Willard Van Orman Quine

136 peter hylton
comments as follows:
The intervening theory is composed of sentences associated with one another
in multifarious ways not easily reconstructed even in conjecture.
There are so-called logical connections, and there are so-called causal ones;
but any such interconnections of sentences must finally be due to the conditioning
of sentences as responses to sentences as stimuli. If some of the
connections count more particularly as logical or causal, they do so only
by reference to so-called logical or causal laws, which in turn are sentences
within the theory. The theory as a whole – a chapter of chemistry, in this
case, plus relevant adjuncts from logic and elsewhere – is a fabric of sentences
variously associated to one another and to non-verbal stimuli by the
mechanism of conditioned response. (WO 11)
The meaning of ‘There is copper in it’ is thus by no means exhausted
by its direct links to stimulation – by an account of which stimulations
would prompt one to agree with it and which to disagree with
it. The sentence also plays a role in our theory and is thus linked to
countless other sentences of that theory.
For our immediate purposes, the thing to emphasize about this
account of the significance of language is that it all takes place at
the level of sentences. It is observation sentences that are linked to
stimulations; it is links between one sentence and others that play a
role in the meaning of nonobservational sentences. We might put the
point like this: An observation sentence is directly linked to stimulations,
and those links determine its correct use and thus its meaning.
For a nonobservation sentence, links to stimulations are equally important,
but in this case those links are partly or wholly indirect. The
sentence is linked to other sentences that are in turn linked to other
sentences and so on, terminating in observation sentences. This terminus
provides the empirical meaning for any sentence, however
indirect and complex the connections may be. 24
What we said about observation sentences may thus be generalized
to all sentences, though with an important qualification. For any
sentence, there is a sense in which what one needs to know to be a
competent user of that sentence does not depend on the structure of
the sentence – on its analysis into constituent parts. If one uses the
sentence as a whole correctly, both in relation to stimulations and in
relation to other sentences, then one is a competent user of it; that is
all that can be required. In particular, it is not required that one see
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