Quine-Two Dogmas of EmpiricismTwo Dogmas of EmpiricismBy Willard Van Orman QuineOriginally published in The Philosophical Review 60 (1951): 20-43. Reprinted in W.V.O. Quine, From a Logical Point of View (Harvard University Press, 1953; second revised edition 1961), with the following alterations: “The version printed here diverges from the original in footnotes and in other minor respects: 1 and 6 have been abridged where they encroach on the preceding essay, and 3-4 have been expanded at points.”Transcribed into hypertext (http:/www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html) by Andrew Chrucky, Sept. 12, 1997.Modern empiricism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is a belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact and truths which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. The other dogma is reductionism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience. Both dogmas, I shall argue, are ill founded. One effect of abandoning them is, as we shall see, a blurring of the supposed boundary between speculative metaphysics and natural science. Another effect is a shift toward pragmatism.1. BACKGROUND FOR ANALYTICITYKants cleavage between analytic and synthetic truths was foreshadowed in Humes distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact, and in Leibnizs distinction between truths of reason and truths of fact. Leibniz spoke of the truths of reason as true in all possible worlds. Picturesqueness aside, this is to say that the truths of reason are those which could not possibly be false. In the same vein we hear analytic statements defined as statements whose denials are self-contradictory. But this definition has small explanatory value; for the notion of self-contradictoriness, in the quite broad sense needed for this definition of analyticity, stands in exactly the same need of clarification as does the notion of analyticity itself.1 The two notions are the two sides of a single dubious coin.Kant conceived of an analytic statement as one that attributes to its subject no more than is already conceptually contained in the subject. This formulation has two shortcomings: it limits itself to statements of subject-predicate form, and it appeals to a notion of containment which is left at a metaphorical level. But Kants intent, evident more from the use he makes of the notion of analyticity than from his definition of it, can be restated thus: a statement is analytic when it is true by virtue of meanings and independently of fact. Pursuing this line, let us examine the concept of meaning which is presupposed.We must observe to begin with that meaning is not to be identified with naming or reference. Consider Freges example of Evening Star and Morning Star. Understood not merely as a recurrent evening apparition but as a body, the Evening Star is the planet Venus, and the Morning Star is the same. The two singular terms name the same thing. But the meanings must be treated as distinct, since the identity Evening Star = Morning Star is a statement of fact established by astronomical observation. If Evening Star and Morning Star were alike in meaning, the identity Evening Star = Morning Star would be analytic.Again there is Russells example of Scott and the author of Waverly. Analysis of the meanings of words was by no means sufficient to reveal to George IV that the person named by these two singular terms was one and the same.The distinction between meaning and naming is no less important at the level of abstract terms. The terms 9 and the number of planets name one and the same abstract entity but presumably must be regarded as unlike in meaning; for astronomical observation was needed, and not mere reflection on meanings, to determine the sameness of the entity in question.Thus far we have been considering singular terms. With general terms, or predicates, the situation is somewhat different but parallel. Whereas a singular term purports to name an entity, abstract or concrete, a general term does not; but a general term is true of an entity, or of each of many, or of none. The class of all entities of which a general term is true is called the extension of the term. Now paralleling the contrast between the meaning of a singular term and the entity named, we must distinguish equally between the meaning of a general term and its extension. The general terms creature with a heart and creature with a kidney, e.g., are perhaps alike in extension but unlike in meaning.Confusion of meaning with extension, in the case of general terms, is less common than confusion of meaning with naming in the case of singular terms. It is indeed a commonplace in philosophy to oppose intention (or meaning) to extension, or, in a variant vocabulary, connotation to denotation.The Aristotelian notion of esse