The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things (79 page)

32
See e.g.
Philosophy of Logic
, p. 81.

33
Quine occasionally acknowledges some rare and artificial exceptions that do satisfy this criterion of synthetic truth (e.g. ‘Vuillemin’, p. 620, and ‘Five Milestones’, p. 71). But ‘rare and artificial’ is the operative phrase – these statements are able to satisfy the criterion only because they differ in certain fundamental respects from most statements – so I think we can afford to ignore them. He also sometimes says that ‘observation’ statements satisfy the criterion (e.g. ‘Epistemology Naturalized’, p. 89). But I see this as another relaxing of his position in ‘Two Dogmas’.

34
Note that my exegesis here brings me into conflict with Michael Dummett, who in Dummett (
1978l
), p. 375, argues that Quine is not denying the very coherence of the analytic/synthetic distinction, merely denying that, on one clear characterization of analytic and synthetic truths, there are any truths of either kind. For a counterargument see Moore (
2002a
), §I. For further attacks on the analytic/synthetic distinction, see White (
1952
) and Waismann (
1968
). For a defence of it, see Grice and Strawson (
1956
). And for discussion see Putnam (
1975
).

35
Quine himself cites all three of these distinctions in ‘Two Dogmas’, p. 20.

36
It is perhaps the distinction that we find in the later Wittgenstein that is least vulnerable to Quine’s attack, given Wittgenstein’s own sensitivity to the way in which various pragmatic forces can bring it about that the very statements we use at one time to say how things must be we may later find ourselves using to say how they are not: see
Ch. 10
, §3 (and see again the material cited in n. 37 of that discussion). But ironically, given that there is something strikingly similar to Wittgenstein’s vision in Carnap (see §3(e) of the previous chapter), Carnap’s distinction may also be a good deal less vulnerable than most: this relates to the points made in nn. 30 and 31.

37
Note that Quine is similarly unsympathetic to the various other distinctions of meaning that we saw the logical positivists draw among statements, whereby some have ‘non-literal’ meaning and are therefore neither true nor false. For Quine, if a statement has meaning at all, its very form makes it true or false. This is because he accepts what he calls ‘Tarski’s paradigm’, by which he means, roughly, the view that calling a statement true is equivalent to issuing it (e.g.
Philosophy of Logic
, p. 12; cf. ‘Equivalent Systems’, p. 242). ‘[This] paradigm,’ he writes, ‘works for evaluations … as well as for statements of fact. And it works equally well for performatives. “Slander is evil” is true if and only if slander is evil, and “I bid you good morning” is true of us on a given occasion if and only if, on that occasion, I bid you good morning’ (‘Austin’, p. 90). We might wonder whether this involves a thinning of the logical positivists’ conception of sense-making which leaves Quine vulnerable to the Limit Argument (see §6 of the previous chapter). In fact, however, it involves an assimilation of all sense-making to scientific sense-making which allows him, harmlessly, to view the project of drawing a limit to our sense-making as the broadly scientific project of accounting for how interactions between us and our environment cause some of what we do to make sense and some of it not to.

38
Cf. ‘Epistemology Naturalized’, p. 80, where he urges that logical positivists ‘espoused a verification theory of meaning but did not take it seriously enough’.

39
‘Unempirical’ is a word that he uses to stigmatize the analytic/synthetic distinction (‘Two Dogmas’, p. 37). We can readily imagine him using it to stigmatize any of the rest of these distinctions.

40
We saw how the Fregean notion of sense subserves Frege’s own analytic/synthetic distinction in
Ch. 8
, §§4 and 5.

41
This would be a stretching of Frege’s own notion. But Quine does sometimes talk in such terms: see e.g.
Pursuit of Truth
, p. 102, where for ‘propositions’ we can read ‘(Fregean) thoughts’; and cf. ‘Ontological Relativity’, pp. 27–29.

42
See
Word and Object
,
Ch. 2
. See also ‘Translation’, ‘Facts’, and ‘Translation Again’. For a further indication of how much (or how little) counts as making sense of things in this context, see
Roots of Reference
, pp. 51–52. For discussion of Quine’s views on indeterminacy, see Dummett (
1978l
); Kirk (
1986
); Gibson (
1986
); Hookway (
1988
), Pt III; Zabludowski (
1989
); Morris (
2006
),
Ch. 11
; and Hylton (
2007
),
Ch. 8
. In the Appendix to this chapter I shall suggest that there is tension between Quine’s commitment to this new distinction and his rejection of the various others that we saw him reject in the previous section.

43
Towards some metaphysics – and in particular, towards the sort of metaphysics which, in Wittgenstein’s phrase, takes language ‘on holiday’ (Wittgenstein (
1967a
), Pt I, §38) – he has straightforward logical positivist antipathy. (Cf.
Word and Object
, p. 133, and ‘Structure’, p. 406.) There is a delicious example of this which I cannot resist quoting, since the quotation is a personal favourite of mine. Henryk Skolimowski, in his contribution to a book of essays on Quine (Skolimowski (
1986
)), makes a series of needling proposals about Quine’s ideas, in a spirit of broad hostility, about which he himself comments, ‘I can anticipate Professor Quine’s response to my proposals. He is likely to say that he doesn’t know what I mean by my assertions about the spiral of understanding as corresponding to the walls of our cosmos’ (p. 489). Quine’s response, in ‘Skolimowski’, is mischievously caustic: ‘Skolimowski predicts that I will pretend not to understand what he means by his “assertions about the spiral of understanding as corresponding to the walls of our cosmos.” I am tempted, perversely, to pretend that I do understand. But let us be fair: if he claimed not to understand me, I would not for a moment suspect him of pretending’ (p. 493).

44
Cf. ‘Natural Kinds’, pp. 126–127. Note: it follows that Quine’s answers to the three questions that I posed in §6 of the Introduction are nowhere near as clear as the Carnapian answers proffered in §5(b) of the previous chapter. (This is especially true of the Creativity Question. The possibility alluded to in n. 26 of the Introduction is pertinent here: see
Word and Object
, p. 161. But Quine’s sectarian commitment to certain evidence-transcendence facts means that even his attitude to the Transcendence Question is unstraightforward.) I shall not pursue this matter.

45
See Hylton (
2007
),
Ch. 9
.

46
Does it also receive support from Tarski’s paradigm (see above, n. 37)? Quine explicitly argues not (
Pursuit of Truth
, pp. 90–91). For a contrary argument, see Williamson (
1994a
), §7.2.

47
See e.g. ‘Responses’, pp. 174–175.

48
There is room for concern about whether this compromises Quine’s naturalism. For this issue, at least as Quine conceives it, is arguably not of the kind that exercises natural scientists themselves.

49
‘Do well’ may be too weak. There are those who think that we do well to include such apparatus for heuristic reasons, without its embodying any truth: see e.g. Field (
1980
) and Melia (
1995
). (For some comments relevant to the question of what ‘do well’ might come to in this context, see Soames (
2009
), p. 442.)

50
But ‘credited with’ is the operative phrase; see Thorburn (
1918
).

51
For a sense of how deep his reluctance is, see his early essay ‘A Constructive Nominalism’, which is co-authored with Nelson Goodman and which the authors open by declaring, ‘We do not believe in abstract entities’ (p. 105). For a later retraction of that declaration, see
Word and Object
, p. 243, n. 5.

52
For further views of Quine’s in ontology, see
Word and Object
,
Ch. 7
, passim. For an illuminating discussion, see Hylton (
2004
).

53
Much of the material in this section derives from Moore (
2006b
), §V. I am grateful to the editor and publisher of the issue of
Philosophical Topics
in which that essay appears for permission to make use of this material.

54
It is interesting to note in connection with this objection how evasive much of Quine’s language is. In
Pursuit of Truth
he speaks of ‘the flow of evidence from the triggering of the senses to the pronouncements of science’ (p. 41). The word ‘flow’ here nicely epitomizes the very fudge of which McDowell takes him to be guilty.

55
Cf. Putnam (
1981
), pp. 5–6.

56
Johnson famously thought it was enough: see Boswell (
1887
), Vol. I, p. 471.

57
Cf. also Stroud (
1984
),
Ch. 6
, esp. pp. 250–254.

58
Roger Gibson, in Gibson (
1995
), §IV, cites further instances of this sort of objection, including that of Barry Stroud mentioned in the previous note, and tries to defend Quine against them. His defence seems to me question-begging.

59
Cf. Hookway (
1988
),
Ch. 12
, esp. §6. Cf. also Williams (
2006m
). And for a strenuous defence of the idea that there is a non-scientific way of making sense of making sense of things, see Gadamer (
2004
). This idea will dominate Part Three: see esp. Chs 17 and 18.

60
Cf. Rorty (
1972
), p. 459.

61
I have presented the argument in the form of a dilemma. But there is also the exegetical issue of which horn, if either, Quine is actually impaled on. In my essay I suggested the second. This fits the material in n. 37 which shows Quine prepared to assign truth to statements other than ‘statements of fact’. One might protest that he is prepared to do this only when the statements in question have meaning. But in any relevant non-question-begging sense, statements about matters that Quine takes to be indeterminate do have meaning; witness his own freewheeling use of them (see e.g. the material straddling pp. 334–335 of ‘Stroud’). It is noteworthy also that there are passages in which Quine treats sympathetically of the idea that mathematical truth outstrips factuality: see e.g. ‘Putnam’, p. 430;
Pursuit of Truth
, §40; and
From Stimulus to Science
, pp. 56–57. All of that said, there are reasons, also, for seeing Quine as impaled on the first horn – though I am not much moved by them. I know of only two, and I find neither decisive. (One reason why I find neither decisive is that we can always attribute to Quine a further, incidental inconsistency, of the sort that was noted in n. 19.) The first is Quine’s enthusiastic reception in ‘Gibson’ of Roger Gibson (
1986
), where Gibson glosses ‘indeterminate’ as ‘neither true nor false’ (p. 152). The second is a passage in Burton Dreben (
2004
), in the opening paragraph of which Dreben claims that ‘all except perhaps two of the sentences that follow are Quine’s’ (though he gives no references). The passage in question occurs on p. 291 and runs as follows: ‘This [i.e. a case in which there are two rival ways of translating from one language into another, each of which is compatible with all the evidence] is where, by my lights, open-mindedness [gives] way to truth-valuelessness: there is no fact of the matter. Such is indeterminacy as distinct from underdetermination.’

Chapter 13 Lewis Metaphysics in the Service of Philosophy

1. Analytic Philosophy in the Immediate Aftermath of Quine

Quine changed the map of analytic philosophy. Or perhaps the perfect tense better captures the dynamic: Quine has changed the map of analytic philosophy. To be sure, his influence, like that of any great philosopher, has been marked no less by rebellion among his successors than by discipleship. Thus many of his specific proposals about meaning, to take one central example, have been subjected to sustained counterargument, but only because they have first been subjected to sustained scrutiny. And even when philosophers who have disagreed with him have not been particularly concerned to justify their disagreement, they have felt obliged to register it. It would be out of the question, now, for an analytic philosopher to make pivotal but uncritical use of the analytic/synthetic distinction, something that was commonplace before Quine’s onslaught.
¹