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Single Idea 3131

[filed under theme 17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 3. Eliminativism ]

Full Idea

Quine expresses the instrumental version of eliminativism.

Gist of Idea

Quine expresses the instrumental version of eliminativism

Source

report of Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind Int.3

Book Ref

Rey,Georges: 'Contemporary Philosophy of Mind' [Blackwell 1997], p.7


The 29 ideas from 'Word and Object'

Quine's naturalistic and empirical view is based entirely on first-order logic and set theory [Quine, by Mautner]
Two theories can be internally consistent and match all the facts, yet be inconsistent with one another [Quine, by Baggini /Fosl]
Quine expresses the instrumental version of eliminativism [Quine, by Rey]
Indeterminacy of translation also implies indeterminacy in interpreting people's mental states [Dennett on Quine]
Enquiry needs a conceptual scheme, so we should retain the best available [Quine]
The firmer the links between sentences and stimuli, the less translations can diverge [Quine]
We can never precisely pin down how to translate the native word 'Gavagai' [Quine]
Stimulus synonymy of 'Gavagai' and 'Rabbit' does not even guarantee they are coextensive [Quine]
Weird translations are always possible, but they improve if we impose our own logic on them [Quine]
Dispositions to speech behaviour, and actual speech, are never enough to fix any one translation [Quine]
We should be suspicious of a translation which implies that a people have very strange beliefs [Quine]
Plurals can in principle be paraphrased away altogether [Quine]
The quest for ultimate categories is the quest for a simple clear pattern of notation [Quine]
Physical objects in space-time are just events or processes, no matter how disconnected [Quine]
Mathematicians must be rational but not two-legged, cyclists the opposite. So a mathematical cyclist? [Quine]
Cyclist are not actually essentially two-legged [Brody on Quine]
Quine aims to deal with properties by the use of eternal open sentences, or classes [Quine, by Devitt]
What stays the same in assessing a counterfactual antecedent depends on context [Quine]
Normal conditionals have a truth-value gap when the antecedent is false. [Quine]
Counterfactuals have no place in a strict account of science [Quine]
Conditionals are pointless if the truth value of the antecedent is known [Quine]
We feign belief in counterfactual antecedents, and assess how convincing the consequent is [Quine]
Counterfactuals are plausible when dispositions are involved, as they imply structures [Quine]
Either dispositions rest on structures, or we keep saying 'all things being equal' [Quine]
Explain unmanifested dispositions as structural similarities to objects which have manifested them [Quine, by Martin,CB]
We can paraphrase 'x=y' as a sequence of the form 'if Fx then Fy' [Quine]
The notion of a physical object is by far the most useful one for science [Quine]
Any progression will do nicely for numbers; they can all then be used to measure multiplicity [Quine]
Nearly all of mathematics has to quantify over abstract objects [Quine]