From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays, Second Revised Edition [Paperback]

W. V. Quine (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

This volume of essays has a unity and bears throughout the imprint of Quine's powerful and original mind. It is written with the felicity in the choice of words which makes everything that Quine writes a pleasure to read, and which ranks him among the best contemporary writers on abstract subjects. (Cambridge Review )

Professor Quine's challenging and original views are here for the first time presented as a unity. The chief merit of the book is the heart-searching from which it arose and to which it will give rise. In vigour, conciseness, and clarity, it is characteristic of its author. (Oxford Magazine )

About the Author

W. V. Quine was Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University. He wrote twenty-one books, thirteen of them published by Harvard University Press.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press; Second Revised Edition edition (May 15, 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674323513
• ISBN-13: 978-0674323513
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #159,358 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Metaphysics is dead! - long live the conceptual scheme!, November 29, 2000

By 

Jacob Lautrup Kristensen (Aarhus N Denmark) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays, Second Revised Edition (Paperback)

With this book, Quine bursts onto the scene of analytical philosophy with claims the boldness and insight of which dealt a deadly strike to the orthodoxy of logical positivism. Being published for the first time in 1953, From a Logical Point of View followed hot on the heels of Wittgenstein's Philosophische Untersuchungen and although it's approach is quite different from that of Wittgestein's work, it has received less attention than P.U. Quine's arguments are transparent and yet very substancial in their claims. Better than anyone before or after him Quine realised that the rejection of traditional metaphysics has much graver consequences than it was imagined by the logical positivists. Quine tries to reconcile empiricism with metaphysics-criticism through a pragmatic view of the theory of reality. The result; - the conceptual scheme, is a fasinating and extremely controversial idea, but it has changed the face of metaphysics and epistemology forever. Long since philosophical classics, the essays "On What There Is" and "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" are still the best and most readable expositions of the views, which saw Quine elavate theoretical philosophy to a level of thinking, of which it still benefits tremendously.

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth the cost for the first two essays alone., December 29, 2002

By 

Jack Arnold (Columbus, OH United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays, Second Revised Edition (Paperback)

This collection is worth the price simply for "On What There Is" and "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" alone. "The Problem of Meaning in Linguistics" is a gem that (along with the last six essays) is too often overlooked, simply because it occurs after the above two (notorious) essays. If you do not own this book, then you cannot be someone who works in the contemporary, post-positivist philosophy of language.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Universals, dogmas, useful myths, efficacy in communication, December 13, 2009

By 

Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays, Second Revised Edition (Paperback)

The philosophical issues treated in this book are very important indeed. In fact, they explain nothing less than what really exists in our universe and how mankind can deal with this universe through pragmatism (language).

On What There Is
Universals of bound variables (e.g., redness) are useful myths. They don't exist really (they are not there).
Physical conceptual schemes simplify our accounts of experience, because myriad scattered sense events come to be associated with simple so-called objects.

Two Dogmas of Empiricism
There is no fundamental cleavage between analytic (grounded on meanings independent of fact) and synthetic (grounded in fact) truths. The truth of a statement cannot be split into a linguistic and a factual component.
Reductionism, the theory that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience, is a dogma. The unit of empirical significance is the whole of science. Reductionism is only pragmatic.

The Problem of Meaning in Linguistics
This text treats the problem of significant sequences (phonemes and morphemes) in speech and the notion of synonymy.

Identity, Ostension and Hypostasis
Concepts in an unconceptualized reality are not more than language. Their purpose is pragmatic. The ultimate duty of language, science and philosophy is efficacy in communication and prediction.

New Foundations
In this text, Quine reduces the logical foundations of Russell's Principia Mathematica to a three-fold logic of propositions, classes and relations: membership (x is a member of y), alternative denial (a statement is false if and only if both constituent statements are true) and universal quantification (a prefix of a variable).

Reification of Universals
Quantification is a criterion of ontological commitment: an entity (a value) is presupposed by a theory if and only if it is needed among the values of the bound variables in order to make the statements affirmed in the true theory.

Notes on the Theory of Reference
In this text Quine explains Tarski's solution for the paradoxes in the theory of reference (e.g., the liar paradox).

Reference and Modality
In this text, Quine gives comments on the theory of reference and modal contexts (e.g., possibility, necessity).

Meaning and Existential Inference
In this essay, Quine treats the difficulties arising out of the distinction between meaning and reference, logical truth and singular terms.

Although the problems (and the reasoning behind them) are not always easy to understand for the layman, Quine's language is exceptionally clear (an example for all true philosophers).

These essays are a must for all those interested in philosophy and for all those who want to understand the world we live in.