"Whatever the state of experience, we can affirm the truth of any sentence in our total system, as long as we are prepared to make adjustments elsewhere." Discuss this statement in the light of Quine's 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism'.

2. Reductionism

• Traditional View: Reductionism, particularly 'radical reductionism,' held that every meaningful synthetic statement could be reduced to, or translated into, a statement about immediate sensory experience. The meaning of a statement was equated with its method of empirical verification.
• Quine's Critique: Quine argues against the idea that individual statements, in isolation, can be confirmed or disconfirmed by experience. He posits that statements about the external world are not individually verifiable but rather face the "tribunal of sense experience" as a "corporate body" – the entire system of our beliefs.
• Connection to Analyticity: Quine highlights that the dogma of reductionism is implicit in the idea that individual statements admit of confirmation or refutation. If reductionism were true, it would provide a clear path to defining analyticity (statements true irrespective of observation). However, Quine finds reductionism untenable, further undermining the analytic-synthetic distinction.

The Rise of Holism and the Duhem-Quine Thesis

By rejecting these two dogmas, Quine paved the way for a holistic view of knowledge, often articulated as the Duhem-Quine thesis (though Duhem and Quine had distinct versions). This thesis asserts that scientific hypotheses, or indeed any statements, cannot be tested in isolation. Instead, empirical predictions are deduced from a cluster of interconnected hypotheses and background assumptions.

The statement, "Whatever the state of experience, we can affirm the truth of any sentence in our total system, as long as we are prepared to make adjustments elsewhere," directly reflects this holistic framework:

• Web of Belief: Quine conceives of our knowledge as a vast "web of belief." Experience impinges on this web only at its periphery. When a recalcitrant experience (an observation that contradicts a prediction) occurs, it does not necessarily falsify a single, isolated statement.
• Flexibility and Revision: Instead, the disconfirming experience sends a shockwave through the web. We have a choice: we can revise the statement directly challenged by the experience (a peripheral statement), or we can make adjustments to other, more central statements (e.g., logical laws, scientific theories, or even our understanding of observation itself) to accommodate the problematic experience and preserve the original statement.
• Pragmatic Choices: The decision of which part of the web to revise is not dictated by pure logic or empirical facts alone but involves pragmatic considerations. Factors like simplicity, coherence, and efficacy in organizing our experience guide our choices. For instance, revising a fundamental law of logic would cause a massive reorganization of the entire web, whereas altering a minor empirical hypothesis might be less disruptive.
• No Unambiguous Falsification: This implies that no scientific hypothesis is ever definitively falsified by experience, as one can always modify auxiliary hypotheses or background assumptions to shield the hypothesis in question. This is a central tenet of the Duhem-Quine thesis, suggesting the "underdetermination of theory by evidence."

The following table summarizes the shift Quine instigated:

Implications of Quine's Holism

Quine's arguments have several profound implications:

• Blurring Boundaries: It blurs the traditional boundaries between analytic philosophy, speculative metaphysics, and natural science, as all statements, including those of logic and mathematics, become fallible and revisable, albeit with varying degrees of resistance to revision.
• Pragmatism: It shifts philosophy towards a more pragmatic outlook, where the utility and efficacy of our conceptual scheme in predicting and organizing experience become paramount.
• Indeterminacy of Translation: A related concept, the indeterminacy of translation, further illustrates this flexibility. Quine argues that there can be multiple, equally valid translation manuals for a foreign language, all compatible with observable behavior, yet incompatible with each other, meaning there's no single "fact of the matter" regarding correct translation or meaning.