Willard Van Orman Quine Research Papers (original) (raw)

► JOHN CORCORAN AND SRIRAM NAMBIAR, Five Goldfarb implications. Expanding Corcoran’s “Meanings of implication” , we discuss five implication relations in Goldfarb’s Deductive logic , an important logic textbook that contains the latest... more

► JOHN CORCORAN AND SRIRAM NAMBIAR, Five Goldfarb implications.
Expanding Corcoran’s “Meanings of implication” , we discuss five implication relations in Goldfarb’s Deductive logic , an important logic textbook that contains the latest articulation of approaches rooted in Quine’s 1940 masterpiece Mathematical logic, whose basic ideas were taught to generations of Harvard students, many now influential logicians, philosophers, and mathematicians.

Quine e Kuhn têm visões diferentes sobre a ciência e deram origem a linhas de pesquisa em filosofia da ciência comumente percebidas como divergentes. Mas, apesar das diferenças, é possível identificar no trabalho de ambos semelhanças... more

Quine e Kuhn têm visões diferentes sobre a ciência e deram origem a linhas de pesquisa em filosofia da ciência comumente percebidas como divergentes. Mas, apesar das diferenças, é possível identificar no trabalho de ambos semelhanças metodológicas. Neste ensaio, sustentamos que certos aspectos metodológicos da filosofia histórica da ciência de Kuhn harmonizam-se com o espírito da epistemologia naturalizada de Quine. O naturalismo de Maddy, defendemos ao final, pode ser visto como combinando aspectos das duas abordagens.

Étienne Balibar's On Universals rigorously engages in the philosophical and political exigencies of the universal, aiming neither to restore nor amend universality but, instead, to clarify the meaning and value of universalism while... more

Étienne Balibar's On Universals rigorously engages in the philosophical and political exigencies of the universal, aiming neither to restore nor amend universality but, instead, to clarify the meaning and value of universalism while analyzing universalism's relationship to equality, democracy and the institution. However, intra-linguistic and inter-linguistic translations demonstrate that the name "equality" is never equivocal within democratic constituencies. Similarly, universalism, which scaffolds "equality," is also never equivocal. In navigating this aporia, Balibar's project radically pluralizes universality. Balibar's first chapter, "Racism, Sexism, Universalism: A Reply to Joan Scott and Judith Butler" recalls his "Racism as Universalism" (1994), where he makes the case that universalism and racism are determinate contraries, with one affecting the other "from the inside" (2020: 1). A critical feature with the humanist model of anthropological universalism is how universality underpins racist/sexist discourses. That is, an element of discrimination and generic exclusion is involved in the constitution of the general idea of the human that identifies fundamental values, investing them with normative functionalities. In "Ambiguous Universality" (2002), Balibar applies Lacan's analytical schema to illuminate the logic of universality qua domination, with universality galvanizing majority vs. minority status. "Real universality" is always conditioned by "fictive universality," the constitution of ethical norms through which identity is recognized and internalized, and "ideal/symbolic universality," where community values are challenged in name of class struggle. Emancipatory projects appeal to infinite negativity, giving universalism its capacity for political subversion by way of a historical positive, problematizing the relationship between universal and community, identity and difference. In Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (1997), Judith Butler takes issue with Balibar's argument that racism is present at the core of current notions of universality and at the same time his attempt to reconcile universality with the normative-political use of the universal. For Butler one cannot assume consensus about universalist values like equality and we have to challenge universality's normative naturalization of differences. Butler takes Balibar to task for offering a picture of universality that cannot be established without exclusion and necessarily contradicting itself (4). Joan Scott's Only Paradoxes to Offer (1996) engages with a "pluriversalist" universalism, bringing Balibar's conception of paradoxical class and ideal universality to task. The antagonism that both Butler and Scott identify is the very condition of politics, which pushes us to look for emancipation beyond any instituted given. In turn, what inscribes contradictions of the universal is not only on the side of institutional effects but the institution's conditions of possibility. For Scott, Balibar's "paradoxical class" and "ideal universality" seek to transform community instead of integrating minorities into a given community of citizens. Scott has Balibar say that every exclusion is open to the challenge posed by those who turn that exclusion's principles against it (4). Balibar sees these retorts as making pellucid that universalism represents a site of struggle against the structural domination and violence to which it invariably leads. Accordingly, Balibar seeks to deracinate instrumental universalism from conceptual universalism (i.e., universalism in-itself).

The centrality of Quine's naturalistic outlook to his conception of ontology has long been overlooked. But it is thrown into sharp relief if we contrast his view with that of Ruth Barcan Marcus, a classic nominalist, and try to... more

The centrality of Quine's naturalistic outlook to his conception of ontology has long been overlooked. But it is thrown into sharp relief if we contrast his view with that of Ruth Barcan Marcus, a classic nominalist, and try to disentangle where and why they misunderstood each other. Quine thinks that the only way we can know an object is by positing it, tentatively, as the best explanation of significantly overlapping observations. Our only access to objects is descriptively, by considering the object's role in our best theory. Fans as well as detractors of Quine also routinely miss that this implies Quine's unattractive view of identity as mere indiscernibility-according-to-the-theory. After all, if an object can only be admitted into the ontology by playing some explanatory role couched in terms of the predicates of the theory, there will never be any reason to admit two objects which satisfy all and only the same predicates of that theory. There is no distinct explanatory role for the second object that the first doesn't already discharge. Nor can we appeal to a stronger language to distinguish the two. Quine's naturalism implies that we must always work within our best theory. Barcan Marcus, by contrast, believes that our minds can reach out and touch objects directly. Her ontologically committing expressions are not variables, but names, encoding in language such direct access to objects. Variables are relieved of the burden of commitment: her substitutional interpretation reduces them to substitution instances using names. She neatly turns Quine's criterion, which paraphrases away names in favour of (Russellian, existentially quantified) descriptions on its head. Identity statements between directly referential names, or \emph{tags}, as Barcan Marcus calls them, are true or false \emph{tout court}, without any need for descriptions or indiscernibility. My paper explores how Barcan Marcus and Quine talked past each other at crucial points, for instance where Quine misread her quantifiers as objectual quantifiers, or her identity as equivalent to indiscernibility, and where Barcan Marcus urges Quine to use Russellian descriptions to dispel puzzles about so-called contingent identity, not realising that for him names never rise above the level of descriptions. I finish by considering what a synthesis between the two would look like, and considering what sort of role could be played by directly referential ontologically committing expressions in a naturalistic theory. Uses of ostension, direct perceptual access, and the case of introspective methods used in contemporary psychology and psychiatry provide intriguing test cases.

Slides to accompany the paper of the same title.

This class, introducing students to the pragmatist tradition and to neo-pragmatism, turned out unexpectedly: students knew so little of the history of modern philosophy that it was necessary to include summaries of. e.g., Descartes'... more

This class, introducing students to the pragmatist tradition and to neo-pragmatism, turned out unexpectedly: students knew so little of the history of modern philosophy that it was necessary to include summaries of. e.g., Descartes' approach. One of the term papers in this class, by the way, was subsequently published in the Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society.

How do we come to know metaphysical truths? How does metaphysical inquiry work? Are metaphysical debates substantial? These are the questions which characterize metametaphysics. This book, the first systematic student introduction... more

How do we come to know metaphysical truths? How does metaphysical inquiry work? Are metaphysical debates substantial? These are the questions which characterize metametaphysics. This book, the first systematic student introduction dedicated to metametaphysics, discusses the nature of metaphysics - its methodology, epistemology, ontology and our access to metaphysical knowledge. It provides students with a firm grounding in the basics of metametaphysics, covering a broad range of topics in metaontology such as existence, quantification, ontological commitment and ontological realism. Contemporary views are discussed along with those of Quine, Carnap and Meinong. Going beyond the metaontological debate, thorough treatment is given to novel topics in metametaphysics, including grounding, ontological dependence, fundamentality, modal epistemology, intuitions, thought experiments and the relationship between metaphysics and science. The book will be an essential resource for those studying advanced metaphysics, philosophical methodology, metametaphysics, epistemology and the philosophy of science.

The purpose of this article is to point out the historical reasons why W.V. Quine’s article Two Dogmas of Empiricism should be read not as an attempt to criticize the characteristic theses of logical positivism, but as an attempt to... more

The purpose of this article is to point out the historical reasons why W.V. Quine’s article Two Dogmas of Empiricism should be read not as an attempt to criticize the characteristic theses of logical positivism, but as an attempt to reject the conceptual analysis based on the unclear concepts such as ‘analytical’, ‘synonymous’ and ‘meaning’. Instead of the conceptual analysis, Quine proposed the methods of explication and paraphrase. These two methods are useful for clarifying and simplifying the conceptual apparatus in which scientific knowledge is formulated.

A summary for my undergraduates on W. V. O. Quine’s seminal paper of 1948, 'On What There Is'.

C. I. Lewis’s distinction between the given and the concept is often exposed as the key element of his treatment of the problem of intentionality in that the given and the concept would be necessary and sufficient conditions for objective... more

C. I. Lewis’s distinction between the given and the concept is often exposed as the key element of his treatment of the problem of intentionality in that the given and the concept would be necessary and sufficient conditions for objective purport. Such an account nonetheless offers a truncated picture of Lewis’s treatment of the problem of intentionality. The best way to appreciate this verdict is to state the predicament this account is confronted with: If the distinction between the given and the concept apparently leads to a version of the same problem it was designed to address, how could it be the key element contributing to answering the problem of intentionality? Indeed, according to Lewis, the given and the concept are mutually independent so that prima facie nothing guarantees that concepts are applicable to the given. The difficulty is what Lewis calls “the problem of the a priori”: how to guarantee that our concepts can be imposed upon a content of experience which is independent and not yet given? This is a version of the problem that Kant’s Transcendental Deduction addresses: How can categories, as subjective conditions of experience, be objectively valid? A natural question is then: How does Lewis address the problem of the a priori? The main purpose of this essay is then to investigate how C. I. Lewis’s addresses the problem of the a priori and to contribute to restoring an appropriate understanding of Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism.
http://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/2573

Most philosophers would argue that metaphors cannot be both irreducibly metaphorical (i.e., not simply equivalent to a series of literal comparison statements) and true in a philosophically interesting sense (i.e., apart from the... more

Most philosophers would argue that metaphors cannot be both irreducibly metaphorical (i.e., not simply equivalent to a series of literal comparison statements) and true in a philosophically interesting sense (i.e., apart from the occasional metaphorical claim which by chance is also literally true); consequently, metaphors are excluded from the domain of knowledge, since being true is a necessary characteristic of genuine knowledge. Instead of revising our understanding of metaphor to make it more closely correspond to our idea of truth and thereby open the way to an appreciation of the epistemic status of metaphors, I argue that our idea of truth is itself often a metaphor. The two dominant traditional theories of truth, the correspondence and coherence theories, both rest upon fundamental metaphors apart from which they are untenable. Once the fundamentally metaphorical character of these theories is appreciated, the objection that metaphors cannot enter into the domain of knowledge because they cannot meet the standards of either the correspondence or coherence theories of truth loses its force. If metaphors cannot be true, then philosophy itself would be forced to abnegate its claim to truth. American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division, 1984.

This is a quietly subversive attempt to convey, via fastidious attention to the text with some expansions, Quine's thinking about ontology in the final chapter of his great mid-period work, his Word and Object of 1960. In many ways it... more

This is a quietly subversive attempt to convey, via fastidious attention to the text with some expansions, Quine's thinking about ontology in the final chapter of his great mid-period work, his Word and Object of 1960. In many ways it sums up his thinking through the 1950's, but in the following decades he would change his estimate of its significance. We find it aptly named in 'Ontic Decision'. Many of the tendencies for which he is most famous -- his pragmatism, and against a peculiarly philosophical point of view as against or superior to science being chief among them -- are very much on display.

Having found several erroneities, chimerae, lacunae, malaphors and their sequalae, or (at least generally considered) 'sub-literate' comments and notations in the work of renowned SuperPhysicist Albert Einstein, I have concluded that it... more

Having found several erroneities, chimerae, lacunae, malaphors and their sequalae, or (at least generally considered) 'sub-literate' comments and notations in the work of renowned SuperPhysicist Albert Einstein, I have concluded that it is incumbent upon me as a sentient witness, thereof, that I convey and expose the flaws of Mr. Einstein's mildly eccentric ideas to those who are willing to listen and learn.

In recent academic debates, a lot has been said about metaontology. Usually, the main point of disagreement in these debates is the relationship between ontology and the logical existential quantifier. It has been well-known, since the... more

In recent academic debates, a lot has been said about metaontology. Usually, the main point of disagreement in these debates is the relationship between ontology and the logical existential quantifier. It has been well-known, since the famous 'On What There Is' (1948), that the dominant view regarding the meaning of the existential quantifier of formal logic is ontological, which means that the ontological notion of existence is completely captured by it. This association between ontological existence and the logical existential quantifier is explicitly defended by Quine with his criterion of ontological commitment. However, the most curious aspect about Quine's criterion that is commonly put aside, on purpose or not, is that it is a clear and extreme attempt to reduce ontological and metaphysical debates to the field of logic and semantics, more specifically, to the theory of reference. His criterion, as it was proposed, can be seen as a tool with which he defends the idea that the correct and only approach to answer the main ontological question " What is there? " is through logical analysis. If this interpretation is correct, the criterion of ontological commitment, although toughly defended by metaphysicians nowadays, is much closer to a deflationist point of view than is usually assumed. This is due to the fact that, as I intend to show, the relation between ontological existence and the logical existential quantifier, especially as proposed by Quine, is reductionist, superficial and completely anti-intuitive.

Verbete sobre vida e obra de Quine.

W artykule niniejszym omawiam kilka klasycznych sposobów podejścia do problemu intencjonalności. Zaczynam od ogólnego naszkicowania problemu. Następnie przechodzę do konkretnych propozycji. Najpierw omówiona zostanie ogólna postać teorii... more

W artykule niniejszym omawiam kilka klasycznych sposobów podejścia do problemu intencjonalności. Zaczynam od ogólnego naszkicowania problemu. Następnie przechodzę do konkretnych propozycji. Najpierw omówiona zostanie ogólna postać teorii wprowadzającej byty zapośredniczające typu Fregowskiego, następnie teoria przedmiotów intencjonalnych, tak jak występuje ona u Brentana, Ingardena czy Meinonga, a także w wersji operujących ontologią światów możliwych. Kolejnym podejściem będą „przysłówkowe” teorie treści mentalnych, teorie kauzalne, teorie funkcjonalistyczno-reprezentacjonalistyczne oraz teorie behawiorystyczno-funkcjonalistyczne, głoszące pierwszeństwo intencjonalności językowej. Artykuł pomyślany jest jako wprowadzenie do problematyki, i w związku z tym nie znajdą się w nim ani wszystkie istotne zagadki ani też pełne i precyzyjne wersje argumentacji. Starałem się jednak pokazać podstawowe problemy oraz wewnętrzną logikę preferowania tych czy innych podejść.

O presente trabalho tem por objetivo apresentar a ontologia de Quine e analisar duas de suas características, a relatividade que dela decorre e o pragmatismo que ela pressupõe. Inicia-se com uma breve biografia do autor. Em seguida,... more

Der Geburtsfehler der Wissenschaftstheorie besteht nach meiner Auffassung darin, dass sie von den Theorien als Kern der Wissenschaft (respektive der Physik) ausgeht, und dabei den zugrunde liegenden Konzepten und ihrer Rolle zu wenig... more

Der Geburtsfehler der Wissenschaftstheorie besteht nach meiner Auffassung darin, dass sie von den Theorien als Kern der Wissenschaft (respektive der Physik) ausgeht, und dabei den zugrunde liegenden Konzepten und ihrer Rolle zu wenig Aufmerksamkeit schenkt. Der Grund dafür ist darin zu sehen, dass die Wissenschaftstheorie - wie sich auch in der prominenten Platzierung des Problems der 'Abgrenzung gegenüber der Metaphysik' zeigt - grundsätzlich von einem gegenstandsaffinen Erkenntniskonzept ausgeht, das sich im Wesentlichen nicht von dem gegenstandsbezogenen, spezifizierenden Erkenntniskonzept der Metaphysik unterscheidet, dem auch die Erkenntnistheorie mit ihrem Modell von Erkenntnis als Subjekt-Objekt-Beziehung Ausdruck verleiht. Die physikalischen Konzepte werden demgemäß analog klassischen Allgemeinbegriffen aufgefasst. Symptomatisch für die Übertragung dieser Erkenntnisauffassung auf die physikalische Theoriebildung ist das Induktionsproblem.
Dieses beruht auf der Annahme, dass die Induktion, die Verallgemeinerung von singulären Beobachtungen (auf Basis von Repetition), den grundlegenden Faktor der Theoriebildung repräsentiert. Der Gedanke der Induktion, der Verallgemeinerung, korrespondiert im Grunde dem Gedanken der Subsumtion unter ein begriffliches Schema, mit entsprechenden Problemen, was den Allgemeingültigkeitsanspruch physikalischer Gesetze betrifft.
Meine These ist, dass dieses gegenstandsaffine Erkenntniskonzept in seiner heuristischen Übertragung auf den Erkenntniszugang der Physik ein grundlegendes Missverständnis bildet, denn deren Erkenntniskonzept ist im Gegensatz zum metaphysischen nicht gegenstandsbezogen, sondern transzendental, nicht spezifizierend, sondern generalisierend. Und grundlegend dafür ist die transzendentale Rolle der physikalischen Konzepte. Der epistemologische Modus ihrer Allgemeinheit ist nicht die Subsumtion, sondern die Substitution. Sie entziehen, ontologisch gesehen, den Gegenständen (in konkretem Bezug auf ihr Verhalten und ihre 'Eigenschaften') sukzessive ihre Autonomie. Es ist die Substitution der Gegenstände durch transzendentale Konzepte, deren präsumptiver Status der Allgemeinheit den Anspruch der physikalischen Gesetze auf Allgemeingültigkeit begründet. Die Induktion spielt höchstens eine Rolle auf dem Weg, der zu den Konzepten führt.
Die These der Inadäquatheit des metaphysischen Erkenntniskonzepts (und damit verbunden auch des erkenntnistheoretischen Modells von Erkenntnis) bezogen auf die Physik bildet den Hintergrund für die Auseinandersetzung mit den wesentlichen Positionen und Stationen der klassischen Erkenntnis- und Wissenschaftstheorie, im Zuge derer auch die tieferliegenden Gründe für das Festhalten am metaphysischen Erkenntniskonzept klar werden.

To a significant extent, mainstream Western philosophy is not empirically minded. The neurophilosophy of the Churchlands seems to exhibit the greatest divergence from this orientation by far. Extending and neuralizing Quine’s naturalism,... more

To a significant extent, mainstream Western philosophy is not empirically minded. The neurophilosophy of the Churchlands seems to exhibit the greatest divergence from this orientation by far. Extending and neuralizing Quine’s naturalism, the Churchlands have been known to challenge most assumptions and principles of contemporary mainstream analytic and even existing naturalistic philosophies. Even the philosophers who identify themselves as full-blown naturalists have an inexplicably negative attitude toward the Churchlands. For many philosophers of the mind, the Churchlands’ problem is not that they are philosophically wrong, but that they have no philosophical approach that could be wrong. They are nonphilosophers working at philosophy departments. Proper philosophy is not what they do or think they are doing. In this article, I argue to the contrary. The Churchlands would seem surprisingly moderate, and neither trivial nor near-trivial, when closely scrutinized.

An increasing number of philosophers of biology are currently advocating process ontology as an ontological framework able to capture the profound dynamicity of biological reality. Living beings are claimed to be processes rather than... more

An increasing number of philosophers of biology are currently advocating process ontology as an ontological framework able to capture the profound dynamicity of biological reality. Living beings are claimed to be processes rather than things or substances. However, due to a lack of reflection on the ontological nature of processes, the implications of this process ontological turn in philosophy of biology are not sufficiently clear. In this chapter I show how Bergson provides helpful conceptual resources for clarifying the notion of process, on which basis then different versions of 'process biology' can be evaluated. I argue that Bergson's analyses of movement and change make a powerful case against the common fourdimensionalist interpretation, according to which organisms would be four-dimensional aggregates of portions of spacetime. If the 'process biologists' are serious about the fundamentally processual constitution of life and living beings, they ought to endorse a notion of process that does not reduce movement and change to static thing-like existents. Bergson's concept of 'duration'-indivisible temporal continuity-can serve as a model.

Quine’s theory of ontological relativity holds that in the realm of discourse, there are several ways of painting and picturing reality, where each picture of reality could go for an acceptable or likely picture of how things are. In... more

Quine’s theory of ontological relativity holds that in the realm of discourse, there are several ways of painting and picturing reality, where each picture of reality could go for an acceptable or likely picture of how things are. In defending ontological relativity, Quine moves against foundationalism in Philosophy. He seems to follow the notions of relativism, pragmatism and libertarianism which virtually all post-modernist philosophers are enamoured of.
In trying to undercut foundations, Quine’s theory implicitly posits background theory as an epistemic-determining foundation, which is fulfilled on the premises of naturalised epistemology. Again, while he sought to pattern naturalised epistemology after the methodology of the natural sciences, the foundational nature of the natural sciences also stare it at the face. This essay deploys critical analysis to argue that contra Quine and some scholars like Richard Rorty, Quine’s theory does not imply the demise of foundationalism, for foundations are indispensable for progress, rather, it provides a framework for re-working and re-defining foundationalism along new lines. If this be so understood, then false assumptions about Quine’s programme would be dispensed with, and, the hope of an epistemology that guides knowledge acquisition, would be reached.

Roman Ingarden’s theory of modes of being belongs to the most interesting and original parts of his ontology. According to Ingarden the word “being” is used with a number of different meanings. Not only have we to distinguish between... more

Roman Ingarden’s theory of modes of being belongs to the most interesting and original parts of his ontology. According to Ingarden the word “being” is used with a number of different meanings. Not only have we to distinguish between existential “is” (“There is no Santa Claus”), copulative “is” (“This apple is red”) and “is” as transitive verb (“My dog is in your garden”). Also the philosophically most celebrated existential “is” can be – as another well known thinker used to say – predicated in various ways. According to Ingarden these various ways can be analyzed into several existential moments, which basically correspond to various ways of existential dependence. Possible modes of being are obtained by combining existential moments. Finally we get a highly articulated existential ontology. Modes of being aren’t regarded as primitive and unanalysable. They have a kind of internal structure that helps us to understand ontological dependencies in which entities enjoying a given mode of being are involved. Moreover, the combinatorial idea makes it possible to construct many modes of being out of a relatively small number of existential moments, which makes the resulting dependence network ontologically transparent and cognitively accessible.

Willard V. O. Quine, with his thesis of indeterminacy of translation, propose that there is no uniquely correct translation of one set of sentences into another, and that different translations of the same source material could be equally... more

Willard V. O. Quine, with his thesis of indeterminacy of translation, propose that there is no uniquely correct translation of one set of sentences into another, and that different translations of the same source material could be equally correct instances of translation where the differences between translations are not merely stylistic or connotational differences but are also related to what the translations imply; that it is possible to come up with divergent translations of the same set of sentences that are all compatible as translations of their corresponding source sentences, “yet are incompatible with one another.” In addition, Quine’s theses of indeterminacies also encompasses the thesis of indeterminacy of reference and the thesis of underdetermination of scientific theories. In this paper I shall attempt to provide a brief introduction to Quine, analyze the thesis of indeterminacy of translation as well as the other two indeterminacies found in Quine’s writings along with some analyses of them found in secondary sources. In the second half of this paper I shall attempt to see how indeterminacy of translation could relate to translation studies, and examine in what respects it would be useful for an inquirer of translation to study Quine.