http://www.sfu.ca/content/dam/sfu/philosophy/docs/bradley/refutation_of_quine.pdf
For more than four decades, many Anglo-American philosophers have been held in thrall by a captivating metaphor, Quine's holistic image of the man-made fabric (or web) of knowledge and belief within which no statement is absolutely immune to revision. And many have been led to think that the following three distinctions are indefensible:
(i) that between sentences and the propositions that they express;
(ii) that between necessary and contingent propositions;
and
(iii) that between a priori and empirical knowledge.
First I will argue that Quine's holistic metaphor is incoherent since, by its own lights, some statements turn out to be wholly immune to revision. Then I will argue for the rehabilitation of distinctions (ii), (i), and (iii), in that order.
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