Page 546 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

Key Figures
philosophy of language. He was influenced by Rudolf Carnap and other logical positivists, his work sharing their commitments both to empiricism and to the view that the only genuine knowledge is scientific knowl- edge. However, most notably in the papers published in From a Logical Point of View (1953), he rejected the semantic doctrines most characteristic of positivism. From his 1960 book Word and Object onward, his work is identified with naturalism, the doctrine that philosophy should be pursued as part of natural science. Pursuit of Truth (1990) provides an elegant and concise statement of his overall philosophical position.
1. The Rejection of Analyticity and Intensionality
Quine's writings on language attempt to construct a naturalistic account of linguistic behavior and under- standing. Two Dogmas of Empiricism,' published in the 1953 collection, attacks the positivist dogma that some statements are analytic, true by virtue of mean- ing: a plausible example is 'All bachelors are unmar- ried,' but the positivists extended the idea to include all of mathematics and much more. He claimed that the plausibility of this view rested on the empiricist idea that understanding a sentence involvesknowing which experiences would confirm it and which refute it: analytic statements are then those which are con- firmed by all observations. In contrast, Quine insisted upon the holistic character of evidence: background beliefs and general theoretical orientation are all implicated when we make predictions on the basis of hypotheses. All that a failed prediction shows is that there is error somewhere in our corpus of beliefs; there
is considerable latitude in how we revise our beliefs in order to remove the conflict with experience. We can- not isolate certain implications as guaranteed by the meaning of a sentence.
This leads to a denial that talk of meanings and of intensional notions like property and proposition have any theoretical role in semantics or psychology. Chapter 3 of From a Logical Point of View introduces ideas about meaning which become more prominent in later work. Quine's skepticism about the concept surfaces in a consideration of synonymy. 'Synonymy of two forms is supposed vaguely to consist in an approximate likeness in the situation which evokes the two forms': but given the holistic character of the bearing of experience upon opinion, there are obstacles of principle to establishing whether the fact that two speakers produce a sentence in different cir- cumstances is due to their associating different mean- ings with it or to differences lying elsewhere in their corpus of beliefs. This is the source of Quine's thesis
of the 'indeterminacy of translation,' which denies that there are any objective synonymy relations by claiming that when one tries to translate an unknown language, relying only upon evidence of the linguistic behavior of native speakers, one can construct alter- native incompatible translation manuals, there being no fact of the matter which is correct.
2. Naturalism andSemantics
There being no analytic truths to uncover or meanings to analyze, Quine urges philosophers to forsake the search for a priori foundations for meaning and knowledge and be content with psychological expla- nations of our practices. His writings since 1960 have defended a naturalistic epistemology, sketching a psychological explanation of how theories are related to sensory input and, developing this theme, of our ability to refer to objects in our surroundings. Since he rejects notions like meaning and proposition he is unsympathetic to the kind of cognitive science which explains behavior by reference to inner rep- resentations: there is no room for a mentalistic or rationalistic psychology intermediate between the physiological study of the mind and a study of the mind which focuses on behavior. He insists now that in linguistics (but not in psychology) behaviorism is compulsory (Quine 1990:37-38). This is because one learns language from experience of the extralinguistic world and the linguistic behavior of others; and one's understanding is adequate so long as one's linguistic behavior conforms to that of other speakers.
Quine's philosophical importance does not only lie in these areas. His explanations of the logical structure of the language of science have been influential; and the desire to combat his criticisms of intensionality, modal logic, and mentalistic psychology stimulated many of the developments within those areas since 1960.
See also: Analyticity; Indeterminacy of Translation; Occasion Sentences and Eternal Sentences; Onto- logical Commitment.
Bibliography
Quine W V O 1953 From a Logical Point of View. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
QuineWVO 1960WordandObject.MITPress,Cambridge, MA
Quine W V O 1969 Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. Columbia University Press, New York
Quine WVO 1973 The Roots of Reference. Open Court, La Salle, IL
Quine W V O 1981 Theories and Things. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Quine W V O 1990 The Pursuit of Truth. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
524