Thinker · TH-0424
W. V. O. Quine
W. V. O. Quine was an American philosopher and logician who spent his career at Harvard. In "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951) he denied…
On the Coordinates: 1.1 Ontology · 1.1.4 Abstract Objects · 1.10 Meta-Metaphysics +3 more
Also known as Willard Van Orman Quine
1908 – 2000 · Akron, Ohio; Cambridge, Massachusetts (Harvard)
Traditions: Analytic
W. V. O. Quine was an American philosopher and logician who spent his career at Harvard. In "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951) he denied a sharp boundary between analytic and synthetic truths and argued that our beliefs face experience as a whole, so no statement, logic included, is immune to revision. He made the criterion of ontological commitment central to metaphysics, defended a naturalism that treats philosophy as continuous with science, and with Putnam is associated with the indispensability argument for mathematical objects.
Key ideas
- There is no sharp distinction between analytic and synthetic statements.
- Beliefs face the tribunal of experience as a corporate body; any can be revised, logic included.
- To be is to be the value of a bound variable: theories are committed to what they quantify over.
- Translation is indeterminate: behavioural evidence underdetermines meaning.
Major works
- "On What There Is" (1948)
- "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951)
- Word and Object (1960)
- Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (1969)
In the conversation
- Question My students used the surprise test paradox against me. Where exactly does their argument fail?
- Discussion Davidson said there are no untranslatable conceptual schemes. A working translator is not so sure
- Debate The grounding revival brought metaphysics back without bringing back a method
- Debate Quine was right that even logic could be revised in the light of experience
- Debate Saving a theory with an auxiliary hypothesis is often exactly the right move
- Debate The indispensability argument is the best case for numbers, and it still does not work
- Question What is Carnap’s distinction between internal and external questions, in plain terms?
- Question When philosophers ask what exists, what would even count as an answer?
- Debate Deflationism is right: “true” is a useful device, not the name of a property
- Question Does the dialetheist really believe contradictions, or has she changed the meaning of ‘not’?
- Question Soundness and completeness of a logical system: what exactly is being proved?
- Reading group Reading group: Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, one section a week for six weeks
- Reading group Reading group: Quine’s ‘On What There Is’, slowly, in three sittings
In the Coordinates
The questions of philosophy where W. V. O. Quine takes a place, from The Coordinates of Thought.
- 1.1 Ontology What is there?
- 1.1.4 Abstract Objects Does the number seven exist?
- 1.10 Meta-Metaphysics Are metaphysical arguments about anything?
- 2.2.2 Reason and Intuition How, if at all, do you know that a surface cannot be wholly red and wholly green at the same time and in the same respect?
- 4.5 Philosophy of Logic Is logic discovered or invented?
- 6.8 Philosophy of Science What makes a claim scientific?