The return of the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction
Without a doubt, the greatest urban legend of contemporary philosophy is the beliefthat Quine refuted the A-S distinction in the Two Dogmas of the Empiricism in1951. The central claim of this essay is that the right theory of mental content and humanrationality on the one hand, and the analytic-synthetic distinction on the other,are explanatorily complementary, mutually supporting, and jointly cogent. One veryimportant further consequence of this Kantian theory is that it demonstrates that thereare in fact no such things as necessary a posteriori statements or contingent a prioristatements, contrary to popular post-Quinean belief. So Kant was right, Quine waswrong, and perhaps even more surprisingly, Kripke was wrong too.