display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
| 9009 | Single words are strongly synonymous if their interchange preserves truth [Quine] |
| Full Idea: We can define, it would seem, a strong synonymy relation for single words by them being interchangeable salva veritate. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This is a first step in Quine's rejection of synonymous sentences. He goes on to raise the problem of renate/cordate. Presumably any two word types can have different connotations, and hence not always be interchangeable - in poetry, for example. |
| 9007 | It makes no sense to say that two sentences express the same proposition [Quine] |
| Full Idea: My objection to propositions is not parsimony, or disapproval of abstract entities, ..but that propositions induce a relation of synonymy or equivalence between sentences (expressing the same proposition), and this makes no objective sense. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Personally I think propositions are unavoidable when you try to connect language to activities of the brain, and also when you consider animal thought. And also when you introspect about your own language processes. Mr Quine, he wrong. |
| 9008 | There is no rule for separating the information from other features of sentences [Quine] |
| Full Idea: There is no evident rule for separating the information from the stylistic or other immaterial features of the sentences. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: There is no rule for deciding precisely when night falls, so I don't believe in night. I take a proposition, prima facie, as an answer to the question 'What exactly do you mean by that remark?' How do you extract logical form from sentences? |
| 9010 | We can abandon propositions, and just talk of sentences and equivalence [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Why not just talk of sentences and equivalence and let the propositions go? Propositions have been projected as shadows of sentences, but at best they will give us nothing the sentences will not give. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I don't understand how you decide that two sentences are equivalent. 'There's someone in that wood'; 'yes, there's a person amongst those trees'. Identical truth-conditions. We can formulate a non-linguistic fact about those truth-conditions. |
| 9021 | A good way of explaining an expression is saying what conditions make its contexts true [Quine] |
| Full Idea: A reasonable way of explaining an expression is by saying what conditions make its various contexts true. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I like the circumspect phrasing of this, which carefully avoids any entities such as 'meanings' or 'truth conditions'. Maybe the whole core of philosophy of language should shift from theories of meaning to just trying to 'explain' sentences. |