Quine

Peter Hylton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780415063982
• eBook ISBN: 9781134922703
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Quine was one of the foremost philosophers of the Twentieth century. In this outstanding overview of Quine's philosophy, Peter Hylton shows why Quine is so important and how his philosophical naturalism has been so influential within analytic philosophy.

Beginning with an overview of Quine's philosophical background in logic and mathematics and the role of Rudolf Carnap's influence on Quine's thought, he goes on to discuss Quine's famous analytic-synthetic distinction and his arguments concerning the nature of the a priori. He also discusses Quine's philosophy of language and epistemology, his celebrated theory of the indeterminacy of translation and his broader views of ontology and modality.

This book is essential reading for anyone interested in Quine, twentieth century philosophy and the philosophy of language.

1

OVERVIEW

Quine’s naturalism

The purpose of this chapter is to set out some fundamental points of Quine’s philosophy, to orient us and guide us in what follows. We begin with a very compressed and abstract summary, and then enlarge and qualify as we go.

I Fundamentals

Quine’s philosophical concern is with human knowledge, and with the most general features of the world that we attempt to know. (He finds the word “knowledge” unacceptably vague, but it will do to get us going.) He has no particular philosophical interest in ethics, or the nature of a just society, or the nature of art; indeed he does not seem to see those matters as falling within his purview at all.¹ His most explicit writing on ethics is chiefly a speculation on how moral values might be inculcated in human beings as they mature.² His work is thus, in one way, narrow in scope. In another way, however, it is perhaps broader than one might expect, especially as compared with that of Rudolf Carnap, the philosopher who most directly influenced him. Carnap wholly rejects the idea that philosophy gives us knowledge of the world. He suggests that the first-order activity of finding out about the world is a matter for the scientist; the philosopher’s activity is higher-order, dealing with understanding first-order knowledge, organizing it, systematizing it, and so on. Quine, by contrast, is concerned with the most general features of the world. This is not because he thinks that there is some special philosophical way of knowing which gives us a priori insight into the world; he is no more inclined to that view than is Carnap. It is, rather, because he rejects the distinction between the first-order and the second-order. On his account, organizing and systematizing a body of knowledge, finding the best notation in which to phrase it, understanding its basis, removing apparent difficulties in it—activities of this sort are themselves first-order contributions to that body of knowledge, and thus tell us something about the world: “The quest of a simplest, clearest pattern of canonical notation is not to be distinguished from a quest of ultimate categories, a limning of the most general traits of reality”. (WO, p. 161).

Quine’s fundamental philosophical doctrine is what he calls naturalism. He explains the doctrine as “the recognition that it is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described” (TT, p. 21). Let us take the idea piecemeal. One crucial point is that, in considering human knowledge, philosophers have no vantage point, no method, no stance, which is different in kind from that of the knowledge which is their subject. The importance of this idea to Quine is such that it is found in the words with which he begins Word and Object, his first philosophical monograph, and in the words with which he ends that book. After the dedication, to Carnap, the book begins with an epigraph taken from Neurath: “We are like sailors who must rebuild their boat on the open sea, without ever being able to put into dock and reconstruct it from the best components”.³ The final paragraph of the book starts like this:

The philosopher’s task differs from the others’ … in detail, but in no such drastic way as those suppose who imagine for the philosopher a vantage point outside the conceptual scheme he takes in charge. There is no such cosmic exile. He cannot study and revise the fundamental conceptual scheme of science and common sense without having some conceptual scheme, whether the same or another no less in need of philosophical scrutiny, in which to work. He can scrutinize and improve the system from within, appealing to coherence and simplicity, but this is the theoretician’s method generally.

(WO, pp. 275–76)

The philosopher thus works from within, beginning in the middle of things (see “Reply to Roth”, H&S, p. 461). This idea, however, is as yet too vague to take us very far. Where are we when we are “in the middle of things”? Given Quine’s concerns, it is clear that we are in the middle of our system of knowledge. (And the philosopher’s work is intended as a contribution to that system.) It is human cognitive or theoretical activity that is Quine’s focus, not human culture in general. How this demarcation is to be made—how the cognitive is to be distinguished from other aspects of culture—is something we shall have to discuss. In other ways, too, we need to see something about how Quine understands our system of knowledge before we can see what it comes to to say that the philosopher is always working within that system. So making Quine’s starting point explicit will require substantive Quinean doctrine. (So perhaps any linear account of his philosophy will distort it: still, we must do what we can.)

Quine’s naturalism, the view that “it is within science … that reality is to be identified and described”, may seem to place too much weight on science: why should we accept that science, rather than our ordinary knowledge, is what tells us about the world? Two points help here. The first is largely a point of usage. In a late work, Quine says that he uses the word “science” broadly; he explicitly includes psychology, economics, sociology, and history under that heading (see FSS, p. 49).⁴ The second point is more obviously substantive. He holds that science is continuous with common sense, with everyday knowledge. All (putative) knowledge is in the same very general line of business. Where common sense and science appear to compete, it is not because they have different concerns or different standards of evidence; it is, rather, because unreflective common sense has not yet absorbed an improvement made by science. Quine’s sketch of the business of knowledge gives some basis for this idea. It is not, however, an idea that receives very detailed articulation and defence in his work, perhaps because it always seemed to him obvious. It is, nevertheless, a crucial part of his overall view. (The idea that all knowledge is in the same line of work may be what justifies Quine’s broad use of the term “science”, just noted.)

Quine thus holds that science is our most successful attempt at knowledge. Hence philosophy, as part of our knowledge which aims, of course, to be successful, will aspire to scientific standards. It will not rely uncritically on terms simply because they are in ordinary use; it will, rather, use standards of clarity and explanatoriness which are drawn from the more successful sciences. A small example of this sort of thing, already noted in passing, is Quine’s criticism of the term “knowledge”. He finds the word vague, because it is unclear just how strong the evidence must be for something, and how certain we must be of it, to count it as knowledge. The word, he says, is “useful and unobjectionable in the vernacular where we acquiesce in vagueness, but unsuited to technical use because of lacking a precise boundary”. (“Relativism and Absolutism”, p. 295.) Quine himself sometimes uses the word in contexts where precision is not at issue (we will continue to do the same); at other times he speaks instead of “our system of the world” or simply “our theory”. By giving up on the term for “technical use” he avoids such problems as whether I can really know something if I could be wrong.

Quine’s insistence on the continuity of science and common sense is helpfully thought of as an aspect of a more general doctrine: the seamlessness of knowledge. There are no fundamental differences of kind within it. In particular, Quine denies that it splits into the a priori and the a posteriori. This point is of particular importance with regard to the guiding idea that philosophy seeks to understand our theory from within. One might claim to accept that idea and still go on to say that philosophy draws particularly on one part or aspect of that theory, namely the a priori part, and that this fact accounts for its difference from empirical subjects. Such is not Quine’s view: he does not think there is an a priori part which can be drawn upon.

Quine’s denial of a distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori is closely connected with his attitude towards the analytic–synthetic distinction. It is still widely held that he denies any such distinction. This is incorrect; he accepts a version of the distinction, but not a version which will do serious philosophical work. (His denial of the a priori is his rejection of the idea that there is serious philosophical work of this kind that needs doing.) Quine’s rejection of a serious analytic–synthetic distinction is integral to his disagreement with Carnap, and occurs relatively early in his philosophical career. Quine’s position here draws on his general outlook, and on his fundamental assumptions. Only when we have at least a preliminary understanding of those assumptions shall we be in a position to understand his attitude towards analyticity. (That gives one reason for our beginning with this overview chapter, rather than by launching into the dispute between Carnap and Quine over analyticity.)

Quine’s rejection of a philosophically useful distinction between the analytic and the synthetic is also connected with his attitude towards meaning, and the uses that philosophers have made of that idea. One astute commentator puts Quine’s attitude towards meaning at the very heart of his philosophy as a whole.⁵ It is indeed central to his negative views, including his argument against Carnap’s analytic–synthetic distinction. As I have already implied, however, his position here rests on his more general, and more positive, views. (We will return to this point towards the end of the chapter.)

Quine, as we said, rejects the distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori. This is not to say that he cannot accept any distinctions at all among the various things that we take ourselves to know. My knowledge that there is a table in front of me; my knowledge that my name is “Peter Hylton”; a physicist’s knowledge of the latest theory; a mathematician’s knowledge of a theorem that she has just proved—surely these are very different sorts of things, known in very different ways. Quine’s view can, I think, leave room for these differences, but explaining them is not a major concern of his. (The chief exception is the difference between observational knowledge—that embodied in what he calls observation sentences—and other kinds.) Three points are worth making briefly. First, Quine thinks that all kinds of knowledge fall under the same very general account. The account is so general that one might think that it ruled out nothing; crucially, however, it does rule out most versions (at least) of a priori knowledge. Second, while Quine can accept that there are differences, he denies that there is a single clear distinction, such as is held by advocates of the distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori. Finally, Quine’s thought is for the most part exceedingly abstract. While there are differences among various kinds of knowledge, none of these differences (with the exception noted above) seem to him important at the level of abstraction at which he is working. For the most part, Quine sees things from a very lofty perspective indeed; from that perspective, the sorts of differences with which we began this paragraph seem to him relatively minor.

So far we have been outlining Quine’s fundamental concern and doctrines, largely in abstraction from discussion of particular texts. As an illustration, and as a way of beginning to elaborate and to raise further questions, we shall consider some passages from “The Scope and Language of Science” (SLS). The essay starts with the following striking paragraph:

I am physical object sitting in a physical world. Some of the forces of this physical world impinge on my surface. Light rays strike my retinas; molecules bombard my eardrums and fingertips. I strike back, emanating concentric airwaves. These waves take the form of a torrent of discourse about tables, people, molecules, light rays, retinas, prime numbers, infinite classes, joy and sorrow, good and evil.

(SLS, WP, p. 228)

Here we have the basic picture which Quine always presupposes; we shall frequently revert to it in what follows.

The passage is not intended as autobiographical; Quine’s situation as he describes it is clearly meant to typify what is philosophically most significant about the human situation generally. (In this respect the paragraph resembles the Meditations of Descartes; in other respects the contrast is striking.) Let us grant the truth of Quine’s claim here; still we might wonder about its relevance. Why should a statement of these facts be thought to be a starting point for philosophy? If this is a place to begin philosophy, how is that subject being conceived? How is Quine thinking of its aims, its method, its point?

Some matters are familiar from our first few pages. Quine clearly feels free to use our theory of the world; he makes no attempt to begin with absolute certainty, or with the a priori, or with what is in some sense given to him at the outset of his cognitive endeavours. This alone marks a drastic break from the procedure of many philosophers. Even granted that point, however, we can ask: why does he draw upon that part of our theory, and why described in this way, using something like the vocabulary of physics? Of the indefinitely many truths about the human condition, why does he begin with these? As we have already said, Quine’s concern is with the theoretical or cognitive aspects of our lives. He takes it that our knowledge is embodied in language; hence the emphasis on the concentric airwaves that we emit.⁶ The emphasis on the physical forces which impinge on his surface is also explained by his focus on cognitive activity; this point is perhaps less straightforward, and we shall return to it in the next section. Before doing so, however, we shall briefly consider the issue of the vocabulary that Quine adopts.

Quine assimilates philosophy to our knowledge in general, and he sees that knowledge as seamless. Science, in his view, is continuous with common sense. They are in the same line of business; science is simply the more self-conscious and more successful end of the spectrum. So philosophy, as we have said, should aspire to something like the standards of clarity and explanatoriness found in the most successful sciences; Quine, indeed, seems to suggest that higher standards may be appropriate:

the scientist can enhance objectivity and diminish the interference of language, by his very choice of language. And we [i.e. we philosophers], concerned to distill the essence of scientific discourse, can profitably purify the language of science beyond what might reasonably be urged upon the practicing scientist.

(WP, p. 235)

To get a more precise idea of what Quine takes to be the appropriate vocabulary to use, when we are concerned to maximize clarity and objectivity, we need to await the results of that part of philosophy which is concerned to “purify the language of science”.

Much of the vocabulary which is in general philosophical use does not meet Quine’s standards. He rejects it as insufficiently clear; an account couched in those terms will not advance our understanding. Quine, by his own account, is an empiricist, so one might think that he would take the notion of experience as absolutely fundamental. But not so:

Experience, really, like meaning and thought and belief, is a worthy object of philosophical and scientific clarification and analysis, and, like all those it is ill-suited for use as an instrument of philosophical clarification and analysis.

(TT, p. 185)

A little earlier, commenting just on thought and belief, he suggests an alternative to those ideas, closer to what is observable:

For instruments of philosophical and scientific clarification and analysis I have looked rather in the foreground, finding sentences … and dispositions to assent. Sentences are observable, and dispositions to assent are fairly accessible through observable symptoms. Linking observables to observables, these and others, and conjecturing causal connections, we might then seek a partial understanding, basically neurological, of what is loosely called thought or belief.

(TT, p. 184)

Quine thus criticizes terms which most philosophers take for granted and use both for posing philosophical problems and for attempting to resolve them. By his standards, many such terms simply are not sufficiently clear and precise to be used in that way.

Quine’s attitude here is complicated. He does not claim that terms such as “means” or “understands” are senseless, nor does he argue that they should be wholly banished from the language. In contexts in which there is no reason to insist on high standards of clarity and precision, such terms are unobjectionable. Moreover Quine himself sometimes uses such terms, for more or less rhetorical purposes or when full precision is not at issue. (We shall follow him in this.) But he rejects the idea that familiar ways of describing things, just because they are in general use, must be accepted as clear enough to use for “philosophical and scientific” purposes. The problems that he takes seriously are those that can be formulated using terms which do meet his standards of clarity; other (supposed) problems he is willing to dismiss.

II Stimulations and science

How does language come to be about the world? Or, more or less equivalently, what is the relation between language and the reality that it is supposedly about? Quine interprets this question in his own terms, as a scientific question, and gives it a clear answer: language comes to be about the world in virtue of its relations to sensory stimulation. That is why in the opening paragraph of “The Scope and Language of Science” Quine emphasizes the physical forces which impinge on his sensory surfaces, and the noises that he emits. Physical forces impinging on appropriate parts of the body give rise to stimulations of the sensory nerves; emitted noises are about the world in virtue of their relations to such stimulations. The principle is ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Overview: Quine’s naturalism
• 2 Quine’s philosophical background: beginnings; logic; Carnap
• 3 The analytic–synthetic distinction
• 4 Reconceiving epistemology
• 5 The beginnings of cognitive language: shared responses to stimulation and observation sentences
• 6 Beyond the observation sentences
• 7 Theory and evidence
• 8 Radical translation and its indeterminacy
• 9 Quinean metaphysics: limning the structure of reality
• 10 A framework for theory: the role of logic
• 11 Extensionality, reference, and singular terms
• 12 Ontology, physicalism, realism
• 13 Minds, beliefs, and modality
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index