Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W. V. Quine by Willard Van Orman Quine (PDF)

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Through the first half of the twentieth century, analytic philosophy was dominated by Russell, Wittgenstein, and Carnap. Influenced by Russell and especially by Carnap, another towering figure, Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000) emerged as the most important proponent of analytic philosophy during the second half of the century. Yet with twenty-three books and countless articles to his credit—including, most famously, Word and Object and “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”—Quine remained a philosopher’s philosopher, largely unknown to the general public.Quintessence for the first time collects Quine’s classic essays (such as “Two Dogmas” and “On What There Is”) in one volume—and thus offers readers a much-needed introduction to his general philosophy. Divided into six parts, the thirty-five selections take up analyticity and reductionism; the indeterminacy of translation of theoretical sentences and the inscrutability of reference; ontology; naturalized epistemology; philosophy of mind; and extensionalism. Representative of Quine at his best, these readings are fundamental not only to an appreciation of the philosopher and his work, but also to an understanding of the philosophical tradition that he so materially advanced.

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⭐W.V. Quine (1908-2000) was perhaps the most esteemed American philosopher of the last half of the 20th century. He received his Ph.D. degree from Harvard in 1932 and, except for service as a naval officer in WW II, spent his entire career there. During the 1930s and 1940s Quine’s work was primarily devoted to technical issues in logic and set theory. This volume reflects his philosophical commitments only. Those interested in his early technical work will need to look elsewhere.Quine was a naturalist, an empiricist, a conventionalist, and a pragmatist. His interests were mainly epistemological and ontological But he always seemed to end up fighting the tar baby of language. He was suspicious of synonyms, mistrustful of meaning, and acutely aware of dissolute definitions. His recurring answer to these problems was ORDER. And this was accomplished through the judicious use of first-order predicate logic.The 25 essays comprising this book may be cataloged as follows: (a) 12 are from professional journals, (b) 10 were published in philosophical anthologies, (c) 3 are excerpts from Quine’s books–two from Word and Object (1960) and one from the Pursuit of Truth (1990). The earliest essay (Ch. 1) was published in 1936, and the latest (Ch. 8) in 1996. Chapter 21 (2001) was published posthumously.Quine’s most publicized and debated essay is “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (Ch.2). Following at number two is “On What There Is” (Ch. 9). A close third, and my personal favorite, is “Epistemology Naturalized” (Ch. 15). Quine was a very systematic philosopher. His overarching naturalism neatly structures his interests in logic, ontology, epistemology, and philosophy of language. The editor of this superb volume has conveniently grouped the essays under five large headings. In the remainder of this review I will limit my discussion to three main topics: naturalism, ontology, and epistemology.NATURALISMQuine, like most educated people since the 19th century, is committed to a scientific worldview. He believes that “it is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described” (p. 246). And for Quine this scientific enterprise is HOLISTIC. Our minds receive sense data from the environment, process it, and postulate explanations. “Our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body” (p. 49).The goals of the philosopher may be summarized as follows (p. 247):(1) A rational reconstruction of the world from sense data.(2) This is done by postulating a realm of entities intimately related to the stimulation of the sensory surfaces.(3) Using an auxiliary realm of entities from mathematics, we proceed by contextual definition to construct a language adequate to natural science.For some surprising reason Quine believes this cannot be done. This (Carnapian?) project he characterizes as “the abyss of the transcendental” (p. 247). The flaw in our reasoning is due to the indeterminacy of translation (ibid.). Another way of putting this is to say that theories are underdetermined by the evidence. Hence our ontologies depend on our conceptual frameworks. Quine believes the scientific one is superior.ONTOLOGYQuine’s enthusiastic scientific realism and his psychologistic epistemological commitments are nicely summarized in the following quote (p. 193):”I am a physical object sitting in a physical world. Some of the forces of this physical world impinge on my surface. Light rays strike my retinas; molecules bombard my eardrums and fingertips. I strike back, emanating concentric air waves. These waves take the form of a torrent of discourse about tables, people, molecules, light rays, retinas, air waves, prime numbers, infinite classes, joy and sorrow, good and evil….All I am or ever hope to be is due to irritations on my surface, together with such latent tendencies to response as may have been present in my original germ plasm.”This is a robust scientific ontology, but there are others available. Everyone has a conceptual scheme that she uses to interpret experience. And one’s ontology is basic to the conceptual scheme (p. 184). Quine understands our species to be essential myth-makers. Physical objects are convenient myths. But some myths are better than others. Physicalism, logic, classes, and mathematics are HIGHER MYTHS. These are higher because they are good and useful. In the tradition of classical American pragmatism Quine commends UTILITY (p. 191).To emphasize Quine’s metaphysical radicalism, I offer the following quote (p. 52):”But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.”The furniture of the world is known through facts. This is an epistemological problem for most philosophers, but not for Quine. Matters of fact are not transcendental, or epistemological, or even a question of evidence. They are ONTOLOGICAL (p. 247). And our preferred ontology must be SCIENCE. Hilary Putnam, who knew Quine as well as anybody, even accused him of scientism (surely a pejorative term). “Quine proposes to reduce logic, mathematics, and philosophy itself to physics” (Putnam, p. 183).In closing this section I must give you Quine’s most famous ontological statement: “To be is to be the value of a variable” (p. 189). If we count things, they must exist!EPISTEMOLOGYAs noted earlier, Quine’s scientific naturalism is the bedrock of his philosophy. And of course this extends to his epistemology. Most epistemologists use various elements of experience to CONSTRUCT a philosophy of science. Quine, ever the science enthusiast, strives to do epistemology WITHIN SCIENCE (p. 288). But at its most basic level Quine wants to make it easy for us. He sees science as a continuation of common sense. The main difference is that the scientist is more careful (p. 197).At the end of his most famous essay on epistemology (Ch. 15 in the volume reviewed here), Quine makes several interesting distinctions. Many analytic philosophers want to talk about science, or epistemology, or ontology, and end up talking about language. Quine is no exception. Here he outlines “…the duality between concept and doctrine, between knowing what a sentence means and knowing whether it is true” (p. 273). A few paragraphs later he summarizes his important conclusion: “…epistemology now becomes semantics. For epistemology remains centered as always on evidence, and meaning remains centered as always on verification; and evidence is verification” (p. 274).Quine now ties a ribbon around his holistic science package: “What is likelier to shock preconceptions is that meaning, once we get beyond observation sentences, ceases in general to have any clear applicability to single sentences; also that epistemology merges with psychology, as well as with linguistics” (p. 274).QUINE AS PHILOSOPHERAs with most analytic philosophers, Quine’s prose is clear and direct. And his sly sense of humor sometimes breaks through his abstract musings. But he is dealing with extremely difficult issues, and it seems that his primary audience is other professional philosophers. Novice philosophy students are best served by holding off and reading Quine as seniors or graduate students. I think that Hilary Putnam would be a better introduction to this subject matter. He deals with many of the same issues as Quine, but in a more approachable fashion.REFERENCES AND RECOMMENDATIONS1) Hylton, Peter—Quine (The gold standard of secondary sources on Quine. Sophisticated, detailed, and philosophically sound.)2) Putnam, Hilary—Realism and Reason: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 3 (Important essays by a long-time Harvard colleague of Quine’s.)3) Quine, W.V.—Word and Object (A mid-career magnum opus. About 65 pp. are reproduced as Chapters 7 and 12 of the volume reviewed here.)4) Quine, W.V.—Pursuit of Truth, Revised Edition (A late career summing up and clarifying of the most importantof Quine’s accomplishments. Short, direct, and highly recommended.)

⭐W.V. Quine (2004). Quintessence, Harvard University Press (paperback)I’m going to assume you already realize that Quine is one of the most important philosophers of all time and just tell you why you need this particular book.Here are the contents. The title of each paper is followed by the title of the book from which it comes. (Note that most were originally published in various professional journals.) Those marked with a star are not available in book form.I. Analyticity and Reductionism 1. Truth by Convention (Ways of Paradox) 2. Two Dogmas of Empiricism (From a Logical Point of View) 3. Two Dogmas in Retrospect (*) 4. Carnap and Logical Truth (Ways of Paradox)II. Indeterminacy and Inscrutability 5. Speaking of Objects (*) 6. Reference (Pursuit of Truth) 7. Translation and Meaning (Word and Object) 8. Progress on Two Fronts (*)III. Ontology 9. On What There Is (From a Logical Point of View) 10. The Scope and Language of Science (Ways of Paradox) 11. On Simple Theories of a Complex World (Ways of Paradox) 12. Ontic Decision (Word and Object) 13. Things and Their Place in Theories (Theories and Things) 14. On Carnap’s Views on Ontology (Ways of Paradox)IV. Epistemology and Philosophy of Mind 15. Epistemology Naturalized (Ontological Relativity) 16. Naturalism; or, Living within One’s Means (*) 17. The Nature of Natural Knowledge (Mind and Language (multiauthor collection)) 18. Five Milestones of Empiricism (Theories and Things) 19. On Mental Entities (Ways of Paradox) 20. Mind and Verbal Dispositions (Mind and Language (multiauthor collection))V. Extensionalism 21. Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist (Future Pasts (multiauthor collection)) 22. Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes (Ways of Paradox) 23. Intensions Revisited (Theories and Things) 24. Reference and Modality (From a Logical Point of View) 25. Three Grades of Modal Involvement (Ways of Paradox)Four papers are only available in professional journals. Three are only available in edited collections containing mostly work by other authors. And the rest are scattered across From a Logical Point of View, Word and Object, Ways of Paradox, Theories and Things, Ontological Relativity, and Pursuit of Truth. I have all of these last and more. And they’re all great. But unless you know you’re a big Quine fan the cream can be found in Quintessence.The most telling thing to me are which papers are referenced by people who really know Quine. I recently read

⭐and I’m now reading

⭐. The most heavily cited papers between both volumes are in Quintessence.A caveat. There is really no shallow end to Quine, and if you dive into this unprepared you may drown. But, I came to Quine with little previous background through books like Word and Object and Ways of Paradox. It can be done. I don’t know of a really good way to get started, so I’ll have to assume that if you get this book you already have some background or are willing to put in the effort.About Logic. A couple of reviewers have complained that this volume contains none of Quine’s technical papers. Piffle. Most of Quine’s philosophical work does not depend on appreciation of his technical work. I’ve read them both, and I’m telling you. And no author of a book on Quine nor editor of a collection of papers on Quine’s philosophy has felt the need to inject tons of equations at any point. However, basic logic is sometimes used by Quine in his philosophical papers and you do need to know some basic quantification-theory/predicate-calculus/first-order-logic. I highly recommend Quine’s own

⭐or you might get by with his

⭐.The book is subtitled Basic Readings From the PHILOSOPHY of W.V. Quine.For those of you who can’t let it go try

⭐. Just know that Quine took the annoying tack of saying “well, I already published that paper in (e.g.) From a Logical Point of View, so I won’t include it Selected Logic Papers.” So you need to buy

⭐and others even to get the essential stuff.

⭐This is one of the best collections of a major analytic philosopher (or any 20th century philosopher) I’ve ever seen, and the price is right.There is one EXTREMELY major problem though – Quine’s mathematical logic and philosophy of language writings are really not represented well and mathematical logic, not at all – which is a gross oversight. While some (like the editor) consider these writings “difficult” (presumably because they generally involve math and Quine’s idiosyncratic style of notation, which the editor likely didn’t feel like modernizing), the editor included “2 Dogmas of Empiricism” (which is an equally difficult read to someone only casually acquainted with the history of modern philosophy – and completely indecipherable to the educated layperson).The writings omitted are at the heart of Q’s philosophy of language and modern mathematical and analytic philosophy. This isn’t really a Quine collection, more accurately it’s “Quine – sans all of Formal Logic and Philosophies of Mathematics and much of Language”.Still, a very strong, but qualified, recommendation. What’s in the book is uniformly excellent and this is an extremely affordably priced volume.

⭐This is difficult for me to admit since I am a Continental writer, but I love Quine’s writing. It is always crystal clear, and his reasoning (or occasional lack thereof) is always out in the open for inspection. In my opinion, a key conclusion of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” namely that his discourse blurs the distinction between science and speculative metaphysics, is bot courageous and profound.

⭐What more is there to say? Quine was close to the pinnacle of what analytic philosophy can be, definitely worth buying for those who haven’t read these papers before.

⭐This is not an anthology collection for Quine aficionados, who undoubtedly already own all of his many books (which, typically, are somewhat expensive relative to their limited page length, though a bargain at any price relative to their philosophical importance and originality). But for those with general philosophy and science interests who have yet to attend to Quine’s indispensable contributions, “Quintessence” offers an ideal opportunity. Editor Roger Gibson, Jr. has brought together twenty-five of Quine’s most significant essays, as ordered by five of the major themes of his life’s work: I. Analyticity and Reduction; II. Indeterminacy and Inscrutability; III. Ontology; IV. Epistemology and Philosophy of Mind; V. Extensionalism.It is true that the volume does not include any of Quine’s technical contributions to Logic, but given the laudable aim of bringing Quine’s work to a wider readership, this editorial decision surely cannot be faulted. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press is to be commended for producing this essential collection at such an affordable price. Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) is one of the most important thinkers in the history of world philosophy, as anyone who ventures to read a few pages of his work will readily and delightfully discover.

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