Keith Donnellan’s definition of analyticity is warmed-over Frege,
Jerrold Katz says. Yet Donnellan’s target here is Frege and Carnap.
Donnellan begins by questioning approaches such as Carnap’s.
Donnellan wonders: How can Carnap know if he is using the correct
meaning postulates and if they will work.
Test case: “All whales are mammals.” First, would the applicability
of the term apply to all possible cases? Answering this question in the
affirmative is required to meet the condition of necessity. Second, what
if there is disagreement on the application of the term, as may be the
case with applying mammal to whale.
Donnellan’s point: If there’s a fact of the matter, the application
must be made in advance. He doubts that it is fixed in advance.
Donnellan’s conclusion: The criteria of application cannot be
determined in advance. How do we know to what criteria to appeal to in
such cases as disagreement between a sailor and a zoologist on whales as
mammals? Thus, is there some objective criterion that can determine the
meaning of a term? No, Donnellan would say.
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Philosophy of Language
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because Quine’s reason for thinking that independent controls do not
exist in translation takes its force from the argument that there are no
linguistically neutral meanings. The absence of linguistically neutral
meanings is a prerequiste for the indeterminacy of translation. Read more …