ONT Re: Quine -- Two Dogmas Of Empiricism
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TDOE. Note 8
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| 2. Definition (cont.)
|
| Definition is not, indeed, an activity exclusively of philologists.
| Philosophers and scientists frequently have occasion to "define"
| a recondite term by paraphrasing it into terms of a more familiar
| vocabulary. But ordinarily such a definition, like the philologist's,
| is pure lexicography, affirming a relation of synonymy antecedent to
| the exposition in hand.
|
| Just what it means to affirm synonymy, just what the interconnections
| may be which are necessary and sufficient in order that two linguistic
| forms be properly describable as synonymous, is far from clear; but,
| whatever these interconnections may be, ordinarily they are grounded
| in usage. Definitions reporting selected instances of synonymy come
| then as reports upon usage.
|
| There is also, however, a variant type of definitional activity which does
| not limit itself to the reporting of pre-existing synonymies. I have in
| mind what Carnap calls 'explication' -- an activity to which philosophers
| are given, and scientists also in their more philosophical moments. In
| explication the purpose is not merely to paraphrase the definiendum into
| an outright synonym, but actually to improve upon the definiendum by
| refining or supplementing its meaning. But even explication, though
| not merely reporting a pre-existing synonymy between definiendum and
| definiens, does rest nevertheless on 'other' pre-existing synonymies.
| The matter might be viewed as follows. Any word worth explicating
| has some contexts which, as wholes, are clear and precise enough
| to be useful; and the purpose of explication is to preserve the
| usage of these favored contexts while sharpening the usage of
| other contexts. In order that a given definition be suitable
| for purposes of explication, therefore, what is required is not
| that the definiendum in its antecedent usage be synonymous with
| the definiens, but just that each of these favored contexts of
| the definiendum, taken as a whole in its antecedent usage, be
| synonymous with the corrsponding context of the definiens.
|
| Two alternative definientia may be equally appropriate for the purposes
| of a given task of explication and yet not be synonymous with each other;
| for they may serve interchangeably within the favored contexts but diverge
| elsewhere. By cleaving to one of these definientia rather than the other,
| a definition of explicative kind generates, by fiat, a relation of synonymy
| between definiendum and definiens which did not hold before. But such a
| definition still owes its explicative function, as seen, to pre-existing
| synonymies.
|
| Quine, "Two Dogmas", pp. 24-25.
|
| 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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