Is Analyticity unintelligible?

Abstract

Carnap's epistemological program was attacked by Quine's "Two Dogmas", especially in the sense that the distinction between analytic and synthetic assumed in Carnap's epistemology is untenable. But, although it is wide spread understanding that Carnap's epistemology was defeated by Quine's attack, there still remains some difficulties in understanding how Quine's criticism could succeed in getting rid of Carnap's epistemology in detail. Rather, there are some philosophers who argue that Quine's criticism is invalid, recently.
In this paper, I reevaluate the validity of Quine's criticism to analyticity, aiming at the difference of understanding the role of analyticity in epistemology. The structure of this paper is following. First, it is shown that in evaluation of Carnap/Quine dispute about analyticity it should focus on the definition of analytic sentences as truths by virtue of semantical rules. Second, it is argued that the unintelligibility charge of Quine to analyticity is applied not to explicans but to explicandum. Third, the difference between Carnap and Quine is shown to be in whether the empirically specifiable explicandum is needed or not for intelligibility of analyticity. Then, the interpretation is proposed that this difference comes from the difference in style of understanding analyticity, that is, difference between Quine's descriptive stance and Carnap's revisionary/normative stance. And, finally, I conclude that Carnap's concept of analyticity can be secured by taking Carnap's revisionary/ normative stance.