Verificationism and the Molecular View of Language

Abstract

In Section 5 of ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’, W. V. Quine considered the possibility of drawing the analytic-synthetic distinction by means of a verificationist model of meaning. Quine regarded such an approach to meaning as more promising than the ones he had examined in the first four sections, since it explicitly aimed at giving an empirical sense to the concepts of meaning and analyticity, by grounding these concepts on the observation of how actual theories are related to experience. Under the verificationist model, the meaning of a statement lies in the observations that would support or refute it. Quine’s “countersuggestion” against the possibility of defining strict meanings by this approach was holism, namely that “our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body” (Quine, 1951, p. 41).