The Objectivity of Analyticity: Quine's Two Dogmas Argument Revisited

Abstract

From a classical view, analyticity entails objectivity, as opposed to syntheticity. With "Two Dogmas" and other essays, the traditional analytical aprioricity is dead, various attempts for seeking recourse to conventions also reveal to be insufficient to account for the leak from subjective experiences about the external world and objective knowledge reserved in a law-governed sphere. Although Quine cast doubt on a traditional analytic-synthetic distinction and a priori truth obtained by virtue of meaning and disapproved of Carnap's logical empiricism, i.e., logical truth in the sense of conventions that defined by linguistic structrue, it is clear that he has never refused the possibility of seeking a common picture of our external world, a kind of objectivity neither based on a transcendental Kantian approach of a priori intuition, nor the one that relies on a logical framework and certain structural properties that are isomorphic between private experiences. Quine opposed these views mainly by providing a holistic approach which states that confirmation is holistic where interdeterminancy sets the accountability of every single given expression. However, this claim eventually resuscitates the question of the relation between objectivity and the questioned analyticity, i.e. truth by virtue of meaning. This essay argues that in fact, a new kind of objectivity has emerged with the Quinean approach, namely the analytical objectivity.