Quine on Propositions

Part-III:Diffuseness of Empirical Meaning

November 16, 2014

Evidence and Theory

Suppose an experiment has yielded a result contrary to a

theory currently held in some natural science.
The theory comprises a whole bundle of conjoint
hypotheses, or is resoluble into such a bundle.
The most that the experiment shows is that at least one
of those hypotheses is false; it does not show which.
It is only the theory as a whole, and not any one of the
hypotheses, that admits of evidence or counter-evidence
in observation and experiment.

Contarary Evidence: Evidence Against a Theory,

Not Sentences
And How Wide is a Theory? No part of science is quite
isolated from the rest.
Parts as disparate as you please may be expected to share
laws of logic and arithmetic, anyway, and to share various
common-sense generalities about bodies in motion.
Legalistically, one could claim that evidence counts always
for or against the total system, however loose-knit, of
science.
Evidence against the system is not evidence against any
one sentence rather than another, but can be acted on
rather by any of various adjustments.

An Important Exception

An important exception suggests itself: surely an

observation is evidence for the sentence that reports that
very observation, and against the sentence that predicted
the contrary.
Our legalist can stand his ground even here. He cant
point out that in an extreme case, where beliefs that have
been supported overwhelmingly from time immemorial are
suddenly challenged by a single contrary observation, the
observation will be dismissed as illusion.

Observation Sentences and Theretical Sentences.

What is more important, however, is that usually
observation sentences are indeed individually responsive
to observation. This is what distinguishes observation
sentences from theoretical sentences.
It is only through the responsiveness of observation
sentences individually to observation, and through the
connections in turn of theoretical sentences to
observation sentences, that a scientific theory admits of
evidence at all.
Why certain sentences are thus individually responsive to
observations becomes evident when we think about how
we learn language

Ostensive Learning of Linguistic Expressions

Many expressions, including most of our earliest, are

learned ostensively.
They are learned in the situation that they describe, or in
the presence of the things that they describe.
They are conditioned, in short, to observations; and to
publicly shared observations, since both teacher and
learner have to see the appropriateness of the occasion.

Learning And Behavioural Criteria of Observation

Sentences
Now if an expression is learned in this way by everyone,
everyone will tend uniformly to apply it in the presence of
the same stimulations.
This uniformity affords, indeed, a behavioral criterion of
what to count as an observation sentence.
It is because of this uniformity, also, that scientists who
are checking one anothers evidence gravitate to
observation sentences as a point where concurrence is
assured.

Connections Between Observation Sentences and

Non-observaton Sentences
We learn further expressions contextually in ways that
generate a fabric of sentences, complexly interconnected.
The connections are such as to incline us to affirm or
deny some of these sentences when inclined to affirm or
deny others.
These are the connections through which a theory of
nature imbibes its empirical substance from the
observation sentences.
They are also the connections whereby, in an extremity,
our theory of nature may tempt us to ignore or disavow
an observation, though it would be regrettable to yield
often to this temptation.

Theory Under-determined by Our Data

The hopelessness of distributing empirical information
generally over separate sentences, or even over fairly large
bundles of sentences, is in some sense widely recognised,
if only by implication.
It will be widely agreed that our theory of nature is
under-determined by our data.
It is under-determined not only by the observations we
actually have made and will make, but even by all the
unobserved events that are of an observable kind.
Briefly, our theory of nature is under-determined by all
possible observations.

What Does Under-determination of a Theory by

All Possible Observations Mean?
This means that there can be a set H of hypotheses, and
an alternative set H0 incompatible with H.
And it can happen that when our total theory T is
changed to the extent of putting H0 for H in it, the
resulting theory T0 still fits all possible observations just
as well as T did.
Evidently then H and H0 convey the same empirical
information, as far as empirical information can be
apportioned to H and H0 at all;but still they are
incompatible.

Why Notion of Propositions as Empirical Meanings

Stubborn?

This reflection should scotch any general notion of

propositions as empirical meanings of sentences. Why
then is the notion so stubborn?
Partly because the separate sentences of science and
common sense do in practice seem after all to carry their
separate empirical meanings.
This is misleading, and explicable.

Explication of the Misleading Seperateness I

Thus suppose that from a combined dozen of our
theoretical beliefs a scientist derives a prediction in
molecular biology, and the prediction fails.
He is apt to scrutinise for possible revision only the half
dozen beliefs that belonged to molecular biology.
He would not amper with the more general half dozen
having to do with logic and arithmetic and the gross
behavior of bodies.
This is a reasonable strategy a maxim of minimum
mutilation.
But an effect of it is that the portion of theory to which
the discovered failure of prediction is relevant seems
narrower than it otherwise might.

Explication of the Misleading Seperateness II

Probably, moreover, he will not even confront the six
beliefs from molecular biology impartially with the failure
of prediction;
he will concentrate on one of the six, which was more
suspect than the rest.
Scientists are indeed forever devising experiments for the
express purpose of testing single hypotheses;
and this is reasonable, insofar as one hypothesis has been
fixed upon as more tentative and suspect than other parts
of the theory.

Rejection of Hypthesis is not That of Single

Sentence
It would be a mistake, however, to see the scientists
move as one of questioning a single hypothesis while
keeping all else fixed.
His experiment is prompted by suspicion of one
hypothesis, yes;
and if the test proves negative he is resolved to reject
that hypothesis, but not quite it alone.
Along with it he will reject also any which, as he says,
imply it.
Quine thinks that he must not lean on a notion of
implication, for he is challenging that (or the associated
notion of equivalence, which is simply mutual
implication).

Rejection of a Group of Sentences Because of their

Interconnections
But we do have to recognise that sentences are
interconnected by means of associations entrenched in
behavior.
There are the complex interconnections lately remarked
upon: connections of varying strengths that incline us to
affirm or deny some sentences when affirming or denying
others.
Whoever rejects one hypothesis will be led by these habit
patterns to reject other sentences with it.

Allocation of Seperate Evidence to Observation

Sentences Alone

The scientists strategy of dividing and conquering serves

science well, but it does not show how to allocate
separate empirical evidence to separate sentences.
We can allocate separate evidence to each observation
sentence, but that is about the end of it.