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From: ladkin@kestrel.ARPA (Peter Ladkin)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Quine against meaning (was Re: Logic vs Emotion)
Message-ID: <12947@kestrel.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 29-Sep-86 18:39:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: kestrel.12947
Posted: Mon Sep 29 18:39:14 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 2-Oct-86 19:44:39 EDT
References: <2382@utai.UUCP>
Organization: Kestrel Institute, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 26

In article <2382@utai.UUCP>, cbo@utai.UUCP (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) writes:
> Quine's "arguments", such as they are, are directed toward full fledged
> propositional meaning. As far as I can see, the arguments are terrible:
> here is a sketch of the main one, the "argument from radical translation".

[followed by an elegant summary of his argument from Word and Object]

Quine's original argument against analyticity, 
necessary properties, and sameness-of-meaning, pre-dates
Word and Object by many years. The radical translation argument 
is his positive contribution from W&O. His original comments were 
ad hominem, showing that the explanations of these entities were
circular, and thus left room for sceptics such as himself to
doubt the whole arrangement. I always thought this argument
was rather good, and I still await some convincing explanation
of propositions and their identity (notwithstanding the fact
that I use pro forma definitions of this in formal languages
without blinking). I tend to think there isn't any.
The situation semantical approach seems to avoid many of the
problems with precise semantics that caused the reliance on
propositions and their identity, and is thus evidence that
maybe we can do without the notions that Quine suggested
were incoherent.

Peter Ladkin
ladkin@kestrel.arpa