Two Dogmas of Empiricism
Quine's 1951 paper attacking the analytic-synthetic distinction and reductionism — and shifting analytic philosophy decisively
Tradition: Analytic philosophy / naturalized epistemology
Two dogmas of empiricism — the analytic/synthetic distinction and reductionism — are untenable; all our beliefs face the tribunal of experience as a corporate body
Two Dogmas of Empiricism is one of the most influential single papers in twentieth-century analytic philosophy. Quine attacks the analytic-synthetic distinction (the doctrine that some truths are true purely in virtue of meaning) and reductionism (the doctrine that meaningful statements can be reduced to statements about immediate experience) — the "two dogmas" of logical empiricism. Quine's alternative: a "web of belief" in which our total system of beliefs faces "the tribunal of sense experience" only at its periphery, and revision can propagate anywhere through the system. The paper effectively dissolved the logical-positivist programme of the Vienna Circle and launched naturalized epistemology — philosophy as continuous with empirical science. It is the most-cited single paper in mid-twentieth-century philosophy.
Editions cited
- From a Logical Point of View (Harvard, 2nd rev. ed. 1980)
- Two Dogmas of Empiricism (Philosophical Review 60:20-43, 1951)
School Embodiments
Two Dogmas reshaped analytic philosophy decisively. The post-Quinean analytic tradition (Davidson, Putnam, Kripke, the post-positivist consensus) operates in its shadow.
"The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs... is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges." (Two Dogmas §6)
Quine's naturalized epistemology — philosophy is continuous with empirical science, not a separate first-philosophy — is the founding document of modern philosophical naturalism.
"As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool... for predicting future experience in the light of past experience." (Two Dogmas §6)
The closing section openly identifies Quine's position with American pragmatism — and the web-of-belief picture has been one of the major twentieth-century pragmatist contributions.
"Each man is given a scientific heritage plus a continuing barrage of sensory stimulation; and the considerations which guide him in warping his scientific heritage to fit his continuing sensory promptings are, where rational, pragmatic." (Two Dogmas §6 closing)
A complicated relationship: Quine remains an empiricist in the broad sense (sense experience is the ultimate court of appeal) but rejects the foundationalist version of empiricism that the Vienna Circle defended.
"Modern empiricism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas." (Two Dogmas, opening)
Quine's scientific realism (we should believe what our best total theory tells us) shaped subsequent pragmatic realism (Putnam, Boyd).
"To be is to be the value of a variable." (Quine, On What There Is — consonant with the Two Dogmas' web-of-belief)
Two Dogmas was the decisive blow against logical positivism's technical program. Carnap engaged Quine extensively in defence; the subsequent philosophical consensus moved away from positivism.
"A boundary between analytic and synthetic statements simply has not been drawn." (Two Dogmas §1)
The web-of-belief picture, in which our total scientific theory is constructed under pragmatic constraints, has been engaged by social constructivists (Latour, Bloor).
"No statement is immune to revision." (Two Dogmas §6, the famous holist thesis)
Internal Tensions
The "no statement is immune to revision" thesis has been criticised as self-refuting (is the thesis itself revisable?) and defended as a methodological maxim about empirical science. The relation between Quine's extensional naturalism and his behaviourist treatment of meaning has been the central interpretive question.
I. Time
Standard scientific background. The web of belief is revised through time as experience accumulates.
Attributes
II. Space
Standard scientific realism.
Attributes
III. Matter
Real and the topic of our best scientific theory. Quine's ontology is "what science says there is."
Attributes
IV. Observer
The Quinean observer is the embodied human inquirer within a community of inquiry. Active, plural; no metaphysical agency in the working naturalism.
Attributes
V. Energy
Standard scientific framework.
Attributes
VI. Information
The web of belief is relational — no individual belief has meaning apart from its place in the whole. Personal information not conserved across death.
Attributes
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How Two Dogmas of Empiricism resolves each dilemma
51 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 6 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 6 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.
6 mainstream positions
Matter · 7 dilemmas, all mainstream
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.