Quine: Two Dogmas of Empiricism

Tip of the hat to all who braved the craggy transcendental heights of Kant over our last four sessions! The Prolegomena has definitely been one of the heftier philosophical lifts we've so far attempted.

Before moving on completely though, we agreed last time to follow up with one of the most famed critiques of Kant's system, penned by one of the 20th century's greatest analytic philosophers and logicians: Willard V. O. Quine's 1951 essay "Two Dogmas of Empiricism".

In this work, Quine devastatingly attacks Kant's "synthetic-analytic distinction", as well as the concept of reductionism--both vital load-bearing elements in the Kantian machine. Does the machine hold up? Stop on by & we will do our dangdest to find out.

A PDF of "Two Dogmas" can be found here: https://eclass.uoa.gr/modules/document/file.php/PHS688/Epistemology_Bibliography/Quine%20Two%20dogmas%20of%20empiricism.pdf