The Ontological Foundations of Holism

Quine argues in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” that the empiricist project is plagued by

two unempirical dogmas: analyticity and reductionism. While these aspects of empiricism may

collapse, Quine erects an empiricism in its place supposedly free from dogma. In this version of

empiricism, Quine advocates a holism with respect to verification and a thoroughgoing

pragmatism about ontological constructs. In other words, ontological truths are only true in

reference to their systematic assumptions and thus no ontological fact is necessary and non-

revisable in a robust sense. These claims lead Quine to adopt a sort of ontological relativity as

expressed in his essay of the same name. The first argument in this paper will be that this

adoption is in tension with an implied realism toward sense experience. Quine, while freeing

himself from some of the unreflective aspects of the empiricist project, upholds a place for sense

experience as an ontological foundation. This, I argue, is in conflict with previously adopted

facets of Quine’s project. Quine cannot uphold a foundational place for sense experience while

maintaining holism and ontological relativity1. Secondly, I argue that what conflicts in this case

is not a sort of realism, qua realism, but where Quine chooses to limit his realism. Taking

Wittgenstein’s suggestion that “what is given..are forms of life”, I suggest that locating an

ontological foundation in what Wittgenstein and the contemporary scholar Michael Thompson

call “forms of life”, we might maintain both a non-empirical realism and Quine’s suggestion of

holism.

Quine and the Empirically Given

1 This is not ontological relativity of a radical sense. Rather, relativity that I want to defend is dependency of concepts on the sort of language used to express them. This seems to be the sort of relativity that Quine has in mind in Word and Object, rather than the more radical relativity that states that concepts are nothing but language.

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As I mentioned in the introduction, Quine’s critique of empiricism aims at two

undefended assumptions: analyticity and reductionism in verification. The second dogma, the

dogma of reductionism, is the view that a proposition, if it is significant, must be reducible to

experience from which it can be logically derived. The significance of the proposition rests on

its relation between the proposition and the experience which would confirm or deny it. Quine

rejects a one-to-one relationship between a proposition and its confirming experience. Instead,

he suggest that “our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not

individually but only as a corporate body”.2 An experience or observation can confirm or

disconfirm an individual proposition only given certain assumptions.3

An observation does not conflict with a proposition in isolation but together with other

propositions. These propositions are referred to together as a system or theory. Quine suggests

that when an observation shows that a system or theory must be overhauled, it leaves us to

choose which of these interlocking propositions to revise.4 A proposition makes certain claims

or implies certain consequences which if realized would confirm it:

The typical statement about bodies has no fund of experiential implications it can call its own. A

substantial mass of theory, taken together, will commonly have experiential implications…Sometimes…an

experience implied by a theory fails to come off; and then, ideally, we declare the theory false. But the

failure falsifies only a block of theory as a whole, a conjunction of many statements. The failure shows

that one or more of these statements is false, but it does not show which.5

Thus, what confronts the “tribunal of sense experience” is not individual propositions but a

system of propositions. When an unwelcome observation presents itself what is presented is the

“whole of science”: “the unit of empirical significance is the whole of science”.6 Thus, we might

2 “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” p.41 3 DIlman, Ilham. Quine on Ontology, Necessity and Experience: A Philosophical Critique (Albany: State U of New York, 1984) 107-108 4 “Two Dogmas of Empiricism, p.42 5 Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, p. 79 6 “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” p. 42

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to try and restrict our choices, but ultimately, in the event of an unwelcome observations,

propositions not normally thought revisable become subject to the observation. In fact, Quine

makes no distinction between those propositions we are not normally prepared to revise and

those that are vulnerable to falsification. The difference between them is simply one of degree.

He uses the analogy of a web or field of force. There are propositions that lie at its boundaries

and those that are at the interior of the field, their distance to the center being a relative one.

Those that are most vulnerable to experience lie at the edges of the field; they are what Quine

calls observation sentences, those that are least vulnerable lie at the interior.

The more remote a proposition from the edge of the field, the less justified we are in

attributing a content to it individually.7 Quine states, “The typical statement about bodies has no

fund of experiential implications it can call its own”. However, at the edge of the field, what

Quine calls the observation statement, “is the minimally verifiable aggregate; it has an empirical

content all its own and wears it on its sleeve”.8

Quine’s view, at this point involves a sort of relativity that Quine finds unwelcome.

Quine suggests that observations are compelling for the reworking of systems of propositions.

He says, “When an observation shows that a system of beliefs must be overhauled, it leaves us to

choose which of those interlocking beliefs to revise.” However, if this is always the case, how

could we ever make an observation? What would we say we have observed in a particular

situation? Wouldn’t we have the same choice we have in amending our web of belief in saying

what it is we observe, or if we observed anything? In order to escape such a regress into radical

relativism, observations must compel the observer to make certain statements. In other words,

7 Ibid p.43 8 Ontological Relativity p.89

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the observation must have a significant input to the observer.9 Indeed, Quine says “The human

subject is accorded a certain experimentally controlled input-certain patterns of irradiation in

assorted frequencies, for instance-and in the fullness of time the subject delivers as output a

description of the three-dimensional external world and its history.”10 Thus, the content of

observations are the patterns of sensory stimulation of an organism. Observations are equated

with the stimulation of sensory receptors: “It is simply the stimulations of our sensory receptors

that are best looked upon as the input of our cognitive mechanism.”11

Given Quine’s holism about confirmation, we must question the relationship between

observation sentences and the theory that it is supposed to amend. Suppose I am concerned with

whether p is true. I am in a position to use my senses. The more I use and have to rely on what I

already accept as true and less my verdict depends on “the deliverances of my senses” at the

time.12 The confirmation of p is not directly caused by sensory receptors because my verdict

does not heavily rely on stimulation of sense receptor. Thus, the question is not an observation

sentence. An observation sentence is one where “our verdict depends only on the sensory

stimulation present at the time”13 But if this is all an observation depends on, it seems Quine’s

holism would make an observation sentence impossible. We must have some knowledge of

language in order to understand any observation.

Quine attempts to account for knowledge brought to the observation by speaking of

“stored information”. In light of this, he says, we must revise our criterion for an observation

sentence: “A sentence is an observation sentence if all verdicts on it depend on present sensory

9 Quine on Ontology, Necessity and Experience, 110-112 10 Ontological Relativity, 82-83 11 Ibid 84 12 Ibid 85 13 Ibid

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stimulation and on no stored information beyond what goes into understanding the sentence.”14

In spite of this, it seems unclear how the observer is to distinguish between stored information

that is relevant solely to our understanding of the sentence and stored information that goes

beyond it? Quine attempts to brush off this question by insisting that this is another iteration of

the attempt to distinguish between analytic/synthetic components of sentences.15 The possible of

such a distinction he has denied many times. Instead, we should suppose that all fluent speakers

of the language would bring the same stored information relevant to the understanding of

sentences. In respect of other stored information they would diverge. This would make their

verdicts on the truth of propositions expressed in the language they share differ, except in the

case of observation sentences. For these are defined as those sentences to the verdict of which

such information is irrelevant. Thus Quine concludes, “An observation sentence is one on which

all the speakers of the language give the same verdict when given the same concurrent

stimulation.” It is one “that is not sensitive to different past experiences within the speech

community.”16 This account seems to cut against holism advanced by Quine. How can

verification refer to the whole interconnected system of propositions if observation sentences are

only verified by a certain portion of the system, ignoring all else? Furthermore, in order for the

observation sentences to operate this way, observations must have an input prior to and

compelling for the observer to arrive at a certain proposition despite differing linguistic

commitments elsewhere.

14 Ibid p.86 15 Ibid 16 Ibid 86-87

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Quine wants to use observation sentences as the “repository of evidence for scientific

hypotheses.”17 In order for observation sentences to function in this way, they must play a

foundational role. It seems that Quine shares with the positivist a dogma: that our language,

theory, and propositions are ultimately based upon sense experience and all our knowledge arises

out of this experience.18 There is nothing in the intellect, and so in science, that was not

previously in the senses. What is in the senses is “the stimulation of sense receptors” or

“patterns of stimulation”. The content of the senses precedes language and explains it. On the

one hand, we have “the flux of experience” and on the other hand we have the

conceptual/linguistic scheme we have developed. The latter represents our way of organizing

this flux of stimulation, thus language is an instrument of organization.19 However, no matter

how the flux is organized or conceptualized the truth of the sentences ultimately rests on the

efficacy of the sentences to organize the flux of non-linguistic experience.

Here I would like to propose that Quine is actually a realist about microphysical states

that make up the “flux of experience”. These microphysical states are what observations are

about. The observer receives input from microphysical states that ultimately make up the

linguistic structures she gives to the world.20 By “microphysical states”, I mean that for Quine

physical objects are composed of a certain organization of non-specified stimulations of sense

organs. The physical object is a distinct thing only insofar as these sense stimulations occupy a

distinct space.21 These microphysical states are ultimately the input of Quinean observation

17 Ibid p.88 18 Gibson, Roger F.,“Quine, Wittgenstein and Holism” in Wittgenstein and Quine, ed. Robert Arrington and Hans-Johann Glock (Londin: Routledge, 1996) 85 19 “Quine, Wittgenstein, and Holism”, 87 20 Dejnozka, Jan. The Ontology of the Analytic Tradition and Its Origins: Realism and Identity in Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Quine. (Lanham, MD: Littlefield Adams, 1996) 263. 21 “Things and Their Place on Theory” 87

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sentences.22 Moreover, Quine sees observation sentences as the foundation for all theory and

indeed an objective science. He says, “Natural science owes its objectivity to its intersubjective

check points in observation sentences, but there is not such rock bottom for moral judgments”.23

Therefore, the “patterns of stimulation” are not explanatory posits but the objectively existent

foundation for the posited existence of all else.

As I have mentioned above, this seems problematic for the sort of holism proposed in

“Two Dogmas of Empiricism”. For how is it that we can verify observation sentences as

objective matters of fact referring to patterns of stimulation while holding in abeyance any

irrelevant stored information. Indeed, it seems that in order for observation sentences to serve as

the rock bottom of an objective science they must ensure an objective response to patterns of

stimulation, or at least have better and worse ways of being explained.24 Thus, Quine must

suppose that all observers have the same stored information relevant to basic observations or he

must suppose a compelling pattern in the microphysical states presented to the observer in the

stimulation of her sense organs.25 At this point, it seems Quine has arrived at a similar position

as the positivist he criticized. Observation sentences stand as a distinctly verified group of

statements that exist objectively and independently of the observer. In the following section I

hope to argue that the issue is not Quine’s realism about a “rock bottom” but his empiricism

about where the realism is placed. I will argue that an ontological “rock bottom” is better

reconciled with holism if it is placed on a robust concept of “form of life”.

22 The Ontology of the Analytical Tradition, 271 23 The Philosophy of W.V. Quine, L.E. Hahn and P.. Schilpp, eds. 664 24 Quine on Ontology, Necessity and Experience, 115 25 “Quine, Wittgenstein and Holism”, 88

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Realism and the Form of Life

Quine is not wrong to see the need for something ontologically basic. I believe Quine’s

intuition towards a sort of modified realism is the right one. However, my compliant is that

Quine’s aesthetic taste for desert landscapes, his enduring empiricism, and his desire for an

objective science forces him to locate an ontological foundation in place that problematizes

holistic notions of verification. Quine’s wants us to be able to posit the simplest iteration of

language and thus must support a “flux of sensations” as the matter which we might form in

different and more simplistic ways. Furthermore, Quine is unable to shake the final dogma of

empiricism that sensory input is ontologically basic and foundational for all other posits. Finally,

Quine must posit objective observation sentences as basic in order to secure a foundation for the

operation of objective scientific activity.

However, if we understood the ontologically basic without these constraints, we might

find a candidate that poses less of a threat to holistic notions of truth. My suggestion is the “form

of life”. I gather this term from two sources that might initially seem at odds. First, this term has

been used by Michael Thompson in his essay The Representation of Life. Thompson outlines the

form of life26 as a contemporary invocation of Aristotelian substance. A thing’s form of life is

defined by what sort of organism it is. For example, a jellyfish moves around in certain patterns

not accidentally, but because this is what it is to be a jellyfish.27 Thompson’s inquiry is in the

realm of ethics, yet he insists that this sort of metaphysical foundation is needed in order to give

us any notion of what are appropriate actions for a specific organism. The form of life of a

human being is not simply our biological make-up, though this is part of it, but also the sorts of

26 Thompson often uses “life-form” instead of “form of life” but equates the two terms. I will use form of life to enforce the connection to Wittgenstein. 27 Thompson, Michael “Apprehending the Life-Form” p.2-3

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actions that we ought to perform.28 Indeed, Thompson dismisses previous attempts to define

“life” as organization, stimulus response, or vital operation.29 These definitions continue to treat

life as a specific property to be added to non-living matter.30 They are insufficient because they

reduce the concept of life to a specific biological characteristics instead of realizing the “wider-

context” that surround these specific concepts. As Thompson says, “These concepts, the vital

categories, together form a sort of solid block, and we run into a kind of circle in attempting to

elucidate any of them.”31 An attempt to elucidate any one vital concept immediately involves a

context beyond that particular context. The “wider-context” that becomes apparent in any

attempt to define the concept of life is what Thompson calls the “form of life”.32 When we refer

to something as an acorn, we might think this means “oak-seed” in its wider-context. The acorn

is tied up in what it is to be an oak. But this is not all Thompson means by wider-context. The

existence of an individual organism or that we can have individual phenomenon such as eating or

reproducing, presupposes a “wider-context” that is not simply biological but substantial.33 The

form of life, as suggested above, is what it is for a thing to be what it is. It is the metaphysical

given that grounds individual instances of the organism and the practices it engages in.

The second source for my concept of form of life is Wittgenstein’s Philosophical

Investigations. I claim that for Wittgenstein the form of life is the given, or fundamental fact.

This is not simply an epistemological concept but a realist one. The form of life is what is

ontologically basic. This might seem a hard to square with Wittgenstein’s claims. First, for

Wittgenstein, there are various “grammatical” kinds of being seemingly determined by

28 “The Representation of Life” Ethics and Practice p.57 29 Ibid, p. 34-46 30 Ibid, p. 47 31 Ibid, p.47 32 Ibid, p.53 33 Ibid, p. 56

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language.34 Wittgenstein almost calls them grammatical fictions, and does speak of grammatical

illusions.35 What Wittgenstein refers to as “the bewitchment of metaphysics” is due to our

considering these grammatical categories as actual “queer” kinds of being, owing to a misleading

picture of all words as referring. The bewitchment of ontology is to consider being itself a queer

kind of being, leading to the same misleading picture.36 This picture is that all words are names;

this picture is shared by realist, idealists, nominalists.37 Indeed, these claims suggests a deep

irrealism. However, Wittgenstein distinguishes between looking and seeing how words are used

from being bewitched by a picture of what words mean.38 How words are used, the rules they

follow, is Wittgenstein’s fundamental fact.39 He says, “The fundamental fact is that we lay

down rules, a technique, for a game, and when we follow the rules, things do not turn out as we

assumed”.40 Thus, he admits a fundamental fact. Furthermore, Wittgenstein says, “The

language games are…set up as objects of comparison…We can avoid ineptness…only by

presenting the model as what it is, an object of comparison.”41 “Philosophy may in no way

interfere with the actual use of language…It leaves everything as it is.”42 And, as I had quoted

Wittgenstein earlier, “What has to be accepted, the given is…the forms of life.”43 Forms of life

for Wittgenstein are substantive and primary as “fundamental facts”. What actually happens, the

forms of life that human beings follow, are real and fundamental. Nicholas Gier, in his

Wittgenstein and Phenomenology, makes the case for whole languages or forms of life as more

34 The Ontology of the Analytic Tradition, 254 35 Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations. #97, #110, #307 36 Ibid, #116 37 Ibid, #383, #402, #436 38 Ibid, #66, #115, #122 39 The Ontology of the Analytic Tradition, 255 40 Philosophical Investigations, #125 41 Ibid, #131 42 Ibid, #124 43 Ibid, #226

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ontologically basic than specific language-games in Investigations.44 And indeed, Wittgenstein

makes a distinction between game of chess and the theory of chess. There is flexibility in the

ways that the game might be played, yet the theory of chess expresses the limits of what it is to

be the game of chess. In the same way, the human being might slice up language and being into

different notions, yet there ways in which she might violate “the way that things are”; the

fundamental form of life.

Here we might see the connection being developed between Thompson and Wittgenstein.

Thompson’s connection of form of life with what it is to be a human being is very similar to the

linguistic/cultural forms of life that limit Wittgenstein’s language game.45 Both are claiming a

holist realism on the level human language and action. Thompson and Wittgenstein claim that

what is basic to the ontological scheme are forms of life. These forms encompass the “wider-

context” or the theory in which particular claims are made. Furthermore, both thinkers allow for

a sort of relativity about how things are said/done. That things are said and done is fundamental.

Yet, how they are said and done might be relative to species or linguistic-cultural concept. The

notion of “form of life”, as I have explained it, is one that is species specific but also

fundamental for our linguistic life.

Form of Life and Holism

As we have seen, Quine commits himself to a sort of realist empiricism in his attempt to

escape a radical form of relativism. Quine assumes an ontological foundation in the reality of

the stimulation of the sense-receptors. These are proto-physical states serving as the components

44 Gier, Nicholas F. Wittgenstein and Phenomenology: A Comparative Study of the Later Wittgenstein, Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty (Albany, NY: State U of New York, 1981) 135 45 The Ontology of the Analytic Tradition, 257

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for observation sentences. Observation sentences are objective reports of sense-stimulation

which serve as the foundation of an objective science. Quine’s disposition toward an empiricist

understanding of what is basic, as well as an aesthetic taste for desert landscapes, leads Quine to

accept this sort of realism in response to radical relativism. I have claimed that accepting this

sort of realism problematizes other aspects of Quine’s project. Specifically, this brand of realism

makes it difficult to see how one can genuinely hold to a holistic view of verification. Assuming

as ontologically basic the micro-physical states, the stimulation of our sense receptors, in order

justify independently observation statements for a normative foundation of objective science

creates a sub-set of independently verified statements which are so because of their ontologically

superior content. Thus, Quine’s limited realism, which seeks to find the most content-bare

phenomenon and crown it as ontologically basic, fails to avoid creating a privileged subset of

statements. This, I have said, destroys a genuine holism.

However, if the form of life is adopted as the ontologically basic category we might

maintain holistic notions. Without the compulsion in Quine to reduce metaphysical

commitments, we do not find it difficult to adopt the metaphysical and species specified wider-

context suggested by Thompson. Furthermore, Wittgenstein’s conception of the form of life

suggests a foundational context formed by the practical lives of human beings. What is basic for

Thompson and Wittgenstein is the ways that things are actually used/done by human beings.

The elevation of the everydayness of human use to the basic ontological category allows us to

genuinely assert that holistic verification is possible, even necessary. The form of life suggest

that the whole precedes any part of it. In a metaphysics of the form of life, the whole defines any

particular instance. Any attempt to define that particular must ultimately appeal to the form of

life for explanation. At one point, Quine comes close to recognizing this by suggesting that in

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trying to explain a statement one is ultimately reduced to pointing.46 Yet, Quine ultimately

interprets this as helpful only because one engages a fundamental, empirically given,

observation. Again, this gives us the metaphysical assumption of meta-physical states. What is

really needed to uphold a holistic verification is the recognition of a metaphysics of forms of life.

When we recognize that the linguistic/practical lives of human beings is itself non-reducible, we

find a metaphysical basis for assuming a holistic view of verification. When a human being is

explaining herself, what is foundational is not pointing as a pointer toward an empirically given

object, but rather pointing as a basic human action. We point not at an object but at the very

form of our life and answer with Wittgenstein, “this is just what I do”.

In conclusion, we have seen that Quine’s holistic views of verification are in conflict with

an implied realism about proto-physical states. Quine’s system admits a sub-set of

independently verified statements. This is a direct result of the empirically modified realism that

Quine adopts. I have argued that this is a mistake not because of realism, qua realism, but

because of where we limit this realism. In essence, this is a problem of reduction. Holism

cannot reduce the given to anything “simpler” than the system by which it verifies. What is

needed is a top-down explanation by way of substantial forms of life. If we adopt forms of life

as the ontologically basic, then verification, by its very nature is holistic. Explanation is not a

reduction to proto-physical states, but concentric circles leading outward toward wider and wider

contexts. The rock bottom is the basic structure of the form of life.

46 Quine, Word and Object. 78