W.V.O. Quine
1908-2000 · American · Analytic Philosophy, Logic, Epistemology, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Science, Metaphysics
To be is to be the value of a variable.
When W.V.O. Quine sailed to Vienna in 1932 to meet Carnap, Schlick, Gödel, and Tarski, he was absorbing the most rigorous philosophy of his era. Within two decades he would dismantle its foundations. His 1951 paper "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" attacked the idea that any statement is true purely by the meaning of its words, and the companion idea that each claim faces experience independently. What we have instead is a web of belief — knowledge as a fabric touched by experience only at its periphery, where any thread is revisable, even the laws of logic.
Topics W.V.O. Quine addresses
- the two dogmas of empiricism
- rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction
- confirmation holism
- the Duhem-Quine thesis
- the web of belief
- naturalized epistemology
- ontological commitment
- to be is to be the value of a variable
- the indeterminacy of translation
- radical translation
- gavagai
- the inscrutability of reference
- ontological relativity
- naturalism
- philosophy continuous with science
- extensionality
- nominalism
- stimulus meaning
- observation sentences
- occasion sentences
- standing sentences
- regimentation
- canonical notation
- the tribunal of sense experience
Questions to put to W.V.O. Quine
Translation, Meaning, and Gavagai
- What happens in the gavagai thought experiment?
- How can there be no fact of the matter about what a word means?
- What's the difference between stimulus meaning and what you call 'real meaning'?
- Why does indeterminacy of translation matter for philosophy of language?
- If translation is indeterminate, how do we ever understand each other?
The Two Dogmas and the Web of Belief
- What are the two dogmas of empiricism you're attacking?
- Why can't we give a good account of what makes a statement analytic?
- What do you mean by saying our statements face experience as a corporate body?
- How does the web of belief actually work when we encounter new evidence?
- Can we really revise logic itself if the empirical pressure is strong enough?
- What's wrong with the idea that each statement has its own bundle of confirming experiences?
Ontology and What There Is
- What do you mean by 'to be is to be the value of a variable'?
- How do we figure out what a theory is committed to saying exists?
- What's the difference between ontological commitment and ideology?
- Why does your criterion seem to favor abstract objects like numbers and sets?
- How is ontology relative to a background language or translation manual?
- What's inscrutability of reference and how does it differ from indeterminacy of translation?
Naturalized Epistemology
- What's wrong with the traditional Cartesian epistemology project?
- How does psychology replace first philosophy in your approach?
- Are you really giving up on the normative question of justification?
- How do children build up reference and theory from surface stimulations?
- What role does prediction play in naturalized epistemology?
Holism and Confirmation
- What's the Duhem-Quine thesis about testing hypotheses?
- How do we decide which part of the web to revise when experience conflicts with theory?
- What's the maxim of minimum mutilation?
- How is your holism different from saying anything goes in theory choice?
- Why can't we just test one statement at a time against experience?
Naturalism and the Scope of Philosophy
- What do you mean by saying philosophy is continuous with science?
- Why is there no first philosophy independent of empirical investigation?
- How does naturalism handle questions about modality and necessity?
- What makes a philosophical question worth asking on your view?
- Is philosophy of science really philosophy enough?
Converse with W.V.O. Quine on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in W.V.O. Quine's own writing, cited to the page.