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Ep. 294: Quine on Science vs. Epistemology (Part Two)

May 30, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Subscribe to get Parts 1 and 2 ad-free, plus a supporter exclusive Part 3, which you can preview. Continuing from part one on "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), we work further through the text, getting into what this new psychology-rooted epistemology might look like. Quine remains an empiricist in that he agrees that whatever evidence there is for science must be  Continue Reading …

Ep. 294: Quine on Science vs. Epistemology (Part Three for Supporters)

May 29, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Concluding on W.V.O. Quine's "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), featuring Mark, Wes, and Seth. Start with part one. We take one more stab at making sense of the indeterminacy of translation that is part of Quine's holism about linguistic meaning. Then we turn to more implications about Quine's attempt to turn epistemology into psychology. Is Quine a behaviorist? (Was  Continue Reading …

Ep. 294: Quine on Science vs. Epistemology (Part One)

May 23, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Subscribe to get parts 1 and 2 of this now, ad-free, plus a supporter-only part 3. On W.V.O. Quine's "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), featuring Mark, Wes, and Seth. What justifies scientific theory? The classical epistemological project found in figures like Descartes and Locke seeks to find basic, indubitable premises that serve to ground the rest of our theorizing.  Continue Reading …

Ep. 294: Quine on Science vs. Epistemology (Part Two for Supporters)

May 22, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Continuing from part one on "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), we work further through the text, getting into what this new psychology-rooted epistemology might look like. Quine remains an empiricist in that he agrees that whatever evidence there is for science must be sensory, and that we learn language through the medium of our senses (i.e. no innate knowledge). However, this  Continue Reading …

Ep. 294: Quine on Science vs. Epistemology (Part One for Supporters)

May 22, 2022 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On W.V.O. Quine's "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), featuring Mark, Wes, and Seth. What justifies scientific theory? The classical epistemological project found in figures like Descartes and Locke seeks to find basic, indubitable premises that serve to ground the rest of our theorizing. Quine begins by considering Hume's attempt to do this by claiming that all we ever  Continue Reading …

Is Quine “Literature” Because He Reads All Smooth and Silky?

December 12, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer 9 Comments

After our posts about philosophical literature it seemed appropriate to refer to this post from the NY Times on philosophy itself as literature by Jim Holt. An excerpt: Now let me narrow my query: Does anybody read analytic philosophy for pleasure? Is this kind of philosophy literature? Here you might say, “Certainly not!” Or you might say, “What the heck is analytic  Continue Reading …

Theologians on Quine

November 25, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer 2 Comments

In our Quine episode, I mentioned a religious podcast where the participants used Quine's undermining of verificationism to argue that any secular-based knowledge is groundless, and thus that we need revelation in order to have knowledge at all. The podcast in question was this Philosophy for Theologians episode on "Two Dogmas of Empiricism." (I've blogged on this podcast  Continue Reading …

Episode 66: Quine on Linguistic Meaning and Science (Citizens Only)

November 21, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

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

November 21, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer 29 Comments

This is a short preview of the full episode. Buy Now Purchase this episode for $2.99. Or become a PEL Citizen for $5 a month, and get access to this and all other paywalled episodes, including 68 back catalogue episodes; exclusive Part 2's for episodes published after September, 2020; and our after-show Nightcap, where the guys respond to listener email and chat more  Continue Reading …

Audiobook: W.V.O. Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”

November 20, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Mark Linsenmayer reads the 1951 article, discussed on our episode 66. Read about the essay.  Continue Reading …

Audiobook: W.V.O. Quine’s “On What There Is”

November 20, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Dylan Casey reads the 1948 article, discussed on our episode 66. Read about the essay.  Continue Reading …

Topic for #66: Quine on Language, Logic, and Science

October 17, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer 12 Comments

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 …

Goodman and Quine’s Nominalism

November 3, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

I referred on the podcast to Goodman's 1947 article "Steps Toward a Constructive Nominalism." You can look at it here. The philosophical content is in the first couple of chapters; in fact, I'll just give you the first half of the first chapter here: We do not believe in abstract entities. No one supposes that abstract entities -- classes, relations, properties, etc. --  Continue Reading …

Later Pragmatists: Quine on mind

July 20, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 3 Comments

In our discussions on William James, we alluded to later pragmatists and the relationship of pragmatism to verificationism (logical positivism). Does being a pragmatist, who tries to reduce philosophical problems to problems of how we should most intelligently act in the face of world, mean that you have to discount claims that can't be verified by empirical science? Here's  Continue Reading …

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The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we’re talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion

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