Quine's Holistic Model of Science and Language

ABSTRACT. The main objective of this paper is to explore and describe the philosophical consequences of Quine's naturalized epistemology, Quine's semantic and confirmational holism, his project of regimenting the language of science into a canonical notation, and his behavioristic notion of stimulus meaning. In the present paper, I focus on the changes in Quine's attitude toward analyticity, Quine's rejection of by convention, his idea of how language could be regimented to reveal or remove ontological commitments, and his holistic metaphor of our knowledge as consisting of a man-made fabric.Keywords: Quine, science, language, meaning holism, naturalized epistemology1. IntroductionI am specifically interested in how previous research investigated the role that behaviorism plays in Quine's philosophy of language, Quine's empiricist rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction, his naturalized epistemology, and his meaning holism in the form of the indeterminacy of translation. Related topics I will explore include Quine's coherence objection to analyticity, his naturalistic conception of philosophy, his treatment of language as a physical phenomenon, and his intention to derive meaning holism from confirmation holism and verificationism.2. Quine's Attitude toward AnalyticityJuhl and Loomis argue that, according to Quine, the rejection of just is a part of the rejection of first philosophy (the notion of is not intelligible). A coherent explanation of analytic must be at least a rough characterization in terms of verbal behavior. Analyticity has no coherent or intelligible explanation, whereas the corresponding analytic-synthetic distinction is empty. Extensional notions like and reference are not sufficient for analyticity. Every attempt to explicate analyticity must do so with reference to notions such as cognitive synonymy or that are in turn definable using analytic.Quine rejects as circular any general characterization of analytic in terms of the notions of necessity or synonymy. The notion of should be given some empirical content. Analyticity in natural language is an unclear concept. Efforts to explain with reference to notions such as cognitive synonymy or are circular. Stimulus is suitably behavioristically based, but it is too weak to be more than a behaviorist ersatz of the philosophical notion of analyticity. There is a coherent notion of that is narrower than that of stimulus analyticity: it can be explicated in terms of our learning of the meanings of words. Common definitions of analytic are viciously circular. Juhl and Loomis state that Quine grants that some notion of akin to the traditional one of truth in virtue of meaning1 is coherent. Quine's discoveries lead him to a thoroughgoing critique of the notion of and the analyticsynthetic distinction.Quine rejects the analytic-synthetic distinction in nearly all of its traditional forms. The two empiricist dogmas are the belief in the existence of an intelligible analytic-synthetic distinction, and the belief in reductionism - meaningful statements are individually associated with extra-linguistic evidence, such as sensory experience that can confirm or disconfirm them. Juhl and Loomis say that Quine avoids the hypostasis of meanings as entities that cannot be either accounted for or eliminated through explication in empirical terms,2 grants that some abstract objects, such as classes, could be justified by the role they play in theory, uses logical methods to produce a theory of the world as consistent as possible with our best physical theories, accepts whatever entities or categories our best current theory requires, unless and until a better theory becomes available, relies solely on evidence of other people's overt behavior under publicly recognizable circumstances, assumes our physical account of the world as a starting point for inquiry, and speaks of a canonical notation as indistinguishable from the quest of ultimate categories of reality. …