  two dogmas of empiricism is a paper by analytic philosopher willard van orman quine published in 1951. according to city university of new york professor of philosophy peter godfrey-smith, this "paper [is] sometimes regarded as the most important in all of twentieth-century philosophy".peter godfrey-smith, theory and reality, 2003, university of chicago, isbn 0-226-30062-5, pages 30-33 (section 2.4 "problems and changes") the paper is an attack on two central aspects of the logical positivists' philosophy. one is the analytic-synthetic distinction between analytic truths and synthetic truths, explained by quine as truths grounded only in meanings and independent of facts, and truths grounded in facts. the other is reductionism, the theory that each meaningful statement gets its meaning from some logical construction of terms that refers exclusively to immediate experience. "two dogmas" is divided into six sections. the first four sections are focused on analyticity, the last two sections on reductionism. there, quine turns the focus to the logical positivists' theory of meaning. he also presents his own holistic theory of meaning. ==analyticity and circularity== most of quine's argument against analyticity in the first four sections is focused on showing that different explanations of analyticity are circular. the main purpose is to show that no satisfactory explanation of analyticity has been given. quine begins by making a distinction between two different classes of analytic statements. the first one is called logically true and has the form: :(1) no unmarried man is married a sentence with that form is true independent of the interpretation of "man" and "married", so long as the logical particles "no", "un-" and "is" have their ordinary english meaning. the statements in the second class have the form: :(2) no bachelor is married. a statement with this form can be turned into a statement with form (1) by changing synonyms with synonyms, in this case "bachelor" with "unmarried man". it is the second class of statements that lack characterization according to quine. the notion of the second form of analyticity leans on the notion of synonymy, which quine believes is in as much need of clarification as analyticity. most of quine's following arguments are focused on showing how explanations of synonymy end up being dependent on the notions of analyticity, necessity, or even synonymy itself. how do we reduce sentences from the second class to a sentence of class (1)? some might propose definitions. "no bachelor is married" can be tu
1951_essays Academic_journal_articles Analytic_philosophy_literature Empiricism Epistemology_literature Holism Logical_truth Philosophy_essays Philosophy_of_language_literature Philosophy_of_science_literature Willard_Van_Orman_Quine Works_originally_published_in_American_magazines