Quine wrong on analyticity
Brian Holtz
among statements according to whether their truth-value depends on their
empirical or extra-linguistic or factual content. While he's right that
some synthetic statements are more synthetic than others, and that the
vagueness of definitions can make it hard to tell whether a given statement
is analytic, he's wrong to think that these two points imply that "a
boundary between analytic and synthetic statement simply has not been
drawn".
Quine writes:
meaning and reference are distinct. Once the theory of meaning is
sharply separated from the theory of reference, it is a short
step to recognizing as the business of the theory of meaning
simply the synonymy of linguistic forms and the analyticity of
statements; meanings themselves, as obscure intermediary
entities, may well be abandoned.
Not necessarily. The "sharpness" of the "separation" between meaning and
reference is relative. Meaning is the context-sensitive connotation
ultimately established by relevant denotation and use. Other than calling
it "a short step", Quine here gives us utterly no reason to agree with him
that it must be the case that either a) meaning is reference or b) the
notion of meaning "may well be abandoned".
Certainly the "definition" which is the lexicographer's report of
an observed synonymy cannot be taken as the ground of the
synonymy.
The ground of a proposed synonymy is not the lexicographer's report of the
observed synonymy, but the observable synonymous usage itself. The trivial
observation that lexicographers are not the exclusive assigners of meaning
by fiat does not change the fact that language users as a community are
indeed the exclusive assigners of meaning by fiat. When 'dumb' came to mean
not just mute but rather stupid, it was not because of some change in or
discovery about the natural world (e.g. such as finding out that the
morning star and the evening star are the same object). Rather, it was
because language users intentionally (though perhaps gradually) started
using 'dumb' to connote stupidity. That any such usage event may not be
entirely stipulative (i.e. usage-defining rather than usage-following) does
not imply that definitions are not ultimately grounded in stipulation. By
the same token, all possible facts about the current meaning of a term are
in principle determinable by interviewing and experimenting on all the
members of the relevant linguistic community. Quine seems to believe, by
contrast, that changes in meanings (connotations) just sweep through a
linguistic community in the same way as might a pathogen, without anyone
having any relevant intentions or making any relevant decisions.
definition -- except in the extreme case of the explicitly
conventional introduction of new notation -- hinges on prior
relationships of synonymy. Recognizing then that the notation of
definition does not hold the key to synonymy [..]
Quine here either a) begs the question by labeling as "extreme" all cases
in which new senses or meanings are created or reinforced, or b) simply
ignores all such cases that aren't an explicit introduction of "new
notation".
A natural suggestion, deserving close examination, is that the
synonymy of two linguistic forms consists simply in their
interchangeability in all contexts without change of truth value
An even more natural suggestion is that synonymy consists in similarity of
meaning, defined as the context-sensitive connotation ultimately
established by relevant denotation and use. But Quine earlier ignored
without argument the possibility of any such suggestion.
I do not know whether the statement 'Everything green is
extended' is analytic. Now does my indecision over this example
really betray an incomplete understanding, an incomplete grasp of
the "meanings," of 'green' and 'extended'?
Yes, either Quine has an incomplete grasp of the meanings, or the meanings
are equivocal and the statement needs to be made more precise. One might
justifiably assert that the common-usage understanding of green-ness simply
does not imply extension. (One could even argue that a line could be green
while consisting only of unextended points, or that a pointlike unextended
object could still emit or reflect (capture and re-emit) green photons.)
But one need not recur to such arguments to affirm that this statement is
synthetic.
It is obvious that truth in general depends on both language and
extra-linguistic fact. The statement 'Brutus killed Caesar' would
be false if the world had been different in certain ways, but it
would also be false if the word 'killed' happened rather to have
the sense of 'begat.' Hence the temptation to suppose in general
that the truth of a statement is somehow analyzable into a
linguistic component and a factual component. Given this
supposition, it next seems reasonable that in some statements the
factual component should be null; and these are the analytic
statements. But, for all its a priori reasonableness, a boundary
between analytic and synthetic statement simply has not been
drawn. That there is such a distinction to be drawn at all is an
unempirical dogma of empiricists, a metaphysical article of
faith.
The boundary has indeed been drawn. There may not be a rigorous
demonstration that the boundary sharply divides all possible cases, but
Quine admits that believing such a boundary is possible is "a priori
reasonable", and his argument against the belief is flawed. Calling such a
belief "dogma" or "faith" is thus just an empty pejorative.
if the verification theory can be accepted as an adequate account
of statement synonymy, the notion of analyticity is saved after
all. [..] The dogma of reductionism survives in the supposition
that each statement, taken in isolation from its fellows, can
admit of confirmation or infirmation at all. My countersuggestion
[..] is that our statements about the external world face the
tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a
corporate body. [..] The unit of empirical significance is the
whole of science.
This countersuggestion is either a) an uninteresting consequence of the
fact that truth consists partly in consistency with other truth, or b) the
false claim that our statements are either all true or all false.
Even a statement very close to the periphery can be held true in
the face of recalcitrant experience by pleading hallucination or
by amending certain statements of the kind called logical laws.
Conversely, by the same token, no statement is immune to
revision. Revision even of the logical law of the excluded middle
has been proposed as a means of simplifying quantum mechanics;
and what difference is there in principle between such a shift
and the shift whereby Kepler superseded Ptolemy, or Einstein
Newton, or Darwin Aristotle?
The latter shifts make falsifiable claims about the empirical world. The
former shift would just change the rules by which we count some statements
as true or not.
our natural tendency to disturb the total system as little as
possible would lead us to focus our revisions upon these specific
statements concerning brick houses or centaurs. These statements
are felt, therefore, to have a sharper empirical reference than
highly theoretical statements of physics or logic or ontology.
Physics is nevertheless subject to empirical verification and
falsification; logic and ontology nevertheless are not.
I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in
Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe
otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical
objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both
sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits.
The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to
most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a
device for working a manageable structure into the flux of
experience.
The respective notions of physical object and Homeric god have indeed both
been used as instances of the class one might call "explanations", but it's
simply confused or misleading to therefore call them both "myths" or
"cultural posits". Replacing these two phrases with the term "explanation"
makes Quine's statements quite uninteresting. His alternative phraseology
seems designed simply to strike a more-skeptical-than-thou pose that does
not seem to be founded on any well-motivated difference with whomever he
thinks he is disagreeing with.
Ironically, his idiosyncratic use of 'myth' here to mean explanation, if
widely adopted in coming decades by other speakers of English, could then
in retrospect be seen as precisely the sort of non-lexicographic instance
of synonymizing/defining that he earlier in his paper tries to imply is so
mysterious and unavailable for epistemological scrutiny.
car...@norbury82.freeserve.co.uk
1) Quine uses words, which are ambiguous to start of with, so he's building
his house on sand (mathematical formulae are better).
2) words don't have meanings they have usages (the lexecogropher is
recording usage).
"Brian Holtz" <br...@holtz.org> wrote in message
news:ARsl8.63757$af7.45256@rwcrnsc53...
Stuart Burns
<car...@norbury82.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:a7csnh$g8g$2...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk...
> Couple of points
> 1) Quine uses words, which are ambiguous to start of with, so he's
building
> his house on sand (mathematical formulae are better).
> 2) words don't have meanings they have usages (the lexecogropher is
> recording usage).
I certainly know what *I* mean when I use a word. I when communicating
with/to others, I certainly hope that *you* understand the same meaning when
you use the same word. Otherwise, we could not communicate. How else could
you understand the meaning of this sentece, if not by the meanings of the
words I am employing?? Although I will certainly grant you that a word to
have meaning must also have a context - or a usage in your terms.
Neil W Rickert
><car...@norbury82.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:a7csnh$g8g$2...@news7.svr.pol.co.uk...
>> Couple of points
>> 1) Quine uses words, which are ambiguous to start of with, so he's
>building
>> his house on sand (mathematical formulae are better).
>> 2) words don't have meanings they have usages (the lexecogropher is
>> recording usage).
>I certainly know what *I* mean when I use a word.
I expect so. People mean things when they speak. But it does not
follow that the words have meanings.
> I when communicating
>with/to others, I certainly hope that *you* understand the same meaning when
>you use the same word. Otherwise, we could not communicate.
That doesn't follow.
When I talk of pain, what I mean is relative to my experiences. When
you talk of pain, what you mean is relative to your experiences. I
don't feel your pain, and you don't feel my pain. This does not seem
to prevent us from using the word "pain" in our communication.
Stuart Burns
news:a7h1q3$mj$1...@husk.cso.niu.edu...
Yet if I did not understand that by "pain" you mean "relative to your
experiences", then I would have no understanding of what you are attempting
to communicate by using the word "pain". Thus you have demonstrated that
the word "pain" has a specific meaning (in a particular context).
Neil W Rickert
>"Neil W Rickert" <ricke...@cs.niu.edu> wrote in message
>news:a7h1q3$mj$1...@husk.cso.niu.edu...
>> When I talk of pain, what I mean is relative to my experiences. When
>> you talk of pain, what you mean is relative to your experiences. I
>> don't feel your pain, and you don't feel my pain. This does not seem
>> to prevent us from using the word "pain" in our communication.
>Yet if I did not understand that by "pain" you mean "relative to your
>experiences", then I would have no understanding of what you are attempting
>to communicate by using the word "pain". Thus you have demonstrated that
>the word "pain" has a specific meaning (in a particular context).
However, you do not know anything about pain relative to my experiences.
For all you know, my experiences of pain might be very similar to your
experiences of green, and my experiences of green might be similar to
your experiences of itchy.
What we do share, is a common pattern of usage of these words. And
that's sufficient to allow us to communicate.
Your familiarity with the pattern of usage is such that, when I talk
of pain, that brings to your mind the circumstances where you would
talk of pain. You thus impute to me what your experiences of pain
might be in similar circumstances, regardless of whether my
experiences of pain would be at all similar.
The shared usage of words is sufficient to allow communication. It
is not necessary that words are carriers of some mysterious property
named "meaning".
John Savard
<sab...@sympatico.ca> wrote, in part:
>I certainly know what *I* mean when I use a word.
True, but given the subject matter...
>> "Brian Holtz" <br...@holtz.org> wrote in message
>> news:ARsl8.63757$af7.45256@rwcrnsc53...
>> > In "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" Quine argues there is no clear distinction
>> > among statements according to whether their truth-value depends on their
>> > empirical or extra-linguistic or factual content. While he's right that
>> > some synthetic statements are more synthetic than others, and that the
>> > vagueness of definitions can make it hard to tell whether a given
>> statement
>> > is analytic, he's wrong to think that these two points imply that "a
>> > boundary between analytic and synthetic statement simply has not been
>> > drawn".
while Quine could indeed complain on his side of the argument that the
boundary between analytic and synthetic statements has only been drawn
with words, and not in the more precise language of mathematical
formulae, the other side of the argument can also say that a boundary
of sorts exists.
John Savard
http://members.shaw.ca/quadibloc/index.html