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| {{Infobox philosopher
| | Good morning! Let me start by saying my name - Kraig there isn't anything feel comfortable when people use complete name. For years I've been working as the production and distribution company. Her husband doesn't like it the way she does but what she really loves doing is dogs but she is struggling in order to time because of it. Alabama is the only place she's been residing all the way through. You can find my website here: http://www.kiwibox.com/kingcom62/blog/entry/113680821/web-site-layout-tricks-that-set-you-on-the-road-to-succes/?pPage=0<br><br>my web site [http://www.kiwibox.com/kingcom62/blog/entry/113680821/web-site-layout-tricks-that-set-you-on-the-road-to-succes/?pPage=0 eyes] |
| |region = [[Western Philosophy]]
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| |era = [[20th-century philosophy]]
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| |image = Wvq-passport-1975-400dpi-crop.jpg|
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| |caption = Willard Van Orman Quine
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| |name = Willard Van Orman Quine
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| |birth_date = {{birth date|mf=yes|1908|6|25}}
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| |birth_place = [[Akron, Ohio|Akron]], [[Ohio]]
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| |death_date = {{dda|mf=yes|2000|12|25|1908|6|25}}
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| |death_place = [[Boston]], [[Massachusetts]]
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| |school_tradition = [[Analytic philosophy|Analytic]]
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| |main_interests = [[Logic]], [[ontology]], [[epistemology]], [[philosophy of language]], [[philosophy of mathematics]], [[philosophy of science]], [[set theory]]
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| |notable_ideas = [[New Foundations]], [[indeterminacy of translation]], [[naturalized epistemology]], [[ontological relativity]], [[Quine's paradox]], [[Duhem–Quine thesis]], [[radical translation]], [[confirmation holism]], [[Quine–McCluskey algorithm]]
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| |influences = [[Rudolf Carnap]], [[C.S. Peirce]], [[Alfred Tarski]], [[Vienna Circle]], [[Bertrand Russell]], [[Clarence Irving Lewis|C.I. Lewis]], [[Alfred North Whitehead|A.N. Whitehead]], [[William of Ockham]], [[B.F. Skinner]], [[David Hume]]
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| |influenced = [[Donald Davidson (philosopher)|Donald Davidson]], [[Daniel Dennett]], [[David Lewis (philosopher)|David Lewis]], [[Scott Soames]], [[David Kaplan (philosopher)|David Kaplan]], [[Richard Rorty]], [[Gila Sher]], [[Patricia Churchland]], [[Hilary Putnam]], [[Brian Leiter]], [[Noam Chomsky]]
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| }}
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| '''Willard Van Orman Quine''' (June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) (known to intimates as "Van")<ref name = mactutor>{{MacTutor|id=Quine|date=October 2003}}</ref> was an [[American philosopher]] and [[logician]] in the [[analytic philosophy|analytic tradition]]. From 1930 until his death 70 years later, Quine was continually affiliated with [[Harvard University]] in one way or another, first as a student, then as a professor of philosophy and a teacher of logic and [[set theory]], and finally as a professor emeritus who published or revised several books in retirement. He filled the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard from 1956 to 1978. A recent poll conducted among analytic philosophers named Quine as the fifth most important philosopher of the past two centuries.<ref>[http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/03/so-who-is-the-most-important-philosopher-of-the-past-200-years.html "So who *is* the most important philosopher of the past 200 years?"] Leiter Reports. Leiterreports.typepad.com. 11 March 2009. Accessed 8 March 2010.</ref> He won the first [[Rolf Schock Prizes|Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy]] in 1993, for "his systematical and penetrating discussions of how learning of language and communication are based on socially available evidence and of the consequences of this for theories on knowledge and linguistic meaning."<ref>[http://www.kva.se/en/Prizes/Prize-winner-page/?laureateId=368 "Prize winner page"]. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Kva.se. Retrieved 29 August 2010.</ref> In 1996 he was awarded the [[Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy]] for his "outstanding contributions to the progress of philosophy in the 20th century by proposing numerous theories based on keen insights in logic, epistemology, philosophy of science and philosophy of language."<ref>{{cite web|title=Willard Van Orman Quine|url=http://www.inamori-f.or.jp/laureates/k12_c_willard/ctn_e.html|publisher=Inamori Foundation|accessdate=15 December 2012}}</ref> | |
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| Quine falls squarely into the analytic philosophy tradition while also being the main proponent of the view that philosophy is not merely [[conceptual analysis]]. His major writings include "[[Two Dogmas of Empiricism]]" (1951), which attacked the distinction between [[analytic proposition|analytic]] and [[synthetic proposition|synthetic]] [[proposition]]s and advocated a form of [[semantic holism]], and ''[[Word and Object]]'' (1960), which further developed these positions and introduced Quine's famous [[indeterminacy of translation]] thesis, advocating a [[behaviorist]] [[Meaning (philosophy of language)|theory of meaning]]. He also developed an influential [[naturalized epistemology]] that tried to provide "an improved scientific explanation of how we have developed elaborate scientific theories on the basis of meager sensory input."<ref name="iep">[http://www.iep.utm.edu/quine-sc/ "Quine's Philosophy of Science"]. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Iep.utm.edu. 27 July 2009. Accessed 8 March 2010.</ref> He is also important in [[philosophy of science]] for his "systematic attempt to understand science from within the resources of science itself"<ref name="iep" /> and for his conception of philosophy as continuous with science. This led to his famous quip that "philosophy of science is philosophy enough."<ref>[http://www.jstor.org/stable/2251091?cookieSet=1 "Mr Strawson on Logical Theory"]. WV Quine. ''Mind'' Vol. 62 No. 248. Oct. 1953.</ref> In [[philosophy of mathematics]], he and his Harvard colleague [[Hilary Putnam]] developed the "[[Philosophy of mathematics#Indispensability argument for realism|Quine–Putnam indispensability thesis]]," an argument for the [[Philosophy of mathematics#Empiricism|reality of mathematical entities]].<ref>Colyvan, Mark, [http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2004/entries/mathphil-indis/ "Indispensability Arguments in the Philosophy of Mathematics"], The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2004 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)</ref>
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| ==Biography==
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| According to his autobiography, ''The Time of My Life'' (1986), Quine grew up in [[Akron, Ohio|Akron]], [[Ohio]], where he lived with his parents and older brother Robert C. His father, Cloyd R., was a manufacturing entrepreneur and his mother, Harriett E. (also known as "Hattie" according to the 1920 census), was a schoolteacher and later a housewife.<ref name = mactutor /> He received his B.A. in mathematics from [[Oberlin College]] in 1930, and his Ph.D. in philosophy from [[Harvard University]] in 1932. His thesis supervisor was [[Alfred North Whitehead]]. He was then appointed a [[Harvard Junior Fellow]], which excused him from having to teach for four years. During the academic year 1932–33, he travelled in Europe thanks to a Sheldon fellowship, meeting Polish logicians (including [[Alfred Tarski]]) and members of the [[Vienna Circle]] (including [[Rudolf Carnap]]), as well as the logical positivist [[A.J. Ayer]].<ref name = mactutor />
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| It was through Quine's good offices that [[Alfred Tarski]] was invited to attend the September 1939 [[Unity of Science]] Congress in Cambridge. To attend that Congress, Tarski sailed for the USA on the last ship to leave [[Gdańsk|Danzig]] before the [[Third Reich]] invaded Poland. Tarski survived the war and worked another 44 years in the USA.
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| During World War II, Quine lectured on logic in Brazil, in Portuguese, and served in the United States Navy in a [[military intelligence]] role, deciphering messages from German submarines, and reaching the rank of Lieutenant Commander.<ref name = mactutor />
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| At Harvard, Quine helped supervise the Harvard theses of, among others, [[Donald Davidson (philosopher)|Donald Davidson]], [[Hubert Dreyfus]], [[David Lewis (philosopher)|David Lewis]], [[Daniel Dennett]], [[Gilbert Harman]], [[Dagfinn Føllesdal]], [[Hao Wang (academic)|Hao Wang]], [[Hugues LeBlanc]] and [[Henry Hiz]]. For the academic year 1964–1965, Quine was a Fellow on the faculty in the Center for Advanced Studies at [[Wesleyan University]].<ref>[http://www.wesleyan.edu/libr/schome/FAs/ce1000-137.html "Guide to the Center for Advanced Studies Records, 1958–1969"]. Weselyan University. Wesleyan.edu. Accessed 8 March 2010.</ref>
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| Quine was an atheist.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Philosophy of W.V. Quine|year=1986|publisher=Open Court|isbn=9780812690101|page=6|last1=Quine |first1=Willard Van Orman |last2=Hahn |first2=Lewis Edwin |quote=In my third year of high school I walked often with my new Jamaican friends, Fred and Harold Cassidy, trying to convert them from their Episcopalian faith to atheism.}}</ref>
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| Quine had four children by two marriages.<ref name = mactutor /> Guitarist [[Robert Quine]] was his nephew.
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| ===Political beliefs===
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| Quine was politically conservative, but the bulk of his writing was in technical areas of philosophy removed from direct political issues.<ref>Wall Street Journal [http://www.wvquine.org/wvq-obit3.html obituary] for W V Quine – Jan 4 2001</ref> He did, however, write in defense of several conservative positions: for example, in ''Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary'', he wrote a defense of [[moral censorship]];<ref>''Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary'', entries for Tolerance (pp. 206–8) and Freedom (p.69)</ref> while, in his autobiography, he made some criticisms of American postwar academic culture.<ref>"Paradoxes of Plenty" in Theories and Things p.197</ref><ref>The Time of My Life: An Autobiography, pp. 352–3</ref>
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| Quine, like many philosophers in the Anglo-American "analytic" tradition, was critical of [[Jacques Derrida]]; in 1992, Quine led an unsuccessful petition to stop [[Cambridge University]] from granting Derrida an honorary degree. Such criticism was, according to Derrida, directed at Derrida "no doubt because deconstructions query or put into question a good many divisions and distinctions, for example the distinction between the pretended neutrality of philosophical discourse, on the one hand, and existential passions and drives on the other, between what is public and what is private, and so on."<ref>[http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/derrida/interviews.html#cambridge ''The 'Derrida Affair' at Cambridge University''], from "Honoris Causa" pp. 409–413</ref> Quine regarded Derrida's work as [[pseudophilosophy]] or [[sophistry]].<ref name="DUlisse">J.E. D'Ulisse ''[http://www.newpartisan.com/home/derrida-1930-2004.html Derrida (1930–2004)]'', ''New Partisan'' 12.24.2004</ref>
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| {{infobox
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| | bodystyle=width:auto
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| | bodyclass=plainlist
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| | title = Academic Genealogy
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| | header1 = Notable teachers
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| | data2 =
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| * [[Rudolf Carnap]]
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| * [[C. I. Lewis]]
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| * [[A. N. Whitehead]]
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| | header3 = Notable students
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| | data4 =
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| * [[Hilary Putnam]]
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| * [[Donald Davidson (philosopher)|Donald Davidson]]
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| * [[Daniel Dennett]]
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| * [[Dagfinn Føllesdal]]
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| * [[Gilbert Harman]]
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| * [[Saul Kripke]]
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| * [[David Kellogg Lewis|David K. Lewis]]
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| * [[Thomas Nagel]]
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| * [[Hao Wang (academic)|Hao Wang]]
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| * [[David Lyons (legal philosopher)|David Lyons]]
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| * [[Michael Slote]]
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| * [[Margaret Dauler Wilson|Margaret Wilson]]
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| * [[Theodore Kaczynski]]
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| * [[Wolfgang Stegmüller]]
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| * [[Tom Lehrer]]
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| * [[Michael Silverstein]]
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| }}
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| ==Work==
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| Quine's Ph.D. thesis and early publications were on [[formal logic]] and [[set theory]]. Only after World War II did he, by virtue of seminal papers on [[ontology]], [[epistemology]] and language, emerge as a major philosopher. By the 1960s, he had worked out his "naturalized epistemology" whose aim was to answer all substantive questions of knowledge and meaning using the methods and tools of the natural sciences. Quine roundly rejected the notion that there should be a "first philosophy", a theoretical standpoint somehow prior to natural science and capable of justifying it. These views are intrinsic to his [[philosophical naturalism|naturalism]].
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| Quine could lecture in French, Spanish, Portuguese and German, as well as his native English. But like the logical positivists, he evinced little interest in the philosophical canon: only once did he teach a course in the history of philosophy, on Hume. Quine has an [[Erdős number]] of 3.<ref>[http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/collaborationDistance.html "MR: Collaboration Distance"]. American Mathematical Society. Ams.org. Retrieved 29 August 2010.</ref>
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| ===Rejection of the analytic–synthetic distinction===
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| {{See also|Two Dogmas of Empiricism#Analyticity and circularity|l1=Two Dogmas of Empiricism}}
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| In the 1930s and 1940s, discussions with [[Rudolf Carnap]], [[Nelson Goodman]] and [[Alfred Tarski]], among others, led Quine to doubt the tenability of the distinction between "analytic" statements — those true simply by the meanings of their words, such as "All bachelors are unmarried" — and "synthetic" statements, those true or false by virtue of facts about the world, such as "There is a cat on the mat." This distinction was central to [[logical positivism]]. Although Quine is not normally associated with [[verificationism]], some philosophers believe the tenet is not incompatible with his general philosophy of language, citing his Harvard colleague [[B. F. Skinner]], and his analysis of language in ''[[Verbal Behavior (book)|Verbal Behavior]]''.<ref>Prawitz, Dag. 'Quine and Verificationism.' In ''Inquiry'', Stockholm, 1994, pp 487–494</ref>
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| Like other [[Analytic philosophy|Analytic]] philosophers before him, Quine accepted the [[definition]] of "analytic" as "true in virtue of meaning alone". Unlike them, however, he concluded that ultimately the definition was [[circular definition|circular]]. In other words, Quine accepted that analytic statements are those that are true by definition, then argued that the notion of truth by definition was unsatisfactory.
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| Quine's chief objection to analyticity is with the notion of [[synonymy]] (sameness of meaning), a sentence being analytic, just in case it substitutes a synonym for one "black" in a proposition like "All black things are black" (or any other [[logical truth]]). The objection to synonymy hinges upon the problem of collateral information. We intuitively feel that there is a distinction between "All unmarried men are bachelors" and "There have been black dogs", but a competent English speaker will assent to both sentences under all conditions since such speakers also have access to ''collateral information'' bearing on the historical existence of black dogs. Quine maintains that there is no distinction between universally known collateral information and conceptual or analytic truths.
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| Another approach to Quine's objection to analyticity and synonymy emerges from the modal notion of [[logical possibility]]. A traditional [[Wittgenstein]]ian view of meaning held that each meaningful sentence was associated with a region in the space of possible worlds. Quine finds the notion of such a space problematic, arguing that there is no distinction between those truths which are universally and confidently believed and those which are necessarily true.
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| ===Confirmation holism and ontological relativity===
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| The central theses underlying the [[indeterminacy of translation]] and other extensions of Quine's work are [[ontological relativity]] and the related [[doctrine]] of [[confirmation holism]]. The premise of confirmation [[holism]] is that all theories (and the propositions derived from them) are under-determined by empirical data (data, sensory-data, evidence); although some theories are not justifiable, failing to fit with the data or being unworkably complex, there are many equally justifiable alternatives. While the Greeks' assumption that (unobservable) Homeric gods exist is false, and our supposition of (unobservable) electromagnetic waves is true, both are to be justified solely by their ability to explain our observations.
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| Quine concluded his "[[Two Dogmas of Empiricism]]" as follows:
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| <blockquote>
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| As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of [[Homer]] . . . For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing, the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits.
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| </blockquote>
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| Quine's ontological [[relativism]] (evident in the passage above) led him to agree with [[Pierre Duhem]] that for any collection of [[empirical evidence]], there would always be many theories able to account for it. However, Duhem's [[holism]] is much more restricted and limited than Quine's. For Duhem, underdetermination applies only to [[physics]] or possibly to [[natural science]], while for Quine it applies to all of human knowledge. Thus, while it is possible to verify or [[falsifiability|falsify]] whole theories, it is not possible to verify or falsify individual statements. Almost any particular statement can be saved, given sufficiently radical modifications of the containing theory. For Quine, scientific thought forms a [[Coherentism|coherent]] web in which any part could be altered in the light of empirical evidence, and in which no empirical evidence could force the revision of a given part.
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| Quine's writings have led to the wide acceptance of [[instrumentalism]] in the [[philosophy of science]].
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| ===Existence and Its contrary===
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| The problem of [[empty name|non-referring names]] is an old puzzle in philosophy, which Quine captured eloquently when he wrote,
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| :"A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can be put into three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: 'What is there?' It can be answered, moreover, in a word—'Everything'—and everyone will accept this answer as true."<ref>W.V.O. Quine, "On What There Is" ''The Review of Metaphysics'', New Haven 1948, 2, 21</ref>
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| More directly, the controversy goes,
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| :"How can we talk about [[Pegasus]]? To what does the word 'Pegasus' refer? If our answer is, 'Something,' then we seem to believe in mystical entities; if our answer is, 'nothing', then we seem to talk about nothing and what sense can be made of this? Certainly when we said that Pegasus was a mythological winged horse we make sense, and moreover we speak the truth! If we speak the truth, this must be truth ''about something''. So we cannot be speaking of nothing."
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| Quine resists the temptation to say that non-referring terms are meaningless for reasons made clear above. Instead he tells us that we must first determine whether our terms refer or not before we know the proper way to understand them. However, [[Czesław Lejewski]] criticizes this belief for reducing the matter to empirical discovery when it seems we should have a formal distinction between referring and non-referring terms or elements of our domain. Lejewski writes further,
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| :"This state of affairs does not seem to be very satisfactory. The idea that some of our rules of inference should depend on empirical information, which may not be forthcoming, is so foreign to the character of logical inquiry that a thorough re-examination of the two inferences [existential generalization and universal instantiation] may prove worth our while."
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| Lejewski then goes on to offer a description of [[free logic]], which he claims accommodates an answer to the problem.
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| Lejewski also points out that free logic additionally can handle the problem of the empty set for statements like <math>\forall x\,Fx \rightarrow \exists x\,Fx</math>. Quine had considered the problem of the empty set unrealistic, which left Lejewski unsatisfied.<ref>Czeslaw Lejewski, "Logic and Existence" ''British Journal for the Philosophy of Science'' Vol. 5 (1954–5), pp. 104–119</ref>
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| ===Logic===
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| Over the course of his career, Quine published numerous technical and expository papers on formal logic, some of which are reprinted in his ''Selected Logic Papers'' and in ''The Ways of Paradox''.
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| Quine confined logic to classical bivalent [[first-order logic]], hence to truth and falsity under any (nonempty) [[universe of discourse]]. Hence the following were not logic for Quine:
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| * Higher order logic and set theory. He famously referred to [[higher order logic]] as "set theory in disguise";
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| * Much of what ''[[Principia Mathematica]]'' included in logic was not logic for Quine.
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| * Formal systems involving [[intension]]al notions, especially [[modal logic|modality]]. Quine was especially hostile to modal logic with [[quantification]], a battle he largely lost when [[Saul Kripke]]'s [[Kripke semantics|relational semantics]] became canonical for [[modal logic]]s.
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| Quine wrote three undergraduate texts on formal logic:
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| * ''Elementary Logic''. While teaching an introductory course in 1940, Quine discovered that extant texts for philosophy students did not do justice to [[quantification theory]] or [[first-order predicate logic]]. Quine wrote this book in 6 weeks as an ''[[ad hoc]]'' solution to his teaching needs.
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| * ''Methods of Logic''. The four editions of this book resulted from a more advanced undergraduate course in logic Quine taught from the end of World War II until his 1978 retirement.
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| * ''Philosophy of Logic''. A concise and witty undergraduate treatment of a number of Quinian themes, such as the prevalence of use-mention confusions, the dubiousness of [[modal logic|quantified modal logic]], and the non-logical character of higher-order logic.
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| ''Mathematical Logic'' is based on Quine's graduate teaching during the 1930s and 40s. It shows that much of what ''[[Principia Mathematica]]'' took more than 1000 pages to say can be said in 250 pages. The proofs are concise, even cryptic. The last chapter, on [[Gödel's incompleteness theorem]] and [[Tarski's indefinability theorem]], along with the article Quine (1946), became a launching point for [[Raymond Smullyan]]'s later lucid exposition of these and related results.
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| Quine's work in logic gradually became dated in some respects. Techniques he did not teach and discuss include [[analytic tableau]]x, [[recursion#Functional recursion|recursive function]]s, and [[model theory]]. His treatment of [[metalogic]] left something to be desired. For example, ''Mathematical Logic'' does not include any proofs of [[soundness]] and [[completeness]]. Early in his career, the notation of his writings on logic was often idiosyncratic. His later writings nearly always employed the now-dated notation of ''[[Principia Mathematica]]''. Set against all this are the simplicity of his preferred method (as exposited in his ''Methods of Logic'') for determining the satisfiability of quantified formulas, the richness of his philosophical and linguistic insights, and the fine prose in which he expressed them.
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| Most of Quine's original work in formal logic from 1960 onwards was on variants of his [[predicate functor logic]], one of several ways that have been proposed for doing logic without [[quantifier]]s. For a comprehensive treatment of predicate functor logic and its history, see Quine (1976). For an introduction, see chpt. 45 of his ''Methods of Logic''.
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| Quine was very warm to the possibility that formal logic would eventually be applied outside of philosophy and mathematics. He wrote several papers on the sort of [[Boolean algebra (logic)|Boolean algebra]] employed in [[electrical engineering]], and with [[Edward J. McCluskey]], devised the [[Quine–McCluskey algorithm]] of reducing [[Boolean equation]]s to a minimum covering sum of [[prime implicant]]s.
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| ===Set theory=== | |
| While his contributions to logic include elegant expositions and a number of technical results, it is in [[set theory]] that Quine was most innovative. He always maintained that mathematics required set theory and that set theory was quite distinct from logic. He flirted with [[Nelson Goodman]]'s [[nominalism]] for a while, but backed away when he failed to find a nominalist grounding of mathematics.
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| Over the course of his career, Quine proposed three variants of axiomatic set theory, each including the [[axiom of extensionality]]:
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| * [[New Foundations]], NF, creates and manipulates sets using a single axiom schema for set admissibility, namely an axiom schema of stratified comprehension, whereby all individuals satisfying a stratified formula compose a set. A stratified formula is one that [[type theory]] would allow, were the [[ontology]] to include types. However, Quine's set theory does not feature types. The metamathematics of NF are curious. NF allows many "large" sets the now-canonical [[ZFC]] set theory does not allow, even sets for which the [[axiom of choice]] does not hold. Since the axiom of choice holds for all finite sets, the failure of this axiom in NF proves that NF includes infinite sets. The (relative) consistency of NF is an open question. A modification of NF, [[New Foundations|NFU]], due to R. B. Jensen and admitting [[urelement]]s (entities that can be members of sets but that lack elements), turns out to be consistent relative to [[Peano arithmetic]], thus vindicating the intuition behind NF. NF and NFU are the only Quinian set theories with a following. For a derivation of foundational mathematics in NF, see Rosser (1952);
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| * The set theory of ''Mathematical Logic'' is NF augmented by the [[proper class]]es of [[Von Neumann–Bernays–Gödel set theory]], except axiomatized in a much simpler way;
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| * The set theory of ''Set Theory and Its Logic'' does away with stratification and is almost entirely derived from a single axiom schema. Quine derived the foundations of mathematics once again. This book includes the definitive exposition of Quine's theory of virtual sets and relations, and surveyed axiomatic set theory as it stood circa 1960. However, [[Adolf Abraham Halevi Fraenkel|Fraenkel]], [[Yehoshua Bar-Hillel|Bar-Hillel]] and [[Azriel Levy|Levy]] (1973) do a better job of surveying set theory as it stood at mid-century.
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| All three set theories admit a universal class, but since they are free of any [[hierarchy]] of [[Type (metaphysics)|types]], they have no need for a distinct universal class at each type level.
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| Quine's set theory and its background logic were driven by a desire to minimize posits; each innovation is pushed as far as it can be pushed before further innovations are introduced. For Quine, there is but one connective, the [[Sheffer stroke]], and one quantifier, the [[universal quantifier]]. All polyadic [[Predicate (mathematical logic)|predicates]] can be reduced to one dyadic predicate, interpretable as set membership. His rules of proof were limited to [[modus ponens]] and substitution. He preferred [[logical conjunction|conjunction]] to either [[disjunction]] or the [[Material conditional|conditional]], because conjunction has the least semantic ambiguity. He was delighted to discover early in his career that all of first order logic and set theory could be grounded in a mere two primitive notions: [[set abstraction|abstraction]] and [[inclusion (set theory)|inclusion]]. For an elegant introduction to the parsimony of Quine's approach to logic, see his "New Foundations for Mathematical Logic," ch. 5 in his ''From a Logical Point of View''.
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| ===Quine's epistemology===
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| Just as he challenged the dominant analytic–synthetic distinction, Quine also took aim at traditional [[normative]] [[epistemology]]. According to Quine, normative epistemology is the trend that assigns ought claims to conditions of knowledge. This approach, he argued, has failed to give us any real understanding of the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge. Quine recommended that, as an alternative, we look to natural sciences like psychology for a full explanation of knowledge. Thus, we must totally replace our entire epistemological paradigm. Quine's proposal is extremely controversial among contemporary philosophers and has several important critics, with [[Jaegwon Kim]] the most prominent among them.<ref>[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-naturalized/ "Naturalized Epistemology"]. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Plato.stanford.edu. 5 July 2001. Accessed 8 March 2010.</ref>
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| ==In popular culture==
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| * A [[computer program]] whose output is its source code is named a "[[Quine (computing)|quine]]" after W.V. Quine.
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| ==Bibliography==
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| {{Wikisource-author}}
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| ===Selected books===
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| * 1934 ''A System of Logistic''. Harvard Univ. Press.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Church, Alonzo|authorlink=Alonzo Church|title=Review: ''A System of Logistic'' by Willard Van Orman Quine|journal=Bull. Amer. Math. Soc.|year=1935|volume=41|issue=9|pages=598–603|url=http://www.ams.org/bull/1935-41-09/S0002-9904-1935-06146-4/S0002-9904-1935-06146-4.pdf}}</ref>
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| * 1951 (1940). ''Mathematical Logic''. Harvard Univ. Press. ISBN 0-674-55451-5.
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| * 1966. ''Selected Logic Papers''. New York: Random House.
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| * 1970 (2nd ed., 1978). With J. S. Ullian. ''The Web of Belief''. New York: Random House.
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| * 1980 (1941). ''Elementary Logic''. Harvard Univ. Press. ISBN 0-674-24451-6.
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| * 1982 (1950). ''Methods of Logic''. Harvard Univ. Press.
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| * 1980 (1953). ''From a Logical Point of View''. Harvard Univ. Press. ISBN 0-674-32351-3. Contains "[http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html Two dogmas of Empiricism.]"
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| * 1960 ''[[Word and Object]]''. MIT Press; ISBN 0-262-67001-1. The closest thing Quine wrote to a philosophical treatise. Chpt. 2 sets out the [[indeterminacy of translation]] thesis.
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| * 1974 (1971) ''[[The Roots of Reference]]''. Open Court Publishing Company ISBN 0-8126-9101-6 (developed from Quine's [[Carus Lectures]])
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| * 1976 (1966). ''The Ways of Paradox''. Harvard Univ. Press.
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| * 1969 ''Ontological Relativity and Other Essays''. Columbia Univ. Press. ISBN 0-231-08357-2. Contains chapters on [[ontological relativity]], [[naturalized epistemology]], and [[natural kind]]s.
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| * 1969 (1963). ''Set Theory and Its Logic''. Harvard Univ. Press.
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| * 1985 ''The Time of My Life – An Autobiography''. Cambridge, The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-17003-5. 1986: Harvard Univ. Press.
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| * 1986 (1970). ''The Philosophy of Logic''. Harvard Univ. Press.
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| * 1987 ''Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary''. Harvard Univ. Press. ISBN 0-14-012522-1. A work of essays, many subtly humorous, for lay readers, very revealing of the breadth of his interests.
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| * 1992 (1990). ''Pursuit of Truth''. Harvard Univ. Press. A short, lively synthesis of his thought for advanced students and general readers not fooled by its simplicity. ISBN 0-674-73951-5.
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| ===Important articles===
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| {{Wikisource|On What There Is}}
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| * 1946, "Concatenation as a basis for arithmetic." Reprinted in his ''Selected Logic Papers''. Harvard Univ. Press.
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| * 1948, "[[On What There Is]]", ''Review of Metaphysics''. Reprinted in his 1953 ''From a Logical Point of View''. Harvard University Press.
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| * 1951, "[[Two Dogmas of Empiricism]]", ''The Philosophical Review 60'': 20–43. Reprinted in his 1953 ''From a Logical Point of View''. Harvard University Press.
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| * 1956, "Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes," ''Journal of Philosophy 53''. Reprinted in his 1976 ''Ways of Paradox''. Harvard Univ. Press: 185–96.
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| * 1969, "[[Epistemology Naturalized]]" in ''Ontological Relativity and Other Essays''. New York: Columbia University Press: 69–90.
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| * "'''''Truth by Convention'''''," first published in 1936. Reprinted in the book, '''Readings in Philosophical Analysis''', edited by Herbert '''Feigl''' and Wilfrid '''Sellars''', pp. 250-273, ''[[Appleton-Century-Crofts]]''., 1949.
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| ==See also==
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| {{Col-begin}}
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| {{Col-break}}
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| * [[Hold come what may]]
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| * [[List of American philosophers]]
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| * [[Plato's beard]]
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| {{Col-break}}
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| {{Portal|Philosophy|Logic}}
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| {{Col-end}}
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| ==Notes==
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| {{Reflist|30em}}
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| ==Further reading==
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| *{{cite book |title=The Cambridge companion to Quine |editor=Roger F Gibson |isbn=0521639492 |year=2004 |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=87BcFLgJmxMC&printsec=frontcover |publisher=Cambridge University Press |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=Kvw-n1JIXHkC}}
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| * ————, 1988. ''The Philosophy of W.V. Quine: An Expository Essay''. Tampa: University of South Florida.
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| * ————, 1988. ''Enlightened Empiricism: An Examination of W. V. Quine's Theory of Knowledge'' Tampa: University of South Florida.
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| * ————, 2004. ''Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W. V. Quine''. Harvard Univ. Press.
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| * ———— and Barrett, R., eds., 1990. ''Perspectives on Quine''. Oxford: Blackwell.
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| * [[Paul Gochet|Gochet, Paul]], 1978. ''Quine en perspective'', Paris, Flammarion.
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| * [[Peter Godfrey-Smith|Godfrey-Smith, Peter]], 2003. ''Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science''.
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| * [[Ivor Grattan-Guinness|Grattan-Guinness, Ivor]], 2000. ''The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870–1940''. Princeton University Press.
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| * [[Paul Grice|Grice, Paul]] and [[Peter Strawson]]. "In Defense of a Dogma". ''The Philosophical Review 65'' (1965).
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| * Hahn, L. E., and Schilpp, P. A., eds., 1986. ''The Philosophy of W. V. O. Quine'' (The Library of Living Philosophers). Open Court.
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| * Köhler, Dieter, 1999/2003. ''[http://www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/archiv/3548 Sinnesreize, Sprache und Erfahrung: eine Studie zur Quineschen Erkenntnistheorie]''. Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Heidelberg.
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| * Murray Murphey, ''The Development of Quine's Philosophy'' (Heidelberg, Springer, 2012) (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 291).
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| * {{cite book |last=Orenstein |first=Alex |title=W.V. Quine |year=2002 |publisher=Princeton University Press}}
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| * [[Hilary Putnam|Putnam, Hilary]]. "The Greatest Logical Positivist." Reprinted in ''Realism with a Human Face'', ed. James Conant. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
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| * [[John Barkley Rosser|Rosser, John Barkley]], "The axiom of infinity in Quine's new foundations," ''Journal of Symbolic Logic'' 17 (4):238–242, 1952.
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| * Valore, Paolo, 2001. ''Questioni di ontologia quineana'', Milano: Cusi.
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| ==External links==
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| {{Wikiquote}}
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| * [http://www.wvquine.org/ Willard Van Orman Quine—Philosopher and Mathematician]
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| * [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quine/ Willard Van Orman Quine] at the [[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]]
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| * [http://www.iep.utm.edu/quine-sc/ Quine's Philosophy of Science] at the [[Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]]
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| * [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quine-nf/ Quine's New Foundations] at the [[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]]
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| * {{MathGenealogy|id=73831}}
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| * [http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,416245,00.html Obituary from ''The Guardian'']
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| * [[s:On What There Is|"On What There Is"]]
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| * [http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html "Two Dogmas of Empiricism"]
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| * [http://sveinbjorn.org/simple_theories_of_a_complex_world "On Simple Theories Of A Complex World"]
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| * [http://www.framingbusiness.net/archives/1435 What is Quine's Ontology?]
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| |list=
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| }}
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| {{Authority control|VIAF=27070554|GND=118641824}}
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| {{Persondata
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| |NAME = Quine, Willard Van Orman
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| |ALTERNATIVE NAMES =
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| |SHORT DESCRIPTION = American philosopher
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| |DATE OF BIRTH = June 25, 1908
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| |PLACE OF BIRTH = Akron, Ohio, United States
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| |DATE OF DEATH = December 25, 2000
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| |PLACE OF DEATH = Boston, Massachusetts, United States
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| }}
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