beliefs than other claims. This “pragmatic” idea of the a priori (which Quine borrows from his teacher at Harvard, C. I. Lewis) is a central feature of contemporary the “post-modern” criticism of epistemology and philosophy of science. In this essay, I intend to chart a history of the analytic/synthetic distinction, through its proponents and critics. Focus will be on Quine’s argument itself, paying special attention to placing the argument within the contextual background of logical positivism that lead to his criticism. Some attention will be paid towards the end of the essay to examine responses to the argument—from Grice and Strawson (1956), Putnam (1976), Chalmers (2011) and others.

Selected Bibliography

Boghossian, Paul and Peacocke Christopher (2000). New Essays on the A Priori. New York: Oxford University Press.

Chalmers, David (2011). “Revisability and Conceptual Change in ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’” Journal of Philosophy 108 (8): 387-415.

Grice, H. P. and Strawson, P. F. (1956). “In Defense of a Dogma” The Philosophical Review 65 (2): 141-158

Katz, Jerrold (1974). “Where Things Stand with the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction” Synthese 28 (3-4): 283 – 319.

Lewis, C. I (1923). “A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori” Journal of Philosophy 20 (7): 169-177

Putnam, Hilary (1976). “’Two Dogmas’ revisited” in Gilbert Ryle, Contemporary Aspects of Philosophy. Stocksfield: Oriel Press: 202–213.

Quine, W.V.O. (1951). “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” Philosophical Review 60: 20-43.

Quine, W.V.O. (1953). “Carnap on Logical Truth” Synthese 12 (4): 350-374.