Trying to wrap my head around Quine’s writings about meaning & truth, and specifically his concept of synonymy.
My current understanding is that two dissimilar or even contradictory statements can be reduced to the same empirical truth…but i’m not so sure this is correct.
Can anyone help me out with an example of what synonymy really is and why it is important?
bump?!?
I saw the question, but since I’m not very well up in philosophy of language, I decided to pass this one by. Since no-one else replied, I’ll give it a try anyway.
I’m checking Robert M. Martin, The meaning of language, Cambridge (Mass.) 1987, pp. 60-63. Those pages are refered to in the index as being about synonymy, but somehow the author manages to discuss the concept without ever using the word. From what I gather is that it involves Quine’s standpoint that there is no rigid distinction between analytic and synthetic truths (you remember, this distinction goes back to Kant’s Critic of Pure Reason). He argues that the truth of a statement cannot be checked on its own but is dependent on the meaning sentences get in our whole belief system. Hence even seemingly analytic sentences may be influenced by experience.
In other words, going back to your OP, as I understand it (without the context) is that you may indeed have two sentences looking identical, but having a different meaning because of the belief system they are part of. An example I’m pulling out of my hat right now is:
‘matter equals a certain amount of energy’
In pre-relativistic times this was an analytic falsehood. Nowadays it is an analytic truth. Our concept of matter is not the same as it used to be for Newton and his ilk.
I hope this is of some use. And I hope it is correct. (I see by my side notes in the text that I have actually read this passage at some point, but I’ve completely forgotten about it)
thanks, things make slightly more sense now.