Word and Object, new edition

by Willard Van Orman Quine, Patricia S. Churchland (Foreword by), Dagfinn Follesdal (Preface by)

Overview

A new edition of Quine's most important work.

Willard Van Orman Quine begins this influential work by declaring, "Language is a social art. In acquiring it we have to depend entirely on intersubjectively available cues as to what to say and when." As Patricia Smith Churchland notes in her foreword to this new edition, with Word and Object Quine challenged the tradition of conceptual analysis as a way of advancing knowledge. The book signaled twentieth-century philosophy's turn away from metaphysics and what Churchland calls the "phony precision" of conceptual analysis.

In the course of his discussion of meaning and the linguistic mechanisms of objective reference, Quine considers the indeterminacy of 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. In addition to Churchland's foreword, this edition offers a new preface by Quine's student and colleague Dagfinn Follesdal that describes the never-realized plans for a second edition of Word and Object, in which Quine would offer a more unified treatment of the public nature of meaning, modalities, and propositional attitudes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262312806
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	01/25/2013
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	312
Sales rank:	817,171
File size:	501 KB

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.

Patricia S. Churchland is President's Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of California, San Diego, and Adjunct Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences. She is the author of many books, including Neurophilosophy and Brain-Wise (both published by the MIT Press).

Dagfinn Føllesdal is C. I. Lewis Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Stanford University.

Table of Contents

Foreword Patricia Smith Churchland xi

Preface to the New Edition Dagfinn Føllesdal xv

Preface to the First Edition xxix

1 Language and Truth 1

1 Beginning with Ordinary Things 1

2 The Objective Pull; or, E pluribus unum 5

3 The Interanimation of Sentences 8

4 Ways of Learning Words 12

5 Evidence 15

6 Posits and Truth 19

2 Translation and Meaning 23

7 First Steps of Radical Translation 23

8 Stimulation and Stimulus Meaning 27

9 Occasion Sentences. Intrusive Information 32

10 Observation Sentences 36

11 Intrasubjective Synonymy of Occasion Sentences 41

12 Synonymy of Terms 46

13 Translating Logical Connectives 52

14 Synonymous and Analytic Sentences 55

15 Analytical Hypotheses 61

16 On Failure to Perceive the Indeterminacy 66

3 The Ontogenesis of Reference 73

17 Words and Qualities 73

18 Phonetic Norms 77

19 Divided Reference 82

20 Predication 87

21 Demonstratives. Attributives 91

22 Relative Terms. Four Phases of Reference 96

23 Relative Clauses. Indefinite Singular Terms 100

24 Identity 104

25 Abstract Terms 108

4 Vagaries of Reference 113

26 Vagueness 113

27 Ambiguity of Terms 116

28 Some Ambiguities of Syntax 121

29 Ambiguity of Scope 124

30 Referential Opacity 128

31 Opacity and Indefinite Terms 132

32 Opacity in Certain Verbs 137

5 Regimentation 143

33 Aims and Claims of Regimentation 143

34 Quantifiers and Other Operators 147

35 Variables and Referential Opacity 151

36 Time. Confinement of General Terms 154

37 Names Reparsed 160

38 Conciliatory Remarks. Elimination of Singular Terms 164

39 Definition and the Double Life 170

6 Flight from Intension 175

40 Propositions and Eternal Sentences 175

41 Modality 178

42 Propositions as Meanings 183

43 Toward Dispensing with Intensional Objects 189

44 Other Objects for the Attitudes 193

45 The Double Standard 198

46 Dispositions and Conditionals 203

47 A Framework for Theory 207

7 Ontic Decision 215

48 Nominalism and Realism 215

49 False Predilections. Ontic Commitment 220

50 Entia non grata 224

51 Limit Myths 228

52 Geometrical Objects 231

53 The Ordered Pair as Philosophical Paradigm 236

54 Numbers, Mind, and Body 241

55 Whither Classes? 245

56 Semantic Ascent 249

Bibliography 255

Index 267