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

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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.

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.

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.

Quine is very concise and fun to read. Most works of philosophy are dry and 'boring', pushing readers to read very little, put the book down, and never return to reading it. Quine breaks the mold; he is exciting, to-the-point, and illuminating.

This small book of 184 pages including an index is a collection of previously published papers. The chapters "On What There Is", "Reification of Universals", "Identity, Ostension and Hypostasis", "Reification of Universals", "Theory of Reference" and "Two Dogmas" expound on two central theses of Quine's philosophy of language. The first thesis is his nominalism, and the second is his wholism (or "holism").

"On What There Is", "Reification of Universals", "Identity, Ostension and Hypostasis", "Reification of Universals", and "Theory of Reference" are several papers that set forth Quine's nominalist philosophy of language, which is due to his fidelity to the predicate calculus created by Whitehead and Russell. Quine had written his Ph.D. dissertation titled A System of Logic under Whitehead, who in his "Foreword" wrote that logic shapes metaphysical thought. Whitehead and Russell had a nominalist agenda, and Quine bought into it.

This shaping of metaphysical thought with the Russellian symbolic logic is accomplished by combining existence claims with quantification, such that the only relation the symbols can have to the real world is by reference. Elsewhere in his "On Universals" as well as in "Reification of universals" in this book Quine thus argues that in the Russellian logic realism must be expressed by quantifying over predicates so they reference universals (i.e. ideas or meanings) as "entities". And he co-authored with Goodman "Steps toward a Constructive Nominalism", a nominalist manifesto, in which all philosophers are classified as either "platonists" or nominalists depending on whether or not predicates are quantified. Nonnominalists are chagrined at the "platonist" caricature. Furthermore nominalism typically gives philosophers the willies, and Willie Van Quine's appeal to the contrived Russellian logic used as an Orwellian newspeak has caused few to reconsider.

Quine's first statement of his wholistic thesis is set forth in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951), which has been much more influential than his nominalism; in fact it is this article that motivates many readers to buy this book. The enabling feature of Quine's wholism is his thesis that language is so empirically "underdetermined" that there is much latitude for choice as to what statements to reevaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. The thesis of the empirical underdetermination of language can be traced to Duhem's view of physical theory, which Quine cites in this article. Duhem said that there could be many theories, all equally empirically adequate, that explain the same phenomenon. But Quine furthermore extends Duhem's thesis to include not just theory but all of language including observation language.

Quine's most elaborate statement of his wholistic thesis is set forth in his first full-length book, Word and Object (Studies in Communication) (1960), where he expresses it in the literal vocabulary of behavioristic psychology instead of the metaphorical statement given in "Two Dogmas". His wholistic view went through some retrogression, when he came to think that his earlier and more radical pragmatism implies an unwanted cultural relativistic view of truth. Consequently in the 1970's he attempted to restrict the extent of his semantical wholism, so that the semantics of theory is not viewed as contributing to the semantics of observation language. This is a residual positivism that does not inhibit later pragmatists.

"Two Dogmas" is a seminal document that has guided the way to the contemporary pragmatism, which prevails in academic philosophy today. For more on Quine Google my History of Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science at my philsci web site for the book with free downloads by chapter.

Thomas J. Hickey

`From a Logical Point of View' originally published in 1953 in a series of essays by W.V.O. Quine. My comments pertain to the 2003 re-release by Harvard University Press which includes the prefaces to both the 1953 and 1980 editions.

The two best known essays from this text, "On What There Is' and `Two Dogmas on Empiricism' have been reprinted in many anthologies over the years. Although Two Dogmas may strike contemporary readers as trivial, coming at the end of the verificationist era, it did have some historic significance and is worth a look for that reason alone. I also enjoyed some of the other essays, e.g. "Reference and Modality" and "Meaning and Existential Inference". Potential buyers may wish to access the on-line table of contents prior to purchasing.

I enjoyed the book - it is a relatively accessible look back at mid twentieth century analytic thought. That said, it is largely a period piece and probably only of interest to dedicated followers of modern analytic philosophy.

in deed indeed, an outstanding classic -- and not only for insiders. the title does tell the tale: one need only have an interest in the topic.