W.V. Quine / Alex Orenstein.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Orenstein, Alex, author.

Series:

Philosophy now.

Philosophy now

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Quine, W. V. (Willard Van Orman).

Quine, W. V.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 209 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Durham : Acumen Publishing, 2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The most influential philosopher in the analytic tradition of his time, Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000) changed the way we think about language and its relation to the world. His rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction, his scepticism about modal logic and essentialism, his celebrated theme of the indeterminacy of translation, and his advocacy of naturalism have challenged key assumptions of the prevailing orthodoxy and helped shape the development of much of recent philosophy. This introduction to Quine's philosophical ideas provides philosophers, students and generalists with an authoritative analysis of his lasting contributions to philosophy. Quine's ideas throughout are contrasted with more traditional views, as well as with contemporaries such as Frege, Russell, Carnap, Davidson, Field, Kripke and Chomsky, enabling the reader to grasp a clear sense of the place of Quine's views in twentieth-century philosophy and the important criticisms of them.

Contents:

Cover; Half Title; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Preface; 1 Introduction; 2 Expressing an ontology; The new way of construing existence claims; The new logic: a canonical notation; The semantic side of ontological commitment; Challenging Quine on expressing existence; 3 Deciding on an ontology; Some rival twentieth-century ontologies; Opting for an ontology: indispensability arguments; Qidne's ontology; Conflict with Carnap over ontology; Inscrutability of reference; Challenging Quine: indispensability arguments; 4 The spectre of a priori knowledge; The problem of a priori knowledge

Duhemian-Holistic empiricism and the dogma of reductionismThe effects of dispensing with the a priori; Challenging Quine: naturalism and the a priori; 5 The nature of logic; Analyticity as logical truth; Expressing the principles of logic and set theory; Are logic and mathematics true by convention?; Challenging Quine: a broader conception of logic; 6 Analyticity and indeterminacy; Dispensing with meanings; Other attempts to explicate analyticity; The indeterminacy conjecture; Contrasting indeterminacy and underdetermination

Contrasting inscrutability of reference and indeterminacy of meaningChallenging Quine: analyticity and indeterminacy; 7 Intensional contexts; Modal logic; The quotation, paradigm; De dicto and de re modality: quotation and essentialism; Challenging Quine: possible world semantics and the new theory of reference; Pronositional attitudes; Challenging Quine: attitudes without objects; 8 Nature, know thyself; Epistemology naturalized; A natural history of reference; Challenging Quine on epistemology; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 02 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-317-48989-6

1-315-71075-7

9786612534621

1-282-53462-9

1-84465-312-9

9781315710754

OCLC:

715184562