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W.V. Quine on Analyticity: “Two Dogmas of

Empiricism” in Context

Andrew Lugg

Dialogue / Volume 51 / Issue 02 / June 2012, pp 231 - 246

DOI: 10.1017/S001221731200042X, Published online: 27 September 2012

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S001221731200042X

How to cite this article:

Andrew Lugg (2012). W.V. Quine on Analyticity: “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” in
Context. Dialogue, 51, pp 231-246 doi:10.1017/S001221731200042X

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W.V. Quine on Analyticity: “Two
Dogmas of Empiricism” in Context

ANDREW LUGG University of Ottawa

ABSTRACT: It is not W.V. Quine’s aim in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” to prove

against all-comers that the analytic/synthetic distinction is untenable or to provide a
novel conception of our knowledge. He aims to undermine the empiricist’s appeal to
the distinction and show what empiricism unencumbered by dogma comes to. Focusing
on §§1-3 and §6, I argue that his treatment of analyticity is framed by important
philosophical assumptions and the conception of knowledge he defends is one to which
he had long been committed. “Two Dogmas” is less easily dismissed when read in the
context of Quine’s early lectures on Carnap.

RÉSUMÉ : Le but de W.V. Quine, dans «Deux dogmes de l’empirisme», n’est pas de
prouver contre tous que la distinction analytique/synthétique est intenable ni de fournir
une conception originale de la connaissance. Il veut plutôt ébranler l’attrait de
l’empiriste pour la distinction et montrer ce en quoi réside un empirisme exempt de
dogme. En me concentrant sur §§1-3 et §6, je soutiens que son traitement de l’analyticité
est structuré par des hypothèses philosophiques fondamentales et que la conception de
la connaissance qu’il défend l’habite depuis fort longtemps. «Deux Dogmes» est moins
facilement invalidé quand il est interprété en référence aux premières conférences de
Quine sur Carnap.

Looking back on the origins of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” W.V. Quine

notes that he had in 1940, with Alfred Tarski’s support, already challenged
Rudolf Carnap’s thinking about analyticity, but “[b]ecause of its negativity,
[his] repudiation of analyticity was nothing [he] felt impelled to write about.”1
Only when commissioned to speak to the American Philosophical Association
in December 1950 did he finally put pen to paper and write up his thoughts.

Dialogue 51 (2012), 231–246.

© Canadian Philosophical Association /Association canadienne de philosophie 2012
doi:10.1017/S001221731200042X
232 Dialogue

Similarly in a slightly later autobiography that he wrote for a general audience,

he devotes just a couple of lines to the paper and dispatches it in very short
order—he merely repeats that he had discussed the matter with Tarski and
Carnap and his doubts about analyticity were long-standing.2 And some forty
years after the appearance of the paper, in a retrospective discussion, he again
plays down what is now generally regarded as his most important and influential
article. He writes: “I had not thought to look on my strictures over analyticity
as the stuff of revolution. It was mere criticism, a negative point with no
suggestion of a bright replacement.”3 This is baffling. Why, assuming Quine is
to be believed, his reluctance to tout what he had written and how come he
failed to anticipate the ensuing “spate of controversial literature”?4
Quine’s nonchalance about the contribution of “Two Dogmas” to philosophy
is rarely advertised, and the paper is usually taken to pose a major challenge to
philosophical tradition. It is read as two-pronged with the bulk of the discus-
sion devoted to attacking the distinction between truth by virtue of fact and
truth by virtue of meaning and the rest given over to promoting the view that
our knowledge, trivial or substantial, concrete or abstract, is all of a piece.
More specifically, §§1-3 are interpreted as denying the alleged logical difference
between the likes of “There are brick houses on Elm Street” and “No bachelor
is married,” quibbles about “ages, divorce and bachelors of arts” aside.5
Moreover, §6, the final section of the paper, is interpreted as defending the
proposition that the sole difference between such sentences is their centrality
to our system of beliefs. (§4 on Carnap’s attempt to clarify analyticity in terms
of semantic rules and §5 on “the verification theory of meaning” and the
second dogma, the conception of meaningful statements as expressible in
terms referring to immediate experience, are accorded much less attention, and
I shall mostly skip over these sections.)
Unsurprisingly, common belief about “Two Dogmas” squares well with a
fair amount of the text. At the start of the paper, Quine declares that he will
argue that the “dogma” of “a belief in a fundamental cleavage” between truths
“grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact” and truths “grounded
in fact” is “ill-founded” and adds that “abandoning” this dogma (along with
the dogma of reductionism) results in “a blurring of the supposed boundary
between speculative metaphysics and natural science” (20). Still, such a line of
interpretation leaves much to be desired. Besides attributing to Quine views he
does not express and arguments he does not advance, it has the unfortunate
consequence that, as has been argued time and again, his discussion falls badly
short and is easily answered. Quine does not come close to disposing of the
analytic/synthetic distinction once and for all, nor does he show his conception
of knowledge to be superior to mainstream conceptions. It is no small irony
that a paper routinely judged to be singularly important is just as routinely
deemed unconvincing, even self-evidently wrong. While many philosophers
embrace what they take to be Quine’s epistemological vision, few find what
they take to be his reasoning at all credible.
 W.V. Quine on Analyticity 233

Quine was largely indifferent to the criticism levelled against what he says
in “Two Dogmas.” Having discussed the distinction at length during the 1940s,
he would doubtless have already heard most of the objections pressed against
him, and in the years following the publication of the paper he accepted what
he took to be the grains of truth in his critics’ arguments but did not retract
or qualify his main point. In Word and Object, he recognises a “behaviourist
ersatz,” a “vegetarian imitation” of analyticity, covering “No bachelor is
married,” all the while rejecting any more general notion of analyticity.6
And in Roots of Reference, he eschews the traditional notion in favour of the
idea that “a sentence is analytic if everybody learns that it is true by learning its
words.”7 Here and in later work, he stands his ground and bends his energies to
fleshing out his conception of a dogma-free epistemology. He cashes out the
metaphors in “Two Dogmas” to obtain what he takes to be a more satisfactory
conception of knowledge, proposing, for instance, the notion of an observation
sentence as a replacement for the “flabby reference [in ‘Two Dogmas’] to
‘experience.’”8
But if Quine’s paper is not to be regarded as badly flawed (and his reserva-
tions about its importance respected), how should it be read? Three points need
noting right away. First, as Quine later emphasised, his aims are epistemological
in that he is primarily concerned with the suggestion that our knowledge of
the unmarried status of bachelors is categorically different from our knowledge
of the type of house on Elm Street. Though the phrase “a priori” occurs just
once in “Two Dogmas” and then only in the everyday sense of “initial” or
“on first thought” (37), he targets the distinction between statements known
true prior to experience and statements known true only as a result of it. §1
(“Background for analyticity”) opens with a reference to “Kant’s cleavage,” a
cleavage Quine sees as “foreshadowed in Hume’s distinction between relations
of ideas and matters of fact, and in Leibniz’s distinction between truths of
reason and truths of fact” (20). Furthermore in “Carnap and Logical Truth,” a
companion piece from the same period, Quine mentions Kant’s question about
the possibility of synthetic a priori judgement when introducing the topic.9
And in Word and Object he notes that the analytic/synthetic dichotomy is
“reminiscent of Kant” and takes issue with the idea of “a sweeping epistemo-
logical dichotomy.”10 As he still later stresses, “the philosophically important
question about analyticity [is] the question of [its] relevance to epistemology.”11
Secondly, while Quine is regularly understood as arguing in §§1-3 that there
is no non-circular way of characterising the notion of analyticity, this is not
what he actually argues.12 He does not rest content with observing that
“analytic” belongs to a circle of notions including “self-contradictory” (20),
“synonymous” (23), “definable” (24), “necessary” (29) and “interchangeable
in all contexts without change of truth value” (32).13 The problem is that we
“lack a proper characterization of ... analytic statements” (23), analyticity
construed in terms of self-contradictoriness having “small explanatory value”
(20), synonymy being “no less in need of clarification than analyticity itself ”
234 Dialogue

(23), definition in the relevant sense presupposing synonymy “rather than

explaining it” (26) and “extensional agreement fall[ing] far short of cognitive
synonymy of the type required for explaining analyticity” (31).14 In fact
neither the term “circle” nor any of its cognates appear in the discussion of
the analytic/synthetic distinction, only incidentally to pre-empt the objection
that the argument being rehearsed itself is “flatly circular” (30). For Quine
analyticity is unexplanatory and appealing to it gets us no further ahead. One
might say the problem is not that the terms form a circle but that the circle of
terms provides no explanation of a priori knowledge.15
Thirdly, and surprisingly infrequently mentioned, is the fact that Quine
discusses the question of analyticity within the framework of empiricism. While
he refers to Kant and Leibniz at the beginning of the paper, it should have been
clear that he mentions them to get the ball rolling and to underline that the
analytic/synthetic distinction has a long and illustrious pedigree. It is presum-
ably no accident that the paper sports the title “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,”
not “Two Dogmas of Philosophy,” and that it begins with the words: “Modern
empiricism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas [i.e. the dogma
of analyticity and the dogma of reductionism]” (20). Nor can it be fortuitous
that Quine refers to himself as an empiricist, writing in §6: “As an empiricist
I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for
predicting future experience in the light of past experience” (44). Though he
does not explicitly state that experience is the only sure guide to the truth about
how things are, he was strongly of the opinion that experience is all we have
to go on (and would have believed this substantive philosophical assumption
requires no special defence beyond what can be learned from science itself ).
When he speaks of himself at the end of the paper as espousing “a more
thorough pragmatism” (43), he is not qualifying his empiricism. As he later
noted, he was “not clear on what it takes to be a pragmatist,” merely “taking
the word from Carnap and handing it back.”16
Bearing in mind these three points when reviewing what Quine says in “Two
Dogmas,” we find that he proceeds very differently from how he is normally
held to proceed and his evaluation of the paper becomes much less puzzling. In
§§1-3 he does not pretend to consider all conceivable, even all plausible, ways
of defining analyticity (for one thing in §4 he discusses Carnap’s more subtle
treatment). Rather he casts his discussion within a framework of empiricism
and attempts to show that “modern empiricists,” i.e. empiricists who embrace
the analytic/synthetic distinction, jump the gun. It is no argument against him,
as assumed in some quarters, that he equates the a priori with the analytic.17
To the contrary, he objects to the equation, his challenge being directed at the
assumption, widely held by empiricists when he was writing, that the analytic/
synthetic distinction is epistemologically important since it explains putative
a priori knowledge. Moreover, mindful of the preliminary points just noted,
we are much less likely to overlook that in §6 Quine is still working within the
framework of empiricism, in particular that he is not arguing that philosophers
 W.V. Quine on Analyticity 235

of every stripe should accept the conception of epistemology he advocates,

only that empiricists who believe the a priori can be retrieved by invoking
analyticity should accept it—a much less easily refuted contention.
As Quine sees it, “modern empiricists” do not live up to their own standards
of concept construction. Taking philosophers who nail their flag to the empiri-
cist mast at their word, he argues that the a priori cannot be accounted for
by appealing to analyticity construed in terms of self-contradictoriness,
synonymy, definability, necessity or “interchangeability.” These notions do
not explain the a priori, a fact that Quine takes to provide good reason to
believe that the analytic/synthetic distinction is “a metaphysical article of faith”
(37). (By “metaphysical” Quine means, I take it, “empirically unjustified.”)
Since self-respecting empiricists cannot tolerate unempirical dogmas, they
must resign themselves to the conception of epistemology adumbrated in §6
(or come up with an adequate response to Quine’s challenge). They cannot but
agree that “no statement is immune to revision” and there is no “difference ...
in principle” between the shift in “the logical law of the excluded middle [that]
has been proposed as a means of simplifying quantum mechanics” and “the
shift whereby Kepler superseded Ptolemy, or Einstein Newton, or Darwin
Aristotle” (43).
More precisely, Quine is out to establish that the (modern) empiricist has
not justified the introduction of an explanatorily relevant epistemological
distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, i.e. has not shown
that a distinction explaining a priori knowledge can be devised. Despite
the seeming plausibility of treating the a priori in terms of analyticity, he writes:
“[A] boundary between analytic and synthetic statements simply has not been
drawn. That there is such a distinction to be drawn at all is an unempirical
dogma of empiricists” (37). Put otherwise, since empiricists cannot draw the
distinction in any of the ways they are apt to suppose, they should not weigh
their empiricism down with it. It is not good enough to assume it possible to
introduce a distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, one that
captures and hence explains the distinction between so-called a priori and
so-called a posteriori knowledge. This has to be demonstrated. The fundamental
difficulty is that the “modern empiricist” wrongly assumes there is no need
to show (or thinks it can readily be shown) that there exists a line between
analytic and synthetic statements that explains the a priori/a posteriori dis-
tinction. No such line has been drawn and—as the considerations canvassed
in §§1-3 (and §4) strongly suggest—the prospects of drawing such a line are
exceedingly dim.
To appreciate Quine’s discussion in “Two Dogmas,” it helps to consider how
he proceeded in the early 1930s when he was closest to Carnap. In “Lectures
on Carnap,” lectures he gave at Harvard University in 1934 when just 26, he
accepts the analytic/synthetic distinction and sketches a method for introducing
it, his thought being that a set of sentences can be delineated, each of which
possesses what, following Kant, he calls “inward necessity.”18 Though he does
236 Dialogue

not say it in so many words, he plainly takes modern empiricists, Carnap in

particular, to be on firm ground just insofar as they can show sentences gen-
erally held to be analytic possess such necessity. Within the year, however, he
realised that the prescription he had provided for introducing the distinction does
not work, and he came to question the possibility of concocting a prescrip-
tion that does the trick. Thus, in “Truth by Convention,” a paper published in
1935, he announces that the process of turning sentences into analytic truths
fails, logic being required to show that logic has “inward necessity.”19 Since
there does not seem to be a process of “elevating a statement from putative to
conventional truth,” he concludes that it is doubtful that saying a statement
is “true by convention” (and analytic) adds anything to saying it is “firmly
accepted.”20
Especially striking and important for understanding Quine on analyticity is
that in both “Lectures on Carnap” and “Truth by Convention” he considers
the possibility of dividing the body of sentences accepted as true into two
with sentences that possess “inward necessity” on one side and sentences
that do not possess it on the other. (In the “Lectures” Quine starts with “the
whole range of admittedly true sentences” and “our whole range of accepted
sentences,” while in “Truth by Convention” he starts with “more or less firmly
accepted statements.”21) His central assumption is that only given a method
for turning accepted truths into definitions can it be justifiably concluded that
a line can be drawn coinciding with the line dividing a priori from a posteriori
knowledge. The primary difference between the lectures and the paper is not
what Quine demands, but what he thinks can be achieved. Whereas in the
lectures he believes the notion of “inward necessity” can be captured, in the
paper he doubts it.22 In both 1934 and 1935, he takes it to go without saying
that it has to be demonstrated that a line can be drawn in a principled way—at
least “nearly enough”—across the body of firmly established statements
dividing a priori statements from a posteriori statements.23
Quine, I want to suggest, broaches the problem of analyticity in 1950 the same
way as he broached it in 1934/1935. In “Two Dogmas,” he again proceeds
within the framework of empiricism, assumes we are apprised of a body of
accepted truths and considers the possibility of retrieving the notion of the
a priori by appealing to the notion of analyticity. What changed between
1935 and 1950 is mainly the strength of his doubts regarding the possibility of
devising a recipe for separating the analytic from the synthetic (and hence the
a priori from the a posteriori). Whereas in 1935 he was unsure of success, by
1950 he had come to think nothing will work. He had satisfied himself that
analyticity is an ill-begotten notion, there being no satisfactory alternative
to the flawed recipe proposed in “Lectures on Carnap” and explored in “Truth
by Convention.”24 Though the phrase “inward necessity” is dropped (and
synonymy becomes his main focus of attention), Quine continues, on the
account of the paper I am defending, to question the possibility of introducing
an empirically acceptable notion of analyticity that captures the philosophical
 W.V. Quine on Analyticity 237

conception of the a priori. In “Two Dogmas” he suggests that some seem-

ingly plausible ways of filling the bill are no such thing and implies this is
no great loss.
It is worth noting that Quine’s approach to analyticity is very different from
Carnap’s, and it is easy to see why they never saw eye to eye. It is one thing to
hold, as Quine did, that the existence of an empirically acceptable distinction
between analytic and synthetic statements has to be shown to be acceptable,
not merely explicated in related terms, quite another to hold, as Carnap did, that
there is a distinction, one that only requires explication. Contrary to Quine’s
later characterisation of his 1934 lectures, they are not “abjectly sequacious.”25
Carnap does not start out assuming we are apprised of a range of accepted
sentences and go on to seek a method for turning sentences in the range into
analytic truths, let alone suspend judgement concerning the existence of the
distinction. He assumes there is a distinction and sets out to render it precise.26
The “suitable setting” for considering the problem of analyticity that Quine
provides in his lectures on Carnap makes all the difference.27 Given Quine’s
starting point, he was all but bound—once he realised that the argument in the
lectures is erroneous—to end up concluding that the distinction is a dogma of
empiricism. When the error is removed, the sceptical conclusion follows as a
matter of course (pending the discovery of a better method of introducing the
distinction, an exceedingly tall order).
The singular nature of Quine’s approach is especially apparent in “Notes on
the Theory of Reference,” a generally overlooked work from the same period
as “Two Dogmas.”28 In this work, Quine takes up the objection pressed by
Carnap and R.M. Martin that analyticity is in no worse shape than truth.29
The notion of “truth-in-L” (where L stands for a particular language) is
conceded to be scientifically irreproachable and the empiricist is allowed to
have—subsequent to Tarski’s discussion of truth—as much right to the notion
as anyone. But “analyticity-in-L” is still different since it lacks justification of
the sort that Tarski provides for “truth-in-L.” The snag is that while we have an
acceptable criterion of adequacy for truth—“p” is true-in-L (for each sentence
p of L) if and only if p—we have no such criterion for analyticity. Whereas
Tarski’s paradigm endows “is true-in-L” with “every bit as much clarity, in any
particular application, as is enjoyed by the particular expressions of L to which
we apply [the predicate],” Quine writes, “we have no clue comparable in value
[for ’is analytic-in-L’].”30 In other words “analytic-in-L” has to go because it
cannot be disquoted and there is no substitute for disquotation in the offing.31
Quine is not averse to analysis and explication, and it is no argument against
him that he disparages the notion of analyticity while providing accounts of
comparable notions. Thus in Word and Object he deems the analysis of ordered
pairs in terms of unordered sets a “philosophical paradigm.”32 And he has
no quarrel with Carnap’s attempt to explicate various notions, only with his
attempts to explicate of the notion of analyticity. He himself explicates
when possible and where necessary, neither of which is the case, he thinks, for
238 Dialogue

analyticity. He does not work with a double standard and should not be
criticised for attempting to explicate observationality while rejecting the
possibility of explicating analyticity. In his view observationality, unlike
analyticity, is central to science and while there is a need for a clear notion
of “observation sentence,” there is no need for a clear notion of “analytic
sentence”. Not unreasonably he takes it to make good sense to “foster perspi-
cuity by fancying boundaries” in the one case but not in the other.33 His
“reservations over analyticity ... concern the tracing of any demarcation, even
a vague and approximate one, across the domain of sentences in general,” and
he is unpersuaded that there is a notion of analyticity, the boundaries of which
require fancying.34
Quine’s misgivings about analyticity are reminiscent of nothing so much
as Albert Einstein’s misgivings about simultaneity.35 Like many philosophers,
he was struck by Einstein’s work on the theory of relativity and apparently
had it in mind when he first focused on the possibility of introducing the notion
of analyticity to explain a priority. In both “Lectures on Carnap” and “Truth by
Convention,” he refers to Einstein’s definition of simultaneity in terms of
light emissions and treats the Einsteinian strategy of raising an accepted truth
to the status of a linguistic convention as a model. Thus in his lectures he
writes: “Einstein found it important, in enhancing the rigor of physics, to
define ‘simultaneity’—rather than simply using the word [assuming] everyone
concerned knew well enough what it meant,” and in the paper he writes:
“The concept of simultaneity at a distance affords a stock example of [the
replacement of a law by a definition].”36 Though hard to prove, it is not
farfetched to picture Quine as coming to believe in 1935 that the notion of
analyticity (understood as doing service for “inward necessity”) is in no better
shape than the classical notion of simultaneity. Certainly in 1950 he was of the
opinion that philosophers should forgo such a notion of analyticity no less than
Einstein was of the opinion that physicists should forgo the notion of absolute
simultaneity.
The similarity between Quine’s and Einstein’s strategies even extends to the
arguments they rehearse. In much the same way that Einstein questions the
uncritical acceptance of absolute simultaneity, Quine questions the uncritical
acceptance of analyticity. He judges the notion of absolute analyticity suspect
in point of its empirical soundness no less than Einstein judges the notion of
absolute simultaneity suspect in point of its physical soundness. And, like
Einstein, he considers whether a certain generally assumed notion meets strict
standards of scientific acceptability, concludes that it does not and refuses to
accept promissory notes. It is, he thinks, incumbent on empiricists to show that
analyticity pays its way, not presume it meets the scientific standards they
favour, a demand that parallels Einstein’s demand on physicists regarding
simultaneity. For him, the only useful notion that comes up to empiricist
standards is his own “behavioural ersatz,” a notion comparable to Einstein’s
notion of relative simultaneity. Whereas Einstein is intolerant of notions of
 W.V. Quine on Analyticity 239

simultaneity stronger than “simultaneous-in-a-frame-of-reference.” Quine is

intolerant of notions of analyticity stronger than “analytic-in-L.”37
It is striking too that objections to Quine’s discussion echo objections to
Einstein’s discussion. It is often argued against Quine, as against Einstein, that
he simply discounts the possibility of an underlying reality (in Quine’s case, a
realm of meanings; in Einstein’s, absolute time). In Quine’s eyes, this objection
cuts no more ice than the corresponding objection to Einstein cut ice in
Einstein’s eyes. He holds that the assumption of underlying meanings is an
untenable metaphysical prejudice, one that no self-respecting empiricist should
give in to. And for much the same reason it is not a problem that he argues from
an epistemological premise to a metaphysical conclusion (and, even worse,
presupposes verificationism, a doctrine that nobody nowadays accepts).
Exactly the same objection could be levelled against Einstein, and exactly the
same response is in order. Quine, no less than Einstein, repudiates the belief
that what is not known cannot be excluded, it being as central to his thinking
as to Einstein’s—indeed to scientific method—that only well-founded notions
are permissible.38 A scientific philosopher if ever there was one, Quine thinks
philosophers should shy away from notions that have not been shown scientif-
ically sound.39
And §6? How should it be read? Did Quine regard the account of episte-
mology he provides here “a bright replacement” or did he include it for
want of anything better? There is, it has to be said, little of substance in §6
that is new. The positive view Quine sketches in this section is one he had
long espoused. As early as 1934, he expressed himself in terms close to those
he expresses himself in in 1951, and there are more than a few passages in
“Lectures on Carnap” easily mistaken for passages in “Two Dogmas.” For
instance Quine states in his lectures that revisions in our system of beliefs are
“guided largely by the tendency to dislodge as little of previous doctrine as we
can compatibly with the ideal of unity and simplicity in the resulting doctrine”
and declares that “[t]he more firmly accepted sentences [will be modified] last,
if at all, in the course of evolving and revamping our sciences.”40 Still the
discussion of §6 contributes significantly to philosophy. The importance of the
paper lies less in Quine’s conception of epistemology than in his suggestion
that there is no richer conception to be had. One could say that his bright idea
is that there is no bright replacement available to empiricists and they do not
need one. To treat the analytic/synthetic distinction as surplus to scientific
requirements is not a minor departure from philosophical orthodoxy. It means
retreating to a view of philosophy and logic as branches of—and on a par
with—science.
§6 is often judged to be weak and easily challenged. Quine’s starting point
has occasioned little dispute, it being generally conceded that “[t]he totality of
our so-called knowledge or beliefs ... is a man-made fabric which impinges on
experience only along the edges” and “total science is a field of force whose
boundary conditions are experience” (42). And there has not been much criticism
240 Dialogue

of his point that “the total field is so underdetermined by its boundary condi-
tions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements
to reëvaluate in the light of any single contrary experience” (42-43). What
has not been granted is that, as he goes on to say, “[n]o particular experiences
are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except
indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole,”
to say nothing of his further conclusion that “[a]ny statement can be held
true ... if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system” and
“[c]onversely, by the same token, no statement is immune to revision” (43).
Not without reason, it has been frequently noted that taking our knowledge
to be all of a piece because theories are underdetermined by the evidence is
a gross non sequitur. But does he fall for it? Only when the assumptions
informing his discussion are overlooked.
Again, it is essential to remember that Quine is working within the frame-
work of empiricism and that §6 is entitled “Empiricism without the Dogmas,”
not “Epistemology without the dogmas.”41 He does not suppose that whoever
accepts the underdetermination of theory by evidence must regard our knowl-
edge as an undifferentiated whole, only urges the far less objectionable propo-
sition that empiricists must regard it this way given their view of evidence
and empirical content. As in the 1934 lectures, i.e. before he uncovered the
shortcomings of the method for elevating accepted sentences to analytic truths,
he considers how the serious empiricist should view our knowledge. It is not a
strike against him that non-empiricists will find what he says unsatisfying and
old-school empiricists who have no truck with the idea of a special class of
a priori truths will regard him as belabouring the obvious. He is addressing the
“modern empiricist” who supplements the defensible core of empiricism with
the assumption that the a priori is explicable in terms of analyticity. His claim
is that empiricism rigorously construed has a consequence that tends to be
overlooked (and was doubtless largely unrecognised in the 1930s and 1940s).
In arguing that modern empiricism is no advance on empiricism traditionally
understood, he is being reactionary. But in insisting that modern empiricists
should, given their empiricist assumptions, stick with an empiricism that, as
he puts it, takes there to be nothing in the mind not already in the senses,
he is being revolutionary.42
A number of other points about §6 are worth mentioning by way of conclu-
sion. One is that the section cannot, despite how it is sometimes anthologised,
be separated without loss from the rest of the paper. Quine does not set out a
self-contained argument and claim to demonstrate from scratch that statements
are epistemologically all of a single kind, still less does he purport to show
that philosophers of a more rationalistic bent are wrong to assume the exis-
tence of two different kinds of epistemological statement. Starting from what
he believes he has already shown, he proceeds, taking the empiricist’s emphasis
on the primacy of experience as given, to spell out what empiricism comes to
given the success of his critique of the analytic/synthetic distinction. After
 W.V. Quine on Analyticity 241

noting that statements in “the interior of the field” are not pinned down by
“experience ... indirectly,” he declares, good empiricist that he is, that “it is
misleading to speak of the empirical content of an individual statement—
especially if the statement is at all remote from [experience]” (43). Then
without further ado he declares it to be “folly to seek a boundary between
synthetic statements, which hold contingently, on experience, and analytic
statements, which hold come what may.” This, evidently, follows only given
what Quine has already argued. It is, after all, hardly foolish to seek a boundary
between analytic and synthetic statements while holding that single sentences
have empirical content only in the context of a body of theory.
A related point concerns Quine’s so-called “holism,” the view that science
is a unified whole, the sentences of which are—observation sentences aside—
intrinsically interrelated. The conception of our knowledge sketched in §6
does not stand and fall with the Duhemian observation that “[o]ur statements
about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually
but only as a corporate body” (41), and it is no objection to this conception
that Carnap accepted Duhem’s observation.43 In §6 Quine treats the Duhemian
observation in tandem with what he takes himself to have already shown,
namely that the analytic/synthetic distinction is “an unempirical dogma of
empiricists.” Whereas Carnap takes it for granted that there exists such a
distinction and regards statements within a theory (or theoretical framework)
to face the tribunal as a corporate body, Quine eschews the distinction and
takes “the [t]otality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs” to face the tribunal.
Again the difference comes down to the question of the possibility of intro-
ducing the distinction. For Carnap, it is introducible because it figures in
science and Duhem’s point applies subsequent to its introduction. For Quine,
on the other hand, the distinction cannot be introduced and Duhem’s point
applies across the board.
Also, it is a mistake to criticise Quine for failing to recognize other con-
straints on theory acceptance. He would not need to be told that many philos-
ophers believe the underdetermination of theory by evidence can be eliminated
(and the analytic/synthetic distinction grounded) by appealing to a priori
principles and that it is commonly believed that the gap can be closed by
invoking self-evidence, pure intuition, rational insight or the grasping of
meanings.44 He is not speaking to such philosophers in “Two Dogmas” (though
he includes some paragraphs on the idea of meanings as entities in §1). He
is attempting to convince “modern empiricists” for whom scientific theories
are underdetermined by evidence that there is no reducing completely the
distance between periphery and interior solely by appealing to empirical
considerations.45 The argument of §6 is that empiricists cannot justifiably deny
that our “latitude of choice” is unlimited (as opposed to Carnap, who holds
it is limited to the language of science). Accepting the underdetermination
of theory by evidence and the folly of attempting to provide an explanatory
account of analyticity, Quine concludes that the consistent empiricist must
242 Dialogue

agree that our knowledge comprises an epistemologically undifferentiated

whole.46
Nor does Quine maintain that the account of a dogma-free epistemology
provided in §6 constitutes the best argument against the analytic/synthetic
distinction.47 Subsequent to writing “Two Dogmas” in 1950, he may well have
come to think his positive remarks are more compelling than the negative
considerations he advances in §§1-3 (he does not return to the argument of
these sections). But he does not say, or even intimate, in “Two Dogmas” itself
that the distinction should be shunned because it is dispensable. Just the
reverse, he argues that the distinction should be dispensed with because it is
“ill-founded”. Far from claiming the distinction is uncalled for, he explicitly
says: “This is a distinction I reject” (46). In his view the argument of §§1-3
(and §4) is very much to the point since it undermines the (linguistic) account
of the a priori favoured by the “modern empiricist” and serves as a premise for
the argument of §6. For better or worse, his argument in “Two Dogmas” is that
empiricists must agree—given their conception of evidence and standards of
scientific explanation—that the dogma of analyticity does not pass muster and
embrace the account of our knowledge he advances in §6.48
In retrospect it is not hard to see why Quine thought a discussion of analy-
ticity suitable for a symposium on “Main Trends in Recent Philosophy” (the
other panellists spoke on “Speculative Philosophy” and “Moral Philosophy
at Mid-Century”). He would have reckoned his remarks appropriate since
they concern the acceptability of a widely-defended view. Moreover I hope
it is less puzzling why he suggested he was not saying anything especially
questionable or shocking. From his point of view “modern empiricism” plainly
does not meet the standards of explanation to which empiricists are them-
selves committed. On the account of “Two Dogmas” I have defended, he did
not intend to mount an argument independent of substantive philosophical
presuppositions, only to undercut modern empiricism from within. Through-
out he accepts the insight, central to empiricism, that our knowledge is a
creative construction only partly pinned down by observation and experiment
(and that there is no evidence other than empirical evidence). A committed
empiricist—he seems to have believed no other view deserves attention—
he confines himself in “Two Dogmas” to disabusing fellow empiricists of their
errors and to clarifying what empiricism rigorously understood amounts to. In
1950/1951 and for almost another fifty years, he would hold that empiricism
disentangled from the dogma of analyticity (and the dogma of reductionism)
is as good as it gets.49

Notes
1 The Philosophy of W.V. Quine, expanded ed., eds. L.E. Hahn and P.A. Schilpp
(La Salle: Open Court, 1998) 19. “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” was published in
Philosophical Review 60 (1951), 20-43, and reprinted with revisions in W.V. Quine,
From A Logical Point of View, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980),
 W.V. Quine on Analyticity 243
20-46. Page references in the text are to the revision. Except where noted, quoted
passages also occur in the original.
2 The Time of My Life, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 226, also 150.
3 “Two Dogmas in Retrospect”, in W.V. Quine, Quintessence, ed. R. Gibson
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 57.
4 The Philosophy of W.V. Quine, 19.
5 W.V. Quine, Word and Object, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960). 46.
6 Op. cit., 66-67. In this work Quine grants that “the stimulus meanings of ‘Bachelor’
and ‘Unmarried man’ are ... identical for any one speaker” (46), treats terms like
“bachelor” and “unmarried male” as “stimulus synonymous” (55) and characterises
sentences judged true by competent speakers of English “come what stimulus ...
may” as “stimulus analytic” (along with sentences obtainable “from logical truths
by [stimulus] synonymy substitution”) (66-67).
7 La Salle: Open Court, 1974, 79. Quine reckons this notion “a somewhat nearer
approximation to the analytic sentences uncritically so called” than the notion of
“stimulus analytic” in Word and Object (80).
8 “Two Dogmas in Retrospect”, 62. Significantly, there is no discussion of analy-
ticity in W.V. Quine and J. Ullian, The Web of Belief, (New York: Random
House, 1970).
9 The Ways of Paradox, rev. and enlarged ed., (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1976), 107.
10 Word and Object, 67.
11 The Philosophy of W.V. Quine, 207. Also, in The Roots of Reference, Quine refers
to “Carnap and other epistemologists” when proposing a substitute notion of
analyticity (80) and in “Two Dogmas in Retrospect” writes: “I recognize the
notion of analyticity in its obvious and useful but epistemologically insignificant
applications” (61). I am not claiming Quine was as clear when he wrote “Two
Dogmas” as he was later on, only that his concerns were epistemological both
early and late.
12 For this interpretation, see, e.g., S. Soames, Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth
Century, vol. 1, (Princeton University Press, 2003), 355-360.
13 I disregard less important suggestions touched on in §§1-3, for instance, the idea
that the predicates of analytic statements are conceptually contained in their
subjects.
14 Analyticity and self-contradictoriness are also said to be “two sides of a single
dubious coin” (23), definition said to put “the cart before the horse” (24), necessity
sufficiently “narrowly construed” said to have the “air of hocus-pocus” (29) and
interchangeability in the required sense said to be “intelligible only insofar as the
notion of analyticity is already understood in advance” (31). In addition Quine
disapproves of Carnap’s “tende[ncy] to explain analyticity by appeal to ... state-
descriptions” (23).
15 In “Carnap and Logical Truth”, Quine says defining synonymy in terms of analy-
ticity would be “circular” but does not take this to show analyticity is disreputable
(129). The problem with Carnap’s doctrine of logical truth is rather that it is a
244 Dialogue
“pseudo-doctrine”, one that “leaves explanation unbegun” (113). Also note that
Quine should not be upbraided for failing to notice that semantic and ethical
notions (even notions like “parent”) cannot be pinned down without reference to
notions of the same general sort.
16 “Two Dogmas in Retrospect”, 61. In “Two Dogmas” Quine simply says he goes
further than those like “Carnap, Lewis and others [who] take a pragmatic stand”
since he repudiates the boundary they take to exist between the analytic and the
synthetic. Burton Dreben, Quine’s closest collaborator, often stressed that it is
insufficiently appreciated that Quine chiefly acquired his conception of episte-
mology from Lewis. Also see W.V. Quine, “Comments on Parsons” in Perspectives
on Quine, eds. R. Gibson and R. Barrett. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 292.
17 Compare Soames, op. cit., 355, 361 and 363.
18 W.V. Quine and R. Carnap, Dear Carnap, Dear Van, ed. R. Creath, (Berkeley:
California University Press, 1990), 47. It is of some interest given what has already
been noted that C.I. Lewis was in the audience when Quine lectured on Carnap and
near the beginning of his remarks he referred to Lewis’s conception of the a priori
as ‘definitive or analytic in its nature’ (68). The reference is to C.I. Lewis, Mind and
the World Order, (New York: Scribner, 1929), 231.
19 The Ways of Paradox, 102.
20 Ibid., 101 and 106. Quine seems to have had misgivings about the distinction
before 1934 since when visiting Carnap in Prague in 1933, he apparently ques-
tioned whether logical axioms are different in kind from empirical sentences. See
“Two Dogmas in Retrospect”, 55. Even in 1935 he seems to have had hope for the
dogma of reductionism. See “Truth by Convention”, 100, n.20.
21 “Lectures on Carnap”, 49 and 65, and “Truth by Convention”, 102.
22 At the beginning of “Truth by Convention” Quine says: “It is less the purpose of the
present inquiry to question the validity of [the contrast between analytic/a priori
and synthetic/a posteriori] than to question its sense” (77).
23 Quine allows that some sentences normally regarded as synthetic might end up
being classified as analytic, the law of freely falling bodies, for example (“Lectures
on Carnap”, 62).
24 In “Carnap and Logical Truth” Quine puts it this way: “The lore of our fathers ... is
a pale grey lore, black with fact and white with convention. But I have found no
substantial reason for concluding that there are any quite black threads in it, or any
white ones” (132).
25 “Two Dogmas in Retrospect”, 55-56.
26 Nor does Carnap propound a “doctrine” or defend a “thesis” (“Lectures on Carnap”,
47 and 66).
27 Ibid., 47.
28 W.V. Quine, From a Logical Point of View, 130-138.
29 Dear Carnap, Dear Van, 430; The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap, 919; and
R.M. Martin, “On ’Analytic’” Philosophical Studies 3 (1952), 42-47. In the revised
version of “Two Dogmas”, Quine added a paragraph in response to Martin (35).
30 “Notes on the Theory of Reference”, 138.
 W.V. Quine on Analyticity 245
31 Quine criticises the behavioural criteria for analyticity that Carnap offers in “Meaning
and Synonymy in Natural Languages” Philosophical Studies 6 (1995), §3. See,
e.g., Word and Object, 35.
32 Word and Object, 257.
33 The Pursuit of Truth, rev. ed., (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), §3.
34 “Two Dogmas in Retrospect”, 60. This remark, by the way, indicates that Quine
does not repudiate analyticity because it is imprecise.
35 In conversation, Burton Dreben observed more than once that Quine appreciated
that his argument was similar to Einstein’s but refrained from mentioning the fact
for fear of seeming immodest.
36 “Lectures on Carnap”, 64, and “Truth by Convention”, 77.
37 In “Two Dogmas” Quine questions the possibility of explaining “analytic-in-L” for
“variable L” (34), and in “Notes on the Theory of Reference” adds that we do not
have “any systematic routine for constructing definitions for ‘analytic-in-L’, even
for the various individual choices of L” (138).
38 Phlogiston and the ether, it hardly needs recalling, are discounted despite the fact
neither has been demonstrated conclusively not to exist. For Quine meanings are in
the same boat as the ether.
39 None of this would satisfy Carnap, his final argument for analyticity being that it
is needed to understand Einstein’s development of the theory of relativity. See
R. Carnap, Philosophical Foundations of Physics, (New York: Basic Books, 1966),
257. In Quine’s view, by contrast, Einstein’s manoeuvre is nothing more or less
than an example of semantic ascent (Word and Object, 272).
40 Op. cit., 63 and 65. Also compare: “[The sentences] which we are not going to give
up at all, so basic are they to our whole conceptual scheme ..., if any, are the
sentences to which the epithet ‘a priori’ would have to apply” (65).
41 In Word and Object Quine laments that “[t]he title of ‘Two Dogmas’ ... has proved
unfortunate in its unintended but very real suggestion that there is no empiricism
without the dogmas in question” (68, n.7).
42 Compare Pursuit of Truth, 19: “The most notable norm of naturalized episte-
mology [Quine’s preferred view] actually coincides with that of traditional
epistemology. It is simply the watchword of empiricism: nihil in mente quod
non prius in sensu”.
43 See R. Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language, (Chicago: Open Court, 2002),
318. In “Two Dogmas” Quine takes “the unit of empirical significance [to be] the
whole of science” (42). Later he will take it, more realistically, to consist of
“a critical semantic mass” of sentences (see, e.g., Pursuit of Truth, 17).
44 It is worth noting that C.I. Lewis, whom Quine couples with Carnap at the end of
“Two Dogmas”, refers to analyticity as an alternative to self-evidence and intuition,
op. cit., viii.
45 Quine did not believe—he will later underscore the fact—that the problem of
underdetermination cannot be solved by noting that good theories are simple,
general and the like. See, e.g., “On Empirically Equivalent Systems of the World”,
in Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist, 242, and Pursuit of Truth, 99.
246 Dialogue
46 It is worth noting that whereas Quine holds that empiricists do not have to avail
themselves of the notion of analyticity since they can regard putative a priori truths
as central to our conceptual scheme (44), Carnap takes the sentences in question
to be central to our conceptual scheme because they are analytic (and a priori).
For Carnap firmness and centrality are what require explaining, not what do the
explaining.
47 See, for instance, R. Creath, ‘Every Dogma has its Day’, Erkenntnis 35 (1991),
348, 371 and 385.
48 Similar remarks, I believe, are in order regarding the dogma of reductionism. As
I see it, a study of §5 (also §4) would complement the present examination of
§§1-3 and §6. Also notice that when detached from Quine’s critical remarks,
empiricism free of the dogmas is arguably inferior to empiricism supplemented
by them. Armed with the analytic/synthetic distinction the modern empiricist
can avoid the awkward conclusion that numbers exist in the same sense as electrons
and regard sentences like “The number one weighs two kilograms” as nonsensical
rather than obviously false.
49 While writing this paper I have had in mind discussions about Quine’s treatment of
the analytic/synthetic distinction that I had with Burton Dreben during the last
years of his life. In addition I want to thank Paul Forster for constructive criticism
and useful advice, Peter Hylton for conversation and reading material, and two
anonymous reviewers for comments and suggestions.