“We learn language only through hearing it in observable situations; it’s a matter of observable behaviour. […] It’s the sentence—not the thought, not the meaning—that we have to go on. [...] Why don’t we stop with that?” —W.VO. Quine on skepticism about meaning

Here's the full video. A good discussion between Quine, Daniel Dennett, Martin Davies, and Paul Horwich.

Romanos who I take to be one of the clearest articulators of the Quinean viewpoint says this.

Which book or article is this?

Quine and Analytic Philosophy. There’s a lot I take issue with in it, but it is the most comprehensive articulation of the Quinean critique of pre-Quine analytic philosophy that I’ve read.

he’s my favorite analytic philosopher

We learn the taste of burgers only by eating burgers. It's the burgers—not a salad, not pasta, not curry—that we have to go on about the taste of burgers. Why don't we stop with burgers?

"Why don’t we stop with that?" Because translation is possible.

In a way I want to make the question pregnant: I don't know why we don't stop with that, but. . .

Hm, he is forgetting the cases of blind people...

Blind people can hear sentences...?

To answer that question I recomendo you to read "An Essay on Man" by Cassirer. Symbols, symbols everywhere!

@PAHoyeck Why don’t you just answer the question or explain it? @grok

@PAHoyeck @grok Grok put it well: «Cassirer shifts focus to symbols as active shapers of experience.» What about dead people, etc.

It’s the sound waves not the sentence, why not stop with that

I'm reading Gregory Hickok's new book "Wired for Words: The Neural Architecture of Language" to update my position on language. Too much to say about how it intersects Quine, but I like the big role "language as action" plays for GH, not unlike the line following Davidson.

Hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers. This is language, a properly constructed valid statement, but is it an observable situation?

what does “go on” mean?

In the case of analytic philosophy, the triumph of both propositions and possible worlds happened sociologically rather than through force of reasons. People just talk about them and other people copy them. FWIW I don't think you should believe in either.

Imagine, for the sake of argument, there are such things as mental states. Suppose that, due to shared physiology and environment, certain sentences are usually occasioned by similar mental states. Why not a notion of meaning involving the mental state? Deflationism > behaviorism

Well Quine has only half the situation since without the innate conceptual structures what we call 'language' would be incoherent noise. We only make sense of this outer noise because we have inner organizing structures. Surely Quine would have read The Course in Gen. Linguistics

“How do we know that what we understand by the word is how the speaker understands it?” We could just ask him.

Why we don't is a good question but we certainly don't.

Muddy communication is still communication. The ability to live and act effectively in a world of constant doubt and change is what we are stuck with being human beings.. Logic as salvation is a fruitless slog. 😏

because then we wouldn't be able to talk about or clarify the meaning of the sentence

The most compelling answer to this question for me has been that we can use different sentences to refer to the same thought/proposition: i.e., that the sky is blue can be expressed by saying, e.g., "the sky is blue," but also by saying "yes" in response.

Horwich looking cool even then.

One of my heroes !

Noam Chomsky included Quine’s book 𝑭𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝑨 𝑳𝒐𝒈𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍 𝑷𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝑽𝒊𝒆𝒘, in the bibliography of one of linguistic books. This surprised some of his fellow linguists.

Quine: stop at the sentence. No. The sentence is the readout. Meaning is the occupant. vᵢ → argmin Σvᵢ² → c = f_sel ⊙ μ Same words, different basin. Behaviour is the leak, not the stream. @OMT

pragmatismo è una cosa, scetticismo è un 'altra

Why limit ourselves? If we’re going to be skeptical, why not doubt the doubt- same as Hegel pointed out about Kantian boundaries also trying to shore up philosophy to be less messy? Human being is kinda messy, imo!

yes.

William Butler Yeats had a dream in which he met George Bernard Shaw, who was a talking sewing machine. I saw Quine on Men of Ideas, and he sounded like a machine. A brilliant, talking machine.

All I heard is that Latin and Greek should be taught as spoken languages

We don't stop there because there's more. Mucho more.

Shared physiology of perception and brain structure provide a shared absolute foundation to all human language. We have this to go on, not just 'the sentence'. Quine fell into the Wittgenstein trap. It's simple onc you divest academic fixation on closed system axiomatic thinking.

No matter what language you speak. The language part of the brain of the brain is the same for some in China and someone in the US. Our neurons and cells use exactly the same processes for millions of years. The same molecules make us hungry or sad or excited.

A wise man who truly loathed Derrida.