Extension, Stimulus And Experience

The meaning of language has been explored unprecedentedly in the twentieth century history of analytic philosophy. From the perspective of first-order logic, Quine made a comprehensive study.First-order logic is extensional. Quine used it as a tool for philosophical investigation and defended it all his life, so his ontology denies other things except physical entities and class which meet the requirements of extensional principle. Meaning, as an intensional object, is regarded as a substance by most philosophers. Quine was opposed to that opinion by criticizing the synonymy. If talk of expression-synonymy is meaningless, it seems that talk of expression having a meaning is also meaningless. Then Quine analyzed synonymy by attacking the analyticity and conceiving the indeterminacy of translation thesis, and pointed out that the synonymy can't meet the extensional principle, so meaning is not a substance either.The denial of meaning as a substance doesn't mean that the question "what is the meaning of a sentence" is meaningless; however, meaning shouldn't be regarded as a substance. The traditional theory of meaning has been divided by Quine into two fields:the theory of meaning and the theory of reference. And the theory of reference is more promising than the theory of meaning. By depicting the ontogenesis of reference, Quine pointed out that only the expressions that points to the individual things in physical world have reference. The abstract words and other expressions that have no relation to individual things are generated on this basis. As a result, the ontogenesis of reference can be considered as the foundation of meaning. Since the expressions have relation to only individual things, one has to use them communicating with others in order to obtain the usage, and the meaning of any given expression is something that settled by conventional usage. Moreover, for the usage is depended on context, the meaning is indeterminate. In Quine's opinion, it is based on the "Stimulus-Response Model" that people can master the usage of language. The model and its product "stimulus meaning" can meet the requirements of extensional principle, though meaning can't. Meaning is gradually appearing from "stimulus meaning". Therefore, to master the root of reference is necessary to understand the meaning of language. It is not so much the question that "What is the meaning of an expression" but the question "how to get the meaning of an expression" which is important.From Quine's point of view, the meaning has the following four characteristics:(1) as a kind of experience, meaning is a convention which achieves through the communication among inter-subjects; (2) it must be collated by people's speech acts, even not completely; (3) meaning is indeterminate; however, (4) it is objective. These features haven't revealed the meaning completely. There is no ultimate answer to the problem that "What is the meaning". It is impossible to reduce meaning to an object, no matter abstract or concrete. Meaning includes all of the above, maybe even more.Since Quine's theory of meaning, social factors have been introduced into meaning investigation. As philosophers have been aware of the indeterminacy of meaning, more emphasis has been put on the intersubjective consensus. However, due to the social factors emphasized by Quine is a purely natural phenomenon, the intentionality has been investigated by later meaning theories on the basis of Quine's. They have been integrating the sociality with the intentionality. In addition, Quine's theory of meaning also has an influence on the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of science, and so on.