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5 ideas
9383 | Metaphysical analyticity (and linguistic necessity) are hopeless, but epistemic analyticity is a priori [Boghossian on Quine] |
Full Idea: Quine showed the vacuity of the metaphysical concept of analyticity and the futility of the underwritten project - the linguistic theory of necessity. But that doesn't effect the epistemic notion of analyticity needed for a priori knowledge. | |
From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Paul Boghossian - Analyticity Reconsidered Concl | |
A reaction: This summarise Boghossian's view, that a priori knowledge is still analytic, once we get clear about analyticity. See Idea 9368 for his two types of analyticity. Horwich attacks the view. |
12424 | Quine challenges the claim that analytic truths are knowable a priori [Quine, by Kitcher] |
Full Idea: The last section of Quine's article challenges the claim that analytic truths are knowable a priori. | |
From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Philip Kitcher - The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge 04.5 | |
A reaction: That is, Quine does not deny that there are truths which rest entirely on meaning. It is a 'dogma of empiricism' that the a priori can be equated with the analytic (and the necessary). |
9337 | Science is empirical, simple and conservative; any belief can hence be abandoned; so no a priori [Quine, by Horwich] |
Full Idea: Quine says scientific beliefs follow empirical adequacy, simplicity and conservatism; science and rationality support this view; hence any hypothesis can be abandoned to increase simplicity; so no scientific belief is a priori. | |
From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Paul Horwich - Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority §10 | |
A reaction: [Compressed] I just don't accept this claim. If science wants to drop simple arithmetic or the laws of thought, so much the worse for science - they've obviously taken a wrong turning somewhere. We must try to infer God's logic. |
9338 | Quine's objections to a priori knowledge only work in the domain of science [Horwich on Quine] |
Full Idea: Quine's arguments provide no reason to doubt the existence of a priori knowledge outside the domain of science. | |
From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Paul Horwich - Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority §10 | |
A reaction: This rather ignores Quine's background view of thoroughgoing physicalism, so that the domain of science is the domain of nature, which is the domain of everything. See his naturalising of epistemology, for example. Maths is part of his science. |
9340 | Logic, arithmetic and geometry are revisable and a posteriori; quantum logic could be right [Horwich on Quine] |
Full Idea: I think logic, arithmetic and geometry are subject to Quine's empirical revisability argument: quantum logic may turn out to be the best overall theory; so these things are justified a posteriori. | |
From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Paul Horwich - Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority §11 | |
A reaction: Not much of an argument, because 'quantum logic' may also turn out to be a will-o'-the-whisp. Until it is established (which I doubt, because quantum theory is so poorly understood), I think we should be highly suspicious of the Quinean view. |