Quine (from my book "The Great Philosophers")

"…for all its a priori reasonableness, a boundary between the 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, a metaphysical article of faith." Quine

Quine is one of the most influential philosophers of the Twentieth Century. The son of a schoolteacher mother and entrepreneur father, Quine studied mathematics and logic at Oberlin College before winning a scholarship to Harvard. He spent his entire teaching career at Harvard, holding the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard University from 1956 to 2000. During WWII, Quine worked for US military intelligence.

QUINE’S ATTACK ON ANALYTICITY

Two kinds of truth

Many philosophers have drawn a distinction between two kinds of truth. Take these two sentences:

All bachelors are unmarried males
All vixens are female foxes

Both are true. But why? It’s tempting to answer: because of what the words “bachelor” and “vixen” mean. These sentences are true in virtue of meaning. The expression “bachelor” has the same meaning as “unmarried male”. They are synonymous expressions. So “All bachelors are unmarried males” is guaranteed to be true simply by virtue of the meaning of the words that go to make it up. And the same, you might suggest, is true of “All vixens are female foxes”.

We might add that, because these sentences are true in virtue of meaning, so there is no possibility of them being falsified by experience. Their truth is guaranteed, irrespective of how the world turns out to be.

Philosophers call those truths that are true in virtue of meaning analytic truths. They are contrasted with non-analytic, or synthetic, truths, such as:

All bachelors live in the vicinity of the Earth

This sentence is also true. But it is not true in virtue of meaning. The truth of this sentence, its tempting to say, is of an entirely different sort. This sentence is true because it correctly describes how things stand – as a matter of fact all bachelors do live in the vicinity of the Earth. Had they not, the sentence would have been false.

It seems, then, that there are two kinds of truth: analytic truth and synthetic truth.

• {{{{{TEXT BOX:Explaining a priori knowledge
• Armed with the notion of analyticity, several empiricist philosophers have attempted to explain how a priori knowledge is possible.
• A priori knowledge is knowledge that can be established independently of the evidence provided by our five senses. It seems we can know a priori, for example, that all bachelors are unmarried. We don’t need to go out into the world and examine lots of bachelors to check are all unmarried. We know, even before we even start to look, that they will be. It seems we can also know a priori that 2 + 2 = 4 and that every surface is extended. And, according to Anselm (chpt XX), we can know a priori that God exists.
• You can see how we might try to explain how certain truths can be known a priori by appealing to the notion of analyticity. How can I know, without examining any bachelors, that they are all unmarried? Because “bachelor” just means “unmarried male”. So I need only understand the meaning of the words that make up the sentence to be in a position to know that the sentence is true.
• Armed with the notion of analyticity, we can also explain why it is a necessary truth that ever bachelors is also an unmarried male. If “bachelor” just means “unmarried male”, then “All bachelors are unmarried” says that all unmarried males are unmarried, which is a logical truth (for to deny it would involve you in a logical contradiction).
• Of course, it is debatable whether all a priori necessary truths are analytic. But if they were, that would certainly explain why they are a priori and necessary. Which is why many philosophers have been drawn to the idea that all a priori necessary truths are analytic.END OF TEXT BOX.}}}}}

Quine’s attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction

The analytic/synthetic distinction has been one of the bread and butter distinctions of philosophy ever since Kant, who introduced the terms (though something like the distinction can be found in the work of Hume and Leibniz). While not all philosophers were convinced that all a priori necessary truths are analytic (Kant wasn’t), there was, before the 1950’s, a broad consensus that the analytic/synthetic distinction was a real one, and that there were, indeed, two categorically different kinds of truth. So when Quine presented a powerful-looking argument that the analytic/synthetic distinction was, in effect, empty, and that no distinction could be made between those true statements that are true purely in virtue of meaning and those that are not, the effect on the philosophical community was electrifying. Indeed, as a result of Quine’s work, many philosophers (particularly in the U.S.) are now convinced that there is no cogent notion of “analyticity”.

How does Quine attack the distinction?

The web of belief

According to Quine, our beliefs about the world form a web. They face the test of experience not separately, but collectively:

our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually, but only as a corporate body

Suppose, for example, that I believe that the Earth is flat. But then I come to possess two pieces of evidence that suggest my belief is false. A sailor tells me that he has sailed around the world and come back to the same place, and someone else has drawn my attention to the fact that, when boats disappear over the horizon, they disappear from the bottom up, as if the surface of the sea curved downwards.

These two pieces of evidence might together lead me to have doubts about the Earth being flat. But of course they are far from conclusive. I might deal with the sailor’s testimony by supposing that he is either lying or deluded about having sailed round the world. And I might try to deal with the observation about distant ships by supposing that light rays travelling close to the surface of the sea are somehow bent over a distance.

Of course, as more evidence against my theory that the Earth is flat begins to pile up, I might be more inclined to abandon my theory. But the fact is that, as long as I am prepared to make increasingly far-reaching adjustments to my other beliefs – my beliefs about the reliability of the testimony of sailors, about light, and so on – any apparent recalcitrant evidence can always be dealt with.

Now according to Quine, those beliefs that philosophers are inclined to call “analytic” are simply those beliefs that are particularly well-entrenched in our web of belief. They are the beliefs we will be slowest to give up, given recalcitrant evidence.

But, insists Quine, no belief is absolutely immune to revision in the light of experience in the way that “analytic” truths are supposed to be. Given that enough recalcitrant evidence mounted up, we might decide that, rather than making ever more complex and dramatic adjustments to the rest of our web of belief, the most satisfactory solution would simply be to abandon one of the supposedly “analytic” and/or “necessary” truths (interestingly, some have suggested that developments in quantum mechanics require that we revise the laws of logic).

No satisfactory definition of “analytic”

The other key component to Quine’s attack on the notion of analyticity is that no satisfactory explanation of the notion can be given. We can define analyticity in terms of meaning, of course, by saying that the analytic truths are those that are “true in virtue of meaning”. But, says Quine, the philosophical notion of meaning is just as opaque as that of analyticity. We might also try to explain analyticity in terms of the notions of the notions of synonymy, definition, and necessity. Indeed, each of these terms might be defined in terms of the others. The problem is that together they form a tight little circle of notions none of which is ever properly explained.

Here’s an analogy. Suppose I define a “wibble” as a collection of “woobles”, a “wooble” as an adult “doofer”, and “doofers” as the things that, when fully-grown, go to make up “wibbles”. I have defined each of my terms. But I have left you none the wiser as to what, if anything, I mean by them.

Quine’s point is that we are in a similar situation with respect to “analytic”. Yes we can define the term using other terms, but not in such a way that we get any closer to understanding what it is supposed to mean.

Of course, if I were to point to a pod of whales and say “That is a wibble”, what I mean by “wibble” suddenly becomes much clearer. Can’t we similarly explain what “analytic truth” means? Can’t we explain what it means by just providing some examples, such as “All bachelors are unmarried”?

No, says Quine. For why suppose that, say, “All bachelors are unmarried” is unrevisable in light of experience? True, we might not be able easily to envisage circumstances under which we would consider it false. But just because we can’t easily envisage such circumstances doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

If Quine is right that our statements are answerable to experience not individually, but collectively, and that any statement is potentially revisable in the light of experience, then even those statements that philosophers have traditionally called “analytic” are revisable. But then to point to such statements as examples of what “analytic” means would really be to beg the question. For if Quine is right, they are not analytic.

Since Quine’s attack on the notion of analyticity, it has largely, though not totally, fallen out of philosophical favour.