Quine and the Problem of Synonymy1

1. Synonymy in the Two Dogmas framework At the end of section three of Two Dogmas, Quine decides to turn his back on what he calls ‘the problem of synonymy’. By then he has spent two sections on discussing what synonymy might amount to, dismissing first defin tion and then i terchangeability salva veritate as candidates for explaining it. In a sense, he does the right thing, for the discus-sion of synonymy in Two Dogmas is really a digression. Quine’s main target, or one of his two main targets, is analyticity. But, as Tyler Burge (Burge 1992:4-10) and Paul Boghossian (Boghossian 1997:335-7), among others, have pointed out, there are several notions of analyticity in Two Dogmas. The first notion (1951:20) of an analytic truth is that of a truth grounded in meaning independently of matters of fact. The second (1951:23), is that of a truth that can be turned into a logical truth by putting synonyms for synonyms. The third and last notion (1951:43) is that of a truth that holds come what may, as opposed to a synthetic truth that holds contingently on experience. At no point does Quine comment on the relations between these different notions, and it is not easy to know what he thought