graph TB
A['The King of England'] -- expresses --> B(a meaning/sense)
B -- determines --> C(Charles)
Two Dogmas, Continued
David Sanson
2026-09-16
Preliminaries
Agenda
Announcements
- Reading for today was Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”
- Reading for next week is selections from Saul Kripke’s book, Naming and Necessity
Review and Warm Up
Agenda
Logical Empiricism: a Vision
Language makes contact with experience in the form of basic observation sentences, e.g.,
This is red.
‘This’ refers to some immediate object of sense experience, and ‘is red’ categorizes it by how it appears.
Logical Empiricism: a Vision
Fire Engines are red.
More abstract sentences reduce, via definition and logical analysis, to basic observation sentences.
Logical Empiricism: a Vision
This leaves a residue of sentences that are not basic observation sentences and do not reduce to basic observation sentences.
These are either nonsense (metaphysics and theology) or analytic (mathematics and logic).
The Two Dogmas
One [dogma] is a belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact, and truth which are synthetic, or grounded in fact.
The other dogma is reductionism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience.
What even are meanings/senses?
- The meaning is not ‘The King England’.
- The meaning is not the King England.
- The meaning is something intermediate between the two.
What even are meanings/senses?
graph TB
A['The King of England'] -- expresses --> B(a meaning/sense)
B -- determines --> C(Charles)
- The meaning is not ‘The male monarch of England’.
- The meaning is not the male monarch of England.
- ‘Male monarch’ and ‘king’ are synonyms.
- A synonym is another word or phrase with the same meaning.
- That entity—the meaning itself—remains elusive.
The Business of a Theory of Meaning
Once the theory of meaning is sharply separated from the theory of reference, it is a short step to recognizing as the business of the theory of meaning simply the synonymy of linguistic forms and the analyticity of statements; meanings themselves, as obscure intermediary entities, may well be abandoned. (22-23)
- When two words “mean the same thing”, is there really a third thing—a “meaning”—that both express?
- Or is the “entification” of meanings just sloppy talk for a relation of synonymy between them?
Some Analogies
- When two things “have the same property”, is there really a third thing—a “property”—that both instantiate?
- Or is the “entification” of properties just sloppy talk for a relation of similarity?
- When two animals are “of the same species”, is there a third thing—a “species”—that stands above them?
- Or is the “entification” of species just sloppy talk for a network of relationships between individual animals?
Shifting Project
Instead of first giving a theory of meanings, and then using that theory to explain synonymy and analyticity, let’s look at strategies for making sense of synonymy and analyticity directly.
Analyticity as Truth by Definition
Agenda
Proposal
There are those who find it soothing to say that the analytic statements of the second class reduce to those of the first class, the logical truths, by definition; ‘bachelor’, e.g., is defined as ‘unmarried man’. But how do we find that ‘bachelor’ is defined as ‘unmarried man’? (24)
He puts this as a “how do we find” question. But really, he is asking about what makes it so.
Dictionary Definitions Presuppose Synonymy
The lexicographer is an empirical scientist, whose business is the recording of antecedent facts; and if he glosses ‘bachelor’ as ‘unmarried man’ it is because of his belief that there is a relation of synonymy between these forms, implicit in general or preferred usage prior to his own work. […] . Certainly the “definition” which is the lexicographer’s report of an observed synonymy cannot be taken as the ground of the synonymy (24)
Dictionary Definitions and Usage
Just what it means to affirm synonymy, just what the interconnections may be which are necessary and sufficient in order that two linguistic forms be properly describable as synonymous, is far from clear; but, whatever these interconnections may be, ordinarily they are grounded in usage. Definitions reporting selected instances of synonymy come then as reports upon usage. (25)
Definitions as Explications
In explication the purpose is not merely to paraphrase the definiendum into an outright synonym, but actually to improve upon the definiendum by refining or supplementing its meaning.
- the biologist offers an explication of ‘fish’: in past usage, the extension of ‘fish’ included whales, but it is better to change that, so that it does not include whales.
- Followers of Frege offer an explication of ‘meaning’: in past usage, it is ambiguous between sense and reference, but it is better to change that, and only use it for sense.
Definitions as Explications
Such a definition still owes its explicative function to pre-existing synonymies (25)
Do you see why?
Definitions as Conventional Abbreviations
Quine goes on about this at some length. Here is a relatively simple example:
- ‘Or’, in English, has both an inclusive and exclusive reading.
- Suppose we offer an explication of ‘or’, on which only the inclusive reading is allowed.
- We can then define ‘P xor Q’ as an abbreviation for ‘(P or Q) and not (P and Q)’.
Definitions as Conventional Abbreviation
But these correlations are not arbitrary. They are supposed to show how the primitive notations can accomplish all purposes, save brevity and convenience, of the redundant language. Hence the definiendum and its definiens may be expected, in each case, to be related in one or another of the three ways lately noted. The definiens may be a faithful paraphrase of the definiendum into the narrower notation, preserving a direct synonymy as of antecedent usage; or the definiens may, in the spirit of explication, improve upon the antecedent usage of the definiendum; or finally, the definiendum may be a newly created notation, newly endowed with meaning here and now. (27)
Only the last case plausibly gives rise to a new synonymy. But that case does not account for the relation between, e.g., ‘bachelor’ and ‘unmarried man’.
Interchangeability
Agenda
Proposal
A natural suggestion, deserving close examination, is that the synonymy of two linguistic forms consists simply in their interchangeability in all contexts without change of truth value; interchangeability, in Leibniz’s phrase, salva veritate. (27)
This is Frege’s test for co-reference. If we apply it to words as they occur both in direct and indirect contexts, it is a test for sameness of both reference and sense.
Examples
- I saw a bachelor shopping at Kroger.
- I saw an unmarried man shopping at Kroger.
Examples
- Lois believes that Superman flies.
- Lois believes that Clark Kent flies.
- Lois believes that the man who wears his underwear outside his tights flies.
Examples
- The ancient Greeks initially believed Venus to be two separate stars: Phosphorus, the morning star, and Hesperus, the evening star.
A Small Problem
Truths which become false under substitution of ‘unmarried man’ for ‘bachelor’ are easily constructed with help of ‘bachelor of arts’ or ‘bachelor’s buttons’. Also with help of quotation, thus: ‘Bachelor’ has less than ten letters. Such counterinstances can, however, perhaps be set aside by treating the phrases ‘bachelor of arts’ and ‘bachelor’s buttons’ and the quotation ‘’bachelor’’ each as a single indivisible word and then stipulating that the interchangeability salva veritate which is to be the touchstone of synonymy is not supposed to apply to fragmentary occurrences inside of a word. (27-28)
Can we unpack this?
Modal Contexts
Suppose we grant the test. We need to find sentences where interchangeability fails exactly when the two words are not synonymous. Quine suggests:
- Necessarily all and only As are Bs.
If ‘A’ and ‘B’ are synonymous, then this should be equivalent to the logical truth,
- Necessarily all and only As are As.
Modal Contexts
For example,
- Necessarily all and only bachelors are bachelors.
is true (indeed, a logical truth), and so is the sentence that results from replacing ‘unmarried men’ with ‘bachelors’:
- Necessarily all and only bachelors are unmarried men.
On the current proposal, this is what it is for ‘unmarried men’ and ‘bachelors’ to be synonyms.
Modal Contexts
And,
- Necessarily all and only creatures with hearts are creatures with hearts.
is true, but this is not:
- Necessarily all and only creatures with hearts are creatures with kidneys.
This shows that ‘creatures with hearts’ and ‘creatures with kidneys’ are not synonyms.
Modal Contexts
And,
- Necessarily, 9 is odd.
- Necessarily, the number of planets is odd.
The first is true, but the second false, showing that ‘9’ and ‘the number of planets’, though they are co-referential, are not synonymous.
“Necessarily”
What about:
- Necessarily, all and only triangles are triangles.
- Necessarily, all and only triangles are trilaterals.
Does this preserve truth? Are ‘triangle’ and ‘trilateral’ synonyms?
“Necessarily”
What about:
- Necessarily, the force exerted by this physical object is the force exerted by this physical object.
- Necessarily, the force exerted by this physical object is the product of its mass and its acceleration.
Does this preserve truth? Are the terms synonyms?
“Necessarily”
Let us see what there is about the above argument that gives it its air of hocus-pocus. The condition of interchangeability salva ve-ritate varies in its force with variations in the richness of the language at hand. The above argument supposes we are working with a language rich enough to contain the adverb ‘necessarily’, this adverb being so construed as to yield truth when and only when applied to an analytic statement. But can we condone a language which contains such an adverb? Does the adverb really make sense? To suppose that it does is to suppose that we have already made satisfactory sense of ‘analytic’. (29)
“Necessarily”
‘Necessarily’, in English, has different strengths: physical necessity, mathematical necessity…
The analysis only works if ‘necessarily’ just means ‘is analytic’, then our analysis is:
- It is analytic that all and only triangles are triangles.
- It is analytic that all and only triangles are trilaterals.
Another Problematic Example…
I do not know whether the statement ‘Everything green is extended’ is analytic. Now does my indecision over this example really betray an incomplete understanding, an incomplete grasp of the “meanings”, of ‘green’ and ‘extended’? I think not. The trouble is not with ‘green’ or ‘extended’, but with ‘analytic’. (31)
Everything green is extended.
Is this analytic?