Science and Sensibilia by W. V. Quine
Science and Sensibilia by W. V. Quine

Author: Robert Sinclair

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-02-05

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 3030049094

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In this book, W. V. Quine’s Immanuel Kant Lectures entitled Science and Sensibilia are published for the first time in English. These lectures represent an important stage in the development of Quine’s later thought, where he is more explicit about the importance of physicalist constraints in his account of the steps from sensory stimulation to scientific theory, and in further using them to assess the extent to which mental vocabulary is defensible. Taken as a unit, these lectures fill an important gap in our understanding of his philosophical development from his 1973 work The Roots of Reference to his later work. The volume further contains an introduction that outlines the content and philosophical significance of the lectures. In addition, several essays written by leading scholars of Quine’s philosophy provide further insight into the important issues raised in the lectures.

The Cambridge Companion to Quine
The Cambridge Companion to Quine

Author: Roger F. Gibson, Jr

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2004-03-29

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 1139825801

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W. V. Quine (1908–2000) was quite simply the most distinguished analytic philosopher of the later half of the twentieth century. His celebrated attack on the analytic/synthetic tradition heralded a major shift away from the views of language descended from logical positivism. His most important book, Word and Object, introduced the concept of indeterminacy of radical translation, a bleak view of the nature of the language with which we ascribe thoughts and beliefs to ourselves and others. Quine is also famous for the view that epistemology should be naturalized, that is conducted in a scientific spirit with the object of investigating the relationship between the inputs of experience and the outputs of belief. The eleven essays in this volume cover all the central topics of Quine's philosophy: the underdetermination of physical theory, analycity, naturalism, propositional attitudes, behaviorism, reference and ontology, positivism, holism and logic.

Word and Object, new edition
Word and Object, new edition

Author: Willard Van Orman Quine

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2013-01-25

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 0262518317

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A new edition of Quine's most important work. Willard Van Orman Quine begins this influential work by declaring, "Language is a social art. In acquiring it we have to depend entirely on intersubjectively available cues as to what to say and when." As Patricia Smith Churchland notes in her foreword to this new edition, with Word and Object Quine challenged the tradition of conceptual analysis as a way of advancing knowledge. The book signaled twentieth-century philosophy's turn away from metaphysics and what Churchland calls the "phony precision" of conceptual analysis. In the course of his discussion of meaning and the linguistic mechanisms of objective reference, Quine considers the indeterminacy of translation, brings to light the anomalies and conflicts implicit in our language's referential apparatus, clarifies semantic problems connected with the imputation of existence, and marshals reasons for admitting or repudiating each of various categories of supposed objects. In addition to Churchland's foreword, this edition offers a new preface by Quine's student and colleague Dagfinn Follesdal that describes the never-realized plans for a second edition of Word and Object, in which Quine would offer a more unified treatment of the public nature of meaning, modalities, and propositional attitudes.

Quine’s Philosophy
Quine’s Philosophy

Author: Gary Kemp

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2023-08-24

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1350342041

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W.V. Quine is one of the leading figures of 20th century analytic philosophy, and still among the most influential. But his work can be challenging and complex, and indeed often misunderstood. In this updated introduction to Quine's thought, Gary Kemp examines his seemingly disparate views as a unified whole and offers a valuable guide for anyone approaching Quine for the first time. Informed by current debates and updated throughout, this edition now includes: · Thoroughly revised and expanded text · More references to commentaries, secondary literature and works by Quine · Suggestions for further reading · Newly introduced material on Empirical Content, Explication, Nominalism, The Purported Third Dogma, Theoreticity, Natural Selection and Linguistics. · Historical notes on Quine's relation to his predecessors and contemporaries Paying close attention to Quine's seminal works including Word and Object and Philosophy of Logic, Kemp explains how his philosophy relates to thinkers including Rudolf Carnap and Wittgenstein, as well as to more recent figures such as Donald Davidson and Noam Chomsky. Kemp clearly and accurately emphasizes the systematic nature of Quine's thought as one of naturalism. He advances our understanding of Quine and attests to his ongoing influence in philosophy of science, logic, language, ontology and epistemology. This unique introduction to Quine's philosophy is recommended for any student interested in Quine and the history of analytic philosophy.

Quine's Naturalism
Quine's Naturalism

Author: Paul A. Gregory

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2011-11-03

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1441101489

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W. V. Quine was the most important naturalistic philosopher of the twentieth century and a major impetus for the recent resurgence of the view that empirical science is our best avenue to knowledge. His views, however, have not been well understood. Critics charge that Quine's naturalized epistemology is circular and that it cannot be normative. Yet, such criticisms stem from a cluster of fundamental traditional assumptions regarding language, theory, and the knowing subject - the very presuppositions that Quine is at pains to reject. Through investigation of Quine's views regarding language, knowledge, and reality, the author offers a new interpretation of Quine's naturalism. The naturalism/anti-naturalism debate can be advanced only by acknowledging and critiquing the substantial theoretical commitments implicit in the traditional view. Gregory argues that the responses to the circularity and non-normativity objections do just that. His analysis further reveals that Quine's departure from the tradition penetrates the conception of the knowing subject, and he thus offers a new and engaging defence of Quine's naturalism.

Quine on Ethics
Quine on Ethics

Author: Necip Fikri Alican

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2021-04-07

Total Pages: 137

ISBN-13: 1527568105

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This book is the first comprehensive treatment of Quine’s brief yet memorable foray into ethics. It defends Quine against his most formidable critics, corrects misconceptions in the reception of his outlook on ethics as a philosophical enterprise and morality as a social institution, and restores emphasis on observationality as the impetus behind his momentous intervention in metaethics. The central focus is on Quine’s infamous challenge to ethical theory: his thesis of the methodological infirmity of ethics as compared with science. The book ultimately demonstrates that the challenge is not only valid but also valuable in its identification of opportunities for reformation in ethical reasoning and moral justification.

The Routledge Handbook of Liberal Naturalism
The Routledge Handbook of Liberal Naturalism

Author: Mario De Caro

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-03-14

Total Pages: 476

ISBN-13: 1351209450

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The central question of naturalism - the relation of philosophy to science - was one of the defining strands of twentieth-century thought and remains a major source of debate and controversy. Today many argue that philosophy should fold itself into the sciences, especially the natural sciences. Liberal naturalists argue that such scientific naturalism demands reductive and Procrustean conceptions of knowledge and reality. Moreover, many philosophical problems are beyond the scope of the sciences, such as the nature of persons, the normativity of the space of reasons, and how best to understand the peculiar mix of objectivity and subjectivity of ethics and art. The Routledge Handbook of Liberal Naturalism is the first collection to present a comprehensive overview of liberal naturalism, a philosophical outlook that lies between scientific naturalism and supernaturalism. Comprising 37 chapters by an international team of contributors, it examines important cutting-edge topics including: what is liberal naturalism? is metaphysics a viable project? naturalism in the history of philosophy, including Hume, Dewey, and Quine contemporary liberal naturalists such as P.F. Strawson, John McDowell, Hilary Putnam, and John Rawls related kinds of naturalism, including subject naturalism, common-sense naturalism and biological naturalism the bearing of liberal naturalism on contemporary debates in epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics and aesthetics. Essential reading for students and researchers in all areas of philosophy, this volume will be of particular interest for those studying philosophical naturalism, philosophy of science, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics and aesthetics.

Righting Epistemology
Righting Epistemology

Author: Bredo Johnsen

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0190662778

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Righting Epistemology defends an unrecognized Humean conception of epistemic justification, showing that he is no skeptic, and an argument of his that refutes all extant alternative conceptions. It goes on to trace the development of his thought in Sir Karl Popper, Nelson Goodman, W. V. Quine and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Working from Within
Working from Within

Author: Sander Verhaegh

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-11-07

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0190913177

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During the past few decades, a radical shift has occurred in how philosophers conceive of the relation between science and philosophy. A great number of analytic philosophers have adopted what is commonly called a "naturalistic" approach, arguing that their inquiries ought to be in some sense continuous with science. Where early analytic philosophers often relied on a sharp distinction between science and philosophy--the former an empirical discipline concerned with fact, the latter an a priori discipline concerned with meaning--philosophers today largely follow Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) in his seminal rejection of this distinction. Sander Verhaegh here offers a comprehensive study of Quine's groundbreaking naturalism. Building on Quine's published corpus as well as a wealth of unpublished letters, notes, lectures, papers, proposals, and annotations from the Quine archives, Verhaegh aims to reconstruct both the nature and the development of his naturalism. As such, Working from Within aims to contribute to the rapidly developing historiography of analytic philosophy, and to provide a better, historically informed, understanding of what is philosophically at stake in the contemporary naturalistic turn. Transcriptions of five unpublished papers, letters, and notes are included in the appendix.

Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism, and the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction
Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism, and the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction

Author: Robert Sinclair

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-08-01

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13: 1793618216

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W. V. Quine’s occasional references to his ‘pragmatism’ have often been interpreted as suggesting a possible link to the American Pragmatism of Peirce, James, and Dewey. Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism, and the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction argues that the influence of pragmatism on Quine’s philosophy is more accurately traced to his teacher C.I. Lewis and his conceptual pragmatism from Mind and the World Order, and his later An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. Quine’s epistemological views share many affinities with Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism, where knowledge is conceived as a conceptual framework pragmatically revised in light of what future experience reveals. Robert Sinclair further defends and elaborates on this claim by showing how Lewis’s influence can be seen in several key episodes in Quine’s philosophical development. This not only highlights a forgotten element of the epistemological backdrop to Quine’s mid-century criticism of the analytic-synthetic distinction, but Sinclair further argues that it provides the central epistemological framework for the form and content of Quine’s later naturalized conception of epistemology.