Product Description
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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Empiricism Squared
Quine tells a fascinating story about translation.His is not a lazy mind.

His assumption (or belief) that language is learned completely through experience is simply false.Ample evidence drawn from experiments in psychology, neuro-physics, and even common sense demonstrate otherwise.Like the English philosophers who wrote about language and cognition centuries before him, his work will be found to be historically interesting, but ultimately dated; one might say, in the field of linguistics, pre-Copernicus.

Probably wrong but great nonetheless
First of all, unless you specialize in self-torture, don't try to read past chapter 2. (I myself died in the middle of chapter 5.) Chapters 1 and 2, however, are fantastic. You've probably heard the story before...it seems we can't tell whether by "Gavagai" the natives mean "rabbit", or "undetached rabbit part." The reason is, every single time a native is stimulated by the one, he is stimulated by the other...or something like that. That much is a fairly amusing observation, and Quine has a field day with it, suggesting that it's impossible in principle to discriminate between these putative "referents". Hmm. Well, let's just see. Say you and I are observing a "source"...a black box, out of which ticks a stream of letters. Say that, occasionally, the string of characters "R-A-B-B-I-T" appears in the stream. You have noticed that whenever this happens, I announce (gleefully) "Gavagai!" It seems you're stuck. You can never tell whether by "Gavagai!" I take myself to "refer" to "R-A-B-B-I-T" or to the rabbit-embedded "B-B" appearing in the stream. At least, not by passive observation. Once you can ask me questions about what I do take myself to be "referring" to, it seems that we can clear this issue up, but fast. Or not? Quine thinks not, and that's where things get interesting. I'm pretty sure he's wrong, but I'm not (exactly) sure why. Probably you can employ a meta-language to artificially attach referential information to sentences...more interesting, however, is the question why you would want to. Indeed, wouldn't a philosopher versed in the paradox just say "what's the difference?" when asked whether he "referred" to "R-A-B-B-I-T" or a rabbit-embedded "B-B"? The moral seems to be that you aren't stuck at all...you know what I *mean* either way, you just don't know what I'm referring to: reference, in short, doesn't contribute in the way we usually think it does to meaning. But, whatever the answers are, the puzzles are here, so read it.

A Seminal Book in Contemporary Pragmatism
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.

Thomas J. Hickey

An Essential Read forPhilosophy of Language Enthusiasts
In this incomparable and engaging book Quine takes up many of the questions he raised in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" and in his other early papers.In Word and Object, he levels an attack against the traditional notion of meaning that is accepted by so many, because it is understood by so few.Though the position defended here is alomost completely wrong, it is wrong for interesting reasons and, along with Quine's other works, establishes a position regarding matters semantic that, from his ultra-empiricist positivist perspective is nearly inevitable.If you don't find his position at least a little compelling, then your heart is made of stone.

Pinnacle of Philosophical Clarity
This book is a true classic, both in content and presentation; Quine's pithy style, sometimes ironic, is singular in the literature of analytic philosophy. This book describes the generation of reference and logical categories out of the confluence of "sense-data" and "stimulus synonymy", and proceeds to plow through every permutation of problems which can arise from such an endeavor. Chapter two (the [in-]famous "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' "Philosophy and the Empiricism of Mind," Quine's major work completes the quadrivium of mid-20th century analytic philosophy. ... Read more

Product Description
"Some Pow'r did us the giftie grant/ To see oursels as others can't." With that play on Burns' famous line as a preface, Willard Van Orman Quine sets out to spin the yarn of his life so far. And it is a gift indeed to see one of the world's most famous philosophers as no one else has seen him before. To catch an intimate glimpse of his seminal and controversial theories of philosophy, logic, and language as they evolved, and to hear his warm and often amusing comments on famous contemporary philosophers.

From his beginnings in Akron, Ohio in the early 1900s, Quine takes us on a tour of over 100 countries over three-quarters of a century, including close observations of the Depression and two world wars. Far from a philosophical tract, it is an ebullient, folksy account of a richly varied and rounded life. When he does dip into philosophy, it is generally of the armchair sort, and laced with a gentle good humor: "There is that which one wants to do for the glory of having done it, and there is that which one wants to do for the joy of doing it. One can want to be a scientist because he wants to see himself as a Darwin or an Einstein, and one can want to be a scientist because he is curious about what makes things tick .... In normal cases the two kinds of motivation are in time brought to terms .... In me the glory motive lingered ......

In this book, Quine approaches the details of his life the way he has always approached them with a sharp sense of interest, adventure and fun. And he has a skill for picking a word that is just off-center enough to pull an ordinary event out of the humdrum of daily life and evoke its personal meaning. The result is a book of memories that is utterly mesmerizing.

Willard Van Orman Quine is the author of numerous books, including Word and Object, published by The MIT Press in 1960.

A Bradford Book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

External things
This autobiography is only `a factual account of external things'.
It is a summing up of the author's travel experiences and symposia reminiscences.
It contains only very superficial sketches of his family life and professional career and nearly nothing about his philosophical work or about discussions with colleagues.
There are no emotions, no comments on political or social events, on war or peace. Nothing.

I cannot recommend this book.

For an introduction to the work of Quine, I recommend an interview with Bryan Magee published in `Talking Philosophy: dialogues with Fifteen Leading Philosophers.'

Poor formatting
An interesting book, a bit too long, and a very bad text-formatting job. One would expect much better from MIT press. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Willard Van Orman Quine, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 1316 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
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Chapters: John Dewey, Willard Van Orman Quine, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Hilary Putnam, Mordecai Kaplan, Eleanor Duckworth, Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller, Richard Shusterman, Richard Rorty, George Herbert Mead, Cornel West, Richard Posner, Reinhold Niebuhr, Joseph Margolis, George Santayana, Clarence Irving Lewis, Charles Cooley, Wilfrid Sellars, Sidney Hook, Karl-Otto Apel, Susan Haack, Abraham Kaplan, Brian J. Mistler, Addison Webster Moore, Young Radicals. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 288. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: John Dewey (October 20, 1859 June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey, along with Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, is recognized as one of the founders of the philosophy of pragmatism and of functional psychology. He was a major representative of the progressive and progressive populist philosophies of schooling during the first half of the 20th century in the USA. Although Dewey is known best for his publications concerning education, he also wrote about many other topics, including experience, nature, art, logic, inquiry, democracy, and ethics. In his advocacy of democracy, Dewey considered two fundamental elementsschools and civil societyas being major topics needing attention and reconstruction to encourage experimental intelligence and plurality. Dewey asserted that complete democracy was to be obtained not just by extending voting rights but also by ensuring that there exists a fully-formed public opinion, accomplished by effective communication among citizens, experts, and politicians, with the latter being accountable for the policies they adopt. Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont of modest family origins. Like ...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=16187 ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Letras Libres, published by Editorial Vuelta, S.A. de C.V. on February 1, 2001. The length of the article is 916 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: MINIATURAS: Quine, el maestro, murió a los 92 años.(Willard Van Orman Quine, filósofo)(TT: Miniatures: Quine, the master, dead at ninety-two.)(TA: philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine)(Obituario)
Author: Hugo Hiriart
Publication: Letras Libres (Magazine/Journal)
Date: February 1, 2001
Publisher: Editorial Vuelta, S.A. de C.V.
Volume: 3Issue: 26Page: 70

Article Type: Obituario, Biography

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

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Chapters: Andrew Wiles, Saul Kripke, Willard Van Orman Quine, John Rawls, Mauricio Kagel, György Ligeti, Dana Scott, Thomas Nagel, Giuseppe Penone, Michael Dummett, Kronos Quartet, Anne Sofie Von Otter, Claes Oldenburg, Herzog ... Read more

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Der Erwerb des Buches enthält gleichzeitig die kostenlose Mitgliedschaft im Buchklub des Verlags zum Ausprobieren - dort können Sie von über einer Million Bücher ohne weitere Kosten auswählen. Das Buch besteht aus Wikipedia-Artikeln: Hans Albert, Willard Van Orman Quine, Daniel Dennett, Jerry Fodor, Michael Schmidt-Salomon, David Kellogg Lewis, David Armstrong, Wilfrid Sellars, David Papineau, Bernulf Kanitscheider, Gerhard Vollmer, Patricia Churchland, Paul Churchland, Ruth Millikan, Alvin Goldman, John Perry, Ernest Nagel, Fred Dretske,. Online finden Sie die kostenlose Aktualisierung der Bücher. Nicht dargestellt. Auszug: Hans Albert (* 8. Februar 1921 in Köln) ist ein deutscher Philosoph und Soziologe. Nach Kriegsdienst und amerikanischer Kriegsgefangenschaft studierte Hans Albert Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften an der Universität zu Köln. 1952 wurde er mit einer Arbeit über Rationalität und Existenz - Politische Arithmetik und politische Anthropologie promoviert. 1957 habilitierte er sich in Köln mit einer Reihe von Aufsätzen zur Methodologie der Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften. 1963 erhielt Albert einen Ruf an den neu geschaffenen Lehrstuhl für Soziologie und Wissenschaftslehre der damaligen Wirtschaftshochschule, heute Universität Mannheim. Trotz einiger Rufe an andere Universitäten hatte er diesen Lehrstuhl inne bis zur Emeritierung im Jahre 1989. Albert ist Ehrendoktor der Universitäten Linz (1995), Athen (1997), Kassel (2000), Graz (2007) sowie Klagenfurt (2007). Als Vertreter des Kritischen Rationalismus war Hans Albert neben Karl Popper, Theodor W. Adorno und Jürgen Habermas einer der Akteure im so genannten Positivismusstreit. Eine seiner vielen an Karl Popper orientierten Hauptaussagen: Da die Vernunft fehlbar ist, müssen Theorien immer wieder der Kritik unterzogen werden. Keine These kann zweifelsfrei begründet werden. Argumentativ stützt sich diese Auffassung auf das von ihm so genannte Münchhausen-...http://booksllc.net/?l=de&id=168124 ... Read more

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Chapters: Jeffrey Dahmer, John Brown, Willard Van Orman Quine, Clark Gable, Wendell Willkie, Richard Smalley, Jim Jarmusch, Mark Mothersbaugh, David Allan Coe, Sandi Jackson, Lebron James, Bo Schembechler, Joseph Arthur, Elbridge Truman Barnette, Ara Parseghian, Stanford R. Ovshinsky, Thurman Munson, Ricky Powers, Larry Csonka, John Dean, James Harrison, Chrissie Hynde, Anne Heche, Shirley Fry, James Ingram, Jesse White, Frank W. Mayborn, Jaroslav Pelikan, Liam Lynch, Gus Johnson, Robert Quine, George Sisler, George Dexter Whitcomb, Hugh Downs, Brad Warner, Denny Shute, Robert Mihaly, Jani Lane, Brock Kreitzburg, List of People From Akron, Ohio, Dan Auerbach, Cliff Battles, Herman Keiser, Beanie Wells, Mike Vrabel, Joe Glazer, Antonio Pittman, Chuck Klosterman, Rita Dove, Ward Van Orman, A. W. Tozer, Tyrone Evans, William H. Gerstenmaier, Keith Dambrot, Tim "Ripper" Owens, Judith Resnik, R. W. Apple, Jr., Thomas Scott Baldwin, E. J. Burt, Bob Golic, Melina Kanakaredes, Mike Golic, Carol Heiss, Luke Sewell, Nate Thurmond, Chuck Blasdel, Damon Packard, Art Fleming, List of Akron Baseball People, Lux Interior, Scott Muni, Dick Goddard, James W. Reilly, Pete Nischt, Henry Augustus Buchtel, Mark Stevens, Rex Humbard, Leonard Firestone, John F. Seiberling, Butch Reynolds, Louis Nanchoff, Ray Wise, Harold G. Epperson, Tom Cousineau, Gene Boyer, Gene Woodling, Elizabeth Franz, Todd Tobias, Tyrell Sutton, Eugene C. Eppley, Brad Guigar, Harvey Samuel Firestone, Gabe Norwood, Wilbur F. Sanders, Howard Hewett, Steve Johnson, Angie Everhart, Walter Forward, Mike Doss, Rosario Borgio, Frank Seiberling, Dan Moldea, Michael Holley, Mortimer Dormer Leggett, Terry Pluto, Lola Albright, Helen Jepson, James E. Akins, Parke Kolbe, Hayes Alan Jenkins, Dean Keener, Michael Dokes, Bob Knepper, Lloyd C. Douglas, Fatina Salaheddine, Terry Bevington, Dave Brown, Bob Smith, Chris Owens, Melissa Baker, Andy Alleman, Ellsworth Raymond Bathrick, Vincent J....More: http://booksllc.net/?id=77323 ... Read more

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Les achats comprennent une adhésion à l'essai gratuite au club de livres de l'éditeur, dans lequel vous pouvez choisir parmi plus d'un million d'ouvrages, sans frais. Le livre consiste d'articles Wikipedia sur : Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Rawls, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Willard Van Orman Quine, Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap, Hilary Putnam, Stanley Cavell, Charles Taylor, George Edward Moore, Stanisław Leśniewski, Jacques Bouveresse, John Mcdowell, Alfred North Whitehead, Saul Kripke, G. E. M. Anscombe, Pascal Engel, Wilfrid Sellars, Noël Carroll, Donald Davidson, Robert Nozick, Sandra Laugier, Peter Frederick Strawson, Stephen Neale, Peter Geach, Richard Rorty, Thomas Nagel, John Langshaw Austin, Nelson Goodman, Michael Martin, Denis Vernant, David M. Armstrong, David Lewis, Jerry Fodor, Vincent Descombes, Jan Woleński, Harry Frankfurt, Alfred Jules Ayer, Mario Bunge, Michael Dummett, Gilles Gaston Granger, Christiane Chauviré, Daniel Dennett, Casimir Lewy, Charles Travis, Norman Malcolm, Gilbert Ryle, Rush Rhees, Ruth Barcan Marcus, Robert Brandom, Frédéric Nef, Jonathan Dancy, Ruth Millikan, Philippe de Rouilhan, Gwilym Ellis Lane Owen, Barry Smith, Stig Kanger, Peter Winch, Gareth Evans, Crispin Wright, Fred Dretske, Antony Flew. Non illustré. Mises à jour gratuites en ligne. Extrait : Bertrand Arthur William Russell (18 mai 1872, Trellech, Monmouthshire - 2 février 1970, près de Penrhyndeudraeth, Pays de Galles), 3 comte Russell, est un mathématicien, logicien, philosophe, épistémologue, homme politique et moraliste britannique. Considéré comme l'un des plus importants philosophes du siècle, avec une pensée qui peut être présentée selon trois grands axes. La logique et le fondement des mathématiques : Russell est, avec Frege, l'un des fondateurs de la logique contemporaine. Son ouvrage majeur, écrit avec Alfred North Whitehead, est Principia Mathematica. À la suite des travaux d'axiomatisation de l'arithmétique de Pe...http://booksllc.net/?l=fr ... Read more

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Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Woodrow Wilson, Willard Van Orman Quine, John Cage, V. S. Naipaul, Hannah Arendt, C. P. Snow, Richard Wilbur, Judith Butler, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Sally Banes, Dana Gioia, Clarence Irving Lewis, Anthony Braxton, Edmund Wilson, Paula Sharp, Herbert Read, Elizabeth Parr-Johnston, H. Bruce Franklin, Vera Schwarcz, Andrei Markovits, Conrad Hal Waddington, Alvin Lucier, Mark Strand, Richard Slotkin, Wilbur Olin Atwater, Theodore R. Sarbin, Stanley Cavell, William Manchester, Paul Lafarge, George Garrett, René Dubos, George Saunders, Leslie Munro, Joanne V. Creighton, Norman O. Brown, André Aciman, Edgar S. Brightman, John Wrench, Ed Blackwell, Winthrop M. Daniels, Marcus Thompson, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Edward Loranus Rice, J.p. Clark, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Shlomo Avineri, Hing Tong, Richard N. Goodwin, Sydney Lea, Charles Lemert, Robert E. Brown, Jean Redpath, Lisa Moore, K. V. Narayanaswamy, Angna Enters, Charles Barber, Nathan M. Pusey, Michael Berenbaum, Leon Edel, Jimmy Garrison, John Monroe Van Vleck, Frederick Slocum, Paul Horgan, Makanda Ken Mcintyre, Elizabeth Willis, Michael S. Roth, Michiyo Yagi, Karl William Kapp, Grace Schulman, Judith Tarr, Jon B. Higgins, Leslie H. Gelb, Max Tishler, T. Viswanathan, Scott Plous, Jonathan Schell, Henry Duckworth, Jeanine Basinger, Sumarsam, Debby Applegate, Martin Ostwald, Peter Cole, Jean Stafford, Arthur Kopit, Jay Hoggard, Cyrus David Foss, Ellis Kohs, F.d. Reeve, Ethan Kleinberg, Kit Reed, Edward Bennett Rosa, Carl Emil Schorske, Gorō Yamaguchi, Philip Hallie, Augustus William Smith, Gary Yohe, Dick Griffin, Marzette Watts, Clarence Long, E. San Juan, Anselm Berrigan, Barry R. Schaller, Catherine Clinton, David P. Mcallester, Dani Shapiro, Carl Leo Stearns, Deb Olin Unferth, William L. Storrs, Nelson W...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=33523 ... Read more

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Chapters: Willard Van Orman Quine, Complexity, Synergy, Theory of Colours, Integral Theory, Indeterminacy, Semantic Holism, Synergetics, Holism in Science, Sphota, Systems Thinking, Confirmation Holism, Holon, Organicism, Integral Ecology, Synergism, Meshico, Duhem-quine Thesis, Holism in Ecological Anthropology, Logical Holism. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 181. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Theory of Colours (original German title, Zur Farbenlehre) is a book by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published in 1810. It contains some of the earliest published descriptions of phenomena such as coloured shadows, refraction, and chromatic aberration. Its influence extends primarily to the art world, especially among the Pre-Raphaelites. J. M. W. Turner studied it comprehensively, and referenced it in the titles of several paintings (Bockemuhl, 1991). Wassily Kandinsky considered Goethe's theory "one of the most important works." Although Goethe's work was never well received by physicists, a number of philosophers and physicists have been known to have concerned themselves with it, including Arthur Schopenhauer, Kurt Gödel, Werner Heisenberg, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Hermann von Helmholtz. Mitchell Feigenbaum had even convinced himself that 'Goethe had been right about colour!' (Ribe ... Read more