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Pursuit of Truth
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.
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.
126 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
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About the author
Willard Van Orman Quine
99 books212 followers"Willard Van Orman Quine (June 25, 1908 Akron, Ohio – December 25, 2000) (known to intimates as "Van"), was an American analytic philosopher and logician. From 1930 until his death 70 years later, Quine was affiliated in some way with Harvard University, first as a student, then as a professor of philosophy and a teacher of mathematics, and finally as an emeritus elder statesman who published or revised seven books in retirement. He filled the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard, 1956-78. Quine falls squarely into the analytic philosophy tradition while also being the main proponent of the view that philosophy is not conceptual analysis. His major writings include "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", which attacked the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions and advocated a form of semantic holism, and Word and Object which further developed these positions and introduced the notorious indeterminacy of translation thesis." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_...
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 17, 2020
An exceedingly difficult book, more or less summing up Quine's lifework, of which I'd known little. Discusses the possibility of scientific knowledge, the way sense data is reified into facts about the world, language and the impossibility of translation (if a speaker of an unknown language points at a rabbit and says "gavagai!", what exactly are they referring to?), throwing around the word "holophrastic" a lot, which seems to mean "in the sense of the language as a whole, not one word or phrase in isolation". The Bose-Einstein statistics (in which bosons, unlike fermions, are able to be in the same place at the same time) imply that our mental models of how things look might be fundamentally inappropriate. There's a lot more that I failed to get - a reread (or several) is in order.
February 25, 2019
Dense and academic, but content rich. I may have to reread it several more times.
I happened upon this work in support of my thesis that the only Truth is rhetoric, rhetoric being purely a function of language.
I happened upon this work in support of my thesis that the only Truth is rhetoric, rhetoric being purely a function of language.
Shelved as 'read-nonfiction'
February 7, 2019"dog-facing and is bristling"
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 18, 2015
Behaviorism's not dead!
December 2, 2015
I read it twice. Pretty technical but well worth the read.
September 1, 2017
A restatement of other philosophers on the same subject. Chapter 1 on evidence is the best part.
April 23, 2023
Quine is taking the analytical and logical positivism a little bit further by adding some American behaviorism, holism, and pragmatism to them. In doing so, Quine is moving in an academic and restricted circle (i.e., Carnap, Tarski, Russell, and similar) and thus trying to take further and to solve some of their logical problems. After reading a lot of Heidegger lately - this short book seems to me quite colorless, without depths, formal, free-floating, boring, lifeless, and an endless collection of metaphysical pronouncements (about truth, reality, subjectivity, objectivity, epistemology, logic, mathematics, language, ontology, theories, sciences, and similar).
May 30, 2017
A brilliant and concise rendering of Quine's most important ideas—some of the most important ideas in the 20th century. This book requires slow, careful reading and is somewhat technical, but rewards the reader with profoundly original ideas.
September 22, 2020
Dense. It covers material that spans his entire career; in about 100 pages. There are some technical terms and subtle concepts, but he provides clear examples. Basically, he gives a materialist and behaviorist account of meaning and truth and presents two surprising results; the indeterminacy of translation and under-determination of global science. It's excellent. This is about as good as a small book of analytic philosophy can get.
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July 27, 2021Audiobook was a mistake... making large technical sections more or less unintelligible, I might reread this in physical form after learning more about Quine. The best parts of reading this for me were the videos I watched on Quine's ideas as side-research :D
October 16, 2024
QUINE PROPOSES TO “UPDATE” A NUMBER OF HIS IDEAS
Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) was an American philosopher and logician who taught at Harvard University, and wrote many books.
He wrote in the Preface to the first (1990) edition, “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. Some of the progress is expository and some substantive. The substance has been precipitating sporadically over the past ten years, and some of it has surfaced in lectures, informal discussions, and scattered paragraphs… I intend this little book no less for my past readers then for my new ones, so I have curbed my exposition of things already belabored in my other books. I do retrace familiar ground where I see an improvement in the idea of the presentation …”
He says in the first essay, “What brought us to an examination of observation was our quest of the link between observation and theory. The observation sentence is the means of verbalizing the prediction that checks a theory. The requirement that it command a verdict outright is what makes it a final checkpoint. The requirement of intersubjectivity is what makes science objective.” (Pg. 4-5)
He admits, “I am of that [group] who repudiate the Cartesian dream of a foundation for scientific certainty firmer than scientific method itself. But I remain occupied, we see, with what has been central to traditional epistemology, namely the relation of science to sensory data.” (Pg. 19)
He concludes the second essay, “The objectivity of our knowledge of the external world remains rooted in our contact with the external world, hence in our neural intake and the observation sentences that respond to it. We begin with the monolithic sentence, not the term. A lesson of proxy functions is that our ontology, like grammar, is part of our own conceptual contribution to our theory of the world. Man proposes; the world disposes, but only by … yes-or-no verdicts on the observation sentences that embody man’s predictions.” (Pg. 36)
In the third essay, he asserts, “my thought experiment of radical translation… led to a negative conclusion, a thesis of indeterminacy of translation. Critics have said that the thesis is a consequence of my behaviorism… I agree ... I hold further that the behaviorist approach is mandatory. In psychology one may or may not be a behaviorist, but in linguistics one has no choice.” (Pg. 37-38)
In a later essay, he states, “Perceptions are neural realities, and so are the individual instances of beliefs and other propositional attitudes insofar as these do not fade out into irreality altogether. Physicalist explanation of neural events and states goes blithely forward with no intrusion of mental laws or intensional concepts. What are irreducibly mental are ways of grouping them… I acquiesce in what [Donald] Davidson calls anomalous monism, also known as token physicalism: there is no mental substance, but there are irreducibly mental ways of grouping physical states, and events.” (Pg. 71-72)
I’m rather doubtful that this book would be a meaningful “introduction” to Quine for “new readers.” But for persons wanting a thoughtful reconsideration and reformulation of some of his key ideas, this book will be of significant interest.
Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) was an American philosopher and logician who taught at Harvard University, and wrote many books.
He wrote in the Preface to the first (1990) edition, “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. Some of the progress is expository and some substantive. The substance has been precipitating sporadically over the past ten years, and some of it has surfaced in lectures, informal discussions, and scattered paragraphs… I intend this little book no less for my past readers then for my new ones, so I have curbed my exposition of things already belabored in my other books. I do retrace familiar ground where I see an improvement in the idea of the presentation …”
He says in the first essay, “What brought us to an examination of observation was our quest of the link between observation and theory. The observation sentence is the means of verbalizing the prediction that checks a theory. The requirement that it command a verdict outright is what makes it a final checkpoint. The requirement of intersubjectivity is what makes science objective.” (Pg. 4-5)
He admits, “I am of that [group] who repudiate the Cartesian dream of a foundation for scientific certainty firmer than scientific method itself. But I remain occupied, we see, with what has been central to traditional epistemology, namely the relation of science to sensory data.” (Pg. 19)
He concludes the second essay, “The objectivity of our knowledge of the external world remains rooted in our contact with the external world, hence in our neural intake and the observation sentences that respond to it. We begin with the monolithic sentence, not the term. A lesson of proxy functions is that our ontology, like grammar, is part of our own conceptual contribution to our theory of the world. Man proposes; the world disposes, but only by … yes-or-no verdicts on the observation sentences that embody man’s predictions.” (Pg. 36)
In the third essay, he asserts, “my thought experiment of radical translation… led to a negative conclusion, a thesis of indeterminacy of translation. Critics have said that the thesis is a consequence of my behaviorism… I agree ... I hold further that the behaviorist approach is mandatory. In psychology one may or may not be a behaviorist, but in linguistics one has no choice.” (Pg. 37-38)
In a later essay, he states, “Perceptions are neural realities, and so are the individual instances of beliefs and other propositional attitudes insofar as these do not fade out into irreality altogether. Physicalist explanation of neural events and states goes blithely forward with no intrusion of mental laws or intensional concepts. What are irreducibly mental are ways of grouping them… I acquiesce in what [Donald] Davidson calls anomalous monism, also known as token physicalism: there is no mental substance, but there are irreducibly mental ways of grouping physical states, and events.” (Pg. 71-72)
I’m rather doubtful that this book would be a meaningful “introduction” to Quine for “new readers.” But for persons wanting a thoughtful reconsideration and reformulation of some of his key ideas, this book will be of significant interest.
November 2, 2020
I am looking for and epistemology that supports phenomenography. Although I accept his coherence argument for truth, it does not help resolve the different conceptions that people have of a phenomenon. Trying to reconcile theories is helpful but in phenomenography, we are talking of differences in experience or awareness. This is not something Quine discusses.
January 15, 2016
Well-written, in his typical style. Very informative on his thinking.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews