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The Philosophical Significance of Quine's D-Thesis Is Considered THE PHILOSOPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF QUINE'S D-THESIS THE PHILOSOPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF QUINE'S D-THESIS BY BRADLEY R. MUNRO Thesis Presented to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of the University of Waterloo in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy The University of Waterloo 1975 ii © Owner: Bradley R. Munro Year: 1975 The University of Waterloo requires the signature of all persons using this thesis. Please sign below and give address and date. iii I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. I authorize the University of Waterloo to lend it to other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. Signature _____________________________________________________ Bradley R. Munro iv FRONTISPIECE "I take it that the intent of science is to ease human existence. If you give way to coercion, science can be crippled, and your new machines may simply suggest new drudgeries." (B. Brecht, Galileo, pp. 123-4) "It is impossible to leave outside the laboratory door the theory that we wish to test, for without theory it is impossible to regulate a single instrument or interpret a single reading.'' (P. Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory. p. 182) "All the sciences are interconnected as by a chain; no one of them can be completely grasped without the others following of themselves and so without taking in the whole encyclopedia at one and the same time." (R. Descartes, Opuscules de 1619-21, iv, Adam & Tannery vol. x, p. 255.) "Theories are built upon facts; and conversely the reports upon facts are shot through and through with theoretical interpretation." (A.N. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, Introduction} "A man demonstrates his rationality, not by a commitment to fixed ideas, stereotyped procedures, or immutable concepts, but by the manner in which, and the occasions on which, he changes those ideas, procedures, and concepts." (S. Toulmin, Human Understanding, Frontispiece) "The heart of recent arguments about conceptual change is the insight that no single ideal of 'explanation', or rational justification - such as Plato and Descartes found in formal geometry - is applicable universally in all sciences at all times." (S. Toulmin, Human Understanding, p. 176) v Table of Contents Title......................................................................................................i Title Page...............................................................................................ii Copyright...............................................................................................iii Declaration.............................................................................................iv Frontispiece............................................................................................v Table of Contents...................................................................................vi Preface...................................................................................................ix Acknowledgments..................................................................................xii Abstract.................................................................................................xiii Chapter One: Introduction.............................................................................................1 Quine's D-thesis.......................................................................................4 Exposition................................................................................................8 Chapter Two: Quine's Development and the D-thesis....................................................21 Meaning and Reference............................................................................23 Reference, Ontology, and Language.........................................................24 Conceptual Schemes, and Ontology.........................................................37 The Status of Meanings............................................................................38 Ontological Commitment.........................................................................39 vi Alternative Conceptual Schemes..................................................................44 The Ontological Claims of Conceptual Schemes .........................................47 Singular Terms and Quine's Preferences ......................................................56 Synonymy......................................................................................................67 Two Dogmas of Empiricism........................................................................ 74 Chapter Three: Criticism of the D-thesis...............................................................................89 The Trivial Case of the D-thesis...................................................................97 The Non-Trivial Case..................................................................................105 Grünbaum's 'Falsifying' Counter-Example...................................................107 The Special Case..........................................................................................109 Counter-Examples to Grünbaum's Counter-Example...................................111 Grünbaum's Second Counter-Example: The General Case..........................122 Semantical Stability.......................................................................................131 The Impossibility of Grünbaum's Counter-Example.....................................146 Summary........................................................................................................149 Chapter Four: Teasing Out the D-thesis (D-thesis and Meaning Change)............................153 Frankfurt's Other Criticisms...........................................................................168 Frankfurt's Suggestions..................................................................................171 Meaning Change............................................................................................173 The Paradoxes of Meaning Variance.............................................................179 vii Scheffler's Solution..........................................................................................186 Quine's D-thesis and Meaning Change............................................................195 Chapter Five: The Philosophical Significance of the D-thesis...............................................200 Observation and Theory...................................................................................204 The Logic of Hypothesis (Falsification)...........................................................211 Crucial Experiments.........................................................................................220 The Linguistic Component in Science..............................................................224 Pragmatic Factors.............................................................................................227 The System of Science.....................................................................................234 Conclusion.......................................................................................................235 Appendix One: Duhem's Thesis................................................................................................239 Appendix Two: Quine's Development of Stimulus Meaning....................................................249 Exhibit One: Quine's Letter............................................................................282 Bibliography....................................................................................................285 viii PREFACE With recently sharpened tools, philosophers within the British and American tradition are mounting a renewed attack1 on the old problem of rationality. We have chosen to enter into a discussion of the problem by way of Quine's D-theoretic remarks in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism".2 There could have been other points of departure, but it is a matter of personal history that these remarks were the ones that were chosen. The fundamental problem of rationality covers a vast amount of territory and cannot be adequately treated in one dissertation; however, one can focus on some of the issues as they relate to Quine's D-thesis. The D-thesis provides a basis for rethinking the question of how one rationally decides between alternative theories of nature. Quine's approach is to treat the whole system of statements in which a particular statement is couched and not the individual statement by itself as the unit of empirical significance. From this point of view, it does not make sense to talk of the truth or falsity of isolated statements. As Grünbaum puts it: "no one constituent hypothesis H can ever be extricated from the ever-present web of collateral assumptions so as to be open to separate 1 Besides Quine, there are others who are attacking the problem of rationality anew - writers like T.S. Kuhn, P.K. Feyerabend, Mary Hesse, and Stephen Toulmin lead the way. Our work concentrates on the development of Quine's D-thesis, although mention will occasionally be made of some of these others. 2 W.V.O. Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", From a Logical Point of View 2nd. ed., (New York, 1963) pp. 20-46. ix refutation ... just as no such isolation is achievable for purposes of verification.3 Further, under such a construal, science is no longer pictured as somehow totally objective and value-free, but
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