1. See e.g. W. V. O. Quine, From a Logical Point of View, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1953 (2nd ed.: 1961), pp. 130–132.
2. For a simple recent argument of this sort (without a specific reference to first-order theories), see e.g. William P. Alston, Philosophy of Language, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1964, p. 13. Cf. also Quine, op. cit. pp. 21–22.
3. In more general terms, it seems to me hopeless to try to develop a theory of sentential meaning which is not connected very closely with the idea of the information which the sentence can convey to us, or a theory of meaning for individual words which would not show how understanding them contributes to appreciating the information of the sentences in which they occur. There are of course many nuances in the actual use of words and sentences which are not directly explained by connecting meaning and information in this way, assuming that this can be done. However, there do not seem to be any obstacles in principle to explaining these nuances in terms of pragmatic, contextual, and other contingent pressures operating on a language-user. For remarks on this methodological situation, see my paper ‘Epistemic Logic and the Methods of Philosophical Analysis’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy
46 (1968) 37–51.
4. Donald Davidson, Truth and Meaning’, Synthese
17 (1967) 304–323. Also included in the present volume, p. 1.
5. See Quine, op. cit., pp. 32–37.