quine-davidson-rorty summary

Quine-Davidson-Rorty: A Summary

Bryan W. Van Norden

© 2016

(c) 2014 Bryan W. Van Norden

Classical Empiricism •  Empiricism is the view that all knowledge comes

from our physical senses. •  According to empiricism, for every meaningful

sentence, there is a particular experience that verifies or falsifies it.

•  If we cannot associate a sentence with a particular experience, then that sentence is meaningless.

•  Scientific claims are meaningful because verified or falsified by experience. Statements about religion, ethics, and most of traditional philosophy are, literally, “meaningless.”


W.V.O. Quine (1908-2000)

•  W.V.O. Quine was an empiricist, but one who thought classic empiricism was mistaken in seeing an individual sentence as getting its meaning and truth from its relationship to an individual experience.

•  Quine argued that our entire "web of beliefs" faces experience as a whole.

•  For example, a particular experience could lead us to believe "there are flying saucers" or "I saw headlights reflected off clouds." The choice of which to believe will depend on which other beliefs we are committed to.


An Image of the Classic Empiricist View

Belief1 Belief2 Belief3 Experience1 Experience2 Experience3


An Image of Quine's View

.

Beliefs

Experience

Experience Experience

Experience


Quine's Description of Things as "Posits"

"As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries -- not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer." (Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," 44, emphasis mine)


Quine's Description of Things as "Posits"

“Let me interject that for my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience." (Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," 44, emphasis mine)


Two Webs of Belief: Disputed "Posits" in Boldface

B1="A bolt of lightning killed the king." B2="The king offended Zeus." B3="Zeus punishes those who offend him." B4="Zeus is the god of lightning." B1="A bolt of lightning killed the king." B2="The king's body conducted electricity to the ground." B3="Lightning is electricity." B4="Electricity is electrons in motion."

B1

Experience

B2 B3

B4


Summary of Quine's View •  Quine was not claiming that it is arbitrary whether we believe in Zeus or atoms, flying saucers or reflected lights. Quine agrees that there are better and worse ways to adjust our theory to sensory evidence.

•  However, Quine argued that no individual sentence is uniquely connected to any individual experience.

•  He also argued that things (whether cats or ghosts) are simply "posits." We postulate that they exist in order to organize and predict our sensory experience.


Donald Davidson (1917-2003)

•  Donald Davidson was a student of Quine's.

•  Davidson agreed with Quine about many things; however, Davidson thought Quine did not go far enough in his criticism of classic empiricism.

•  Davidson rejected the notion that human knowledge could be grounded in sensory experiences in any meaningful sense.


Davidson's Description of Quine's View

"[On a view like Quine's,] for a theory to fit or face up to the totality of possible sensory evidence is for that theory to be true. If a theory [refers to] physical objects, numbers, or sets, what it says about these entities is true provided the theory as a whole fits the sensory evidence. One can see how, from this point of view, such entities might be called posits. It is reasonable to call something a posit if it can be contrasted with something that is not. Here the something that is not is sensory experience—at least that is the idea." ("On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme," 193, glosses and emphasis mine)


Davidson's Criticism of Quine's View

"The trouble is that the notion of fitting the totality of experience, like the notion of fitting the facts, or of being true to the facts, adds nothing intelligible to the simple concept of being true. To speak of sensory experience rather than the evidence, or just the facts, expresses a view about the source or nature of evidence, but it does not add a new entity to the universe against which to test conceptual schemes." (193-194, emphasis mine)


Quine vs. Davidson •  Quine is still an empiricist: the totality of our

beliefs is judged by how well it predicts and controls the totality of human experience.

•  Davidson rejects this view, arguing that it is just as obscure what it means for all of our beliefs to be true of (or predict, or control) "experience as a whole" as it is for one belief to be true of (predict, control) an individual experience.

•  To say "our beliefs fit experience as a whole" is just a colorful way of saying "our beliefs are true."


Richard Rorty (1931-2007)

•  Richard Rorty began as a fairly mainstream "analytic" philosopher. However, in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and later essays and books, he argued that mainstream philosophy was fundamentally misguided in searching for a foundation for our beliefs.

•  A significant part of Rorty's argument was based on his understanding of Quine and Davidson.


Rorty on Language and the World

•  What Rorty said about the relationship between language and the world is ambiguous.

•  Sometimes, he suggests a sensible and moderate position that he derives from Davidson.

•  Other times, Rorty slips into a way of speaking that could easily be mistaken for subjectivism, relativism, or idealism (views that make reality somehow dependent on the human mind).


Some of Rorty's Comments Suggest a Radical View

•  "...there is no way to get outside our beliefs and our language so as to find some test other than coherence [among our beliefs]." (178)

•  "We have to drop the notion of correspondence [with reality] for sentences as well as for thoughts, and see sentences as connected with other sentences rather than with the world." (372-373)


Some of Rorty's Comments Sugggest a Moderate View

"...to say that we do not know how to find a way of describing ...inquiry into nature except in our own terms...[is] just a way of saying that our present views about nature are our only guide in talking about the relation between nature and our words." (276)


Davidson's View Does Not Support the Radical Formulation that Rorty Gives

“In giving up dependence on the concept of an uninterpreted reality, something outside all schemes and science, we do not relinquish the notion of objective truth—quite the contrary. Given the dogma of a dualism of scheme and reality, we get conceptual relativity, and truth relative to a scheme. Without the dogma, this kind of relativity goes by the board. ... In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the world, but re-establish unmediated touch with the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false.” (Davidson, 198, emphasis mine)


"Unmediated Touch with...Familiar Objects"

Davidson agrees with common sense that...

•  there is a world independent of our language.

•  we can talk about language-independent objects (tables, cats, atoms, galaxies) and sensory experiences.

However, Davidson insists...

•  there is no way to "get outside of our language," in the sense that we have to use our language to talk about the world, objects, or sensory experiences. Consequently...

•  there is no helpful way of justifying our sentences through a semantic theory that explains their "correspondence" to some language-independent things. So...

•  to say "this sentence corresponds to the facts" is just a colorful way of saying "this sentence is true."

quine-davidson-rorty summary

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