Two Dogmas of Empiricism
Encyclopedia
W. V. Quine's paper Two Dogmas of Empiricism, published in 1951, is one of the most celebrated papers of twentieth century philosophy in the analytic
tradition. According to Harvard
professor of philosophy Peter Godfrey-Smith
, this "paper [is] sometimes regarded as the most important in all of twentieth-century philosophy". The paper is an attack on two central parts of the logical positivists'
philosophy. One is the analytic-synthetic distinction between analytic truth
s and synthetic truths, explained by Quine as truths grounded only in meanings and independent of facts, and truths grounded in facts. The other is reductionism
, the theory that each meaningful statement gets its meaning from some logic
al construction of terms that refers exclusively to immediate experience.
"Two Dogmas" is divided into six sections. The first four sections are focused on analyticity, the last two sections on reductionism. There, Quine turns the focus to the logical positivists' theory of meaning. He also presents his own holistic
theory of meaning.
Quine begins by making a distinction between two different classes of analytic statements. The first one is called logically true and has the form:
No unmarried man is married
A sentence with that form is true independent of the interpretation of "man" and "married", so long as the logical particles "no", "un-", "is" and "and" have their ordinary English meaning.
The statements in the second class have the form:
No bachelor is married.
A statement with this form can be turned into a statement with form (1) by changing synonyms with synonyms, in this case "bachelor" with "unmarried man". It is the second class of statements that lack characterization according to Quine. The notion of the second form of analyticity leans on the notion of synonymy, which Quine believes is in as much need of clarification as analyticity. Most of Quine's following arguments are focused on showing how explanations of synonymy end up being dependent on the notions of analyticity, necessity, or even synonymy itself.
How do we reduce sentences from the second class to a sentence of class (1)? Some might propose definitions. "No bachelor is married" can be turned into "No unmarried man is married" because "bachelor" is defined as "unmarried man". But, Quine asks: how do we find out that "bachelor" is defined as "unmarried man"? Clearly, a dictionary would not solve the problem, as a dictionary is a report of already known synonyms, and thus is dependent on the notion of synonymy, which Quine holds as unexplained.
A second suggestion Quine considers is an explanation of synonymy in terms of interchangeability. Two linguistic forms are (according to this view) synonymous if they are interchangeable without changing the truth-value. That is, in all contexts without change of truth value. But consider the following example:
"Bachelor" has fewer than ten letters.
Obviously "bachelor" and "unmarried man" are not interchangeable in that sentence. To exclude that example and some other obvious counterexamples, such as poetic quality, Quine introduces the notion of cognitive synonymy. But does interchangeability hold as an explanation of cognitive synonymy
? Suppose we have a language without modal adverbs like "necessarily". Such a language would be extensional
, in the way that two predicates which are true about the same objects are interchangeable again without altering the truth-value. Thus, there is no assurance that two terms that are interchangeable without the truth-value changing are interchangeable because of meaning, and not because of chance. For example, "creature with a heart" and "creature with kidneys" share extension.
In a language with the modal adverb "necessarily" the problem is solved, as salva veritate
holds in the following case:
Necessarily all and only bachelors are unmarried men
while it does not hold for
Necessarily all and only creatures with a heart are creatures with kidneys.
Presuming that 'creature with a heart' and 'creature with kidneys' have the same extension, they will be interchangeable salva veritate
. But this interchangeability rests upon both empirical features of the language itself and the degree to which extension is empirically found to be identical for the two concepts, and not upon the sought for principle of cognitive synonymy.
It seems that the only way to assert the synonymy is by supposing that the terms 'bachelor' and 'unmarried man' are synonymous and that the sentence "All and only all bachelors are unmarried men" is analytic. But for salva veritate to hold as a definition of something more than extensional agreement, i.e., cognitive synonymy, we need a notion of necessity and thus of analyticity.
So, from the above example, it can be seen that in order for us to distinguish between analytic and synthetic we must appeal to synonymy; at the same time, we should also understand synonymy with interchangeability salva veritate. However, such a condition to understand synonymy is not enough so we not only argue that the terms should be interchangeable, but necessarily so. And to explain this logical necessity we must appeal to analyticity once again.
of meaning: an analytic statement would be one synonymous with a logical truth
, which would be an extreme case of meaning where empirical verification is not needed. "So, if the verification theory can be accepted as an adequate account of statement synonymy, the notion of analyticity is saved after all."
The problem that naturally follows is how statements are to be verified. An empiricist would say that it can only be done using empirical evidence. So some form of reductionism - "the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience" - must be assumed in order for an empiricist to 'save' the notion of analyticity. Such reductionism, says Quine, presents just as intractable a problem as did analyticity.
In order to prove that all meaningful statements can be translated into a sense-datum language, a reductionist would surely have to confront "the task of specifying a sense-datum language and showing how to translate the rest of significant discourse, statement by statement, into it." To illustrate the difficulty of doing so, Quine describes Rudolf Carnap
's attempt in his book Der logische Aufbau der Welt.
Quine first observes that Carnap's starting point was not the strictest possible, as his "sense-datum language" included not only sense-events but also "the notations of logic, up through higher set theory... Empiricists there are who would boggle at such prodigality." Nonetheless, says Quine, Carnap showed great ingenuity in defining sensory concepts "which, but for his constructions, one would not have dreamed were definable on so slender a basis." However, even such admirable efforts left Carnap, by his own admission, far short of completing the whole project.
Finally, Quine objects in principle to Carnap's proposed translation of statements like "quality q is at point-instant x;y;z;t" into his sense-datum language, because he does not define the connective "is at". Without statements of this kind, it is difficult to see, even in principle, how Carnap's project could have been completed.
The difficulty that Carnap encountered shows that reductionism is, at best, unproven and very difficult to prove. Until a reductionist can produce an acceptable proof, Quine maintains that reductionism is another "metaphysical article of faith".
. Any statement can be held as necessarily true according to Quine, if the right changes are made somewhere else in the system. In the same way, no statements are immune to revision.
Even logical laws can be revised according to Quine. Quantum logic
, introduced by Garrett Birkhoff
and John von Neumann
, abandons the law of distributivity from classical logic in order to reconcile some of the apparent inconsistencies of classical Boolean logic
with the facts related to measurement and observation in quantum mechanics. Quine makes the case that the empirical study of physics has furnished apparently credible grounds for replacing classical logic by quantum logic, rather as Newtonian physics
gave way to Einsteinian physics
. The idea that logical laws are not immune to revision in the light of empirical evidence has provoked an intense debate (see Is logic empirical?
).
According to Quine, there are two different results of his reasoning. The first is a blurring of the line between metaphysics
and natural science. The common-sense theory about physical objects is epistemologically comparable to the gods of Homer
. Quine is a Physicalist, in the sense that he considers it a scientific error not to adopt a theory which makes reference to physical objects. However, like Gods of Homer, physical objects are posits, and there is no great epistemic difference in kind; the difference is rather that the theory of physical objects has turned out to be a more efficient theory. As Quine states in Two Dogmas, "The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of
experience".
The second result is a move towards pragmatism
. Since, Quine says, the function of science is to predict future experiences in the light of past ones, the only ground for choosing which explanations to believe is "the degree to which they expedite our dealings with sense experiences." While pragmatic concerns are important for Carnap and other logical positivists when choosing linguistic framework, their pragmatism "leaves off at the imagined boundary between the analytic and the synthetic". For Quine, every change in the system of science is, when rational
, pragmatic.
and P. F. Strawson
criticized "Two Dogmas" in their (1956) article "In Defense of a Dogma". Among other things, they argue that Quine's skepticism
about synonyms leads to a skepticism about meaning. If statements can have meanings, then it would make sense to ask "What does it mean?". If it makes sense to ask "What does it mean?", then synonymy can be defined as follows: Two sentences are synonymous if and only if the true answer of the question "What does it mean?" asked of one of them is the true answer to the same question asked of the other. They also draw the conclusion that discussion about correct or incorrect translations would be impossible given Quine's argument. Four years after Grice and Strawson published their paper, Quine's book Word and Object
was released. In the book Quine presented his theory of indeterminacy of translation
.
In "'Two Dogmas' revisited", Hilary Putnam
argues that Quine is attacking two different notions. Analytic truth defined as a true statement derivable from a tautology
by putting synonyms for synonyms are near Kant's
account of analytic truth as a truth whose negation is a contradiction. Analytic truth defined as a truth confirmed no matter what however, is closer to one of the traditional accounts of a priori
. While the first four sections of Quine's paper concern analyticity, the last two concern a priority. Putnam considers the argument in the two last sections as independent of the first four, and at the same time as Putnam criticizes Quine, he also emphasizes his historical importance as the first top rank philosopher to both reject the notion of apriority and sketch a methodology without it.
Jerrold Katz
, an onetime associate of Noam Chomsky
's, countered the arguments of Two Dogmas directly by trying to define analyticity non-circularly on the syntactical features of sentences.
In his book Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume 1 : The Dawn of Analysis Scott Soames
(pp 360–361) has pointed out that Quine's circularity argument needs two of the logical positivists' central theses to be effective:
It is only when these two theses are accepted that Quine's argument holds. It is not a problem that the notion of necessity is presupposed by the notion of analyticity if necessity can be explained without analyticity. According to Soames, both theses were accepted by most philosophers when Quine published Two Dogmas. Today however, Soames holds both statements to be antiquated.
Analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...
tradition. According to Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
professor of philosophy Peter Godfrey-Smith
Peter Godfrey-Smith
Peter Godfrey-Smith is a professor of philosophy at Harvard University. Born in Australia in 1965, he received a Ph.D. in philosophy from UCSD in 1991, and joined Harvard in 2006 after previous positions at Stanford University and Australian National University...
, this "paper [is] sometimes regarded as the most important in all of twentieth-century philosophy". The paper is an attack on two central parts of the logical positivists'
Logical positivism
Logical positivism is a philosophy that combines empiricism—the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge—with a version of rationalism incorporating mathematical and logico-linguistic constructs and deductions of epistemology.It may be considered as a type of analytic...
philosophy. One is the analytic-synthetic distinction between analytic truth
Truth
Truth has a variety of meanings, such as the state of being in accord with fact or reality. It can also mean having fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal. In a common usage, it also means constancy or sincerity in action or character...
s and synthetic truths, explained by Quine as truths grounded only in meanings and independent of facts, and truths grounded in facts. The other is reductionism
Reductionism
Reductionism can mean either an approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can...
, the theory that each meaningful statement gets its meaning from some logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
al construction of terms that refers exclusively to immediate experience.
"Two Dogmas" is divided into six sections. The first four sections are focused on analyticity, the last two sections on reductionism. There, Quine turns the focus to the logical positivists' theory of meaning. He also presents his own holistic
Holism
Holism is the idea that all the properties of a given system cannot be determined or explained by its component parts alone...
theory of meaning.
Analyticity and circularity
Most of Quine's argument against analyticity in the first four sections is focused on showing that different explanations of analyticity are circular. The main purpose is to show that no satisfactory explanation of analyticity has been given.Quine begins by making a distinction between two different classes of analytic statements. The first one is called logically true and has the form:
No unmarried man is married
A sentence with that form is true independent of the interpretation of "man" and "married", so long as the logical particles "no", "un-", "is" and "and" have their ordinary English meaning.
The statements in the second class have the form:
No bachelor is married.
A statement with this form can be turned into a statement with form (1) by changing synonyms with synonyms, in this case "bachelor" with "unmarried man". It is the second class of statements that lack characterization according to Quine. The notion of the second form of analyticity leans on the notion of synonymy, which Quine believes is in as much need of clarification as analyticity. Most of Quine's following arguments are focused on showing how explanations of synonymy end up being dependent on the notions of analyticity, necessity, or even synonymy itself.
How do we reduce sentences from the second class to a sentence of class (1)? Some might propose definitions. "No bachelor is married" can be turned into "No unmarried man is married" because "bachelor" is defined as "unmarried man". But, Quine asks: how do we find out that "bachelor" is defined as "unmarried man"? Clearly, a dictionary would not solve the problem, as a dictionary is a report of already known synonyms, and thus is dependent on the notion of synonymy, which Quine holds as unexplained.
A second suggestion Quine considers is an explanation of synonymy in terms of interchangeability. Two linguistic forms are (according to this view) synonymous if they are interchangeable without changing the truth-value. That is, in all contexts without change of truth value. But consider the following example:
"Bachelor" has fewer than ten letters.
Obviously "bachelor" and "unmarried man" are not interchangeable in that sentence. To exclude that example and some other obvious counterexamples, such as poetic quality, Quine introduces the notion of cognitive synonymy. But does interchangeability hold as an explanation of cognitive synonymy
Cognitive synonymy
Cognitive synonymy is a property of words or terms distinguished from similarity of mental associations, connotations, emotive responses, and poetic value; it is the information that a word or term expresses such that it is synonymous with a different word's cognitive meaning...
? Suppose we have a language without modal adverbs like "necessarily". Such a language would be extensional
Extension (semantics)
In any of several studies that treat the use of signs - for example, in linguistics, logic, mathematics, semantics, and semiotics - the extension of a concept, idea, or sign consists of the things to which it applies, in contrast with its comprehension or intension, which consists very roughly of...
, in the way that two predicates which are true about the same objects are interchangeable again without altering the truth-value. Thus, there is no assurance that two terms that are interchangeable without the truth-value changing are interchangeable because of meaning, and not because of chance. For example, "creature with a heart" and "creature with kidneys" share extension.
In a language with the modal adverb "necessarily" the problem is solved, as salva veritate
Salva veritate
Salva veritate is the logical condition in virtue of which interchanging two expressions may be done without changing the truth-value of statements in which the expressions occur. The phrase occurs in two fragments from Gottfried Leibniz's General Science...
holds in the following case:
Necessarily all and only bachelors are unmarried men
while it does not hold for
Necessarily all and only creatures with a heart are creatures with kidneys.
Presuming that 'creature with a heart' and 'creature with kidneys' have the same extension, they will be interchangeable salva veritate
Salva veritate
Salva veritate is the logical condition in virtue of which interchanging two expressions may be done without changing the truth-value of statements in which the expressions occur. The phrase occurs in two fragments from Gottfried Leibniz's General Science...
. But this interchangeability rests upon both empirical features of the language itself and the degree to which extension is empirically found to be identical for the two concepts, and not upon the sought for principle of cognitive synonymy.
It seems that the only way to assert the synonymy is by supposing that the terms 'bachelor' and 'unmarried man' are synonymous and that the sentence "All and only all bachelors are unmarried men" is analytic. But for salva veritate to hold as a definition of something more than extensional agreement, i.e., cognitive synonymy, we need a notion of necessity and thus of analyticity.
So, from the above example, it can be seen that in order for us to distinguish between analytic and synthetic we must appeal to synonymy; at the same time, we should also understand synonymy with interchangeability salva veritate. However, such a condition to understand synonymy is not enough so we not only argue that the terms should be interchangeable, but necessarily so. And to explain this logical necessity we must appeal to analyticity once again.
Reductionism
Analyticity would be acceptable if we allowed for the verification theoryVerification theory
The verification theory is a philosophical theory proposed by the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle. A simplified form of the theory states that a proposition's meaning is determined by the method through which it is empirically verified. In other words, if something cannot be empirically...
of meaning: an analytic statement would be one synonymous with a logical truth
Logical truth
Logical truth is one of the most fundamental concepts in logic, and there are different theories on its nature. A logical truth is a statement which is true and remains true under all reinterpretations of its components other than its logical constants. It is a type of analytic statement.Logical...
, which would be an extreme case of meaning where empirical verification is not needed. "So, if the verification theory can be accepted as an adequate account of statement synonymy, the notion of analyticity is saved after all."
The problem that naturally follows is how statements are to be verified. An empiricist would say that it can only be done using empirical evidence. So some form of reductionism - "the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience" - must be assumed in order for an empiricist to 'save' the notion of analyticity. Such reductionism, says Quine, presents just as intractable a problem as did analyticity.
In order to prove that all meaningful statements can be translated into a sense-datum language, a reductionist would surely have to confront "the task of specifying a sense-datum language and showing how to translate the rest of significant discourse, statement by statement, into it." To illustrate the difficulty of doing so, Quine describes Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap was an influential German-born philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism....
's attempt in his book Der logische Aufbau der Welt.
Quine first observes that Carnap's starting point was not the strictest possible, as his "sense-datum language" included not only sense-events but also "the notations of logic, up through higher set theory... Empiricists there are who would boggle at such prodigality." Nonetheless, says Quine, Carnap showed great ingenuity in defining sensory concepts "which, but for his constructions, one would not have dreamed were definable on so slender a basis." However, even such admirable efforts left Carnap, by his own admission, far short of completing the whole project.
Finally, Quine objects in principle to Carnap's proposed translation of statements like "quality q is at point-instant x;y;z;t" into his sense-datum language, because he does not define the connective "is at". Without statements of this kind, it is difficult to see, even in principle, how Carnap's project could have been completed.
The difficulty that Carnap encountered shows that reductionism is, at best, unproven and very difficult to prove. Until a reductionist can produce an acceptable proof, Quine maintains that reductionism is another "metaphysical article of faith".
Quine's holism
Instead of reductionism, Quine proposes that it is the whole field of science and not single statements that are verified. All scientific statements are interconnected. Logical laws give the relation between different statements, while they also are statements of the system. This makes talk about the empirical content of a single statement misleading. It also becomes impossible to draw a line between synthetic statements, which depend on experience, and analytic statements, that hold come what mayHold come what may
Hold come what may is a phrase popularized by the late Harvard philosophy professor, Willard Van Orman Quine. Beliefs that are "held come what may" are beliefs one is unwilling to give up, regardless of any evidence with which one might be presented...
. Any statement can be held as necessarily true according to Quine, if the right changes are made somewhere else in the system. In the same way, no statements are immune to revision.
Even logical laws can be revised according to Quine. Quantum logic
Quantum logic
In quantum mechanics, quantum logic is a set of rules for reasoning about propositions which takes the principles of quantum theory into account...
, introduced by Garrett Birkhoff
Garrett Birkhoff
Garrett Birkhoff was an American mathematician. He is best known for his work in lattice theory.The mathematician George Birkhoff was his father....
and John von Neumann
John von Neumann
John von Neumann was a Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath who made major contributions to a vast number of fields, including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, geometry, fluid dynamics, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis,...
, abandons the law of distributivity from classical logic in order to reconcile some of the apparent inconsistencies of classical Boolean logic
Boolean logic
Boolean algebra is a logical calculus of truth values, developed by George Boole in the 1840s. It resembles the algebra of real numbers, but with the numeric operations of multiplication xy, addition x + y, and negation −x replaced by the respective logical operations of...
with the facts related to measurement and observation in quantum mechanics. Quine makes the case that the empirical study of physics has furnished apparently credible grounds for replacing classical logic by quantum logic, rather as Newtonian physics
Classical mechanics
In physics, classical mechanics is one of the two major sub-fields of mechanics, which is concerned with the set of physical laws describing the motion of bodies under the action of a system of forces...
gave way to Einsteinian physics
General relativity
General relativity or the general theory of relativity is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916. It is the current description of gravitation in modern physics...
. The idea that logical laws are not immune to revision in the light of empirical evidence has provoked an intense debate (see Is logic empirical?
Is logic empirical?
"Is logic empirical?" is the title of two articles that discuss the idea that the algebraic properties of logic may, or should, be empirically determined; in particular, they deal with the question of whether empirical facts about quantum phenomena may provide grounds for revising classical logic...
).
According to Quine, there are two different results of his reasoning. The first is a blurring of the line between metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
and natural science. The common-sense theory about physical objects is epistemologically comparable to the gods of Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
. Quine is a Physicalist, in the sense that he considers it a scientific error not to adopt a theory which makes reference to physical objects. However, like Gods of Homer, physical objects are posits, and there is no great epistemic difference in kind; the difference is rather that the theory of physical objects has turned out to be a more efficient theory. As Quine states in Two Dogmas, "The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of
experience".
The second result is a move towards pragmatism
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice...
. Since, Quine says, the function of science is to predict future experiences in the light of past ones, the only ground for choosing which explanations to believe is "the degree to which they expedite our dealings with sense experiences." While pragmatic concerns are important for Carnap and other logical positivists when choosing linguistic framework, their pragmatism "leaves off at the imagined boundary between the analytic and the synthetic". For Quine, every change in the system of science is, when rational
Rationality
In philosophy, rationality is the exercise of reason. It is the manner in which people derive conclusions when considering things deliberately. It also refers to the conformity of one's beliefs with one's reasons for belief, or with one's actions with one's reasons for action...
, pragmatic.
Critique and influence
Paul GricePaul Grice
Herbert Paul Grice , usually publishing under the name H. P. Grice, H...
and P. F. Strawson
P. F. Strawson
Sir Peter Frederick Strawson FBA was an English philosopher. He was the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford from 1968 to 1987. Before that he was appointed as a college lecturer at University College, Oxford in 1947 and became a tutorial fellow the...
criticized "Two Dogmas" in their (1956) article "In Defense of a Dogma". Among other things, they argue that Quine's skepticism
Skepticism
Skepticism has many definitions, but generally refers to any questioning attitude towards knowledge, facts, or opinions/beliefs stated as facts, or doubt regarding claims that are taken for granted elsewhere...
about synonyms leads to a skepticism about meaning. If statements can have meanings, then it would make sense to ask "What does it mean?". If it makes sense to ask "What does it mean?", then synonymy can be defined as follows: Two sentences are synonymous if and only if the true answer of the question "What does it mean?" asked of one of them is the true answer to the same question asked of the other. They also draw the conclusion that discussion about correct or incorrect translations would be impossible given Quine's argument. Four years after Grice and Strawson published their paper, Quine's book Word and Object
Word and Object
Word and Object is a 1960 book of epistemology by Willard Van Orman Quine. In it, Quine develops his thesis of the Indeterminacy of translation....
was released. In the book Quine presented his theory of indeterminacy of translation
Indeterminacy of translation
The indeterminacy of translation is a thesis propounded by 20th century analytic philosopher W. V. Quine. The classic statement of this thesis can be found in his 1960 book Word and Object, which gathered together and refined much of Quine's previous work on subjects other than formal logic and set...
.
In "'Two Dogmas' revisited", Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Whitehall Putnam is an American philosopher, mathematician and computer scientist, who has been a central figure in analytic philosophy since the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science...
argues that Quine is attacking two different notions. Analytic truth defined as a true statement derivable from a tautology
Tautology (logic)
In logic, a tautology is a formula which is true in every possible interpretation. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein first applied the term to redundancies of propositional logic in 1921; it had been used earlier to refer to rhetorical tautologies, and continues to be used in that alternate sense...
by putting synonyms for synonyms are near Kant's
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
account of analytic truth as a truth whose negation is a contradiction. Analytic truth defined as a truth confirmed no matter what however, is closer to one of the traditional accounts of a priori
A priori and a posteriori (philosophy)
The terms a priori and a posteriori are used in philosophy to distinguish two types of knowledge, justifications or arguments...
. While the first four sections of Quine's paper concern analyticity, the last two concern a priority. Putnam considers the argument in the two last sections as independent of the first four, and at the same time as Putnam criticizes Quine, he also emphasizes his historical importance as the first top rank philosopher to both reject the notion of apriority and sketch a methodology without it.
Jerrold Katz
Jerrold Katz
Jerrold J. Katz was an American philosopher and linguist.After receiving a PhD in philosophy from Princeton University in 1960, Katz became a Research Associate in Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961. He was appointed Assistant Professor of Philosophy there in 1963,...
, an onetime associate of Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
's, countered the arguments of Two Dogmas directly by trying to define analyticity non-circularly on the syntactical features of sentences.
In his book Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume 1 : The Dawn of Analysis Scott Soames
Scott Soames
Scott Soames is a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California. He specializes in the philosophy of language and the history of analytic philosophy...
(pp 360–361) has pointed out that Quine's circularity argument needs two of the logical positivists' central theses to be effective:
- All necessary (and all a priori) truths are analytic
- Analyticity is needed to explain and legitimate necessity.
It is only when these two theses are accepted that Quine's argument holds. It is not a problem that the notion of necessity is presupposed by the notion of analyticity if necessity can be explained without analyticity. According to Soames, both theses were accepted by most philosophers when Quine published Two Dogmas. Today however, Soames holds both statements to be antiquated.