Quine - two dogmas of empiricism

Question

I'm trying to understand this paper. Seems to me like it all stems from a rejection of "meaning"... ie: Quine is saying statements don't mean anything. And this is what leads to the rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction. But if meanings do exist, then there's a simple distinction between analytic and synthetic... analytic statements are true in virtue of the meanings of the words... Synthetic statements are not.

So if we don't agree with Quine's rejection of meaning, then we can't accept the rest of the paper. Is that right?

Here's a link to the paper:

http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html

Answer 1

He is not rejecting meaning; what he says is:

My present suggestion is that it is nonsense, and the root of much nonsense, to speak of a linguistic component and a factual component in the truth of any individual statement. Taken collectively, science has its double dependence upon language and experience; but this duality is not significantly traceable into the statements of science taken one by one.

Thus, if we deny that:

the truth of a statement is somehow analyzable into a linguistic component and a factual component.

we have to reject the possibility of identifying a class of statements whose truth relies only on the "linguistic component", i.e. the class of analytic statements.

Answer 2

Quine doesn't hold that statements don't mean anything (that indeed would be quite an extreme form of skepticism), but rather that the meaningfulness of statements should be considered not in isolation but only as a part of a broader theory or language. This is of course of Quine's holism. You can read more here.

Answer 3

Quine is a complete empiricist, unlike rationalist such as Leibniz, Kant, Chomsky, here in Two Dogmas essentially he claims there are no "analytic" truths, but all truths involve an empirical aspect. Any possible meaning eventually comes from some sensory experience. If we haven't lived this life so far, how can we know bachelor is just a synonymy of unmarried? Accepting analyticity for Quine really means accepting rationalism which instead accepts meaning can be acquired from reason alone, no need for any experience. Even for the normal analytic tautology such as x=x is synthetic for Quine, since if you don't have some life experience how can you be sure a thing always equals itself even at a same time instant? How can you even know what equality (=) means without any sensory experience? How can you even know what simultaneity means without sense experience? (remember Special Relativity hinted most people didn't really understand the subtle motion-dependent relative nature of simultaneity)

So Quine want to discard the two unempirical dogmas left in logical empiricism to favor his more thorough pragmatism:

Carnap, Lewis, and others take a pragmatic stand on the question of choosing between language forms, scientific frameworks; but their pragmatism leaves off at the imagined boundary between the analytic and the synthetic. In repudiating such a boundary I espouse a more thorough pragmatism. 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.

Of course, later Saul Kripke proposed his famous rigid designators to try to preserve some analyticity (rationality)...

Answer 4

Quine is only criticizing the current definition of of analytic versus synthetic distinction not that no such distinction can ever be made.

I am sure that he would realize that the sentence written on paper: "Quine had a Boston cream pie smashed into his face" is not identical to the first hand direct experience of {Quine had a Boston cream pie smashed into his face}. The difference between these words on paper and the actual physical event proves that there is some distinction between analytic and synthetic.

We might divide this distinction this way: whatever aspect of meaning that can be expressed using words is its analytic component and whatever aspect of meaning that cannot be expressed using words and can only be directly experienced as first hand physical sensations from the sense organs is its synthetic component.

Unanswered: Are there any sentences that are impossibly false?
This sentence is comprised of words.