Philosophy of Science: Hempel, Quine, and Carnap - Essay Example

Hempel points out that this is impossible, because all available evidence means everything that ever could be known about anything, and gaining that kind of knowledge before even starting an experiment is obviously impossible. Even if one weakens this statement to “one should gather all relevant evidence before forming a hypothesis,” logic still does not support this kind of induction, because this statement requires a hypothesis to determine relevancy. How can someone, without performing a wide variety of experiments, determine what is or is not relevant?

So obviously using this kind of induction at all, according to Hempel, is not a good way to engage in the scientific practice. He believes that people should be comfortable hypothesizing without evidence since there is no way to avoid doing so anyway. Forming a hypothesis and then using deductive logic to prove or disprove it, using verifiable results, will not, according to Hempel, induce more bias, especially because it is more honest to the actual situation of real-world science as practiced.

To say that Quine succeeds in showing there is no distinction between analytic and synthetic truths is going a bit too far, but Quine certainly does do an excellent job blurring the lines between the two and bringing both kinds of truth closer in line with each other and with an idea of pragmatism. One of the most telling things that Quine is able to accomplish is to demonstrate that so-called analytic truths usually only work because of elaborate systems of synonyms and antagonism between themselves.

Essentially, the only way an analytical truth can be true is it boils down to a basic logical statement, a fundamental assumption such as A=A. So, to use his example, the statement “every bachelor is an unmarried man” only functions truthfully because bachelor and not married man are equivalent to each other. He also points out that the only reason “bachelor” means “unmarried man” because it has been determined by a population of speakers, codified by a dictionary or a lexicographer and so on, that those two things are equivalent to each other.