Analytic philosophy and techniques, in which philosophy is approached as a primarily linguistic and logic exercise, has been the dominant mode of philosophy in the Anglo-American world for most of the last century, and is subscribed to by 80% of the responders on the PhilSurvey.
I am surprized by this, as Quine, in Two Dogma's of Empiricism, appears to have decisively shown that analyticy is impossible to practice per its own standards!
For those who are not familar with the paper, here is a link: https://www.theologie.uzh.ch/dam/jcr:ffffffff-fbd6-1538-0000-000070cf64bc/Quine51.pdf
A few key passages first defining analytics:
a statement is analytic when it is true by virtue of meanings and independently of fact.
Then discussing how neither definition nor synonym give analytic justification to definitions
In formal and informal work alike, thus, we find that definition -- except in the extreme case of the explicitly conventional introduction of new notation -- hinges on prior relationships of synonymy.
In an extensional language, therefore, interchangeability salva veritate is no assurance of cognitive synonymy of the desired type. That 'bachelor' and 'unmarried man' are interchangeable salva veritate in an extensional language assures us of no more than that (3) is true. There is no assurance here that the extensional agreement of 'bachelor' and 'unmarried man' rests on meaning rather than merely on accidental matters of fact
And analyticity cannot even be supported by switching to "formal" languages:
It is often hinted that the difficulty in separating analytic statements from synthetic ones in ordinary language is due to the vagueness of ordinary language and that the distinction is clear when we have a precise artificial language with explicit "semantical rules." This, however, as I shall now attempt to show, is a confusion. The notion of analyticity about which we are worrying is a purported relation between statements and languages: a statement S is said to be analytic for a language L, and the problem is to make sense of this relation generally, for example, for variable 'S' and 'L.' The point that I want to make is that the gravity of this problem is not perceptibly less for artificial languages than for natural ones.
Quine goes on to conclude that he has eliminated the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, but many philosophers disagree. the most noteworthy response I found was from Grice and Strawson: https://sites.ualberta.ca/~francisp/NewPhil448/GriceStrawsonDogmaDefense56.pdf
They argue that there is important and useful practical difference between analytic and synthetic, and that much useful philosophy can be done based on that difference. This response strikes me at least as convincing, BUT, I note it is a PRAGMATIC rebuttal. Analyticity is a logic-based approach to philosophy, and it depends on precise terms, and absolutes. This rebuttal holds that analytic philosophy is PRAGMATICALLY useful, but analytic philosophy is not valid under its own terms!
This should, I think, lead analytics to be seen as at best a useful supplement to pragmatism. But with ~80% of philosophers self-identifying as analytic, and only 1.2% as pragmatic -- my understanding of the consequences of Quine's attack on analyticity has not been realized.
My question is, how has analytic philosophy justified itself, and maintained its dominant popularity, in the face of this critique?
