Word and Object: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 09:37, 17 September 2019

Revision as of 09:38, 17 September 2019

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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, 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, 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===

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===Analytical hypotheses===

Quine sums up the first steps of the radical translation: "'(1) Observation sentences can be translated. There is uncertainty, but the situation is the normal inductive one. (2) Truth functions can be translated. (3) Stimulus-analytic sentences can be recognized. So can the sentences of the opposite type, the "stimulus-contradictory" sentences, which command irreversible dissent. (4) Questions of intrasubjective stimulus synonymy of native occasion sentences even of non-observational kind can be settled if raised, but the sentences cannot be translated."' To go beyond these boundaries of translation by stimulus meaning, the linguist uses analytical hypotheses, in which he uses the steps (1)–(4) to equate parts of the native sentences to English words or phrases. Using the analytical hypotheses the linguist can form new sentences and create a translation manual.

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