クワインによる「分析―統合」区分擁護

Abstract

In 1934 Quine gave a lecture entitled "The A Priori, " in which he put forward an argument in favor of the analytic/synthetic distinction. In this paper the author tries to investigate whether this argument is really refuted or not in his later articles, namely, "Truth by Convention" (1936) and "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951), since both of them are generally believed to attack the notion of analyticity. First, in Section II, the author examines Quine's argument of "The A Priori." There the following two main points are revealed. First, Quine stipulates that an analytic sentence is one which we decide to accept as true by conventions. Second, this stipulation is independent of any qualities, such as truth and apriority, which some sentences might be supposed to have. This means that it is possible to define an analytic sentence even if we cannot have any clear idea of apriority. Second, in Sections III and IV, the author considers Quine's argument of "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" and that of "Truth by Convention." There it is pointed out that these arguments have nothing to do with the stipulation of analyticity mentioned above. They merely show that it is impossible to understand the notion of apriority in any consistent way. This conclusion, whether right or wrong, cannot affect the notion of analyticity because it is stipulated independently of the notion of apriority. Therefore the author concludes that Quine's argument for the analytic/synthetic distinction advanced in "The A Priori" is not refuted at all in his later work.