Review of "The Significance of the New Logic" Willard Van Orman Quine. Edited and translated by Walter Carnielli, Frederique Janssen-Lauret, and William Pickering. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2018, pp. 200. ISBN-10: 1107179025 ISBN-13: 978-1107179028 (original) (raw)

In this review, I will discuss the historical importance of "The Significance of the New Logic" by Quine. This is a translation of the original "O Sentido da Nova Lógica" in Portuguese by Carnielli, Janssen-Lauret, and Pickering. The American philosopher wrote this book in the beginning of the 1940s, before a major shift in his philosophy. Thus, I will argue that the reader must see this book as a picture of an important period in his thinking. Later, I will expose a brief summary of the chapters, remarking on valuable features in each of them and positions Quine abandoned in his later work. for scholars to have access in full to most originals. But, since the 1940s were a period of maturation of Quine's philosophy, this translation fills a historical gap Quine scholars were hoping. Carnielli, Janssen-Lauret and Pickering explore in many details the context in which Quine wrote this book. They have. been successful in presenting the Brazilian philosophical background, especially on what concerns. its relative their absence in the analytical scenario. In this respect, the book intended to further the Brazilians to analytic philosophy. Discussions and techniques developed by Frege, Russell, Carnap, Tarsky, Godel and others are therefore the primary topics in the volume. We note that Quine intended SNL to be a textbook. As such, the volume fails to give an updated overview of techniques and it uses a deprecated language. But, SNL can now be regarded as a picture of Quine's view on logic in the early 1940s. It is an overstate to regard the book only as a textbook. The way Quine develops the logical apparatus and his preparatory remarks are particular of a very distinct philosophical position. By a close examination of his writing, we realize he was arguing for an extensional, nominalistic leaning ontology and a rather reluctant logicist position. The latter part of the book is dedicated to a discussion on themes such as ontology and its relation with philosophy of language and logic. He drafts in Portuguese the first version of his later work: "Notes on Existence and Necessity". Thus, he exits the scope of a pure textbook, including contemporary discussions on ontology and philosophy of mathematics. These topics are accompanied by the flavour of the inner conflict that suggests parts of Quine's mature philosophy.