ABSTRACT
This chapter first contains a brief introduction to one of the core areas of philosophy: the intuitive distinction that can be drawn in language between two different sorts of claim that can be made. The first type of claim is like this: all bachelors are unmarried men. The second type is like 'John is a bachelor'. The first claim is called 'analytic' and the second sort is called the 'synthetic'. We might think 'bachelor' and 'unmarried man' are synonymous because in any sentence in which the word 'bachelor' appears is one where we can swap 'bachelor' for 'unmarried man' and the truth or falsity of the sentence will stay the same. Willard Van Orman Quine had a sensible solution for this. According to Quine, there is no such sharp distinction to be drawn between the analytic and the synthetic. The chapter also contains further readings and ten questions that are intended to get the reader thinking about this distinction.
