| Phi 346-02 Spring 2014 |
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For Mon. This paper (actually the text of a lecture) surveys views that Quine later developed as a book, Word and Object (1960), which was his major work.
• Quine later referred to the situation of the linguist that he describes in §I as “radical translation” and its upshot as the “indeterminacy of reference.” Although the discussion may seem an introductory device here, it will be more significant later in the paper. Quine placed significantly more weight on it in Word and Object and later work.
• The description of language learning that Quine gives in §II is something else he developed further in later work. Here it serves him mainly as a device for showing the central role of individuation in reference (something he will be express later in the lecture by way of the slogan “No entity without identity”).
• Quine’s account of series of “phases” of language learning in §III serves to highlight different aspects and elements of language. By the end, you should notice connections between Quine’s discussion here and his talk of “posits” at the end of “Two Dogmas.”
At the end of the section, Quine mentions a figure of speech due to Otto Neurath (1882-1945), a philosopher-economist who was a member of the Vienna Circle, and it has become quite well known (thanks largely to Quine). Neurath states it in a single sentence:
We are like sailors who must rebuild their ship on the open sea, never able to dismantle it in dry-dock and reconstruct it there out of the best materials.
“Protocol Sentences,” G. Schick (tr.), in Logical Positivism, A. J. Ayer (ed.), The Free Press, 1959, p. 201.
This figure is naturally contrasted with one in Descartes’ Discourse on Method (pt. 2), where he compares his philosophical activity to rebuilding a house from its foundations.
For Wed. Although Quine will return at the end of “Speaking of Objects” to ideas from the first section, in much of §§IV-V he is concerned with a range of topics related to his concerns in the initial segments of “Two Dogmas.”
• Quine main concern in §IV is with issues regarding attributes. However, in an interlude or digression on pp. 16f, he discusses the referentiality of terms in ascriptions of belief. This is closely related to the question whether a language is “extensional,” which came up in §III of “Two Dogmas.” In Word and Object, Quine adapted a term used by Russell to speak of the issue as one of “referential transparency” (vs. “referential opacity”), and this has become the most common way of speaking about the issue.
• After a discussion of whether to posit objects of belief at the beginning of §V, Quine speculates about the possibility of fundamental changes in our ontology. His comments at the end about the significance of the idea of such a change anticipate the ways in which ideas from §I were developed in his later work.