Willard Van Orman Quine

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8 Quine on Modality
One main theme in Quine’s philosophy, one that emerged in the very
early article “Truth by Convention” (1936), was skepticism toward
the notions of meaning and analyticity. These were key notions in
the work of Carnap and other philosophers whom Quine regarded
highly. His criticism soon spread to the notions of logical necessity
and possibility, which, following Carnap and C. I. Lewis, he regarded
as closely connected with the former notions. Carnap and Lewis subscribed
to the so-called linguistic view on necessity, which Quine
formulated this way: “[A] statement of the form ‘Necessarily...’ is
true if and only if the component statement which ‘necessarily’ governs
is analytic, and a statement of the form ‘Possibly...’ is false if
and only if the negation of the component statement which ‘possibly’
governs is analytic” (RAM 143).
Quine saw two kinds of problems connected with the modal notions.
First, like the notions of meaning and analyticity, they are
unclear: It is hard to draw a line between what is necessary and
what is merely accidental. This is the case with many other notions,
too. Where does one draw the line between mountains and
mere hills, and when does a man cease being thin haired and become
bald? However, the obscurity affecting the modal notions and the
notions of meaning and analyticity is of a different and more malignant
kind. There is not just vagueness, a problem of difficult borderline
cases; even in the seemingly most clear-cut cases, it is difficult
to understand what distinguishes the necessary from that which is
merely possible. One can, of course, “explain” necessity in terms
of possibility: What is necessary is what cannot possibly be otherwise.
However, unless we come up with an illuminating account of
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