Two Dogmas of Empiricism - Reductionism and Quine's holism

Quine's paper Two Dogmas of Empiricism, published 1951, is one of the most celebrated papers of twentieth century philosophy in the analytic tradition. The paper is an attack on two central parts of the logical positivists' philosophy. One is the 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, which is the theory that each meaningful statement gets its meaning from some logical construc ...

Including:

• Two Dogmas of Empiricism - Analyticity and circularity
• Two Dogmas of Empiricism - Reductionism and Quine's holism
• Two Dogmas of Empiricism - Critique and influence

Read more here: » Two Dogmas of Empiricism: Encyclopedia - Two Dogmas of Empiricism

According to the logical positivists, a statement was given a meaning by its empirical verification. This view can be used to define synonymy. Two terms would be synonymous if and only if they are alike in method of empirical confirmation or infirmation. With the notion of synonymy, analyticity of the second class could be defined, and the problem would be solved. But Quine points out that this view needs an explanation of the methods which are to be compared. Reductionism is one of these methods, where a meaningful statement gets its meanin ...

See also:

Two Dogmas of Empiricism, Two Dogmas of Empiricism - Analyticity and circularity, Two Dogmas of Empiricism - Reductionism and Quine's holism, Two Dogmas of Empiricism - Critique and influence

Read more here: » Two Dogmas of Empiricism: Encyclopedia II - Two Dogmas of Empiricism - Reductionism and Quine's holism

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 logical 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 ...

See also:

Two Dogmas of Empiricism, Two Dogmas of Empiricism - Analyticity and circularity, Two Dogmas of Empiricism - Reductionism and Quine's holism, Two Dogmas of Empiricism - Critique and influence

Read more here: » Two Dogmas of Empiricism: Encyclopedia II - Two Dogmas of Empiricism - Analyticity and circularity