The art of science: Quine and the speculative reach of philosophy in natural science

Dialectica

Volumn 52, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 275-290

  Clark, Chalmers C ^a  

^a CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60949734552     PISSN: 00122017     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1746-8361.1998.tb00055.x     Document Type: Article

References (43)

1. The Philosophical Review, 60 (January 1951): 20-43.
2. Citations hereafter refer to From A Logical Point of View (Cambridge: Harvard, 1980), 20-46. The paper was first read at the University of Toronto in December 1950.
3. "Two Dogmas in Retrospect," Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 21, No. 3, September 1991, p. 271.
4. From Stimulus To Science (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard, 1995), 77.
5. "Review," Pursuit of Truth (1990), The Journal of Philosophy, 1 (January 1992): 48-51.
6. In a video production by Rudolf Fara, Quine commented on his position in "Two Dogmas" as follows. My attitude throughout that paper, although perhaps it didn't shine through altogether, was I was protesting that we had yet to see really what the distinction amounted to, not that it couldn't be answered. And then, as part of my presentation, I went through various ways that one might in fact various ways that various people had explained analyticity-and pointed out that these didn't help me because they always ended up with a term that I was equally in the dark about. So, by the time I wrote that article, I was very doubtful that anybody was going to come up with it. (In Conversation with W.V. Quine, "Boolos Panel," Video Production, Phil-osophy International, London School of Economics, 1994.)
7. While Katz's proposal may be employed consistently in Quine's naturalism, Katz him-self is not sympathetic to naturalism. He presents arguments for non-naturalism and the autonomy of philosophy in The Metaphysics of Meaning (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T., 1990.)
8. See Word & Object, 207.
9. "Two Dogmas," 20. Quine otherwise treats of the natural philosopher's role rather diversely, sometimes emphasizing that the ontological philosopher's position is distinguished primarily by "breadth of categories... [and] making explicit what had been tacit, of making pre-cise what had been vague; exposing and resolving paradoxes, smoothing kinks, lopping off ves-tigial growths, clearing ontological slums" (Word & Object [Cambridge: MIT, 1960], 275).
10. Furthering his immanent conception Quine says; "The old epistemologist failed to recognize the strength of his position. No longer dreaming of a first philosophy firmer than science," Quine's epistemologist "emerges as a defender or protector...out to protect science from within against its self doubts." (The Roots of Reference [LaSalle: Open Court, 1974], 2-3.)
11. More re-cently, Quine has spoken of the distinctively speculative character of philosophy in science ("Has Philosophy Lost Contact With People," Theories and Things [Cambridge: Harvard, 1981], 190-93).
12. Here, Quine repeats his metaphor of "the busy sailor on Neurath's boat... out to improve, clarify, and understand the system from within." ("Five Milestones of Empiricism," Theories and Things, 72.).
13. And lastly, a "gadfly" role is recognized where the philosopher-scientist "attempts [breaches] to induce a tension between law and anomaly to power the en-gines of science and make it forge ahead." (Quiditties. An Intermittent Philosophical Diction-ary [Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard, 1987], 8.)
14. In Conversation with W. V. Quine, "Goldfarb Panel."
15. There is some anecdotal evidence that Quine agrees with this assessment. In a 1989 conference, Quine remarked-during questions that if he was to write "Two Dogmas" again, he would switch the dogmas. "Reductionism, " he said, "was the bigger villain." Conference, Rutgers University (March 30, 1989).
16. "Two Dogmas in Retrospect," 267.
17. See R. Barrett and R. Gibson, eds., "Comment on Katz," Perspectives on Quine (New York: Blackwell, 1990), 198.
18. See Chapter Two, Word & Object
19. In "Responses to Questions,"(Conference at The City University of New York Graduate Center, November 30,1984,8.) Quine wrote, "...I have been misunderstood on the matter of circularity. The circular interdefinability of analyticity, synonymy, consistency, etc. was of it self no 'sign of a troubled family of concepts,' in my view it was merely a dead end encountered in the course of seeking an explication of analyticity."
20. See W. V. Quine, "Review" of P. F. Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties, The New York Review of Books, 32 (1985), 32.
21. Also see L. Hahn and P. Schilpp eds., "Reply to Nelson Goodman," The Philosophy of W. V. Quine (LaSalle: Open Court, 1986), 162.
22. See H. P. Grice and P. F. Strawson, "A Defense of Dogma," Philosophical Review 65, 2 (1956): 141-58.
23. In "Comment on Katz" (1990), Perspectives on Quine, 198, Quine identified the context of analyticity as empirical and not amenable to "proof." See footnote forty-six.
24. At the Eastern Divisional Meetings of The American Philosophical Association (Boston: December, 1994), Hilary Kornblith presented a paper on "Naturalistic Epistemology and its Critics." Kornblith begins his paper saying: "My instructions from the program committee indicate that, although the session is to be informational,... it will add interest to the session if there are some contentious judgements expressed..."
25. Pursuit of Truth, 37-38.
26. Also see "Indeterminacy of Translation Again," The Journal of Philosophy, 1 (January, 1987): 5.
27. "Responses to Questions," CUNY Conference, 8.
28. C. Clark, Correspondence, 8 March, 1988
29. W. V. Quine, Correspondence, 11 March, 1988.
30. See "Reply to Robert Nozick," The Philosophy of W. V. Quine, 367.
31. Enlightened Empiricism. An Examination of W. V. Quine's Theory of Knowledge (Tampa: University of Florida Presses, 1988), 1-2.
32. W. V. Quine, Correspondence, 29 June, 1996.
33. The arguments presented here remain neutral on long range prospects and on whether other semantic conceptions can be forged consistently within Quine's outlook
34. "Common Sense in Semantics," Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 2 (April 1982): 174-218.
35. "Responses to Questions," Cuny Conference, 7.
36. R. Shahan and C. Swoyer, eds., "Facts of the Matter," Essays on the Philosophy of W. V. Quine (Norman, OK: Harvester, 1979), 166.
37. "Facts of the Matter," 162.
38. "Indeterminacy of Translation Again," 10.
39. Perspectives on Quine, 198. The quote continues with Quine reporting that his assault on meaning in "Two Dogmas" was not intended as a proof. Quine writes: "I would not hope for proof. I have engaged in proofs in logical contexts, but not in empirical ones, which this is."
40. With J. S. Ullian (New York: Random House, 1970).
41. Creating good hypotheses is an imaginative art, not a science. It is the art of science." (From Stimulus To Science, 49.)
42. Quiditties, 7.
43. The Problems of Philosophy (New York: Oxford/Galaxy, 1969), 161