cbo@utai.UUCP (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) (09/19/86)
Peter Ladkin (ladkin@kestrel) writes: | Are you familiar with the arguments of Quine that there is no | such attribute as *meaning the same thing* ? | However, he doesn't argue that everything is meaningless. Quine is a semantic behaviorist, so he thinks meanings are to be identified with sets of external stimuli. The meanings he accepts, and thus the meanings for which he acknowledges there is a criterion of individuation, are what he calls stimulus meanings. (Note: certainly Quine thinks you can compare things which are meaningful to see if they have the same meaning. This is just a consequence of one of his biggest ontological claims: no entity without identity.) Quine's "arguments", such as they are, are directed toward full fledged propositional meaning. As far as I can see, the arguments are terrible: here is a sketch of the main one, the "argument from radical translation". A linguist who went to a radically different culture from ours, attempting to produce a translation manual, would have to set out by gathering two sets of stimuli for each native utterance. (These should be as close as possible to the natives perceptual input: what he sees expressed in terms of retinal stimulation). One set contains those stimuli for which the native assents to the given utterance (the positive stimulus meaning) and the other contains those stimuli for which he dissents (the negative stimulus meaning). Collectively these comprise the stimulus meaning, a kind of meaning Quine finds unproblematic (since there is an obvious criterion of individuation). Collecting stimulus meanings is all that the linguist can do, according to Quine. At this point, however, the translation manual is radically underdetermined. There will be many different manuals, each of which fits the empirical constraints available. These manuals will be different in the sense that, for example, one of them will match a native utterance A up with our utterance B, and another will match A up with C, where B and C "stand in no relation of synonomy, no matter how loose" (Quote as I remember it from Word and Object). Of course B and C are equal in stimulus meaning, but there is no more full notion of meaning which is preserved under the translation. Since meaning is supposed to be preserved under translation, and we have done the best translation possible in principle, Quine concludes that there is no such thing as meaning (or, more accurately, that stimulus meaning is the fullest kind of meaning there is). This is Quine's argument. As far as I know, all of his other arguments are just variations on this. Don't flame me with the flaws in this argument. As far as I am concerned, it is full of nonsequiturs, howlers, and incorrect assumptions. Quine afficionados, feel free to flame the interpretaion of the argument, but I think its pretty faithful. * * * Quine aside, how about some real philosophy discussion? Like, for example: Is realism correct? (vs. nominalism/idealism (old style) or positivism/constructivism (new style)). * * * Philosophy: (n). A system of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing. ---Ambrose Bierce Calvin Bruce Ostrum, University of Toronto Department of Computer Science uucp: {ihnp4 decwrl utzoo uw-beaver decvax allegra linus}!utcsri!utai!cbo arpa: cbo%toronto@csnet-relay csnet: cbo@toronto
ladkin@kestrel.ARPA (Peter Ladkin) (09/30/86)
In article <2382@utai.UUCP>, cbo@utai.UUCP (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes: > Quine's "arguments", such as they are, are directed toward full fledged > propositional meaning. As far as I can see, the arguments are terrible: > here is a sketch of the main one, the "argument from radical translation". [followed by an elegant summary of his argument from Word and Object] Quine's original argument against analyticity, necessary properties, and sameness-of-meaning, pre-dates Word and Object by many years. The radical translation argument is his positive contribution from W&O. His original comments were ad hominem, showing that the explanations of these entities were circular, and thus left room for sceptics such as himself to doubt the whole arrangement. I always thought this argument was rather good, and I still await some convincing explanation of propositions and their identity (notwithstanding the fact that I use pro forma definitions of this in formal languages without blinking). I tend to think there isn't any. The situation semantical approach seems to avoid many of the problems with precise semantics that caused the reliance on propositions and their identity, and is thus evidence that maybe we can do without the notions that Quine suggested were incoherent. Peter Ladkin ladkin@kestrel.arpa