Consequences of rejecting two dogmas of empiricism

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1. Which are the two dogmas?

First dogma: the analytic/synthetic distinction. That there is a distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, namely: analytic statements are true in virtue of meaning alone while synthetic statements are true in virtue of being grounded in experience.

Second dogma: reductionism. A radical version: each statement of a theory can be translated into a statement about immediate experience. A less radical version: to each statement there is a unique range of possible sensory events whose occurrence would add to the likelohood of truth of the statement (confirmation) and again a unique range of possible sensory events whose occurrence would detract from this likelihood (infirmation).

2. How does Quine argue against the two dogmas?

a.) Against the first dogma.
Quine's thesis: There is no non-trivial or non-arbitrary distinction between analytic and synthetic statements.
Rationale: there are various candidates that have been proposed to explain analyticity, but these are either trivial, circular, vacuous, or arbitrary. These candidates are:

I. Logical truths: (1) 'No unmarried man is married'. No problem with these. But these are trivial instances of analyticity. What are of interest with respect to analyticity are non-trivial instances like (2) 'No bachelor is married'.

II. Synonymy: (2) can be transformed into a statement like (1) by putting synonyms for synonyms, i.e. 'unmarried man' for 'bachelor'. But for this we need a clear ...