display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
13 ideas
| 9764 | Inspiration and social improvement need wisdom, but not professional philosophy [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Professional philosophers have no peculiar fitness for inspirational and edifying writing, or helping to get society on an even keel (though we should do what we can). Wisdom may fulfil these crying needs: 'sophia' yes, but 'philosophia' not necessarily. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Has Philosophy Lost Contact with People? [1979], p.193) | |
| A reaction: This rather startlingly says that philosophy is unlikely to lead to wisdom, which is rather odd when it is defined as love of that very thing. Does love of horticulture lead to good gardening. I can't agree. Philosophy is the best hope of 'sophia'. |
| 9763 | For a good theory of the world, we must focus on our flabby foundational vocabulary [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Our traditional introspective notions - of meaning, idea, concept, essence, all undisciplined and undefined - afford a hopelessly flabby and unmanageable foundation for a theory of the world. Control is gained by focusing on words. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Has Philosophy Lost Contact with People? [1979], p.192) | |
| A reaction: A very nice statement of the aim of modern language-centred philosophy, though the task offered appears to be that of an under-labourer, when the real target, even according to Quine, is supposed to be a 'theory of the world'. |
| 13736 | Quinean metaphysics just lists the beings, which is a domain with no internal structure [Schaffer,J on Quine] |
| Full Idea: The Quinean task in metaphysics is to say what exists. What exists forms the domain of quantification. The domain is a set (or class, or plurality) - it has no internal structure. In other words, the Quinean task is to list the beings. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Jonathan Schaffer - On What Grounds What 1.1 | |
| A reaction: I really warm to this thesis. The Quinean version is what you get when you think that logic is the best tool for explicating metaphysics. Schaffer goes on to say that the only real aim for Quine is the cardinality of what exists! |
| 1627 | Any statement can be held true if we make enough adjustment to the rest of the system [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.43) |
| 22153 | Quine rejects Carnap's view that science and philosophy are distinct [Quine, by Boulter] |
| Full Idea: Quine rejects Carnap's view that the methods of science and philosophy are distinct. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (On Carnap's Views on Ontology [1951]) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 5 | |
| A reaction: I can't decide this one. Leibniz agreed with Carnap, but rated philosophy more highly. I like the view of philosophy as continuous with science, but that doesn't make it a branch of science. I incline towards science being a branch of philosophy. |
| 22438 | Philosophy is largely concerned with finding the minimum that science could get by with [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is in large part concerned with ...what science could get along with, could be reconstructed by means of, as distinct from what science has historically made us of. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], V) | |
| A reaction: This nicely summarises the programme for the whole of the philosophy of David Lewis, who was Quine's pupil. If you start by asking what it could 'get by with', it is not surprising that simplicity is the top intellectual virtue for both of them. |
| 6891 | Quine's naturalistic and empirical view is based entirely on first-order logic and set theory [Quine, by Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Quine has aimed at a naturalistic and empirical world-view, and claims that first-order logic and set theory provide a framework sufficient for the articulation of our knowledge of the world. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.465 | |
| A reaction: Consequently he is fairly eliminativist about meaning and mental states, and does without universals in his metaphysics. An impressively puritanical enterprise, taking Ockham's Razor to the limit, but I find it hard to swallow. |
| 6310 | Enquiry needs a conceptual scheme, so we should retain the best available [Quine] |
| Full Idea: No enquiry is possible without some conceptual scheme, so we may as well retain and use the best one we know. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §01) | |
| A reaction: This remark leads to Davidson's splendid paper 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme'. Quine's remark raises the question of how we know which conceptual scheme is 'best'. |
| 11103 | We aren't stuck with our native conceptual scheme; we can gradually change it [Quine] |
| Full Idea: We must not leap to the fatalistic conclusion that we are stuck with the conceptual scheme that we grew up in. We can change it bit by bit, plank by plank. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 5) | |
| A reaction: This is an interesting commitment to Strawson's 'revisionary' metaphysics, rather than its duller cousin 'descriptive' metaphysics. Good for Quine. Remember, though, Davidson's 'On the Very Idea of Conceptual Scheme'. |
| 21960 | Ordinary language is the beginning of philosophy, but there is much more to it [Austin,JL] |
| Full Idea: Ordinary language is not the last word: in principle it can everywhere be supplemented and improved upon and superseded. Only remember, it is the first word. | |
| From: J.L. Austin (A Plea for Excuses [1956], p.185), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics Intro | |
| A reaction: To claim anything more would be absurd. The point is that this remark comes from the high priest of ordinary language philosophy. |
| 8996 | If if time is money then if time is not money then time is money then if if if time is not money... [Quine] |
| Full Idea: If if time is money then if time is not money then time is money then if if if time is not money then time is money then time is money then if time is money then time is money. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935], p.95) | |
| A reaction: Quine offers this with no hint of a smile. I reproduce it for the benefit of people who hate analytic philosophy, and get tired of continental philosophy being attacked for its obscurity. |
| 22436 | Logicians don't paraphrase logic into language, because they think in the symbolic language [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The logician does not even need to paraphrase the vernacular into his logical notation, for he has learned to think directly in his logical notation, or even (which is the beauty of the thing) to let it think for him. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], V) | |
| A reaction: See Williamson's love of logic (and his book on modal metaphysics). This idea embodies the dream of hardcore Frege-Russellian analytic philosophers. I wish someone had told me when I studied logic that the target was to actually think symbolically. |
| 16943 | Philosophy is continuous with science, and has no external vantage point [Quine] |
| Full Idea: I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous with science. I see philosophy and science as in the same boat. …There is no external vantage point, no first philosophy. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.126) | |
| A reaction: Philosophy is generalisation. Science holds the upper hand, because it settles the subject-matter to be generalised. |