Questions tagged [quine]
W.V.O. Quine (1908-2000) was a prominent 20th century analytic philosopher.
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What is Quine’s Confirmation theory?
I have just read that Quine relies on his confirmation theory to establish if a scientific theory is “valid” or not. But I am not sure to have understood what is Quine’s confirmation theory and why ...
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Is there any correlation between Quine’s underdetermination and bayesian issues of old evidence and new theories?
Bayesianism has some faults some of them are the problem of old evidence and the issue of new theories. Are these two problems linked to Quine’s underdetermination? Or are they contrasting it? What is ...
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Differences and similarities between Kuhn and Quine about the indeterminacy of translation
About Thomas Kuhn's semantic incommensurability:
Early on Kuhn drew a parallel with Quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of translation (1970a, 202; 1970c, 268). According to the latter, if we are ...
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The synthetic apriority of the categorical imperative
Weirdness I noticed about Kant's theory of the categorical imperative: he says that the CI is "synthetic," in the second Critique using the very imposing phrase "sic volo, sic jubeo" to characterize ...
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Quine's perspective on laws of nature
I am studying Lewis and his best system account of laws of nature so I am wondering what is Quine's viewpoint on laws on nature and if his perspective is similar to the lewisian one.
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Humean supervenience and Quine
I am wondering if Quine would adopt the Lewis' Humean supervenience theory to make sense of probability. Quine is a subjectivist about probability (even though regarding probability in QM he thinks ...
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What are good sources on vivid designators?
Wikipedia lists a vivid designator as the following:
Vivid designator:
In modal logic and the philosophy of language, a vivid designator is a
term which is believed to designate the same ...
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How and why Aristotelian essentialism is a problem for Quine?
I cannot understand how and why the Aristotelian essentialism is problematic for Quine. I have tried to read articles on the theme but probably I am not smart enough to understand them. Could you ...
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What is Quine’s reductionism?
I am especially interested in how reductionism is related to the fact that even though science broadly comprehends a number of subjects, physics is paradigmatic.
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Why are non-logical predicates of 0-arity treated as logical variables?
In the "Non-logical symbols" section of Wikipedia, it states:
A predicate symbol (or relation symbol) with some valence (or arity,
number of arguments) greater than or equal to 0. These are ...
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Quine, subjective probability and QM
I have just read Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist where Quine says:
“Probability? Of events? Restore extensionality (...). Of states of affairs? Treat quotationally, like de dicto. How much ...
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How do we know that Wyman and McX aren't the same person?
Quine thought that only that which exists can be referred to, or in other words 'to be is to be the value of a bound variable'.
However, what of his equally famous fictional characters Wyman and McX?...
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What is Quine's response to Parmenides's argument against change?
I was recently reading Russell's chapter on Parmenides in The History of Western Philosophy, and I came across a fun little argument for the absence of change. Essentially, it says that word meaning ...
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Secondary texts on Dennett's “Quining Qualia”?
Does there exist any secondary literature discussing "Quining Qualia" by Daniel Dennett?
A google search provided nothing relevant. I'm not in university, so I don't have a professor to give a brief ...
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What is Quine's perspective on probability?
I am curious about what Quine's perspective on probability may be and if we can say that the quinean viewpoint on modality can be considered similar to his viewpoint on probability.
Is probability ...
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Why can we not reduce necessity to analyticity?
Why can’t we eliminate talk of necessity and possible worlds, for talk of analyticity and (non-modal) logical consistency? Has there been any attempt in recent times to do this? I'm not 100% sure, but ...
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Is Kuhn referring to Quine's holism while developing his later Semantic Incommensurability Thesis?
Kuhn's view as expressed in the passage quoted above depends upon meaning holism—the claim that the meanings of terms are interrelated in such a way that changing the meaning of one term results in ...
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What did Kuhn exactly say about the inscrutability of reference?
Early on Kuhn drew a parallel with Quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of translation (1970a, 202; 1970c, 268). According to the latter, if we are translating one language into another, there are ...
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In which sense Quine denies that the translated expressions do have a meaning?
Early on Kuhn drew a parallel with Quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of translation (1970a, 202; 1970c, 268). According to the latter, if we are translating one language into another, there are ...
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Quine “Ontological Relativity”
I am completely new to Quine's theories and thank you for your patience in answering my novice questions.
In his paper "Ontological Relativity", Quine says:
Consider the case of a thoughtful ...
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why Bertrand Russell's paradox had such a high impact and relevance?
The paradox of Bertrand Russell he formulated in 1918, I believe, has undermined the attempt to found mathematics on a strictly logical basis. I remember that an intuitive way of putting the paradox ...
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Could someone help me out with Quine's theory of ontological commitment?
I'm kind of struggling with this. My prof gave an example of the problem of whether or not holes exist.
In the case of a colander, a realist about holes could say that a colander is metal that has ...
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is the world a set of everything that exists? Any quotation?
The way I understood first-order-logic with quinean metaontology is, that a world is the set of everything that exists. Now I'm searching for a quote. I looked at some texts from Russell and at On ...
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Does Quine's dissolution of the Analytic/Synthetic distinction challenge mathematical realism?
I was surprised to learn that Quine is a mathematical realist (See this interview for example). I always assumed that his "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" and specifically his dissolution of the Analytic/...
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What are the relations between externalism (Kripke, Putnam) and holism (Quine) about meaning?
Three points are not clear to me about the relations between semantic externalism (Kripke, Putnam) and holism (Quine):
Is there a way according to which externalism and holism can be held together or ...
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Quine on Necessity
Lately, I have been reading some of Quine's works on modality. I can't help but feel that many of his pronouncements on modality are wrong/misguided, although pinpointing exactly where is goes wrong ...
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How do Kripke's rigid designators and the necessity of identity relate to the Duhem-Quine thesis?
The Duhem-Quine thesis refers to the underdetermination of scientific theories and the fact that it is impossible to test scientific theories in isolation, we always need to make background ...
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Do Wittgenstein and Quine give the same criticisms of semantics?
What is the connection between the criticisms offered by Wittgenstein and Quine of meaning and language? Are both philosophers generally criticizing the same semantic theories with similar arguments, ...
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Are “to exist” and “to have being” the same?
I recently read an introduction about ontology. A section was about the debate whether to exist and to have being is the same.
One position says (attributed to Meinong), that some things exist and ...
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305 views
Are there serious challenges to the 'principle of charity' as presented by Donald Davidson?
Donald Davidson's formulation of the "principle of charity" is based on Quine's "radical interpretation" (I believe from the book Word & Object), and he formulates it in a way that considers its ...
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Quine - Two dogmas of empiricism - status of mathematics [duplicate]
If we do away with the analytic-synthetic distinction as per Quine, does that mean that mathematics is no more certain than empirical science?
And how does mathematical proof proceed if we don't use ...
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Difference between Carnap and Quine's views
Could someone explain to me, in easy language, what the main differences are between Carnap and Quine's views regarding internal / external questions and realism? Quine called Carnap a Platoist, yet I ...
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If one agrees with Quine's dissolution of the Analytic/Synthetic distinction, what is left of Kant's epistemology?
One of Kant's most important (if not the most important) result is his argument (proof?) that synthetic a priori knowledge is possible.
If one agrees with Quine's argument against Analyticity as ...
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What is knowledge for Quine? What is the criterion for determining what knowledge is and isn't?
Quine's holism is marked by a scientific methodology. Perhaps not all beliefs in Quine's web of belief are accurate, but at its best the web consists of the refined, matured string of beliefs which ...
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Two questions on Quine's philosophy of science
These are fairly straight forward question to which I have found no answers. Years ago, when I was taking a seminar on Quine, the professor explained Quine's philosophy of science. According to Quine, ...
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Quine on higher set theory
In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic, Stewart Shapiro states in his introductory section:
Quine himself accepts mathematics (as true) only to the extent that it is applied ...
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How important are Quine and Feyerabend to the philosophy of science and the demarcation problem?
I've listened to two sets of lectures on the philosophy of science that treat Quine's results on underdetermination, the dissolution of the analytic/synthetic distinction, and confirmation holism as ...
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The scope of Analytic discussion about sentences
Kripke and Quine argue both for 2 different ideas (about which I will write shortly) but their objectives are common - to say something about the nature of sentences. Yet, It seems to me like they don'...
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How does Quine answer the metaphysician's charge that scientism is self-refuting?
General scientism seems to hold that due to the predictive powers of our scientific methods, such methods are preferred to other methods of knowledge, such as metaphysics (radical scientism claiming ...
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What is Quine's rebuttal to Grice and Strawson's In Defense of Dogma?
In response to Quine's rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction, Strawson and Grice appear to reduce Quine's rejection (or skepticism) of synonymy to a rejection of meaning. What is/would be ...
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Is Quine's epistemology really just a linguistic reinterpretation of Kant's?
Kant's epistemology: There are facts out there, but we can never access them directly, we can only perceive them the way they are presented to us by our own minds.
Quine: There are facts out there, ...
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When Quine is criticizing the notion of analyticity what exactly is his criterion?
Quine criticizes analyticity for presupposing another notion, that of synonymy, which for Quine either must be explained in terms of analyticity or synonymy itself.
But what exactly does Quine think ...
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Is Quine begging the question against the traditional epistemologist?
Quine's naturalistic holism is marked by the idea that our methodology should be concerned with empirical data as understood by modern science in conjunction with the idea that every theory is ...
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Does Quine consider the Homeric gods to have predictive power?
Quine wrote in his 1951 paper "Two Dogmas of Empiricism":
"Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but ...
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How does Quine effectively shift from points he has made about knowledge acquisition to conclusions he makes about knowledge simpliciter?
Quine propagated forward an approach to epistemology wherein there was no need of any sort of justification "beyond observation and the hypothetico-deductive method" (Quine 1981).
Quine is going ...
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Why is “similarity” not a logical relation? (from “Natural Kinds” by Quine)
I have two questions regarding Quine's paper “Natural Kinds”:
Why isn't similarity a logical relation?
Why is our ability to recognize similarity so fundamental?
These two things are explained in ...
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Did Quine have another reason to be skeptical of reference besides its context-dependence?
Quine, like many others before him, thought that the meaning of words depends on the context they are in.
But what compelled Quine to hold that in light of this there is an ambiguity as to what any ...
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Does Quine's relativism only follow if the data of theories is the only source of a theory's justification?
Quine saw that any group of theories could have the same pieces of data.
There is a gap between any set of data and the interpretation we have of it.
Quine then felt that in light of this, whether ...
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How is self-reference understood in the pragmatist tradition?
Gödel and Tarski's works have been especially influential in the pragmatist tradition, but what exactly did their theorems usher in?
What is left of self-reference in the pragmatist tradition?
More ...
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What distinctions does Quine draw between ontological and ideological commitments?
Quine held in "On What There Is" the following:
"A theory is committed to those and only those entities to which the bound variables of the theory must be capable of referring in order that the ...
