Talk:Willard Van Orman Quine

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It might be worth noting that although Quine rejected the synthetic/analytic distinction, he held onto other key doctrines of the Vienna Circle, e.g. that the scope of language is limited to verifiables; which restricts the scope of science dramatically. The claim that some physical object exists, for instance, is taken to mean only that it's useful for explaining our observations, not that it really exists. So material objects are defined in terms of our observations, and since our observations are also defined in terms of material objects (Quine even calls himself a physicalist), it's hard to see what's left. This whole spooky worldview or lack thereof is carried over fairly neatly from the Vienna Circle. An anecdote in one of Quine's books illustrates the distinction neatly; he said Carnap had complained about Quine's using the word "ontology" when it didn't mean anything, and Quine replied that in his ethics of terminology, words that didn't mean anything were precisely those ripe for redefinition. Presumably this would also apply to the word "exist" and some others. Quine is closer to the Vienna Circle and farther from common belief than his use of language leads people to believe. The same, incidentally, is true of Daniel Dennett, another student of Quine's as I recall.

Should qua ("qua lay physicist") not be in italics? Anjouli 13:17, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Contents 1 Skepticism and indeterminacy 2 Why does Quine reject synthetic/analytic distinction? 3 Recent changes 4 Gavagai 5 Agid? 6 Defend "Limited Curiosity" 7 The Library of Babel

[edit] Skepticism and indeterminacy

The last part about indeterminacy of translation, beginning with "There is no way to escape this circle. In fact, it holds just as well in interpreting speakers of one's own language, and even one's own past utterances. This does not, contrary to a widely-disseminated caricature of Quine, lead to skepticism about meaning".

I think it's controversial to say that Quine's theory of meaning isn't a skeptical position. I can not see anything on Philosophical skepticism that makes me think that Quine's theory of meaning can't be called skeptic from at least some point of view.

I can't see how meaning-indeterminacy about one's own utterances follows from the field linguist-argument. Something must be missing in the argument.

Davidw 20:41, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Why does Quine reject synthetic/analytic distinction?

The article would be improved if some rationale would be given for the Quines rejection because, as explained in the article, the synthetic/analytic distinction makes perfect sense to me.

WpZurp 07:48, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I have just read the “Rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction” section. I find it quite unconvincing. I don't really see his argument (at least as presented here) that bachelor & unmarried are rather not synonyms. The way its argument seems to be diddling on words. Can any one present a more formal argumentation? Xah Lee 21:34, 2005 Apr 27 (UTC)

Not only are "bachelor" and "unmarried male" not synonyms (the key question I heard in a philo class was, "Is the Pope a bachelor?"), but I think (its been a while) that Quine's rejection hinges on the idea that an analytic statement must contain concepts that are logically equivalent (synonymous), but words are only synonymous insofar as they relate to the world in some way. Going at it the other way, the world is characterized in certain ways by the languages and the conceptual schemes, including logical equivalences, that are packed into those languages. So the distinction gets blurred either way you approach it. -Seth Mahoney 22:34, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)

The problem of "collateral information" is mentioned in the article and should be remembered when considering the problem of synonymy. The question whether two words are synonomous can be couched within the question of whether those two words are interchangable within the same sentence--that is, whether the meaning, understood perhaps in terms of the information they provide, if it is an informative sentence, is changed or remains the same when the words are switched. So, for example, in the case of the sentence "John is a bachelor", can ione replace 'bachelor' with 'unmarried male' and yield the exact same meaning? There are different ways of looking at this. For example, you could argue that the 'unmarried male' is implicitly qualified to mean to refer to humans, but that is not an 'analytic' truth, it depends on your interpretation of the context. Whereas 'bachelor' refers explicitly to human's.

The question isn't exactly whether the two terms are synonyms, but what exactly the mechanism by which synonymy functions. Two words cannot mean the exact same thing by simple virtue of the fact that you say they do. This might seem sophistical, but it seems to me that the bare use of a word in a sentence conveys the along with its literl meaning the information that that word refer to the thing it does, which is informtion that no other word can convey.

[edit] Recent changes

1) The recent changes (by 138.130.145.250) were by me. I apologise for not creating an account first and also for not using preview more effectively.

2) The article as it stood contained some serious misrepresentations of Quine's theory. Though there are of course different interpretations of Quine's work the points that I have altered attributed to Quine either a view that is flat out contrary to some central doctrine he explicitly advocated, or a non-sequitur. I have not intended present a controvertial reading of his work.

3) I hope I have done better justice to the question of why Quine rejected the a/s distinction, and also made clear the distinction between skepticism concerning meanings (which Quine advocated) and skepticism about meaningfulness or significance (which he did not).

(Though I didn't include it in the article the application of the indeterminacy argument to oneself is nothing special since according to Quine the only evidence of what anyone means, including oneself, is behavioural. If it weren't how could we ever be sure that we taught children to associate words with the right meanings? That this question is silly is Quine's main point about meanings.)

Surprised 13:04, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your contribution! I don't know enough about Quine but your edits are appreciated  :). If you're interested, take a look at WikiProject Philosophy and join the list of philosophy contributors. --FranksValli 10:07, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Gavagai

A search for "Gavagai" is redirected to the page on W.V.O Quine. I feel the concept is sufficiently notable to deserve a page of its own. Perhaps merging the section on the indeterminacy of translation with other facts about the term in Quine's work would form an adequate little stub on "gavagai". Does anyone agree with me on this?" Kevin L. 07:00, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I actually came accross a page on indeterminacy of translation a while ago. It's not very good, though I attempted to at least write a little intro and shorten the section in this article from which it was copied (as it was getting long) so as to stop it just being an obvious copy-and-paste job. I'll fix gavagai so it redirects there - I don't really think it needs its own stub. Please do help me edit the aforementioned page instead - if you like, you could expand the section focussing specifically on the 'gavagai' example? Thomas Ash 22:55, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Agid?

What does this term mean? The article includes the following quote: "Life is agid, life is fulgid." Could the word used in the original quote actually be "algid"? I could not find any proof of the existence of the word "agid" in the Shorter OED or anywhere online.

[edit] Defend "Limited Curiosity"

"Like many analytic philosophers, his knowledge and curiosity about the history of ideas—logic and foundational mathematics excepted—was rather limited."

What evidence is there that he had either limited knowledge, or curiosity, about "the history of ideas"?

I agree; that sentence is highly objectionable. The opening clause is crass and false stereotyping. I've removed it and replaced it with something that is objective, and captures its kernel of truth. 271828182 18:41, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Library of Babel

Theres some debate on The Library of Babel about a section which gives Quines philosophical interpretaion of the story. However we do not have any suitable references. I'm wondering if anyone here knows if quine wrote on the subject or knows of a suitable reference. --Salix alba (talk) 08:49, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Hiya - I was able to find the reference. It's from Quine's philosophical dictionary - "Quiddities". Here's the entry for the Babel Library example: http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/universal_library.html. It's very late at night, but on a glance reading, the original addition to the Babel article wasn't very clear - hopefully Quine made himself reasonably clear here (see link). FranksValli 09:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Wow quick work, thanks. --Salix alba (talk) 09:31, 20 July 2006 (UTC)