Pursuit of Truth: Revised Edition
Willard Van Orman Quine
Language: English
Pages: 128
ISBN: 0674739515
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In Pursuit of Truth W. V. Quine gives us his latest word on issues to which he has devoted many years. As he says in the preface: "In these pages I have undertaken to update, sum up, and clarify my variously intersecting views on cognitive meaning, objective reference, and the grounds of knowledge?'The pursuit of truth is a quest that links observation, theory, and the world. Various faulty efforts to forge such links have led to much intellectual confusion. Quine's efforts to get beyond the confusion begin by rejecting the very idea of binding together word and thing, rejecting the focus on the isolated word. For him, observation sentences and theoretical sentences are the alpha and omega ofthe scientific enterprise. Notions like "idea" and "meaning" are vague, but a sentence-now there's something you can sink your teeth into.
Starting thus with sentences, Quine sketches an epistemological setting for the pursuit of truth. He proceeds to show how reification and reference contribute to the elaborate structure that can indeed relate science to its sensory evidence.In this book Quine both summarizes and moves ahead. Rich, lively chapters dissect his major concerns-evidence, reference, meaning, intension, and truth. "Some points;' he writes, "have become clearer in my mind in the eight years since Theories and Things. Some that were already clear in my mind have become clearer on paper. And there are some that have meanwhile undergone substantive change for the better." This is a key book for understanding the effort that a major philosopher has made a large part of his life's work: to naturalize epistemology in the twentieth century. The book is concise and elegantly written, as one would expect, and does not assume the reader's previous acquaintance with Quine's writings. Throughout, it is marked by Quine's wit and economy of style.
idiom 'perceives that it's raining' cuts through all that hopeless neurological complexity and en capsulates all perception that it is raining-not just on Tom's part, but on everyone's. It does so by citing a symptom rather than a neural mech anism. And what a remarkable sort of symptom! We detect it by empathetic observation of the subject's facial expres sions and what is happening in front of him, perhaps, and we specify it by a content clause consisting of a vicarious observation sentence.
interchangeability of all coextensive terms and clauses salva veritate. It obstructed classical predicate logic as a universal theoretical framework. Now this quarter of the mind problem is in a fair way to dissolution. Quota tional treatment of propositional attitudes de dicto delivers them to the extensional domain of predicate logic, thanks to the reduction of quotation to spelling. Propositional atti tudes de re, on the other hand, we downgraded. So we see the attitudes de dicto reconciled
human ac- INTENSION 73 tion. They complement natural science in their incommen surable way, and are indispensable both to the social sci ences and to our everyday dealings. Read Dennett and Davidson. 30 . Modalities The modalities of necessity and possibility are not overtly mentalistic, but still they are intensional, in the sense of resisting substitutivity of i de�tity Here again we have the interplay between de dieto and de reo Thus 'nee (7 < the , number of the planets) is true de
His " 94 PURSUIT OF TRUTH rou g h idea is to reckon a sen ten ce of natural science neither true nor false if n o pro ced u re is known for making a strong emp irical case for its truth or falsity. Holistic considerations make it doubtful what sentences should be retained, then, as eligib le for t ru th or fal s it y Clear candidates for retention are the observation categ o ri cals. Other sentences share empirical conten t i n va ry in g deg rees by i mp lyin g ob serv ation categ ori cals
5). pp. 1 61 - 1 7 1 . -- "Reply t o Roger F . Gibson, Jr. " In L . E . Hahn and P . A . Schilpp. cds. , TItt Philosophy oJ W. V. QuiM (laSalle : Open Court. 1 986), pp. 1 5 5 - 1 5 7. -- Quiddities. Harvard University Press, 1 987. Quine. W. V . , and J . S. Ullian. The Web oJBelieJ New York: Ran dom House. 1 970. Rev . ed. , 1 978. . • .• .• REFERENCES 1 07 Russen, Bertrand. "00 Denoting. " Mirul 1 4 ( 1 9OS), p p . 479-493 . "Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of Types. "