Hoppe’s Ridiculous Attack on the Epistemological Foundation of Moderate Empiricism

I get mercifully few libertarians in the comments sections these days, but I recently got this challenge here.

Patrick asks me to respond to this critique here.

This is a passage from the Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Hoppe 2007: 33–34), and Hoppe is a defender of Kantian synthetic a priori knowledge as the epistemological foundation of epistemology and Misesian praxeology.

The proposition that is the epistemological foundation for classical and modern moderate empiricism, as Hoppe notes, is this:

“This is empiricism’s central claim: Empirical knowledge must be verifiable or falsifiable by experience; and analytical knowledge, which is not so verifiable or falsifiable, thus cannot contain any empirical knowledge. If this is true, then it is fair to ask: What then is the status of this fundamental statement of empiricism? Evidently it must be either analytical or empirical.” (Hoppe 2007: 33).

Hoppe notes that this must be defended and classified as either (1) analytic a priori or (2) synthetic a posteriori.

So which one is it? The answer is that it can be rationally and easily defended as a synthetic a posteriori proposition (that is to say, an empirical proposition).

But, according to Hoppe, this somehow leads to this:

“So perhaps we should choose the other available option and declare the fundamental empiricist distinction between empirical and analytical knowledge an empirical statement. But then the empiricist position would no longer carry any weight whatsoever. For if this were done, it would have to be admitted that the proposition – as an empirical one – might well be wrong and that one would be entitled to hear on the basis of what criterion one would have to decide whether or not it was. More decisively, as an empirical proposition, right or wrong, it could only state a historical fact, something like ‘all heretofore scrutinized propositions fall indeed into the two categories analytical and empirical.’ The statement would be entirely irrelevant for determining whether it would be possible to produce propositions that are true a priori and are still empirical ones. Indeed, if empiricism's central claim were declared an empirical proposition, empiricism would cease altogether to be an epistemology, a logic of science, and would be no more than a completely arbitrary verbal convention of calling certain arbitrary ways of dealing with certain statements certain arbitrary names. Empiricism would be a position void of any justification.” (Hoppe 2007: 34).

Huh? No longer “carry any weight whatsoever”?

If that were true, then all human natural or social science of any kind based on foundational empirical propositions or assumptions would not “carry any weight whatsoever.” This is nonsense.

The standard ideas we presuppose in either the natural sciences or social sciences (or indeed in everyday common sense) can indeed be justified empirically, by experience, inductive argument and inference to the best explanation (which is just another non-deductive, or inductive form of reasoning) by long debates and arguments in philosophy or in the natural and social sciences too.

At the most basic level, there are all sorts of assumptions that are epistemological foundations of our beliefs and scientific theories (including economics), such as the following:

(1) the real existence of other human minds;

(2) the real existence of an external world of matter and energy that is the causal origin of our sensory data (= an indirect realist ontology);

(3) that the past had real existence (and is not some figment of our imagination);

(4) the existence of a set of physical and chemical laws that have been discovered by the natural sciences that account for the order and nature of the universe;

(5) the view that our earth is about 4.54 billion years old;

(6) the view that all livings things on our earth are the product of a Darwinian process of evolution by natural selection (and, if one wants to be technical, also by (i) sexual selection and (ii) artificial selection by humans);

(7) the human mind is the product of the physical activity of the brain, and so on.

And of course we can keep listing such propositions too as we move from natural science to the social sciences.

None of these assumptions can be justified as analytic a priori or as Kantian synthetic a priori knowledge. They are all empirical propositions. Does the admission that they are not 100% certain make science impossible? No.

For example, we have the empirical proposition that:

“the earth and the planets of our solar system revolve around the sun.”

This is an empirical proposition, which is contingent, known a posteriori, and its truth is probabilistic.

That is to say, even though there is an enormous amount of empirical evidence in its favour, it could be that this proposition is wrong, because as a contingent and probabilistic truth, it is not 100% certain and never can be. It’s not impossible that it might be false, though it seems extremely improbable given all we know.

We must always be open to the possibility that new evidence might suddenly emerge that would throw doubt on our belief, even if (again) this seems extremely improbable.

But, at present, we have overwhelming evidence that it is true. The proposition therefore stands as a rational and defensible foundational assumption of any branch of cosmology studying solar systems.

There is no profound epistemological problem with this state of affairs, or with the foundation of the physics of solar systems, because we never said that the empirical propositions were 100% certain, nor do we need them to be, in order to get empirical knowledge whose truth is probabilistic and rationally defensible as true on the current evidence.

We accept the truth of all empirical propositions only as long as the weight of current evidence demonstrates that we have a good or very good case to think they are true. E.g., we have no good reason to doubt that gravity will suddenly stop operating 5 seconds from now, though it’s not impossible that it might for some unknown reason. Is that any reason to jump out of a 100 story building now and expect to float to the ground unharmed?

It is the same, broadly speaking, with the foundational proposition of moderate empiricism.

Our defence of the original epistemological principle is empirical and its truth is only probable or highly probable, but the lack of certainty produces no such epistemological crisis for empiricism, for the reason that it never aimed at absolute necessary truth in the first place, as Hoppe demands. Our best scientific theories do not have apodictic truth, nor does the inductive method yield absolute certainty, yet modern science is incredibly successful.

The rejection of dogmatism and the willingness to regard any scientific theory as capable of revision or falsification are what give modern scientific epistemology its great strength.

But if we adopted the same type of argument used by Hoppe, then we must conclude that modern science must “no longer carry any weight whatsoever” and “would cease altogether to be an epistemology.”

Secondly, the legitimate response of an empiricist to a Rationalist that “all heretofore scrutinized propositions fall indeed into the two categories analytical and empirical” can be defended as true. Hoppe’s point here carries no weight.

We need only look at the way Kant’s original synthetic a priori knowledge, such as Euclidean geometry, necessary and deterministic causation, or certain laws of logic have either been refuted by modern science or seriously questioned.

Hoppe’s next statement that the empiricist’s classification of knowledge “would be entirely irrelevant for determining whether it would be possible to produce propositions that are true a priori and are still empirical ones” is also a non sequitur, since, on the contrary, it is a defensible starting point for analysing all statements and all future statements and determining whether they could possibly provide synthetic truth but be known a priori. If, for example, some Rationalist asserts that statement x is a synthetic a priori truth, but we discover that the real world produces overwhelming empirical evidence against the proposition, then it is the Rationalist who is faced with an epistemological crisis.

In essence, there are very good reasons why most analytic philosophers have rejected Kantian synthetic a priori knowledge, as follows:

(1) The paradigmatic type of synthetic a priori knowledge that was Euclidean geometry, when asserted as a universally true theory of space, has been shown to be severely contradicted by the empirical evidence – and this is not what we would expect to find if this theory really was necessarily true and an irrefutable theory of reality.

(2) We can eliminate the problem of virtually all proposed synthetic a priori knowledge by carefully separating pure maths/pure geometry (which is analytic a priori and necessarily true, but not describing reality) from applied maths/applied geometry (which is asserted as true of reality but is synthetic a posteriori and contingent).

For example, most of mathematics can be clearly explained as an analytic a priori system, as derived from pure logic and set theory (Schwartz 2012: 19), as shown by the work of Frege, Russell, and Whitehead.

(3) From (1) and (2), we can satisfactorily explain proposed synthetic a priori knowledge either as (i) analytic a priori or (ii) synthetic a posteriori, eliminating a complex and unnecessary category.

If any Kantian or libertarian has any further nor new example of an alleged Kantian synthetic a priori statement, then he or she can make it, and we can scrutinise any and all such proposed propositions and see whether the claim is convincing. I’ve not yet seen any such proposed or credible proposition. For example, the idea that the human action axiom is a synthetic a priori truth collapses like a house of cards when seriously scrutinised.

Ultimately, we can reject synthetic a priori knowledge by inference to the best explanation and Ockham’s razor.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hoppe, Hans-Hermann. 2007. Economic Science and the Austrian Method. Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn. Ala.

Schwartz, Stephen P. 2012. A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy: From Russell to Rawls. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, UK.

Further Reading
For anyone interested in understanding why Misesian praxeology and Kantian synthetic a priori epistemology is wrong, see my posts here:

“Mises’ Praxeology: A Critique,” October 1, 2010.
“Limits of the Human Action Axiom,” February 28, 2011.
“Hayek on Mises’ Apriorism,” May 23, 2011.
“Mises and Logic,” August 26, 2011.
“Karl Popper’s View of Mises,” October 2, 2012.
“My Post on Praxeology gets some Attention,” March 7, 2012.
“Mises Flunks Evolution 101,” April 2, 2013.
“What is the Epistemological Status of Praxeology and the Action Axiom?,” July 27, 2013.
“Barrotta’s Kantian Critique of Mises’s Epistemology,” July 28, 2013.
“David Friedman versus Robert Murphy,” August 4, 2013.
“Mises Fails Philosophy of Mathematics 101,” August 30, 2013.
“Bob Murphy All At Sea on Geometry and Economic Epistemology,” August 31, 2013.
“Mises’s Non Sequitur on synthetic a priori Knowledge,” September 2, 2013.
“Tokumaru on Mises’s Epistemology,” September 3, 2013.
“Reply to a ‘Red Herring on Praxeology,’” September 6, 2013.
“Mises versus the Vienna Circle,” September 7, 2013.
“Mises’s Flawed Deduction and Praxeology,” September 8, 2013.
“Hoppe’s Caricature of Empiricism,” September 10, 2013.
“Hoppe on Euclidean Geometry,” September 11, 2013.
“Robert Murphy gets Mises’s Epistemology Wrong,” September 13, 2013.
“Hoppe on Euclidean Geometry, Part 2,” September 14, 2013.
“Mises on Kant and Praxeology,” September 15, 2013.
“Mises was Confused about the Analytic–Synthetic Distinction,” September 15, 2013.
“What is the Epistemological Status of the Law of Demand?,” September 19, 2013.
“A Simple Question for Austrian Apriorists,” November 20, 2013.
“Mises, Action and Uncertainty,” December 4, 2013.
“Córdoba on Praxeology and Economics,” December 7, 2013.
“Schuller’s Challenge to Misesian Apriorists has never been answered,” December 7, 2013.
“Mises versus Ayer on Analytic Propositions and a priori Reasoning,” March 16, 2014.
“David Gordon on Praxeology and the Austrian Method: A Critique,” March 13, 2014.
“Why Mises’s Praxeological Theories are not Necessarily True of the Real World,” March 15, 2014.
“Mises and Empiricism,” April 17, 2014.
“Mark Blaug was Right on Mises’ Method,” April 30, 2014.
“Why Should we reject the Existence of Synthetic a priori Knowledge?,” May 23, 2014.
“Detlev Schlichter on Mises’ Apriorism,” June 5, 2014.
“Robert Taylor versus David Ramsay Steele on Praxeology,” June 6, 2014.
“John Quiggin on Apriorism in Austrian Economics,” July 28, 2014.
“Hutchison on the History of Hayek’s Views on Economic Methodology,” August 2, 2014.
“Hayek on Prediction in the Social Sciences,” August 6, 2014.
“Are all Facts Theory-Laden?,” December 21, 2014.
“Walter Block’s An Austrian Critique of Mainstream Economics: A Critique on Epistemology,” October 8, 2015.

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Epistemology in Modern Analytic Philosophy: A Review

There are three fundamental epistemological categories with respect to propositions and knowledge in modern analytic philosophy:

(1) the “analytic” versus “synthetic” distinction
This is a distinction involving the semantic form of propositions. A sentence is analytic if and only if it is true solely by virtue of the meanings of terms used (Elugardo 1997: 13). Every sentence that is not analytic is synthetic;

(2) the notion of “necessity” versus “contingency”
This relates to the nature of truth and can be understood in (i) a metaphysical/ontological sense or (ii) a conceptual/verbal sense (or de dicto). A logically necessary truth in sense (ii) is not metaphysically necessary, but true only by virtue of the definitions of terms used;

(3) the a priori versus a posteriori distinction
This involves how a proposition is epistemologically known to be true or false. An a priori truth is known without appeal to experience, and an a posteriori truth is known by appeal to experience or empirical evidence.

With regard to analyticity, it is also possible to distinguish three types of analytic sentence, as follows:

(1) an explicit analyticity, such as “Bachelors are bachelors.” These can also be called “identity propositions” or “truths of logic”;

(2) an implicit analyticity, where the sentence is true by definition, e.g., “Bachelors are male.” Here we have a predicative proposition in which the predicate asserts something of a subject already containing that idea implicitly; and

(3) another type of analyticity where propositions are true in virtue of the meanings of the words used, but not true by definition: “Nothing is both red and green all over” or “whatever is coloured is extended.”

Types (1) and (2) describe what is called “Frege analyticity” (Boghossian 1997) in the following senses:

“A sentence is analytic if and only if either (i) it is a logical truth, or (ii) it can be converted into a logical truth by substitution of synonymous expressions, salve veritate, and formally valid inferences.” (Elugardo 1997: 15).

All “Frege analytic” truths are known a priori.

But type (3) above describes a kind of analyticity that is wider in sense than (1) or (2), and the epistemological status of (3) was once held to be synthetic a priori (Elugardo 1997: 15). Today many would say it is analytic a priori, but a type that Boghossian (2008: 203) calls “Carnap analyticity” (after the logical positivist Rudolf Carnap).

In 1951, Quine (1951) attacked the analytic–synthetic distinction. Elugardo (1997: 15) argues that Quine admitted the existence of “Frege analytic” truths in sense (1), but thought that even these logical truths are open to revision. But Quine also argued that Frege analyticity in sense (2) is untenable. Quine’s rejection of this type of analytic statement is derived from his unwillingness to accept any definition of “synonymy” that is circular (in that it relies in turn on the concept of “analyticity” for its definition), and because of his verbal behaviourism.

But Quine’s attack on Frege analyticity is controversial. Many modern analytic philosophers think Quine did not succeed in his arguments, and that analyticity does indeed exist (Grice and Strawson 1956; Putnam 1962 and 1975; Quinton 1967; Glock 1996 and 2003; Nimtz 2003). Nor it is surprising that modern Rationalists support the existence of Frege analyticity (Katz 1967; Chomsky 1988).

Quine also argued against the logical positivist view that verification of a single synthetic proposition is possible by empirical evidence and without the need for verifying other sentences. For Quine, every synthetic proposition relies on and presupposes a number of other sentences, a view which lead to Quine’s confirmation holism and the Quine-Duhem thesis.

Thus knowledge is an interconnected “web of belief,” and those beliefs at the core are only the most difficult to give up, while those at the periphery are easy to give up. Nevertheless, all beliefs are capable in principle of being given up and none immune to revision (Elugardo 1997: 14). Philosophers have continued to debate this view too.

Such were the main controversies in analytic philosophy on epistemology until the 1970s. Until the 1970s, most analytic philosophers thought that all necessary truths are a priori and all contingent truths are a posteriori. Then Saul Kripke argued that the three concepts above are distinct, and that there are actually “necessary a posteriori” truths, such as, for example, the statement that “water is truly H₂O.”

Kripke introduced a revolution in analytic metaphysics and epistemology, and he also argued that scientifically true identities are necessary a posteriori truths (Elugardo 1997: 12).

Kripke also contended that there is such a thing as “contingent a priori” truth, but the existence of this type of truth is still disputed.

Links
“The Return of Metaphysics into Analytic Philosophy,” August 29, 2013.

“Epistemology and Kinds of Knowledge,” July 25, 2013.

“Schwartz’s A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy: from Russell to Rawls: Chapter 3,” August 25, 2013.

“Quine and the Analytic–Synthetic Distinction,” August 24, 2013.

“Schwartz’s A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy: from Russell to Rawls: Chapter 2,” August 23, 2013.

“Schwartz’s A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy: From Russell to Rawls: Chapter 1,” August 22, 2013.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Boghossian, Paul. 1996. “Analyticity Reconsidered,” Nous 30: 360–391.

Boghossian, Paul. 1997. “Analyticity,” in B. Hale and C. Wright (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language. Basil Blackwell, Oxford. 331–368.

Boghossian, Paul. 2008. “Analyticity Reconsidered,” in Paul A. Boghossian, Content and Justification: Philosophical Papers. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 195–224.

Chomsky, Noam. 1988. Language and Problems of Knowledge: The Managua Lectures. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London.

Elugardo, R. 1997. “Analytic/Synthetic, Necessary/Contingent, and a priori/a posteriori: Distinction,” in Peter V. Lamarque (ed.), Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language. Pergamon, New York. 10–19.

Frege, Gottlob. 1986. The Foundations of Arithmetic (2nd rev. edn.). Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

Glock, Hans-Johann. 1996. “Necessity and Normativity,” in Hans Sluga and David G. Stern (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York. 198–225.

Glock, Hans-Johann. 2003. Quine and Davidson on Language, Thought and Reality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Grice, H. P. and P. F. Strawson. 1956. “In Defence of a Dogma,” Philosophical Review 65: 141–158.

Horwich, Paul. 1992. “Chomsky versus Quine on the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society n.s. 92: 95–108.

Katz, Jerrold J. 1967. “Some Remarks on Quine on Analyticity,” Journal of Philosophy 64: 36–52.

Katz, Jerrold J. 2010. “Analyticity,” in Jonathan Dancy, Ernest Sosa and Matthias Steup (eds.), A Companion to Epistemology (2nd edn.). Blackwell, Malden, MA and Oxford. 224–230.

Nimtz, C. 2003. “Analytic Truths – Still Harmless After All These Years?,” in H. J. Glock, K. Gluer, and G. Keil (eds.), Fifty Years of Quine’s ‘Two Dogmas’. Rodopi, Amsterdam and New York. 91–118.

Pap, Arthur. 1958. Semantics and Necessary Truth: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy. Yale University Press, New Haven.

Popper, Karl. 1957. “Philosophy of Science: A Personal Report,” in C. A. Mace (ed.), British Philosophy in the Mid-Century: A Cambridge Symposium. Macmillan, New York. 155–191.

Putnam, H. 1962. “The Analytic and the Synthetic,” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 3: 358–397.

Putnam, Hilary. 1975. “The Analytic and the Synthetic,” Hilary Putnam, Mind, Language, and Reality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 33–69.

Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1951. “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” Philosophical Review 60: 20–43.

Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1960. Word and Object. M.I.T. Press, Massachusetts.

Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1981. “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” in From a Logical Point of View. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 20–46.

Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1991. “Two Dogmas in Retrospect,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21.3: 265–274.

Quinton, Anthony. 1963–1964. “The ‘a priori’ and the Analytic,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society n.s. 64: 31–54.

Quinton, Anthony. 1967. “The ‘a priori’ and the Analytic,” in P. F. Strawson (ed.), Philosophical Logic. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 107–128.

Watkins, J. W. N. 1957. “Between Analytic and Empirical,” Philosophy 32.121: 112–131.

Mises was Confused about the Analytic–Synthetic Distinction

The evidence is here in Mises’s The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method (1962):

“Praxeology is a priori. All its theorems are products of deductive reasoning that starts from the category of action. The questions whether the judgments of praxeology are to be called analytic or synthetic and whether or not its procedure is to be qualified as ‘merely’ tautological are of verbal interest only.

What praxeology asserts with regard to human action in general is strictly valid without any exception for every action. There is action and there is the absence of action, but there is nothing in between. Every action is an attempt to exchange one state of affairs for another, and everything that praxeology affirms with regard to exchange refers strictly to it. In dealing with every action we encounter the fundamental concepts end and means, success or failure, profit or loss, costs. An exchange can be either direct or indirect, i.e., effected through the interposition of an intermediary stage. Whether a definite action was indirect exchange has to be determined by experience. But if it was indirect exchange, then all that praxeology says about indirect exchange in general strictly applies to it.

Every theorem of praxeology is deduced by logical reasoning from the category of action. It partakes of the apodictic certainty provided by logical reasoning that starts from an a priori category.

Into the chain of praxeological reasoning the praxeologist introduces certain assumptions concerning the conditions of the environment in which an action takes place. Then he tries to find out how these special conditions affect the result to which his reasoning must lead. The question whether or not the real conditions of the external world correspond to these assumptions is to be answered by experience. But if the answer is in the affirmative, all the conclusions drawn by logically correct praxeological reasoning strictly describe what is going on in reality.” (Mises 1962: 44–45).

Mises’s main epistemological concern is to maintain the a priori status of praxeology.

But his remarkable statement is here:

“The questions whether the judgments of praxeology are to be called analytic or synthetic and whether or not its procedure is to be qualified as ‘merely’ tautological are of verbal interest only.”

According to Mises, whether praxeological theorems or derived theories are “synthetic” or “analytic” is of “verbal interest only.” That is an incredibly ignorant statement, because if praxeological theorems say anything necessarily true of the real world, as Mises says in many other passages (Mises 2008: 39), then they must be synthetic, not analytic.

Mises is logically committed to defending the synthetic a priori status of praxeology, but was so confused that he dismissed the first of these concepts as merely of “verbal interest,” when the synthetic nature of any praxeological theorem ought to be a straightforward consequence of his epistemology.

This confusion, or lack of interest in the analytic or synthetic distinction, mostly likely explains his equally confused discussion of Euclidean geometry in Human Action (Mises 2008: 38).

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mises, Ludwig von. 1962. The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method. Van Nostrand, Princeton, N.J.

Mises, Ludwig von. 2008. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. The Scholar’s Edition. Mises Institute, Auburn, Ala.

Quine and the Analytic–Synthetic Distinction

I am taking a quick detour through analytic philosophy and epistemology at the moment, as a type of prolegomena to economic methodology.

In 1951, Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000) published the now famous paper “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951; reprinted in Quine 1981), in which he argued that the conventional idea of analyticity (or the analytic nature of a proposition) cannot be defended, and that the distinction between analytic and synthetic truths is not clear cut.

“Two Dogmas of Empiricism” is often said to be one of the most important papers in analytic philosophy of the late 20th century, though Quine continued to develop his epistemological views later in life, so that he modified or shifted the arguments used in “Two Dogmas” (Creath 2004: 47).

In “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” Quine examines the intensional definitions or meanings given to the concepts of “analyticity” and “synonymy.”

Quine complains that the process of definition necessary for understanding “analytic truth” rests on the concept of “synonymy,” and that affirming or establishing that these two linguistic forms are proper synonyms is “far from clear” (Quine 1951: 25). Moreover, Quine asserts that appeals to “synonymy” supposedly fall back on “analyticity,” so that we have a circular argument.

Quine therefore argues that all attempts to define “analyticity” fall back on intensional terms in a way that is viciously circular, and that intensional definitions do “not hold the key” to the concepts of synonymy and analyticity (Quine 1951: 27). Ultimately, intensional terms like “analyticity” must be defended in extensional terms, or, that is to say, in terms of their reference to verbal behaviour (Glock 1996: 204).

Quine therefore concluded that the standard ideas of analyticity and analytic truth were indefensible, and so the analytic and synthetic distinction unclear.

Many responses to Quine were made (Grice and Strawson 1956; Putnam 1962; Quinton 1967; Glock 1996; Nimtz 2003; Gutting 2009: 11–30).

Glock argues that, although the process by which “analyticity” is defined is circular, it is nevertheless not a vicious form of circularity (Glock 1996: 204; Glock 2003: 75). Quine’s demand that an intensional concept like “analyticity” needs to be reduced to extensional ones is unreasonable and unnecessary (Glock 2003: 75).

We can consider the following proposition:

(1) All bachelors are unmarried.

It is not possible to deny the truth of this proposition without simply redefining one of the words, and the definition of “analyticity” in terms of synonymy is not unjustified if intensional meanings can be sustained without being reduced to extensional verbal behaviour.

Quine’s complaints, then, about the circularity involved in defining “analyticity” cannot be sound, nor are they sufficient to overthrow the definition of analyticity in terms of synonymy.

Quine himself later denied that his major criticism of the concept of “analyticity” in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” was simply that attempts to define it are circular (indeed Glock 2003: 77 contends that Quine dropped the “circularity” charge as early as 1953), and other philosophers seem to accept this, and instead claim that Quine’s actual fundamental complaint was that the term of “analyticity” must be analysed in a behavioural sense.

So with Quine’s behaviourism very much the relevant background theory, Quine’s objection appears to be that neither “analyticity” nor “synonymy” can be reduced to verbal behaviour or behavioural criteria (Gibson 1996: 99; Creath 2004: 49; Gutting 2009: 21; Hylton 2006: 183). This view was confirmed when critics charged that Quine’s standard for the definitions of these terms was impossibly high, and Quine responded by saying precisely that he wished “no more, after all, than a rough characterization in terms of dispositions to verbal behavior” (Quine 1960: 207).

So it is clear that Quine wants a behaviourist semantics (Gibson 1996: 99). Quine also redefined analytic sentences to mean those that all people in a community of speakers learn are true by learning the meanings of the words involved (Gibson 1996: 100). But, Quine argued, neither this behaviourist semantical definition nor a “popular” or ordinary language notion of analyticity (Elugardo 1997: 15) can provide a strict scientific clarification that can defend the intensional semantic one that justifies the necessary verbal truth of analytic propositions (Gibson 1996: 100).

In essence, Quine’s attack on analyticity is to be understood in the logical positivist tradition of the verification principle: how is the term of analyticity to be related to the empirical verbal behaviour of human beings as judged by a methodological behaviourism? (Creath 2004: 49). The paradox, as Creath points out, is that:

“Quine is pushing against Carnap the very demands that Carnap had pushed against the metaphysicians” (Creath 2004: 49).

But Quine’s whole attempt to reject strict analytic truth would seem to collapse once we recognise that (1) the verification principle cannot be accepted, and (2) the whole behaviourist project is unsound (Gutting 2009: 21; Burgess 2004: 51–52).

Ultimately, then, Quine’s attempt to reject the analytic versus synthetic distinction is a failure.

These conclusions are broadly in line with the arguments of Quine’s critics, who find that analytic truths do exist, but they are, as in conventional empiricist epistemology, trivial or non-informative (Putnam 1962; Nimtz 2003).

For example, Putnam argued that there is indeed an analytic versus synthetic distinction but that it is ultimately a trivial one (Putnam 1962: 361).

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Burgess, John P. 2004. “Quine, Analyticity and Philosophy of Mathematics,” The Philosophical Quarterly 54.214: 38–55.

Creath, Richard. 1990. Dear Carnap, dear Van: The Quine-Carnap Correspondence and Related Work. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA and London.

Creath, Richard. 2004. “Quine on the Intelligibility and Relevance of Analyticity,” in Roger F. Gibson, (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Quine. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York. 47–64.

Elugardo, R. 1997. “Analytic/Synthetic, Necessary/Contingent, and a priori/a posterori: Distinction,” in Peter V. Lamarque (ed.), Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language. Pergamon, New York. 10–19.

Gibson, Roger F. 1996. “Quine’s Behaviorism,” in William O’Donohue and Richard F. Kitchener (eds.), The Philosophy of Psychology. Sage, London. 96–107.

Glock, Hans-Johann. 1996. “Necessity and Normativity,” in Hans Sluga and David G. Stern (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York. 198–225.

Glock, Hans-Johann. 2003. Quine and Davidson on Language, Thought and Reality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Grice, H. P. and P. F. Strawson. 1956. “In Defence of a Dogma,” Philosophical Review 65: 141–158.

Gutting, Gary. 2009. What Philosophers Know: Case Studies in Recent Analytic Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Hylton, P. 2006. “W. V. Quine (1908–2000),” in A. P. Martinich and David Sosa (eds.), A Companion to Analytic Philosophy. Blackwell, Malden, Mass. and Oxford. 181–204.

Nimtz, C. 2003. “Analytic Truths – Still Harmless After All These Years?,” in H. J. Glock, K. Gluer, and G. Keil (eds.), Fifty Years of Quine’s ‘Two Dogmas’. Rodopi, Amsterdam and New York. 91–118.

Putnam, Hilary. 1962. “The Analytic and the Synthetic,” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 3: 358–397.

Putnam, Hilary. 1975. “The Analytic and the Synthetic,” in Hilary Putnam, Mind, Language and Reality. Philosophical Papers. Volume 2. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 33–69.

Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1951. “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” Philosophical Review 60: 20–43.

Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1960. Word and Object. M.I.T. Press, Massachusetts.

Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1981. “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” in From a Logical Point of View. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 20–46.

Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1991. “Two Dogmas in Retrospect,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21.3: 265–274.

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