This paper investigates the relation between Carnap and Quine’s views on analyticity on the one hand, and their views on philosophical analysis or explication on the other. I argue that the stance each takes on what constitutes a successful explication largely dictates the view they take on analyticity. I show that although acknowledged by neither party (in fact Quine frequently expressed his agreement with Carnap on this subject) their views on explication are substantially different. I argue that this (...) difference not only explains their differences on the question of analyticity, but points to a Quinean way to answer a challenge that Quine posed to Carnap. The answer to this challenge leads to a Quinean view of analyticity such that arithmetical truths are analytic, according to Quine’s own remarks, and set theory is at least defensibly analytic. (shrink)

Willard V. Quine’s 1951 article, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (Two Dogmas) was taken to be revolutionary because it rejects the analytic-synthetic distinction and the thesis that empirical statements are confirmed individually rather than holistically. The present chapter, however, argues that the overcoming of modern philosophy already included the overcoming of these theses by Hegelians, pragmatists and two critics of Hegelianism and pragmatism, Grace and Theodore de Laguna. From this perspective, Two Dogmas offers a Hegelian epistemology that was already superseded in (...) 1910. The perspective is largely based on the de Lagunas’ 1910 book Dogmatism and Evolution: Studies in Modern Philosophy. The de Lagunas’ book also helps to make clear that the real revolution Two Dogmas participated in was the marginalisation of their work and that of other speculative philosophers. Grace de Laguna surely recognised much of this when she stood opposite Quine as he first presented Two Dogmas. (shrink)

「경험주의의 두 독단」에서 콰인은 인식론적 전체론에 근거해서 모든 문장이 원칙적으로 수정 가능하므로, 무슨 일이 있어도 수정되지 않는 것으로 가정된 분석 문장이 존재하지 않는다고 주장한다. 콰인에 맞서서, 차머스는 베이즈주의 인식론의 이론적 틀을 사용해서 분석성을 옹호한다. 특히 그는 인식론적 전체론을 받아들이는 콰인주의자들이 베이즈주의 조건화 원리를 위반한 합리적인 믿음 수정의 존재에 개입하게 된다는 것을 설득력 있게 논증한다. 그리고 더 나아가 그는 이러한 종류의 믿음 수정에는 개념 변화가 요구된다고 주장한다. 그런데 이것은 곧 콰인주의자들이 자신들이 거부하고자 하는 분석 문장의 존재를 거부할 수 없게 된다는 것을 (...) 의미한다. 이 글에서 나는 콰인주의자들이 조건화 원리를 위반한 합리적인 믿음 수정을 개념 변화에 호소하는 대신에 이론 변화에 호소해서 설명할 수 있다는 것을 논증한다. (shrink)

I argue that Quinean naturalists’ holism-based arguments against analyticity and apriority are more difficult to resist than is generally supposed, for two reasons. First, although opponents of naturalism sometimes dismiss these arguments on the grounds that the holistic premises on which they depend are unacceptably radical, it turns out that the sort of holism required by these arguments is actually quite minimal. And second, although it’s true, as Grice and Strawson pointed out long ago, that these arguments can (...) succeed only if there isn’t any principled criterion for meaning change, such a criterion turns out to be hard to come by. David Chalmers has recently argued that such a criterion must exist, since the norms governing belief revision are subject to obvious exceptions that can be explained only by appeal to meaning change. But this, I argue, is incorrect: if choices about how to use language are themselves rationally assessable, then there are no such exceptions to be explained. To show that this is so, I formulate a new kind of coherence norm that may be useful for reasoning formally about the relationship between meaning and evidence. (shrink)

Significant issues remain for understanding and evaluating the Quinean critique of the analytic/synthetic distinction. These issues are highlighted in a puzzling mismatch between the common philosophical attitude toward the critique and its broader intellectual legacy. A discussion of this mismatch sets the larger context for criticism of a recent tradition of interpretation of the critique. I argue that this tradition confuses the roles and relative importance of indeterminacy, a priority, and analyticity in the Quinean critique.

An odd dissensus between confident metaphysicians and neopragmatist antimetaphysicians pervades early twenty-first century analytic philosophy. Each faction is convinced their side has won the day, but both are mistaken about the philosophical legacy of the twentieth century. More historical awareness is needed to overcome the current dissensus. Lewis and his possible-world system are lionised by metaphysicians; Quine’s pragmatist scruples about heavy-duty metaphysics inspire antimetaphysicians. But Lewis developed his system under the influence of his teacher Quine, inheriting from him his empiricism, (...) his physicalism, his metaontology, and, I will show in this paper, also his Humeanism. Using published as well as never-before-seen unpublished sources, I will make apparent that both heavy-duty metaphysicians and neopragmatist antimetaphysicians are wrong about the roles Quine and Lewis played in the development of twentieth-century philosophy. The two are much more alike than is commonly supposed, and Quine much more instrumental to the pedigree of current metaphysics. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4.

The main purpose of this paper is to propose and defend anew definition of synonymy. Roughly (and slightly misleadingly), theidea is that two expressions are synonymous iff intersubstitutions insentences preserve the degree of doxastic revisability. In Section 1 Iargue that Quine''s attacks on analyticity leave room for such adefinition. The definition is presented in Section 2, and Section 3elaborates on the concept of revisability. The definition is defendedin Sections 4 and 5. It is, inter alia, shown that the definition (...) hasdesired formal properties. In Sections 6 and 7 I briefly comment on,first, the relation of the definition to Quine''s later ideas about (stimulus)synonymy, and, second, its relation to a general, interlinguistic, conceptof meaning. (shrink)

The paper argues for two theses: a) there are certain truths which are analytic; b) these are true by convention. Much of the paper deals with quine's arguments against these claims. The paper starts by accepting quine's network theory of belief and arguing that this presupposes a certain concept of rule following. This may be used to define analyticity. The paper then discusses the conventional nature of rule following and argues that this implies the conventional truth of analytic truths. (...) Quine's arguments against truth by convention are then disarmed. Finally, The paper shows that the account of analyticity given gives rise to a modal logic in the order of s4, Disarming another argument against conventionalism. (shrink)

Recent work on analyticity distinguishes two kinds, metaphysical and epistemic. This paper argues that the distinction allows for a new view in the philosophy of logic according to which the claims of logic are metaphysically analytic and have distinctive modal profiles, even though their epistemology is holist and in many ways rather Quinean. It is argued that such a view combines some of the more attractive aspects of the Carnapian and Quinean approaches to logic, whilst avoiding some (...) famous problems. (shrink)

I present the history of philosophy, and history more generally, as a context of ideas, with respect to which philosophers and historians share concerns about the meaning of the texts they both use, and where for some there is a principled contrast between seeing meaning in quasi-mathematical terms (“a philosophical stance”) or in terms of context (“a historical stance”). I introduce this imagined (but not imaginary) world of ideas as temporally extended. Returning to my early research into the epistemic problems (...) of historiography, I present my view that foundational was meaningful language in a shared world, and I display some difficulties found in handling the “wholeness” of historical accounts. I came to realise that it was epistemic opposition between historical accounts that mattered. I concluded that analytical philosophy was wrong to assume that individual sentences were free-standing meaningful units that could be juxtaposed with others at whim, and that an understanding of the rational grounds for determining relevance was needed. In order to make sense of this I used Quine’s conception of the “web of belief,” and noted that a historical account could be treated as a “unit of empirical significance” in his terms. I observe that, although the epistemic problems of history arose for me before I considered his pragmatic position, nevertheless attention to those problems required me to adopt the Quine-based form of pragmatism I describe. I came to realise that I had wrongly adopted a synchronic view of the Quinean web, thereby adopting a “philosophical stance.” Rather, the web should be conceived in diachronic terms as a rolling web, so forming history itself. It is wrong to think that language started in atomistic terms so that, following Aristotle, it first consisted of simple concepts forming sentences of brief and narrow subject-predicate form. Instead, early communications took the form of oral traditions usually in narrative form. Meaningful wholes such as historical accounts are conceptually prior to atomistic sentences and need to be seen in extended temporal terms, so that an Aristotelian subject-predicate metaphysics is implausible. Quine’s pragmatism framed and facilitated my historical stance despite the unashamed philosophical stance that he adopted. (shrink)

I argue that there are analytic claims that, if true, can be known a priori, but which also can turn out to be false: they are expressive of merely default instructions from the language faculty to the conceptual system, which may be overridden by pragmatic or scientific considerations, in which case, of course, they would not be known at all, a priori or otherwise. More surprisingly, I also argue that they might not be, strictly speaking, conceptual: concepts may be importantly (...) different from the meaning instructions for the words we use to express them. I will press all this in the context of a general Quinean “naturalism,” where the epistemology that interests me is “a chapter of natural science,” but where the science won't be Quine's behaviorism, but a Chomskyan theory of the “I-semantics” of “I-language.” But, relying on a distinction I draw between an explanatory and a working epistemology, I will be pressing it largely as an explanatory claim, not one that will have serious consequences for on-going philosophical practice, neither with regard to the world, nor, more surprisingly, even with regard to armchair “conceptual analysis.” As Putnam observed, there may be analytic truths, but they don't cut much philosophical ice. (shrink)

Much contemporary ontological inquiry takes place within the so-called ‘Quinean tradition’ but, given that some aspects of Quine’s project have been widely abandoned even by those who consider themselves Quineans, it is unclear what this amounts to. Fortunately recent work in metaontology has produced two relevant results here: a clearer characterisation of the metaontology uniting the aforementioned Quineans, most notably undertaken by Peter van Inwagen, and a raft of criticisms of that metaontology. In this paper I critique van Inwagen’s (...) Quinean metaontology, finding that certain challenges, supplemented by pressure to reflect more closely Quine’s work, should drive Quineans to adopt a stronger metaontology incorporating more of Quine’s radical views. I conclude that while van Inwagen’s Quineanism is problematic there are prospects for a viable, more wholeheartedly Quinean, metaontology. (shrink)

This paper examines whether one can accept Quine's critique of the analytic/synthetic distinction while rejecting his indeterminacy of translation thesis. I argue that this is possible, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. Holding that linguistic synonymy is a well‐defined relation, and that translation is thus a determinate matter, does not commit one to the existence of an analytic‐synthetic distinction capable of playing the explanatory role that the traditional distinction was supposed to play, unless one holds that logical truths have distinctive epistemological (...) or semantic properties that other truths do not. It is therefore possible to deny that logical truths have any such properties, thus to deny the existence of an explanatorily significant analytic/synthetic distinction, while holding that linguistic synonymy is a well‐defined relation. A corollary of this position is that the indeterminacy thesis is false. (shrink)

Paul Boghossian advocates a version of the analytic theory of a priori knowledge. His defense of an "epistemic" notion of analyticity is based on an implicit definition account ofthe meaning of the logical constants. Boghossian underestimates the power of the classical Quinean criticisms, however; the challenge to substantiate the distinction between empirical and non-empirical sentences, as forcefully presented in Two Dogmas, still stands, and the regress from Truth by Convention still needs to be avoided. Here, Quine also showed (...) that there are no implicit definers for the logical constants. Moreover, even if they existed, their epistemic analyticity would, on Boghossian's own account, be doubtful. (shrink)

It is commonplace in cognitive science that concepts are individuated in terms of the roles they play in the cognitive lives of thinkers, a view that Jerry Fodor has recently been dubbed ‘Concept Pragmatism’. Quinean critics of Pragmatism have long argued that it founders on its commitment to the analytic/synthetic distinction, since without such a distinction there is plausibly no way to distinguish constitutive from non-constitutive roles in cognition. This paper considers Fodor’s empirical arguments against analyticity, and in (...) particular his arguments against lexical decomposition and definitions, and argues that Concept Pragmatists have two viable options with respect to them. First, Concept Pragmatists can confront them head-on, and argue that they do not show that lexical items are semantically primitive or that lexical concepts are internally unstructured. Second, Pragmatists may accept that these arguments show that lexical concepts are atomic, but insist that this need not entail that Pragmatism is false. For there is a viable version of Concept Pragmatism that does not take lexical items to be semantically structured or lexical concepts to be internally structured. Adopting a version of Pragmatism that takes meaning relations to be specified by inference rules, or meaning postulates, allows one to accept the empirical arguments in favor of Concept Atomism, while at the same time deny that such arguments show that there are no analyticities. The paper concludes by responding to Fodor’s recent objection that such a version of Concept Pragmatism has unhappy consequences concerning the relation between concept constitution and concept possession. (shrink)

In general, the eleven, previously unpublished papers are not as strong as those in the first series. Bromberger attempts to detail the necessary and sufficient conditions for something's being an explanation; Anscombe offers some provocative but inconclusive remarks on the intentionality of sensation; Malpas examines some criteriological puzzles which arise in considering the location of sound as a bit of unlearned perceptual behavior. The rest of the papers are second order assessments and attacks upon positions maintained by other analytical philosophers. (...) Of these Putnam's attack on Malcolm's brand of behaviorism and Butler's attempted dissolution of Goodman's "grue" paradox make their points most effectively. Moravcsik contends, against Strawson, that events are at least as primitive in our conceptual scheme as physical bodies. Wiggins questions some Fregean analyses of the logic of identity-statements; taking off from Strawson, Woods distinguishes a principle of individuation from a criterion of identity and attempts to clarify their separate but related roles by an analysis of the sorts of questions that require their use in giving answers. Rundle is concerned to modify certain Quinean answers to paradoxes of tense requirements that arise in the quantification of modal statements; Savan questions Vlastos' ascription of fallacies to the Socratic argument on the unity of Wisdom and Temperance in the Protagoras. Finally, Shorter points out the general inconclusiveness of "transformational analysis" by exhibiting specific shortcomings of Vendler's analysis of causality in the first volume of this series.—E. A. R. (shrink)

Meaning without Analyticity draws upon the author’s essays and articles, over a period of 20 years, focused on language, logic and meaning. The book explores the prospect of a non-behavioristic theory of cognitive meaning which rejects the analytic-synthetic distinction, Quinean behaviorism, and the logical and social-intellectual excesses of extreme holism. Cast in clear, perspicuous language and oriented to scientific discussions, this book takes up the challenges of philosophical communication and evaluation implicit in the recent revival of the pragmatist (...) tradition—especially those arising from its relation to prior American analytic thought. This volume continues the work of Callaway’s 1993 book, Context for Meaning and Analysis, building on the “turn toward pragmatism.” . (shrink)

This paper examines whether one can accept Quine's critique of the analytic/synthetic distinction while rejecting his indeterminacy of translation thesis. I argue that this is possible, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. Holding that linguistic synonymy is a well‐defined relation, and that translation is thus a determinate matter, does not commit one to the existence of an analytic‐synthetic distinction capable of playing the explanatory role that the traditional distinction was supposed to play, unless one holds that logical truths have distinctive epistemological (...) or semantic properties that other truths do not. It is therefore possible to deny that logical truths have any such properties, thus to deny the existence of an explanatorily significant analytic/synthetic distinction, while holding that linguistic synonymy is a well‐defined relation. A corollary of this position is that the indeterminacy thesis is false. (shrink)

Analyticity is a bogus explanatory concept, and is so even granting genuine synonomy. Definitions can't explain the truth of a statement, let alone its necessity and/or our a priori knowledge of it. The illusion of an explanation is revealed by exposing diverse confusions: e.g., between nominal, conceptual and real definitions, and correspondingly between notational, conceptual, and objectual readings of alleged analytic truths, and between speaking a language and operating a calculus. The putative explananda of analyticity are (alleged) truths (...) about essential properties. Real definitions (a la Socrates) are the (alleged) explananda, not the explanans of analyticity. Their truth can be explained neither by conceptual definitions (a la Kant), nor by nominal definitions (a la Frege). The Quinean assault on synonomy is unsuccessful and in any case misplaced, because analyticity turns on the explanatory import of synonomy, not its existence. Synonym substitution in a logical truth cannot yield a necessary truth for it doesn't preserve logical form. Self-identity statements (for properties and/or individuals) differ in logical form from alter-identity statements. (shrink)

Recent work on analyticity distinguishes two kinds, metaphysical and epistemic. This paper argues that the distinction allows for a new view in the philosophy of logic according to which the claims of logic are metaphysically analytic and have distinctive modal profiles, even though their epistemology is holist and in many ways rather Quinean. It is argued that such a view combines some of the more attractive aspects of the Carnapian and Quinean approaches to logic, whilst avoiding some (...) famous problems. (shrink)

Originally conceived as a forty-page conclusion to Hacker’s twenty years of work on the monumental four-volume Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, this book “rapidly assumed a life of its own”. A major contribution to the history of analytic philosophy, this substantial volume delivers even more than the title promises. The eight chapters are best approached as a six-chapter book, itself some 220 pages long, on Wittgenstein’s contribution to twentieth-century philosophy, followed by a two-chapter, 120-page epilogue about how and why (...) his influence has waned. The first six chapters provide an encyclopedic summary of the fruits of Hacker’s research on Wittgenstein’s writing, an immensely learned account of British philosophy from the turn of the century to the 1970s, and a detailed account of Wittgenstein’s reception by Oxford, Cambridge, and the Vienna Circle. The book’s closing chapters, “Post-positivism in the United States and Quine’s Apostasy” and “The Decline of Analytic Philosophy,” polemically argue that Quine’s philosophy, and the post-Quinean naturalism prevalent in Anglo-American philosophy today, amount to such a decisive break with the analytic tradition, as Hacker conceives of it, that they should not be counted as “analytic.”. (shrink)

In 1901 Russell had envisaged the new analytic philosophy as uniquely systematic, borrowing the methods of science and mathematics. A century later, have Russell’s hopes become reality? David Lewis is often celebrated as a great systematic metaphysician, his influence proof that we live in a heyday of systematic philosophy. But, we argue, this common belief is misguided: Lewis was not a systematic philosopher, and he didn’t want to be. Although some aspects of his philosophy are systematic, mainly his pluriverse of (...) possible worlds and its many applications, that systematicity was due to the influence of his teacher Quine, who really was an heir to Russell. Drawing upon Lewis’s posthumous papers and his correspondence as well as the published record, we show that Lewis’s non- Quinean influences, including G.E. Moore and D.M. Armstrong, led Lewis to an anti- systematic methodology which leaves each philosopher’s views and starting points to his or her own personal conscience. (shrink)

Sennett and Fisher: Quine on Paraphrase and Regimentation: Regimentation plays an integral role in Quine's influential approaches to metaphysics, philosophy of science, and semantics. In this paper we explore Quine's views on regimentation and its applications. We also consider how the Quinean view of regimentation interacts with his views on ontological commitment, holism, indeterminacy of translation, and the inscrutability of reference.

What is an object? How do we look at them? Why do they matter? This collection presents a lively, timely discussion of natural and artifactual objects, considering the relationship between them from a range of philosophical perspectives, including the philosophy of biology, the metaphysics of space and the philosophy of perception. Beginning from the starting point that natural objects are bona fide, endowed with some natural border between themselves and everything else, while artifactual objects depend on the observation of tacit (...) conventions and may include the ordinary objects of everyday life, this volume explores, contextualises and interrogates objects. Contributors discuss a variety of objects including physical, scientific and mental ones, as well as things that appear to question the limits of object-hood, including holes, Quinean 'posits' and language. The very first collection to address this growing topic within analytic philosophy, Natural and Artifactual Objects in Contemporary Metaphysics represents a highly original work, showcasing some of the most important and influential philosophers working in Europe today. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch's philosophical texts depart significantly from familiar analytic discursive norms. (Such as the norms concerning argument structure and the minimization of rhetoric.) This may lead us to adopt one of two strategies. On the one hand an assimilation strategy that involves translation of Murdoch's claims into the more familiar terms of property-realism (the terminology of ethical naturalism and non-naturalism). On the other hand, there is the option of adopting a crossover strategy and reading Murdoch as (in some sense) a (...) philosopher who belongs more properly to the continental tradition. The following article argues that if familiar Quinean claims about ontological commitment and Murdoch's account of metaphor are both broadly correct then the assimilation strategy must fail to produce a faithful translation. Nonetheless, Murdoch's connection to the analytic tradition is more than genealogical, it is more than a matter of her writing (initially) in response to analytic contemporaries before branching off in a more continental direction. While she departs from familiar analytic discursive norms, she continues to accept most of the epistemic values (such as clarity and simplicity) that the norms embody. (shrink)

There is a widespread view in philosophy of language and in philosophy of mind according to which the «quinean» rejection of analyticity can be made compatible with some sort of realism about meaning. Against such compatibilist claim, Paul Boghossian has recently held the thesis that one cannot coherently reject the analytical/synthetical distinction maintaining at the same time a meaning realism. His arguments are very pervasive, but they can be replied. The main objective of this paper is to show (...) that in fact it is possible to reject analyticity being at the same time a meaning realist, even a meaning realist of a non-holist kind. The prevailing view is basically right. Moreover, it is possible to go on maintaining the compatibilist claim in its most radical form. In short, even if we adopt a non-holist meaning realism, we must reject analyticity because language is always conceptually motivated and engaged with reality. There is no linguistic arbitrariness. That forces us to go far from classical conceptions of meaning and to have a much more pluralistic one. With respect to it, for instance, to say that some statements are true once their meanings are fixed would not entail that they are true by virtue of meanings. The problem to get such a conception of meaning remains open. However, the reasons against analyticity do not force us to any irreductible meaning holism. (shrink)

Quine claims that holism (i.e., the Quine-Duhem thesis) prevents us from defining synonymy and analyticity (section 2). In Word and Object, he dismisses a notion of synonymy which works well even if holism is true. The notion goes back to a proposal from Grice and Strawson and runs thus: R and S are synonymous iff for all sentences T we have that the logical conjunction of R and T is stimulus-synonymous to that of S and T. Whereas Grice and (...) Strawson did not attempt to defend this definition, I try to show that it indeed gives us a satisfactory account of synonymy. Contrary to Quine, the notion is tighter than stimulus-synonymy – particularly when applied to sentences with less than critical semantic mass (section 3). Now according to Quine, analyticity could be defined in terms of synonymy, if synonymy were to make sense: A sentence is analytic iff synonymous to self-conditionals. This leads us to the following notion of analyticity: S is analytic iff, for all sentences T, the logical conjunction of S and T is stimulus-synonymous to T; an analytic sentence does not change the semantic mass of any theory to which it may be conjoined (section 4). This notion is tighter than Quine's stimulus-analyticity; unlike stimulus-analyticity, it does not apply to those sentences from the very center of our theories which can be assented to come what may, even though they are not synthetic in the intuitive sense (section 5). Conclusion: We can have well-defined notions of synonymy and analyticity even if we embrace Quine's holism, naturalism, behaviorism, and radical translation. Quine's meaning skepticism is to be repudiated on Quinean grounds. (shrink)

Though largely unnoticed, in “Two Dogmas” Quine himself invokes a distinction: a distinction between logical and analytic truths. Unlike analytic statements equating ‘bachelor’ with ‘unmarried man’, strictly logical tautologies relating two word-tokens of the same word-type, e.g., ‘bachelor’ and ‘bachelor’ are true merely in virtue of basic phonological form, putatively an exclusively non-semantic function of perceptual categorization or brute stimulus behavior. Yet natural language phonemic categorization is not entirely free of interpretive semantic considerations. “Phonemic reductionism” in both its linguistic and (...) behavioral, Newbury Park, CA, Sage Publications, 164–167) guise is false. The semantic basis of phonological equivalence, however, has repercussions vis-à-vis Quine’s critique of analyticity. A consistent rejection of meaning-based equivalencies eliminates not only analyticity, but imposes a form of phonological eliminativism too. Phonological eliminativism is the reductio result of applying Quinean meaning skepticism to the phonological typing of natural language. But unlike analyticity, phonology is presumably not subject to philosophical dismissal. The semantic basis of natural language phonology serves to neutralize Quine’s argument against analyticity: without the semantics of meaning, more than just synonymy is lost; basic phonology must also be forfeited. Let’s begin with the fact that even Quine has to admit that it is possible for two tokens of the same orthographic type to be synonymous, for that much is presupposed by his own account of logical truth. Paul Boghossian. (shrink)

Gideon Rosen: Quine and the Revival of Metaphysics: Quine's critique of Carnap's positivism and Quine's alternative account of scientific and philosophical methodology set the stage for the revival of metaphysics in the 1970s and 80s. The key ingredients in this transition were (a) Quine's insistence that theory choice in the sciences is governed by holistic, pragmatic considerations, (b) his claim that the sciences nonetheless give us reason to believe in the items they posit, and (c) his insistence that theory choice (...) in philosophy is continuous with scientific theory choice in all respects. The chapter presents Quine's account of theory choice and highlights the respects in which post‐Quinean metaphysics owes its methodological self‐conception to Quine's work. (shrink)

Though largely unnoticed, in "Two Dogmas" Quine himself invokes a distinction: a distinction between logical and analytic truths. Unlike analytic statements equating 'bachelor' with 'unmarried man', strictly logical tautologies relating two word-tokens of the same word-type, e.g., 'bachelor' and 'bachelor' are true merely in virtue of basic phonological form, putatively an exclusively non-semantic function of perceptual categorization or brute stimulus behavior. Yet natural language phonemic categorization is not entirely free of interpretive semantic considerations. "Phonemic reductionism" in both its linguistic and (...) behavioral, Newbury Park, CA, Sage Publications, 164-167) guise is false. The semantic basis of phonological equivalence, however, has repercussions vis-à-vis Quine's critique of analyticity. A consistent rejection of meaning-based equivalencies eliminates not only analyticity, but imposes a form of phonological eliminativism too. Phonological eliminativism is the reductio result of applying Quinean meaning skepticism to the phonological typing of natural language. But unlike analyticity, phonology is presumably not subject to philosophical dismissal. The semantic basis of natural language phonology serves to neutralize Quine's argument against analyticity: without the semantics of meaning, more than just synonymy is lost; basic phonology must also be forfeited. (shrink)

This chapter aims to attempt no more than to make some informal and unsystematic remarks on the transformation of analytic philosophy. It deals with a few sketchy remarks on the historiography of recent analytic philosophy. Writing in 1981, David Lewis described “a reasonable goal for a philosopher” as bringing one’s opinions into stable equilibrium. A natural comparison is between Lewis’s Quinean or at least post‐Quinean methodology and the methodology of Peter Strawson, Quine’s leading opponent from the tradition of (...) ordinary language philosophy. Analytic epistemology provides a good case study of the philosophical application of Gricean pragmatics outside the philosophy of language. On Michael Dummett picture of the history of philosophy, Descartes had made epistemology first philosophy, the engine for the rest of philosophy, and then Frege had replaced epistemology by the philosophy of language as first philosophy. The chapter suggests that philosophy sometimes already uses an abductive methodology and ought to use it more in the future. (shrink)

The analytic/synthetic distinction looks simple. It is a distinction between two different kinds of sentence. Synthetic sentences are true in part because of the way the world is, and in part because of what they mean. Analytic sentences - like all bachelors are unmarried and triangles have three sides - are different. They are true in virtue of meaning, so no matter what the world is like, as long as the sentence means what it does, it will be true. -/- (...) This distinction seems powerful because analytic sentences seem to be knowable in a special way. One can know that all bachelors are unmarried, for example, just by thinking about what it means. But many twentieth-century philosophers, with Quine in the lead, argued that there were no analytic sentences, that the idea of analyticity didn't even make sense, and that the analytic/synthetic distinction was therefore an illusion. Others couldn't see how there could fail to be a distinction, however ingenious the arguments of Quine and his supporters. -/- But since the heyday of the debate, things have changed in the philosophy of language. Tools have been refined, confusions cleared up, and most significantly, many philosophers now accept a view of language - semantic externalism - on which it is possible to see how the distinction could fail. One might be tempted to think that ultimately the distinction has fallen for reasons other than those proposed in the original debate. -/- In Truth in Virtue of Meaning, Gillian Russell argues that it hasn't. Using the tools of contemporary philosophy of language, she outlines a view of analytic sentences which is compatible with semantic externalism and defends that view against the old Quinean arguments. She then goes on to draw out the surprising epistemological consequences of her approach. (shrink)

John P. Burgess: Quine's continuing struggles with epistemological and ontological problems about mathematics and logic are traced from his first rebellion against logicism, through his flirtation and subsequent disillusionment with nominalism, to his final endorsement of naturalism, with an eye throughout to tensions among different aspects of his overall philosophy.

[Stephen Yablo] The usual charge against Carnap's internal/external distinction is one of 'guilt by association with analytic/synthetic'. But it can be freed of this association, to become the distinction between statements made within make-believe games and those made outside them-or, rather, a special case of it with some claim to be called the metaphorical/literal distinction. Not even Quine considers figurative speech committal, so this turns the tables somewhat. To determine our ontological commitments, we have to ferret out all traces of (...) nonliterality in our assertions; if there is no sensible project of doing that, there is no sensible project of Quinean ontology. /// [Andre Gallois] I discuss Steve Yablo's defence of Carnap's distinction between internal and external questions. In the first section I set out what I take that distinction, as Carnap draws it, to be, and spell out a central motivation Carnap has for invoking it. In the second section I endorse, and augment, Yablo's response to Quine's arguments against Carnap. In the third section I say why Carnap's application of the distinction between internal and external questions runs into trouble. In the fourth section I spell out what I take to be Yablo's version of Carnap. In the last I say why that version is especially vulnerable to the objection raised in the second. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor and Ernie LePore argue against inferential role semantics on the grounds that either it relies on an analytic/synthetic distinction vulnerable to Quinean objections, or else it leads to a variety of meaning holism frought with absurd consequences. However, the slide from semantic atomism to meaning holism might be prevented by distinctions not affected by Quine's arguments against analyticity; and the absurd consequences Fodor and LePore attribute to meaning holism obtain only on an implausible construal of inferential (...) roles. (shrink)

Rey’s project of rescuing conceptual analysis within a naturalistic computationalist framework, equipped with a Putnamian account of reference, is an interesting and valuable project. However, his extremepessimism about fundamental philosophical concepts, according to which they mostly tended to be empty, amounts to sacrificing philosophical analysis after having it rescued from the Quineans. An alternative is proposed, which accepts most of the naturalistic computationalist Putnamian framework, rejects the traditional view of analyticity, but secures more space for a constructive, as opposed (...) to merely destructive, philosophical analysis. (shrink)

Early analytic philosophers like Carnap, Wittgenstein and Ryle regarded ontology as a branch of metaphysics that is either trivial or meaningless. But at present it is generally assumed that philosophy can make substantial discoveries about what kinds of things exist and about the essence of these kinds. My paper challenges this ontological turn. The currently predominant conceptions of the subject, at any rate, do not license the idea that ontology can provide distinctively philosophical insights into the constituents of reality. I (...) distinguish four main sources of analytic ontology—Strawson's descriptive metaphysics, Kripke's realist semantics, the Austro-Australian truth-maker principle, Quine's naturalistic conception of ontology—and indicate briefly why the first three do not rehabilitate ontology. In the remainder, I concentrate on the most influential and promising position. Quinean ontology seeks to bring out and reduce the ontological commitments of our best scientific theories through logical paraphrase. Against this programme, I argue that Quine's conception of ontological commitment is inadequate, and that his logical paraphrase cannot contribute to the exploration of reality, but at most to the clarification of our conceptual framework. (shrink)