|
 Building
a home philosophy library
Lyn
May and Steve Deery
The
sixth in a series of articles advising on how to build your own
home philosophy library.
No.
6 Willard Quine, From a Logical Point of View
W.
V. O. Quine, ,
was an empiricist, but by 1953 epistemology had moved on. The prevailing
empiricist view was, thought Quine, conditioned by 'two dogmas'.
The first was Kant's analytic-synthetic distinction. An analytic
statement is true in virtue of the meaning of the terms used; 'a
vixen is a female fox' is an analytic statement as the concept 'female
fox' is contained in the concept 'vixen'. A synthetic statement
is true in virtue of its relationship with matters of fact; 'foxes
are carnivorous' is a synthetic statement as the concept 'carnivorous'
is independent of the concept 'foxes'. The second dogma was reductionism
- the view that individual statements can be reduced to their logical
constructs and then confirmed or denied on the basis of immediate
experience.
Quine
argues that any support for the analytic-synthetic distinction is
illusory: it is either circular or shifts the inherent ambiguity
of 'analytic' to related terms such as meaning. Reductionism is
also ill-founded as 'our statements about the external world face
the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as corporate
body.' This joint attack on the 'two dogmas' means there is no privileged
class of statements that we can know separate from our total set
of beliefs. His holism means that 'any statement can be held true
come what may', as long as it coheres with the rest of our beliefs.
So,
do we know the sun will rise tomorrow? Whether we do, and
what it means to know, depends on who you are prepared to believe.
Take your pick, but read the books first.
From
a Logical Point of View, W. V. O. Quine (Harvard) $15.50/£10.50
A
new book will be featured from June 1st 2001.
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