Revising a system of beliefs › A serious objection: explanation is not existence

A central objection asks whether Quine demands too much of analyticity. Failure to define a distinction in independent terms does not automatically establish that the distinction is unreal. Several concepts might be explained together. The defender can acknowledge relations among meaning, synonymy, and necessity while denying that these relations make the entire vocabulary unusable.

H. P. Grice and P. F. Strawson develop this line in "In Defense of a Dogma." They question the inference from inadequate philosophical explanations to rejection of the distinction itself. They also argue that ordinary judgments about sameness of meaning deserve weight. Their response is a substantive challenge to Quine's standards, rather than evidence that the controversy was quickly settled. Grice and Strawson, 1956, pp.141–158.

A defender might use an invented translation example. If someone systematically translates "red" as "confidential," we can identify a mistake without first possessing a complete philosophical theory of meaning. This shows that some judgments of difference are well grounded. Quine's supporter can reply that the existence of useful judgments still leaves open whether they support the strong, general boundary claimed by the theory.

This exchange separates two disputes. One concerns whether speakers can make useful semantic distinctions. The other concerns whether those distinctions divide truths into two fundamentally different kinds with the explanatory consequences traditionally claimed. Resolving the first does not automatically resolve the second. Equally, raising doubts about the second does not erase every practical difference between learning vocabulary and investigating a garden.