ebola?
Bluelight Crew
Recently, I found an essay I wrote that seems somewhat pertinent to some of the discussion that was going on in the "Is philosophy dead?" thread. Feel free to read and comment if you have too much time on your hands. 
Also, I think this might be a rough draft, so beware of gross errors.
On pragmatic epistemology, Quine, James, and Dewey
Beginning with the modern empiricists such as Hume, moving through Kant, and reaching its conclusion with the logical positivists, epistemology has been dominated by a particular rigid and dualistic view. According to the picture of the logical positivists, all knowledge stems from on one hand, the objective world which delivers to the passive observing subject discrete, atomized sensory-experiences, and on the other hand, the structure of logic, which allows for the subject to synthesize these logically primitive units of experience. It is, then, from the logical structuring of these particles of experience that concepts are formed and that inferences between these concepts, on the basis of primitive semantic markers held in common, are made possible. If we are to achieve epistemic certainty, on this picture, we must firstly makes sure that our words line up with these types of primitive experience-particles on a one-to-one basis and secondly make sure that we apply the transformational rules of logic properly when making inferences. It is through such activity that hypotheses are built, confirmed or disconfirmed by experience, and solidified into theories. It is from this activity, the activity of science, that we are able to achieve epistemic certainty and avoid metaphysical “nonsense”.
The view of the logical positivists, however, depends on a rigidly dualistic division between logical truths and truths that are confirmed experientially. Kant most clearly explicated this view, arguing that logical, a priori truths are true analytically while empirical, a posteriori truths are true synthetically. It is argued, here, that analytic truths are true by virtue only of the relations of the terms contained therein. For example, the statement “all squares have four sides” is an analytic truth because four-sidedness is contained within the definition of what it is to be a square. Some logical positivists, including (Frege?), have argued that such truths would be true in all possible worlds. Synthetic truths, on the other hand, are empirically contingent and are subject to verification in the experienced world. These truths are not necessarily intrinsic to the concept they describe. “It is 72 degrees outside” is a synthetic truth, for example, because it is not part of the concept of “outsideness” for it to be 72 degrees; rather, we have to go outside with a thermometer and check.
In The Two Dogmas of Empiricism, Quine argues against the aforementioned epistemological picture, arguing that the synthetic/analytic distinction is unviable, as is the doctrine of reductionism, the notion that our body of knowledge can be reduced to primitive particulates and logical operations. Through a number of examples, Quine shows that the notion of analyticity is not self-evident in analytic statements, and that prevailing explanations of the workings of analyticity presuppose the notion of analytic truth they try to prove. The consequence, here, is that all supposedly primitive sense-particulates actually carry with them theoretical baggage, conceptual distinctions which shape what is experienced and how. Quine’s argument against the doctrine of reductionism, on the other hand, shows that the seemingly singular sense-experiences and concepts are actually dependent on a rich conceptual web with sensory-experience “at its fringes”. The truth, Quine argues, is in the whole of the conceptual web. With the notion of this conceptual web, Quine is engaging a rich pragmatic tradition of epistemology. Quine’s picture of sense-presentation and its necessary blending with theoretical presupposition is equivalent to Dewey’s notion of secondary experience, in which we are very nearly continually immersed. Quine’s conceptual web is equivalent with Dewey’s notion of civilization and its necessary sub-processes. Ultimately, this pragmatic picture of knowledge that emerges out of thinkers such as Quine and Dewey gives a better picture of real human activity than the rigid dogmatism of the logical positivists.
After giving a brief history of the dogma of the analytic/synthetic distinction, Quine goes on to outline what needs to be explained in order for us to have a working notion of purely analytic truths. He argues, that there are two kinds of analytic truths, the first being those that are logically true, that is they are true by virtue of the meaning of their logical particles alone (Quine 154). An example of such a truth would be the statement, “No dog is not a dog,” because the statement would remain true regardless of what noun we use in place of “dog”. The statement remains true by virtue of the meaning of the logical particulates and their relation to a particular over-arching system of logic. More problematic, however, is the second type of analytic truths, those driven by synonymy, such as the classic, “All bachelors are unmarried men” (Quine 155). To anchor this notion of analyticity, we need a working notion of synonymy that does not presuppose a notion of analyticity.
Exploring the notion of synonymy, one’s first inclination is likely to say that two symbols (usually words) are synonymous by virtue of having the same definition. This declaration, however, is not enough. How is it that these terms are defined? What anchors their definition? One could easily pull out a dictionary, proclaiming, “these two words have the same definition in here!” but this gets us nowhere. The dictionary, rather than being the word of God, used for the purpose of detailing the analytic truths of the universe, is a collection of culturally situated meanings emergent in that culture. The lexicographer responsible for the content of the dictionary is an “empirical scientist”, the definitions chosen simply being a report of the prevailing usage in her culture (Quine 155-6). This notion of synonymy is contingent upon the relation between all the words of the culture’s language and the language’s connection to its larger cultural situation. Synonymy, on this picture, is hardly an analytic connection between terms; it is not that the meaning of one term is entailed by the other. Rather, synonymy is based in these terms’ connection to an entire cultural framework of meaning.
The central role of this network of meaning is also highlighted by the structure of the dictionary itself. Return, to our example, of the supposedly analytic truth, “All bachelors are married men.” To determine if these terms are synonymous, one could look up the meaning of “bachelor”, but this definition would suggest that we look up what a “man” is and what “marriage” is. These terms would further suggest that we look up “ceremony,” “union,” “church,” “love,” “male,” “adult,” “human,” etc. This network of related terms found in the dictionary stands to span the dictionary in its entirety without touching upon “primitive experiences” or “primitive logical types”. In fact, without considering the surrounding cultural context, the network of definitions presented by the dictionary presents a tautology, never extending outside of the dictionary itself. Thus, for these definitions to have meaning for us, we must consider the surrounding cultural context, thus shattering any notion of synonymy which would serve as a mechanism for analytic relations, where one term is simply implied directly by another.
Quine goes on to entertain other relations among terms which have previously been purported to explain analyticity. The first of these is interchangeability. The idea here is that if one term can be exchanged for another without changing the statement’s truth-value, then these two terms may be said to be synonymous. Through this notion of synonymy, we can explain analyticity (Quine, 158-9). The problem here, again, is that interchangeability is only possible relative to a given situational context. For example, while it is clear that a twenty-something male human who is seeking a female mate is a bachelor, is this the case for a gay man who is in a committed, long-term relationship? How about a priest? What about a man in a culture where monogamous, heterosexual bonding is not generally practiced? While all these individuals are obviously unmarried men, their bachelorhood is dependent on the situational context, including culture, in which they find themselves.
Part of this situational context lying behind synonymy is the language in which the terms of the statement are situated. We cannot simply side step the issue by arguing that x and y are synonymous when necessarily all and only x are y because this statement is dependent upon a notion of necessity built into the language, a notion which is dependent on a conception of analyticity (Quine 159). The relationship between synonymy and analyticity, exemplified by the word “necessarily”, is circular and does little to explain analyticity. The presence of the word “necessarily” in the lexicon also suggests that terms will fit imperfectly and variably, depending on the situation, in the absence of “necessarily” or a similar term.
After showing that the use of semantic markers in the context of an artificial language do little more to explain analyticity than various notions of synonymy in natural language, Quine concludes that we have no means in sharply dividing synthetic and analytic truths, dividing the empirical and logical components of the facts with which we deal (Quine 163). Prior empiricists have assumed that these two components of our truths could be distinguished, but at the present such an assumption is baseless, a prior metaphysical commitment rather than a scientific fact. The consequence of the rejection of the synthetic/analytic distinction is that each seemingly primitive sensory-experience reflects also theoretical commitments, the two halves of experience impossible to disentangle entirely.
As prior empiricists have assumed that our knowledge may be disentangled into empirical matters of fact and logical, theoretical commitments, they have also assumed a dogma of radical reductionism. Empiricists such as Hume and Lock have assumed that all meaningful statements can be reduced to reports of primitive sense-data, the particulates of which experience is thought to consist (Quine 164). On this view, statements of our knowledge do not appear as these simple particulates because they have been tied together and validly transformed through the use of logical operations. The question then arises as to how language is linked to these sense-data, how language about empirical phenomena is given its meaning. These empiricists have adopted the verification theory of meaning to link language to the sensible world. According to this theory, a statement is true insofar as it is confirmed by some sort of measurement taken in the sensible world. On this view, two statements are synonymous when the same empirical test confirms the truth of both statements (Quine 163).
There are, however, loose ends to the verification theory of meaning. The nature of how language links up with the phenomena in the world is rather unclear. Dogmatic empiricists, even those who have abandoned the position that individual terms link up with individual sense-data on a one-to-one basis, would maintain that “. . .to each statement, or each synthetic statement, there is associated a unique range of possible sensory events such that the occurrence of any of them would add to the likelihood of truth of the statement. . .” (Quine, 165). Thus, on this view, each statement is tested scientifically against pertinent observation. Using statistical methods, certain observed phenomena are deemed to lend support to the hypothesis, increasing its likelihood of truth above the null hypothesis, while others would not support the hypothesis, decreasing the likelihood that the hypothesis is true in light of the null hypothesis. The crux of the matter here is that each hypothesis stands alone, confirmed or disconfirmed by empirical testing.
Quine argues that this dogma of reductionism is not tenable for the same reasons that the synthetic/analytic distinction cannot be maintained. We engage sensory-experience brining prior theoretical commitments to the table. In the sensory-presentation, these theoretical commitments blend with empirical fact. So much is apparent, the synthetic/analytic distinction having been shattered. What more, these theoretical commitments are in turn dependent on other theoretic commitments and other empirical findings emergent from our history and cultural context. On this view, no theoretical particle, no concept, and no empirical particle, no sense-datum, can be viewed in isolation. Rather, each perceived object and each particle of knowledge is dependent on its surrounding context for its meaning.
For example, imagine coming across a tree in the forest and identifying it as a Douglas Fir. The process through which the tree is identified is not merely bottom up, the forest-explorer having to begin anew, attempting interpret a flurry of visual sensoria. Rather, the identification of the tree depends on certain theoretical commitments, such as that the idea that there are different types of plants with distinct properties, that there are things called plants, and that there are living things distinguishable from nonliving things, etc. Furthermore, these theoretical commitments are not only dependent on a host of other very concrete conceptual designations but also basic logical commitments, such as that there are individuals to be distinguished in the world at all. Thus, the tree and knowledge of this tree has meaning only insofar as it is viewed within a particular situation which includes a particular cultural context. We could alternately try to maintain that all the information of this situation is implicit in the statements we make, such as the identification of this tree, but to do so is to attempt to pack the whole of human culture within each and every statement we make. This approach is unviable, if not only because it is very unparsimonious.
Given that each statement must be viewed in the context of its situation, including culturally specific conceptual commitments, then the truth is to be found in the whole of the theoretical framework. Quine writes, “. . . our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body” (Quine 165). Thus, on conceptual terms, we come to know the world in terms of a rich conceptual web, sensible experience at its fringes and abstract, nearly purely theoretical structure at its center. The problem, here, is that at no point can we determine “where” exactly the fringe of the web is. Rather, at every point, sensible perception is blended with theoretical distinctions. Consequently, when novel sensible experience places part of this conceptual web in doubt, the experience challenges not just the truth of the statement applying directly to that experience but also the entirety of the conceptual framework underlying that statement and the presentation of the sense-datum itself. The conceptual network, with its many internal interconnections, is radically underdetermined by sensible experience (Quine 166). For each sensible experience, there is a massive number of changes which could be made to that conceptual framework to adapt it to that experience.
For example, if I encounter a blinding white light and a sense of peace and unity while lying in bed, there are a number of approaches I could take to interpreting this novel experience. On one hand, I could disregard the experience a hallucination, driven by some sort of neuro-chemical fluctuation. This approach would require the least amount of change to the theoretical center of my existing conceptual network. On the other hand, I could alternately interpret my experience in religious terms, interpreting my experience as an encounter with the unitary divine consciousness of the universe. This interpretive approach would require a greater theoretical shift than dismissing the experience as a hallucination, but also stands as a viable method for integrating the experience into my framework of knowledge. The diversity in the approaches I could take to interpret the same experience show that the situation is underdetermined by sensory-experience, largely determined by historical and cultural commitments. These prior commitments and the context of the present situation consitute conceptual network which shapes seemingly discrete units of experience and knowledge.
With his criticism of the synthetic/analytic distinction and reductionism, Quine is drawing upon a rich history of pragmatism that begins with James and is further refined by Dewey. Firstly, the picture Quine paints in his criticism of the synthetic/analytic distinction, where sensation blends with theory in both knowledge and seemingly direction perception, describes the intermingling of concepts within the stream of thought noted by James in Percepts and Concept. James writes, “Percepts and concepts interpenetrate and melt together, impregnate and fertilize each other” (James 235). Thus, these concepts are part of the continuum of experience, enriching the stream of experience but dependent on that stream of which they are a part for their meaning. These concepts, these prior distinctions, inform experience and shape it into comprehensible objects with relations among themselves, but these distinctions are also thoroughly integrated into experience, inseparable from it. The picture painted by James here is the same as the picture Quine paints human knowledge emergent from experience.
In Experience and Nature, Dewey further fleshes out the notion of experience and conceptualization put forth by James in Percept and Concept. On experience, Dewey writes, “. . .experience is of as well as in nature. . .Things interacting in certain ways are experience; they are what is experienced” (EN, 12). Thus, on this view, experience is not some qualia had by the private mind of a subject; rather, experience is an organism-environment interaction, constituted by a particular situation, including various phyiscal, biological-homeostatic, and social factors. This situation presents an immediate quality which gives rise to primary experience, which constitutes the organism-environment interaction prior to conceptual distinctions. The experienced qualia of the organism involved in this interaction are only one aspect of the situation. Although qualia themselves appear to be irreducible, the situation itself cannot be reduced to these qualia.
As human organisms, we do not dwell in primary experience alone. Rather, because experience is in as well as of nature, experience is of experience itself as well as that which lies outside of experience. Dewey terms experience of experience “seconday experience”. On secondary experience, he writes, “. . .the subject-matter of primary experience sets the problems and furnishes the first data of the reflection which constructs the secondary objects. . .it is also evident that test and verification of [the objects of secondary experience] is secured only by a return to things of crude or macroscopic experience” (EN, 16). Thus, when the human organism reflects on primary experience, she introduces conceptual distinctions, cuts in primary experience, to that experience. These cuts in experience, these objects of secondary experience, serves as tools, means that allow the organism to attain ends in view, to determinately alter the quality of the situation at hand both through understanding and overt action.
It would be a mistake, however, to view primary experience as chornologically primary, the experience of the human organism moving in distinct phases from primary experience to secondary experience. Rather, the human organism is ever immersed in secondary experience. Prior distinctions made within secondary experience serve to shape futrue, novel experiences to be had. Thus, when a new experience emerges, it does not appear as an unanalyzed whole presenting a singular quality. Rather, the experience presents itself shaped with prior conceptual distinctions. For example, when I encounter a desk, I do not experience it as a flurry of incomprehensible color and visual texture occupying a particular retinal and visuo-cortical space. Rather, I experience it quite directly as a desk, an object with a particular characteristic visual pattern and presenting particular possiblities for use in order to attain certain goals. The crux of the matter here is that we are not in a position to neatly tease appart these distinctions made on the basis of prior theoretical commitment from nakedly empirical sense-data. Rather, the two appear intertwined and Quine has described in his ciriticism of the synthetic-analytic distinction.
Furthermore, because the situation for Dewey includes cultural factors along with the mental conceputal framework which is emergent in that cultural and also ties historical factors, namely secondary experience previously had, no object of secondary experience can be viewed in isolation. Rather, these objects mean insofar as they are viewed in relation to the quality of the situation, a situation which includes a rich framework of interrelated concepts. Explaining the historical inheretance of secondary experience, Dewey writes, “We bring to the simplest situation a complex apparatus of habits, of accepted meanings and techniques. Otherwise observation is the blankest of stares. . .” (EN, 170). Thus, the inheritance of secondary experience is a process that occurs socially as well as individually, the pre-existing social semiotic framework informing the secondary experience of the individual organism. Additionally, the interaction of the culturally specific conceptual framework and the organism in interaction with its environment is reciprocal; the actions of those organisms, linguistic and otherwise, also constitute and update that social network as well as arising out of that network.
Dewey is led to identify this rich conceptual framkework that informs seemingly individual organism-environment interaction “mind”. On mind, Dewey writes, “Mind denotes the whole system of meanings as they are embodied in the workings of organic life; consciousness in a being with language denotes awareness or perception of meanings. . .The greater part of mind is only implicit in any concisous act or state” (EN, 230). Although it may seem so, mind for Dewey is not some sort of Hegelian Geist. Rather, because the human organism is a symbolic and social being, secondary experience for the human organism occurs on a social level. Thus, on this social level, a rich framework of interrelated concepts emerges. For Dewey, this framework is mind. Mind, in addition to being socially situated, is also reflected in the neurology and felt qualia of the individual organism. Mind may inform the secondary experience of the organism, but the organism, acting consciously, has the opportunity to transform the character of her secondary experience and the network of conceptual distinctions therein. This process, too, occurs socially and is facilitated, in part, through intersubjective linguistic exchange. Thus, through conscious action and social exchange, the social semiotic framework that constitutes mind is updated when novel experiences emerge.
We can see immediately that the cultural framework operant in Dewey’s epistemology cannot be reduced to the sum of the separate conceptual categories therein. Rather, the meaning of these conceptual disctinctions lies in their interconnections to each other and the ways in which the conceptual network is related to the situation in which social, human organisms find themselves and the qualities these situations present. For exmaple, if I argue that the principal of excluded middle, that an entity must either be A or not A, but not both, this principle only has meaning insofar as it relates to the surrounding framework of symbolic logic. This framework of logic only has meaning insofar as it is put to use as a tool in our experience, both allowing us to render our experience comprehensible and manipulate that experience for our ends. Furthermore, the principle of excluded middle has meaning insofar as it is placed in relief with violations of itself, for example the Christian conception of the Holy trinity as the same time being one unified God but at the same time 3 separate things, God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. If the principle of excluded middle was not emergent in or experience, if we did not experience objects as only themselves, it would not be present in our cultural framework. All other concepts withing our culture framework, from those as concrete as “shoe” to those as abstract as “justice” are also dependent on the surrounding conceptual framework and underlying situation for their meaning.
The picture painted by Dewey, of a socially situated conceptual network, is one and the same as the picture painted by Quine in his rejection of reductionism. Quine’s conceptual network, like mind for Dewey, has meaning as a whole; each separate conceptual distinction is useful only insofar as it is situated in an interrelated network of other concepts. What more, this conceptual network, as a whole, has meaning insofar as it is applied to experience “at its fringes”, much in the same way as Dewey’s mind has meaning insofar as consciousness draws upon it, applying the network of distinctions to a particular situation presenting a particular quality. On both these pictures, knowledge is emergent in the socially situated organism-environment interaction in which we find ourselves and manifests itself on a cultural level. Both Dewey and Quine’s conceptions of knoweldge render the view of the logical positivists impossible. Quine shows that experienced objects and statements of knowledge cannot be reduced to primitive sense-data delivered by the objective world manipulated by the logic with which we have been innately endowed. Quine would further argue that these theoretical distinctions are dependent on their connection to a network of interrelated theoretical knowledge, smashing the logical positivist’s dream of radical reductionism. Dewey similarly presents the unification of theory and emprical fact in his conception of secondary experience. Dewey takes this concept even further, showing that the discrete conceptual distinctions of secondary experience must be viewed in relation to the qualitative whole of the primarily experienced situation. This qualitative whole includes, within itself, the culturally situated conceptual network of knowledge from which we begin. It is from these pragmatic epistemological conceptions of the likes of Dewey and Quine rather than the dogmatic dualism of logic and sense-data that we will be able to gain a full picture of the organism-enviornment interaction that constitutes our experience.

Also, I think this might be a rough draft, so beware of gross errors.

On pragmatic epistemology, Quine, James, and Dewey
Beginning with the modern empiricists such as Hume, moving through Kant, and reaching its conclusion with the logical positivists, epistemology has been dominated by a particular rigid and dualistic view. According to the picture of the logical positivists, all knowledge stems from on one hand, the objective world which delivers to the passive observing subject discrete, atomized sensory-experiences, and on the other hand, the structure of logic, which allows for the subject to synthesize these logically primitive units of experience. It is, then, from the logical structuring of these particles of experience that concepts are formed and that inferences between these concepts, on the basis of primitive semantic markers held in common, are made possible. If we are to achieve epistemic certainty, on this picture, we must firstly makes sure that our words line up with these types of primitive experience-particles on a one-to-one basis and secondly make sure that we apply the transformational rules of logic properly when making inferences. It is through such activity that hypotheses are built, confirmed or disconfirmed by experience, and solidified into theories. It is from this activity, the activity of science, that we are able to achieve epistemic certainty and avoid metaphysical “nonsense”.
The view of the logical positivists, however, depends on a rigidly dualistic division between logical truths and truths that are confirmed experientially. Kant most clearly explicated this view, arguing that logical, a priori truths are true analytically while empirical, a posteriori truths are true synthetically. It is argued, here, that analytic truths are true by virtue only of the relations of the terms contained therein. For example, the statement “all squares have four sides” is an analytic truth because four-sidedness is contained within the definition of what it is to be a square. Some logical positivists, including (Frege?), have argued that such truths would be true in all possible worlds. Synthetic truths, on the other hand, are empirically contingent and are subject to verification in the experienced world. These truths are not necessarily intrinsic to the concept they describe. “It is 72 degrees outside” is a synthetic truth, for example, because it is not part of the concept of “outsideness” for it to be 72 degrees; rather, we have to go outside with a thermometer and check.
In The Two Dogmas of Empiricism, Quine argues against the aforementioned epistemological picture, arguing that the synthetic/analytic distinction is unviable, as is the doctrine of reductionism, the notion that our body of knowledge can be reduced to primitive particulates and logical operations. Through a number of examples, Quine shows that the notion of analyticity is not self-evident in analytic statements, and that prevailing explanations of the workings of analyticity presuppose the notion of analytic truth they try to prove. The consequence, here, is that all supposedly primitive sense-particulates actually carry with them theoretical baggage, conceptual distinctions which shape what is experienced and how. Quine’s argument against the doctrine of reductionism, on the other hand, shows that the seemingly singular sense-experiences and concepts are actually dependent on a rich conceptual web with sensory-experience “at its fringes”. The truth, Quine argues, is in the whole of the conceptual web. With the notion of this conceptual web, Quine is engaging a rich pragmatic tradition of epistemology. Quine’s picture of sense-presentation and its necessary blending with theoretical presupposition is equivalent to Dewey’s notion of secondary experience, in which we are very nearly continually immersed. Quine’s conceptual web is equivalent with Dewey’s notion of civilization and its necessary sub-processes. Ultimately, this pragmatic picture of knowledge that emerges out of thinkers such as Quine and Dewey gives a better picture of real human activity than the rigid dogmatism of the logical positivists.
After giving a brief history of the dogma of the analytic/synthetic distinction, Quine goes on to outline what needs to be explained in order for us to have a working notion of purely analytic truths. He argues, that there are two kinds of analytic truths, the first being those that are logically true, that is they are true by virtue of the meaning of their logical particles alone (Quine 154). An example of such a truth would be the statement, “No dog is not a dog,” because the statement would remain true regardless of what noun we use in place of “dog”. The statement remains true by virtue of the meaning of the logical particulates and their relation to a particular over-arching system of logic. More problematic, however, is the second type of analytic truths, those driven by synonymy, such as the classic, “All bachelors are unmarried men” (Quine 155). To anchor this notion of analyticity, we need a working notion of synonymy that does not presuppose a notion of analyticity.
Exploring the notion of synonymy, one’s first inclination is likely to say that two symbols (usually words) are synonymous by virtue of having the same definition. This declaration, however, is not enough. How is it that these terms are defined? What anchors their definition? One could easily pull out a dictionary, proclaiming, “these two words have the same definition in here!” but this gets us nowhere. The dictionary, rather than being the word of God, used for the purpose of detailing the analytic truths of the universe, is a collection of culturally situated meanings emergent in that culture. The lexicographer responsible for the content of the dictionary is an “empirical scientist”, the definitions chosen simply being a report of the prevailing usage in her culture (Quine 155-6). This notion of synonymy is contingent upon the relation between all the words of the culture’s language and the language’s connection to its larger cultural situation. Synonymy, on this picture, is hardly an analytic connection between terms; it is not that the meaning of one term is entailed by the other. Rather, synonymy is based in these terms’ connection to an entire cultural framework of meaning.
The central role of this network of meaning is also highlighted by the structure of the dictionary itself. Return, to our example, of the supposedly analytic truth, “All bachelors are married men.” To determine if these terms are synonymous, one could look up the meaning of “bachelor”, but this definition would suggest that we look up what a “man” is and what “marriage” is. These terms would further suggest that we look up “ceremony,” “union,” “church,” “love,” “male,” “adult,” “human,” etc. This network of related terms found in the dictionary stands to span the dictionary in its entirety without touching upon “primitive experiences” or “primitive logical types”. In fact, without considering the surrounding cultural context, the network of definitions presented by the dictionary presents a tautology, never extending outside of the dictionary itself. Thus, for these definitions to have meaning for us, we must consider the surrounding cultural context, thus shattering any notion of synonymy which would serve as a mechanism for analytic relations, where one term is simply implied directly by another.
Quine goes on to entertain other relations among terms which have previously been purported to explain analyticity. The first of these is interchangeability. The idea here is that if one term can be exchanged for another without changing the statement’s truth-value, then these two terms may be said to be synonymous. Through this notion of synonymy, we can explain analyticity (Quine, 158-9). The problem here, again, is that interchangeability is only possible relative to a given situational context. For example, while it is clear that a twenty-something male human who is seeking a female mate is a bachelor, is this the case for a gay man who is in a committed, long-term relationship? How about a priest? What about a man in a culture where monogamous, heterosexual bonding is not generally practiced? While all these individuals are obviously unmarried men, their bachelorhood is dependent on the situational context, including culture, in which they find themselves.
Part of this situational context lying behind synonymy is the language in which the terms of the statement are situated. We cannot simply side step the issue by arguing that x and y are synonymous when necessarily all and only x are y because this statement is dependent upon a notion of necessity built into the language, a notion which is dependent on a conception of analyticity (Quine 159). The relationship between synonymy and analyticity, exemplified by the word “necessarily”, is circular and does little to explain analyticity. The presence of the word “necessarily” in the lexicon also suggests that terms will fit imperfectly and variably, depending on the situation, in the absence of “necessarily” or a similar term.
After showing that the use of semantic markers in the context of an artificial language do little more to explain analyticity than various notions of synonymy in natural language, Quine concludes that we have no means in sharply dividing synthetic and analytic truths, dividing the empirical and logical components of the facts with which we deal (Quine 163). Prior empiricists have assumed that these two components of our truths could be distinguished, but at the present such an assumption is baseless, a prior metaphysical commitment rather than a scientific fact. The consequence of the rejection of the synthetic/analytic distinction is that each seemingly primitive sensory-experience reflects also theoretical commitments, the two halves of experience impossible to disentangle entirely.
As prior empiricists have assumed that our knowledge may be disentangled into empirical matters of fact and logical, theoretical commitments, they have also assumed a dogma of radical reductionism. Empiricists such as Hume and Lock have assumed that all meaningful statements can be reduced to reports of primitive sense-data, the particulates of which experience is thought to consist (Quine 164). On this view, statements of our knowledge do not appear as these simple particulates because they have been tied together and validly transformed through the use of logical operations. The question then arises as to how language is linked to these sense-data, how language about empirical phenomena is given its meaning. These empiricists have adopted the verification theory of meaning to link language to the sensible world. According to this theory, a statement is true insofar as it is confirmed by some sort of measurement taken in the sensible world. On this view, two statements are synonymous when the same empirical test confirms the truth of both statements (Quine 163).
There are, however, loose ends to the verification theory of meaning. The nature of how language links up with the phenomena in the world is rather unclear. Dogmatic empiricists, even those who have abandoned the position that individual terms link up with individual sense-data on a one-to-one basis, would maintain that “. . .to each statement, or each synthetic statement, there is associated a unique range of possible sensory events such that the occurrence of any of them would add to the likelihood of truth of the statement. . .” (Quine, 165). Thus, on this view, each statement is tested scientifically against pertinent observation. Using statistical methods, certain observed phenomena are deemed to lend support to the hypothesis, increasing its likelihood of truth above the null hypothesis, while others would not support the hypothesis, decreasing the likelihood that the hypothesis is true in light of the null hypothesis. The crux of the matter here is that each hypothesis stands alone, confirmed or disconfirmed by empirical testing.
Quine argues that this dogma of reductionism is not tenable for the same reasons that the synthetic/analytic distinction cannot be maintained. We engage sensory-experience brining prior theoretical commitments to the table. In the sensory-presentation, these theoretical commitments blend with empirical fact. So much is apparent, the synthetic/analytic distinction having been shattered. What more, these theoretical commitments are in turn dependent on other theoretic commitments and other empirical findings emergent from our history and cultural context. On this view, no theoretical particle, no concept, and no empirical particle, no sense-datum, can be viewed in isolation. Rather, each perceived object and each particle of knowledge is dependent on its surrounding context for its meaning.
For example, imagine coming across a tree in the forest and identifying it as a Douglas Fir. The process through which the tree is identified is not merely bottom up, the forest-explorer having to begin anew, attempting interpret a flurry of visual sensoria. Rather, the identification of the tree depends on certain theoretical commitments, such as that the idea that there are different types of plants with distinct properties, that there are things called plants, and that there are living things distinguishable from nonliving things, etc. Furthermore, these theoretical commitments are not only dependent on a host of other very concrete conceptual designations but also basic logical commitments, such as that there are individuals to be distinguished in the world at all. Thus, the tree and knowledge of this tree has meaning only insofar as it is viewed within a particular situation which includes a particular cultural context. We could alternately try to maintain that all the information of this situation is implicit in the statements we make, such as the identification of this tree, but to do so is to attempt to pack the whole of human culture within each and every statement we make. This approach is unviable, if not only because it is very unparsimonious.
Given that each statement must be viewed in the context of its situation, including culturally specific conceptual commitments, then the truth is to be found in the whole of the theoretical framework. Quine writes, “. . . our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body” (Quine 165). Thus, on conceptual terms, we come to know the world in terms of a rich conceptual web, sensible experience at its fringes and abstract, nearly purely theoretical structure at its center. The problem, here, is that at no point can we determine “where” exactly the fringe of the web is. Rather, at every point, sensible perception is blended with theoretical distinctions. Consequently, when novel sensible experience places part of this conceptual web in doubt, the experience challenges not just the truth of the statement applying directly to that experience but also the entirety of the conceptual framework underlying that statement and the presentation of the sense-datum itself. The conceptual network, with its many internal interconnections, is radically underdetermined by sensible experience (Quine 166). For each sensible experience, there is a massive number of changes which could be made to that conceptual framework to adapt it to that experience.
For example, if I encounter a blinding white light and a sense of peace and unity while lying in bed, there are a number of approaches I could take to interpreting this novel experience. On one hand, I could disregard the experience a hallucination, driven by some sort of neuro-chemical fluctuation. This approach would require the least amount of change to the theoretical center of my existing conceptual network. On the other hand, I could alternately interpret my experience in religious terms, interpreting my experience as an encounter with the unitary divine consciousness of the universe. This interpretive approach would require a greater theoretical shift than dismissing the experience as a hallucination, but also stands as a viable method for integrating the experience into my framework of knowledge. The diversity in the approaches I could take to interpret the same experience show that the situation is underdetermined by sensory-experience, largely determined by historical and cultural commitments. These prior commitments and the context of the present situation consitute conceptual network which shapes seemingly discrete units of experience and knowledge.
With his criticism of the synthetic/analytic distinction and reductionism, Quine is drawing upon a rich history of pragmatism that begins with James and is further refined by Dewey. Firstly, the picture Quine paints in his criticism of the synthetic/analytic distinction, where sensation blends with theory in both knowledge and seemingly direction perception, describes the intermingling of concepts within the stream of thought noted by James in Percepts and Concept. James writes, “Percepts and concepts interpenetrate and melt together, impregnate and fertilize each other” (James 235). Thus, these concepts are part of the continuum of experience, enriching the stream of experience but dependent on that stream of which they are a part for their meaning. These concepts, these prior distinctions, inform experience and shape it into comprehensible objects with relations among themselves, but these distinctions are also thoroughly integrated into experience, inseparable from it. The picture painted by James here is the same as the picture Quine paints human knowledge emergent from experience.
In Experience and Nature, Dewey further fleshes out the notion of experience and conceptualization put forth by James in Percept and Concept. On experience, Dewey writes, “. . .experience is of as well as in nature. . .Things interacting in certain ways are experience; they are what is experienced” (EN, 12). Thus, on this view, experience is not some qualia had by the private mind of a subject; rather, experience is an organism-environment interaction, constituted by a particular situation, including various phyiscal, biological-homeostatic, and social factors. This situation presents an immediate quality which gives rise to primary experience, which constitutes the organism-environment interaction prior to conceptual distinctions. The experienced qualia of the organism involved in this interaction are only one aspect of the situation. Although qualia themselves appear to be irreducible, the situation itself cannot be reduced to these qualia.
As human organisms, we do not dwell in primary experience alone. Rather, because experience is in as well as of nature, experience is of experience itself as well as that which lies outside of experience. Dewey terms experience of experience “seconday experience”. On secondary experience, he writes, “. . .the subject-matter of primary experience sets the problems and furnishes the first data of the reflection which constructs the secondary objects. . .it is also evident that test and verification of [the objects of secondary experience] is secured only by a return to things of crude or macroscopic experience” (EN, 16). Thus, when the human organism reflects on primary experience, she introduces conceptual distinctions, cuts in primary experience, to that experience. These cuts in experience, these objects of secondary experience, serves as tools, means that allow the organism to attain ends in view, to determinately alter the quality of the situation at hand both through understanding and overt action.
It would be a mistake, however, to view primary experience as chornologically primary, the experience of the human organism moving in distinct phases from primary experience to secondary experience. Rather, the human organism is ever immersed in secondary experience. Prior distinctions made within secondary experience serve to shape futrue, novel experiences to be had. Thus, when a new experience emerges, it does not appear as an unanalyzed whole presenting a singular quality. Rather, the experience presents itself shaped with prior conceptual distinctions. For example, when I encounter a desk, I do not experience it as a flurry of incomprehensible color and visual texture occupying a particular retinal and visuo-cortical space. Rather, I experience it quite directly as a desk, an object with a particular characteristic visual pattern and presenting particular possiblities for use in order to attain certain goals. The crux of the matter here is that we are not in a position to neatly tease appart these distinctions made on the basis of prior theoretical commitment from nakedly empirical sense-data. Rather, the two appear intertwined and Quine has described in his ciriticism of the synthetic-analytic distinction.
Furthermore, because the situation for Dewey includes cultural factors along with the mental conceputal framework which is emergent in that cultural and also ties historical factors, namely secondary experience previously had, no object of secondary experience can be viewed in isolation. Rather, these objects mean insofar as they are viewed in relation to the quality of the situation, a situation which includes a rich framework of interrelated concepts. Explaining the historical inheretance of secondary experience, Dewey writes, “We bring to the simplest situation a complex apparatus of habits, of accepted meanings and techniques. Otherwise observation is the blankest of stares. . .” (EN, 170). Thus, the inheritance of secondary experience is a process that occurs socially as well as individually, the pre-existing social semiotic framework informing the secondary experience of the individual organism. Additionally, the interaction of the culturally specific conceptual framework and the organism in interaction with its environment is reciprocal; the actions of those organisms, linguistic and otherwise, also constitute and update that social network as well as arising out of that network.
Dewey is led to identify this rich conceptual framkework that informs seemingly individual organism-environment interaction “mind”. On mind, Dewey writes, “Mind denotes the whole system of meanings as they are embodied in the workings of organic life; consciousness in a being with language denotes awareness or perception of meanings. . .The greater part of mind is only implicit in any concisous act or state” (EN, 230). Although it may seem so, mind for Dewey is not some sort of Hegelian Geist. Rather, because the human organism is a symbolic and social being, secondary experience for the human organism occurs on a social level. Thus, on this social level, a rich framework of interrelated concepts emerges. For Dewey, this framework is mind. Mind, in addition to being socially situated, is also reflected in the neurology and felt qualia of the individual organism. Mind may inform the secondary experience of the organism, but the organism, acting consciously, has the opportunity to transform the character of her secondary experience and the network of conceptual distinctions therein. This process, too, occurs socially and is facilitated, in part, through intersubjective linguistic exchange. Thus, through conscious action and social exchange, the social semiotic framework that constitutes mind is updated when novel experiences emerge.
We can see immediately that the cultural framework operant in Dewey’s epistemology cannot be reduced to the sum of the separate conceptual categories therein. Rather, the meaning of these conceptual disctinctions lies in their interconnections to each other and the ways in which the conceptual network is related to the situation in which social, human organisms find themselves and the qualities these situations present. For exmaple, if I argue that the principal of excluded middle, that an entity must either be A or not A, but not both, this principle only has meaning insofar as it relates to the surrounding framework of symbolic logic. This framework of logic only has meaning insofar as it is put to use as a tool in our experience, both allowing us to render our experience comprehensible and manipulate that experience for our ends. Furthermore, the principle of excluded middle has meaning insofar as it is placed in relief with violations of itself, for example the Christian conception of the Holy trinity as the same time being one unified God but at the same time 3 separate things, God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. If the principle of excluded middle was not emergent in or experience, if we did not experience objects as only themselves, it would not be present in our cultural framework. All other concepts withing our culture framework, from those as concrete as “shoe” to those as abstract as “justice” are also dependent on the surrounding conceptual framework and underlying situation for their meaning.
The picture painted by Dewey, of a socially situated conceptual network, is one and the same as the picture painted by Quine in his rejection of reductionism. Quine’s conceptual network, like mind for Dewey, has meaning as a whole; each separate conceptual distinction is useful only insofar as it is situated in an interrelated network of other concepts. What more, this conceptual network, as a whole, has meaning insofar as it is applied to experience “at its fringes”, much in the same way as Dewey’s mind has meaning insofar as consciousness draws upon it, applying the network of distinctions to a particular situation presenting a particular quality. On both these pictures, knowledge is emergent in the socially situated organism-environment interaction in which we find ourselves and manifests itself on a cultural level. Both Dewey and Quine’s conceptions of knoweldge render the view of the logical positivists impossible. Quine shows that experienced objects and statements of knowledge cannot be reduced to primitive sense-data delivered by the objective world manipulated by the logic with which we have been innately endowed. Quine would further argue that these theoretical distinctions are dependent on their connection to a network of interrelated theoretical knowledge, smashing the logical positivist’s dream of radical reductionism. Dewey similarly presents the unification of theory and emprical fact in his conception of secondary experience. Dewey takes this concept even further, showing that the discrete conceptual distinctions of secondary experience must be viewed in relation to the qualitative whole of the primarily experienced situation. This qualitative whole includes, within itself, the culturally situated conceptual network of knowledge from which we begin. It is from these pragmatic epistemological conceptions of the likes of Dewey and Quine rather than the dogmatic dualism of logic and sense-data that we will be able to gain a full picture of the organism-enviornment interaction that constitutes our experience.