Notes on <Two Dogmas of Empiricsm>

2020-08-12 0 views

In this article, Quine tries to refute two dogmas in modern empiricism. One is a belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact and truths which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. The other dogma is reductionism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience. The effects of abandoning them are (1). a blurring of the supposed boundary between speculative metaphysics and natural science (2). a shift toward pragmatism.

1. Background for Analyticity

From Kant, analytic statements have two definitions. One is that they are defined as statements whose denials are self-contradictory. The other is that an analytic statement is one that attributes to its subject no more than is already conceptually contained in the subject. The second formulation has two shortcomings, (1). it limits itself to statements of subject-predicate form (2) it appeals to a notion of containment which is left at a metaphorical level.

From Kant’s usage of analyticity, it can be restated as: a statement is analytic when it is true by virtue of meanings and independently of fact. Now let’s examine the concept of meaning which is presupposed.

Meaning should not be identified with naming, as we see from Frege’s example of “Evening Star” and “Morning Star”. A singular term purports to name an entity, abstract or concrete, a general term does not; but a general term is true of an entity, or of each of many, or of none. The class of all entities of which a general term is true is called the extension of the term. Confusion of meaning with extension, in the case of general terms, is less common than confusion of meaning with naming in the case of singular terms. It is indeed a commonplace in philosophy to oppose intension (or meaning) to extension, or, in a variant vocabulary, connotation to denotation.

There are two classes of analytic statements. The first class, which is called logically true, are typified by:

(1) No unmarried man is married.

It is not merely true as it stands, but remains true under any and all reinterpretations of ‘man’ and ‘married.’

There is also a second class of analytic statements, typified by:

(2) No bachelor is married.

The characteristic of such a statement is that it can be turned into a logical truth by putting synonyms for synonyms; thus (2) can be turned into (1) by putting ‘unmarried man’ for its synonym ‘bachelor.’ However, the notion of ‘synonymy’ which is no less in need of clarification than analyticity itself.

Our problem is analyticity; and here the major difficulty lies not in the first class of analytic statements, the logical truths, but rather in the second class, which depends on the notion of synonymy.

2. Definition

People might say that the analytic statements of second type can be reduced to the first type by definition, since for example, “bachelor” is defined as “unmarried man”. But the question still remains that what justifies the definition. We will need an analysis of linguistic behavior of synonyms here since such a definition is pure lexicography, affirming a relationship of synonymy antecedent to the exposition in hand.

What are the interconnections that are necessary and sufficient in order that two linguistic forms be properly describable as synonymous may be, ordinarily they are grounded in usage. There is also a different type, what Carnap calls explication – an activity to which philosophers are given, and scientists also in their more philosophical moments. In explication the purpose is not merely to paraphrase the definiendum into an outright synonym, but actually to improve upon the definiendum by refining or supplementing its meaning. In order that a given definition be suitable for purposes of explication, therefore, what is required is not that the definiendum in its antecedent usage be synonymous with the definiens, but just that each of these favored contexts of the definiendum taken as a whole in its antecedent usage, be synonymous with the corresponding context of the definiens.

There does, however, remain still an extreme sort of definition which does not hark back to prior synonymies at all; namely, the explicitly conventional introduction of novel notations for purposes of sheer abbreviation. Here the definiendum becomes synonymous with the definiens simply because it has been created expressly for the purpose of being synonymous with the definiens. For the rest, definition rests on synonymy rather than explaining it.

We shall do well to digress now into a brief appraisal of the role of definition in formal work.

In logical and mathematical systems either of two mutually antagonistic types of economy may be striven for, and each has its peculiar practical utility. On the one hand we may seek economy of practical expression: ease and brevity in the statement of multifarious relationships. Second, however, and oppositely, we may seek economy in grammar and vocabulary; we may try to find a minimum of basic concepts such that, once a distinctive notation has been appropriated to each of them, it becomes possible to express any desired further concept by mere combination and iteration of our basic notations.

The custom has consequently arisen of combining both sorts of economy by forging in effect two languages, the one a part of the other. The inclusive language, though redundant in grammar and vocabulary, is economical in message lengths, while the part, called primitive notation, is economical in grammar and vocabulary. Whole and part are correlated by rules of translation whereby each idiom not in primitive notation is equated to some complex built up of primitive notation. These rules of translation are the so-called definitions which appear in formalized systems. They are best viewed not as adjuncts to one language but as correlations between two languages, the one a part of the other.

The definiendum and its definiens are expected to be related in one of the three ways noted above. The definiens may be a faithful paraphrase of the definiendum into the narrower notation, preserving a direct synonymy as of antecedent usage; or the definiens may, in the spirit of explication, improve upon the antecedent usage of the definiendum; or finally, the definiendum may be a newly created notation, newly endowed with meaning here and now.

Since definition relies on prior relationships of synonymy and does not hold the key to synonymy and analyticity, we need to look further into synonymy.

3. Interchangeability

A natural suggestion is that the synonymy of two linguistic forms consists simply in their interchangeability in all contexts without change of truth value. But this is not quite true for “bachelor” and “unmarried man”, for example, “bachelor of arts”. Such counter instances can be resolved if we treat phrases like ‘bachelor of arts’ as a single indivisible word. Although this conception presupposes a conception of “word”, but let’s assume “word” is already defined and continue the analysis.

The question remains whether interchangeability is a strong enough condition for synonymy, or whether, some non-synonymous expressions might be interchangeable. Notice here we are only concerned with cognitive synonymy: to say that ‘bachelor’ and ‘unmarried man’ are cognitively synonymous is to say no more nor less than that the statement:

(3) All and only bachelors are unmarried men

is analytic. What we need is an account of cognitive synonymy not presupposing analyticity. The question before us, to resume the thread at last, is whether such interchangeability is a sufficient condition for cognitive synonymy. We can quickly assure ourselves that it is, by example:

(4) Necessarily all and only bachelors are bachelors

is evidently true. Then, if ‘bachelor’ and ‘unmarried man’ are interchangeable, the result

(5) Necessarily, all and only bachelors are unmarried men

of putting ‘unmarried man’ for an occurrence of ‘bachelor’ in (4) must, like (4), be true. But to say that (5) is true is to say that (3) is analytic, and hence that ‘bachelor’ and ‘unmarried man’ are cognitively synonymous.

The above argument supposes we are working with a language rich enough to contain the adverb ‘necessarily,’ this adverb being so construed as to yield truth when and only when applied to an analytic statement. But can we condone a language which contains such an adverb? To suppose that it does is to suppose that we have already made satisfactory sense of ‘analytic.’ So the above argument is circular.

We can have a language that is extensional in the sense that any two predicates which agree extensionally (i.e., are true of the same objects) are interchangeable.

In an extensional language, therefore, interchangeability is no assurance of cognitive synonymy of the desired type. That ‘bachelor’ and ‘unmarried man’ are interchangeable in an extensional language assures us of no more than that (3) is true. There is no assurance here that the extensional agreement of ‘bachelor’ and ‘unmarried man’ rests on meaning rather than merely on accidental matters of fact, as does extensional agreement of ‘creature with a heart’ and ‘creature with a kidney.’

The type of cognitive synonymy required there is such as to equate the synonymy of ‘bachelor’ and ‘unmarried man’ with the analyticity of (3), not merely with the truth of (3). So we must recognize that interchangeability if construed in relation to an extensional language, is not a sufficient condition of cognitive synonymy in the sense needed for deriving analyticity in the manner of Section I. If a language contains an intensional adverb ‘necessarily’ then interchangeability in such a language does afford a sufficient condition of cognitive synonymy; but such a language is intelligible only if the notion of analyticity is already clearly understood in advance.

The effort to explain analyticity with cognitive synonymy might be a wrong approach. Instead we might try explaining analyticity somehow without appeal to cognitive synonymy. Afterward we could derive cognitive synonymy from analyticity satisfactorily enough if desired.

4. Semantical Rules

It is often hinted that the difficulty in separating analytic statements from synthetic ones in ordinary language is due to the vagueness of ordinary language and that the distinction is clear when we have a precise artificial language with explicit “semantical rules.” This, however, as I shall now attempt to show, is a confusion.

The notion of analyticity about which we are worrying is a purported relation between statements and languages: a statement S is said to be analytic for a language L, and the problem is to make sense of this relation generally. And the difficulty applies to both artificial and real languages.

We can look at writings of Carnap for artificial languages. Let’s support an artificial language L0 whose semantical rules have the form explicitly of a specification, by recursion or otherwise, of all the analytic statements of L0. The rule tells are what are the analytic statements for language L0. However, the rule contains the word “analytic”, which we do not understand.

Alternatively we may say we can view the rule as a definition of a new symbol: “analytic for L0”. By saying what statements are analytic for L0 we explain ‘analytic-for L0 ‘ but not ‘analytic for.’

We may turn to a second form of semantic rule since we know analytic statements are supposed to be true. Instead of saying such and such statements are analytic, we can say simply that such and such statements are included among the truths. Such a rule is not subject to the criticism of containing the un-understood word ‘analytic’. A statement is analytic if it is (not merely true but) true according to the semantical rule. Still there is really no progress. Instead of appealing to an unexplained word ‘analytic’ we are now appealing to an unexplained phrase ‘semantical rule’.

It may be instructive to compare the notion of semantical rule with that of postulate. Relative to the given set of postulates, it is easy to say that what a postulate is: it is a member of the set. Relative to a given set of semantical rules, it is equally easy to say what a semantical rule is. But given simply a notation and indeed as thoroughly understood a notation as you please in point of the translation or truth conditions of its statements, who can say which of its true statements rank as postulates? Obviously the question is meaningless – as meaningless as asking which points in Ohio are starting points. No one signalization of a subclass of the truths of language L is intrinsically more a semantical rule than another.

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; they are of no help in gaining this understanding.

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 un-empirical dogma of empiricists, a metaphysical article of faith.

5. The Verification Theory and Reductionism

The verification theory of meaning, which has been conspicuous in the literature from Peirce onward, is that the meaning of a statement is the method of empirically confirming or infirming it. An analytic statement is that limiting case which is confirmed no matter what.

As urged in Section I, we can as well pass over the question of meanings as entities and move straight to sameness of meaning, or synonymy. Then what the verification theory says is that statements are synonymous if and only if they are alike in point of method of empirical confirmation or infirmation.

This is an account of cognitive synonymy not of linguistic forms generally, but of statements. It is not necessary to appeal to synonymy of linguistic forms other than statements. For a statement may be described as analytic simply when it is synonymous with a logically true statement.

So, if the verification theory can be accepted as an adequate account of statement synonymy, the notion of analyticity is saved after all. However, let us reflect. Statement synonymy is said to be likeness of method of empirical confirmation or infirmation. Just what are these methods which are to be compared for likeness? What, in other words, is the nature of the relationship between a statement and the experiences which contribute to or detract from its confirmation?

The most naive view of the relationship is that it is one of direct report. This is radical reductionism. Every meaningful statement is held to be translatable into a statement (true or false) about immediate experience. Taking a hint from Tooke we might rephrase this doctrine in semantical jargon by saying that a term, to be significant at all, must be either a name of a sense datum or a compound of such names or an abbreviation of such a compound. There is a reorientation in semantics – the reorientation whereby the primary vehicle of meaning came to be seen no longer in the term but in the statement. This is implicit in theories of Frege and also Russell, and in the verification theory of meaning, since the objects of verification are statements.

In his later writings Carnap abandoned all notion of the translatability of statements about the physical world into statements. But the dogma of reductionism has, in a subtler and more tenuous form, continued to influence the thought of empiricists.

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, issuing essentially from Carnap’s doctrine of the physical world in the Aufbau, is that our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body.

The dogma of reductionism, even in its attenuated form, is intimately connected with the other dogma: that there is a cleavage between the analytic and the synthetic. We have found ourselves led, indeed, from the latter problem to the former through the verification theory of meaning. More directly, the one dogma clearly supports the other in this way: as long as it is taken to be significant in general to speak of the confirmation and infirmation of a statement, it seems significant to speak also of a limiting kind of statement which is vacuously confirmed, ipso facto, come what may; and such a statement is analytic.

The two dogmas are, indeed, at root identical. We feel that the truth of a statement is somehow analyzable into a linguistic component and a factual component. The factual component must, if we are empiricists, boil down to a range of confirmatory experiences. In the extreme case where the linguistic component is all that matters, a true statement is analytic. But I hope we are now impressed with how stubbornly the distinction between analytic and synthetic has resisted any straightforward drawing. My present suggestion is that it is nonsense, and the root of much nonsense, to speak of a linguistic component and a factual component in the truth of any individual statement. Taken collectively, science has its double dependence upon language and experience; but this duality is not significantly traceable into the statements of science taken one by one. The unit of empirical significance is the whole of science.

6. Empiricism without Dogmas

The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience. Re-evaluation of some statements entails re-evaluation of others, because of their logical interconnections. But the total field is so undetermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to re-evaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole.

If this view is right, it is misleading to speak of the empirical content of an individual statement – especially if it be a statement at all remote from the experiential periphery of the field. Furthermore it becomes folly to seek a boundary between synthetic statements, which hold contingently on experience, and analytic statements which hold come what may. Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system. 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.

Certain statements, though about physical objects and not sense experience, seem peculiarly germane to sense experience. Such statements, especially germane to particular experiences, I picture as near the periphery. But in this relation of “germaneness” I envisage nothing more than a loose association reflecting the relative likelihood, in practice, of our choosing one statement rather than another for revision in the event of recalcitrant experience. These statements are felt, therefore, to have a sharper empirical reference than highly theoretical statements of physics or logic or ontology. The latter statements may be thought of as relatively centrally located within the total network, meaning merely that little preferential connection with any particular sense data obtrudes itself.

As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries – not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits - comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. 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.

Physical objects, small and large, are not the only posits. Forces are another example; and indeed we are told nowadays that the boundary between energy and matter is obsolete. Moreover, the abstract entities which are the substance of mathematics – ultimately classes and classes of classes and so on up – are another posit in the same spirit. Epistemologically these are myths on the same footing with physical objects and gods, neither better nor worse except for differences in the degree to which they expedite our dealings with sense experiences.

Ontological questions, under this view, are on a par with questions of natural science. Consider the question whether to countenance classes as entities. This is the question whether to quantify with respect to variables which take classes as values. Now Carnap has maintained that this is a question not of matters of fact but of choosing a convenient language form, a convenient conceptual scheme or framework for science. Carnap has recognized that he is able to preserve a double standard for ontological questions and scientific hypotheses only by assuming an absolute distinction between the analytic and the synthetic; and I need not say again that this is a distinction which I reject.

Carnap, Lewis and others’s pragmatism leaves off at the imagined boundary between the analytic and the synthetic. In repudiating such a boundary I espouse a more thorough pragmatism. Each man is given a scientific heritage plus a continuing barrage of sensory stimulation; and the considerations which guide him in warping his scientific heritage to fit his continuing sensory promptings are, where rational, pragmatic.

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