Skepticism About Meaning 1

Quinean Meaning Nihilism

Primary:               Quine, W. V. O. (1960) Word and Object, Cambridge, MA; MIT Press

(1951)  ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’

Secondary:            Davidson, D. & Hintikka, J. (eds.) (1969) Words and Objections, Dordrecht; Reidel

                                Barrett & Gibson (eds.) (1988) Perspectives on Quine, London; Blackwell

                                Hahn & Schilpp (eds.) (1986) The Philosophy of W. V. Quine

                                Grice & Strawson (1956) ‘In Defense of a Dogma’ Philosophical Review, vol. 65,

pp. 141-158.

                                Miller, A. (1998) Philosophy of Language McGill-Queen’s University Press

                                Evans, G. ‘Identity and Predication’ Journal of Philosophy, vol. 72, pp. 343-363

Quine's Claim

There is no fact of the matter about what something means.

Indications of Skepticism

a.                    Problems with Synonymy

Quine’s discussion leading to his skeptical view of meaning begins with a fundamental questioning of the possibility of making sense of the idea of synonymy.

When we ask of a sentence uttered by a speaker, ‘what does it mean?’ we usually have in mind that some other sentence should be presented, possible as a paraphrase, for which the speaker will claim that ‘this has the same meaning.’ (In fact we are just as likely to ask ‘what do you mean?’ and to be interested in the speaker’s intentions rather than the utterance’s ‘intension.’) For the speaker and for the person who is spoken to, it makes some sort of sense to say of distinct sentences S₁ and S₂ that they are identical in meaning. The folk-theoretical terminology of ‘meanings’ is intended to simplify discussion of such intuitively felt identities amongst many other related phenomena. Just as ancient astronomers were able to speak intelligibly of planets without the necessity of a theory of their nature, so there needs to be no articulated theory of meaning to justify this behaviour. It is not, however, the nature of philosophy to leave such conventions unmolested.

To say that sentences S₁ and S₂ are alike in meaning is to say that they are synonyms in the common sense of the word. In ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ Quine undertakes to clarify the notion of synonymy in order that he can explicate the answer to ‘what is meaning’; which is simply the generalized form of the question ‘what is the meaning of this?’ The direction that the enquiry will take is stated early on:

A felt need for meant entities may derive from an earlier failure to appreciate that 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 primary 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.[1]

Well, that’s his project, but there’s a good deal of work to get to that conclusion. How does this argument actually go?

b.                    Circularity of Analyticity, Synonymy and Necessity

Quine is famous for an argument against the coherence of the analytic/synthetic distinction. This distinction is one that was drawn explicitly by Kant in his monsterpiece, the Critique of Pure Reason. Basically it states that some sentences are true because of the meanings of the words, as the sentence

                A bachelor is an unmarried male

is said to be true because the meaning of ‘bachelor’ just is ‘unmarried male. The truth of the statement can be known through an analysis of the sentences itself. On the other hand, a sentence like

                The number of planets is nine.

is a synthetic statement because, intuitively, it tells us new stuff. It synthesizes concepts into a new item of knowledge – if it pretended to give us knowledge. But both of these definitions are pretty vague. If the concept is going to do useful conceptual work then the’re going to have to be improved upon.

When Kant attempted to define analyticity more closely he appealed to the idea that the concepts can be contained in each other, so that ‘Analytic statements are those which attribute to the subject no more than is conceptually contained in the subject concept.’ But, as I said before, an explanation in terms of metaphors is no good basis for satisfaction. Now we need to have the idea of conceptual containment explained to us. And Kant does not do so. Perhaps, however, he felt the insufficiency of his first attempt, because he also claims that a statement is analytic if its negation is a contradiction. But this can’t be right either, because the notion of contradiction required is strong enough that it also requires explanation. Consider: we know what it would mean for a statement like ‘Bob is a bloke and Bob is not bloke’ to be a contradiction, because the contradiction is simply marked by the syntax of the statement. It’s of the form P & ~P. But a statement like ‘Bob is a married bachelor’ doesn’t wear its self contradictoriness on its sleeve, and it’s not at all clear that the notion of contradiction that is sufficient to account for that sentence is more tractable than the notion of analyticity itself.

There’s another way of thinking of analyticity that Quine looks at too. A way that is basically due to the work of Frege. On this way of looking at it a sentence is analytic if it can be shown to be true given only definitions of terms and logical laws. By logical laws is just meant the forms of statements that are true under all interpretations of their terms and in which the logical connectives are understood as we normally understand them. The following, for example, could be classed as logical laws

i.                     If all A are B, and all B are C, then all A are C.

Eg: if all men are animals, and all animals are mortals, then all men are mortals

ii.                    If A and B then A

Eg. if grass is green and the sky is blue then the grass is green.

iii.                  If A or B, and yet not B, then A.

Eg. if I’ll either go to the movies tonight or I’ll go to see my friends, and I won’t go to see my friends, then I’ll go to the movies.

It thus becomes analytic that ‘no unmarried man is married’, because – given that ‘unmarried’ is just English idiomatic talk for ‘not married’ – any interpretation at all of the term ‘married’ is going to make the sentence come out true. If we interpreted ‘married’ as ‘from outer space’ the sentence would be true if no man who was not from outer space was a man from outer space. And that is true. The sentence ‘no bachelor is married’ is not a logical law, but it will come out true if ‘bachelor’ is defined to be ‘unmarried man’, and since that is how it is defined in our language, the statement is analytic on Frege’s understanding.  Here’s the proof:

a.                    no unmarried man is married                      (no not A is A      – a logical law)

b.                   a bachelor is an unmarried man                 (B is not A             – a definition)

c.                    no bachelor is married                                 (no B is A              – from a and b)

But this doesn’t seem to be sufficient for our purposes because we really want to talk about the correct interpretations. For a language in which there are atomic particles such as ‘unmarried man’ (yes, it could be atomic) and ‘bachelor’ whose meanings are not mutually independent, a Carnap-style assignment of a state-description (as in Meaning and Necessity, and as we supposed could play the role of propositions in the last lecture) may well assign the particles different truth values. Or we could simply define use the definition ‘a zebra is an unmarried man’ to yield the analytic statement ‘no zebra is married’ (which may be true but not just because of the meanings of the terms.) We generally express our rejection of this possibility by saying that the statement of a definition requires that the terms being identified are synonymous. But the intent of this is to claim that a statement is true in virtue of the meaning of its parts, and by this move we simply move the problem to one of defining synonymy.

Quine examines the suggestion that synonymy consists in interchangeability salva veritate with certain ad hoc restrictions designed to avert problems which arise from uses in oblique contexts, etc., but he finds that in so far as the language is extensional, synonymy is restricted to being identical with extensional equality. What this means is that if the interpretation of terms is to be identified with the set of objects in the universe that those terms apply to – as if we were to say that the interpretation of ‘horse’ was the set of all horses – then two terms will have the same interpretation – they will be ‘synonymous’ – just when those sets are identical. Thus the terms ‘equus’ in Latin, ‘hippos’ in Greek, ‘Pferd’ in German, ‘sus’ in Hebrew, ‘hosaan’ in Arabic, ‘ma’ in Chinese, etc. are all synonymous because their interpretations are the same set in each case.But we only need to look at the difference in the meaning of the terms ‘cordate ‘ and ‘renate’ to see that this is not sufficient. ‘Cordates’ are all those critters that have a heart, and ‘Renates’ are all those creatures that have a kidney. It is a matter of simple empirical fact that all cordates are renates and vice versa, but we can very easily imagine that this is not the case; and the terms certainly aren’t supposed by us to mean the same thing. In this case then the two terms have identical extension but their intensions are very different. And this is sufficient to show that intensions cannot be extensions.

Perhaps what we have to do is eliminate those cases which are just contingently extensionally synonymous, in which it’s just a simple matter of fact about the actual world that the sets are identical. Maybe we want to qualify the equivalence by claiming that they are to be necessarily equivalent. But what does it mean to say that some statement is ‘necessarily true’? Surely, says Quine, it just means that the statement is analytic.

Thus analytic gets explained in terms of synonymy, synonymy gets explained in terms of necessity and necessity gets explained in terms of analyticity. This is objectionable, and we should presumably therefore give up the notion of synonymy (and analyticity, and necessity.) And this could be immediately taken as having pretty serious consequences (Quine, ‘In Defense of  a Dogma’):

If talk of sentence-synonymy is meaningless, then it seems that tlk of sentences having a meaning at all must be meaningless too. For if it made sense to talk of a sentence having a meaning, or meaning something, then presumably it would make sense to ask ‘what does it mean?’ And if it made sense to ask ‘what does it mean?’ of a sentence, then sentence-synonymy could be roughly defined as follows: Two sentences are synonymous if and only if any true answer to the question ‘what does it mean?’ asked of one of them, is a true answer to the same question asked of the other … If we are to give up the notion of sentence-synonymy as senseless, we must give up the notion of sentence-significance (of a sentence having meaning) as senseless too. But then perhaps we might as well give up the notion of sense.

The real question to ask about this whole project, however, does seem to be whether the circularity that Quine has identified is really so obnoxious as all that. It certainly seems that we have no problem learning to use these concepts, any more than we have a problem learning to use our colour terms, which are also not definable except in terms of other colour terms. So perhaps the requirement that definitions be noncircular only applies to a few types of terms – and if that’s the case we need to know why analyticity/synonymy/etc. are such terms. Grice and Strawson are good on this point.
 

Quine does not base his meaning-skepticism explicitly upon the argument from Two Dogmas, but his general objection to intensionality discourse is pretty clearly driven by the apparent inability to give a reductive account of it in non-intensional terms. This inability to break the circle of intensionality might have led him to take meaning as a simple indefinable term and to regard explications of it as a type of naturalistic fallacy in the same way that Moore thought of ‘Good’. Or he might have been expected to treat meaning in the same way that he and other post-positivists would presumably treat the theoretical constructs of physical science. We shall see later why this course is not open to him.

The Indeterminacy of Translations

The enterprise of establishing a form of synonymy is investigated in his magnum opus, Word and Object, in its extreme form as the performance of a radical translation. In fact analyticity/synonymy-within-a-language is a lesser problem than radical translation because, as Quine points out[1], given either analyticity or synonymy-within-a-language we may work via biconditionals to obtain the other; but we cannot make a biconditional work between two languages.

Quine clearly declares his methodology at the beginning. For him a scientific linguist is concerned ‘with language as the complex of present dispositions to verbal behaviour’ (p. 27) and operates under the restriction that

All the objective data he has to go on are the forces that he sees impinging on the native’s surfaces and the observable behaviour, vocal and otherwise, of the native

which is a consequence of the more general empiricist proposition that we can know external data only through impacts at nerve endings. We should just note at this point that in order to talk about the forces impinging upon the native Quine has to suppose that there is a division of the world into parts that are relevant as a stimulus to the verbal behaviour and parts that are not. The part that is relevant is said to be the modulus of that sound sequence. Thus, when I ask for a coffee at the coffee shop the modulus may be taken to include the coffee shop and my presence there and my physiological cravings for coffee and the behaviour of the barista and so on; but it would not be supposed to include the jumbo jet flying overhead or the winds of hurricane Ivan in the Caribbean or the fact that birds are wandering about the tables. The modulus is not, however, supposed to be a strictly definable thing. It’s up to the linguist’s intuitions to decide what is to be included.

Anyway, in Quine’s now notorious example (section 7 f) the linguist observes a rabbit to impinge upon a native’s surfaces and the verbal behaviour of the native to be modified in so far as he utters the sound sequence ‘gavagai’ within the modulus of the sound sequence as intuitively assigned by the linguist. The linguist, considering the sort of thing that he might be disposed to verbalise were he in the native’s position as he conceives it to be, tentatively translates ‘gavagai’ as ‘rabbit’ and attempts to confirm the appropriateness of this translation by comparing the native’s disposition to respond to ‘gavagai’ observed during various stimulatory situations to that which he would expect if the stimulus conditions of assent and dissent were the same for ‘gavagai’ as for ‘rabbit’. If the dispositions are found to be sufficiently similar then we may feel that that which is substantially shared by ‘rabbit’ and ‘gavagai’, i.e. the class of stimulations prompting identically assent and dissent, deserves a name. Quine calls it stimulus-meaning.

Stimulus-meaning is no candidate for an intensional object however, since stimulus synonymy does not even guarantee coextension. If ‘gavagai’ was actually being said to express the presence of a discontinuous portion of the world consisting of the fusion of all rabbit, then the object to which it applies is not identical to any object to which ‘rabbit’ applies. The phenomenon persists as the linguist fleshes out his translation with the assistance of ‘analytical hypotheses’, hypothetical equations of functions for phrases in the linguist’s language and phrases in the native’s language. Suppose that a phrase for the native had the function that the linguist would express by ‘is part of’. If that were the linguist’s analytical hypothesis then by questioning the native he would be led to revise his translation of ‘gavagai’. But if his analytical hypothesis were ‘is different from’ then the same questioning would not lead to a revision. Neither hypothesis can be deemed impossible, and either can be made consistent with observed speech dispositions by judicious revision of other such hypotheses because in judging and particular sentence all the sentences are put on trial to a greater or a lesser degree. Thus (p. 72):

There can be no doubt that rival systems of analytical hypotheses can fit the totality of dispositions to speech behaviour as well, and still specify mutually incompatible translations of countless sentences insusceptible of independent control.

Moreover these alternative possible translation manuals are independent of all the physical facts of the situation so that translation/synonymy/meaning is radically underdetermined by the empirical evidence.

The Skeptical Claim

Now Quine also holds that scientific theories are equally underdetermined by all the possible empirical evidence which supports them, and for much the same reason. The posits that a physicist makes are motivated by the desire to simplify his theory by supplementing his universe. Such posits begin with ordinary things, such as desks, through what Quine calls the objective pull of social usage, and proceeds to such strange possibilities as degenerate dimensions of space-time. In philosophy there has been a tendency to posit sentence meaning for the similar purpose of simplifying the theories of language, though probably this simplification consists largely in the legitimating of folk-theories of semantics. In particular they have been supposed as the translational constants which hide behind our conviction that we can in principle communicate with others of our speech-community. But ‘since the situation [of indeterminacy as described above] does obtain, then the positing of propositions only obscures it.’ (sec. 43)

By investigating this and other cases Quine argues hat there is no explanatory benefit to lay against the ontological cost of such a posit. He does not prove that there are no such things, and in fact is doubtful of the possibility of doing so.[1] His comments on the ‘lack of any fact of the matter’ of translation are glossed as merely expressing the thought that there is no advantage in the ‘prior assumption of an unexplained domain of objects called meanings’ if the object of the exercise is to explicate synonymy.

This talk of ‘facts of the matter’ goes to the very heart of Quine’s positions. Quine’s insistence that it is not possible to speak of, let alone pick out, a correct translation manual from all possible translation manuals is at root not an epistemological objection but an ontological one. A ‘fact of the matter’ for Quine is a physical fact and nothing else, and to speak of an objectively correct translation is to speak of a translation that is in accord with all the objective physical facts. Now our {objective) disposition to verbal behaviour can vary only as (objective) physical facts about us vary, yet all possible translation manuals are equally compatible with those facts. As there are no objective criteria of choice it can make no sense to talk about an objectively correct choice.

Herein lies the basis of the distinction which Quine draws between the consequences of the underdetermination of scientific theories and the indeterminacy of translation; as in his ‘Reply to Chomsky’.[2] Chomsky’s criticism of the indeterminacy thesis misses the point in that it treats the indeterminacy as purely epistemological.[3] Chomsky is unable to see the difference between the theoretical physicist’s hypotheses and the analytical hypotheses of the linguist. For him, as for many other critics, the undoubted fact that ‘if a system of ‘analytical hypotheses’ goes beyond the evidence then it is possible to conceive alternatives compatible with the evidence …’ means that ‘… the situation in the case of language, or ‘common-sense knowledge’, is in this respect no different from the case of physics.’[4] So too criticism of Quine’s empiricist model of language acquisition does no damage to the indeterminacy thesis.

Perhaps Quine should be pleased that his position has been so commonly misunderstood and misrepresented, as it could optimistically be seen as an example of his thesis at work. However, at least some of the criticism has had an air of desperation about it that suggests that the critics believed that admission of Quine’s Physicalism alongside his indeterminacy thesis would remove all possibility of objectively correct understanding of discourse, and that this would be a VERY BAD THING. Yet, if we consider the items separately there is nothing very objectionable. Rather the reverse; we do want our explanations to be physicalist, we don’t want to posit meanings which float free of the real world, and we are willing to accept that underdetermination of physical hypotheses is at least no fatal. It may be that resistance to Quine’s position is motivated to some extent by a nostalgic desire to be able to attain the Real Truth, or to Know things by their essences, to Truly Understand. All of these are possibilities that have been slipping out of sight.

I will finally mention that some very powerful objections to Quine’s theory of indeterminacy are put forward by Gareth Evans in his ‘Identity and Predication’. He basically denies that a theory of meaning can be so free as Quine assumes. I won’t say much more about this because I intend to set it as an essay question.