Word and Object: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 05:08, 18 January 2019

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==Behaviorism==

Central to Quine’sQuine'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, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2015, p. 73</ref>

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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.

In determining the translation of the Jungle sentence 'Gavagai' (whose English equivalent would be 'Look, a rabbit'), the linguist first has to determine which [[stimulation]] prompt the native to assent, and which prompt him to dissent to the linguist uttering 'Gavagai'. For example, if the linguist sees a rabbit, and the native says ‘Gavagai’, the linguist may think that ‘Gavagai’ means ‘Rabbit’. (S)he will then try the sentence ‘Gavagai’ in different situations caused by the stimulation of a rabbit, to see whether the native assents or dissents to the utterance. The native’snative's reaction is elicited by the linguist’slinguist's question and the prompting stimulation together. It is the stimulation that prompts the assent or dissent, not the object in the world, because an object in the world can be replaced by a replica, but then the stimulation stays the same.

'The class of all the stimulations [..] that would prompt his assent'.<ref name="Quine, Willard Van Orman 2015, p. 29"/> is the ''affirmative stimulus meaning'' of a certain sentence for a given speaker. ''Negative stimulus meaning'' is defined likewise, with assent and dissent interchanged. Quine calls these affirmative and negative stimulus meaning combined the ''stimulus meaning'' of the sentence. However, since we want to account for the fact that a speaker can change the meaning of a concept, we add the ''modulus'' to the definition of ''stimulus meaning'': the time frame in which the stimulations take place. Once the ''stimulus meaning'' has been found, the linguist can then compare it to the stimulus meanings of sentences in English. The English sentence with (near-) identical stimulus meaning to 'Gavagai' functions as a translation of 'Gavagai'.

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=={{Not a typo|Reference}}==

In Chapter 2 of ''Word and Object'', Quine shows that the total apparatus of grammatical and semantic devices in a language is not objectively translatable into foreign languages. Therefore, in Chapter 3, he proposes to investigate a language’slanguage's devices relative to each other. For this, he first describes a child’schild's process of acquiring reference, by showing the order in which children learn grammatical devices. In Chapter 4 he then turns away from language acquisition, to investigate the vagaries of reference in a particular language (English). In Chapter 5, Quine proposes a system for regimentation, which should help us understand how reference in language works and should clarify our conceptual scheme. He calls this system the ''canonical notation''; it is a system with which we can investigate the grammatical and semantic devices of English by paraphrase.

===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, 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, 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, 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, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2015, p. 100</ref> This phase thus gives a new dimension to the child’schild's conceptual scheme.

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