On a Suggestion of Katz

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On a Suggestion of Katz W. V. Quine The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 64, No. 2, Some Recent Issues in Linguistics. (Feb. 2, 1967), pp. 52-54. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X%2819670202%2964%3A2%3C52%3AOASOK%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K The Journal of Philosophy is currently published by Journal of Philosophy, Inc..

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their epistemological status is becomes a more acute question for empiricists. Second, although such cases do not come under analyticity in the narrow sense, the obvious cases of analytic sentences, such as (3), do, and this shows that whatever empirical support there seemed to be for the existence of a full-width analytic-synthetic distinction on the basis of these obvious cases is no longer available. This casts further doubt on the empiricist claim that linguistic considerations suffice to account for the epistemological status of alleged necessary truths. Thus, there are two notions of analyticity, the one with which I have been concerned, which derives from Kant, and the one that Quine refers to as "full-width analyticity," which is sought by Carnap and other logical empiricists. The latter was intended to serve as the basis for a linguistic account of necessary truth and so to divide necessary truths from truths of contingent fact as to leave no middle ground upon which the metaphysician could take a stand. But, although the former concept of analyticity is well defined and empirically motivated, it will not serve the empiricist's purposes, because the analytic-synthetic distinction it draws gives the metaphysician much too much ground on which to stand, whereas the latter notion is not only a mere promissory note but one whose redemption is made far less likely by the fact that obvious cases of analytic sentences cannot now be construed as evidence for the existence of an analytic-synthetic distinction in this wide sense. One loses confidence that someone can pay back the money he owes after learning that all the money he's been flashing about is really someone else's. JERROLD J. KATZ

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

ON A SUGGESTION OF KATZ NALYTICITY is a supposed trait of certain sentences, or of certain uses of them. I have felt the notion to be insufficiently empirical. A notion having to do with language seems peculiarly unpromising if its relation to observable behavior is obscure, for language is first and last a system of dispositions to observable behavior. The very learning and teaching of a language rests on socially observable responses to socially observable circumstances. It is ironical that empiricists have so seldom mistrusted the notion of analyticity for its want of behavioral criteria, and the irony is double in the case of empiricists with a bias toward language.

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Katz, unlike so many, evidently agrees with me that a satisfactory version of analyticity would have to carry with it some approximate behavioral criterion. Let us look to his.* Some of the apparatus that surrounds his account of analyticity, in this paper or elsewhere, can be set aside as inessential to the central issue. This is true of his devices for coping with homonymy, since our analyticity problem would remain even if our language were miraculously pruned of homonyms. Again it seems desirable to by-pass, if we can, the system of classification which he calls "semantic markers." For, even if it were possible by superimposing these classes to determine every meaning, there might still be argument as to the arbitrariness of the classes used. In a passage near the end of his paper, Katz happily cuts through all this and epitomizes his approach by suggesting a direct test of analyticity with a minimum of auxiliary constructions. The informant is presented with lists of sentences. List A contains 'No bachelor is married', 'Black swans are black', and others. Such a sentence as 'Some dogs are black' would appear only in another list. The informant is then called upon to sort further sentences into the lists. Even if this test brings results that are uniform from informant to informant, it affords at best a criterion for analyticity in English. For another language new lists would be needed, and no linguistically general method is offered for making such lists. T o offer one would be to define analyticity for languages generally. Not to offer one is to fall afoul of what Katz has called my "generality criticism." Still it would be ungrateful not to prize a criterion for analyticityin-English. Even if less general than could be wished, analyticity-inEnglish is far more to the point than analyticity-in-Lo, where Lo is merely some newly invented language whose very definition includes a stipulation of what sentences to call analytic. Katz's proposed criterion of analyticity-in-English is that native informants generally put the sentence into list A. Degrees of analyticity could be measured, I suppose, in terms of the amount of agreement among informants and the average swiftness of decision. Also some refinement might be introduced into the definition to allow for chains of reasoning on the informant's part in the case of complex examples. Sentences that informants do not pretty generally agree to put into list A have low analyticity on the imagined scale. Roughly speaking, they do not count as analytic. Therefore, in the really interesting re-

* In "Some Remarks on Quine o n Analyticity," this 1967): 36-52.

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gions-notably in scientific theories-where philosophers have trouble sorting out the analytic sentences, none would count as analytic. Such point as the notion of analyticity was once supposed to have for the philosophy of science would in this way be largely forfeited. This I have long thought inevitable. But then we must recognize that Katz's criterion, like my own criterion of stimulus analyticity, defines something other than the analyticity notion I have criticized. This he seems to appreciate. The fact remains that, if evidence should accumulate to suggest that there is an impressively broad range of sentences which nearly all informants would put into list A, this would be a uniformity worth studying. A study of common traits of such sentences, and of psychological mechanisms behind them, might help us on some semantical points which have been ill served by the uncritically posited dichotomy between analytic and synthetic. In conclusion I turn briefly to some remarks of Katz's on synonymy. He represents me as "endorsing lexical definition," i.e., definition of words by synonymous words or phrases. I have repeatedly stressed the contrary. "Knowing words is knowing how to work out the meanings of sentences containing them. Dictionary definitions are mere clauses in recursive definitions of the meaning of sentences." "Synonymy in the small is no primary concern of the lexicographer; lame synonyms plus stage directions are quite satisfactory insofar as they expedite his primary business of explaining how to translate or paraphrase long speeches. We may continue to characterize the lexicographer's domain squarely as synonymy, but only by recognizing synonymy as primarily a relation of sufficiently long segments of discourse." Katz voices two objections to explaining meanings by equating expressions. One of them has to do with ambiguity; but ambiguity dwindles as we move out to sentences and longer sentences. The other is that the equating of expressions in respect of meaning does not say "what the meaning of either is." But this, if true, seems of little consequence as long as we understand one of the pair of equated expressions. W. V. QUINE

Harvard University 1

"Russell's Ontological Development," this JOURNAL, LXIII,

21

(Nov.

10,

659. 2

From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1953)~p. 58,

1966):

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[Footnotes] *

Some Remarks on Quine on Analyticity Jerrold J. Katz The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 64, No. 2, Some Recent Issues in Linguistics. (Feb. 2, 1967), pp. 36-52. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X%2819670202%2964%3A2%3C36%3ASROQOA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X 1

Russell's Ontological Development W. V. Quine The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 63, No. 21, American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Sixty-Third Annual Meeting. (Nov. 10, 1966), pp. 657-667. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X%2819661110%2963%3A21%3C657%3AROD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P

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