Analytic vs. Synthetic, Distinction or Myth?: Kant’s Kantribution, Quine’s Inquisition, Grice and Strawson’s Salvation

Philosophers have relied heavily on the distinction between analytic truths and synthetic ones for various philosophical pursuits. In this paper I explore Immanuel Kant’s explanation of the distinction, W.V.O. Quine’s qualms with it, and the attempt of H.P. Grice and Strawson at saving synonymy in order to salvage analyticity from doubts. I conclude that although valiant, the efforts put forth by Grice and Strawson fall short. I argue that this is so because they attack a weak interpretation of Quine’s contention. Maité Castillo Humboldt State University mgc188@humboldt.edu https://doi.org/10.7710/2155-4838.1175 Volume 9, Issue 1 Res Cogitans 2 | eP1175 Res Cogitans The following paper is an evaluative assessment of the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments. To do this I have examined Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”1 and Kant’s The Critique of Pure Reason2 to contrast the views that Quine and Kant had of this distinction. Whereas Kant was proud to make this distinction in an effort to revive the study of metaphysics, Quine eventually, after a long period of accepting the distinction, followed with a rejection of analyticity as it was used in metaphysics for establishing necessary truths; claiming that all explanations of analytic truths in that way are circular, “or something like a closed curve in space.”3 Quine asserts that ‘necessity’ in the case of analytic statements does not do the work that past philosophers, such as Kant, wanted it to. I have also explored the criticisms of Quine put forth by Grice and Strawson in “In Defense of a Dogma”4 to see if they restore the analytic and synthetic distinction. I have mainly been concerned with the philosophical problem of establishing the possibility of objective necessary truths through the lenses of Kant, Quine, Grice, and Strawson. I intend to defend Quine by showing where Grice and Strawson fall short in their endeavor. Let us begin with Kant. In The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant attempts to answer the question of how synthetic a priori knowledge is possible. I will begin by explaining the distinctions between ways of conceptualizing or making theoretical judgments of the world, according to Kant, then I will explain his view of metaphysics by way of the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments. Kant distinguishes between a priori judgments that occur unconnected of all outside experiences and pure a priori judgments that happen completely free of experience without anything empirical intermixed. To highlight this distinction he uses an example of a man whose house has a faulty foundation. Given a flaw in infrastructure one can expect without waiting to experience it that the house will fall in on itself, i.e., one can predict it a priori. Reasoning is done a priori by modus ponens to arrive at the conclusion: “If there’s a faulty foundation, then the house will collapse. I see that there is no foundation, therefore the house will collapse.” The sentences themselves that make up the premises are a posteriori. The a priori judgment is not pure since 1 W.V.O. Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Jan., 1951), pp. 20-43 2 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1781