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A Story About Hillary Putnam

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 Hilary Putnam tell the story of his taking to his supervisor, Hans Reichenbach, a copy of Quine’s ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’. Putnam told Reichenbach: “it is an extraordinary paper; Quine argues that the difference between the analytic and the synthetic is not a difference of kind, but one of degree.” Reichenbach looked puzzled and then replied “Hilary, is the difference between a difference of kind and one of degree a difference of kind or one of degree?”.
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  1. HenryAugust 31, 2017 at 9:40 AM

    Reichenbach may have been taking a Wittgensteinian stance. "Degree" and "kind," like "game," are words we apply pursuant to our community's practices; they have no "essence"--no necessary and sufficient conditions--in other words, no strict meaning. Thus, his answer would have been that the difference between a difference of kind and one of degree is a difference of degree. With respect to any instance under consideration--the difference between analytic and synthetic, or the difference between, say, soap and detergent--we (meaning the community as a whole) can label it as we wish.

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