No Difference: Quine, Strawson and Grice on the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction

According to Quine, a statement is analytic if it is true by virtue of meanings and independently of fact. While this definition immediately calls into question what “meanings” are, Quine argues that the concept of meaning is unnecessary because of a further distinction he draws within the concept of analyticity to narrow his eventual criticism. He argues that there are two types of analytic statements, and it is the second type that is of real concern for his argument. The first type are statements that are “logically true” (his words), meaning they are true under any and all reinterpretations because of their logical components. An example of this type of statement would be “no unmarried man is married”. The second, and more important type, are “synonymously true” (my words) statements, which can be made into logically true statements by substituting synonyms for synonyms. An example of this type of statement would be “no bachelor is married” which could be made logically true by substituting “unmarried man”, a synonym for “bachelor”, into the statement, producing the same statement given as an example of the first type. If these types of analytic statements are the problem ones then there is no longer a concern for meaning but rather for synonymy, which must be clarified.

Quine takes a few different approaches he feels others would argue for in coming up with an interpretation of synonymy or of a way around clarifying the concept. The first is the argument that “synonymously true” statements can be reduced to logically true statements simply by definition – “bachelor”, after all, is defined as “unmarried man”. However, definitions are simply empirical recordings, they are not created. Thus, definitions rely on previously existing synonymies and therefore cannot explain away synonymy as it relates to analyticity.

The next major concept Quine deals with is synonymy as interchangeability salva veritate. According to this theory, two linguistic forms are synonymous if they can be interchanged in all contexts without change in truth value. Excluding fragments and mentions rather than uses to give the theory more initial plausibility, he gives a more narrow definition of a specific type of synonymy that is actually being dealt with here, namely cognitive synonymy. To say two expressions are cognitively synonymous is simply to say that the statement “all and only x are y” is analytic. Thus the statement “all and only bachelors are unmarried men” is analytic if the expressions “bachelor” and “unmarried men” are cognitively synonymous.

Quine then equates interchangeability salva veritate with cognitive synonymy by arguing that two predicates are interchangeable salva veritate if they agree extensionally, meaning they are true of the same object(s). This is a narrow view of language that is necessary to have any comprehension of interchangeability but it fails to explain analyticity in full. Thus, interchangeability is not a sufficient condition of cognitive synonymy in the sense needed for deriving analyticity.

Before moving to his positive theory, Quine deals with one final method of producing analytic statements. According to this theory, analyticity is a purported relation between statements and languages, such that analytic statements are supposed to be true according to the semantical rules of a particular language. However, Quine argues that truth depends on both language and extralinguistic fact and thus analytic statements aren’t truly analytic, because they do indeed rely on fact.

Quine’s prescription of philosophy after the dogmas offers up two more criticisms of the distinction. He first argues that it is an illusion to suppose that there is any class of accepted statements the members of which are in principle “immune from revision” in the light of experience. This, of course, is what analytic statements supposedly are – immune from revision because they do not rely on experience for their truth-value. His second argument is that it is an illusion to suppose that an individual statement, taken in isolation from its fellows, can admit of confirmation or disconfirmation at all. There is no particular statement such that a particular experience or set of experiences decides once and for all whether that statement is true or false, independently of our attitudes to all other statements. Thus, the independence clause of the definition of an analytic statement is challenged again. With these final two challenges in mind, it is time to move on to the response to Quine’s criticism offered up by Grice and Strawson.

For Grice and Strawson there is, at least, the distinction between those statements which have certain characteristics necessarily and sufficient to be labeled “analytic” and those statements which are lacking those characteristics. Thus, even if the distinction doesn’t exist in some “Platonic form” floating in the sky, it exists insofar as people perceive it to and employ it in a relatively uniform way. They then go on to show the problems with Quine if he were to accept his extreme thesis of the distinction being an illusion. First, they argue that if Quine is to reject analyticity as a whole then he must reject concepts such as “means the same as” because of the nature of synonymy and meanings which he rejects in rejecting analyticity. However, all people, not just philosophers, use the phrase “means the same as” with no confusion (at least relating to the general use of the phrase). Furthermore, to say that two propositions can’t mean the same thing creates a paradox whereby it is always senseless or absurd to say “predicates x and y in fact apply to the same objects, but do not have the same meaning”, such as could be said about two of Quine’s favorite phrases – “creature with a heart” and “creature with a kidney”. The thrust of Grice and Strawson’s argument is that if sentence-synonomy is meaningless then sentences having meaning at all is meaningless, basically a reductio ad absurdum attack on Quine’s line of thinking.

Grice and Strawson reject Quine’s requirements for satisfactory explanation as “too stringest” and instead provide their own method of explanation. Using the concept “logical impossibility”, which is part of the analyticity family, they illustrate the existence of the distinction. An explanation of logical impossibility could involve a contrast with natural (or causal) impossibility to show how the contrast comes down to incredulity yielding to conviction and incomprehension yielding to comprehension. This means that the distinction does exist, whereby statements like “My neighbor’s three-year-old child understands Russell’s Theory of Types” are naturally impossible, but could be proven true via experience; and statements like “My neighbor’s three-year-old child is an adult” that is logically impossible because being a child excludes being an adult, except in metaphorical senses.

Finally Grice and Strawson take on the two ideas put forth in Quine’s positive theory. The second doctrine, focused around the interaction of all statements, can be dealt with simply by revising the explanation of synonymy. They argue, then, that two statements are synonymous if and only if any experience which, on certain assumptions about the truth-values of other statements, confirm or disconfirm one of the pair, also, on the same assumptions, confirm or disconfirm the other to the same degree. Thus analytic statements are no longer taken in isolation and Quine’s criticism has been incorporated. As for the first doctrine, dealing with the revisability of all statements, can also be dealt with inside a theory of analyticity by flushing out conceptual revision. If it can be understood that words used in one sense can have one truth-value and the same words used in a different sense could have a different truth-value then it is possible to understand how previously “analytic statements” could become synthetic. The argument is that there is no analytic proposition such that we must have linguistic forms bearing just the sense required to express the proposition. But, this does not mean that there are no necessities within any conceptual scheme we adopt or use, or that there are no linguistic forms which do express analytic propositions.

While at first glance it seems that the two lines of argument are two ships passing in the night – Quine arguing that the distinction is just an illusion (a metaphysical question) and Grice and Strawson arguing that people employ the distinction (an empirical question) – Grice and Strawson, when delving into their reductio ad absurdum illustrating the extremes that Quine would have to accept if he were to truly hold that the distinction is an illusion, do a very persuasive job of at least showing that Quine’s line of argument is problematic. If their “strong presumption” in favor of the distinction is held to, then they have sufficiently maintained the existence of the distinction, at least as its employed even if it isn’t floating in the sky like a Platonic form.

Additionally, their ability to quite easily incorporate the two main positive arguments that Quine makes takes a lot of the wind of out of the sails of Quine’s project. If the result of his project – making philosophy better without the dogmas – can be accounted for even as the dogma is maintained, then why go against something that is so deeply rooted? On that thought, however, one issue that could be taken with Grice and Strawson’s defense is their “strong presumption” for the distinction. The rule of parsimony would tell any good philosopher that when two (or more) theories are incompatible but have equal explanatory value then the one with the fewest additional assumptions should be accepted. If Quine’s theory explains why we act like there is a distinction and incorporates his new positive concepts then it would seem to have at least one less assumption, namely the existence of the distinction. However, if Grice and Strawson are right in their reductio ad absurdum then Quine’s theory does not have equal explanatory value and therefore the dogma of analyticity must be accepted.