On W.V.O. Quine's "On What There Is" (1948) and "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951). What kind of metaphysics is compatible with science? Quine sees science and philosophy as one and the same enterprise, and he objects to ontologies that include types of entities that science can't, even in principle, study. In these two highly influential essays, he first tells how to Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Episode 66: Quine on Linguistic Meaning and Science
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Topic for #66: Quine on Language, Logic, and Science
Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000) was a prototypical American analytic philosopher. Following Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein, he was concerned with how logic provides a foundation for mathematics, which in turn grounds physics and the other sciences. We'll be reading two of his most famous essays, both of which can be found in the collection, From a Logical Point of View Continue Reading …