Word and Object (Studies in Communication) [Paperback]

Willard Van Orman Quine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 1964 | ISBN-10: 0262670011 | ISBN-13: 978-0262670012 | Edition: First Edition

Language consists of dispositions, socially instilled, to respond observably to socially observable stimuli. Such is the point of view from which a noted philosopher and logician examines the notion of meaning and the linguistic mechanisms of objective reference. In the course of the discussion, Professor Quine pinpoints the difficulties involved in translation, brings to light the anomalies and conflicts implicit in our language's referential apparatus, clarifies semantic problems connected with the imputation of existence, and marshals reasons for admitting or repudiating each of various categories of supposed objects. He argues that the notion of a language-transcendent "sentence-meaning" must on the whole be rejected; meaningful studies in the semantics of reference can only be directed toward substantially the same language in which they are conducted.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Willard Van Orman Quine (1908--2000) held the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard University from 1956 to 2000. Considered one the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, he is the author of Mathematical Logic, The Roots of Reference, The Time of My Life: An Autobiography (MIT Press), and many other books.

Product Details

• Paperback: 309 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; First Edition edition (March 15, 1964)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262670011
• ISBN-13: 978-0262670012
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 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: #400,387 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #81 in Books > Education & Reference > Words, Language & Grammar > Semantics

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 54 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A CLASSIC OF "ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY" February 19, 2001

By The philosopher VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

This is one of the great books of 20th-century philosophy, with page after page of brilliant arguments. Although Quine had an understated wit and a gracefully economic style, this is not an easy book. I would not tackle it without some training in philosophy, logic, or linguistics. Particularly useful would be some understanding of logical positivism, which Quine is reacting against.

The book's motivating question is how a word (or words) can refer to an object or be used to pick out an object. This might seem to be a narrow topic, but it leads Quine to discuss a large number of epistemological, logical, and metaphysical issues. Quine's conclusions in these areas were so novel and profound that decades later philosophers are still digesting them.

Was Quine right about everything? Surely not, but like all great philosophers, he made us look at the old issues in new ways and made us aware of problems which we hadn't known had existed. For this we can be profoundly grateful.

Willard Van Ormen Quine died 25 December 2000.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Pinnacle of Philosophical Clarity June 19, 2001

By C. Gardner

Format:Paperback

This book is a true classic, both in content and presentation; Quine's pithy style, sometimes ironic, is singular in analytic philosophy. This book describes the generation of reference and logical categories out of the confluence of "sense-data" and "stimulus synonymy," answering with consistency many perennial questions in ontology and epistemology in the process. Chapter two (the infamous "indeterminacy of translation" thesis) is a fascinating linguistic reformulation of the "other minds" problem, demonstrating that one must conclude a type of "ontological relativity" amongst speakers. Along with Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations," Ryle's The Concept of Mind," and Sellars' "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind," Quine's magnum opus completes the quadrivium of mid-20th century analytic philosophy which together rang the death-knell of Cartesianism.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Seminal Book in Contemporary Pragmatism November 14, 2005

By Thomas J. Hickey

Format:Paperback

This book is Quine's first full-length book, and it sets forth his most elaborate statement of his wholistic thesis of language. Instead of the metaphorical statement in "Two Dogmas" written a decade earlier, here in Word and Object Quine expresses his thesis in the literal vocabulary of behavioristic psychology with his idea of "stimulus meaning".

Much of the book is an exposition of his thesis of semantic indeterminacy as it is manifested in translation between languages, which thus appears as his indeterminacy of translation thesis sometimes called his "radical translation" thesis. In fact there is nothing radical about it; linguists have long known of such translation problems. As has long been said: traduttore,traditore. But Quine uses it to critique positivism, and it is essential to his pragmatism.

In the translation situation he portrays the field linguist in the same situation that the positivist Carnap postulates in "Meaning and Synonymy in Natural Language", where Carnap attempted to describe how the field linguist can ascertain a term's "intension" or meaning by identifying its extension or range of application from the observed behavior of native speakers of an unknown language. Carnap admitted that this determination of extension involves uncertainty and possible error due to vagueness, but he excused this uncertainty and risk of error, because it occurs even in the concepts used in empirical science. While this admission of extensional vagueness in science made the fact unproblematic for Carnap, it had just the opposite significance for Quine.

For Quine extensional vagueness is an inherent characteristic of language that he calls "referential inscrutability", and which he later calls "ontological relativity." And what Carnap called intensional vagueness, Quine prefers to consider as a semantical indeterminacy in stimulus meaning but without admitting intensions.

For more on my views on Quine, please Google my book History of Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science, which is also on my web site philsci with free downloads by chapter - especially BOOK III, and my other reviews of Quine's books at this AMAZON site. See also my ebook Philosophy of Science: An Introduction.

Thomas J. Hickey