Two dogmas of empiricism - quine

Two Dogmas of Empiricism

19/06/11 00:09

Two Dogmas of Empiricism By W.V.O. Quine

This e-text version of Willard Van Ormond Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism of 1953 is provided freely for the use of scholars and laymen alike, as well as in support of several of the essays here.
Modern empiricism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is a belief in some fundamentalcleavage between truths which are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact and truths which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. The other dogma is Summary reductionism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience. Both dogmas, I shall argue, are ill founded. One effect of abandoning them is, aswe shall see, a blurring of the supposed boundary between speculative metaphysics and natural science. Another effect is a shift toward pragmatism. 1. Background for Analyticity
The notion of analyticity in Hume's distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact, and Leibniz's distinction between truths of reason and truths of fact. Leibniz needs clarification spoke of the truths ofreason as true in all possible worlds. as well as Picturesqueness aside, this is to say that the truths of reason are those the notion of which could not possibly be false. In the same vein we hear analytic selfstatements defined as statements whose denials are self-contradictory. contradictori But this definition has small explanatory value; for the notion of selfness contradictoriness, in the quitebroad sense needed for this definition of

Kant's cleavage between analytic and synthetic truths was foreshadowed in

analyticity, stands in exactly the same need of clarification as does the notion of analyticity itself. (1a) The two notions are the two sides of a single dubious coin.
Definition of analyticity, according Kant's use of the notion.

Kant conceived of an analytic statementas one that attributes to its subject no more than is already conceptually contained in the subject. This formulation has two shortcomings: it limits itself to statements of subjectpredicate form, and it appeals to a notion of containment which is left at a metaphorical level. But Kant's intent, evident more from the use he makes of the notion of analyticity than from his definition of it, can berestated thus: a statement is analytic when it is true by virtue of meanings and independently of fact. Pursuing this line, let us examine the concept of meaning which is presupposed.

Meaning, let us remember, is not to be identified with naming. (1b) Frege's example of 'Evening Star' and 'Morning Star' and Russell's of 'Scott' and 'the author of Waverly', illustrate that terms can name the samething but Meaning and differ in meaning. The distinction between meaning and naming is no less naming are not the same important at the level of abstract terms. The terms '9' and 'the number of the planets' name one and the same abstract entity but presumably must be regarded as unlike in meaning; for astronomical observation was needed, and not mere reflection on meanings, to determine thesameness of the entity in question.
One must equally distinguish between the meaning of a general term and its extension

The above examples consist of singular terms, concrete and abstract. With general terms, or predicates, the situation is somewhat different but parallel. Whereas a singular term purports to name an entity, abstract or concrete, a general term does not; but a general term is trueof an entity, or of each of many, or of none. (2b) The class of all entities of which a general term is true is called the extension of the term. Now paralleling the contrast between the meaning of a singular term and the entity named, we must distinguish equally between the meaning of a general term and its extension. The general terms 'creature with a heart' and 'creature with a kidney,' e.g.,...