Many informed readers of Carnap (and Quine) have taken Quine’s objections to Carnap’s account of analyticity in terms of semantical rules to have failed. This paper counters this, arguing that Quine actually saw himself as applying Carnap’s own philosophical standards more strictly than Carnap himself did. Quine was, as he later reported, “just being more carnapian than Carnap.” This paper offers a careful analysis of Section 4 of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” which shows Carnap conflating two senses of “semantical rule.” Although the first is clear, Quine sees it as being of no use in defining analyticity. The second, though integral to Carnap’s method of defining analyticity, Quine shows to be left unexplained by Carnap’s definitions.

While a number of commentators have argued that Quine’s account of Carnap’s paper in terms of the category/subclass distinction is simply a misunderstanding of Carnap, this essay argues that it is not. Instead, Quine was correct to construe Carnap’s external questions of existence as all being category questions. Quine’s second claim – that answers to internal category questions of existence are trivial and analytic – was, however, incorrect. Here, this essay then dissents from a view of Ebbs, who has recently argued that Quine was right on both points. Instead, it is argued that epistemic considerations that support Quine’s first point undermine his second point.

W. V. Quine is famous for insisting that translation is indeterminate and Ludwig Wittgenstein widely believed, not least by Quine himself, to have been committed to the same view of translation. Taking Quine at his word, I explore why he would think those conversant with the later Wittgensteins remarks on meaning would take the argument about translation in Word and Object in stride. I argue that Quine and Wittgenstein are, for all their differences, reasonably regarded as battling a commonly held philosophical conception of the determinateness of translation. As I read Quine, he had it right when in later work he emphasized that he should be understood as mounting an argument against propositions, and he – and Wittgenstein – are on much firmer ground than usually supposed. Also in an Afterword I point out that Rudolf Carnap, arguably Wittgensteins most important successor and Quines most important predecessor, largely agreed with the argument I attribute to Quine and Wittgenstein in the body of the text, his reservations about many of their views notwithstanding.

Both Carnap and Quine see an element of practical choice in our scientific theorizing but that they diverge on its significance, particularly with regard to a theory of meaning. From Carnap’s standpoint, linguistic frameworks are practically adopted without any prior constraints and then provide for a theory of meaning. In contrast, Quine sees a theory of meaning presupposing a more general assumption that all meaningful elements stand in a systematic relation before translation begins. Without this assumption, there is no work for a theory of meaning to do. In this sense, the dogmas of empiricism can only do explanatory work if the meaningful elements are already systematically linked in a way that translation might recapture.

The arguments for the indeterminacy of Translation in Quine’s Word and Object (1960) form a turning point in his thinking. Quine may have started out as a disciple of Carnap’s, but in the 1940s and 1950s the most salient feature of Quine’s work is a deep asymmetry. Such extensional notions as reference and ontology are central and fully intelligible. Intensional notions such as analyticity and synonymy are not intelligible, and epistemic concerns are, in his published writing, not central. The arguments for the indeterminacy of translation undermine the asymmetry and initiate changes to the role of ontology and reference, to the status of simplicity, to Quine’s understanding of analyticity and synonymy, and to the character and centrality of his epistemology, ultimately including even a return to a two-tier epistemology. The changes do not amount to a wholesale rejection of earlier views, but exist uneasily alongside those previous views. In the aggregate, however, the changes were significant and brought Quine’s position back much closer to Carnap’s.

The Introduction provides an overview of the book and the individual chapters.

It has become a commonplace that Carnap is the lead empiricist in Quines Two Dogmas of Empiricism. Recent work by Richard Creath, Robert Sinclair, and others stirs up this comfortable narrative, pointing to broader areas of agreement between Quine and Carnap, including Quines positive assessment of the Logische Syntax in his Lectures on Carnap, and the influence of pragmatism on both.  Following a hint from a colleague, I investigate whether at least some strains of empiricism that Quine rejects in Two Dogmas belong to Quines mentor, C. I. Lewis, instead. The paper assesses the philosophical and historical consequences of reading Two Dogmas in this way.

This essay examines the very beginning of Carnap and Quine’s philosophical relationship, focusing on Quine’s visit to Europe during the academic year 1932–33, during which he spent five weeks in Prague with Carnap. Verhaegh details what initiated Quine’s trip, the events leading up to his arrival in Prague, and finally the momentous philosophical exchange between Quine and Carnap that began there and that would carry on for the rest of Quine’s career, even after Carnap’s death in 1970.

This essay considers Carnap and Quine’s views on ontology. While both Carnap and Quine see their disagreement over the status of ontology as a legitimate philosophical undertaking as ultimately rooted in their disagreement over the analytic/synthetic distinction, it argues that this cannot be so since Quine comes to accept a notion of analyticity without changing his views on ontology. Instead, it is argued that the more fundamental point underlying the disagreement about the status of ontology is Carnaps advocacy of the Principle of Tolerance, which Quine never comes to accept.