International Phenomenological Society

Localism and Analyticity Author(s): Michael Devitt Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Sep., 1993), pp. 641-646 Published by: International Phenomenological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2108086 . Accessed: 14/02/2014 20:36
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Philosophy and Phenomenological

Research

Vol.

LIII,

No. 3, September 1993

Localism and Analyticity

MICHAELDEVHIT

University of Maryland, College Park

I have two points to make, an interpretative one and a substantive one. I: INTERPRETATIVE POINT: WHAT QUINE SHOWED

An extreme semantic localist holds that the meaning of any word is constituted solely by direct referential links to reality of some sort. A more moderate localist holds that the meanings of some words are partly (at least) constituted by a few, but not many, of their inferential properties. So the moderate localist distinguishes between inferential properties that are constitutive and those that are not; for example, the fact that you are disposed to infer 'x is unmarried' from 'x is a bachelor' may be constitutive of the meaning of 'bachelor,' but the fact that you are disposed to infer 'x is frustrated' from it may not be. Is the moderate localist thereby committed to something worthy of the name "analytic/synthetic distinction?" Perhaps, but it is very important to note that she is not thereby committed to the epistemic dimension of the traditional a/s distinction.' According to this dimension, if 'All bachelors are unmarried' is analytic then it can be known a priori. Much of the motivation for a/s came from its alleged explanation of a priori knowledge. That explanation rested on the assumption that a person who is competent with a word has propositional knowledge of its meaning.2 So, if a link to 'unmarried' does indeed partly constitute the meaning of 'bachelor,' leading to the analyticity of 'All bachelors are unmarried,' then the competent speaker knows that it does and hence knows that all bachelors are unmarried. This idea that speakers have some sort of "privileged access" to meanings is still very popu-

Of course the localist's distinction is about inferential properties which are clearly epistemic: they are significant in belief formation (and so too are direct referential links to reality). The point is that the distinction between the ones that constitute meaning and the ones that do not need have no epistemic significance at all: it entails nothing about the epistemic status of any sentence. It also rested on the gratuitous assumption that logical truths like 'All unmarriedsare unmarried'are know a priori. FODOR/LEPORE SYMPOSIUM 641

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lar. Nevertheless it is a Cartesianlegacy that the localist certainly need not accept and, in my view, should not accept.3 Quine arguedthat hankeringafter a priori knowledge was a mistake, thus saving the attractiveempiricistidea thatall knowledgeis derivedfrom experience. The idea faced an embarrassing problemthatdogged empiricism:some truths-most notably those of mathematicsand logic-did not seem open to empiricalconfirmationor disconfirmation. It did not seem possible that such truths could be revised in the way that 'All swans are white' was by the sighting of black swans in Australia. Quine, following in the footsteps of Duhem, arguedthat we must breakfree of the naive picture of confirmation suggested by the swan example and view confirmationin a much more holistic way. We can then see how any sentence, even those of mathematicsand logic, might be ultimately answerable to experience; the web of belief is seamless. JerryFodorandErnestLepore("F&L") acceptQuine's argument andhence reject "an epistemologically based a/s distinction"(p. 56). So they insist that moderatelocalism cannot distinguishthe inferentialpropertiesthat constitute meaning from the ones that do not on epistemic grounds like apriority.Yet they emphasize that Quine's argumentdoes not show that there could not be a nonepistemic distinction between the two sorts of properties and hence a nonepistemic a/s distinction (pp. 56, 58). And, as I pointed out, moderatelocalism does not entail any epistemic distinction. So moderate localism survives Quine's argument.4 Despite this "official position" F&L write much of the time as if Quine has shown not merely that an epistemic a/s distinction is untenable but that any a/s distinction is. So, accordingto this "unofficialposition," the moderate localist lacks a criterionfor her distinetion-it has no "principled basis"and the only way to avoid holism is to be an extreme localist, denying that any inferentialpropertiesconstitute word meaning. For example, F&L state baldly that "if Quine is right in 'Two Dogmas,' then what you mean can't be reduced to what inferences you are preparedto accept";i.e. if Quine is right moderatelocalism is wrong. Why?
Because, Quine argues, what inferences you are prepared to accept.. .depends not only on what you intend your words to mean, but also on how you take the (nonlinguistic) world to be. And there is no principled way to separate the respective contributionsof these factors.
3 4

I have argued this in various places, most recently in Realism and Truth(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2nd edition revised, 1991): 270-75. I have argued this at length in "A Critique of the Case for Semantic Holism," Philosophical Perspectives 7-8, in press. The argumentaddresses the concern that, according to moderate localism, it is not possible for a token to change certain of its inferential properties without changing its meaning. I argue that this sort of "unrevisability" is harmlessly "metaphysical."It has no more epistemic significance than the fact that it is not possible for a person to change certain of her economic properties without ceasing to be a capitalist. MICHAEL DEVONr

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Knowing which inferences someone accepts doesn't tell you which of them he accepts a priori; so it doesn't tell you which of them is analytic. (p. 57)

Yet this argumentis simply irrelevant to a moderatelocalism that does not employ an epistemic criterion.(i) It is not part of this localism that what inferences you are preparedto accept depends only on what you intend your words to mean. The theory has nothing whateverto say on why you are preparedto accept inferences.It just says thatbeing preparedto accept certain of them, for whatever reason, is constitutive of meaning. (ii) It is not part of this localism that the speaker accepts the constitutive inferences a priori or indeed thatanyoneaccepts anythinga priori. This discussion is particularlystriking in that it comes in between statements of the official position. What is going on? The answer is that, while F&L think that Quine's argumentreally counts only against an epistemic criterion and so leaves open the possibility of a nonepistemic one-the official position-they find the idea of a nonepistemic one so unimaginableas to be a mere empty possibility that can safely be ignored most of the time. So, in effect, Quine showed that no distinction is possible and hence that moderate localism is impossible-the unofficial position. If moderatelocalism uses an epistemic criterionto distinguish the constitutive inferentialproperties,F&L have Quine's argumentagainst it. If moderate localism does not, F&L have nothing against it except an unargued conviction thatanothercriterioncannotbe found. Although the conviction is unarguedin printit is not unsupportedin conversation. Fodor likes, in his inimitable way, to mock the chances of finding a criterion:"Colordoesn't seem to work, nor does weight in grams. Perhaps it is the inferences drawnon Tuesday that count. If not, there are all the other days of the week to try. Is it ok if rdon't hold my breath?"Yet, ironically, insofar as a criterionis needed, it turnsout that the most promising one is already at work in many semantic theories, including Fodor's own. That is my substantivepoint. II. SUBSTANTIVE POINT: A PRINCIPLED CRITERION Meanings are propertieswe choose to ascribe in 'that clauses' "for semantic purposes,"to explain behavior, learn about the world, or whatever. In what respectdoes the moderatelocalist need a criterionfor her distinction?Contrary to what F&L seem to suggest, not to distinguish the inferential properties that constitutethe meaningswe do as a matteroffact ascribe from the properties that do not constitute those meanings. We no more need a criterion for this than we do to distinguish the propertiesthat constitute being a planet, a capitalist,or whatever.With meanings, as with everythingelse, some properties are constitutive, some aren't, and that's that. There may be a problem telling what is constitutive, of course, but we need no special criterion to
SYMPOSIUM 643 FODOR/LEPORE

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solve it for meaning. What the localist does need a criterionfor is to distinguish the inferentialpropertiesthatconstitutethe meaningswe should ascribe for semanticpurposes from otherinferentialpropertiesthat we should not ascribe for those purposes.' Considerwhat I shall call "Representationalism." This is the common, although not established, view that the properties we need for semantic purposes are all representational.At the level of words, this is the view that the propertieswe need are all referential.An obvious version of this is, in effect,6 the "direct-reference" view that the meaning of a word simply is its property of referringto its referent.That is extreme localism. I want to emphasize the possibility of another version, for this one yields the criterion needed for moderatelocalism. This otherversion counts a word's mode of referenceas a referential property and hence a candidate for meaning.7 So inferential propertiesthatdeterminereferenceare candidates.And the needed criterionis: the difference between a word's inferential properties that constitute a meaning we should ascribe for semantic purposes and its other inferential propertiesis thatonly the formerdetermineits reference. Direct-referencetheorists,like everyone else, need to explain the natureof the meaning they ascribe to a word. The only plausible explanationfor them is that it is some kind of causal link between the word and reality. Any such explanation faces a question: What distinguishes the links that constitute a meaning we should ascribe from the many other causal links between the word and reality? This question is precisely analogous to the one we are addressing to the moderatelocalist: Whatdistinguishesthe inferentialproperties that constitute a meaning we should ascribe from other such properties?The strength of representationalism is that it gives the one good answer to both questions: we should ascribe only word.meanings constituted by properties thatdetermine reference. Fodor is a direct-referencetheorist. He thinks that a certain asymmetric counterfactualconstitutes a word's meaning.8But why does he choose that causal relation to serve our semantic purposes and not any of the other ones the word has to reality?Not because of its color presumably.It's because he

5 6

These claims, and some others to follow, could do with some argument. I attempt to provide this in Coming to Our Senses: A Programfor Semantic Localism, forthcoming. The qualification is necessary because direct-reference theorists seldom consider what purposes meanings serve. It often seems ratheras if 'meaning' and 'semantics' are being arbitrarilydefined to make the theory true. Another version allows some meanings to be "narrow"provided those meanings are constituted from properties that, given an external context, determine reference; the narrowmeanings it allows must be abstractedfrom "wide"referentialmeanings. Psychosemantics (Cambridge, Massachusetts:MIT Press, 1987).
MICHAELDEVrIT

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thinksthat that relationdeterminesreference.And that'show the moderatelocalist chooses too.9There's the irony.'0 What criterioncan be offered by someone who thinks that meaning is not representational, or not only so; for example, by a two-factortheorist?I think none. Once we set aside the determination of a word's reference,no plausible semanticpurposeis served by constitutingmeanings one way ratherthan another out of the word's inferentialproperties.This is the truthunderlyingthe conviction of F&L and othersthatmoderatelocalism lacks a principledbasis. The usual moral drawnfrom this truthis that we must be holists. But that is entirely the wrong moral. Choosing to ascribe holistic word meanings would serve no semanticpurpose at all. The simplest, least theory-laden,reason for this is that these meanings would not satisfy the desire for generality that accompanies any purpose we might have in ascribing meanings. We want to ascribe word meanings that are instantiatedin the one person at different times, in differentcognitive areas of the one mind, in different minds, and perhapseven in different types of mind. Holistic meanings are most unlikely to meet any of these wants. The moral Fodor draws is that we must be extreme localists. That is also the wrong moral. The right moral is that we must be representationalists,a position that is compatible with both moderateand extreme localism. A theory of anything has to show why the properties it identifies serve its purposes. If a non-representationalist theory of meaning lacks the requiredcriterion then it fails to show this and should be abandoned. To say that holism is not a threat is not to say that localism has won. Localism depends on representationalism which is, as yet, very far from having all the answers. Nevertheless, representationalism permits a good deal of progress. We often have fairly persuasive evidence about which inferential propertiesof a word do and do not determineits reference.And we have several attractive,if not yet finally persuasive,ideas about the sorts of causal relation to reality on which referencemust ultimatelydepend. But a deep question remainstroubling:Whydo relationsof these sorts serve the purposes we attachto referenceandrepresentation.
9

10

Because F&L overlook this referential criterion, they wrongly think that moderate localism requires an inferential-role semantics. Inferential properties that determine reference are part of truth-referential semantics. Experience suggests the wisdom of a pre-emptive strike. Suppose that the moderate localist responded to Quine's argument by pointing out that even theories that explain meaning in direct causal terms are committed to analyticities (as F&L agree; pp. 5658). F&L like to point out that this localist would be comforting herself with a red herring because Quine's argumentis not aimed at those sorts of analyticities; it is aimed at ones that explain meaning in inferential terms. I am not drawing that herring. My point is not to save moderate localism from Quine's argument, for it is already saved (see part I). The point is to show that the nonepistemic referentialcriterion used by extremists can also be used by moderates. SYMPOSIUM 645 FODOR/LEPORE

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The real threatis eliminativism. If we cannot make representationalism work, then we may have to conclude that our whole practice of ascribing meanings is mistaken.Given the importanceof this practicein our lives, and its apparentsuccess, this strikes me as an unlikely outcome. In sum, F&L's official position is that Quine's argument counts only againsta moderatelocalism thatuses an epistemic criterionfor distinguishing the constitutive inferences. Their unofficial position is that the argument counts against any moderatelocalism because there is no chance of finding a nonepistemic criterion.Yet, insofar as localism needs a criterion,it has one to hand:attribute meaningsconstitutedby propertiesthatdeterminereference. and is plausible. Fodor cannot The criterion stems from representationalism fail, holism is not a serious consistently deny it. Should representationalism alternative.The real threatis eliminativism."

I am indebted to the following for comments that led to improvements: Ned Block, Brian McLaughlin, Georges Rey, and Michael Slote. 646 MICHAEL DEVIT

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