The Two Dogmas Of Empiricism: The Greatest Philosophy Paper of the 20th Century?

On The Very Idea - A Philosophy Podcast

In this series, I want to look at W.V.O Quine's 1950 essay Two Dogmas of Empiricism which many feel put the final nail in the coffin of the logical positivist project. It's often regarded as the most important or impactful paper of the 20th century. Gary Gutting, formerly of the University of Notre Dame, felt otherwise. We will explore Quine's argument as well as Gutting's case that it wasn't a very well argued piece of philosophical work at all. But, in this first installment of a three part series, we will look at the logical positivist movement that Quine supposedly had stopped dead in its tracks with his Two Dogmas paper. In particular, I will examine the extent to which the logical positivist project hung on the analytic-synthetic distinction. Plus, the usual trivia.