A consideration of two attacks upon the sharp analytic-synthetic distinction

The purpose of this essay is to reply to the attacks upon the sharp analytic-synthetic distinction made by Quine in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" and by White in "The Analytic and the Synthetic: An Untenable Dualism". This essay attempts to show not only that these attacks are ill-conceived, but also that Carnap's semantic methods can be used to explain analytically in natural languages. The two attacks are, in effect, attacks upon the conception of the analytic as being definitely different from the synthetic. Quine's attack is directed primarily at three of Carnap's basic concepts -- state-description, explication, and semantic rule. These he regards as separate attempts to explain analytically. White attacks the claim that some natural language has the sharp analytic-synthetic distinction of an artificial language. He does this by considering primarily two imagined experiments [TRUNCATED]

Grantor dc:publisher

Boston University

Year dc:date.issued

1963

Author dc:creator

• Levy, Robert Jay

Statement dc:rights

• Based on investigation of the BU Libraries' staff, this work is free of known copyright restrictions.

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Dc Identifier Other

b14564361

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.bu.edu:2144/29681