Willard Van Orman Quine
American logician and philosopher who developed naturalized epistemology
Quine died from an illness on Christmas Day in 2000.[1]
Quick Facts
- Region
- Western philosophy
- Era
- 20th-century philosophy
- Born
- 25 June 1908
- Birthplace
- Akron, Ohio, U.S.
- Died
- 25 December 2000
- Place of death
- Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
- Education
- Oberlin College (BA), Harvard University (PhD)
- Institutions
- Harvard University
Facts from the source article.
Life and work
During the academic year 1932–33, he travelled in Europe meeting Polish logicians and members of the Vienna Circle.[2] During World War II, Quine served in the United States Navy in a military intelligence role, deciphering messages from German submarines.[3] Alfred North Whitehead served as the supervisor for Quine's doctoral thesis.[2] Quine made arrangements for Tarski to receive an invitation to the Unity of Science Congress held in Cambridge during September 1939.[3]
Two marriages produced four children for Quine.[3] Although Quine held conservative political views, his published work predominantly addressed technical philosophical subjects rather than direct political matters.[4] According to observations made by his student Dagfinn Føllesdal, Quine experienced memory loss during the later years of his life.[1]
What the cited sources add
The Quine-Putnam indispensability argument holds that the indispensability of mathematics to empirical science gives good reason to believe in the existence of mathematical entities.[5] Quine's philosophy should be seen as a systematic attempt to understand science from within the resources of science itself.[6] Quine advocates naturalized epistemology, which consists of his attempt to provide an improved scientific explanation of how we have developed elaborate scientific theories on the basis of meager sensory input.[6] Quine's view of philosophical inquiry breaks decisively with the a priori conception of philosophy's relation to science as seen in Plato, Descartes and Kant.[6]
Quine requires that our scientific theory fit within the framework of first-order logic, have an ontology of physical objects and sets, and further meet the standards of physicalism.[6] Quine argued that analyticity could only make sense if sense could be made of sameness of meaning or "synonymy".[7] Quine's 1948 landmark essay, "On What There Is," reintroduced talk of "metaphysics" under cover of bound variables and ontological commitments.[7]
References
- Wikipedia, "Willard Van Orman Quine" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Quine, "Word and Object", The MIT Press, 2013; "Willard van Orman Quine; Renowned Philosopher", Los Angeles Times, December 31, 2000 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Willard Van Orman Quine" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: ; Borradori, "The American Philosopher: Conversations with Quine, Davidson, Putnam, Nozick, Danto, Rorty, Cavell, MacIntyre, Kuhn", University of Chicago Press, 1994, p. 30–31 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Willard Van Orman Quine" (CC BY-SA 4.0) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Willard Van Orman Quine" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: The Wall Street Journal, obituary for W. V. Quine – January 4, 2001; Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary, entry for Tolerance (pp. 206–208).; "Paradoxes of Plenty" in Theories and Things, p. 197.; The Time of My Life: An Autobiography, pp. 352–353. (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Colyvan, Mark, "Indispensability Arguments in the Philosophy of Mathematics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2004 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). facts only, no text reused. plato.stanford.edu
- "Quine, Willard Van Orman: Philosophy of Science", 2009. facts only, no text reused. iep.utm.edu
- The Wall Street Journal, obituary for W. V. Quine – January 4, 2001. facts only, no text reused. wvquine.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Willard Van Orman Quine (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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