Word and Object: Difference between revisions

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'''''Word and Object''''' is a 1960 work by philosopher [[Willard Van Orman Quine]], in which the author expands upon the line of thought of his earlier writings in ''From a Logical Point of View'' (1953), and reformulates some of his earlier arguments, such as his attack in "[[Two Dogmas of Empiricism]]" on the [[analytic-synthetic distinction]].<ref name="autobio">{{cite book |author= Quine, Willard Van Orman |editor= |title=The Time of My Life: An Autobiography |publisher=MIT Press |___location= Cambridge, MAMassachusetts |year=1985 |page=392 |isbn= 978-0262670043 |oclc= |doi= |accessdate=}}</ref> The thought experiment of [[radical translation]] and the accompanying notion of [[indeterminacy of translation]] are original to ''Word and Object'', which is Quine's most famous book.<ref name="Gibsonarticle" />

==Synopsis==

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Central to Quine’s philosophy is his linguistic [[behaviorism]]. Quine has remarked that one may or may not choose to be a behaviorist in psychology, but one has no choice but to be a behaviorist in linguistics.<ref>''The Cambridge Companion to Quine'', Roger F. Gibson, Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 199</ref>

This influence can be seen in ''Word and Object''. In chapter 2 a linguist has to translate a native's unknown language into English. What is so specifically behavioristic there is that the linguist has nothing to go on but verbal behavior from the native and the visible environment the native interacts with. The same view is displayed in chapter 3 where Quine describes how a baby learns its first words. In this chapter Quine also mentions [[B.F. Skinner]], a well known behaviorist, as one of his influences.<ref>Quine, Willard Van Orman, ''Word and Object'' [1960]. New edition, with a foreword by Patricia Churchland, Cambridge, Mass.Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2015, p. 73</ref>

==Translation and meaning==

{{Main|Radical translation}}

In the second chapter of ''Word and Object'', Quine investigates the concept of meaning. He shows to what extent his own, empirical, notion of meaning can give an account for our intuitive concept of meaning: 'what a sentence shares with its translation'.<ref name="Quine, Willard Van Orman 2015, p. 29">Quine, Willard Van Orman, ''Word and Object'' [1960]. New edition, with a foreword by Patricia Churchland, Cambridge, Mass.Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2015, p. 29.</ref> Quine also introduces his famous principle of ''indeterminacy of translation'', with the help of the [[thought experiment]] of [[radical translation]], i.e. translation of a hitherto unknown language (called Jungle by Quine) into English. The point of this thought experiment is to show that a [[Behaviorism|behavioristic]] account of meaning does not allow for the determination of the right manual for translating one language into another, as there is no such single right translation manual.<ref name="QuineComp">{{cite book |author=Harman, G.|editor=Harman, G. |editor2=Lepore, E. |title=A Companion to W.V.O. Quine|publisher=Wiley |___location=Hoboken, NJ |year=2013 |pages=236–237 |isbn=9781118607992 |oclc= |doi= |accessdate=}}</ref>

A linguist desiring to translate Jungle has to set up his translation manual based only on the events happening around him/her, the stimulations, combined with the verbal and non-verbal [[behaviour]] of Jungle natives.<ref name="Hookway740">{{cite book |author=Hookway, C. J. |editor=Honderich, Ted |title=The Oxford Companion to Philosophy |publisher=Oxford University Press |___location=Oxford |year=1995 |page=740 |isbn=0-19-866132-0 |oclc= |doi= |accessdate=}}</ref> The linguist can thus only use empirical information, therefore, radical translation will tell us which part of our language can be accounted for by stimulus conditions. In the experiment, Quine assumes that functional Jungle equivalents of 'Yes' and 'No' are relatively easy to be found. This allows the linguist to actively query the utterances of the natives, by repeating words (s)he has heard the native utter, and to subsequently record the native's reaction of assent or dissent.

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After Quine has set out the concept of stimulus meaning, he continues by comparing it with our intuitive notion of meaning.<ref name="Becker, E. 2012 p.100">Becker, E. (2012). ''The Themes of Quine's Philosophy: Meaning, Reference, and Knowledge''. Cambridge University Press, p. 100</ref> For this, he distinguished two kinds of sentences:

''occasion sentences'' and ''standing sentences''. ''Occasion sentences'' are the sentences that are only affirmed or dissented after an appropriate stimulation,<ref>Quine, Willard Van Orman, ''Word and Object'' [1960]. New edition, with a foreword by Patricia Churchland, Cambridge, Mass.Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2015, pp. 32-33</ref> e.g. 'Look, a rabbit walks by!' On the other hand, there are ''standing sentences'', which do not rely on stimulation for assent or dissent; they can be prompted by stimulation, but they don't have to be, e.g. 'Rabbits are mammals'. Thus, the stimulus meaning is less useful to approximate the intuitive meaning of standing sentences. However, the difference between occasion and standing sentences is only a gradual difference. This difference depends on the modulus because ‘an occasion sentence modulo n seconds can be a standing sentence modulo n – 1’.<ref>Quine, Willard Van Orman, ''Word and Object'' [1960]. New edition, with a foreword by Patricia Churchland, Cambridge, Mass.Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2015, p. 32</ref>

Since stimulus meaning cannot really account for the intuitive concept of meaning for standing sentences, the question remain whether it can account for the intuitive concept of meaning for observation sentences. Quine approaches this question by investigating whether, for occasion sentences, the intuitive notion of synonymy (sameness of meaning) is equivalent to the notion of stimulus synonymy (sameness of stimulus meaning).<ref name="Becker, E. 2012 p.100"/> For this question, he uses the notion of ''observationality''. A special subclass of occasion sentences are the ''observations sentences''. Their stimulus meaning is least influenced by ''collateral information'', extra information that is hidden for the linguist, and does not vary over the population. Therefore, observation sentences belong to the sentences that are directly translatable by the linguist.<ref>Kirk, Robert. (2004). "Indeterminacy of Translation". In: Roger F. Gibson, Jr (ed.) ''The Cambridge Companion to Quine''. pp. 151-180. Cambridge Companions to Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 162</ref> However, it is exactly this point of collateral information that poses problems for equating the intuitive notion of synonymy with the notion of stimulus synonymy. For even sentences that are supposedly highly observational, like 'Gavagai!', can be affected by collateral information. Quine uses the example of a rabbit-fly: assume that there is a fly that is unknown to the linguist, that only occurs in the presence of rabbits. Seeing such a rabbit-fly in the grass would thus make the native assent to the sentence 'Gavagai', because the native can be sure that there is a rabbit nearby. However, the rabbit-fly is not part of the stimulus meaning of 'Rabbit' for the linguist. Thus, even for the most observational occasion sentences, it is not possible to equate the intuitive notion of synonymy with stimulus synonymy. From this, Quine concludes that we cannot make sense of our intuitive notions of meaning. As Becker<ref>Becker, E. (2012). ''The Themes of Quine's Philosophy: Meaning, Reference, and Knowledge''. Cambridge University Press, p. 109</ref> formulates it: '' 'From Quine's perspective, the conclusion to be drawn from our failure to reconstruct intuitive semantics is not that the attempt was misconceived but that our ordinary notions about meaning cannot be made intelligible. More particularly, intuitive semantics is committed to a distinction - between semantic information, information about meanings, and factual (or collateral) information, information not about meanings - which we cannot make sense of even in the case of sentences like 'Rabbit', let alone for sentences in general.' ''

===Indeterminacy of translation===

{{Main|Indeterminacy of translation}}

Having taken the first steps in translating sentences, the linguist still has no idea if the term 'gavagai' is actually synonymous to the term 'rabbit', as it is just as plausible to translate it as 'one second rabbit stage', 'undetached rabbit part', 'the spatial whole of all rabbits', or 'rabbithood'. Thus, the identical stimulus meaning of two sentences 'Gavagai' and 'Rabbit' does not mean that the terms 'gavagai' and 'rabbit' are synonymous (have the same meaning). In fact, we cannot even be sure that they are coextensive terms,<ref>Becker, E. (2012). ''The Themes of Quine's Philosophy: Meaning, Reference, and Knowledge''. Cambridge University Press, p. 159</ref> because ‘terms and reference are local to our conceptual scheme’,<ref>Quine, Willard Van Orman, ''Word and Object'' [1960]. New edition, with a foreword by Patricia Churchland, Cambridge, Mass.Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2015, p. 48.</ref> and cannot be accounted for by stimulus meaning. It appears therefore impossible to determine a unique correct translation of the term 'gavagai', since the linguist can take any of the mentioned possibilities and have it correspond to the stimulus meaning through adaptation of logical connectives. This implies there is no matter of fact to which the word refers. Quine calls this the [[inscrutability of reference]].<ref name="Marsoobian" />

This inscrutability leads to difficulties in translating sentences, especially with sentences that have no direct connection to stimuli. For example, the tautological Jungle sentence 'Gavagai xyz gavagai' could be translated (in accordance with stimulus meaning) as 'This rabbit is the same as this rabbit'. However, when 'gavagai' is taken as 'undetached rabbit part' and 'xyz' as 'is part of the same animal as', the English translation could also run 'This undetached rabbit part is part of the same animal as this undetached rabbit part'. The Jungle sentence and its two English translations all have the same stimulus meaning and truth conditions, even though the two translations are clearly different. Quine concludes that the linguist can set up his translation manual in different ways, that all fit the native's speech behaviour yet are mutually incompatible,<ref name="QuineWO">{{cite book |author= Quine, Willard Van Orman |editor= |title=Word and Object |publisher=MIT Press |___location= Cambridge, MAMassachusetts |year=2013 |page=24 |isbn= 9780262670012 |oclc= |doi= |accessdate=}}</ref> this is called [[holophrastic indeterminacy]]. There is no one correct translation of Jungle: translation is indeterminate.<ref name="Marsoobian ">{{cite book |author=Marsoobian, A. T., Ryder, J. |editor=Marsoobian, A. T. |editor2=Ryder, J. |title=The Blackwell Guide to American Philosophy |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |___location= Hoboken, NJ |year=2003 |page=251 |isbn= 978-0-631-21623-0 |oclc= |doi= |accessdate=}}</ref>

===Analytical hypotheses===

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===Acquiring reference===

In order to learn a language, a child has to learn how the language expresses reference grammatically. Quine presents a behavioral theory in which the child acquires language through a process of [[operant conditioning|conditioning]] and ostension.<ref>Murphey, M. ''The Development of Quine’s Philosophy''. Springer, 2011. Web. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. p. 163</ref> This process consists of four phases.<ref>Quine, Willard Van Orman, ''Word and Object'' [1960]. New edition, with a foreword by Patricia Churchland, Cambridge, Mass.Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2015, pp. 98-100</ref> In the first phase the child starts babbling. This behavior gets rewarded or not, dependent on the situation in which it occurs. Terms are learned by a process of reinforcement and extinction. In this phase, the child is not aware yet of objects, it just reacts to stimulations. This is a form of [[operant conditioning]]. In the second phase, the child acquires ''general terms'', and ''demonstrative singular terms'' (this, that) and ''singular description'', sentences that name (or purport to name) only one object. In this phase the child also learns terms that do not have reference, like ‘unicorn’. Furthermore, the child learns divided reference of general terms (that general term refer to more than one object), and with that it has access to a conceptual scheme that includes ‘enduring and recurring objects’.<ref>Quine, Willard Van Orman, ''Word and Object'' [1960]. New edition, with a foreword by Patricia Churchland, Cambridge, Mass.Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2015, p. 86</ref> With this, the child has acquired the important distinction between singular and general terms. This distinction entails that a singular term 'purports to refer to one object' while a general term does not purports to refer to an object.<ref name="Quine, Willard Van Orman 2015, p. 87">Quine, Willard Van Orman, ''Word and Object'' [1960]. New edition, with a foreword by Patricia Churchland, Cambridge, Mass.Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2015, p. 87</ref> As Quine points out: 'The basis combination in which general and singular terms find their contrasting roles is that of ''predication''.'<ref name="Quine, Willard Van Orman 2015, p. 87"/> Predication combines general terms with singular terms, in a sentence that is true or false just as the general term (‘F’) is true or false of the object to which the singular term (‘a’) refers. Predication is thus logically represented as ‘Fa’. In the third phase, the child learns ''composite general terms'', which are formed by joining two general terms. In the fourth phase, the child learns how to talk about new objects. The child can now apply ''relative terms'' to singular or general terms. A relative term is a term that is true of two (or more) objects in relation to each other, like ‘bigger than’. The child can now make terms that refer to objects that cannot be seen, for example ‘smaller than that speck’ to refer to a neutrino.<ref>Quine, Willard Van Orman, ''Word and Object'' [1960]. New edition, with a foreword by Patricia Churchland, Cambridge, Mass.Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2015, p. 100</ref> This phase thus gives a new dimension to the child’s conceptual scheme.

===Vagaries of reference and referential transparency===

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==Semantic ascent and cosmic exile==

In the last paragraph of ''Word and Object'',<ref name="Quine, Willard Van Orman 2015, §56">Quine, Willard Van Orman, ''Word and Object'' [1960]. New edition, with a foreword by Patricia Churchland, Cambridge, Mass.Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2015, p. 56.</ref> Quine asks the question why we have talked more about words than about objects, in a book titled ''Word and Object''. He comes to the conclusion that this has to do with the distinction [[Rudolf Carnap]] makes between a material mode of speech and a formal one.<ref name="Carnap, Rudolf 2015, §§63-64">Carnap, Rudolf, ''Logical Syntax of Language'' [1960]. The International Library of Philosophy: Philosophy of Mind and Language, Routledge, Reprint edition, 2010, pp. 63-64.</ref> In the material mode we talk about objects themselves and usually this is unproblematic. However, when two people with completely different ideas of whether or not there are such entities as miles, are discussing miles as the objects itself this discussion will be fruitless. It is in these instances that we see what Quine calls 'Semantic Ascent',<ref name="Quine, Willard Van Orman 2015, pp. 249-254">Quine, Willard Van Orman, ''Word and Object'' [1960]. New edition, with a foreword by Patricia Churchland, Cambridge, Mass.Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2015, pp. 249-254.</ref> the shift from the material mode of language to the formal one. In the formal mode of language we are at a different level. Rather than talking about miles as objects we are talking about what this word 'mile' even means, what it refers to and if it even refers at all. In the formal mode, people with different conceptual schemes might be able to have a reasonable discussion because they are talking about something their conceptual schemes have in common: language. Quine differs from Carnap in applicability of semantic ascent.<ref name="Quine, Willard Van Orman 2015, p. 250">Quine, Willard Van Orman, ''Word and Object'' [1960]. New edition, with a foreword by Patricia Churchland, Cambridge, Mass.Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2015, p. 250.</ref> Carnap believes that talking in a formal mode is something that can only be done to some effect in philosophy. Quine, however, believes that semantic ascent is used in science as well. He argues that Einstein's theory of relativity wasn't just accepted by the scientific community because of what it had to say about 'time, light, headlong bodies and the perturbations of Mercury'<ref name="Quine, Willard Van Orman 2015, p. 251">Quine, Willard Van Orman, ''Word and Object'' [1960]. New edition, with a foreword by Patricia Churchland, Cambridge, Mass.Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2015, p. 251.</ref> in the material mode, but also because of its simplicity compared to other theories in the formal mode. The formal mode allows for a more distant approach to certain problems; however, we are not able to reach a vantage point outside of our conceptual scheme, to Quine 'there is no such cosmic exile'.<ref name="Quine, Willard Van Orman 2015, p. 254">Quine, Willard Van Orman, ''Word and Object'' [1960]. New edition, with a foreword by Patricia Churchland, Cambridge, Mass.Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2015, p. 254.</ref>

==See also==