W. V. O. Quine

American philosopher who dismantled the analytic-synthetic distinction and meaning-theoretic foundationalism in Two Dogmas of Empiricism, developed naturalistic epistemology, and argued for an inscrutability of reference.

Two Dogmas: the analytic-synthetic distinction and the reductionist dogma (each sentence has its own empirical content) are both untenable. Our beliefs face experience as a corporate body — the web of belief. Ontological relativity: there is no determinate fact about what our terms refer to apart from a background theory.