Philosophy of Logic: 2nd Edition [Paperback]

W. V. Quine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 6, 1986 | ISBN-10: 0674665635 | ISBN-13: 978-0674665637 | Edition: 2

With his customary incisiveness, W. V. Quine presents logic as the product of two factors, truth and grammar--but argues against the doctrine that the logical truths are true because of grammar or language. Rather, in presenting a general theory of grammar and discussing the boundaries and possible extensions of logic, Quine argues that logic is not a mere matter of words.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Quine has few if any equals as an expositor of logic...The field in which he has made himself preeminent is that of the philosophy of logic, to which...Philosophy of Logic is a short but brilliant introduction. (Times Literary Supplement )

Quine pursues his philosophical vision with an uncompromising consistency of purpose that makes his doctrines impossible to ignore. You either go with him or define your position in reaction to his. And this is one mark of a great philosopher. (Journal of Philosophy )

By virtue of intellectual power, range and fertility of ideas and brilliance of presentation, Quine is the most distinguished and influential of living philosophers. (London Review of Books )

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: 128 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press; 2 edition (June 6, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674665635
• ISBN-13: 978-0674665637
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #729,645 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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34 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good intro to some of Quine's philosophy, May 14, 2003

By 

galloamericanus "galloamericanus" (Podunk, Iowa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Philosophy of Logic: 2nd Edition (Paperback)

This is indeed easier and better organized than Quine's other books. I think it better written than "Methods of Logic."

Much of "Philosophy of Logic" is about the sort of ideas that should be included in university logic texts, but aren't (the first part of Church's 1956 text is an exception to this sweeping assessment, surprising because written by a mathematician). POL Is also a nice introduction to a range of issues in analytical philosophy.

It is the unusual lay person who would find this a profitable read. I say this even though I find the philosophical basis of logic and mathematics deeply fascinating, but it is a fascination I can share with almost no one face to face, and I teach college!

While this is a fine introduction to Quine, the lectures he gave in Spain at 84 years of age, "From Stimulus to Science," may be better. I won't deny the weirdness of some of Quine's views. But Quine is less willfully eccentric than many other academic philosphers. Part of the weirdness is that Quine is the closest thing there is to a home grown American member of the Vienna Circle. Quine also shared the instinctive conservatism of the small town midwest he hailed from (Akron OH). This conservatism extended to his views on logic: eg his disdain for modal logic (and for all intensional notions as well), and his dismissal of higher order logic as set theory in disguise. Quine also remained pre-Godelian in many ways. His Mathematical Logic is a sort of last hurrah for Principia Mathematica. He never appreciated the rise of recursive methods or of model theory (even though he admired Tarski). While quite friendly with Carnap, he never understood Carnap's semantical approach.

His 3 logic texts are not a good place to learn metatheory: consistency, completeness, decidability, categoricity, independence.

Quine took little interest in logic before Frege. In his indifference to the history of ideas, he was typical of analytical types. He was 87 when he finally published a short essay recognizing the achievements of C S Peirce in the 19th century. Among British philosophers of his generation, he admired a fine fellow: Peter Geach. Quine co-discovered virtual sets and relations, but ignored mereology. He revered science and math, but it is unclear how much of it he really knew. Privately, he believed that philosophy should limit itself to logic, epistemology, philosophy of science, and the chaste metaphysics he himself practiced.

Quine was not a hopeless conservative. Around 1950, he jumped on the natural deduction bandwagon, and walked away from axiomatics. Later, he walked away from natural deduction, but never cottoned on to truth trees. He was intrigued by Haskell Curry's combinatory logic, and invented a modest rival, calling it predicate functor logic. Quine's set theory, underappreciated in mathematical circles, is downright radical. Finally, Quine's approach to Godel's Theorem, while turgid, contained the seeds of the much more elegant later approach of Smullyan.

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I know what you're thinking about . . ., May 11, 2002

By 

S. Guha (Redmond, Washington United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Philosophy of Logic: 2nd Edition (Paperback)

. . . but it isn't so, nohow. This is a superb little book, and an ideal introduction not only to Quine's philosophy of logic, but to his entire philosophy. This is so for at least three reasons. One: though written with Quine's usual brilliant style, it is more accessible than, say, "Word and Object", partly because it is based on a college lecture series. Indeed, I think it is one of the very few Quine books ("Methods of Logic" is another) that should be accessible to any motivated and reasonably smart undergraduate who has had a first course in logic, though there is much for the professional to learn, too. Two: it covers many topics that are important not just in the philosophy of logic, but in (among other areas) philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and metaphysics--most of the range of Quine's philosophical concerns, in fact. Yet all the material is woven together with consummate skill and clarity, so much so that one needs no special familiarity with the issues to understand them or to perceive their connections. Three: no one understands the topics of this book better than Quine. (This is not to say that his philosophical views are right, of course.)

There is little need for me to explain the topics of this book, since the contents page (which is available from Amazon) is pretty self-explanatory. Nor do I want to spoil the experience of reading a master logician and philosopher by producing a ham-handed summary of this book. But if you are interested in understanding logic and language, as well getting acquainted with Quine (or indeed, contemporary analytic philosophy), then trust me: you WANT this book. One warning, though. Quine may have been a genius, but he had very weird (and, I think, wrong-headed) views on certain subjects. Don't be seduced into thinking he must be right because he's a genius. There is much to be learned from great philosophers, but uncritical acceptance of their theories is a disastrous policy. Having issued this caveat, I say again: this is a superb book. Enjoy!

17 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Quine's hobbyhorse: words without meanings, January 8, 2006

By 

Thomas J. Hickey (River Forest, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Philosophy of Logic: 2nd Edition (Paperback)

This little monograph of only 100 pages is terse and concise, and it requires careful reading.

Quine's metaphysics, such as it is, is realist. But his philosophy of logic is nominalist. Between linguistic word and referenced object he does not recognize meanings, concepts or propositions in the mind, nor does he recognize attributes or properties in the objects.

Readers seeking alternative ideas may wish to consult nonnominalist views. Consider: (1) Alonzo Church's "Formulation of the Logic of Sense and Denotation" in the book, Structure, Method and Meaning: Essays in Honor of Henry M. Sheffer. (ed. Henle, 1951) or (2) Rudolf Carnap's book, Meaning and Necessity: A Study in Semantics and Modal Logic (Midway Reprint) ([1947] 1964), which sets forth the thesis of intensions (meanings) and extensions (objects).

Quine dismisses meanings and propositions, because he rejects synonymy. Perfect synonymy is impossible because reference is determined contextually by the language system - which Quine elsewhere calls the "web of beliefs" - and no two words always occur in exactly the same context. In this respect Quine's philosophy of language is closer to the views of modern linguists. Linguists study natural languages like English, and typically ignore the views of symbolic logicians like Church and Carnap, who create artificial languages.

But few linguists are nominalists, because the systematic character of language does not necessarily imply the rejection of meaning altogether. It only implies rejection of language-transcendent meaning, because it makes meanings system-determined. A unilanguage dictionary exhibits part of the linguistic system. Furthermore too many persons recognize the mental experience of meaning to reject it as illusory. Quine's rejection of meaning is a hobbyhorse.

For more of my views on Quine see my book titled History of Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science - google the book at my web site called philsci for free downloads (especially BOOK III) - and also see my other reviews at this Amazon web site.

Thomas J. Hickey