Revising a system of beliefs › The distinction Quine challenges

Imagine that a room's temperature sensor reports an unexpected rise. You can question the sensor, the software that converts its readings, or your belief that the heating is off. The reading matters, but it does not arrive with a label identifying the mistaken assumption. Several beliefs contributed to the expectation that failed.

This invented example introduces one side of W. V. Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism." The other side concerns an apparently different question: why does a statement about a bachelor seem true just because of what its words mean? Quine connects these questions by challenging a picture in which every statement has its own separable contribution from language and from experience. Understanding that connection requires more than saying that everything is interconnected.

An analytic truth is traditionally understood as true because of meaning, independently of how contingent events turn out. A synthetic statement depends for its truth on facts beyond meaning. Under an ordinary interpretation, "Every vixen is female" looks like the first kind; "A vixen crossed the garden last night" looks like the second. Learning the vocabulary seems sufficient for one, while observation is needed for the other.

These are descriptions of the distinction under examination, rather than definitions Quine accepts. His question is what gives the supposed boundary its philosophical authority. Familiar examples may produce agreement without explaining what makes the examples belong together. If a theory assigns analyticity a foundational role, the distinction needs an account adequate to that role.

The paper appeared in The Philosophical Review in 1951, volume 60, pages 20–43. Its opening identifies two assumptions of modern empiricism: a fundamental separation of analytic from synthetic truths, and reductionism about meaningful statements. Quine discusses Rudolf Carnap's work closely, while also considering older approaches to meaning and experience. He remains concerned with empirical inquiry; rejecting these assumptions is his proposed reform of empiricism. Quine, opening and §§1–6.

The linked transcription distinguishes passages from the original paper and the revised version collected in From a Logical Point of View. The discussion here uses section references because pagination differs across editions. This also prevents a later revision from being silently presented as the exact wording of the original journal article.