Quine's Naturalized Epistemology

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Quine argues for a naturalized epistemology over traditional kinds. The implications of
this move lead to pure descriptions that relinquishes all normativity. Is Quine's method of
science as a "paradigm of inquiry" and commitment to empiricism in the pragmatic
sense--ontological relativity--a form of eliminativism? Is a recipe for aprescriptive or
anormative meaning and value even possible as Quine seems to suggest?

epistemology philosophy-of-science pragmatism quine

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asked Mar 16 '14 at 15:58

Dr. J

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Good, tough questions

First, one should be cautious about claiming that any view "relinquishes all normativity".
The extent to which Quine avoids charges that he is 'sneaking in' values or normativity is
precisely the extent to which he defers to others (e.g., scientists). The goal of Quine's
position is not to provide "pure descriptions" or to end up with a value-free epistemology
or ontology. Indeed, one of the key lessons we are supposed to have learned from Quine
(and others before him, as well as pragmatists generally) is that there are no value-free
facts. So the answer to your second question seems to be: No, such things are not
possible, but this is not contrary to Quine. [For more detail see:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quine/#QuiNatImp, especially the section on
"normativity".]

As for the first question, your own recognition that Quine is an ontological relativist is
noteworthy. Eliminativism comes in different stripes, most prominently materialistic. To
be an eliminativist of any kind, however, is to privilege one ontology over all others and
thus to be ontologically absolutist.

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answered Dec 6 '14 at 4:32

FLprof

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Fascinating! Thanks for the analysis. I will check out the link to normativity. I really didn't
catch the move to an absolutist ontological stance--I think this is important and
particularly noteworthy. Dr. J Jan 6 '15 at 0:57

Why is epistemology done from a phenomenological point of view?

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I'm currently in a class where we are studying, among other things, the philosophy of
perception. The papers we have read so far, for example Grice's "The Causal Theory of
Perception" and Strawson's "Perception and it's Objects," emphasize a very subjective,
observer centered theory of perception. The viewpoint I am talking about can be seen in
this article: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/ . It seems strange to
me that in all of the analyses of perception I have read so far, the physical, scientific
point of view is completely ignored.

For example, if someone asked me what it meant to see a table, I would say that
perceiving the table means that light reflects off the table and hits light receptors in the
retina, activating certain parts of the brain. A neuroscientist or biologist could of course
make this story much more precise.

Now, of course science does not have all the details figured out, but it seems to me that
the physical of theory of perception that science provides is clearly superior to say, a
vague "sense data" theory of perception. All of the problems in the above SEP article
seem to disappear if we just accept the biological story of perception.

My question is, then, why is there such a separation between science and the philosophy
of perception? A lot of the notions described in the SEP article, like openness to the
world, seem, frankly, quaint and archaic. Why do people not accept the scientific
analysis of perception as obviously superior?

epistemology philosophy-of-science

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edited Mar 24 '12 at 21:40

Joseph Weissman

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asked Mar 12 '12 at 0:03

Potato

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An excellent question. I'll research into this and see if I can satisfy you with an answer.
Outlier Mar 12 '12 at 2:13

2
I'm not in the position to answer right now, but Descartes' Meditations offers a discussion
of the reliability of perception itself. It may not serve as a direct answer, but a great and
relevant read nonetheless. commando Mar 12 '12 at 3:22

Have you considered accepting an answer if your question has been covered by one of
the below answers? Outlier Mar 15 '12 at 14:18

Short answer: because epistemologists don't know enough neuroscience. Seamus Mar
19 '12 at 14:47

Epistemology, being the study of knowledge, doesn't want to assume knowledge. It

takes a phenomenological approach because phenomena is typically what's regarded as
given and indubitable. Jeong Kim Dec 3 '12 at 16:38

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It's not clear how much you've read, but consider that you reading a small handful of
papers doesn't exactly give you a good perspective on the field. I studied both
perception in philosophy as well as perception in psychology, and in my readings
(philosophy was after the psych course), I do not recall the philosopher's theories
conflicting with the science I had learned prior to any great extent. In fact in most cases
it wouldn't have mattered at all what the science was. Whether rods or cones are
stimulated, for example, or what kind of action potential is fired when light is detected in
the retina, is largely irrelevant to philosophers because they are looking at a higher level
abstraction of perception. The most fundamental thought experiments of perception
demonstrate very quickly why the scientific position is of little use to philosophy.

You write:

For example, if someone asked me what it meant to see a table, I would say that
perceiving the table means that light reflects off the table and hits light receptors in the
retina, activating certain parts of the brain. A neuroscientist or biologist could of course
make this story much more precise.

But how do you know that your perception of the table is actually based off the real
world and not some evil demon tricking your mind? How do you know that you simply
aren't in a really vivid dream? How do you know that you aren't hallucinating? These
basic questions show how scientific explanations are unreliable and give us no certainty.
Most philosophers ignore them not because they have historically known little about the
eye, but because that kind of data can't take them beyond the classic problems outlined
above.

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answered Mar 12 '12 at 5:58

stoicfury

9,21852969

Thank you, this is the answer I was looking for. Potato Mar 12 '12 at 6:34

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As to answer your question, I would like to first clearly define perception (stated clearly
in the SEP) :

The awareness or apprehension of things by sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste.

Therefore, every single thing in our world, even science is based on common
perceptions.

For example, in chemistry, the states/properties/smell/etc.. of substances are universally

agreed upon based on common perceptions.

Examining the Problem of Perception

This is how the SEP describes the problem of perception:

perception seems intuitively to be openness to the world, but this fact of openness is
threatened by reflection on illusions and hallucinations. Therefore perception, as we
ordinarily understand it, seems to be impossible.
So, I can see why you would think that the scientific analysis is "clearly" superior.
However, please take close note to what I will present to you.

For example, suppose that you are are in a room with a few other people and are
perceiving this:

apple http://boutonrougedesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/red-apple.jpg

If you describe the shape/state to many others, they may or may not agree with you.
Their decision in accepting what you perceive as real is dependent on many conditions.
The circumstances must be examined for example:

Is anyone under the influence of anything that may alter one's perceptions allowing for
errors? (e.g. drugs)

Is a magician affecting anyone's perception of the object?

Are the properties of the given item common/normal?

Is anyone mentally ill?

Is this anything that is out of the ordinary?

The second choice instantly becomes obsolete; the existence of such a magician must
first be proved creating an unreasonable burden of proof.

Does the apple possess any properties that defy the laws of logic and physics (known to
man so far)? For example, is it floating?

If none of the conditions are met, then most likely, everyone will agree with you, because
what you perceive is most likely not an error. Therefore, it will be agreed amongst all of
you that you are perceiving a bright, red apple.

Therefore, the problem of perception can (to some extent) be prevented.

Comparing Phenomenology to the Cartesian method

The Cartesian method is described by Wikipedia as:

[A] method of analysis which sees the world as objects, sets of objects, and objects
acting and reacting upon one another.

The structure of the problem is simple: why try to scientifically prove that the apple is
red when all of us agree on it? The apple is red, and there is not much else to it.

Why go to great lengths to try to scientifically prove something whose existence we are
almost certain of?

Perhaps why perception is preferred over scientific analysis therefore, is simply because
it's not unnecessarily complex, and is (for the lack of a better word) therefore, much
simpler.

Philosophers need not waste their time pondering about simple things. Such paranoia
would be as pointless as much as it would be illogical.

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edited Mar 12 '12 at 6:06

answered Mar 12 '12 at 4:22

Outlier

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Well, I dug up my copy of Descartes' Meditations, and I'll try to provide a supplementary
(but not substitute) answer in support of the others here. For reference, mine is
translated by Donald Cress.

In "Meditation One" of his Meditations (there are six, all in one book), Descartes begins
with what is called radical doubt. He notes that, having seen how questionable some of
his views have been:
I realized that once in my life I had to raze everything to the ground and begin again
from the original foundations, if I wanted to establish anything firm and lasting in the
sciences.

This position is very significant in the sciences to this day. As children, we are full of
misconceptions about the world, and it is the job of proper sciences to come and raze to
the ground all of the false beliefs that we hold (sometimes, it even builds up false beliefs
for simplification, only to replace them with the proper models later - lift, anyone?). From
our perceptions, many of these misconceptions arise. As my physics teach once said,
"common sense is the prejudice of experience."

Thus, Descartes observes the "problem of perception." How can we (why would we?)
begin to use scientific models in philosophy, when as stoicfury said, "scientific
explanations are unreliable and give us no certainty."

So, as Descartes noted, epistemology in philosophy requires us to apply to ourselves a

"general demolition of [our] opinions" which have been established by perception. To use
what we observe scientifically for philosophy is to accept the problem of perception.

Surely whatever I had admitted until now as most true I received either from the senses
or through the sense. However, I have noticed that the senses are sometimes deceptive;
and it is a mark of prudence never to place our complete trust in those who have
deceive us even once.

Descartes even questions how we can know that we are not dreaming. Admittedly, this is
an extreme of solipsism, but still an important point on how unreliable perception is.

Now, epistemology is the theory of knowledge, of what we can and cannot know. You ask
why epistemology does not take from the sciences. Descartes replies:

Physics, astronomy, medicine, and all the other disciplines that are dependent upon the
consideration of composite things are doubtful, and, on the other hand, arithmetic,
geometry, and other such disciplines, which treat of nothing but the simplest and most
general things and which are indifferent as to whether these things do or do not in fact
exist, contain something certain and indubitable. For whether I am awake or asleep, two
plus three make five, and a square does not have more than four sides.

This is why science is simply not a question in epistemology; philosophy has its own
method for epistemology, and science goes about its experiments in tangent. Again to
reference stoicfury's answer, it isn't that philosophy disagrees with science, but that, as
Descartes said above, philosophy does not trust scientific results for use in epistemology.
Philosophy just sticks to internal thought to avoid the problem of perception. I hope this
answer helps and provides you with one (very influential) philosopher's relevant opinion.
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Is naturalized epistemology insincere?

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The insincerity objection is often raised against skeptical positions (nominalism, anti-
realism, anti-intellectualism, solipsism, etc.). An ancient anecdote tells of a skeptic, who
taught that actions make no difference, jumping away from a cart that was about to run
him over. When asked why he jumped if it makes no difference he responded "Ah, it is
because it makes no difference that I jumped". The objection is that where the mouth is
the money is not, professed dibelief in universals, reality, meaning, other minds, etc., is
accompanied by behavior that indicates otherwise.

NE declares that everything is subject to revision, including NE itself, in the face of

recalcitrant experience. If that is the case then it should whole-heartedly embrace say
Husserlian phenomenology or mystical insight if those prove to be practically successful.
And in some areas they might, e.g. heuristic metaphysics, or ethics, or aesthetics. What
"practically successful" means is open to interpretation, but according to Quine himself
even in science choice between theories is based on pragmatic considerations due to
underdetermination by (empirical) evidence. Such considerations may be interpreted as
benefiting from some non-empirical experience, e.g. Husserlian "ideal perception". But
Quine certainly favored science and scientific method, as I suspect do most philosophers
who self-identify as naturalists, and mostly did not venture into areas where alternatives
might come into play.

It may not matter in practice if one stays within a recognized provenance of science, but
is NE, as practiced, vulnerable to the insincerity objection? Was it actually raised, are
there good responses? Is the objection effective at all? According to Wittgenstein the
task of philosophy "is not to explain anything, but to leave everything as it is", so how
one behaves might be purely pragmatic, indicating no philosophy.

epistemology skepticism

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edited Jan 31 '16 at 22:42

asked Jan 28 '16 at 3:12

Conifold

21.2k1976

i think the q. would be better if you defined "practically successful" user6917 Jan 28 '16
at 4:42

@MATHEMETICIAN It is tough to define how people judge success in practice, but I added
an example of how it might happen in epistemological context. Conifold Jan 31 '16 at
22:46

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accepted

I don't know if the objection was raised but I believe that naturalised epistemology
proponents have the resources needed to answer the objection. The reason, I think, is
that being willing to revise one's belief in front of contradictory experience is not the
same as not having the belief outright, or being sceptical about it.

It would have been inappropriate to raise the objection against someone who, a few
centuries ago, would have said "I believe physical space is fundamentally euclidean but I
will revise my belief if an alternative works better". Although it seemed obvious to many
(and even, for authors like Kant, a priori true) that physical space was euclidean, it
turned out that it is better conceived of as non euclidean. Such a person could have
been sincere: no doubt she could have adopted relativity, as many did, in front of crucial
experiences. The fact that she strongly believed that space is euclidean, and acted
accordingly, does not alter her sincerity when she said she would revise this belief if
necessary.

One could argue "well, you're not really willing to revise beliefs such as 'red is a color'
because if you did, you'd only change the meaning of 'red' or 'color', so you're not
sincere when you say you would revise anything". This argument misses the point: it's
not obvious whether we changed or not the meaning of 'space' when we switched to
non-euclidean geometry, and the defender of NE will say that meaning is a dubious, or at
least a flexible notion and that there is no fact of the matter whether it is the meaning of
'space' or our beliefs about space that we changed. If it turns out that our notion of color
is not as appropriate as we think and that it must be redefined in such a way that red is
no more a color (or perhaps only in certain widespread contexts), then why not switch to
this new framework?

Perhaps the closest to an insincerity objection I can think of is the charge that Quine
claimed that even logic is revisable, and was at the same time among the most
conservative about first order logic against alternative logics. I heard this objection quite
often informally. It amounts to suggest that Quine was not really sincere when he said
that he thought logic to be revisable. However Quine argued that logic is so central to
our conceptual schemes that the evidence needed to revise it would be tremendous, so
again, all this merely shows that being willing to revise a belief if an alternative turns out
to be better (however unlikely the prospects) is different from being sceptical outright,
and that it is not even incompatible with holding the belief very firmly (if the prospects of
revision are very unlikely).

If NE is sceptical about meaning, a more subtle objection could target the view that there
are no meanings: after all, NE rests on a scepticism about a priori meaning and
analyticity. The objection would go: "you say you don't believe in analyticity but you
show otherwise". I'm not sure that kind of objection can get off the ground because
analyticity is not a trivial, common sense concept that would be implicit in so many
arguments. At least the burden is on the attacker to show that a NE defender is using the
notion. Perhaps the notion of meaning is more common sense and often used implicitly,
but the defender of NE can argue that she has an aposteriori conception of meaning as
use, and that what she is sceptical about is the idea that meaning is a priori.

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edited Jan 28 '16 at 11:37

answered Jan 28 '16 at 11:12

quen_tin
4,021517

These are good points, I was thinking about insincerity in committing to potentially adopt
an unscientific approach if "tribunal of experience" deems it "worthy", i.e. having a
hidden methodological commitment declared subject to revision only to avoid defending
it. I saw phenomenologists argue something like that: naturalists a priori exclude a priori
knowledge, while declaring that they are open to it they limit "experience" to empirical
to pre-empt ever doing that. See e.g. the essay about NE (pp.47-49) in
books.google.com/ Conifold Jan 28 '16 at 21:51

@Conifold I don't understand your point. Are you saying they're not sincerely willing to
revise scientific approach (or NE) if necessary? quen_tin Jan 28 '16 at 22:26

The point is not mine, so I may be misinterpreting, but the claim seems to be that
"revision" is limited to "empirically based revision" to avoid already available contexts
where scientific approach (allegedly) fails while others (arguably) succeed. In other
words, revision either has already become necessary, but did not happen, with
"empirically based" offered as an ad hoc excuse, or, even assuming it did not so far
become necessary, was not considered in good faith where it was warranted, indicating
insincerity. Conifold Jan 28 '16 at 23:26

Ok I understand although one could respond that science is obviously successful, while
it's not clear in what sense phenomenology is and what a "non-empirical success" could
be. One must have criteria of success. quen_tin Jan 29 '16 at 13:00

I came across Zammito's interesting book philpapers.org/rec/ZAMAND, where he takes

on "empirically based" from the "left" of Quine:"Cognitive science is an empirical science
working to unearth the mechanisms through which natural language constitutes itself.
That account has had to recognize the indispensability of mental states... in the
discourses of culture, we are compelled to seek a more robust naturalism... and what
that requires is the overthrow of Quine's empiricist/behaviorist strictures on evidence...
There is still too much "first philosophy" in Quine." Conifold Feb 1 '16 at 0:23
Have any philosophers applied the concept of underdetermination to non-scientific
contexts?

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Most resources I've found on underdetermination approach the subject within the
context of science. That's definitely a fascinating area of study, but I'd like to explore
ways of applying underdetermination more broadly. I'm interested in the notion that
people's beliefs about themselves and the world they live in may be massively
underdetermined by the evidence available to them. If underdeterminism poses a threat
to scientific theories, then it must pose an even greater threat to lay beliefs, as they
seem to be developed far less rigorously.

In terms of beliefs about the self, I'm interested in the way our narratives of self and our
identity are underdetermined and therefore liable to shift as different interpretations of
the evidence are considered. I'm interested in how sudden realizations and epiphanies
about one's life may be comparable to Kuhnian "paradigm shifts", catalyzing a radical
realignment of self-image without a considerable change in the already-known facts of
the matter.

In terms of beliefs about the world, I'm interested in the way underdetermination relates
to ideology. It seems that people with differing ideologies can interpret the same event in
different ways, which suggests that these ideologies are much like underdetermined
scientific theories, actively competing to explain the empirical data.

Is this a topic that philosophers have addressed? Or have I accidentally strayed into the
realm of psychology? Would appreciate any resources you fine folks could provide.
Thanks!

epistemology philosophy-of-science philosophy-of-culture

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edited Dec 18 '16 at 4:01

Conifold
21.2k1976

asked May 15 '16 at 21:22

Matt Diamond

1562

what exactly do you mean by "underdetermination" and cognate terms? mobileink May
15 '16 at 21:55

also, can you be more explicit about "Is this a topic philosophers have adressed"? I don't
know what "this" refers to. mobileink May 15 '16 at 22:13

@mobileink sorry, "this" refers to underdetermination as applied to one's knowledge of

self and world Matt Diamond May 15 '16 at 22:58

@mobileink and my understanding of "underdetermination" mostly comes from this:

plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-underdetermination Matt Diamond May 15 '16 at
22:59

See related: philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/31726/ Alexander S King May

16 '16 at 22:28

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Underdetermination by evidence does not pose a threat to scientific theories, it only

poses a threat to realistic interpretation of scientific theories. In other words, empirical
adequacy of scientific theories, on which their usefulness is based, is completely
unaffected by the underdetermination. What is affected is ontological interpretation of
them as representing "true" reality. Since different ontologies (e.g. interpretations of
quantum mechanics) are compatible with the same empirical predictions it becomes
difficult to argue that even one of them represents "the reality". But this also works the
other way, whatever doubts underdetermination raises about correspondence to reality
such doubts are empirically irrelevant. They may however be sociologically relevant, e.g.
if funding choices favor adherents of a particular interpretation. Ideologies rarely submit
themselves to the strictures of empirical adequacy, so applied there
"underdetermination" is at best a metaphor.

Quine, one of the most prominent proponents of scientific underdetermination wrote a

famous book that extends it to linguistics, Word and Object. His terms of choice are
"inscrutability of reference", which means that parts of a sentence can change what they
reference in such a way that the meaning of the sentence as a whole remains the same,
and "indeterminacy of translation", which means that there exists no fact of the matter
as to whether "radical" (from scratch) translation from one language into (never before
encountered) another is correct. Indeed, Quine's ideas are the source Feyerabend's and
Kuhn's "incommensurability" of paradigms, see Is Feyerabend confusing discovery and
justification when he criticizes the scientific method?

Together with the similarly minded Derrida's "deconstruction" on the continental side the
idea was picked up and extended to cultures by post-modernists at large. If you are
looking for such an expansive view Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature should do
nicely:

"...thinking of the entire culture, from physics to poetry, as a single, continuous,

seamless activity in which the divisions are merely institutional and pedagogical... we
shall say that all inquiry is interpretation, that all thought is recontextualization... To say
that something is better 'understood' in one vocabulary than another is always an ellipsis
for the claim that a description in the preferred vocabulary is more useful for a certain
purpose."

A word of caution. The founding fathers of underdetermination, Quine and Kuhn, walked
back their original polemically radical claims. And while social and cultural biases are
there, exuberant post-modernistic quest for finding them everywhere ended up
producing way too much inane nonsense, partly exposed by the Sokal hoax. Check out
Zammito's Nice Derangement of Epistemes, which gives a philosophical history of post-
modernism from underdetermination and incommensurability to "sociology of scientific
knowledge" and ultra-feminism, and to its discreditation in 1990s. Here is his take on
Rorty in particular:

"Setting out from Quine, Kuhn, and Davidson, Rorty has executed several elegant turns
through Gadamer and Heidegger to come more and more to partner with Derrida... What
is left is language and the arbitrary "poetics" of conversation. Rorty dissolves too many
distinctions; his new "pragmatism" entails a cavalier disdain for rational adjudication of
dispute. There has been a derangement of epistemes. Philosophy of science pursued
"semantic ascent" into a philosophy of language so "holistic" as to deny determinate
purchase on the world of which we speak. History and sociology of science has become
so "reflexive" that it has plunged "all the way down" into the abime of an almost
absolute skepticism".
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edited Apr 13 at 12:42

Community

answered May 15 '16 at 23:08

Conifold

21.2k1976

Interesting point about empirical adequacy being safe... would this imply that it IS a
problem for scientific realists but not for constructive empiricists? Matt Diamond May
16 '16 at 1:00

@Matt There is a nuance, undetermination goes hand in hand with the theory-ladenness
of observations thesis, so adequacy is not to be taken as individual matching of theory to
"neutral facts", but as overall effectiveness of scientific schemes, methodology included,
in their domains of application. This is the gist of Quine's naturalized epistemology,
developed around the time of Word and Object, and its current popularity has much to
do with it being far more defensible philosophically than traditional scientific realism.
Zammito even uses it to criticize Quine's own excesses. Conifold May 16 '16 at 19:11

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Yes, one example is Noam Chomsky's Poverty of Stimulus thesis in psychological

linguistics, which suggests that the data language learners have access to about
grammar underdetermined those general rules. Chomsky uses this claim as a premise
for defending the idea that we must be born with mental structures for handling
language, since otherwise we would not be able to do it as well as we can.

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answered May 15 '16 at 21:48

ChristopherE
4,2271827

The POS "thesis" was always wild speculation (Chomsky himself at one point explicitly
rejected the idea that we need empirical evidence!) that has been convincingly refuted.
The OP is interested in the relation between underdetermination and ideology. Chomsky
is pure ideology so that's a good place to start! mobileink May 15 '16 at 22:05

Yep -- agree with all of that. Perhaps hypothesis is better than thesis, but thesis is what's
usually said. ChristopherE May 15 '16 at 23:46

What does to naturalize reason mean?

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I am a newbie in philosophy.

I've just started reading "The philosophy book" that is a broad introduction about the
main philosophers.

I found interesting the article on Richard Rorty, so I started to read "Rorty and his critics".

At page 2 it says
Although I think Habermas is absolutely right that we need to socialize and linguistic the
notion of 'reason' by viewing it as communicative, I also think that we should go further:
we need to naturalize reason by dropping his claim that "a moment of unconditionality is
built into factual processes of mutual understanding".

I don't understand what "to naturalize reason" mean.

I found an article on "Naturalized Epistemology" at "Standford Encyclopedia of

Philosophy", but I don't understand it is the same thing.

epistemology contemporary-philosophy rorty

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edited Sep 18 '13 at 19:50

asked Sep 17 '13 at 12:44

Robbo

1392

Could you quote the whole passage? (It concerns his reply to Habermas, if I remember
correctly) DBK Sep 17 '13 at 17:35

Yes, you are right, it concerns his reply to Habermas. I've just added the whole passage.
Robbo Sep 18 '13 at 19:51

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In general, "naturalizing" X, for philosophers, meaning looking at how the processes of X

occur in nature, and developing a theory of it based on those observations rather than
reasoning about it in the abstract. Quine's endorsement of "naturalized epistemology"
was therefore an effort to refocus philosophical analyses of knowledge towards how
knowledge is actually produced in the world (i.e. in nature). This would move
epistemology away from the study of what kinds of reasons for believing a sentence
offer adequate justification for it. It would move epistemology towards the study of
human psychology (and how individuals acquire knowledge) and natural science (and
thus how we collectively acquire knowledge).

Not being a Habermas expert, I don't know whether more is built into his phrase
"moment of unconditionality" but I strongly suspect that "naturalizing reason" here
means looking at how human beings in fact from evidence to conclusions, and indeed
replacing logic with that. I suspect that "dropping the moment of unconditionality"
means removing the abstraction from the analysis of reason, and shifting it towards
reasoning as it actually occurs, embedded in real conditions.

Now, in both cases, there are serious questions about whether a naturalized inquiry
could ever replace a traditional one, even as it seems right that there is a danger in
analyzing processes entirely from the armchair, without engaging with how they happen
in in fact. But the process of integrating those two approaches has indeed characterized
a good deal of Anglophone philosophy over the past couple decades. But, I think that's
what Habermas's critic is saying above.

What is the name for this endless definition problem?

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Say I am trying to define "apple", I define it in terms of a specific way by which atoms,
molecules, and ions are organized. Then I'd have to define those atoms, molecules and
ions, and I do so in terms of elementary physical particles. But then those elementary
physical particles, and the way they behave, remain "unexplained", i.e. I accept them as
they are without question.
The result of this chain of definition is that, either I end up with an endless chain, or I
stop somewhere where I just can't go any further, and I'd have to live with the fact that
"it is what it is".

What is the name of this problem? What are the related terms I should look up?

Thanks a lot for any pointers!

terminology

shareimprove this question

asked Sep 4 '13 at 3:32

neuron

1112

What exactly is the problem that you want to name? A definition of A in terms of B is
successful iff either B is understood better than A, or there is some C, different from B,
such that C is a successful definition of B. That's what I took from what you said, but I
don't see why it's problematic. Hunan Rostomyan Sep 4 '13 at 4:32

Good question - I definitely think this principle deserves a name. Such a name would
summarize in a single word the problem with certain mathematical philosophies (e.g. the
philosophy of N.J. Wildberger) that claim that mathematics doesn't need axioms, all it
needs is definitions. It just doesn't work, because of the problem you describe, wherein
there is necessitated infinite regress of undefined terms, resulting in the impossibility of
formally specifying any formal systems and therefore the impossibility of doing truly
rigorous mathematics. goblin Nov 19 '15 at 3:13

There is such a thing as knowledge by presence; you know an apple by seeing it, holding
it and eating it; definitions don't mean anything unless they refer. Mozibur Ullah Mar 4
'16 at 1:46

add a comment

3 Answers

active oldest votes

up vote

down vote

accepted

The name of the problem is: Mnchhausen-Trilemma

It occurs in various fields, and always consists of having 3 options, which all face
problems.

Option 1: Infinite Regress - which may be bad, because how does a word gets its
meaning, if the chain of defining words is infinite.

Option 2: Fundamentality - which may be bad, because what is fundamental seems to be

arbitrary and unjustified.

Option 3: Coherentism - which may be bad, because according to this option you define
a word, after some or a lot steps, with itself. Circular reasoning is most often disliked.

I tried to include your problem into the general case, but it should help if you check out
the relevant wiki-article

shareimprove this answer

answered Sep 4 '13 at 17:37

Lukas

2,113825

Also known as the "Agrippan Trilemma". Dennis Sep 4 '13 at 17:42

Thanks! Exactly what I was looking for! neuron Sep 6 '13 at 7:34

add a comment

up vote
1

down vote

I think there are two related but distinct issues involved in your question.

First, there is the issue of compositionality, i.e. defining something in terms of its
constituent parts. Then, there is the issue of semantic holism, by which you cannot
define something unless you have defined something else, and thus you can never reach
a proper definition of the original concept, since you would need to have a complete
understanding of the whole language. This is a strong form of semantic holism, and as
far as I know it has been strongly criticised, since sense can be constructed through
mechanisms other than mere composition, such as contextual and pragmatic
information.

shareimprove this answer

edited Sep 5 '13 at 16:53

answered Sep 4 '13 at 13:32

CesarGon

360113

add a comment

up vote

down vote

It's called a failure to recognize ostensive definitions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostensive_definition
Externalism about meaning VS. Holism about meaning

up vote

down vote

favorite

3 points are not clear to me about the relations between externalism (Kripke, Putnam)
and holism (Quine):

Is there a way according to which externalism and holism can be held together or are
they inherently contradicting each other? It seems that holism implies that the meaning
of a term depends upon its linguistic description, its conceptual role or its relations to
other terms within the web of language. According to externalism the meaning is (at
least partially) external to the mere language. Does this mean that the two approaches
contradict?

Externalism about meaning says that there are two different kinds of sentences that can
be said about an object - contingent and necessary. "Kripke is the son of X" will be
necessary because it's essential to "Kripke". "Kripke is a logician", on the other hand, will
be contingent. Quine says that there is no difference between Analytic and synthetic
sentences. Now, the Analytic / Synthetic division is not the same as the necessary /
contingent one, but yet, they are somehow connected. Does the fact that sentences can
be divided in general into two categories create some problems to Holism?

If the two do contradict, it seems to me that Holism would be a better choice only
because it goes deeper. I can say that the sentence "Kripke is the son of X" seems to be
necessary only because the predicate "son of" in the my specific language bares a
linguistic relation to "necessary". In other words - it's only because my web of words if
organised this way and not the other that some sentences seem necessary and some
seem contingent. Therefore, this metaphysical characteristic of sentences is only an
illusion. Holism says - meaning is in the language. Externalism says - given a language
(or "in the current world") this and that are correct (water is H2O and not XYZ, for
example). Hence, it seems to me like Holism goes deeper and can explain why
externalism fails. Am I missing something?

philosophy-of-language analytic-philosophy meaning quine kripke

shareimprove this question

edited Mar 6 at 14:49

asked Mar 6 at 12:57

Amit Hagin

409310

add a comment

3 Answers

active oldest votes

up vote

down vote

accepted

Holism is an epistemological position, and externalism is a semantic one. Not only is it

possible to hold them together, but it is not particularly challenging. The appearance of
incompatibility comes from the misleading use of the word "meaning". In the holism,
especially Quine's and Davidson's, "meaning" is an obscurity best left out of the
vocabulary. There is no such "thing" as "meaning", sentences involving it rephrase facts
about inference, relating concepts to one another, or acting based on them. Quine
explicitly endorses Wittgenstein's "meaning is use", see Quine and Kripkes Wittgenstein
by Jnsson. It is not too far off to say that on Quine's (and Wittgenstein's) view the
externalism/internalism distinction is altogether moot, there is no internal "there"
(traditionally hypostatized as "meaning") there. The issue is pressing only for realists
more robust than Quine.

In its turn, externalism explains how language user relates to her referents, not whether
the reference is established atomistically or holistically. The chief opponents of
externalists are not holists, but theorists of content, like Dretske and Fodor, who
advocate the computational theory of mind creed that "meaning" inheres in some sort of
materially coded "information" in the brain, and then proceed to explain how this
"information" relates to "reality" (the problem of intentionality). It is true that Kripke
gravitates towards realism, even essentialism, this is needed to ground his modal logic in
the face of Quine's objections to its interpretability. There are also disagreements over
Kripke's metaphysics vs Quine's empiricism, intensionality vs extensionality, de re vs de
dicto, etc., contingent a priori, necessary a posteriori are also related to this. Tuboly's
Quine and Quantified Modal Logic is a good review of these controversies from a
historical perspective. It is even true that Putnam finds Quine's holism to be too much,
and advocates the reality of natural kinds.

But all these issues are separate from externalism. One can perfectly well hold that we
pick up semantics semi-holistically a la Davidson (by applying charity to the totality of
other users' linguistic behavior), but that what we pick up is still external-context-
dependent, and so the "meanings" (i.e. conceptual and operational roles) are different
on Earth and Twin Earth. I suppose one could argue that holism undermines realism
(Quine's claims to be a "realist" notwithstanding), and hence the distinctions that
externalists uphold. But even anti-realists have to take ontology at least as a temporary
make believe reflecting the best of current science, and within it the question re-
emerges in a more pragmatic way: is it more effective to represent "meaning" in our
theories as an engram in the head, or as spread over the environment. I suspect that
Quine's physicalism and behaviorism would tip him towards the latter. The causal theory
of reference, which is considered to imply externalism, has a distinct holistic flavor,
reference is picked up opportunistically by imitating linguistic behavior of others.

shareimprove this answer

edited Apr 12 at 2:04

answered Mar 7 at 3:07

Conifold

21.2k1976

Thanks! yet, I have a few more questions: 1. "meaning in use" and "meaning in
inference" are more or less the same, aren't they? Yet Quine endorses the former and
not the latter. How come? 2. conceptual role semantics is supposed to answer the
problem of intentionality and is considered as a holist approach. I don't know if it's
Quinean but it seems to be a holistic position about semantics rather than epistemology.
3. a hidden assumption I have in (2) that might be incorrect: the problem of
intentionality is the problem of meaning, hence a semantic one. is it true? Is
intentionality meaning? Amit Hagin Mar 7 at 15:43

@AmitHagin Inferentialism is one form of semantic pragmatism (use), some pragmatists

are inferentialists (Brandom), others not (Dreyfus). Davidson's semantics is both
pragmatist and holist, but truth conditional, not inferential. Pragmatist approach to
intentionality is a 2-step: analyze "meaning" into more fundamental notions (inference,
social pragmatics, habits of action), tell a story of how these come to be and relate to
the world, more here. Conifold Mar 7 at 21:02

2 more things: It seems from your comment that holism can be a semantic theory as
well (not only epistemological). So is Holism as a semantic theory contradicting
externalism a a semantic theory? Also - if semantic holism is true, then the meaning of a
word doesn't need to refer to the world but to other linguistic terms. Hence, I think
intentionality can be explained without any relation to the real world, isn't it the case? (I
feel that I have semantic "powers" but I actually relate to nothing external to me). Amit
Hagin Mar 8 at 11:41
and actually 2 more things (quite methodological): 1. Why would we make a sharp
distinction between an epistemological theory and a semantic theory. It seems logical to
believe that the way knowledge is established has a lot to do with the meaning words
are given. 2. what exactly a semantic theory should answer to and what should a theory
of intentionality answer to? I'm trying to understand the relations between epistemology,
meaning and intentionality. Amit Hagin Mar 8 at 11:53

@AmitHagin I think most generally holism is a methodological approach that can be

applied to different areas, Quine is best known for epistemological holism. "Semantic
holism" would simply mean that semantics is not established word by word but at the
level of sentences or texts or even languages as wholes. I do not see how it affects
internalism/externalism though, that is about where it is "stored". Not even coherentists
like Davidson claim that semantics/reference can be established without a relation to the
world, but this relation is not seen as semantic, for Davidson it is purely causal.
Conifold Mar 8 at 19:51

show 2 more comments

up vote

down vote

Consider this analogy:

Take a functionalist position in the Philosophy of Mind that says:

(F) The content of each mental state is determined by its relation to other mental states,
and the input-output relations it has to entities outside the mind.

This is both an externalist and a holist position. And both the holistic and the
externalistic theses it combines are ontological, not epistemological. They are about
what is, not about how we can know, believe, etc. This does not mean that this
functionalist thesis cannot have epistemological consequences when combined with a
particular epistemology, but that is beside the point.

Combining semantic holism with semantic externalism is analogous. There is no prima

facie reason why they are not compatible.

shareimprove this answer

answered Mar 7 at 6:09

user2738815

361

add a comment

up vote

down vote

Conifold's answer seems to contain all the relevant materials, but I'll try to arrange them
a bit differently.

So yes, there seems to be a certain collision between semantic externalism and holism.
The reason is not because holism implies internalism (as your first point suggests) but
because holism disputes the very distiction between internal and external (this is closer
to your second point). To put it another way: externalism is indeed "about meaning".
Holism is "about meaning" mainly in a negative sense: it rejects the traditional concept
of meaning. As to grounds, externalism was based on a consideration of how a linguistic
reference is fixed (one of Putnam's assumptions, in the Twin Earth argument for
externalism, was that an item cannot be a piece of "meaning" if it does not serve to fix a
reference). Holism was based on a consideration of the analytic / synthetic distinction,
while abstracting from and mostly ignoring the very idea of linguistic reference.

As to your third point, I agree that there is a sense in which holism is a deeper
alternative. Holism views things from a more flexible, less committed point of view. On
the other hand holism is more abstract, and there is not much guidance how to apply it
in new particular cases. So that one might "get lost" more easily with holism.

Externalism about meaning VS. Holism about meaning

up vote
9

down vote

favorite

3 points are not clear to me about the relations between externalism (Kripke, Putnam)
and holism (Quine):

Is there a way according to which externalism and holism can be held together or are
they inherently contradicting each other? It seems that holism implies that the meaning
of a term depends upon its linguistic description, its conceptual role or its relations to
other terms within the web of language. According to externalism the meaning is (at
least partially) external to the mere language. Does this mean that the two approaches
contradict?

Externalism about meaning says that there are two different kinds of sentences that can
be said about an object - contingent and necessary. "Kripke is the son of X" will be
necessary because it's essential to "Kripke". "Kripke is a logician", on the other hand, will
be contingent. Quine says that there is no difference between Analytic and synthetic
sentences. Now, the Analytic / Synthetic division is not the same as the necessary /
contingent one, but yet, they are somehow connected. Does the fact that sentences can
be divided in general into two categories create some problems to Holism?

If the two do contradict, it seems to me that Holism would be a better choice only
because it goes deeper. I can say that the sentence "Kripke is the son of X" seems to be
necessary only because the predicate "son of" in the my specific language bares a
linguistic relation to "necessary". In other words - it's only because my web of words if
organised this way and not the other that some sentences seem necessary and some
seem contingent. Therefore, this metaphysical characteristic of sentences is only an
illusion. Holism says - meaning is in the language. Externalism says - given a language
(or "in the current world") this and that are correct (water is H2O and not XYZ, for
example). Hence, it seems to me like Holism goes deeper and can explain why
externalism fails. Am I missing something?

philosophy-of-language analytic-philosophy meaning quine kripke

shareimprove this question

edited Mar 6 at 14:49

asked Mar 6 at 12:57

Amit Hagin

409310

add a comment

3 Answers
active oldest votes

up vote

down vote

accepted

Holism is an epistemological position, and externalism is a semantic one. Not only is it

possible to hold them together, but it is not particularly challenging. The appearance of
incompatibility comes from the misleading use of the word "meaning". In the holism,
especially Quine's and Davidson's, "meaning" is an obscurity best left out of the
vocabulary. There is no such "thing" as "meaning", sentences involving it rephrase facts
about inference, relating concepts to one another, or acting based on them. Quine
explicitly endorses Wittgenstein's "meaning is use", see Quine and Kripkes Wittgenstein
by Jnsson. It is not too far off to say that on Quine's (and Wittgenstein's) view the
externalism/internalism distinction is altogether moot, there is no internal "there"
(traditionally hypostatized as "meaning") there. The issue is pressing only for realists
more robust than Quine.

In its turn, externalism explains how language user relates to her referents, not whether
the reference is established atomistically or holistically. The chief opponents of
externalists are not holists, but theorists of content, like Dretske and Fodor, who
advocate the computational theory of mind creed that "meaning" inheres in some sort of
materially coded "information" in the brain, and then proceed to explain how this
"information" relates to "reality" (the problem of intentionality). It is true that Kripke
gravitates towards realism, even essentialism, this is needed to ground his modal logic in
the face of Quine's objections to its interpretability. There are also disagreements over
Kripke's metaphysics vs Quine's empiricism, intensionality vs extensionality, de re vs de
dicto, etc., contingent a priori, necessary a posteriori are also related to this. Tuboly's
Quine and Quantified Modal Logic is a good review of these controversies from a
historical perspective. It is even true that Putnam finds Quine's holism to be too much,
and advocates the reality of natural kinds.

But all these issues are separate from externalism. One can perfectly well hold that we
pick up semantics semi-holistically a la Davidson (by applying charity to the totality of
other users' linguistic behavior), but that what we pick up is still external-context-
dependent, and so the "meanings" (i.e. conceptual and operational roles) are different
on Earth and Twin Earth. I suppose one could argue that holism undermines realism
(Quine's claims to be a "realist" notwithstanding), and hence the distinctions that
externalists uphold. But even anti-realists have to take ontology at least as a temporary
make believe reflecting the best of current science, and within it the question re-
emerges in a more pragmatic way: is it more effective to represent "meaning" in our
theories as an engram in the head, or as spread over the environment. I suspect that
Quine's physicalism and behaviorism would tip him towards the latter. The causal theory
of reference, which is considered to imply externalism, has a distinct holistic flavor,
reference is picked up opportunistically by imitating linguistic behavior of others.
shareimprove this answer

edited Apr 12 at 2:04

answered Mar 7 at 3:07

Conifold

21.2k1976

Thanks! yet, I have a few more questions: 1. "meaning in use" and "meaning in
inference" are more or less the same, aren't they? Yet Quine endorses the former and
not the latter. How come? 2. conceptual role semantics is supposed to answer the
problem of intentionality and is considered as a holist approach. I don't know if it's
Quinean but it seems to be a holistic position about semantics rather than epistemology.
3. a hidden assumption I have in (2) that might be incorrect: the problem of
intentionality is the problem of meaning, hence a semantic one. is it true? Is
intentionality meaning? Amit Hagin Mar 7 at 15:43

@AmitHagin Inferentialism is one form of semantic pragmatism (use), some pragmatists

are inferentialists (Brandom), others not (Dreyfus). Davidson's semantics is both
pragmatist and holist, but truth conditional, not inferential. Pragmatist approach to
intentionality is a 2-step: analyze "meaning" into more fundamental notions (inference,
social pragmatics, habits of action), tell a story of how these come to be and relate to
the world, more here. Conifold Mar 7 at 21:02

2 more things: It seems from your comment that holism can be a semantic theory as
well (not only epistemological). So is Holism as a semantic theory contradicting
externalism a a semantic theory? Also - if semantic holism is true, then the meaning of a
word doesn't need to refer to the world but to other linguistic terms. Hence, I think
intentionality can be explained without any relation to the real world, isn't it the case? (I
feel that I have semantic "powers" but I actually relate to nothing external to me). Amit
Hagin Mar 8 at 11:41

and actually 2 more things (quite methodological): 1. Why would we make a sharp
distinction between an epistemological theory and a semantic theory. It seems logical to
believe that the way knowledge is established has a lot to do with the meaning words
are given. 2. what exactly a semantic theory should answer to and what should a theory
of intentionality answer to? I'm trying to understand the relations between epistemology,
meaning and intentionality. Amit Hagin Mar 8 at 11:53
@AmitHagin I think most generally holism is a methodological approach that can be
applied to different areas, Quine is best known for epistemological holism. "Semantic
holism" would simply mean that semantics is not established word by word but at the
level of sentences or texts or even languages as wholes. I do not see how it affects
internalism/externalism though, that is about where it is "stored". Not even coherentists
like Davidson claim that semantics/reference can be established without a relation to the
world, but this relation is not seen as semantic, for Davidson it is purely causal.
Conifold Mar 8 at 19:51

show 2 more comments

up vote

down vote

Consider this analogy:

Take a functionalist position in the Philosophy of Mind that says:

(F) The content of each mental state is determined by its relation to other mental states,
and the input-output relations it has to entities outside the mind.

This is both an externalist and a holist position. And both the holistic and the
externalistic theses it combines are ontological, not epistemological. They are about
what is, not about how we can know, believe, etc. This does not mean that this
functionalist thesis cannot have epistemological consequences when combined with a
particular epistemology, but that is beside the point.

Combining semantic holism with semantic externalism is analogous. There is no prima

facie reason why they are not compatible.

shareimprove this answer

answered Mar 7 at 6:09

user2738815

361

add a comment

up vote

0
down vote

Conifold's answer seems to contain all the relevant materials, but I'll try to arrange them
a bit differently.

So yes, there seems to be a certain collision between semantic externalism and holism.
The reason is not because holism implies internalism (as your first point suggests) but
because holism disputes the very distiction between internal and external (this is closer
to your second point). To put it another way: externalism is indeed "about meaning".
Holism is "about meaning" mainly in a negative sense: it rejects the traditional concept
of meaning. As to grounds, externalism was based on a consideration of how a linguistic
reference is fixed (one of Putnam's assumptions, in the Twin Earth argument for
externalism, was that an item cannot be a piece of "meaning" if it does not serve to fix a
reference). Holism was based on a consideration of the analytic / synthetic distinction,
while abstracting from and mostly ignoring the very idea of linguistic reference.

As to your third point, I agree that there is a sense in which holism is a deeper
alternative. Holism views things from a more flexible, less committed point of view. On
the other hand holism is more abstract, and there is not much guidance how to apply it
in new particular cases. So that one might "get lost" more easily with holism.

What is compositionality of meaning and why is it syntax rather than semantics?

up vote

down vote

favorite

I don't understand why "compositionality" of meaning belongs to syntax, and isn't a

clearly semantic issue (if I understand it at all. Maybe you could give me an example).
Here is a quote from Steven W. Horst's book Symbols, Computation and Intentionality
(2011 edition, p. 6) calling it "stronger kind of syntax":
Moreover, it is not only the semantic properties of symbols that are conventional in
nature; syntactic properties, and the very symbol types themselves are ultimately
dependent upon conventions. (The fact that something is a letter p or an inscription of
the English word dog depends upon conventions that establish the existence of those
symbol types.) In particular, the kinds of syntactically based rules that are necessary for
compositionality are conventional in nature: in order to generate semantic properties for
complex representations, it is not enough to have interpretations for the primitives and
syntax in the weak sense of rules for legal concatenation or equivalence classes of
legal transformations.

Rather, one needs a stronger kind of syntax that involves rules for how syntactic
patterns contribute to meanings of complex representationsfor example, a rule to the
effect that if A means X and B means Y, then A-&-B will mean X and Y. The only
way we know of getting this kind of compositionality is by way of conventions.

Can somebody help me with this paragraph?

semantics

shareimprove this question

edited Sep 16 '16 at 20:29

Conifold

21.2k1976

asked Sep 16 '16 at 2:50

wolf-revo-cats

1,039523

See Compositionality : "Anything that deserves to be called a language must contain

meaningful expressions built up from other meaningful expressions. How are their
complexity and meaning related? The traditional view is that the relationship is fairly
tight: the meaning of a complex expression is fully determined by its structure and the
meanings of its constituents..." Mauro ALLEGRANZA Sep 16 '16 at 5:54

A means X and B means Y, then A-&-B will mean X and Y. What is the
difference, in this context, between single and double quote marks? And between the
ampersand and the word "and"? Lus Henrique Sep 16 '16 at 13:07

add a comment
1 Answer

active oldest votes

up vote

down vote

accepted

Compositionality applies to both syntax and semantics, it simply means that some
property of compound expressions reduces to that of their constitutive parts. In the case
of syntax the property is well-formedness, and in the case of semantics it is the
"meaning". What Horst calls "stronger kind of syntax" is exactly that semantics be
compositional, that is meanings of sentences, say, be reducible to meanings of
subsentential units according to the syntactic structure of the sentence. In other words,
this is a semantic issue, and Horst is using "syntax" here only analogically, not literally.

Semantic compositionality is the creed of the semantic representationalism common in

the traditional semantics, going back to Frege and Husserl. The argument was that for
language to be learnable and communicable its users must be able to generate
meanings of compounds out of meanings of their atomic parts syntactically, and the
meaning of atomic parts can be assigned in isolation. This argument rests however on a
kind of "intelligent design fallacy": speakers do not have to master the language by
learning "meanings" piece by piece, they can master it by mastering its lumps of
increasing complexity (like the human eye did not evolve piece by piece, but through a
sequence of wholes increasing in complexity).

Over the course of the last century representationalism came under increasing pressure
from criticism by and competing pragmatist semantic theories of Wittgenstein, Quine,
Davidson..., and recently Brandom. They are holistic rather than atomistic, and in them
Horst's compositionality is replaced by recursivity, and his conventions by customs and
practices. In Brandom's inferentialism, for example (described in Articulating
Reasons):"Grasping the concept that is applied in such a making explicit is mastering its
inferential use: knowing (in the practical sense of being able to distinguish, a kind of
knowing how) what else one would be committing oneself to by applying the concept,
what would entitle one to do so, and what would preclude such entitlement". Here is
Brandom on compositionality in his response to Fodor and Lepore:

"Compositionality is a constraint on formal semantics. But, it is argued in effect, since

holism is incompatible with compositionality, it serves also as a constraint on
philosophical semantics... The argument that projectibility and systematicity (and hence
learnability) require semantic atomism, because they require compositionality in a sense
that presupposes atomism, is fallacious. It depends upon systematically overlooking the
possibility of semantic theories that have the shape of the incompatibility semantics for
classical and modal logical vocabulary. For although that semantics is not compositional,
it is fully recursive. The semantic values of logically compound expressions are wholly
determined by the semantic values of logically simpler ones. It is holistic, that is,
noncompositional, in that the semantic value of a compound is not computable from the
semantic values of its components. But this holism within each level of constructional
complexity is entirely compatible with recursiveness between levels".

Why does Quine expand the underdetermination thesis through his global holism?

up vote

down vote

favorite

Quine's application of the problem of underdetermination took the thesis to be a problem

not only for physics (as Duhem before him), nor even for the particular sciences, but for
any and all theories about knowledge. There is as such a disagreement essentially over
the strength of the thesis between the two philosophers most associated with the thesis
of underdetermination. And there is put forward by Quine a bold conjunction between
this thesis and global holism.
However, I am curious as regards the following argument:

Quine views the fact that an infinite amount of theories can be relevant to a given topic
or empirical observation as proof that a.) an infinite amount of theories period is relevant
to any observation and b.) all such theories are entertained by theory makers, and so all
of our theories are relevant to each other and contain by certain qualification the same
empirical content, and/or empirical justification (as Quine puts it, "whatever observation
would be counted for or against the one theory counts equally for or against the other"
1992).

The mistake as I see it can be identified in the following thought problem: the
observation that wheels tend to roll downhill can be said to be relevant to a theory about
rotation because it is considered to be the case that wheels roll in 'rotations'. This
observation can also be said to be relevant to a theory of wheels, or a theory predicting
increase in velocity of a wheel, ad infinitum. In this sense there are an infinite number of
theories related to the observation at hand. For the sake of the example let's use a
theory concerned with rotation.

Now, Quine would hold that the reason we think that 'rotations' can adequately describe
a wheel is because a wheel supposedly spins around an imaginary axis located in its
center. And this imaginary axis is understood in terms of a certain point or line on an
abstract plain. As such, Quine would hold that belief in an abstract plain is entirely and
wholly relevant to the simple observation that some wheel rolls downhill. This belief,
under Quine's vision of revision and global application of the underdetermination thesis,
can be destroyed or justified, moved this way and that, by the power of the observation
of a wheel rolling down the hill.

This however is obviously not the case. And it is not the case because this line of thought
which is in some manner connected to the theory of rotations which actually is relevant
to the observation, is not relevant in the same manner to the observation for the fact
that it contains no inherent concern for the subject matter of the observation. Its relation
to the empirical observation is wholly determined by its relation to a theory that is
inherently concerned with the observation. The relevance of the abstract plain to a
rolling wheel is one derived from some theory more directly relevant to the observation.
This point can be clarified in the ambiguity that results if we hold the abstract plain in
itself to be relevant to the observation of the wheel, for there are endless ways in which
it can be said to be 'relevant', since there are endless aspects of an abstract plain and
wheels rolling. It is only when conjoined to the particular theorizing about a particular
aspect of an observation that a theory or belief can be said to be relevant to a given
observation. As such, what makes a theory 'relevant' to a given observation is its
concern for the aspect of the observation under consideration.

But as such, it just seems to be evident that certain theories really aren't 'empirically
equivalent', in that where certain theories are inherently about an aspect of an
observation, other theories are only about such an aspect in a derivative way.

Thus, Quine's notion of global holism seems to collapse.

Is this argument fair to Quine? If not, in what way is it a misread?

quine methodology

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edited May 4 '16 at 5:06

Conifold

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asked Mar 31 '16 at 2:45

Ovid

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That Quine greatly expanded Duhem's thesis (about which he learned only after writing
the Two Dogmas) is generally acknowledged. Zammito gives a detailed comparison in
The Nice Derangement of Epistemes, summarizing as follows:"Quine has extended the
original proposition of Duhem in two crucial manners. First, he has introduced the radical
phrase "come what may" into the considerations, so that he can be taken to have
endorsed "drastic" rearrangement of the web of our beliefs not merely as possible but as
plausible. Second, he has practiced a "semantic ascent" upon Duhem's empiricism,
transposing an issue of theory and experiment into an issue of language and, indeed,
situating the issue at the most holistic level within this scheme of semantics. Thus, Quine
offers phrases like: "the unit of empirical significance is the whole of science." At that
level of abstraction, there could be no real distinction of the whole of science from the
whole of language."

So I think your reconstruction somewhat undersizes and overconceptualizes Quine's

holism. The reason he thought that "the unit of empirical significance is the whole of
science" is not as much psychoanalysis of our belief reasons as his rejection of atomic
"meanings" as semantic tools, "semantic globalization". Roughly speaking, his analysis
of language led him to believe (as it did Wittgenstein) that concepts and propositions
acquire significance only as placeholders in a web of belief (or language game), not as
stand alone entities. Your observation that "wheels tend to roll downhill" is not even an
observation since it involves "induction" over a class of observations, and "meanings" of
"wheel", "roll", and "downhill", not to mention "tend to", you won't be able to explain to
others (to make sure that the same "observation" is being talked about) without referring
to other concepts, and ultimately to all of common practice that embeds them. He is
unlikely to be impressed by making distinctions about aspects and attempts to analyze
relevance for the same reasons that led him to reject the analytic/synthetic distinction,
and characterize meaning as "will-o'-the-wisp". Quine simply saw that any attempts at
distinguishing and piecemeal justification are transparently vulnerable to extensions of
the same objections that took down the logical atomism of early positivists, and took the
preemptive step of nipping the idea in the bud.

This said, Quine did walk back some of his more polemical and radical statements in his
later works, like Two Dogmas in Retrospect. This walkback however was more pragmatic
than principled: "Looking back on it, one thing I regret is my needlessly strong statement
of holism. 'The unit of empirical significance is the whole of science... Any statement can
be held true come what may.' This is true enough in a legalistic sort of way, but it diverts
attention from what is more to the point... In later writings I have invoked not the whole
of science but chunks of it, clusters of sentences just inclusive enough to have critical
semantic mass". Pragmatic approaches to stratifying and parsing Quine's and Kuhn's
holism that resonate with what you suggest were developed e.g. by Friedman in
Dynamics of Reason, and especially by the structuralist school in philosophy of science
(Suppes, Sneed), explicitly endorsed in Kuhn's Theory-Change as Structure-Change.

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answered Mar 31 '16 at 4:16

Conifold

21.2k1976

Certain clarification seems to be in order. When I say 'relevance' I mean only the extent
to which a certain belief is about something, in this case empirical content. What is then
granted by this objection is the acceptance that we have beliefs that are about empirical
content. Even this Quine would be hard-pressed to reject, no matter what his linguistic
theories led him to believe. As such, the objection as laid out has little to do with Quine's
linguistic reasons for the web. As to your criticism of the example I provided, such
doesn't really influence the gist of the objection. Ovid Mar 31 '16 at 23:29

The objection then is a criticism of the 'aboutness' of our beliefs, and their connection to
the empirical content. Quine held that any belief could have the same empirical
justification precisely because, as the objection goes, Quine ignored the aboutness of
beliefs that engenders an inherent, natural and undeniable division between our theories
and ideas. Ovid Mar 31 '16 at 23:35

That a proposition is indeterminate or not is of little import in this objection, since the
conclusions of linguistics are either subservient to this more pressing matter of our
beliefs in general or aren't directly related unless by qualification, which in any case is
still dependent on the findings of this pursuit. Of course, this all applies so long as we
grant that our beliefs are not identical to our material formulation of said beliefs in
words, which might or might not be a thesis that Quine subsumed (if it is, such might be
the source of disagreement). Ovid Mar 31 '16 at 23:38

@Ovid I see. Then you are right, even late softened Quine denies any discernible content
to beliefs beyond their "material formulation":"Repudiation of the first dogma,
analyticity, is insistence on empirical criteria for semantic concepts: for synonymy,
meaning. Language is learned and taught by observing and correcting verbal behavior in
observable circumstances. There is nothing in linguistic meaning that is not thus
determined". Conifold Apr 1 '16 at 15:54

I quite enjoyed your description there: 'late softened Quine'. And for the sake of
discussion, I have a question: do you think Quine's inclination to hold beliefs as
equivalent to the statement of said beliefs (which would explain his insistence on
analyzing concepts and beliefs in terms of their meaning and mode of reference) is a
direct result of his behaviorism (such that a 'belief' is understood as a behavior like
'language', a behavior which can be material or 'determined')? Ovid Apr 2 '16 at 3:24