Word and object / Willard Van Orman Quine ; foreword by Patricia Smith Churchland ; preface to the new edition by Dagfinn Føllesdal.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

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

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Language and languages--Philosophy.

Language and languages.

Logic, Symbolic and mathematical.

Semantics (Philosophy).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxx, 277 pages)

Edition:

New edition.

Other Title:

MIT Press CogNet.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2014]

System Details:

text file

Summary:

Willard Van Orman Quine begins this influential work by declaring, "Language is a social art. In acquiring it we have to depend entirely on intersubjectively available cues as to what to say and when." As Patricia Smith Churchland notes in her foreword to this new edition, with Word and Object Quine challenged the tradition of conceptual analysis as a way of advancing knowledge. The book signaled twentieth-century philosophy's turn away from metaphysics and from what Churchland calls the "phony precision" of conceptual analysis.

In the course of his discussion of meaning and the linguistic mechanisms of objective reference, Quine considers the indeterminacy of translation, brings to light the anomalies and conflicts implicit in our language's referential apparatus, clarifies semantic problems connected with the imputation of existence, and marshals reasons for admitting or repudiating each of various categories of supposed objects. In addition to Churchland's foreword, this edition offers a hew preface by Quine's student and colleague Dagfinn Follesdal that describes the never-realized plans for a second edition of Word and Object, in which Quine planned to offer a more unified treatment of the public nature of meaning, modalities, and prepositional attitudes. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Language and Truth 1

1 Beginning with Ordinary Things 1

2 The Objective Pull; or, E pluribus unum 5

3 The Interanimation of Sentences 8

4 Ways of Learning Words 12

5 Evidence 15

6 Posits and Truth 19

2 Translation and Meaning 23

7 First Steps of Radical Translation 23

8 Stimulation and Stimulus Meaning 27

9 Occasion Sentences. Intrusive Information 32

10 Observation Sentences 36

11 Intrasubjective Synonymy of Occasion Sentences 41

12 Synonymy of Terms 46

13 Translating Logical Connectives 52

14 Synonymous and Analytic Sentences 55

15 Analytical Hypotheses 61

16 On Failure to Perceive the Indeterminacy 66

3 The Ontogenesis of Reference 73

17 Words and Qualities 73

18 Phonetic Norms 77

19 Divided Reference 82

20 Predication 87

21 Demonstratives. Attributives 91

22 Relative Terms. Four Phases of Reference 96

23 Relative Clauses. Indefinite Singular Terms 100

24 Identity 104

25 Abstract Terms 108

4 Vagaries of Reference 113

26 Vagueness 113

27 Ambiguity of Terms 116

28 Some Ambiguities of Syntax 121

29 Ambiguity of Scope 124

30 Referential Opacity 128

31 Opacity and Indefinite Terms 132

32 Opacity in Certain Verbs 137

5 Regimentation 143

33 Aims and Claims of Regimentation 143

34 Quantifiers and Other Operators 147

35 Variables and Referential Opacity 151

36 Time. Confinement of General Terms 154

37 Names Reparsed 160

38 Conciliatory Remarks. Elimination of Singular Terms 164

39 Definition and the Double Life 170

6 Flight from Intension 175

40 Propositions and Eternal Sentences 175

41 Modality 178

42 Propositions as Meanings 183

43 Toward Dispensing with Intensional Objects 189

44 Other Objects for the Attitudes 193

45 The Double Standard 198

46 Dispositions and Conditionals 203

47 A Framework for Theory 207

7 Ontic Decision 215

48 Nominalism and Realism 215

49 False Predilections. Ontic Commitment 220

50 Entia non grata 224

51 Limit Myths 228

52 Geometrical Objects 231

53 The Ordered Pair as Philosophical Paradigm 236

54 Numbers, Mind, and Body 241

55 Whither Classes? 245

56 Semantic Ascent 249.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [255]-265) and index.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Quine, W. V. Word and object.

ISBN:

9780262312790

0262312794

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.