1 Reading Quine's Claim That Definitional Abbreviations Create Synonymies Gary Ebbs Draft June 15, 2015 in Section 2 Of

Reading Quine’s claim that definitional abbreviations create synonymies Gary Ebbs Draft June 15, 2015 In section 2 of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” Quine claims that when we explicitly introduce a new, previously meaningless expression, As, to serve as an abbreviation for a longer, already meaningful expression, S, we thereby create a “transparent” synonymy between As and S. (Quine 1953a, p. 26) In sections 3 and 5 of “Two Dogmas”, Quine explains why he is skeptical of all other species of synonymy. According to H. P. Grice, P. F. Strawson, Paul Boghossian, Scott Soames, and many others, Quine’s claim that definitional abbreviations create synonymies is in tension with his skepticism about the notion of synonymy for other cases. I shall argue that this kind of criticism is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of Quine’s reasoning in “Two Dogmas.” 1. A first look at the context for Quine’s claim In section 1 of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” Quine grants that first-order logical truths are analytic and asks how to extend this partial characterization of the set of analytic sentences to include such supposedly analytic sentences as “Bachelors are unmarried.” He accepts, provisionally, that a sentence is in the wider class if “it can be turned into a logical truth by putting synonyms for synonyms” (Quine 1953a, p. 23), but notes that this characterization of analyticity “lean[s] on a notion of ‘synonymy’ which is no less in need of clarification than analyticity itself.” (Quine 1953a, p. 23) In sections 2 and 3 of “Two Dogmas” Quine considers various ways of trying to clarify the relevant sense of the term ‘synonymy’ and its cognates, as these terms appear in his assumed, preliminary characterization of the wider class of analytic sentences. In section 2, Quine considers the initially tempting idea that the relevant synonymies rest on, and are therefore explained by, definitions. Against this idea, he argues that some of the synonymy relations that are supposed to be relevant to the wider class of analytic statements hold between expressions, such as ‘Bachelor’ and ‘unmarried man’, that were already in use prior to any explicit definitions we may have subsequently given them. In such cases, as well as cases in which we seek to “improve on” a term already in use “by refining or supplementing its meaning,” our definitions do not clarify the synonymy relation relevant to analyticity, since they are supposed to be faithful to prior and independent relations of sameness or similarity of meaning between a term we define, the definiendum, (such as ‘Bachelor’) and the terms in which we define it, the definiens (such as ‘unmarried man’). Immediately following these observations, Quine makes his claim about definitional abbreviation: 1 There does, however, remain still an extreme sort of definition which does not hark back to prior synonymies at all; namely, the explicitly conventional introduction of novel notations for purposes of sheer abbreviation . the definiendum becomes synonymous with the definiens simply because it has been created expressly for the purposes of being synonymous with the definiens. Here we have a really transparent case of synonymy created by definition; would that all species of synonymy were as intelligible. For the rest, definition rests on synonymy rather than explaining it. (Quine 1953a, p. 26) Quine concludes that the initially tempting thought that synonymies rest on, and are therefore explained by, definitions, is incorrect. “Definition does not hold the key to synonymy.” (Quine 1953a, p. 27) Definition therefore cannot help us extend the first, partial characterization of the set of analytic sentences as the set of first-order logical truths, to obtain a clear characterization of a wider class of analytic truths that includes such supposedly analytic sentences as “Bachelors are unmarried.” 2. The Grice-Strawson criticism H. P. Grice and P. F. Strawson object to Quine’s claim in the above passage about definitional abbreviation, as follows: If we are to take these words of Quine seriously, then his position as a whole is incoherent. It is like the position of a man to whom we are trying to explain, say, the idea of one thing fitting into another thing, or two things fitting together, and who says: “I can understand what it means to say that one thing fits into another, or the two things fit together, in the case where one was specifically made to fit the other; but I cannot understand what it means to say this in any other case.” Perhaps we should not take Quine’s words too seriously. But if not, then we have the right to ask him exactly what state of affairs he thinks is brought about by explicit definition, what relation between expressions is established by this procedure, and why he thinks it unintelligible to suggest that the same (or a closely analogous) state of affairs, or relation, should exist in the absence of this procedure. For our part, we should be inclined to take Quine’s words (or some of them) seriously, and reverse his conclusions; and maintain that the notion of synonymy by explicit convention would be unintelligible if the notion of synonymy by usage were not presupposed. (Grice and Strawson 1956, pp. 152- 153) It is striking that Grice and Strawson equate taking Quine’s words “seriously” with reading his claim that definitional abbreviations create transparent synonymy in a way that is incompatible with his skepticism about the notion of synonymy by usage. They mention the possibility that Quine might be able to explain “what state of affairs he thinks is brought about by explicit definition,” but they don’t pause to investigate this. I would have thought, however, that to take Quine’s words seriously is to try to understand them in the way that Quine understood them. Instead of making this effort, however, they “reverse his conclusions” by pressing the criticism that “the notion of synonymy by 2 explicit convention would be unintelligible if the notion of synonymy by usage were not presupposed.” Many others have raised similar criticisms. Paul Boghossian, for instance, writes [Quine’s] skepticism about synonymy has to boil down to the following somewhat peculiar claim: Although there is such a thing as the property of synonymy; and although it can be instantiated by pairs of tokens of the same orthographic type; and although it can be instantiated by pairs of tokens of distinct orthographic types, provided that they are related to each other by way of an explicit stipulations; it is, nevertheless, in principle impossible to generate instances of this property in some other way, via some other mechanism.… (Boghossian 1996, p. 372) And in a similar vein, Scott Soames writes that Quine … seems to have forgotten that the issue that is central to his overall argument is not how synonymies get created, but whether the notion of synonymy—i.e. sameness of meaning—makes sense. His position is that it doesn’t. But if it doesn’t, then to grant that explicitly stipulated synonyms are genuinely synonymous is to say something inconsistent with his overall conclusion. It is telling, I think, that even Quine’s dedication to his larger, negative, argumentative purposes was not enough to prevent a glimpse of the denied truth from breaking through. (Soames 2003, pp. 364-365, fn 8,) What Soames does not mention (though surely he knows this, since no careful reader of “Two Dogmas” could miss it) is that the burden of section 2 of “Two Dogmas” is not to establish that synonymy is a doubtful notion, but to show that definition does not clarify the notion of synonymy, except in the special case of explicitly conventional abbreviations. How then could Soames have arrived at the conclusion that Quine “seems to have forgotten that the issue that is central to his overall argument is … whether the notion of synonymy—i.e. sameness of meaning—makes sense”? The answer, I think, is that like Grice, Strawson, and Boghossian, Soames believes to accept that there are any clear cases of synonymy is thereby also to accept that a fully general notion of synonymy makes sense, and is therefore incompatible with doubting that the notion of synonymy makes sense in general, for any two expressions of a language. Grice, Strawson, Boghossian, and Soames appear to think that there’s something about the very idea of synonymy that Quine is committed to rejecting. They therefore see Quine’s insistence that he finds some cases of synonymy clear as incompatible with his skepticism about the notion of synonymy for other cases. What exactly do they take the incompatibility to be? To answer this question it helps to consider a related criticism articulated by William Lycan. Lycan says that Quine’s “concession” that definitional abbreviations create synonymies 3 is larger and more damaging than perhaps Quine realized in making it. For it seems to allow that there are analyticity-generating synonymies and so genuine instances of full-fledged analyticity, even if they are few. … The idea of adventitious stipulated definition as it would have to be construed for the purpose of saving analyticity must presuppose the notion of strict, analyticity-generating synonymy. (Lycan 1991, p. 122) The problem, according to Lycan, is that in order to save analyticity, stipulated definitions would have to be construed in such a way that “[they] and their consequences cannot be false, and thus are necessarily true.” (Lycan 1991, p. 125) Thus understood, however, Quine’s claim that definitional abbreviations create synonymies is incompatible with Quine’s well-known rejection of the view that there are some statements that cannot be false, in the sense that they are necessarily true, where being necessarily true is understood as an objective modal property of the statement.

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