Reduction and Elimination in Philosophy and the Sciences

lent. It also implies that an inventory of analytic statements
can be made up, and that with the help of first order logic
semantical rules or meaning postulates can be distilled.
In other words, the section about ‘meaning
postulates’ in Quine’s ‘Two dogmas of empiricism’
becomes unconvincing. Section 4 of ‘Two dogmas of
empiricism’ is a long critical discussion of semantical rules.
Quine writes:
Now the notion of semantical rule is as sensible and
meaningful as that of postulate, if conceived in a
similarly relative spirit – relative in time, to one or
another particular enterprise of schooling unconversant
persons in sufficient conditions for truth of
statements of some natural or artificial language L.
But from this point of view no one signalization of a
subclass of truths of L is intrinsically more a semantical
rule than another; and, if ‘analytic’ means ‘true
by semantical rules’, no one truth of L is analytic to
the exclusion of another. (1953:34)
We see that Quine argues that the characterisation of analyticity
is in the end circular. However, in view of Quine’s
extreme antifoundationalism this is hardly an objection.
Second, he argues that the distinction of analytic and synthetic
statements on the basis of semantical rules is arbitrary.
But this is hardly a serious objection to Carnap. Already
in 1934, in The Logical Syntax of Language, Carnap
had formulated his principle of tolerance, claiming that
there are no morals for setting up linguistic frameworks.
The arbirtrariness of the choice of semantic rules, and thus
of L-determinate statements is an essential ingredient of
Carnap’s later philosophy. In the early thirties, Carnap still
believed that a formal characterisation of analyticity could
be found, but he was soon convinced by Gödel, Tarski,
and McLane that the construction was flawed. Quine must
have known that Carnap was only interested in languagerelative
notions of analyticity. Moreover, there is no reason
to believe that the verification theory of meaning is still an
essential part of Carnap’s notion of meaning. Hence, it is
hard to see how Quine’s critique relates to the position
Carnap endorsed in Meaning and Necessity. It seemingly
took several decades before Quine realised that analyticity,
synonymy, meaning, and semantical rules can rather
innocuously be grounded in behavioural practice. Quine
did have serious arguments against Carnap’s various proposals
of an analytic-synthetic distinction, and certainly
with regard to the distinction between factual and mathematical
truths, but it is ironical that Quine’s most famous
argument is least firmly grounded, and even later to a
large degree withdrawn.
In The Roots of Reference, some of the critical remarks
of ‘Two dogmas’ still find an echo though. Quine
gives the following behaviourist definition of analyticity:
If the samples first acquired qualify as analytic, still
they gain thereby no distinctive status with respect
to the language or the community; for each of us will
have derived his universal categorical powers from
different first samples. Language is social, and analyticity,
being truth that is grounded in language,
should be social as well. Here then we may at last
have a line on a concept of analyticity: a sentence is
analytic if everybody learns that it is true by learning
its words. Analyticity, like observationality, hinges on
social uniformity. (1974:79)
The complaint about the complete arbitrariness of choosing
meaning postulates is here replaced by the observation
that different people learn the domestic language in a
different way, so that everyone could have an idiosyncratic
Quine on the Reduction of Meanings — Lieven Decock
notion of analyticity. The list of analytic truths is thus drastically
reduced through the requirement that everyone
must have learned the truth of an analytic sentence
through learning the language. This important qualification
notwithstanding, it is noteworthy that already in 1974
Quine gave a precise definition of analyticity by means of
which in principle a reduction of meanings was possible.
A further step in Carnap’s direction can be taken. If
analyticity hinges on social uniformity, it becomes possible
to impose the uniformity through social linguistic
engineering. For Carnap, this is entirely unproblematic. He
was actively engaged in the promotion of artificial
languages such as Esperanto. In the Vienna Circle, an
artificial pictorial language, ISOTYPE, had been
constructed by Otto Neurath and his wife. Carnap’s
construction of artificial linguistic frameworks in his major
semantical works ties in with his engineering approach
towards natural language. On this view, it is possible to
regard semantical rules not as arbitrary formal postulates,
but as social imperatives concerning the use of certain
expressions. Social uniformity need not be the result of
every individual’s learning the language, but may be
effectuated through teaching the language in standardised
ways. The normative force of schoolbooks, dictionaries,
etc. can thus significantly broaden the class of analytic
expressions. As a result, language can be transformed
and streamlined.
For Quine, however, this line of reasoning is
problematic. Quine regularly stresses that the formal
frameworks must be interpreted, and often gives the
impression that he believes that this is only possible by
borrowing their meaning from the natural language in
which they are embedded. Both in ‘Two dogmas of
empiricism’ and ‘Carnap on logical truth’, he demands that
the notion of analyticity be clear in the natural language
before application of the notion to artificial languages be
feasible (1953:36; 1976:127). On the other hand, in the
introduction to the chapter on ‘regimentation’, i.e. the
transformation of a scientific theory expressed in natural
language into a theory expressed in first order logic, in
Word and Object, Quine writes:
Opportunistic departure from ordinary language in a
narrow sense is part of ordinary linguistic behavior.
Some departures, if the need that prompts them
persists, may be adhered to, thus becoming ordinary
language in the narrow sense; and herein lies
one factor in the evolution of language. Others are
reserved for use as needed. (1960:157).
The passage illustrates Quine’s ambivalence towards artificial
languages and linguistic engineering. Sentences can
be meaningful in natural language, but meaning postulates
in artificial languages are usually parasitic on the meaningfulness
of natural languages, or at best, as the quoted
passage illustrates, can become meaningful in the long
run. Moreover, dictionaries do not stipulate meanings, but
are merely an inventory of a variety of uses:
Though the word ‘meaning’ is ubiquitous in lexicography,
no capital is made of a relation of sameness
of meaning. An entry gets broken down into several
“meanings” or “senses,” so called, but only ad hoc
to explain how to use a word in various dissimilar
situations. When a word is partly explained by paraphrasing
a sample context, as is so often the way,
the paraphrase is meant only for typical circumstances,
or for specified ones; there is no thought of
sameness of meaning in any theoretical sense.
(1995:83)
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