Hume, Kant, the Logical Positivists, and Quine on the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction

The analytic-synthetic distinction is a topic relevant to both the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind. In dealing with subject-predicate distinctions, the analytic-synthetic distinction attempts to demonstrate what we can say. At the same time, through a priori- a posteriori distinctions, the analytic-synthetic distinction attempts to demonstrate what we can know. For these reasons, the analytic-synthetic distinction became one of the biggest controversies from early modern philosophy well into the twentieth century. While Kant is generally credited with the precise formulation, I argue that David Hume presented one of the earliest coherent forms of the analytic-synthetic distinction. The one major difference in Kant’s analytic-synthetic distinction is the allowance of synthetic a priori judgments. While the analytic-synthetic distinction was accepted by philosophers for hundreds of years, it would undergo significant criticism from the twentieth-century philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine. Quine saw himself as a follower of Humean epistemology; however, he believed Hume was incorrect in asserting analytic a priori judgments. Quine attempted to dismantle the analytic-synthetic distinction, which some philosophers accept today. I conclude by demonstrating connections between Kant’s and Quine’s epistemology.