Orenstein's chapters

Orenstein's chapters are assigned as an aid in understanding what Quine is up to in "Two Dogmas" and
Word and Object. Do ask me questions about these chapters if you want clarification, but you don't have
to sit down and learn everything he says.
Notice his nice discussion of the transition in the empiricist tradition from
(1) looking to experience to ground the significance of words (compare thoughts of) (Locke, Berkeley,
Hume, Russell's "knowledge by acquaintance") to
(2) looking to experience to ground the significance only of whole phrases or sentences (compare
"knowledge by description" and beliefs that) (Russell's knowledge by description, Ayer's analyses) to
(3) looking to experience to ground the significance only of whole sets of logically intertwined sentences
or "theories" all at once (Hemple, Quine).
Notice his nice discussion of what formal systems are. (If you studied Euclidean geometry once you
already knew what an axiomatized system is.)
Notice his nice discussion of the moves made before Quine on a priori knowledge.
Refer to his chapters 5 and 6 for more light on the moves in "Two Dogmas." There will be lots more from
Quine on meaning when we read Word and Object , some of which Orenstein's Chapter 6 will help with.
Two Dogmas of Empiricism.
(Page references are to 3rd and also 4th editions of Martinich.)
Quine is back to predicting sense data (compare Russell and Ayer) instead of Hemple's public
observation statements. This is not just about scientific theory but about more ordinary sentences and the
thoughts behind them.
Quine takes ordinary object talk to be just like theoretical entity talk, so Hemple's sorts of worries will be
applied to everyday language, not just to the language of scientific theories.
Verificationism was in part a theory of meaning, of what words (of a certain sort) mean. Meaning
was contrasted with reference (which Quine here calls "naming"). The meaning gave the way of
identifying the referent, and identity of meaning was known a priori (Quine 26-7; 47-8), but two ways
might pick out the same referent and this was not known a priori. Quine gives Frege's example of "the"
meaning/reference distinction; so he equates it with the Sinn/Bedeutung distinction. Notice, however, that
for general terms, Quine thinks of this distinction as between meaning and "extension." So there is only
the Sinn of a general term which directly determines its extension. Frege, instead, had the Sinn of a
general term determine a "concept" or a "function," which was a real sort of aspect of the real world
outside of thought. One way to crudely understand this difference is to say that Frege thought the
Bedeutung of a general term was a property or relation, whereas Quine is a "nominalist" who does not
believe in the reality properties and relations. In this way, Quine's "meanings" are really more like
Carnap's "intensions" than Frege's Sinns. Carnap thought of properties and relations as being on the level
of thought or meaning, not on the level of real aspects of the world.
It is clear that two predicates with the same meaning can have different extensions. What is unclear, and
Quine muddies over, is whether this might be because the two predicates refer to different properties or
relations, not just because they have different senses. Again, Quine is a nominalist. (Properties are really
just intensions/Sinns according to Orenstein too. He just assumes this in his discussion of Quine.)
The confusion of meaning with naming tempted us to reify meanings: "a felt need for meant
entities" (p. 27b; 48a-b) (for there to be entities called "meanings"). Does the "sake" in "for John's sake"
have a meaning, some Fregean Sinn that determines a Bedeutung, attached? Is a meaning a hidden
psychological state? (Orenstein's discussion of why Quine doesn't like that idea.) Is it a Fregean abstract
entity? Rather, Quine thinks, if there is such a thing it must analyze in terms of how people use words =
respond to experience, to sensory input, with words. Once we have stopped confusing meaning with
naming, we see that talking of meanings is just talking about when linguistic forms are synonymous. (e.g.,
"'rot' means red.) And about analyticity: when linguistic forms are true in a way not dependent on
experience.
Analytic sentences, whose opposites are self contradictory, express "Logical truths" or else rest
on synonymies. (why the latter? All analytic sentences reduce to logical truths when you substitute
synonyms for synonyms. So synonymy is the basic notion to be understood.)
(1)Analytic (2)selfcontradictory (3)true by virtue of meaning (4)synonymous (5)true by definition
(6)necessarily true (7)true by the semantical rules (8)confirmed no matter what happens (9) alike in point
of empirical confirmation and infirmation). These can be defined in terms of each other, but there is no
way out of the circle.
 Definition: The lexicographer is supposed to report some prior truth. So what kind of truth is
that??? Other kinds of definition also apparently report some prior truth about sameness of meaning.
What truth?
Interchangeability Salva Veritate: "Creature with a heart". "creature with a kidney"; "man"
"featherless biped". Interchangeability only gives us sameness of reference unless the language has the
word"necessarily" in it. Logically necessarily. But that is just the word we don't understand.
Semantical Rules: Rules on a list of "semantical rules"--which means what? So the rules are on a
list. What is supposed to be different about the truth of sentences on the list from other true sentences?
Analogy with postulates. Which are the starting points in Ohio? [Which of the statements of Euclid's
geometry are the "real starting points"?] "Semantical rules determining the analytic statements of an
artificial language are of interest only in so far as we already understand the notion of analyticity;" We
need to understand the "mental or behavioral or cultural factors relevant to analyticity"... Because
"Brutus killed Caesar" would not be true but for what "killed" means plus a fact about the world, we are
"tempted to suppose that the truth of a statement is somehow analyzable into a linguistic component and
a factual component". So we think, why should the factual component not be null?
The Verification Theory and Reductionism: Carnap's failure to reduce the "is at" of "Quality Q is at
x, y, z, t" to a statement about possible experiences that would verify it.
Empirical statements don't reduce one by one, but imply experiential contents only as a body. (Duhem
and Hemple again.) "Statements about the external world face the tribunal of sensory experience not
individually but only as a corporate body."
No statement taken alone has implications for experience. Any statement at all might be held true no
matter what by making adjustments elsewhere in the theory. So the idea that there are some special
sentences that would be true no matter what, the "analytic" ones, makes no sense. No connection with
experience will be analytic of "There is a table in front of me".
Empiricism Without the Dogmas: "the conceptual scheme of science as a tool for predicting future
experience in the light of past experience." [Do you in fact predict your experience, or only the perceptual
judgments you will make about observable objects in reaction to experience?] "Our natural tendency to
disturb the total system as little as possible". Recall Hempel on a theory plus bridge rules. Do you change
the theory or do you change the bridge rules when it doesn't work out? [Orenstein explains that Quine
thinks even the laws of excluded middle and/or contradiction, the logical laws, might be abandoned.
Could it turn out that there were no sentences that remained true over different perspectives?]
Both Homeric Gods and Physical objects enter our conception only as cultural posits. "Science is a
continuum of common sense, and it continues the common-sense expedient of swelling ontology to
simplify theory" [Compare Russell: the hypothesis that there are physical objects just simplifies the
prediction of experience. Compare Hemple: positing a single property of length or temperature rather
than a host of laws of immediate experience just simplifies matters]
GRICE & STRAWSON "In Defense of a Dogma"
How can there fail to be a real distinction of some kind if ordinary people agree immediately on
lots of new cases when introduced? (Quineian answer maybe: People agree on what is black vs white
too, but these are two ends of a continuum, not an absolute distinction.)
If there is no such distinction at all then there is no such thing as a sentence having a meaning
and no such thing as correct translation. (Hold your hats, because that is exactly what Quine is going to
argue for in Word and Object)
That the definitions go around in a circle may be characteristic of many domains of discourse.
Maybe there is a circle of strict definition but there is another more informal way of explaining:
"My neighbor's three year old child is an adult."
[What determines whether being an adult logically implies being at least, say, 18 or whether it is just
empirically true that all adults are at least 18? How can we tell whether the English language (before
federal and state laws come along) requires a certain age before someone is an adult?] Nothing "will lead
us to say that what Y said was literally true, but at most to say that we now see what he meant." There is
a definite [sharp?] distinction between not believing him and not understanding him. [Quine thinks there is
not such a sharp distinction.]
Quine says explicit definition creates "synonymy." So there must be such a thing as synonymy
then. [Where would a public consent to a linguistic law that said you must always use "A" the same way
as "B" come from. Who would have laid down the law?]
Admittedly "the boundaries of applications of words are not determined by usage in all possible
directions."
Despite the Duhem thesis, and despite the idea that what to modify in the face of recalcitrant
experience may sometimes be unclear, still that two sentences can stand in the same "germainness
relations" or situations with regard to possible modification given all the same background beliefs. Then
they would mean the same. [This one may hit Quine pretty hard. But is it clear for any sentence, what
experience it's truth would bring, given each and every possible set of other hypotheses about the world?
Do our actual hypotheses about the world yield predictions of experiences?]
[Compare G&S's remark that of course some decisions on word usage aren't determined by (past?
current?) usage. So sometimes we have to make unanticipated decisions about how to go on in the use
of words. Compare: how high can a tennis lob legally go by the rules of tennis. But what then will
determine that we would make the same decisions for the two supposedly synonymous sentences no
matter what?]
Reiteration: there is a difference between changing our conceptual scheme and merely changing our
beliefs.
 Philosophy 301 Essay #3
Due Tuesday October 8, 2002
Explore this question in a page, giving your own carefully stated thoughts on the matter. Don't shuffle your
feet with introductory paragraphs. Jump right in and don't waste any words or unnecessary repetitive
sentences or phrases. Give reasons for your conclusions. Argue!

Suppose that we were to discover one day that cats, which we have always thought were
animals, were really robots very carefully engineered to look like other sorts of animals by Martians, and
remotely controlled in their behaviors by these Martians. (This was one of Hilary Putnam's thought
experiments.) Would this be finding out that cats aren't really animals? Or that not all animals are self
moving? (Self moving was Aristotle's definition of an animal) Is there a definition or meaning of "cat" and
of "animal" lying somewhere that decides this issue, making "cats are animals" and "animals are self
moving" each either definitely analytic or synthetic? If so, where is this definition? In every English
speaker's psychological makeup? If so, how did we all come to have this same psychological make up?
(Try to be realistic here.)