ONT Re: Quine -- Two Dogmas Of Empiricism
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TDOE. Note 5
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| 1. Background for Analyticity (cont.)
|
| For the theory of meaning a conspicuous question is the nature
| of its objects: what sort of things are meanings? A felt need
| for meant entities may derive from an earlier failure to appreciate
| that meaning and reference are distinct. Once the theory of meaning
| is sharply separated from the theory of reference, it is a short step
| to recognizing as the primary business of the theory of meaning simply
| the synonymy of linguistic forms and the analyticity of statements;
| meanings themselves, as obscure intermediary entities, may well be
| abandoned.
|
| The problem of analyticity then confronts us anew. Statements which are
| analytic by general philosophical acclaim are not, indeed, far to seek.
| They fall into two classes. Those of the first class, which may be
| called 'logically true', are typified by:
|
| (1) No unmarried man is married.
|
| The relevant feature of this example is that it not merely
| is true as it stands, but remains true under any and all
| reinterpretations of "man" and "married". If we suppose
| a prior inventory of 'logical' particles, comprising "no",
| "un-", "not", "if", "then", "and", etc., then in general
| a logical truth is a statement which is true and remains
| true under all reinterpretations of its components than
| than the logical particles.
|
| But there is also a second class of analytic statements,
| typified by:
|
| (2) No bachelor is married.
|
| The characteristic of such a statement is that it can be
| turned into a logical truth by putting synonyms for synonyms;
| thus (2) can be turned into (1) by putting "unmarried man" for
| its synonym "bachelor". We still lack a proper characterization
| of this second class of analytic statements, and therewith of
| analyticity generally, inasmuch as we have had in the above
| description to lean on a notion of "synonymy" which is no
| less in need of clarification than analyticity itself.
|
| Quine, "Two Dogmas", pp. 22-23.
|
| W.V. Quine,
|"Two Dogmas of Empiricism", 'Philosophical Review', January 1951.
| Reprinted as pages 20-46 in 'From a Logical Point of View',
| 2nd edition, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1980.
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