Philosophy 250 16 February

1
Philosophy 25016 February

• Announcements
• Reading
• Gillies, The Duhem Thesis and the Quine Thesis p.
  257
• Commentary pp. 365 - 374
• Maxwell,The Ontological Status of Theoretical
  Entities p. 1052.
• Paper One
• Due Date Wednesday 3/18

2
Quine Two Dogmas of Empiricism

• What is Quine saying about Science?
• Logical Positivist ideas about science were
  foundationalist
• Simple empirical observations provide an
  absolutely certain foundation for complex/general
  knowledge claims.
• This Empiricist Foundationalism relies on two
  dogmas
• Analyticity There are two kinds of true
  sentences analytically true sentences and
  synthetically true sentences.
• Reductionism

3
Dogma One Analyticity

• Ben Affleck is Ben Affleck
• Either its raining outside or its not raining
  outside
• All bachelors are unmarried men
• Analytic Statements are true solely by virtue of
  the meaning of their terms.
• For empiricists, these sentences are trivially
  true. They cannot provide a foundation for
  complex knowledge (like science)
• Synthetic Statements are true because they
  contain accurate descriptions of the world.
• For empiricists, these sentences contain real and
  important content. Complex knowledge can be
  built with such sentences as a foundation.

4
Definition

• Maybe we can explicate our justification for
  claiming analytic statements are true by showing
  that the synonyms can be obtained through
  definition
• Three types of definition
• Lexicographical
• Explicative
• Introduction of a new concept by definition
• None of this works to explicate analytic truth.

5
Interchangeability

• What were looking for is Cognitive Synonym
• Maybe Cognitive synonym Interchangeability
  salva veritate
• Interchangeability salva veritate is extentional
• Two concepts/ terms are interchangeable if they
  have the same extension
• Thus, Interchangeability salva veritate does not
  equal cognitive synonymy.
• Animals with hearts and Animals with kidneys.
• And thus we cannot get at analyticity through
  Interchangeability salva veritate

6
Undermining Empiricism

• Analytic/Synthetic Distinction is Unsupportable
  (Dogma)
• Analytic Statements are true solely by virtue of
  the meaning of their terms.
• Relies on the concept of synonymy (same meaning)
• There is no account of synonymy that works to
  provide analyticity.

7
Undermining Empiricism

• Analytic/Synthetic Distinction is Unsupportable
  (Dogma)
• The meaning of (complex) Synthetic Statements can
  be reduced to a set of experiential or
  observational statements.
• Can this part of the distinction be maintained?
• Quine thinks not.

8
Reductionism

• Reductionism Every meaningful statement is held
  to be translatable into a statement about
  immediate experience
• Our meaningful statements must be translatable
  into sense-data language.

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Verification

• Two statements have the same meaning (are
  synonymous) if they are confirmed or disconfirmed
  by the same empirical experience.
• What is the nature of the relation between a
  statement and the experiences which contribute to
  or detract from its confirmation?

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Reductionism

• Radical Reductionism Every meaningful statement
  is held to be translatable in a statement about
  immediate experience
• Our meaningful statements must be translatable
  into sense-datum language.
• But scientific statements dont seem to work this
  way.
• It doesnt appear to be possible to reduce all
  statements about the world into statements about
  immediate experience.

11
Quines Positive Suggestion

• Watered down empiricist reductionism (pg 295)
• Still too tied to the verification theory of
  meaning.
• Holism Our statements about the empirical world
  face the tribunal of experience not individually,
  but only as a corporate body

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Holism

• Scientific knowledge is a network of
  interconnected beliefs whose boundaries are
  defined by experience.
• Individual statements do not have empirical
  content except in the context of the whole
  network.
• Science provides a conceptual framework for
  making sense of the world - making future
  predictions in light of past experience.
• Physical objects (eg. Electrons, genes) are
  imported into the conceptual scheme as useful
  instruments.