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Full Idea
All inculcation of meanings of words must rest ultimately on sensory evidence.
Gist of Idea
Inculcations of meanings of words rests ultimately on sensory evidence
Source
Willard Quine (Epistemology Naturalized [1968], p.75)
Book Ref
Quine,Willard: 'Ontological Relativity and Other Essays' [Columbia 1969], p.75
A Reaction
This betrays Quine's behaviourist tendencies, and rules out introspection, definitions and inferences. Quine's conclusion is fairly total scepticism about meaning, but that is not surprising, given his external and meaningless starting point.
| 7627 | You can't reduce epistemology to psychology, because that presupposes epistemology [Maund on Quine] |
| 8871 | We should abandon a search for justification or foundations, and focus on how knowledge is acquired [Quine, by Davidson] |
| 8826 | If we abandon justification and normativity in epistemology, we must also abandon knowledge [Kim on Quine] |
| 8827 | Without normativity, naturalized epistemology isn't even about beliefs [Kim on Quine] |
| 1635 | Mathematics reduces to set theory (which is a bit vague and unobvious), but not to logic proper [Quine] |
| 8898 | Inculcations of meanings of words rests ultimately on sensory evidence [Quine] |
| 8899 | Epistemology is a part of psychology, studying how our theories relate to our evidence [Quine] |
| 8900 | In observation sentences, we could substitute community acceptance for analyticity [Quine] |